First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2019

Published in this ebook edition in 2020

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Text copyright © Nicola Skinner 2019

Illustrations copyright © Flavia Sorrentino 2019

Cover design copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Nicola Skinner asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008297404

Ebook Edition © April 2019 ISBN: 9780008297411

Version: 2020-02-14

For Ben, who made this possible,

and Polly, who started it all off

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

This is a Warning.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

One Year On

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

Books by Nicola Skinner

About the Publisher

IT’S NOT OFTEN you open a brand-new book to be told that it’s dangerous. But if you want the facts, and nothing but the facts, then this is a book with peril in its pages.

Well, technically, there might be peril in its pages. No one’s been able to prove anything. But still, the risks are there. Which means you need to read this page carefully before skipping off to Chapter 1.

No one is safe. Girls. Boys. Mums. Dads. Sisters. Brothers. Aunts. Uncles. Even those great-great-apparently-you’re-related-but-you-can’t-remember-how relatives you see once a year. Yep, even them.

You’re all in fate’s firing line now.

That’s because just holding this book and touching this paper has unfortunately left you, and everyone you know, potentially exposed to a substance that is, according to the scientists, ‘highly volatile, medically unregulated and impossible to cure’.

Or, as a confused-looking nurse put it to me once: ‘We’ve never seen anything like this before, love.’

So be prepared.

Over the next few days you might experience some unusual sensations. You could be running a bath before bedtime and want to drink it, not sit in it.

You might experience some unusual pains in some unusual places.

And finally – really, it’s nothing to be alarmed about – you might develop some, ahem, growths about your body.

But wait! Don’t fling the book away in horror! Come back! The chances of this happening to you too are super small. Roughly one in a million, or a billion. (Or one in a hundred. I’m not brilliant with decimals.) Honestly, it’s extremely unlikely anything will happen to you, and even if it does, there’s literally no point rushing off to the bathroom to scrub your hands.

Because it’s not your hands you need to worry about.

But look – try not to worry. Even if you are infected at least you won’t be the only one. It happened to us too. We all look a little weird here.

Or, as Mum would say diplomatically, ‘Haven’t we grown, Sorrel?’

And yes, that is my name. Mum has a thing about fresh herbs. It could have been worse, I suppose. She also loves parsley.

WHEN THE NEWSPAPERS and journalists first got hold of my story they wrote a lot of lies. The main ones were:

1. I was the child of a broken home.

2. Mum was a terrible single mother.

3. With a background like mine, it wasn’t any wonder I did what I did.

None of them was true – well, apart from Mum being a single mum. But it wasn’t her fault my dad had done a runner when I was a baby. Yet one of the headlines stuck in my head. I did come from a broken home.

Oh, not in the way they meant it, in the ‘I wore ragged trousers and brushed my teeth with sugar’ sort of way. But our house did feel worn out and broken down – something was always going wrong.

If you’d ever popped in, you’d have felt it too. The tick of the clock in the hallway would follow you around the house like it was tutting at you. The tap in the kitchen would go drip, drip, drip as if it was crying about something. If you sat down in front of the telly, it would lose sound halfway through whatever was on, as if it had gone into a monumental sulk and wasn’t speaking to anyone ever again. Ever.

There was a ring of black mould round the whole bath, our curtains were constantly pinging off their rods in some desperate escape mission and every time we flushed the loo the pipes would moan and groan at what we’d made them swallow. Oh yes, if you visited our house, you’d want to leave within seconds. You’d garble out an excuse, like: ‘Er, just remembered … I promised Mum I was going to hoover the roof today! Gotta go!’ And you’d get away as fast as you could.

Apart from my best friend Neena, not many people stayed long at our home.

And guess what it was called?

Cheery Cottage.

To be honest, though, I didn’t blame anyone that ran away. Because it wasn’t just the damp and the taps and the protesting pipes. It was more than all of that. It was the feeling in the house. And it was everywhere.

A gloomy glumness. A grumpy grimness. A grimy greyness. Cheery Cottage always felt cross and unhappy about something, and there was almost nothing this mood didn’t infect. It inched into everything, from the saggy sofa in the lounge, to the droopy fake fern in the hallway, which always looked as if it was dying of thirst, even though it was plastic.

And – worst of all – this misery sometimes seeped into Mum too. Oh, she’d never say as much, but I’d know. It was in her when she sat at the kitchen table, staring into space. It was in her when she shuffled downstairs in the mornings. I’d look at her. She’d look at me. And in the scary few seconds before she finally smiled, I’d think: It’s spreading.

But what could I do to fix things? I wasn’t a plumber. I was the shortest kid in our year, so I couldn’t reach the curtain poles. When it came to fixing the telly, all I knew was the old Whack and Pray method.

Instead, I had a different solution. And it was to follow this very simple rule:

Be good at school and be good at home, and do what I was told in both.

So, that’s what I did.

I was good at being good.

I was so good, Mum regularly ran out of shoeboxes in which to put my Sensible Child and School Rule Champion certificates.

I was so good, trainee teachers came to me to clear up any questions they had about Grittysnit School rules. Like:

Are pupils allowed to sprint outside?

(Answer: never. A slight jog is allowed if you are in danger – for example, if you are being chased by a bear – and even then, you must obtain written permission twenty-eight days in advance.)

Are you allowed to smile at Mr Grittysnit, our headmaster?

(Answer: never. He prefers a lowered gaze as a mark of respect.)

Has he always been so strict and scary?

(Answer: technically, this is not a question about school rules, but seeing as you’re new, I will let you off, just this once. And yes.)

I was so good, I was Head of Year for the second year running.

I was so good, my nickname at school was Good Girl Sorrel. Well, it had been Good Girl Sorrel, until sometime around the beginning of Year Five when Chrissie Valentini had changed it ever so slightly to ‘Suck-up Sorrel’. But I never told the teachers.

That’s how good I was.

And every time I came home from school with the latest proof, Mum would smile and call me her Good Girl. And that broken feeling would leave her and sneak back into the corners of the house.

For a while.

AND THEN, ON the first day of Year Six last September, something else broke too. Something I was quite fond of. My life.

It was the patio’s fault.

I’d let myself in from school. Mum was still working, the lucky thing, at The Best Job In The World, and wouldn’t get back for another two and a half hours. I planned to unwind by cleaning the kitchen, polishing my school shoes and doing my homework, because that was how I rolled.

Now, Mum wasn’t a big fan of me being home alone, but she worked full-time every day and didn’t get back till 5.45 p.m. We could only afford three days of After-school Club: Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. On Tuesdays, I went to Neena’s house after school. (Who, for a while, depending on which news programme was on, was either my gormless best friend, evil partner in crime, evil best friend or gormless partner in crime.)

Anyway, Mondays were my home-alone afternoons. On Monday mornings, Mum would always say: ‘Don’t burn the house down, and make sure you do your homework.’ As if I needed telling. Who knew exactly what she should be doing at any given time? Who had written Sorrel’s Stupendous Schedule?

I had, that’s who. My Stupendous Schedule played a big part in my being good. It’s sooo much easier to toe the line when you have a row of neat little boxes waiting to be ticked.

So there I was. Wiping sticky marmalade patches off our table. Emptying the dishwasher. Opening the back door to air the kitchen, which always smelled damp.

Once I’d done all that, it was 4.25 p.m. I had just a few more precious moments of leisure time before I had to crack on with my homework, and I knew exactly how to spend them.

I went to my rucksack and took out the letter which had been given to us at the end of school that very day. And this time, I didn’t skim it, surrounded by noisy classmates. I devoured every single word.

This is what it said:

Are the buttons always shiny on your blazer?

Do you regularly come home with Perfect Behaviour reports?

Could YOU be the winner of the school competition to find the Grittysnit Star of the Year?

There’s only one way to find out.

