Heartache High - By Jon Jacks Page 0,3

sort of scenario I’ve wished for so many times.

Where Iain stops; rather than passing by.

Where he turns, notices me; rather than somehow managing to look straight through me, like I wasn’t there.

Where I’m looking amazing; rather than falling over my feet, or sporting a massive spot on my nose.

Where his mouth almost hangs open in surprise at seeing this vision of loveliness, this Venus, who for some-unfathomably-crazy-reason he’s never noticed before.

Where he smiles, grins stupidly, just a little nervous about approaching someone so indescribably beautiful.

But that’s okay, because I smile back, letting him know it’s fine for him to come closer.

So he does.

He gives me one of his grins that somehow seem to say, Hey, you don’t know what fun is until you’ve hung around with me.

He walks over to me.

He says, ‘Hi, you might not know me, but…’

And that’s when I wake up in a bed made for the world’s thinnest person.

*

So, is that it?

Am I still in a dream?

Still not woken up yet?

I pinch myself.

Ouch!

Yeah, like that’s going to work, right?

If I’m in a dream, I’ve just pinched myself in my dream, haven’t I?

The doorway to the main building is huge, a line of identical doors surrounded by a beautifully ornate porch.

The school’s name is neatly carved into the stone above the porch entrance.

Heartache High.

I mean, what school calls itself that?

Yeah, it’s got to be a dream, right?

*

Chapter 5

Inside, I at last begin to see things I’m more familiar with.

Corridors with doors that open onto classrooms.

There’s even a room that could be some sort of laboratory.

I say could be because, all though it’s clean and well kept, it looks ancient.

Like it’s still being used to discover how the wheel works.

The classrooms, too, look like they’re from another age. One when kids sat behind rows of small wooden desks, and did exactly what teacher told them to do, including keeping deathly quiet as they scribbled down their times-tables.

Do I need to say that I still haven’t seen anyone yet?

Still, in the laboratory, the desktop opposite each seat is cluttered with what looks like equipment for an experiment.

There are a number of paper and even carved Mobius strips (you know, where you twist a strip of paper then tape the ends, so you end up with an object that’s only got one side).

On a few of the desktops, some people have even tried to work out how a three dimensional version would work.

It all adds to the unnerving Mary Celeste atmosphere, only here it’s the experiments everyone’s suddenly left half-finished rather than their meals.

One wall is dominated by huge chalkboards on which a number of supposedly helpful diagrams have been drawn. Beyond how the basic strip works, however, the figures and angled lines and curves remain a mystery to me.

Now that’s really really really odd!

One of the desktop experiments seems to have changed while I had my back to it.

I could have sworn the three, different-sized carved strips had been separate. But now they’ve been joined to almost form a hemisphere.

I whirl around, glancing nervously at the other experiments.

There’s no movement, but each one seems to have progressed slightly from how I can remember first seeing it.

And one of the diagrams on the chalkboard has been carelessly wiped, leaving a smudge of coloured chalk.

Uh oh – what is this?

A school for ghosts?

*

Chapter 6

Have I died?

Did Iain come over to me, smiling (inanely?), because he’d noticed me after all, regarding me much the same way as a pop star sees a crazed fan as a stalker?

Had he had enough, strangling me in front of a quite frankly shocked Cherry and Mary?

Suddenly, the rooms full of excited whispering.

No, not whispering; just the sound of a classroom, but so heavily muted I can barely hear it.

But it’s getting louder.

Around me, there are blurs of movement in the air,

Blurs that, as the sound of chatter increases, become wraith-like figures, moving from desk to desk.

Ghosts.

The ghosts of the kids who used to attend this school.

One of the figures stares back at me curiously.

‘Oh, hi,’ he says, offering me his hand to shake. ‘You’re new here aren’t you?’

*

‘Am I dead?’ I ask blankly.

In a daze, I accept his hand.

It’s much firmer than I expected; like a real hand.

Thing is, he no longer looks ghost-like either.

He looks just like a normal kid.

He’s even got the mussed up hair, the geeky glasses.

‘Dead?’

He grins, like this is the most amusing thing he’s ever heard, some girl asking him if she’s dead.

He nudges the girl sitting next to him with