Page 50 of From Now On

‘What is it?’ She looks so kind he almost tells her about the bullying but then he remembers when he’d waited until after class to confide in her before. Jayden had stood in the doorway. He’d mimed slicing his throat with his index finger. Snitches get stitches, he’d mouthed and every time Duke thinks of his throat being cut he feels sick.

‘Duke?’ Miss Greenly prompts gently. ‘Is there something you want to tell me?’

‘I’m ill,’ Duke blurts out. ‘I mean, not now, but I get really travel sick.’ It isn’t exactly a lie. If he was trapped on a coach with Jayden he would absolutely vomit. ‘Please don’t make me go. I’ll bring a letter in explaining.’ He thinks Nina might help him forge one but then she’d said she is ‘sick of sorting his shit out’ so he doesn’t know what he’ll do.

‘Can I go now, please?’

Miss Greenly nods and Duke hurries out into the corridor.

Jayden is waiting.

‘Has everyone seen the weirdo’s rucksack?’ he says loudly. His friends snigger.

Duke tries to ignore them as he hurries to the science lab while they continue to laugh about his bag, his hair, everything.

So, he’s weird… so what? It’s something Nina has been calling him for years so itshouldn’thurt but somehow it does. Not quite as much as the Chinese burn Jayden had given him. He can still feel the sting on his wrist where his skin had been twisted in two different directions.

Insults snap at his heels like dogs, and not friendly ones like Billie. At the thought of her Duke wants to cry but he doesn’t want the other kids to think Jayden is the cause of tears and so he begins humming ‘I Wan’na Be Like You’ inside his head and thinking of happier times.

He is calmer now. Jayden is in a different class for science. He sits on a high wooden stool on the bench. The class are told to partner up for experiments and everyone pairs up immediately leaving Duke alone. He’s put with two girls and the double lesson passes quickly.

At breaktime the wind blows the rain across the playground. Duke huddles against the wall, trying to keep warm and dry. No one comes over to talk to him but that means no one is calling him names either so he takes that as a win. Frequently he checks his watch as though he is waiting for someone or has somewhere important to be, rather than counting the minutes until the bell rings and he can return to the safety of his classroom where, other than the odd insults or the scrunched-up pieces of paper Jayden chucks at him, he feels relatively secure.

Halfway through English, Evie appears, and after the lesson they walk to the cafeteria together.

‘So, no fillings for me.’ She grins. ‘What have I missed?’

‘Jayden being an idiot and… Charlie came to Aunt Violet’s this morning.’

‘Charlie, your brother?’

‘Yeah. He said he wanted me and Nina to live with him.’

‘Cool.’

‘Not really. Aunt Violet said a bunch of stuff about responsibilities and kids being expensive and some things about his dad I didn’t get and now he’s gone back to London.’ Duke doesn’t say anything else.He doesn’t share how upset he is but he can hear the wobble in his voice.

‘You’re better off without him.’ Evie offers him a crisp and he shakes his head.

‘We’re not, though. I don’t care if living with Charlie makes us too poor to buy books because there are libraries. I… I just want to be back in my own bedroom, with Billie and… and I don’t care what Charlie’s real dad was like or what he did, it doesn’t mean he’ll turn out the same, does it? I like Charlie. I really do. He’s a bit like how I might be when I’m grown up.’

‘The ghost of Christmas future.’

‘Yeah.’ Duke smiles. Evie loves reading as much as he does.

‘Tell him then. Change his mind.’

‘I can’t; he never picks up the phone.’

‘Do you know his address?’

‘Yeah, it’s Baker Place. I remember that because of—’

‘Sherlock Holmes.’

‘Yeah. I guess I could write to him.’

‘He’d ignore that as well. You must go and see him.’

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