Enter my GRITTYSNIT STAR competition for the chance to be crowned THE MOST AMAZING GRITTYSNIT STAR OF THE ENTIRE SCHOOL AND LITTLE STERILIS at the end of term.

You will also win a seven-day family holiday in the Lotsa Rays Holiday Resort in Portugal. (Prize kindly donated by local travel agency Breakz Away.)

A family holiday in the sun! I’d never been abroad before, let alone on a plane. Mum always said money was a bit too tight for that. As if our money was an uncomfortable jumper.

On the letter, someone – probably the school secretary, Mrs Pinch – had drawn four little matchstick figures sunbathing on a beach. They were holding ice-cream cones and smiling at each other.

They looked happy.

I read on.

The winning GRITTYSNIT STAR will possess that special something that makes an ideal Grittysnit child.

I held my breath. What?

Each child will be judged on their ability to obey the school rules every second of the day.

I gasped in delight. That was me!

I did a quick mental calculation. There were sixty children in each year at Grittysnits. I’d be up against 419 other entrants. Or would I? I had six full years’ practice of obeying school rules. The odds were in my favour. Most kids in Reception and the early years could barely tie their own shoelaces, let alone mind their pees and, for that matter, their queues.

Winning that holiday would be like taking candy from a baby. I almost felt guilty as I mentally marked the number of competitors down. Them’s the breaks, kids.

The most important thing to remember is that the Grittysnit Star will be a living embodiment of our school motto, BLINKIMUS BLONKIMUS FUDGEYMUS LATINMUS. Or, in English …

I didn’t even have to read the English translation, I knew it so well. Looking up for a moment, I caught sight of my reflection in the kitchen window. Standing solemnly in front of me was a short, round, pale and freckly girl, her hair (the washed-out yellow of mild Cheddar) scraped back in a bun. She returned my gaze confidently, as if to say, ‘School motto? Cut me and I bleed school motto.’

Together, we chanted: ‘May obedience shape you. May conformity mould you. May rules polish you.’

The tap dripped sadly.

I read on.

The lucky winner will also enjoy other special privileges. These will include:

1. Having your own chair on the staff stage during school assemblies.

2. Never having to queue for lunch.

3. A massive badge (in regulation grey) which says:

What, you want more? That’s the problem with children these days it’s all take, take, take.

May the best child win.

Now, go and do your homework.

Your headmaster,

Mr Grittysnit

I put the letter down and took a big shaky breath. This was my destiny. Window girl and I looked solemnly at each other, as if bound by a silent pact.

Holding the letter as gently as if it was made of glass, I walked over to the fridge. I wanted to fix it there with a magnet so I could see it every day. But finding a space would not be easy. Already the fridge was plastered with yellowing bills, old recipes Mum tore out of magazines …

And, of course, that photo of us on our most recent summer holiday, taken just a fortnight before. It showed us on a small pebbly beach, huddled under a blanket, beneath a sky as grey as the bags under Mum’s eyes.

I stared at that photo, remembering. How the caravan had smelled of somebody else’s life that we’d wandered into by mistake. How Mum had spent the whole week begging me not to break anything. How it had rained for six days straight and then, just as we’d boarded the coach back to Little Sterilis, the sun had come out.

Which had made everything worse somehow.

Mum had spent the whole journey back – all five hours of it – with her forehead squished up against the window, staring at the blue sky like it was someone else’s birthday cake and she knew she wouldn’t get a slice.

Next to the photo was our calendar for the year ahead. I saw that Mum had marked our summer holidays on it already. CARAVAN, she’d written, in thick red ink. No exclamation marks. No smiley faces.

To be honest, it looked more like a threat than a holiday.

But if I won the Grittysnit Star competition, we could have a proper family holiday, somewhere sunny. Somewhere else. My yearning hardened into determination. All I had to do was be perfect for the next eight weeks.

No sweat.

I’d just fixed Mr Grittysnit’s letter over the photo, feeling immense relief as Mum’s troubled frown disappeared, when …

SLAM! The back door whipped open with a bang.

My heart hammered with fright. Who’s there?

But it was no one. Just a gust of wind and a door nearly swinging off its hinges. I must not have shut it properly after airing the kitchen earlier.

The wind roared in and seemed to fill the entire kitchen with anger. I felt as if I was standing in a room of invisible fury. On legs as wobbly as cooked spaghetti, I staggered over to shut the door and force the wind out.

Something white and fluttery flew over my shoulder.

I shrieked and ducked down.

Is a pigeon trapped in our kitchen?

I looked closer. It wasn’t a white pigeon, all claws and feathers. It was Mr Grittysnit’s letter! The wind had ripped it off the fridge and it was flying frantically about the room. When I jumped up to catch it, it darted out of reach, as if invisible blustery hands had snatched it away. I just caught a glimpse of the stick figures hovering in mid-air, their smiles turned to frozen grimaces, before they flapped and fluttered …

… out of the doorway and into our backyard.

I WANTED THAT letter. It would spur me on, a promise of better days. I took a deep breath and followed it outside.

I did a quick scan of the patio. It didn’t take long. Everything seemed the same. The two plastic chairs we never sat in. Weeds pushing up between the concrete paving slabs. And the tall weeping willow tree, right at the back, casting its shadow over our house.

I’d have been weeping too if I looked like that.

Its grey trunk was smothered in bright red hairy growths that looked like boils. Its branches dragged on the concrete as if it was hanging its head in misery. Even its leaves were ugly – black and withered and lifeless. Really, the tree didn’t so much grow as squat at the end of our garden, like a dying troll with a skin condition. Mum said it was diseased. I’d say.

And there was no sign of Mr Grittysnit’s letter. I was about to give it up for lost when a fluttering movement at the base of the tree caught my eye. It had somehow got wrapped round one of the tree’s withered branches. I could just about make out the words Each child will be judged and one stick figure pinned underneath a bunch of shrivelled leaves. I felt sorry for it. This wasn’t the holiday of a lifetime, lying under a septic tree in a damp backyard.

‘I’ll take that, thank you very much.’ I lifted up the branch gingerly – reluctant to catch its disease, whatever it was – and bent down to pick up the letter.

ZING! The air took on an electric charge and vibrated with a terrible force. The sounds in the garden became exaggerated with a horrid loudness. The rustling dead leaves in the branches above me were a booming rattle. A pigeon cooed and it sounded like a chainsaw. But more frightening than all of that were the gaps of silence between the sounds. They were eerie and powerful and strong.

It felt—

I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU.

I spun on my heels. Who said that?

My heart thumped so loudly I could barely hear anything. Yet the patio was empty.

Icy sweat drenched my skin. Everything was real and unreal, too loud and too quiet at once.

Come on, Sorrel, breathe in and out, nice and slow. I calmed down enough to try to think. What had just happened? I’d only bent down to pick up the letter. Had the tree poisoned me, sent a hideous disease to my brain which had caused me to start hearing things? Or perhaps I’d had a rush of blood to the head when I’d bent down? Maybe I hadn’t had enough to eat. Maybe I should go into the kitchen and investigate the snack situation.

But what is that, moving near my feet? Rats?

There it was again!

But as I peered around me, shaking with fear, I realised there wasn’t anything black and wriggly next to my feet.

The movement had come from under my feet.

As if there was a … thing. Underneath the concrete.

Turning over.

Down there.

‘Hello?’

I sounded like a baby lamb bleating alone on a hill.

‘Is anyone there?’

The windows in the house gave me blank stares.

RUN, I told myself. NOW!

I managed one step away from the tree when the patio slab under my feet moved up and down, as if something deep down in the earth was trying to shake the concrete – or me – off itself.

Is this an earthquake?

