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  But that wasn’t all – they were staggeringly beautiful as well. I looked from face to face, and found each was more stunning than the last. I realized with horror that I’d left my thesaurus in English class, and so wouldn’t be able to describe their beauty in suitably poetic terms, but let me tell you, they were smokin’ hot and no bullshit.

  I was reeling with shock, and turned to Wanda to ask her who they were, but before I could recover my voice, I noticed that a cloud of dry ice had begun to drift out from under their table. The lights in the cafeteria dimmed until their table was the only one that remained lit, seemingly by concealed spotlights. I looked to the others on my table for some kind of explanation, but no one seemed to have noticed; Wanda was still happily talking away about some movie with a fake-sounding name she’d seen last week.

  Suddenly, pounding dance music filled the room, and the eerily pale girl sprang from her chair and onto the table. I noticed for the first time the exquisite designer clothes she wore. She proceeded to strut back and forth along the tabletop, turning to stand and pose before each of her fellows, who clapped enthusiastically.

  After a few further twirls, she leaped gracefully back into her seat, and one of the boys took her position on the table. He was wearing figure-hugging jeans, a white shirt and a leather waistcoat, and a huge floppy hat with a peacock feather in the brim. His companions applauded as he sashayed back and forth in slow motion and pouted prettily.

  I grabbed Wanda by the chin and yanked her head round to face them. ‘Wanda!’ I exclaimed. ‘Who. Are. They?’

  ‘Who?’ she asked, a little confused.

  ‘Them, over there, strutting up and down the table like it’s an episode of America’s Next Top Model?’ I was virtually screaming at her now.

  ‘Oh, the unearthly, beautiful, mysterious, staggeringly well-dressed and impossibly fascinating family? I’m not sure, no one has ever really paid them much attention, what with there being so much else going on at the Academy. I think they’re called the Kelledys.’

  Kristina chipped into the conversation with some useful exposition. ‘Yes, they’re the Kelledy family; their father Joseph runs the award-winning butcher’s shop in town. Let me see if I can remember their names. The short, perky girl is Bobbi, the boy sitting down is Jack, and the one that’s standing next to you, glaring at you with intense hatred, is Teddy.’

  ‘Aargh!’ I spun round in my chair, and found myself staring into the most beautiful face I’d ever seen. I tried to take in the details of this Teddy Kelledy’s face, drinking in his chiseled jaw, his perfect straight nose, and his beautifully bouffant, side-parted hair. He continued to glower at me with dreamy pitch-black eyes and unmistakable hostility. I was used to that, of course, but I hadn’t even spoken to him yet; it usually took a few days, at least.

  An odd, gurgling noise came from the Kelledy boy’s throat, then his marble lips parted and he vomited his lunch all over me. I stood in utter shock, steak tartare dripping from my sweater, as Teddy Kelledy hissed through his strangely pointed teeth at me, his mouth a hideous grimace of pure malevolence. He turned on his heel and ran out of the cafeteria, his waist-length velvet cape billowing out behind him.

  ‘A p-p-pleasure to meet you, too,’ I stammered, before the smell of half-digested meat made me faint.

  I recovered to find Chip wafting air at me with a schoolbook. ‘Get away from me, Chip,’ I thanked him. My top was ruined. I’d have to go home and change. It would mean cutting the ‘Romantic Dialog’ class, but I couldn’t imagine I’d need that any time soon.

  I left the school and took the Supermarket and Diner (movie only) Road to the Economart to stock up on groceries. As I pushed my cart along the aisles, I thought for the first time about my bizarre encounter with Teddy Kelledy. I was as ordinary and uninteresting as he was unusual and exotic, so why had he reacted like that? Was he allergic to me? Would that happen every time we met? And where did they keep the darn stain remover in this stupid supermarket anyway?

  In exasperation, I shoved the trolley too hard and lost control; it went spinning forward, knocked into a carefully stacked pile of cans, and sent them flying. Someone cried out in pain. Oh dear – what had I done? I’d hoped to leave my clumsiness behind in Sunnytown, but no such luck. It made life so difficult.

