Night School

‘Sylvain’s very high up in Night School, Allie. He may be a complete tosser but if anybody’s going to know this sort of thing? It’s him.’ Rachel’s brow furrowed as she thought about it. ‘Have you spoken to Isabelle?’


They were sitting where Allie and Sylvain had talked the night before, each holding a steaming mug of tea and an untouched biscuit. Even though there was nobody around, they spoke in whispers.

‘Should I?’ Allie asked. ‘It’s been bothering me. He didn’t say I shouldn’t. But it all seemed kind of … I don’t know. Off the record. Like she didn’t want me to know.’

‘But if you’re actually in danger, why on earth wouldn’t she want you to know?’ Rachel looked worried.

‘I don’t know – the whole thing sounds totally weird. But the look on his face … it seemed to me he was really worried.’ Allie leaned back with a sigh. ‘Something’s wrong.’

‘Let me think about it,’ Rachel said. ‘I’ll come up with something.’

But Allie thought she looked worried too.

With Sylvain’s warning hanging over her, Allie slept poorly on Monday. By Tuesday night, after another day of intense classes and an evening spent finishing her essay in the library, she was exhausted when she climbed the stairs to her room at midnight.

Her teeth had only the most fleeting visit from a toothbrush, and she was half asleep by the time she pulled on her pyjamas.

Leaving the window open to the warm night breeze, she muttered, ‘Night-night, room,’ and fell into a sleep so sound she couldn’t recall a single dream.

When she awoke about two hours later, at first she didn’t know what had disturbed her. Her eyes fluttered open. Still deep in the hazy space between asleep and awake, she saw a figure bent over her bed, watching her. At first she thought she was dreaming.

Then she heard him breathe.

‘Carter?’ she murmured, stirring.

She sensed rather than saw the sudden movement as the figure jumped lithely onto the desk and then slipped out the window with the ease of an acrobat.

That isn’t Carter.

That realisation yanked her from her torpor and she sat bolt upright in bed, staring at the open window for a split second before leaping up to turn on the overhead light.

The room was empty. But somebody had been there, she was certain of it. The books and papers on her desk had been disturbed. A pen that had rested on a notebook when she went to sleep now lay on the floor.

She hadn’t been dreaming.

Forcing herself to keep breathing steadily, she climbed up onto the desk and looked out the window, but all she saw was countryside, bathed in the faint glow of a sliver of moon.

Shivering despite the warm night, Allie closed the window and latched it tightly – testing the strength of the lock before climbing back into bed and wrapping her arms around her knees. She sat awake for a very long time.





TWENTY-EIGHT


‘Maybe you were dreaming,’ Carter suggested, but she could see that his muscles had tensed.

‘I wasn’t,’ Allie insisted. ‘Things were moved. Besides, I saw him.’

They were sitting with Rachel at the summerhouse. Classes had ended for the day a few minutes before. The sky was grey and ominous, but it hadn’t yet begun to rain.

‘You see people in your dreams,’ he pointed out. ‘Everybody does. How can you be sure you weren’t asleep and the wind didn’t blow things around?’

‘Did you pinch yourself, Allie?’ Rachel asked. ‘Or, do something to make sure you were awake? Sometimes dreams seem very real.’

‘I saw him.’ Allie was increasingly frustrated. ‘Why don’t you believe me? I sat up in bed as he went out the window. It wasn’t a dream. He was in my room.’ She shuddered. ‘He was in my room.’

‘Hey, it’s OK.’ Rachel put her arm around her. ‘You’re OK. We believe you. We just want you to be sure. Tell us exactly what you saw. What did he look like?’

Screwing up her face, Allie tried to remember everything. ‘He was shorter than Carter, and more slight. He wore all black, and he was fair. I’m pretty sure his hair was almost blonde.’

For a while they went half-heartedly through a list of all the students who could conceivably match that description, but dismissed them all.

‘Nobody in Night School looks like that, ‘Carter said finally. ‘And only Night School can get up on the roof right now.’

‘Night School and whoever was in my room last night,’ Allie said. ‘Carter, there’s something else I have to tell you …’

Until that moment she hadn’t told him about her conversation with Sylvain, so now she filled him in. As he listened his jaw tightened. When she finished he jumped to his feet without a word and strode out of the summerhouse to the edge of the woods where he stood with his back to them.

‘Uh-oh,’ Allie said, making an abortive move as if to get up and walk to him and then changing her mind and sitting back down again.

‘Give him a minute. He’ll be fine,’ Rachel said. ‘And then I’ll really piss him off with my news.’

‘News?’ Allie raised an eyebrow curiously.