My mouth opened to scream but no sound came out. Gasping, I looked down again. Like a twig snapping, the slab under my feet cracked clean in two. The crack gained momentum, ripping its way through the patio all the way from the tree to the back door. It broke the patio as easily as a warm knife slicing through butter, leaving behind a trail of smashed concrete.

The damage was worst by the tree. The concrete round its trunk had shattered outwards in a crude circle of fractured slabs. It looked like it was trying to smile through a mouthful of broken teeth. I saw something, stuck in the cracked slab under my feet.

And I couldn’t look away.

YOU KNOW WHEN you go Easter egg hunting and you have a hunch where an egg is going to be right before you find it in that very spot? I had that feeling. Like someone had put a little treasure down there for me to find.

Not only that, but it had been there my whole life. Waiting for me.

I felt exhausted and terrified, as wrung out as an old sock stuck in a spin cycle for too long. Yet I sank to my knees and peered closer. The thing in the slab was brown and papery. I could only see the top of it, but it looked like a leaf.

And here was the weird thing. Even though the sensible part of me was jumping up and down with disbelief – what was I doing, trying to rescue a random leaf, when I should be inside, running for cover before another earthquake? – there was another part of me with different ideas. And it seemed to be winning the battle of wills, because there I was, sweaty and hot and obsessed with jabbing my fingers into a broken concrete lump so I could pull this thing out.

Then it glowed.

I stared at it. I rubbed my eyes. Engaged the old eyeballs again. But no – it was not glowing now. Yet for a second it had looked almost alive …

All of a sudden, I didn’t care about my homework. I didn’t care about my schedule. I didn’t even care about my school trousers getting dirty. I eagerly reached down. But my fingers were too wide and it was wedged at least fifteen centimetres too deep. My fingertips scrabbled desperately but touched only air.

I ran into the kitchen, yanked open a kitchen drawer and rummaged around with shaking hands. What I needed was something narrow and sharp to stick down the crack and fish out what was down there. Barbecue tongs? No, they wouldn’t fit in the gap. A cocktail stick? That could work!

I ran back outside, kneeled down on the paving slab and poked the cocktail stick down the gap. It fitted perfectly but wasn’t long enough. I could have cried with frustration. I didn’t know why it mattered so much. I was spellbound somehow.

I hurried inside, pulled open the second kitchen drawer and found a yellowing plastic wallet stuffed with paperwork and a roll of cling film. Great if you wanted to cling-film some paperwork; less great if you wanted to impale something inexplicable your patio had just thrown up.

Forget your little rescue mission. Just get back to your schedule and make up for lost time.

I went to retrieve Mr Grittysnit’s letter from underneath the willow tree and threw a final glance at the cracked paving slab. That was weird. The thing stuck down there seemed to have … moved.

I could see a brown corner poking out now. That would make it much easier to pull out. But hadn’t it been wedged so far down my fingers hadn’t been able to touch it?

At that point, I could have done the sensible thing. Walked back into the house and called the emergency services. Reported an Unidentified Brown Papery Thing and had it removed by the authorities. Lived off the excitement for a couple of weeks, and then got on with my life.

But I didn’t.

And that is something I have to live with for the rest of my life. And potentially, although it’s very unlikely, so will you. But let me offer you an important bit of advice just for your peace of mind.

If you are in any way changed by this book, you may feel, at first, like blaming me. But you’re going to have to push past that, seriously. Blame is a toxic emotion that will only, in the end, make you suffer, not me. So remember. No blame. No hate. Aim for brave acceptance instead. I offer you this advice as a friend. Or you could always try punching a pillow – apparently that helps.

Where were we? Oh yes. Shivering a little in the shadows, I looked again. I was right – the old papery object had moved. The top half of it now stuck out of the slab completely. How had that happened?

My brain leaped ahead of me, desperate to provide answers. Perhaps there was another tremor when I was in the kitchen just now and the shockwaves made it move?

I bent down and reached. As the tips of my fingers brushed the object, a jolt of energy ran all the way up my arm, like tiny electric shocks skipping up my bones. For a second, a vision flashed in my brain. Bright green grass, damp with dew. A tangle of tree roots.

I pulled the entire thing free, and straightened up. It was in my hands, so light it was almost weightless.

I stared at it eagerly, wondering what treasure I had discovered.

It was a …

… brown paper envelope.

A brown paper envelope, ladies and gentlemen.

Disappointed yet also completely mystified, I brushed the earth off it, revealing some curly writing on one side which said: THE SURPRISING SEEDS. The words were scrawled in faded, old-fashioned green ink.

Underneath that was the sentence SELF-SEEDING BE THESE SEEDS.

I turned the packet over, hoping to find more explanation, or at least something a bit more exciting, but there was nothing.

No instructions.

No use-by date.

No picture.

No hashtag.

Not even a barcode, for crying out loud.

I shook it with frustration. Something rattled inside.

I shook it again. It rattled again. Yikes.

There was no way I was going to open that. Who knew what might come scuttling out? Instead, I held it up to the late-afternoon sky. The light shining through the flimsy paper revealed about thirty small black things inside.

These things had small, round black bodies, out of which grew four thin black stalks. They weren’t moving – they looked as if they’d dried up a long time ago. But they were spooky. Even their not moving was kind of frightening.

Here’s a list of the things they looked like:

1. Small, petrified jellyfish.

2. Aliens with no faces and four legs.

3. Dried-up severed heads, with mad hair.

I stared at them again. They seemed to be waiting for me to do something. But what, exactly?

My cheeks burned. Mixed in with my fluttery sense of revulsion was a feeling of being tricked. It was like discovering that something I thought would be exciting wasn’t, after all. Our Year Three class trip to the Little Sterilis dishcloth factory, for instance. (Take it from me: not the adrenaline-fuelled ride it sounds. And a very limited range of gifts in the gift shop, if you know what I mean.)

I crumpled the packet up in my hand, scooped up Mr Grittysnit’s letter, stomped back inside and locked the back door firmly.

Because – and pay attention, folks, for here is an important life lesson at no extra charge – if you want to protect yourself from a mysterious dark magic against which you are totally defenceless, then bringing it into your home and locking the door, thereby locking yourself in with it, is definitely the right way to go about it.

Like I said, on the house.

MUM HAD THE best job in the world. She spent her days gazing at mountains of cheese, lakes of tomato sauce and a gazillion giant tubes of spicy pepperoni meat coming down from the factory ceiling like blessings from the pizza gods. Mum made pizzas at Chillz, our town’s frozen-pizza factory.

Well, if you wanted to split hairs, the machines made the pizzas; Mum looked after the machines that made the pizzas. She kept them clean, dealt with any tech glitches and shut the factory down if they got contaminated. She wasn’t a pizza chef as such, more of a machine looker-after.

Or so she kept telling me. To me, Mum made pizzas. Plus she got to wear these awesome pizza-themed overalls, covered in red and green splodges to make her look like a slice from the bestselling product in the Cheap Chillz range. (The Pepperoni and Green Pepper Spice Explosion!, only 79p. Yes, that’s for an entire pizza. I know.) I loved those overalls; I loved even more the wedge-shaped badge pinned to their front pocket which said:

As if all that wasn’t amazing enough, she also got first dibs on the pizza rejects from the conveyor belts. These were the pizzas that either had too much topping or not enough, or that weren’t a perfect circular shape, or were one millimetre out of the required Chillz regulation thickness of 2.1 centimetres.

Most of the rejects were pulped at the end of each day, but Mum would take as many home as she could fit into the car boot because I loved them. They were cheesy. They were spicy. They came with unidentified slices of other stuff, which could have been mushrooms, but nobody knew, and that was part of their magic. And they were all for me. Because Mum, weirdly, never touched them.