  I paid and left, ignoring the store worker who wanted to talk to me about some attention-junkie’s broken leg. By the entrance, a gang of kids with long hair, checked shirts and stubble were spray-painting some slogan onto the wall: ‘Bark If You Love Wolves’. What on earth did that mean? Would any of the local youths turn out to be people I could make friends with? It didn’t look good.

  Back at the house, I started on a casserole for dinner, and was just serving it up when Chump got home.

  ‘Hey, Heff, how’s it going? How was your first day?’

  ‘Fine, thanks! Everyone at school was friendly and it seems like they’ll be easy to manipulate, except for this one kid who threw up on me. He was kind of fascinating, though. You know, Dad, I wouldn’t be surprised if he and I became …’

  ‘Sounds great, Heff. Anyway, I’m going to go and watch the game,’ Chump interrupted, before grabbing his plate and lumbering off to the living room.

  I stirred my casserole and sighed. If only there was someone in Spatula I could really talk to. About myself.

  chapter 3

  * * *

  a little death

  When I woke up the next morning, the dull nothingness of Spatula seemed deeper and duller than ever. Was every chapter going to begin with another day dawning? Couldn’t I skip the awkward breakfast conversation with Chump just once?

  My heart sank further as I drew back the curtains and saw the tendrils of a thick fog curling damply over the street outside. My clumsiness combined with limited visibility was a likely recipe for disaster. I could only hope I’d get through the day with my dignity and self-esteem intact, and I supposed not hurting anyone else would be nice, too.

  Chump was gone by the time I got downstairs. I quickly whipped up a breakfast casserole, did the dishes, ironed Chump’s spare shirt, and swept and mopped the kitchen. I didn’t have time to scour the sink or clean the oven; that would just have to wait till later. I left a note pointing out all my hard work to Chump so he’d be able to be suitably appreciative – he found it so embarrassing when he forgot to thank me – and set out.

  The drive seemed wider and emptier than before. At first, I thought it was the fog playing tricks, but then I realized: the car was gone! Chump had actually taken it to go to work! I couldn’t believe he could be so ungrateful and thoughtless after all the effort I’d put into making his hovel halfway habitable.

  When the bus finally arrived, it was so full of whining, shouting teenagers that my heart felt bruised by their uncouth natures.

  ‘Don’t you have a bus for the more advanced students?’ I asked the fat, toad-like driver, who was possibly the most unpleasant, wart-ridden sight of all.

  ‘Siddown and shaddup,’ he retorted, stamping his foot on the accelerator and nearly sending me flying. ‘D’ya want the weasels to catch us?’

  He cursed loudly at the sirens coming closer, and went round the bend so fast I tripped and fell into the nearest available seat, right next to Chip, who smiled at me hopefully.

  ‘Hey, Heffa. Look, it’s foggy.’

  ‘I can see that, Chip, but thanks so much for pointing it out anyway.’

  God, talking about the weather was elementary conversation for beginners; was this really the level of erudition I could expect at America’s premier character school? Once again, I bemoaned the luck that had given me such exceptional skills. It made interacting with people so hard.

  Justin Case leaned over the seat from behind. ‘Hey, Heff. Look – fog!’

  ‘It’s foggy all the darn time, guys,’ Piper pointed out, rolling her eyes.

  ‘But Heffa’s here now, so suddenly it’s super noteworthy!’ Justin said. ‘Say, Heffa, we could play hide-a
nd-seek in the fog later, what do you say?’

  I opened my mouth to tell him exactly what I thought of his endearing, if pathetic, attempt to spend time with me, but was interrupted by an earth-shattering crash as the bus ploughed into the wall next to the school. The driver jumped through the broken window and ran down the road, shouting, ‘You can’t catch meeeee!’

  We clambered out of the ruined side door and into the main courtyard, and began to hurry to English.

  ‘We could play Street Urchins and Pickpockets at lunch,’ Chip suggested hopefully as we walked. ‘The Artful Dodger’s team always wins, but it might be fun if I slipped my hand into your soft, narrow pocket, don’t you think, Heffa?’

