“Reece? We’re writing a newsletter for the open day. Do you want to come and help us?” Maya was using her persuasive voice, the one as smooth and sweet as honey, that she normally used on Miss Lewis.
“Why me?” said Reece.
“Because you’re good at English. And you’re good in a team,” said Maya.
Joel laughed.
“I don’t know,” said Reece. He didn’t understand why she was asking him.
Maya turned to Oliver. “Will you help us too, Oli? I’d like to run an article on your dad, about life on the frontline.”
So that was it; she was peacemaking, thought Reece, trying to get them to work together. Maya loved to organise people.
“No,” said Oliver shortly.
“But–”
“My dad wants to be private.”
“But he had his picture in the paper,” objected Maya.
“Yeah, well, that was enough for him. He won’t want to be in a school newsletter.”
“At least you could ask him, next time you talk!”
Oliver shook his head decidedly. “He’ll say no.”
Maya rolled her eyes and turned back to Reece.
“No,” said Reece. “Thanks, but no. So if that’s what’s stopping Oliver from helping you, he doesn’t need to worry. He won’t need to work with me.”
He thought this might make him sound self-sacrificing and heroic, but Oliver just said, “Who?” and Maya said “Honestly!” and tossed her head, exasperated.
Reece knew that Maya had offered him a lifeline. All the same, he didn’t want to take it. Maybe she was trying to be kind, but it was a rather imperious form of kindness.
Maya scared him slightly. She always listened intently to Miss Lewis and worked hard, but she was not a nerd like Seth. She was clever and confident, accustomed to laying down the law. Not many people dared to disagree with her.
Certainly none of the group she roped in to write her newsletter were likely to risk doing so. And Maya persuaded Miss Lewis – as only she could – that they were responsible enough to stay in the classroom during playtimes to work on it.
“We won’t be any trouble,” she told Miss Lewis. “You can trust us.”
“I can trust you,” repeated Miss Lewis, as if Maya had done a Jedi mind trick on her.
Maya turned in triumph to Reece. “So you might as well join us, Reece. You’ll be staying in anyway, if your ankle’s still bad.”
It wasn’t. None the less, Reece had persuaded his Dad to re-wrap the bandage round it last night, and had pretended so much pain that Dad had offered him a warm bath and a blueberry muffin. How was a muffin supposed to help a twisted ankle?
“His ankle’s fine,” said Kai. “He’s just a wimp.”
“Who’s a wimp?” retorted Reece. “You can’t see me. Or had you forgotten? You’ve got the memory of a goldfish, that’s your trouble. Five seconds round the bowl and ooh, where am I?”
“Oh, stop it,” said Maya. “You can suit yourself.”
So Reece stayed in alongside, but not with, the newsletter group. It had one great advantage. It provided Reece with cover in his campaign to baffle Oliver.
For he had come to school that morning armed with baffling gifts.
Toffees. Bubble-gum. Football stickers. A pencil sharpener disguised as a revolving skull, because Oliver had admired one like it. Nobody could possibly accuse him of doing anything wrong. All he was doing was giving nice things to Oliver.
All of these things were small enough to post into Oliver’s drawer without even needing to open it. He could slip them in unnoticed as he walked past.
And with Maya’s group in the classroom, he was never alone. He always had an alibi. Alibis didn’t come any more assertive than Maya.
So when, after playtime, Oliver opened first his drawer, and then his mouth, and then held up the pack of stickers to say, bewildered, “Who put this here?” – Reece was last in the line of possible suspects.
Everyone denied all knowledge, including him. Maya swore that nobody had opened Oliver’s drawer while she’d been in the room and why on earth would she want to give him football stickers?
“I don’t even like football,” she said.
“That’s not the point,” said Oliver.
“Then what is the point?”
The point was that Oliver liked football. And bubble-gum and novelty pencil-sharpeners. Reece knew Oliver did not suspect him of being the giver, because after all, why would Reece give him something nice? Anyone could have done it when the class barged in after playtime in a jostling crowd.
“Someone wants to be your girlfriend!” insisted Joel, sniggering. Oliver glanced around at all the girls as if trying to work it out.
But now all the girls were being careful not to be too nice to Oliver in case he thought they were The One; because then there would be no let-up in the jokes and sniggers. So they would hardly even look at him.
In consequence, Oliver was so baffled by the gifts that nobody would admit to giving him, that Reece, while acting bored and sulky, was highly gratified.
He had chosen well. Yet he could choose still better, and baffle Oliver some more.
He’d been saving up his pocket money for the holiday; but he could always get some holiday spends off Dad. Dad was soft like that.
So on Saturday Reece emptied his moneybox shaped like a turtle and got the bus over to the parade of shops on the other side of town, where he would meet nobody he knew.
There he spent a surprisingly pleasant hour choosing baffling gifts for Oliver. It was almost as enjoyable as picking them for himself.
He chose carefully. A four-colour pen. A stunt yoyo. A mouth-organ that played in tune. He even shelled out for a cute red Tamagotchi which looked like a cross between a strawberry and a meerkat.
It wasn’t really a waste of his money. He had a go on the mouth-organ, and tried out all the yoyo stunts, before he took the baffling gifts to school and slipped them, one each day, into Oliver’s drawer.
And with each baffling gift, he saw Oliver’s face caught between pleasure and incomprehension. He saw how Oliver hesitated before pulling his drawer open, not knowing what he’d find. Each gift bothered him more and more.
Oliver tried to talk to Miss Lewis about them. Reece, watching from the corner of his eye, could see how Oliver stumbled and stammered over his words. The teacher’s answer rang out clearly.
“I’m not quite sure what you’re complaining about, Oliver.” Turning to the class, she held up the yoyo. “This was in Oliver’s drawer. Does anybody know who it belongs to?”
“I’ll have it if he doesn’t want it,” offered Cody.
“But nobody’s claiming it? Then you may as well keep it, Oliver. Just don’t play with it in class.”
She gave the yoyo back to Oliver, who took it as gingerly as if it was a hand grenade. He did not attempt to ask Miss Lewis again.
By Thursday, Oliver was setting spies. Kai lounged against the classroom door at playtime, spying on the newsletter group, until Maya went to fetch a teacher to shoo him out.
Then Joel kept peering in through the window.
“Go away!” cried Maya, jumping up to bang on the glass. Joel crossed his eyes and mouthed rude words, making Lucy shriek and run for a teacher again. And while everyone’s attention was on them, into Oliver’s drawer slid the Tamagotchi, quite unseen.
The Tamagotchi made Oliver gasp.
He really liked the Tamagotchi; and he didn’t want to like it. He turned it over and over in his hands. He would have loved it, Reece could tell – if he only knew where it had come from.
The Tamagotchi was the best baffling gift so far, precisely because Oliver loved it so. Reece wasn’t sure how he could top that, certainly not without spending a lot of money that he didn’t have.
But now he had power over Oliver. He had caught him like a helpless fish on a hook, and he didn’t want to let him go.
It was time for the next step.
Chapter Five