*

Once inside, I threw the packet of Surprising Seeds on the table, got a Reject Special out of the freezer and tried to understand what had just happened out on the patio. Would I have to call the police and report an earthquake? Would Mum have felt it in the factory? Would the pizzas be affected? How could that packet have glowed, deep down in the ground? And what level of trouble was the broken patio going to land me in when Mum saw it?

It was too much. I decided to slip into a harmless little daydream just to calm down. In it, we were stepping off a plane in Portugal. Mum was beaming as she turned to look at me. And those dark bags under her eyes had gone.

I smiled back blissfully.

‘Where’s the pool, love?’ she asked as a breeze smelling faintly of coconuts ruffled our hair. I could hear her so clearly, we could have been there. ‘How was school, love?’

Er – what?

My daydream faded, replaced by the sight of a short plump woman with bleached blonde hair. Her tortoiseshell glasses were perched on the end of her nose, and she was rocking her pizza-themed overalls, as usual, although she wasn’t smiling quite as widely as she had been in the daydream.

‘How was your day?’ she asked, her hands cupping my cheeks.

I tried not to prise her icy fingers off my skin. (Her skin was always freezing – that’s what you get when you work in sub-zero temperatures! Talk about a cool mum, right?)

I hesitated. Where can I even start? ‘I think we’ve just had an earthquake.’

The tap gave a sad drip.

‘What?’

‘I was outside in the backyard, and … everything went super loud. I heard a chainsaw – it was a pigeon – and … Did your pizzas rise okay? I was worried …’

Mum raised an eyebrow. ‘What?’ she said gently.

I took a deep breath. It seemed a mad dream now; the details were already fading, and it was hard to tell the difference between what had really happened and the misshapen remains of my jittery imagination.

‘The patio shook.’

‘It shook?’

‘And then the patio broke.’

‘It broke?’

‘And then I found something.’

‘Found something?’

We stared at each other.

‘You’d better show me,’ she said.

I unlocked the back door and, with a trembling finger, pointed at the mess of broken concrete. ‘There.’

Mum’s hands flew to her face and her mouth opened, but she said nothing. She simply stood there, in her grubby white socks, gazing out at the chaos, and somehow her silence was as loud as the patio cracking.

‘It w-wasn’t my fault, Mum,’ I stammered out.

‘I believe you,’ she said, turning round. ‘Where were you when it happened?’

‘Out by the old willow tree.’

She frowned. ‘You know the rule, Sorrel. Don’t go near that tree. It’s not safe.’

‘But I had a reason.’

I filled her in on Mr Grittysnit’s important letter and the branch it had got wrapped round. But she didn’t seem that interested in the letter or the competition. I mean, honestly, it was like telling a sock. But I knew, once it had sunk in, she’d be as excited as I was.

We went back into the kitchen. Mum sat at the table with a heavy sigh and took her glasses off.

After rubbing her eyes for a bit, she reached for her mobile. ‘There’s nothing on the local news about an earthquake.’ Her bitten fingernails flew across the keys. ‘Subsidence,’ she announced eventually.

‘Eh?’

‘When the earth begins to sink it can cause tremors. Break up concrete. That sort of thing.’

She got up and went over to the kettle. ‘It must have been the tree – it’s so diseased. I bet all its nasty little roots are dying, which is why the earth around it collapsed. Promise me you won’t go anywhere near it again.’

While the kettle boiled, she gazed out of the window, fiddling with the small silver hoops in her ears. ‘That blasted tree,’ she sighed. ‘Not only do we have to look at it for the rest of our lives, but it’s going to cost me an arm and a leg to—’

‘Why have we got to look at it for the rest of our lives?’ An idea popped into my head. I felt very clever to have it before Mum. ‘Why can’t you just cut it down?’

She poured boiling water into her mug and added milk. ‘Before I was allowed to buy this house, I had to agree not to remove or harm that tree in any way. The lawyers were quite pushy about it. Made me sign my name and everything.’

She nibbled a biscuit. ‘I wasn’t concentrating much if I’m honest. You were a tiny baby, your dad had just swanned out and all I wanted was a home for us both.’

She gulped her tea and stared up at the clouds. ‘This seemed a perfect place to bring up a baby. Wide pavements for buggies. New houses being built all the time. I would have promised to paint my ears bright purple and sing the royal anthem dressed as a banana if it meant the house would be mine. So, I signed the paperwork. More fool me,’ she said, with a hollow laugh. ‘But back then the tree didn’t look too bad. It’s definitely got worse over the years.’ She gave it one last disgusted look and came to sit down, the smears of smudged mascara under her eyes making her eye-bags look even darker.

The pipes moaned. My stomach gave a queasy lurch. There it was again – that sad feeling in the house had seeped into Mum.

But she put on a bright smile and reached for my hand. ‘Don’t worry. Maybe it’s a chance to give it all a bit of a spring-clean. We’ll put down some fresh concrete and …’ She sniffed the air with an expert nose tilt. ‘Reject Special with unidentified topping?’

‘Yep.’

‘Fancy some of my home-made lemonade to go with that?’

‘Please.’

Mum dug about in the fridge, humming, while I took my pizza out of the oven. As I cleared a space on the table, I spotted the Surprising Seeds. They were still lying where I’d left them, near the salt and pepper shakers. Maybe Mum would know what they were.

‘Look,’ I said, and held the packet out, but the rest of the sentence died on my lips as if I’d lost my voice. I tried again. ‘Ha … Mmm, I foun …’

My lips went all rubbery and loose. Speaking proper words was impossible.

While I sat there, lips flapping about like party streamers and grunts coming out of my mouth, Mum poked her head round the fridge door. ‘You okay?’

With superhuman effort, I managed to force my lips together, but this had the horrible effect of gluing them shut. ‘Mmmm’ was all that came out. ‘Mmmm,’ I said again, desperately.

‘Oh, you’re excited about your pizza,’ she said, walking over to the sink.

I tried to call her back. ‘Mmmm! Mmmm!’

‘All right, darling, point made,’ she said over the splutters and groans of the tap. She put a glass of lemonade in front of me. ‘I’m going upstairs to get out of these overalls.’

It was no use. I looked around frantically for a pen, so I could scribble a message asking for help. But what would I write?

Oh, hi, Mum.

Only me.

I think I might be going slightly mad. How are you?

In other news, currently I can’t speak because my lips have become mysteriously glued together. And I think this is all connected to what happened outside. The details are admittedly a little fuzzy, but I heard voices, thought I was being watched, and saw strange glowing things I couldn’t explain.

Maybe you’d like to look into this packet that I found – are you interested in small black motionless objects resembling jellyfish?

But back to my mouth that I can’t open. I feel very weird. Can you send for a doctor, please?

Oh yeah, she’d send for a doctor all right.

Maybe I shouldn’t tell her. Mum had enough on her plate. Plus, what if she confided in a friend? That was how rumours got started. ‘I’m a bit worried about Sorrel’ would turn into ‘Trixie’s daughter is losing her marbles’ and by the time it reached Mr Grittysnit it would be ‘Obedient pupil? Sorrel Fallowfield can’t even make her own mouth obey her’. And Chrissie would probably come up with another catchy nickname I’d have to grin through for a year. Mad-mouth Sorrel would probably be high on the list.

I twisted in my chair, grabbed my school bag and pushed the Surprising Seeds way down into its depths, out of sight. The moment they were hidden, my lips became unstuck.

‘Testing, testing,’ I said under my breath. Yep, I could definitely talk again.

‘Pardon?’ Mum had reappeared in the doorway in her black tracksuit bottoms and a denim shirt, a look in her eyes that meant temperatures were about to be taken.

‘Nothing.’

And that was when the secret began, I suppose.

THE NEXT MORNING, I was finishing off my toast when there was a knock on the door.

I opened it. Swallowed. Flinched. Tried not to wince.

‘What was it this time?’ I asked the girl with black scruffy hair standing on my doorstep.

