‘Sure you’re OK?’ Yanny asks, staring even harder while I try to get my coat off. It’s become some sort of woolly mammoth and wants to smother me entirely.
‘Yes,’ I say, finally yanking it off my arms and letting it fall in a heap on the floor behind me. Some of the kids are still looking. I take a deep breath and hook my ankles around the chair legs, fixing my eyes on the table. Slowly the room settles, until it’s just Yanny peering at me.
‘I’m fine,’ I say.
He’s still staring.
‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘Nothing at all. Welcome to Broadmere.’
His smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes, but my heart lifts a little anyway because here I am, in my first ever classroom.
After a while, Miss Olive hands me a timetable, which is a grid that seems to have been written in code, and then a bell starts clanging, and everyone rushes out.
‘Where are we going?’ I ask Yanny.
‘Lessons!’ he says. ‘Let me see . . .’ He looks at my timetable. ‘You’re with me for science – come on.’
I follow him gratefully, through the clatter of bodies that yesterday I craved so much. I had no idea how loud they would be, or how close. I get jostled and bumped and nearly go flying down the stairs, but somehow, keeping Yanny in sight, I make it in one piece to science.
The teacher, Mr Hocking, hands me a thin blue-covered book and barks my name to the class, before starting his lesson on force and trajectories. I clutch the book and squeeze in next to Yanny, barely noticing anything else about the class in my rush to get rid of my coat and find my pencil.
It’s a heads-down kind of lesson. Mr Hocking has sharp blue eyes and an even sharper tongue, so there’s no talking. I look over at what Yanny’s doing, and he indicates the massive text book between us.
‘That one,’ he whispers, pointing to a triangular diagram.
I have no clue what any of the writing means, but I copy it all down anyway, and then Mr Hocking draws a simplified version up on the big board and begins to go through it all.
It’s a huge relief when the lesson is over, I’m not sure I like Mr Hocking, but when I turn to Yanny to find out where we’re going next, he looks hassled.
‘Uh, right,’ he says, glancing at my timetable. ‘I’m going in the other direction. You have maths . . . Zara, don’t you have maths next too?’ He turns to the girl next to him, who nods.
‘Mr Goodenough?’
I look down at the timetable. The piece of paper is crumpled already, and I don’t even know which bit to look at.
‘Here,’ she says, tracing her finger down one of the columns. ‘M8, Mr G. You’re with me. Come on.’
I look up to thank Yanny, but he’s already gone.
‘Oh, he does that,’ Zara says. ‘He’s nice enough, but not what you’d call steadfast. He’s gone off to have one of his special lessons . . .’
‘Special lessons?’
Does she mean magic lessons? Is he going up that weird, magical-looking staircase? I squint after him, but he’s disappeared already.
It can’t be that.
‘Honour-student thing,’ she says. ‘No such luck for us.’
I’m a little bit in awe of Zara. She fills the space with her words and just her general presence. She’s a head taller than me, her dark hair spools down to her waist, and her eyes are honey gold, narrowing as she gives me a quick, appraising glance.
‘So, where’ve you come from?’ she demands, swinging out into the corridor, scattering smaller kids and bowling through them.
I hurry after her, hunching my shoulders, making myself small. ‘Um. Just home.’
‘Home?’ She turns and arches one eyebrow. ‘What, like home-schooled? Wow. This must be a bit of a change for you, then.’
‘I wanted to come to school.’
‘Well, you chose a weird one,’ she says. ‘I only started last term myself, and there are lots of things going on that I haven’t worked out yet. Including Yanny and his secret lessons. Come on.’
She sweeps off into a classroom and sits at the back of the class, which is a relief, because it turns out being the new girl is a bit of a challenge when you’re used to being in your house alone with a very small imp and a ghost nan. There are just so many people. So many warm bodies, rushing and nudging and staring and whispering.
Zara has a lot of stationery. She pulls it out of a huge fluffy pencil case and lines it up on the table. Biros, highlighters, sparkling pencils, and a huge blue rubber that says For Big Mistakes, which makes me smile.
I get out my old striped pencil, scratched and scored after a run-in with Peg, and the folding wooden ruler I found in the study. Zara looks at them and then at me. And then with a tiny sigh, she carefully pushes all her stuff over so that it’s in the middle of the table.
‘Help yourself,’ she whispers, as a man with white hair in the shape of a candle flame walks in and perches on the edge of the table at the front of the class, pink socks winking between trousers and shoes.
‘Thank you,’ I whisper.
She smiles, as yellow exercise books are handed out from the box at the front of the class. The teacher looks at me with a frown.
‘You must be Stella.’
‘Yes.’
‘Welcome,’ he says, as the rest of the class stills to listen. His voice is round and shiny as a new conker. ‘I’m Mr Goodenough.’ A shiver of energy rushes through the room. He walks over to Zara and me, a yellow book in his hand. ‘Here you go.’ His eyes glint as he stares at me, handing over the exercise book before striding back to the board at the front of the class. ‘Division!’ he says, picking up a pen.
Zara copies a complicated sequence of numbers and symbols into her book with great care and a number of different pens, so I follow her lead.
The cafeteria is even busier than the rest of the school and full of noise. There’s a lot of laughter, and talk, and charging about with trays and bags and coats. I sit with Zara at a table beneath the window, and she gets out a plastic box with lots of different compartments. There are grapes, small wedges of flatbread called barbari, a little pot of yogurt-and-cucumber dip, a packet of very thin crackers, called crisps, and a wrapped chocolate biscuit.
I get out my pear and my old bit of sausage, feeling a bit embarrassed. Zara looks over and purses her lips.
‘Do you live in Winterspell Forest?’ she asks.
‘No,’ I whisper. ‘My house is quite close by, but not actually in the forest.’
She looks like she’s going to say more, but then Yanny careers into the cafeteria and swooshes through all the other kids to land with a clatter and a grin at our table.
‘How’s day one going?’ he asks, sliding into the chair opposite us. He pulls a battered tin out of his bag and opens it. Tiny golden pastries nestle in waxed paper along with a shiny red apple and a wedge of dark, sticky-looking cake.
‘Yanny has the most ridiculous lunches.’ Zara sighs. ‘But he is very good at sharing.’ She gestures to her own box, and Yanny takes some of the crackers, shoving his tin towards us.
‘Help yourself,’ he says with a smile. There’s a pull in the air when he does it, which makes the world darken for just a second. My chest aches. And then it’s gone, and the buzz of the cafeteria returns.
But it was there for a moment; I’m sure I didn’t imagine it. Magic. Forest magic, dark and alluring. How can that be? He’s human. Isn’t he? I stare at him, and he stares back, and Zara reaches over and takes one of the pastries, putting it whole in her mouth.
‘Mmph,’ she says, closing her eyes. ‘So good . . .’