George talks about his protein bars the whole way. He bought a whole box of them, he says, and now he can’t find them anywhere. George likes talking about protein bars. And various functional items. Functional clothes and functional jogging shoes, for example. George loves functions. Elsa hopes no one ever invents protein bars with functions, because then George’s head will probably explode. Not that Elsa would find that such a bad thing, but she imagines Mum would be upset about it, and there’d be an awful lot of cleaning. George drops her off in the parking area after asking her one more time if she’s seen his missing protein bars. She groans with boredom and jumps out.
The other children keep their distance, watching her guardedly. Rumors of The Monster’s intervention outside the park have spread, but Elsa knows it will only last a short while. It happened too far from school. Things that happen outside school may as well be happening in outer space, because she is protected in here anyway. She may have a respite of a couple of hours, but those who are chasing her will keep testing the boundaries, and once they drum up the courage to have another pop at her they’ll hit her harder than ever.
And she knows that The Monster will never get anywhere near the fence even for her sake, because schools are full of children and children are full of bacteria, and there’s not enough alcogel in the whole world for The Monster after that.
But she enjoys her freedom that morning in spite of all. It’s the second-to-last day before the Christmas holidays and after tomorrow she can have a couple of weeks of rest from running. A couple of weeks without notes in her locker about how ugly she is and how they’re going to kill her.
In the first break she allows herself a walk along the fence. She tightens her backpack straps from time to time, to make sure it isn’t hanging too loose. She knows they won’t be chasing her now, but it’s a difficult habit to break. You run slower if your backpack’s loose.
Eventually she lets herself drift off in her own thoughts. That is probably why she doesn’t see it. She’s thinking about Granny and Miamas, wondering what plan Granny had in mind when she sent her out on this treasure hunt; that is, if she had any plan at all. Granny always sort of made her plans as she went along, and now that she’s no longer there Elsa is having problems recognizing what the next step of the treasure hunt is supposed to be. Above all she wonders what Granny meant when she said she was worried that Elsa would hate her when she found out more about her. Up until now Elsa has only found out that Granny had some pretty dodgy friends, which was hardly a shock, you might say.
And Elsa obviously understands that Granny’s statement about who she was before she became a granny must have something to do with Elsa’s mum, but she’d rather not ask Mum unless she has to. Everything Elsa says to Mum these days seems to end in an argument. And Elsa hates it. She hates that one can’t be allowed to know things unless one starts arguing.
And she hates being as alone as one can only be without Granny.
So it must be for that reason that she doesn’t notice it. Because she’s probably no more than two or three yards away when she finally sees it, which is an insane distance not to see a wurse from. It’s sitting by the gate, just outside the fence. She laughs, surprised. The wurse seems to be laughing as well, but internally.
“I looked for you this morning,” she says, and goes into the street, even though this is not allowed during breaks. “Were you nice to the ghosts?”
The wurse doesn’t look as if it was, but she throws her arms around its neck all the same, buries her hands deep in its thick black fur, and exclaims: “Wait, I’ve got something for you!” The wurse greedily sticks its nose into her backpack, but looks remarkably disappointed when it pulls it back out again.
“They’re protein bars,” says Elsa apologetically. “We don’t have any sweets at home because Mum doesn’t want me to eat them, but George says these are mega-tasty!”
The wurse doesn’t like them at all. It only has about nine of them. When the bell goes, Elsa hugs it hard, hard, hard one more time and whispers, “Thanks for coming!”
She knows that the other children in the playground see her do it. The teachers may be able to avoid noticing the biggest, blackest wurse appearing out of nowhere in the morning break, but no child in the entire universe could.
No one leaves any notes in Elsa’s locker that day.
12
MINT