Zak looked up from the book. Everything around him had been muffled, as if he’d been underwater, but when the voice broke through to him, it was like coming back up to the surface. The world popped back into existence – the hubbub of voices around him, the clatter of cutlery and crockery, and the jostle of other kids pushing past.
‘Earth to Zak. Earth to Zak. Do you copy?’
Zak looked at his friend on the other side of the table. ‘Hmm?’
‘The cake,’ Krishna said. ‘You gonna finish it or not? ’Cause if you’re not, I’ll have it.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Yeah.’
‘OK.’ Zak pushed his tray across the plastic tabletop. ‘Whatever.’
‘Cheers.’ Krishna grabbed his spoon, dug off a piece of Zak’s leftover cake and stuffed it in his mouth. He chewed, swallowed hard and pointed his spoon at Zak. ‘You all right?’
‘Yeah, why? What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know, you’ve been a bit weird since the beginning of term.’ He shovelled in the rest of the cake and licked his spoon clean.
‘Yeah, I guess. It’s just… stuff. You know.’
Krishna looked at Zak as if he was thinking about that, then he shrugged and pushed his chair back as he stood up. ‘You coming outside to play footie?’
‘Dunno.’ Zak put his hand on the book in front of him. ‘I might go to the library. See if I can read a couple of chapters.’
Krishna rolled his eyes. ‘Whatevs, nerd.’
‘Later, loser,’ Zak replied. He smiled and watched his friend take his tray over to the clear-up trolley and slide it into the rack. When Krishna was done, he wiped his hands down the back of his trousers and headed out of the dining hall.
As Krishna left, Zak spotted May heading in for lunch with a couple of friends. As usual, she was wearing heavy black eyeliner and her black hair was hanging over her face. The lapels of her blazer were decorated with pin badges, and she was carrying her Evil Dead backpack.
She was about to load her tray with today’s lunch – some kind of grey meat and soggy vegetables, followed by cake and custard – when she spotted Zak. She said something to her friends before she headed over in his direction, still carrying her empty tray.
As she passed the table where Vanessa Morton-Chandler was sitting with her clones, Vanessa glanced up from her phone and muttered, ‘Hold your breath, everyone, you don’t want to catch anything.’
There was a beat of silence, then Vanessa’s friends started to giggle.
May continued walking a couple of paces, as if she were going to ignore Vanessa, but then she stopped dead. Tray in one hand, hanging by her side, she looked up at the ceiling for a moment, then sighed heavily and turned to glare at Vanessa. ‘What did you say?’
Vanessa looked May up and down with disgust. She put her head to the side and flicked her long hair back with one hand. ‘Well, we don’t want to catch “weird”, do we?’
Her clones giggled.
‘Go on, freak.’ Vanessa waggled her fingers at May. ‘Move along. I don’t want to look at your ugly face any more.’
Zak was on his feet the moment Vanessa called his sister a ‘freak’. By the time she said the word ‘ugly’, Zak was standing by her side.
Vanessa almost curled her lip at him. ‘Go away,’ she sneered.
Zak started to step forward but May stopped him. ‘It’s all right,’ she said to him. ‘I can—’
‘What’s he going to do, anyway?’ Vanessa glanced at the book Zak was holding. ‘Nerd me to death?’
May looked at Vanessa and narrowed her eyes. ‘I’m not scared of you,’ she said. ‘I’ve never been scared of you, but you did make me feel bad. You made me feel like I didn’t matter because I don’t look like you or dress like you, and I don’t get invited to your parties. I didn’t want to care about what you thought, or said, about me, but I did care. You know what, though? After the things I’ve seen and done? Things that would probably make your stupid flouncy hair stand on end? Now, you’re nothing to me. Your parties are nothing, your friends are nothing, your insults are nothing… everything about you means nothing to me. You’re like a speck of dust that I can just flick away. In fact, you’re not even that. I mean here…’ May glanced around the dining hall, hardly noticing that everyone was listening, ‘here, you might be a big deal, with your friends and your hair and your skirt all rolled up, but out there, you’re just another person. Same as me. No better, no worse, just different.’
May took a breath and smiled at Vanessa, who sat with her mouth open, trying to think of something to say. Before she could say anything, though, May turned on her heel. She nudged Zak and together they headed towards the dining-hall exit, leaving Vanessa sitting there, surrounded by her friends.
‘You came to help me?’ May said to Zak. ‘For real?’
‘Of course. I mean, she called you a freak, right? No one gets to call you a freak except for me.’
May stopped and glanced at him. ‘Maybe you should… you know.’
‘You mean…?’ Zak waved a hand in front of him, like Obi-Wan Kenobi telling the stormtroopers these aren’t the droids you’re looking for. ‘Really? But Mum and Dad said not to. They said we need to be normal and that—’
‘Try it on me and you’re dead,’ May said. ‘Seriously, your life would not be worth living – literally – but on her? Maybe just once. Something good.’
Zak grinned. ‘I’ve got just the thing.’ He went back to Vanessa and leant close to her, concentrating hard as he spoke quietly. When he was finished, she nodded and sat perfectly still.
Vanessa kept her eyes on Zak as he walked back to his sister, and when he reached her side, Vanessa smiled at her friends as if she had just won a great battle, then she took her bowl of cake and custard, and tipped it over her head.
‘Ewww.’ The girls sitting either side of her scooted away faster than Zak had seen the scuttlers move in Outpost Zero. They pushed back and leant away, watching Vanessa with a growing sense of horror.
The square of chocolate cake sat on top of her head, while the gloopy custard ran down her hair on to the shoulders of her blazer.
‘What are you doing?’ one of her friends said.
‘Gross!’ said another.
A shocked silence filled the dining hall, radiating outwards as people realized what was happening, then the first person started to laugh. Followed by another and another.
But Vanessa took no notice of them. Instead, she reached up, squished the cake down on to her head and began rubbing it into her hair.
By now her friends were pushing away from the table, desperate not to be covered in cake and custard.
‘I told her it was a great shampoo,’ Zak whispered to May. ‘Suggested she give it a try.’
‘Ooh.’ May faked shock. ‘You bad boy. Come on, let’s go.’
‘What about lunch? You haven’t—’
‘I’m not hungry any more.’ May took one last look at Vanessa washing her hair with cake and custard, then quietly left the dining hall side by side with her brother.
‘Well, one thing’s for sure,’ May said as they left the laughter behind.
‘Yeah? What’s that?’
‘Well, it’s official now, isn’t it? You’re definitely a freak.’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
When my publisher, Barry Cunningham, mentioned that he’d read about an organization that was planning to send people on a one-way trip to Mars, I was fascinated. Imagine leaving Earth knowing that you will never return! There was definitely an exciting story in that idea, so I found out as much as I could about the project to colonize Mars, and then I began to write. But once I had begun, I discovered a story nothing like the one I had expected. My story about sending people to Mars didn’t even leave our own planet. Instead of heading up into the skies, I dug down into the ice and discovered that my story lay much closer to home.