‘Hydrogen peroxide and sodium iodide.’ She grinned at the memory, which seemed to make her glow with happiness. ‘I threw some soap into the beaker to see how much gas was in there and BOOM!’

‘Bad reaction?’ I asked, glancing at the weeping raw sore where Neena’s right eyebrow used to be.

‘Only from Mum,’ she muttered, jerking her head to indicate the smart-looking woman behind her. ‘The experiment itself went perfectly.’

‘Mujhe takat dijie,’ said Neena’s mum, which I know is Hindi for Give me strength because Mrs Gupta says it about Neena so often.

We shared a knowing look.

Neena went through a lot of eyebrows in the name of science. Basically, when she wasn’t talking, dreaming or thinking about it, she was holed up in a rat-infested shed in her garden, rearranging her face with a dangerously out-of-date chemistry set from a charity shop.

*

Neena and I were born three hours apart. Our mums met in the maternity ward and bonded over a box of home-made Sohan Halwa sweets Mrs Gupta had smuggled in. As a baby, I’d never taken that much notice of Neena, being more interested in things like crying and dribbling, but that all changed at my fifth birthday party. When every other boy and girl started sobbing in my lounge just six minutes after arriving, she’d simply stared at them and went back to shaking each of my presents calmly.

One by one, the other kids were whisked away by their concerned parents – ‘So sorry we can’t stay,’ they’d all said. ‘My little angel’s never done this before – must be a sudden temperature, probably got a bug or something. No, honestly, don’t worry about party bags – wouldn’t want to put you out …’ Cheery Cottage had gradually emptied. Ten minutes into my party, Neena was the only guest left.

I held my breath. Our mothers hovered nervously, holding huge platters of food they’d slaved over all morning. I looked at Neena. Neena looked at me. And then she said something so wise, so profound, so comforting, that I’ve never forgotten it. She said: ‘Cake.’

The four of us polished it all off that afternoon. Neena also sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to me extra loudly, helped me open every single present and refused to leave until we’d sung ten rounds of ‘If You’re Happy and You Know It’. From that day on we’d been best friends for life.

*

‘Ready to go?’ asked Mrs Gupta.

As we set off for school, Neena threw me an appraising glance. ‘Something’s different about you today,’ she said.

‘Is it my hair?’ I patted it carefully. I’d taken extra time over my ponytail that morning, making sure each strand was lying flat. Every detail counted on the first day of the Grittysnit Star competition.

‘No.’

‘My shoes?’ I pointed my feet with a flourish.

‘Sorrel, they’re always shiny.’

‘Do I look taller?’ I asked casually.

Neena threw me a sympathetic glance. ‘Nope.’ She examined me again. ‘I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s definitely something new about you.’

‘Maybe it’s my face. Have I got an inner glow?’

‘You what?’ said Neena, frowning.

‘You know, cos of the Grittysnit Star competition?’

‘It sounds like a load of old methane gas to me.’ She kicked a drinks can out of her way. ‘A holiday means I’ll be away from my lab for a whole seven days.’ She stared into the distance as if she couldn’t think of anything worse. ‘And Mum and Dad will try to drag me out to the beach and stuff. Anyway, I’m hardly off to a great start. Not with this.’ She pointed to the patch of skin where her eyebrow used to be, bright red in the September sunshine, and smirked.

Neena had a point, but I didn’t want to gloat.

When we reached the underpass, she stopped suddenly. ‘Hang on, Mum. This is important.’ Her eyes raked over me. ‘I know what it is! You’re crumpled!’ She stared at my grey shirt approvingly. ‘What happened, Sorrel? Was the iron broken? You’re nearly as scruffy as me.’

At this point, I should have just given up altogether. Forgetting to iron my uniform in the morning was so unlike me I should have recognised it as the sign of doom it was, right there and then.

I might as well have started wearing a leather jacket and tearing around town on a motorbike, such were my chances of winning that competition.

Someone should just have tattooed on my forehead, which might not have looked very nice, but at least would have acted as a handy hint whenever I brushed my teeth, and saved me from an awful lot of guesswork.

But, this being real life, none of that actually happened. And even though I was totally unprepared for the malevolent dark power I’d unearthed, I still thought I was in control of my life, which was kind of sweet, while also completely wrong.

So I turned on my heel, pushing against the hordes of Grittysnit pupils swarming around us. ‘I’m going home. I’ll do a quick iron and run back. I’ll catch up with you.’

‘If you go home now you’ll be late,’ said Neena.

‘Great,’ I said bitterly as the stream of pupils pushing past us got thicker. ‘It doesn’t matter what I do. I’m off to a terrible start.’

‘Girls,’ said Mrs Gupta, ‘the bell’s rung. Time to go in.’

Neena gave my shoulder a sympathetic squeeze as we walked through the school gates. ‘Look, don’t worry about your clothes, Sorrel. You’ve still got the shiniest school shoes I have ever seen.’

She grabbed my hand and pulled me towards the stairs while the shrill bell clanged in our ears. I ran up behind her towards our classroom, panting a little.

Outside, the sun beat down on the empty playground. The sound of the school gates being slammed shut rang out across the tarmac. My stomach quivered as I followed Neena through the door. I touched my Head of Year badge for luck.

Showtime.

EVERY SEPTEMBER, ON the first day of school, a very important tradition took place at Grittysnits. Before we walked into the classroom that would be ours for the next year, we’d get a special talk from our headmaster.

Oh ho, you’re probably thinking. Aha. Special talk, eh? Something to kindle a love of learning? A pep talk about wisdom and books and the wonderful things that can happen when you learn and you listen?

Nope.

Mr Grittysnit never talked about books or knowledge or that sort of stuff. No. Mr Grittysnit liked to talk about inventions.

And not just any invention. He wasn’t excited about toy robots, or potted plants that played music from speakers in their leaves. He preferred things that made the world tidier, cleaner, spicker and spanner. He idolised inventions that tidied up human existence and made it all a bit less messy.

And each classroom was named after his favourites.

This term, Mr Grittysnit had pointed at the silver plaque outside our Year Six classroom and fixed us with a solemn stare. ‘There is nothing more satisfying than putting a shiny plastic sheen over things,’ he’d said. ‘The most boring and insignificant things in the world can be transformed with a laminator. Put mediocrity through this machine and it instantly looks better.’

Then he’d glared at us meaningfully for a while. I thought I heard him mutter, ‘If only I could do the same to children’, but I wasn’t completely sure.

So, we were known as the Laminators. It wasn’t that catchy. But as I followed Neena into the classroom, the name suddenly made sense. Everyone did look as if they’d been put through a laminator – shiny, plastic, new. It was all gleaming teeth, scrubbed faces, fresh socks. Not one grimy fingernail, stray bogey or muddy knee. Mr Grittysnit’s competition had started in earnest, and it looked as if everyone in the Laminators was out to win.

‘Didn’t you read the letter, girls?’ teased the tall, red-haired girl nearby, checking her perfect French braid in a compact mirror. ‘The Grittysnit Star has to look amazing. Not –’ she looked us up and down, smirking – ‘like you’ve been sicked up by a cat.’

I bit my lip.

Chrissie snapped her compact shut and stared pointedly at Neena’s burnt eyebrow and my crumpled shirt.

Neena shrugged. ‘This will scab over soon,’ she said evenly.

Chrissie looked at me with disdainful emerald eyes. ‘What’s your excuse, Suck-up?’

I stared at my shoes. Chrissie was the human equivalent of a funfair mirror. I always felt shorter and chubbier when she was around. How we normally interacted went like this: she’d say something mean; I’d bite my lip and pretend I was too busy thinking about something important to reply; she’d snigger, give me a pitying look and then saunter off. And repeat.

I could feel her eyes boring into me, amused. I continued to admire the view of my black lace-ups.

