Almost relieved, I raised my head and grinned at Henry. “You and Grayson are right. It really is dead boring, uninteresting gossip.”
Henry grinned back, and with a cheerful grunt, Grayson helped himself to another roll. Emily’s thin-lipped smile was looking a little sour now, but maybe I was wrong there—after all, her natural expression was grumpy. And Florence, Mom, Ernest, and Lottie went back to their conversation as if nothing had happened. I was so relieved that my appetite came back. Surely another little jam bun wouldn’t do any …
“Don’t rejoice too soon,” said Mia, putting her forefinger on the screen. Among all the other comments, Secrecy had spoken up again. Don’t be too hard on poor Liv—she’s new to the role of a girl in love. Not so long ago she was still the kind of student who got her head dunked in the toilet. Poor thing, she could tell you all about the insides of the toilet bowls at her school in Berkeley, California.…
“How does she know about that?” asked Mia quietly.
“No idea.” But I wasn’t grinning now. Secrecy and the whole school could assume whatever they liked about my sex life, for all I cared, but the Berkeley story was a secret. Apart from the four girls who had attacked me in the toilet, only Mia and Lottie knew about it.
And … Henry.
As I slowly turned my head to look at him, his cell phone began to ring.
5
IN MY DREAM, I was walking through Frognal Academy with everyone staring at me, giggling and whispering. Emily, looking elegant on a purebred bay horse, trotted past me in the stairwell and called, “Don’t be too hard on poor Liv. She can’t help it if Henry doesn’t want to sleep with her.”
Luckily I spotted a green door in the wall of the corridor at that moment, so I knew I was just dreaming.
“She’s simply rather underdeveloped physically and mentally,” said Emily. It annoyed me that she had the nerve to insult me in my own dream. Fundamentally, didn’t that mean that my own subconscious mind was saying these mean things about me? I wasn’t letting it get away with that. With a wave of my hand, I abolished the horse, and Emily fell to the stone floor with a thud.
“Ouch!” she said indignantly.
“Are you crazy, Liv?” Florence helped her friend up. “She could have hurt herself.”
“My dream, my rules!” I said, reaching for the doorknob. “And I really couldn’t care less what people think about me.” A snap of my fingers, and Emily, Florence, and all the rest of them turned into soap bubbles. They floated through the stairwell and burst, one by one, with a series of quiet pops. Satisfied, I slipped through the green door into the dream corridor outside.
“Activate Security Protocol Mr. Wu mark three,” I said quietly. If no one was listening, I liked talking to the door as if I were on the starship Enterprise. Weirdly, and although I hadn’t done anything to it myself, it had changed quite a lot over the last few weeks. While at first, it had looked like the door of a cozy cottage in the Cotswolds painted deep green, it now had two columns, one on each side, and an extra skylight above it. It was still green, but not such a dark green, more of a fresh minty color, and as it now looked, it suited a mysterious Victorian villa rather than a cottage in the country.
I connected the changes that had happened to the door with those I had gone through myself. I’d noticed the same thing happening to other doors in this labyrinth. Some just changed their color; the paint on others was peeling away; some changed their size and shape entirely. I suspected it had something to do with the owners’ states of mind. It was impossible to keep it all straight, because in addition, the doors were always changing places with one another.
However, the doorknob in the shape of a lizard was still there, and it winked at me when I quietly closed the door behind me. Just in time to see Henry’s untidy blond hair disappear around the next corner. I was going to call his name, but then I didn’t—who knew how loud the echo might be in these corridors, and who or what might be enticed into investigating? Furthermore, where on earth was Henry off to? His door was directly opposite mine, and we’d been going to meet each other. Right here. And if I had my way, right now.
I decided to go after him. After all, I had better things to do than stand around here looking stupid and waiting for him. Like finally talking, for instance. And really talking, not just canoodling.
Keeping quiet—I was barefoot—I followed him. We hadn’t had a chance to discuss how Secrecy could know the story of the school toilets in Berkeley. Henry’s cell phone had rung, and he had left in a hurry to go and collect his little brother. From a friend’s house, he had said.
“Can’t your mum do it?” Emily had asked, and I was really glad I hadn’t asked that question, because I don’t think I’d have survived the cold, contemptuous look that Henry gave her.