“Hey, have you seen Bennington? He’s meant to... Oh.” The blond guy who’s just marched into my room stops abruptly when he sees me sitting there. Me and my knickers. He blushes bright red and stares up at the ceiling. At least for a second. Then his eyes flit to the door and back to me. “Er, sorry, I thought—”
“Sinclair!” We whirl around at the sound of the outraged voice. A moment later, Tori’s standing in the doorway too.
“What’s the point of knocking if you’re going to walk in without waiting for an answer?”
“I’m sorry but...” He looks from me to Tori. “Weren’t you going to have this room?”
“Yeah, but I asked Ms.Barnett if I could swap. Weird vibes, I dunno. It’s better next door. Emma, you might be able to swap too.”
They’re both speaking quickly, and I have trouble following them. “No, I... I think I like it,” I falter.
“Are you sure? I could lend you a crystal. That might make it better.”
“You and your crystals! They’re so pointless,” says the blond guy.
Tori glares murderously at him. “Without my pointless crystals, you’d be retaking GCSE maths this year.”
I have to fight back a laugh, because Tori sounds dead serious.
“No, I’d be retaking maths if Henry hadn’t coached me.”
“It was a bit of both,” Tori declares, looking at me. “Emma, are you ready for a tour?”
I nod, bewildered.
“This is Sinclair, by the way,” she says, pointing at the boy.
“Charles,” he adds, smiling at me. I’m totally lost now.
“He’s the head teacher’s son, so everyone just calls him Sinclair, but nobody knows why.” Tori shrugs. “Emma, Sinclair; Sinclair, Emma—the new girl from Germany.”
Charles—or Sinclair, I’m not quite sure what I ought to call him—opens his mouth, but Tori doesn’t let him get a word in. “Spare us your lousy German. Nobody wants to hear you count to ten.”
“Hey,” he protests, but he doesn’t say anything more. He looks away again as he catches another glimpse of my underwear. I hastily shove it under a running top that I’ve just folded. If Tori spotted it, she’s not letting on.
All she says is, “I don’t know where Henry is. He’s not in the girls’ wing anyway.”
“I think he’s with Grace,” I say, and suddenly they’re both looking at me. Sinclair’s expression is confused while Tori isclearly surprised. She pushes past him, shoving him aside by the shoulder.
“Wait, you know Grace?”
“And Henry?” asks Sinclair.
“Yeah, well... no, not really. Henry was on my flight. He had to change in Frankfurt, and we got chatting. Grace came to the airport to meet him and took the bus back here with us. I think Henry was just going to take his things up to his room and go back to her house. They were talking about it earlier.”
“That makes sense,” says Sinclair. “Grace is a day girl.”
“She knows that, if they’ve met,” Tori snaps at him. “Don’t you, Emma?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Are you a day pupil too?” I ask Sinclair.
He shakes his head. “No, my dad has a bakery in Ebrington, and we live there. But I like boarding here. I get kind of bored on my own at home.”
“He moved into the dorm to cheer Henry up when he was homesick in the first form,” Tori explains.
“Hey, you cried your eyes out too when you first started, way more than he did,” Sinclair replies drily.
“Yes, but I didn’t have a brother and sister here,” she retorts. I find myself smiling.