After a while, she laughed. ‘It’s your choice, I suppose,’ Chrissie said casually, flicking the collar on her immaculate charcoal-grey silk shirt. ‘If you can’t be bothered to make an effort, be my guest. Anyway, it’ll make it easier for me to win the prize.’

The scrawny blonde girl by her side nodded adoringly, her silver braces glinting in the light. ‘Easier, no contest.’ I have to say this for Bella Pearlman, Chrissie’s sidekick: she seemed easy to please. All she needed was a couple of words to repeat once in a while. Entertaining herself in the school holidays must have been a breeze.

I forced a smile out. Good girls don’t fight.

After a pause, they sidled off towards their desks. As they walked away, I busied myself with my rucksack, brushing off imaginary specks of dirt.

When I looked up, Neena was giving me a funny look. ‘When are you going to start standing up to her?’ she asked. ‘You could run circles round her if you tried.’

‘It’s fine,’ I said quickly. ‘I’d rather stay out of her way if she’s in one of her moods. Anyway, as Head of Year, I can’t be seen getting into arguments. That wouldn’t set a good example to anybody else.’

Neena rolled her eyes as we walked towards our desks by the window. But even her Little Miss Judgy act wasn’t going to get me to change. Because no good could come from standing up to Chrissie Valentini. Only last term, a nice supply teacher had gently asked her to stop losing her spelling books. Chrissie’s parents had threatened to sue the school for defamation if the teacher wasn’t fired, and we’d never seen the nice supply teacher again.

Mr Grittysnit did everything Mr Valentini wanted. Chrissie’s father was rich, he was on the board of governors and he gave loads of money to the school every year for school trips and supplies. Plus, he owned a big property-development company that gave Mr Grittysnit a cut-price deal on school extensions, which Mr Grittysnit was very fond of doing.

So, yeah, it wasn’t ever a good idea to cheese off Chrissie. Which meant pretending her jokes were hilarious. Even if they were at my expense.

*

In the Laminators, silence reigned. Everyone sat upright in their chairs, hands folded neatly in their laps, waiting for our shy teacher, Miss Mossheart, to take the register. This was unusual. Normally, she had to beg to be heard above the racket you get when you put thirty eleven-year-olds into one room.

Miss Mossheart flinched if the classroom was too loud, blushed if anybody looked at her longer than two seconds, and if she ever had to tell anyone off would spend the rest of the lesson panting quietly at her desk, trying to get her breath back.

You might wonder why she went to work at Grittysnits in the first place. The word in the corridor was she was Mr Grittysnit’s niece. Apparently, he gave her a job because she failed her Chillz interview and couldn’t find work anywhere else in town.

Her pale eyelashes peeped out through her frizzy brown hair, fluttering rapidly. She reached for her tablet and began to call out names from the register.

‘Robbie Bradbury?’

‘Here,’ said Robbie from the desk in front of ours.

Interesting facts about Robbie:

 He’s got a thing about gerbils. He managed to keep his last one, Victoria, in his locker for a whole week in the summer term before she escaped. No one knows where she got to. And this is not a book about a missing gerbil, in case you were wondering. She doesn’t turn up at the end. I’m sure she’s fine.

 He’s totally deaf in his right ear. If he’s interested in what you have to say, he turns his left ear towards you really carefully.

 Why I like him: he’s funny.

‘Elka Kowalski?’

A big smile spread across Elka’s round face in her desk across the aisle.

‘Here, Miss Mozzheart.’

Interesting facts about Elka:

 Elka’s from Poland. She came to live in Little Sterilis two years ago. She and her family live two streets away from us.

 She is massively into rock music, particularly an all-female Polish band called the Sisters of Crush.

 Elka’s mum works in Chillz too, but on the production line, and not in the bit where the software’s kept, so our mums don’t see each other much. We still give each other the odd Chillz Kidz smile now and again.

 Why I like her: I just do.

‘Bertie Troughton?’ said Miss Mossheart.

‘Here,’ whispered Bertie, making a visible effort to speak up.

Interesting facts about Bertie:

 He’s a huge bookworm.

 He has quite a lot of eczema on his face, neck and hands. This seems to get itchier when Mr Grittysnit is around, and less painful when he is reading.

 In Year Four, Bertie won our school’s one and only creative-writing competition. His essay was about a horrible headmaster who got eaten by a snake. The next year, Mr Grittysnit banned creative-writing competitions. But Bertie still likes doodling snakes in his exercise books. Especially when Mr Grittysnit comes into our classroom.

 Why I like him: you can’t NOT like Bertie – he’s sweet and kind.

AFTER THE REGISTER, we filed into the school hall for Assembly.

The hall was buzzing. Excited whispers flew around us, thicker and faster than treacle jetpacks. Kids squirmed and craned their necks to size up their competition: other children. The air was sweet with undertones of shoe polish, iron starch and shampoo.

There was a bustling movement in the doorway. Children straightened their backs and arranged their faces into the ‘nice and polite’ setting.

I did the same, then nudged Neena, who glared. ‘This is ridic—’

‘Shh,’ I hissed.

Mr Grittysnit strode on to the stage, a tall bald man in a grey suit. Everything about him was tidy and precise, from his closely clipped fingernails to the way he walked, every step exactly the same measurement as the last. Even his yellow teeth were perfectly aligned. The only thing remotely untidy about him was the thick thatch of long black hairs which sprouted from his nostrils.

He marched to the lectern and cleared his throat. ‘Children,’ he said.

Along our row, Bertie started to scratch his hands.

‘Good morning, Mr Grittysnit,’ we said in unison.

‘I have called a Special Assembly today because it is a very important day.’

I nodded solemnly.

‘Now, as you are well aware, it’s the first day of our competition to find the Grittysnit Star, and I want to explain the rules.’

‘Pah,’ muttered Neena, picking at her eyebrow and slouching in her chair.

‘Rules are extremely important, as we all know. They keep us in line, give us purpose and make this school what it is.’

Next to me, Robbie nodded too, as if this was something he also strongly believed, despite the whole Victoria-the-gerbil thing, which I knew for a fact was against rules number 11, 17 and 101 in The Grittysnit Rule Book.

‘Obedience Points will be allocated to every child each time they behave in a way that befits our school’s motto: May obedience shape you. May conformity mould you. May rules polish you. The child with the most at the end of the term will be the winner. Now, any teacher can reward you with Obedience Points.’ He made a sweeping gesture to the row of teachers on the stage behind him, who looked back at us with grave faces.

Miss Mossheart gazed at her lap.

‘But be warned,’ the Head continued. ‘If your behaviour is unsatisfactory; if you are scruffy, late, answer back, unenthusiastic about following school rules; or are dressed in anything less than our regulation uniform, you will earn a Bad Blot. The child with the most Bad Blots by the end of term will be expelled.’

There was a collective gasp from around the hall.

Bertie’s fingers flew to his cheeks.

‘I need not point out,’ Mr Grittysnit said, his eyes sweeping the room, ‘how unsatisfactory that would be. We are the only primary school in Little Sterilis, so if you are expelled, you will have to attend the extremely inferior school in Western Poorcrumble. If they will have you.’ His dark eyes glittered and his nostril hairs quivered dramatically.

Mr Grittysnit was one of those grown-ups who could speak to a hall full of children and make each one feel as if he was talking only to them. I squirmed uncomfortably and, by the pained expressions on the faces around me, I could tell everyone else felt the same.

‘But come,’ he said. ‘Let’s not be gloomy. Follow the rules, and you have nothing to fear.’

A hand shot up a few rows ahead of us.

Mr Grittysnit stared at a small boy from Year Three – the Dirt Devils. ‘What?’ he snapped.

The boy stood up and gave a bow. ‘My mum is scared of flying, sir, so is there any other prize we could try to win, apart from the holiday in Portugal?’

