Night School

I mean how do you get over having a naked panic attack in front of half the school?

At least she now knew what had happened after they jumped into the pond. During the night, Jo told her the whole story. How Gabe and Lucas had been in the water and had spotted the girls as they ran to the water. That Gabe had grabbed Jo as soon as she’d hit the surface and pulled her over to where they were swimming near a tree. How she’d managed to hold on to Lisa and pull her along even while Lisa tried to hide from Lucas. And how in all the commotion she’d lost Allie.

‘The pond filled up with people so fast and it was so dark, when I went back to where we started, or where I thought we’d started, I couldn’t find you anywhere,’ Jo said. It was Jules and Ruth who eventually told her that they’d seen Allie with Carter, and that Allie looked ill. ‘Ruth had gone with Jules in the end, because Jules didn’t want to go on her own. And Jules thought we’d been drinking and that that’s why you were ill, and she gave me a bollocking, which is why it took me ages to find you.’

‘I never saw Sylvain there, but then I didn’t see anyone, really,’ Allie said.

‘I don’t think he was there,’ Jo said. ‘But just about everybody else was.’

Allie, who had prepared a bed of coats and sweaters on the floor, buried her face in Jo’s spare pillow. ‘I wonder how many people saw me freak out?’

Up on the bed, Jo stretched out flat and yawned. ‘Not many, that’s for sure. It seemed like nobody saw you all night except Jules.’

‘But she’ll tell everyone.’

‘She won’t. She’s a prefect. She has, like, a duty to support you, or something,’ Jo said. ‘Anyway, what exactly happened?’

Allie explained about the panic attack and how Carter had rescued her. She didn’t talk about the way she’d felt when he pulled her from the water and helped her breathe. Or about watching him walk away in the moonlight. Instead she’d focused on how calm he was, and how coolly he’d handled the crisis.

Jo thought for a moment, and when she spoke her answer was carefully phrased. ‘People here have a weird thing with Carter because he acts like he’s better than everyone, and because he has really upset a lot of girls over the years – pretending he likes them and then suddenly not liking them any more. And, you know, he does his own thing. I’m actually kind of surprised he was down at the pond at all tonight, or last night …’ she looked at the clock. ‘… this morning. Whenever. Because that’s the kind of scene he usually avoids. So people think he’s standoffish. But he can be a good guy – he really can.’

She yawned widely. ‘Lots of people know he doesn’t like them or that he thinks they’re shallow. He makes it obvious.’

‘That’s what I like about him,’ Allie had murmured, closing her eyes. ‘He’s so honest.’

‘Honesty can be good,’ Jo said, turning out the lamp. Her last words floated out of the darkness, disembodied. ‘But it can be bad, too.’

Now, as they sat stirring cereal around their bowls, nobody seemed to have anything to say. Lisa was the most cheerful of them all – she’d survived the splash, and Lucas had walked her back to the school building afterwards. She thought he was starting to like her. But even she was tired.

‘God, I’m so going to need a nap before tonight,’ she said, resting her head on her hand. ‘I’m a wreck.’

‘I feel like arse,’ Jo said succinctly, reaching for the sugar. ‘Who knew sleep mattered?’

‘Arse about sums it up for me too,’ Allie said, sipping the scalding tea and yawning. Nobody had said anything to her about last night, and there’d been no whispering when she walked in the dining room. Maybe Jo was right and it had been so dark and crowded nobody’d seen her losing it last night.

By tradition, classes ended at noon on the day of the summer ball. Through her morning classes Allie fought to stay awake, taking notes that would later make no sense to her at all.

Carter studiously ignored her in biology, and in English she dozed off while waiting for the class to start and never saw him come in. When she looked up, he was there but not looking at her. It was just as well. In eight hours she was going to the dance with Sylvain. This really wasn’t the time to be thinking about standing in the water with his arms around her. Naked.

She straightened the papers on her desk and pulled her textbook out of her bag.

No – not the time at all.

Isabelle had taken her place at the edge of the circle of desks.

She glanced around the room knowingly. ‘My, some of you look very tired. Didn’t you sleep well?’

They shifted uncomfortably in their seats. Somebody snickered.