come on,” he said. “You might need them one of these days…”
“Well I’d go and buy them if that was the case,” I said, looking away from the long rubbery thing he was dangling in front of my eyes, acutely uncomfortable with this conversation.
“You sure? Freebies, ya know,” he said, pocketing another one as he tossed three more into the pile on the desk.
I didn’t answer, but bent over my lines and started writing again. I’d written three more before George said, “You might end up using one anyway, if my sister wants to take a few of these.”
“What?” I asked, my head snapping up.
“My sister,” he repeated, grinning. “She’s been banging on about you ever since she got back from camp. God, the detail she went into about what she wants to do to you—”
“What on earth…” Suddenly I realised who he was talking about. George Tuck. Lena Tuck. Why hadn’t I made the connection? I had only known Lena since about a week ago, and last Thursday, she had indicated that she had a crush on me. In fact, she had been what I considered to be abnormally overt about her feelings. It had been a little intimidating, but that wasn’t the reason why I was nervous about her.
“She’s so totally hot for you,” he went on.
“And what am I supposed to think of that?” I asked warily.
“Do her a favour and screw her senseless,” he said, smirking at my awkwardness. “She’s never had one, you know. We keep telling her to get her butt into gear, ‘cause she’s had so many guys after her before, but she’s finally found someone she likes and it’d break her heart if you turn her away.”
“Oh great,” I said dully. He’d just made my situation ten times more difficult. “I wouldn’t want to do that.”
It was true. I appreciated how attractive Lena was, and if my heart was a little looser, I’d jump at the chance to be the envy of nearly every guy in school. But the fact remained that I was, and always had been, attracted to Natalie. I’d always considered myself no chance, which was why I’d never had a girlfriend before, and probably the reason why I had little to no confidence with girls. But I also knew that she liked me too, thanks to Sebastian stealing her personal diary and confiding in me. I was still uneasy about dating her—how that would affect the group and the Young Army itself—but my hopes of hooking up had risen higher than they’d ever been in the last few days. Still, getting involved with Lena was the worst thing I could do if I was serious about Natalie.
“Are you close to her?” I asked George, turning back to the situation at hand. I didn’t think my own sister would ever share that kind of information with me or Peter. I wasn’t aware of her having a boyfriend in the past. I knew of her crush on Marc, but only as passing knowledge; she had never gone into detail about her feelings. As for Felicity and Jessica, I knew nothing at all about their love lives. If Lena told George about her feelings, they obviously had a different relationship than the rest of us.
“Close enough to know what she’s going through,” he said. “Perhaps having Belinda around has made her see what she’s been missing out on. She’s always been a quiet, studious type. Nobody really knows her on the inside—they just see how attractive she is. But I’m trying to get her to change that, make her more outgoing.”
“And that she has been,” I said darkly, remembering how openly she had flirted with me on camp. Even at Marc’s house the previous day, she’d been trying to catch my eye.
“Good,” he said. “Should be a lot of fun, then.”
I said nothing, my stomach writhing with panic. George was a big guy, about as tall as Harry and Simon, though more muscular and clearly tougher; not the sort of guy you’d want to go toe-to-toe with any day. He sounded protective of Lena, and I knew he’d knock my lights out if I hurt her. But what about Natalie? What on earth was I going to do? All I wanted to do now was get out of here and talk to James and Peter; get some much-needed advice. I therefore got to scribbling with my lines once again.
“You’re not interested, huh?” he asked.
I looked at him and decided the truth was my best bet for now. Evidently my face was going to give me away, no matter how hard I tried to hide it. “Sure I am. Who wouldn’t be? The thing is, I’m more interested in someone else. I don’t want to screw up my chances there if I can help it.”
George shrugged. “Maybe you’ll change your mind about that.”
“Ah, I see there’s plenty of chatter going on,” said Hall, making the class go completely quiet. I suddenly noticed that we’d been talking a little louder than we should have been; not loud enough for most people to hear over the twins, but enough for Hall to know we weren’t doing enough work. Further to that, it seemed as though Peter and Belinda had also been in conversation.
“Well, I think we’ll just have to do a bit of shuffling,” Hall noted. “Remember, none of you can leave 'til you’ve completed your task. Naval, Pensinger, you two swap places. Time, you look like a man in need of an education; you come up here and take Playman’s seat. Playman, you take your brother’s seat, and you,” he stared at Peter with hatred all over his face, “can sit in Time’s seat. Move!”
Feeling that this detention couldn’t finish soon enough, I stood up and took my things to where Peter was sitting.
“What were you talking about?” I hissed curiously at him at he went past.
“Him,” he muttered, jerking his thumb at Hall before moving to sit in Justin’s lonely seat. I sat down and was joined a moment later by a frustrated-looking Tulip.
“I wasn’t looking for personal opinions,” Hall said to Harry when he showed him his first summary. “Go back and do it again. Summarise the article; don’t give me your opinion of the journalist. If you’ve done the same thing,” he said to Simon, “then you might as well start again now.”
“Grrr!” the twins said in unison as they returned to their seats.
“And another thing, you two,” Hall said. “If you give me identical summaries, I will send you both back to do them again.”
The twins looked extremely annoyed for a moment before scrunching their summaries up and tossing them across the room, where they landed cleanly in the rubbish bin. They then resumed discussion of the article they had been studying for the last fifteen minutes.
I got going again with my lines. ‘I will show respect and adoration to my teachers at all times.’ ‘I will show respect and adoration to my teachers at all times.’ ‘I will show respect and adoration to my teachers at all times.’ It was desperately dull, but I was now in the eighties and fast moving towards the hundred mark. My writing was very untidy, even by my standards, but I hardly cared at this stage. I also had to contend with Tulip, who kept muttering things about Hall out of the corner of her mouth at me which, although they were distracting, were also hilarious, and caused me to make several mistakes.
Minutes passed in silence. Harry and Simon had stopped talking, as they were writing summaries of their own about an article they’d already discussed to death. George and Justin were in whispered conversation, but I had no idea what they were talking about. Peter and Belinda, too, were silent as they scribbled away. I could see that Tulip wanted to talk to me, but I kept my head down and kept plodding along with my lines. I just wanted to get out of there.
* * *
I was first out of the detention, having scribbled my last twenty-or-so lines quicker than ever. Over the following ten minutes, the others (bar the twins) were allowed to leave too. When Peter came out, we set off for home. I was dying to tell him about what George had said, but now that I was free to think about things, I was also eager to discuss the information Marc had given us earlier.
Neither our parents or grandparents were in sight when we arrived home, but Nicole