  I ignored the invitation, sure they didn’t really want to include me – what could a clever, pretty, thoughtful girl like me add to their fun? Anyway, I was far too klutzy to participate in any kind of physical activity, not to mention that I might break into a sweat and ruin the perfection of my skin.

  All I could think about for the rest of the morning was the possibility of seeing Teddy Kelledy again. Perhaps I’d been wrong to sense that moment of connection as he lost his lunch all over my sweater, but of all the students here, he was the only one who seemed to share my sensitivity and distance from the rest of humanity.

  Luckily, my trance-like state allowed me to pass over the two lessons with the minimum of fuss and description, and before I knew it, it was time for lunch. The fog had cleared, much to Chip’s unhappiness.

  ‘They always change the weather just when we’re about to have fun,’ he complained. ‘I don’t know why the school’s Health and Safety Board is so uptight.’

  ‘It’s not the Health and Safety Board, it’s the fact that Stephfordy finds exciting action sequences really hard to write,’ Wanda explained. ‘Did you really shoot one of the Pevensies in the arm during Archery, Heffa?’

  ‘I don’t remember,’ I said. Now that I thought about it, there had been a lot of screaming and running about in my Gym class, but I’d been too busy trying to decide the exact shade of Teddy Kelledy’s eyes to pay much attention. ‘Are you coming to Music this afternoon?’

  ‘I c-can’t,’ Wanda said, stuttering slightly. ‘I, er, have an errand I have to run for my dad.’

  I had been hoping that I might be spared Teddy’s otherworldly beauty, but when I got to the ‘Mood Music’ class, he was there. He retched a little when he saw me. I dared to meet his gaze. The rest of the room went out of focus, and the background music changed to ‘lush sweeping strings’. The air between us seemed weighted with tension and foreboding, and I knew I hadn’t been wrong about our connection.

  Chip clicked his fingers in front of my eyes. ‘Snap out of it, Heffa. You’ve been staring longingly at Teddy Kelledy for five minutes.’

  I hadn’t realized how much time had passed. Time meant nothing when confronted with Teddy. Already, I could sense he was becoming the center of my existence. Well, sharing it with me, anyway. As I glanced at him again, the strings swelled behind me, dust motes seemed to dance in the air …Then the teacher turned off the cassette deck.

  ‘Music!’ he announced. ‘The quickest, laziest way to establish mood. From screeching strings that create tension to playing “Hallelujah” when a death happens, music is central to drama. Heffa, why are you standing in the middle of the room ogling the pale student in the top hat? Go sit down.’

  I slid into the seat next to Teddy and shuffled over so we were almost touching. He made an effort to smooth his expression. Without the glowering, he was more than merely gorgeous. He was alluring and enchanting and incredible and divine (I’d spent a useful half hour with my thesaurus last night). I swayed slightly and, in an attempt to regain my balance, thrust my hand out, brushing it over his thigh. I’d touched him! It was everything I’d dreamed of, rough and hard, though that might have been the denim.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, moodily.

  ‘Hi,’ I responded, instantly cursing myself for my lack of originality. But he was talking to me!

  He took his hat off and fiddled with it for a moment. ‘I apologize unreservedly for my lack of digestive control yesterday.’

  ‘That’s all right.’ I resisted the urge to tell him I was never going to wash that sweater again. ‘You can do it again if you like.’

  ‘I believe I shall cope,’ he said. There was something fascinating about the way he spoke, so formal and stilted, almost as if he’d never heard a real person talk and had no idea what they sounded like.

  Mr. Dminor cleared his throat, and I prepared myself to learn, hard as it was to tear my eyes away from the vision of beauty beside me.

  ‘Today, class, we will be looking at adolescent gloom rock, which is frequently and tiresomely used to express alienation. I’m going to hand out some teenage magazines, and I’d like you to identify the cover bands and place them on the scale from “wistful” to “wrist-slittingly depressing”. Is that clear?’

  I sighed. I’d already covered this in Sunnytown, along with all the other lessons any teacher could come up with. Even the topics I hadn’t studied I usually found easy, since I’d read every book in my local library twice. It was that or attempt to engage with boy-obsessed girls and tedious jocks. It could get boring being so far ahead of everyone in my age group, but the teachers seemed not to want to embarrass me by pointing it out, which was considerate of them.

