Anthony Horowitz - Evil Star

Even so, he was unable to concentrate today. Miss Ford was telling them about Dunkirk, May 1940. Matt tried to follow what she was saying but he couldn’t make the words link up. She seemed a long way away, and was it his imagination or had it become very warm in the classroom?

“…the army was cut off and it seemed to many people in England that the war was already lost…”

Matt looked out of the window. Once again he became aware of the sharp, acrid smell of burning toast.

And that was when he saw it, floating through the air, making no sound. It was some sort of lorry. There was a figure hunched behind the wheel but the sunlight was reflecting off the windscreen and he couldn’t make it out. Like a great beast, it soared towards the school, plummeting out of the sky. Its headlamps were its eyes. The radiator grille was a gaping mouth. The tanker seemed to stretch into the distance, a huge, gleaming silver cylinder on twelve thick tyres. Closer and closer it came. Now it filled up the whole window and was about to smash through…

“Matthew? What is it?”

Everyone was staring at him. Again. Miss Ford had stopped whatever she was saying and was looking at him with a mixture of impatience and concern.

“Nothing, Miss Ford.”

“Well, stop staring out of the window and try to concentrate. As I was saying, many people thought that Dunkirk was a miracle…”

Matt waited a few moments, then glanced out of the window again. The classroom looked across to the sports centre, a solid, brick building on the other side of a field, separated from the main part of the school by a single road which rose steeply and then continued back towards York. There was no traffic. It was a beautiful day. Matt pressed a hand against his forehead. When he drew it away, there was sweat on his palm. What was wrong with him? What was going on?

Somehow he managed to stumble through history and then physics and PE. But the last lesson of the morning just had to be English with Mr King. They were reading Macbeth and Matt found Shakespeare difficult enough at the best of times. Today it meant nothing to him – and Mr King seemed to have built-in radar that allowed him to home in on anyone who wasn’t paying attention. It only took him a few minutes before he pounced on Matt.

“Am I boring you, Freeman?” he asked with an unpleasant sneer.

“No, sir.”

“Then perhaps you can tell me what I was just saying about the three weird sisters?”

Matt shook his head. He might as well admit it. “I’m sorry, sir. I wasn’t listening.”

“Then come and see me at the end of the lesson.” Mr King brushed a strand of hair out of his eyes. “The weird sisters tell Macbeth his future,” he went on. “And of course he believes them. In Shakespeare’s time, many people still believed in witchcraft and black magic…”

The end of the lesson took for ever to arrive and when it finally came, Matt didn’t hang around to receive whatever punishment Mr King had in mind. It seemed to be getting hotter and hotter in the school. The glass in the windows was magnifying the sun, dazzling him. The walls seemed to be bending and shimmering in the heat. But he knew that he was only imagining it. This was early summer. Looking around him, he could see that none of the other boys were feeling anything.

There was a fifteen-minute break before the entire school would cross over the road and go into the temporary dining room in the sports centre for lunch. Once again he thought about phoning Richard and asking him to help. Mobiles weren’t allowed at Forrest Hill, but there were three public phones on the other side of the quad.

“Matthew…?”

He turned round and saw Miss Ford walking towards him, on her way to the staff room.

“Mr King is looking for you,” she said.

Of course, he would be. Matt had defied him. That would mean more trouble than ever.

“I wanted to tell you that your last essay was a real improvement,” Miss Ford went on. She was looking at Matt a little sadly. Now she frowned. “Are you feeling ill?” she asked. “You don’t look very well.”

“I’m OK.”

“Well, maybe you should go and see matron.” She had said enough. Even the teachers at Forrest Hill didn’t want to be seen spending too much time with Matt. She brushed past him and continued on her way.

And that was when Matt made his decision. He wasn’t going to see the matron, a thin, scowling woman who seemed to treat any suggestion of illness as a personal insult. Nor was he going to call Richard. It was time to leave Forrest Hill. Today. The other boys had made it perfectly clear to him on the day he had arrived that he didn’t belong here. Well, maybe they were right. What was he doing in a private school in the middle of Yorkshire? The only thing that he had in common with the rest of them was the uniform he was forced to wear.

There was a litter bin in the corridor, just outside the staff room. Matt had been holding a pile of books but now, without even thinking about it, he threw them all in. Macbeth. Maths. A GCSE guide to the Second World War. Then he took off his tie and threw that in too. He felt better already.

He turned round and began to walk.

Gwenda Davis had stopped at the top of the hill. She knew what she had to do but she still couldn’t quite bring herself to do it. Gwenda had never liked pain. If she so much as cut her finger, she’d have to sit down for half an hour and smoke several cigarettes before she was ready to move. And she was fairly sure that her death was going to hurt very much indeed.

Could she really do it? The school was spread out in front of her. She could see it through the windscreen. It looked like a very posh place, very different from the comprehensive she had sent Matt to when he lived with her. She couldn’t imagine him going to a place like this. It wasn’t him at all.

There were a whole load of old buildings grouped round a church – but she knew that she wouldn’t find Matt there. He was going to be in the big brick building next to the football pitch. There would be lots and lots of boys in there with him. It was a shame, really, that so many of them would have to die too. The more she thought about it, the more she wondered if this was a good idea. It wasn’t too late. So far she had only killed one person – Brian. At the last minute, she had decided to hit the driver of the petrol tanker with the flat side, rather than the blade, of the axe. He’d seemed a friendly sort of person. She hadn’t even really wanted to fracture his skull.

The police would never catch up with her, anyway. She could just get out of the petrol tanker and walk away. Maybe that’s what she ought to do.

On an impulse, she reached out and turned on the radio. It was one o’clock. The news would be on and she would find out if the driver had been found yet. But strangely enough, nothing came out of the speaker. She knew the radio was on. There was a faint hiss. But nobody was talking.

And then she heard a single word.

“Gwenda…”

It was coming out of the dashboard, from the radio. She knew who it was and she was so glad to hear him. But at the same time she felt ashamed of herself. How could she have had second thoughts?

“What are you doing, just sitting there?” Rex McKenna asked.

“I don’t know…” Gwenda muttered.

“You weren’t thinking of walking away, were you, you naughty girl?” It made Gwenda tingle when he talked like that. She had seen him do it on the television. Sometimes he treated adults like children. It was part of his act.

“I don’t want to die,” she said.

“Of course you don’t, Gwenda. Nor do I. Nor does anybody. But sometimes, you know, it just has to happen. Sometimes you don’t have any choice.”