Mr Grittysnit cocked his head to one side. One of his nostril hairs seemed to peep out, as if sniffing out a potential uprising. ‘There is no second prize. If you win, I suggest you put a bandage on your mother’s eyes, a bag on her head, or better yet, leave her behind as punishment for her lack of cooperation. Fear of flying is simply a sign of a disobedient mind. Hers must be disciplined.’

‘Er,’ said the boy.

‘Yet you will all be winners,’ continued Mr Grittysnit, thumping the lectern with clenched fists. ‘And your prize is this: becoming a better child. I have no doubt that, after eight weeks, each of you – apart from the expelled child, of course, ho ho, who will be eking out their miserable existence somewhere else – will be neater, tidier, more cooperative and more obedient than you were at the start. You will all be new and improved.’

The boy smiled uncertainly. ‘Thank you, sir.’ He sat back down very quickly.

‘Any more questions?’ asked Mr Grittysnit. ‘Good. Now, before we eat into any more precious time, I have one more announcement.’

I squirmed excitedly in my seat. This term just kept getting better and better. I wished I’d brought something to take notes with.

‘A school that doesn’t develop is a school that doesn’t succeed.’ Mr Grittysnit stretched his lips back and flashed his yellow teeth at us in what we’d learned was his smile.

A little boy in Reception, new to the unpredictable ways of Mr Grittysnit’s face, burst into tears.

‘Which is why I’m delighted to announce that from tomorrow, work will begin on the construction of a brand-new space. A space where you will be able to reach your full potential and prepare yourself for the real world.’

I wondered what he was talking about. A sports hall? A theatre? A proper science block to keep Neena quiet? The bigger library Bertie always said we needed?

‘You’re all going to get a brand-new exam hall!’ said Mr Grittysnit.

An uncertain silence filled the room.

Then, along our row, Bella and Chrissie began to clap.

There was a flash of mustard teeth in their direction. Mr Grittysnit waved a hand vaguely at the window, through which we could see the football-pitch-sized patch of grass that we played and had PE on. ‘It will be built on that useless playing field out there.’

‘But that’s the last of our field,’ spluttered Neena indignantly. ‘There’ll be nothing but concrete if he takes that away!’

‘I’ve decided you’ll be better off without it,’ declared Mr Grittysnit, as if Neena had never spoken. ‘Too much grass can lead to grass stains! Too many bugs outside leads to bugs inside, which leads to illness and sick days and a patchy school attendance record! A nice clean exam hall is much more beneficial to your future, your welfare – and the state of your uniform, quite frankly. Valentini Constructions –’ and here those stained gnashers were turned on full beam at Chrissie, who smirked in return – ‘will begin digging this week. I want you all to avoid playing out there to let the builders finish the hall as quickly as possible. And you can thank me by passing your exams with flying colours and pushing us to the top of the league tables!’

Bella Pearlman stood up and clapped frantically, like a seal who’d spotted the sardines being dangled by its trainer. ‘Go, Chrissie!’ she said.

Chrissie stood up and started clapping too. ‘Go, Mr Grittysnit!’

He smiled at her. ‘Have an Obedience Point, Chrissie.’

She smirked and shot me a triumphant look.

My heart sank. She’s in the lead already?

Then all the other children in the hall stood up slowly and started clapping too.

‘They are literally clapping an exam hall that hasn’t been built yet,’ grumbled Neena. ‘They’re clapping an infringement on our right to play.’

‘I know,’ I muttered, trying to look as if I knew what ‘infringement’ meant, ‘but best be on the safe side …’ And I got to my feet and joined in. ‘Could get a Bad Blot for not taking part. We should probably do what everyone else is …’

But Neena stayed stubbornly seated. ‘And where are we meant to play, Mr Grittysnit? Next to the bins and the drains?’ she shouted, but the sound of the applause drowned her out.

After we’d clapped for about ten minutes, none of us wanting to be the first child to stop, Mr Grittysnit gave a little nod, as if satisfied, and waved his hand around. This was our cue to stand up and recite the Grittysnit Pledge.

We stood and said:

‘At Grittysnit, we children are

Exceptionally normal, never bizarre.

We show up for lessons five minutes early,

We eat what we’re given and are never surly.

We walk and talk at a sensible pace,

With a regulation smile on our face.

Non-regulation is not okay,

That’s why everything we wear is nice and grey.

Answer back? You must be mad –

To answer back is to be bad.

We love our lessons, tests and work –

Without them we would go berserk.

We won’t rock the boat or speak out of line,

We won’t question rules or play in class-time.

In spring, in summer, here’s the truth:

We’ll do our lessons under the roof.

We’ll stay inside until the bell goes bong,

And that’s (nearly) the end of our lovely song.

If you don’t know this yet

(Have you not paid attention?),

Don’t break these rules

Or you’ll get detention.’

‘Rousing stuff, eh?’ said Mr Grittysnit, ignoring Neena’s outstretched hand. ‘Now run along, children, and let’s start the day. You don’t want to fall behind any more than you already are.’

ONCE OUR HEADMASTER had walked off the stage, closely followed by a row of silent teachers, I jumped out of my seat, fired up and enthusiastic after Mr Grittysnit’s motivational chat.

‘Hey, what are you waiting for?’ I asked, for Neena was still sitting in her chair, her face a thundery sky.

‘Didn’t you hear what Mr Grittysnit just said?’ she grumbled.

‘Every. Single. Word.’

‘So you heard we’re going to lose the playing field? If that goes, we’ll have a tiny square of concrete the size of a paddling pool to play on. Does that strike you as fair? How are we all going to fit on that, for a start?’

‘Oh, yeah,’ I said reluctantly.

This was typical Neena, asking overly complicated questions. It was only a bit of brown earth. Perhaps an exam hall was a good idea. Besides, I enjoyed exams. I enjoyed drawing up revision timetables and buying new highlighters, and proving how much I knew then promptly forgetting it all once the exam was over. And was there anything wrong with that? And Mr Grittysnit had a point. Grass did lead to grass stains, and getting them out of our uniform was a real nightmare, as I knew only too well.

Neena was still looking grumpy though. ‘Neena, you don’t use the playing field much. You’re always hunched over your science journals at lunchtime.’

‘That’s not the issue here,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t care about what we actually need – he just cares about our stupid exam results …’

While she rambled on, I cast an anxious look at the clock. 9.37 a.m.

‘Come on,’ I said, pulling her to her feet. ‘There’s nothing you can do, so you might as well not stress. Besides, I’ve got a holiday to win.’

*

Although the others in our class were also upset about losing the playing field, things soon quietened down when Miss Mossheart put an Obedience Points chart up on our wall.

‘This is so you can all track your progress,’ she murmured, standing on tiptoes to stick it up next to the whiteboard. ‘Uncle – I mean, Mr Grittysnit – wants it here for the rest of the term.’

‘Don’t forget to put my point up,’ said Chrissie, touching her hair. ‘The first of many, probably.’

And after that, the morning flew past, with everyone in the Laminators (bar one) trying to behave as perfectly, obediently and tidily as possible.

Just before lunchtime, with the whole morning gone and no Obedience Points under my name, my mood was pretty low. So when Mr Grittysnit dropped by and asked for volunteers to tidy up the library, my hand shot up first. I was filled with joy when he picked me. Here was my chance.

‘Do you want to choose another classmate to help?’ asked Miss Mossheart.

I ignored Bertie’s chapped hand waggling about in the air. ‘Can I have Neena?’ I asked.

But Neena just scowled at me from her chair, huffing and puffing like an old train.

‘Come on, this could be a perfect opportunity to earn an Obedience Point,’ I said brightly.

She rolled her eyes, but got to her feet.

‘Race you there,’ I muttered to her as we followed Mr Grittysnit.