  The magazines were handed out. I glanced at the first one. ‘My Chemical Romance.’

  Teddy nodded, looking surprised and pleased at my perception. ‘The next one’s Muse. I think I would place them more in the “heartsick yowling” category.’

  I identified Fall Out Boy – ‘angsty pseudo-deep whining’ – he named Paramore – ‘melodic bitterness’ – and I finished with The Cure. Teddy looked impressed. ‘I wouldn’t have expected someone as young as you to know the work of Robert Smith.’

  I flushed. ‘I took the class before. But I like The Cure. “Never Enough” is one of my favorite songs. It really speaks to me, you know?’

  ‘I do,’ he breathed. ‘I’m surprised to find someone else in Spatula who feels that way. What other music do you like?’

  He couldn’t be interested in me, I was sure. He must be being polite. Best to keep this on a professional level. ‘I just moved here to further my career. I’m not that interested in falling for anybody – unless something out of the ordinary happened and I met my undying love suddenly sitting beside me in music class, that is. Do you think that could happen?’

  I leaned close against him and fluttered my eyelashes a little; I’d seen people do that in films and it seemed to get results.

  ‘It seems unlikely,’ he said. ‘Especially the undying love part, there’s no such thing as the undead, how mirthful to suggest otherwise. Ha.’

  His nervous, shifty reaction convinced me he was lying about something, but at the same time, I could almost believe he was seeing the person no one else did: the deep and meaningful narrating Heffa. I looked into his eyes. I’d thought they were black, but today they sparked bright colors, like twin kaleidoscopes going round and round in front of me.

  ‘Oh, Teddy—’ I began, and was about to tell him how his brutally side-parted hair was inspiring me with thoughts of what we could do with Brylcreem, when he suddenly jumped to his feet.

  ‘I must go – the smell of your blood is overpowering!’ he ejaculated.

  ‘My blood?’

  ‘Sorry, not blood, I meant, um, pen,’ he said hurriedly, and sped out of the room. He moved so fast the SFX budget couldn’t keep up with him, and the overall effect was frankly a bit lame. I reached out to stop him, but only succeeded in scattering the pile of magazines and hitting Rudy van Warmer in the back of the head.

  ‘Gee, thanks, Heffa!’ he beamed through his tears.

  I didn’t reply. Had I imagined that moment of intimacy with Teddy? Had he really ‘ejaculated’? No one had used that word since the fifties. There was definitely something strangely old-
fashioned about him. What had I done to make him angry? What was it about me that made him feel the need to throw up or run away? Perhaps it was simply that his utter perfection allowed no room in his life for anyone who didn’t live up to his high standards. There was no future for us. I put the elastic band I’d been idly twisting into a promise ring back in my bag and resolved to put him out of my mind entirely.

  The next class was a special presentation from the seniors majoring in ‘Spontaneous Musical Routines’. We filed into the hall. I looked round for the lodestone of my life – completely forgetting my resolution in the previous paragraph; he was just too darn fascinating – and saw him standing on the upper balcony with his siblings. Our eyes met. Time slowed. Music started up from nowhere—

  Kristina nudged me. ‘The show’s starting.’

  An attractive young man stood onstage. ‘Hi, everybody, I’m Trey McBlande. My backing band, the Spunky Puritans, and I are going to perform a song for you that will hopefully clear up some things you might have been wondering about recently, now that you’re all moving towards adult parts. The birds and the bees, and so on.’

  ‘There aren’t any bees in Spatula, it’s too cold,’ Kristina whispered, sounding confused.

  ‘Right,’ Trey said into the silence. ‘Hit it, spunksters!’

  The chorus cartwheeled on behind him as he warbled into the microphone:

  The world’s getting scarier

  Your parts’re getting hairier

  Things are starting to swell …

  You might think about dating

  But you’re better off waiting

  If you don’t wanna go to hell!

  A pretty brunette jazz-handed her way up to stand next to Trey. Kristina clutched my arm excitedly. ‘It’s singing superstar Winona Arizona! Oh Em Gee!’