‘I saw that there was sauce on the stairs and Melissa was about to slip,’ he continued. ‘So I pulled her away from it, but we lost our balance and fell over.’
Mr Gower nodded. He glared at Ed.
‘I’ve just about had it up to my eyeballs with your pranks, Bolton. Detention slips again, is it? But first, you’ve got a mess to clean up. Come to the caretaker’s office and help yourself to a mop.’ He pointed down the hall. ‘Get on with it, Bolton.’
Ed threw Callum a look of pure hatred and marched off with the deputy head, leaving Callum and Melissa alone in the hall.
‘Are you all right?’ Callum asked awkwardly.
Melissa wiped her face with her spangled scarf.
‘I’m OK. Thanks. Thanks for helping.’
‘Do you need to get cleaned up?’
Melissa shook her head. ‘This scarf only cost ninety pence at Shaman’s – I’ll just bin it. I’m going to lunch. If I go up to the girls’ toilets I’ll have to pass Ed cleaning the floor on my way back down.’
Callum could see why Melissa might not want to risk that.
‘All right.’
Callum followed Melissa into the cafeteria and they picked up their lunch trays without speaking. He was still shocked by what had happened. He had seen the future. He had changed the future.
There were two empty seats at the end of a table, so they sat down together.
‘Cheer up,’ Melissa said. ‘At least you didn’t get sauced.’
Callum couldn’t help smiling.
‘Ed’s a bully,’ he said. ‘Don’t take it personally. He’s always looking for an excuse to make people look stupid.’
‘Oh, I know. He’s picked on me before. But not . . . not physically, you know?’
Callum realised suddenly that having their clothes ruined and being made to look stupid in front of half the school would have reduced a lot of other girls to tears. But Melissa just seemed resigned to it.
‘Yeah, he picks on me too,’ Callum told her sympathetically, poking at his mushy peas with his fork. ‘Anyone who’s not popular.’
‘You!’ said Melissa. ‘What do you mean? Everybody likes you.’
Callum glanced up at her in surprise.
‘Well, they do,’ she said. ‘You’re good at sport. You don’t talk much, but people like you. You’re not a swot, you don’t try to get in with the teachers, but you don’t mess about either. Like today – you knew Ed was responsible and you weren’t afraid to say so.’
Callum was astonished. Of course, you had to filter this news through Channel Melissa, but it had never occurred to him that popular kids like Hugh and Andrew spoke to him in the hall and helped him keep his eyes open in class because they liked him.
Melissa frowned a little, stabbing at her own plate. ‘I hope he doesn’t try and get back at you. How did you know it was him, anyway?’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘When you told Gower it was Ed dripping the ketchup, how did you know it was him?’
Callum bit his tongue.
‘I just saw him, that’s all.’
Melissa put down her fork.
‘C’mon, you were standing in front of me, Callum. I was coming down the stairs, I could see the rail at the top, but I didn’t notice Ed. You were standing at the bottom of the stairs, under the landing. You couldn’t have seen him at all. How did you really know?’
‘Must have been a lucky guess,’ Callum countered evasively. He certainly wasn’t going to tell her about his vision. ‘You know Ed. If someone’s dripping ketchup down the stairs, it’s probably him.’
Melissa’s brow furrowed, as if she was puzzling out something that didn’t make sense.
‘Yes, but when you pulled me out of the way, it was as though you knew something terrible was going to happen to me. Not like I was just going to get ketchup in my hair.’
‘Look, anyone could see you might have slipped,’ said Callum defensively. ‘I didn’t know anything. How could I?’ He stirred the green paste on his plate for emphasis.
‘Yes, but -’
‘Look, I’ve got to go,’ said Callum abruptly, standing up and picking up his tray. He’d been here before – people noticing the strange things he could do. It always meant trouble. ‘I’ll see you later, OK.’
Callum didn’t wait for a reply, but turned and headed out of the cafeteria. It wasn’t just that Melissa’s questions were getting a little too pointed. The truth was, even he didn’t know the answers. It was more than luck; more even than his own special kind of Luck.
How had he known?
*
Ed was in both of his afternoon classes, so Callum spent the rest of the day slinking in and out of lessons at the last possible second, desperately trying to avoid an encounter. He had rugby practice after school, but luckily it lasted longer than Ed’s detention, so the bully was long gone before he had finished. Still, he didn’t want to chance it.
‘Aren’t you changing out of your kit?’ asked Owen, the team captain, as Callum picked up his rucksack. ‘You look like you’ve been mud wrestling.’
‘I want to get home before dark,’ Callum said.
‘Can’t say I blame you. Who’d want to walk through Marlock Wood at night!’
Though it wasn’t exactly dark yet, the day was so overcast that twilight seemed to fall an hour earlier than usual. Marlock High Street was jammed with slow-moving traffic as commuters made their way home, and the shops were beginning to shut. The town’s pavements were thick with the spirits of the dead.
Callum didn’t think he’d ever seen so many ghosts in one place. Forgotten villagers from Marlock’s thousand years of history lurked in doorways like gossiping smokers. Although he’d seen a few of them before, there seemed to be dozens of new ones – new to Callum, at least. As he waited to cross the road, the ghost of a wartime pilot, still in his smart blue uniform, stepped out in front of him. The spectral figure climbed up into an invisible bus and disappeared. A dead woman lay face down in the middle of the pavement, her long skirts flapping in a chill breeze only Callum seemed to feel. Another slumped against a post box, staring blankly at the sky and beckoning to someone invisible. It was like walking through a war zone that only he could see – normal passers-by hurried among the ghosts, oblivious to their presence.
Callum hunched his shoulders against the cold. Weren’t ghosts supposed to haunt the places where they died? How could so many people have died in Marlock High Street? Or were they coming from somewhere else?
And how come, thought Callum bitterly as he reached the estate at the edge of town and turned on to the road that led down to Marlock Wood, how come with all these ghosts, I don’t just once see my own mum?
‘Hey, it’s Scott! Look, it’s Callum Scott! Been rolling in mud again, Scott?’
Ed and his gang were crouched under the wooden fort in the toddlers’ play park at the edge of the estate, trying to keep their cigarettes out of the wind. Callum cursed himself. He’d been so distracted by the hordes of ghosts in town he’d forgotten that Ed lived around here.
He’d been lying in wait for him.
In a few seconds, the gang had Callum surrounded: Baz, Harry, George, Craig and Ed.
‘Look at him, he must have been playing in a pigsty!’
That was Baz, Ed’s best mate, always eager to please the boss.
‘Nah, he just lives in one,’ sneered Ed. ‘Don’t you, gyppo? You and your crazy gran.’
Callum gritted his teeth at the usual insult. ‘Better than playing in a baby’s sandpit,’ he fired back.
He picked the biggest gap between Ed’s buddies and set off at a fast walk. Maybe they wouldn’t follow him into the woods. It was nearly dark now, and the ruined church didn’t need a ghostly congregation to make it eerie.
But they did follow him. They kept up with him, walking as a group on his shoulder. Safety in numbers.