Neena knew I never ran anywhere in the school grounds, so this was quite a good joke. And did she appreciate it?

She did not.

*

Mr Grittysnit took us to the school library, a ramshackle collection of old bookcases in the corridor outside the kitchen.

‘I want all these books covered in these grey book covers,’ he said, gesturing towards a box nearby. ‘They’re far too non-reg as they are. And clean the grubby fingerprints off them too, while you’re at it.’

‘Shall we take opposite bookcases and then work towards each other?’ I suggested to Neena, once Mr Grittysnit had gone. A bit of peace and quiet might sort out her funny mood, and after all the excitement of Assembly, I wanted a bit of tranquillity myself.

‘Fine by me,’ she said, stomping to the furthest bookcase.

Within a few moments, I’d got into the rhythm of pulling out a book, wiping it down and covering it up. It was oddly calming. I’d reached the bottom shelf of the first bookcase, Local History, when I spotted a book wedged at the back. I teased it out of its nook. It was dirty and dusty, but felt well made. With a damp cloth, I wiped the cover and a picture emerged through the grime.

It was a painting of a small white cottage in a field of colourful flowers, and the title said:

The Terrible Sad History of Little Cherrybliss.

As I stared at the cover, I had the strongest feeling I’d seen the painting of the little cottage before, but I couldn’t work out where. Did Mum have it at home, mixed up with all those cookery books of hers? And where on earth was Little Cherrybliss? It didn’t sound like any of the towns near us. And why was its history terrible and sad? Perhaps it was one of those forgotten villages. Perhaps it had disappeared into a sinkhole and vanished for ever.

After a moment’s hesitation, I slipped the book into a grey jacket, feeling a strange pang of loss as the white cottage disappeared from view. I wrote the title on the cover, then slipped the book back on to the bookshelf.

I moved on to Hobbies. The first book I grabbed had a photograph of a boy on the cover, under the title The Children’s Gardening Book. He seemed to be dropping something into a little pot. I peered closer. The thing flying out of his hand was small.

And black.

And small.

And …

Gulp.

I stared at the picture and shivered. I hadn’t just forgotten to do my ironing the night before. I’d also totally not thrown the Surprising Seeds safely in the bin.

Which meant …

… they were still in my rucksack, back in the classroom, getting up to who-knew-what while my back was turned.

What if they were glowing?

What if they were causing the desks to topple and the ground to break?

‘What’s wrong?’ Neena had poked her head round the bookshelf and was staring at me. ‘You’ve got that funny shell-shocked face you get when you’re panicking about something.’

I was lost in a whirl of fear. For a second, I wasn’t in the library at all, but standing on a broken patio slab, watching as the world broke apart under my feet, hearing that strange voice all over again.

I’ve been waiting for you.

Gulping, I put my hand on the bookshelf to steady myself.

‘Sorrel,’ said Neena in her don’t-mess-with-me voice, ‘what’s going on?’

She sat me down on a beanbag and looked at me sternly.

I leaned back and sighed. ‘Something weird happened yesterday.’

Her face instantly brightened. ‘Go on.’

I told her everything, half expecting my lips to seal together again. But they worked fine, and I didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. Being able to talk about the Surprising Seeds made them more real somehow, and that didn’t feel like a good thing.

Neena, on the other hand, looked delirious with elation.

‘Shivering silicates!’ she exclaimed. ‘Where’s the packet?’

‘In our classroom.’ I shook my head with frustration. ‘In my rucksack. I meant to throw it away, but I forgot.’

Her eyebrows rose so high they disappeared behind her fringe. ‘You’ve brought contraband into school? You’ve actually broken a school rule?’ A delighted smile played on her face.

I tried a smile and it came out twisted. ‘Look, can we just forget it? Let’s get back to these books.’

‘Okay,’ said Neena firmly. ‘Once you’ve shown me these Surprising Seeds.’

‘N-no,’ I stammered. ‘I can’t. I don’t want to.’

‘Then why do you look so enthusiastic?’

‘Do I?’ I asked, surprised.

‘Er, yeah?’ she said, staring at my face so intently I felt like I was something growing in one of her Petri dishes. ‘You look as excited as you do on the day of the Head of Year nominations.’

A FEW MINUTES later, we squished between two of the most cluttered bookshelves we could find, taking turns to peep out through the shelves to make sure no one was around.

In the light of the midday sun streaming through the window, the envelope looked even older than it had the day before. I held it carefully, noticing how thin and soft the paper felt. Just how long had it been underground anyway?

‘“The Surprising Seeds”,’ Neena read aloud in a spooky voice. ‘“Self-seeding be these seeds.” What does that even mean?’ She looked earnestly at me.

I shrugged, mystified at the sudden thrill of pride I felt. ‘Who knows?’

The hot sunshine pouring in from the window bathed the packet in light and warmth. Within a few seconds it was as hot as the hottest setting on my iron.

‘Ow!’ I dropped it on the floor, wincing.

The packet glowed golden white round the edges, as if a thin flame was dancing inside. Then this sentence appeared: IF YOU FOUND THIS PACKET, SOW THESE SEEDS – AND THEN YOU’LL REAP WHAT YOU TRULY NEED.

Loads of people have since asked why I didn’t throw the packet away right there and then, to which I always reply: ‘Are you mad?’

I mean, what would you have done? Honestly? If something mysterious and beyond human understanding conveniently materialised in front of you one day and promised to MAKE ALL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE?

I’ll tell you what you wouldn’t have done. You wouldn’t have said: ‘Hold on a minute while I run a little background check on you.’ You wouldn’t have said: ‘Have you got an up-to-date licence to practise the dark art of wish fulfilment?’

You’d have rubbed your hands together and asked: ‘When?’

You know it, and I know it. So don’t talk to me about throwing things away.

My mind spun. Could these strange old seeds be the answer to my prayers? If they would give me what I truly needed, perhaps I needed to pay them a bit more respect. I saw myself striding into the hall, Mr Grittysnit beaming at me in a way he never did in real life, a big fat Grittysnit Star certificate in one hand, plane tickets to Portugal in the other.

BANG!

My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of something loud and heavy slamming on to the floor.

‘It’s only a book. It fell off that bookshelf,’ Neena said, picking it up.

My heart thudded. It wasn’t only a book. It was The Terrible Sad History of Little Cherrybliss. And the regulation grey jacket I’d put on carefully just minutes before had fallen off.

As if the book didn’t want to be covered up.

‘Sorrel?’ said Neena.

‘Yeah?’ I gasped, with great effort.

‘Your fingers are going mental.’

She was right. My fingers moved and danced in the air in front of us, as if they were playing a tune on an invisible piano. Almost as if they were speaking to me – and I knew what they wanted.

My fingers want to sow.

They wanted to sprinkle and scatter and shower and shake over. They wanted to dash and drop and dust and drip and dance and dribble. They wanted to send off and send loose and send flying. And they really, really wanted to sprinkle those seeds.

A fully formed thought bubbled up inside my brain as if somebody had planted it there. The Surprising Seeds did not want to be sealed up any longer. They wanted to get out into the world.

And I would be the one to set them free.

The shrill school bell ripped through the air and my fingers stopped twitching.

Hesitantly, I picked up the packet of Surprising Seeds, but it was cold to the touch once more. I stuffed it into my rucksack and exhaled deeply, my head throbbing.

‘Where did you say those seeds came from?’ asked Neena, her eyes shining.

I forced out a weak grin. ‘Our patio.’ My thoughts raced over each other desperately, like busy little worker ants late for their first shift.

I got up shakily and pulled Neena to her feet, a plan forming in my head. ‘I’m coming round after school, aren’t I?’

She nodded. ‘What do you fancy doing?’

‘I’ve got an idea. It’s a bit … weird.’

Neena grinned. ‘I love it already.’

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