What should the next step be? Reece mulled it over.
He could own up to the baffling gifts, and watch Oliver squirm as he realised that the giver was the very boy he’d been rudely ignoring. Oliver might realize his mistake and humbly ask to be his friend.
On the other hand, he might not. And Kai and Joel certainly wouldn’t. They would tease Reece without mercy.
Reece could take the opposite approach. Having lulled Oliver into the expectation of delightful gifts, he could now suddenly shock him with a dead rat.
But this was problematic too. Quite apart from the difficulties of getting hold of a dead rat, if Oliver found one in his drawer all fingers would immediately point at Reece: because everyone knew that he and Oliver were enemies.
And then nobody would believe he’d given Oliver the chocolate and the pen and the Tamagotchi and everything else, and all his previous bafflements would have been wasted.
Reece thought of just dropping the whole thing. Now that his ankle was obviously better, he had no excuse to stay in at playtimes and post gifts. He started hanging around with Seth and Adam, despite his misgivings. While this involved a certain amount of beeping, it was better than being on his own.
But in class he was still stuck with Oliver, Kai and Joel. Miss Lewis would not let him change tables.
She did not hear the taunts of “I can’t see you. You’re not there.” They said it quietly; but they still said it. And every time they said it, Reece felt his insides shrink and tighten up as if there was a miniature black hole inside his stomach, sucking up all joy and gladness.
So his Next Step was still undecided when Miss Lewis announced a surprise Spelling Test.
Reece was not afraid of spelling tests. But from the expression on his face, Oliver was. When Miss Lewis moved them all around the classroom so that they could not copy, Reece was close enough to Oliver to see his fear.
“These are all spellings that you should know from your homework,” said Miss Lewis, and began to announce the list of words slowly and clearly like an actor. At the same time, she strode around the classroom marking books and commenting on who had learnt their spellings properly.
“Well done, Maya,” she said, moved on and paused at Oliver’s side.
She looked at his book.
“What. On. Earth,” she began, and everyone turned round to gaze at Oliver. He was going red.
What happened next was an accident. Reece didn’t mean to do it.
He had just been playing with his pencil when it flew out of his hand, somersaulting like an acrobat, and hit Abby on the back of the neck: which meant that Abby screamed like a mad banshee and turned round to kick Cody who was sitting just behind her.
“For goodness sake!” Miss Lewis cried, exasperated, as she marched over to them. In sorting out the argument that followed, she forgot all about Oliver and his spelling.
But Reece did not. Watching Oliver’s face, he saw relief there.
Then Reece knew how to continue baffling Oliver. He could still give him presents – but of a different sort.
At first, he just watched Oliver carefully to see what he might need. He learnt to watch him without looking at him; and saw that Oliver liked to get things right, and tried to cover up when they were wrong.
Oliver got more things wrong than Reece would have expected. He had thought that Oliver was clever.
But now he saw that Oliver copied off Joel in maths, and Joel let him. He saw that Oliver, while pretending to despise the star chart, twice picked up a star that had fallen on the floor and stuck it surreptitiously next to his name.
The stars were for effort. Oliver did not put in a great deal of effort. He spent a lot of time staring blankly at the wall, and got told off. He did not listen to Miss Lewis’s instructions, and had to ask Kai and Joel what he was supposed to do.
And then he didn’t do it properly, and got told off again. He forgot to do his homework, and got told off some more.
Yet Reece saw that Oliver hated being told off. It made him as miserable as a scolded puppy.
Oliver hadn’t been that forgetful at the start of term. Miss Lewis commented on it.
“I shall have to have a word with your parents, Oliver, if you don’t buck up your ideas,” she said.
Oliver did not answer. He looked down at the table, tense and tired, as if he had things on his mind. Reece was pretty sure he knew what those things were. A Tamagotchi, for one.
Next morning, when he saw Oliver peer at the homework tray and pull an anguished face, Reece was prepared.
For their homework, Miss Lewis had asked them all to write a story about a river journey. Reece had written two. One, by hand, for himself: and one, printed off on the computer and with Oliver’s name at the top, just in case Oliver forgot. Now he dropped both in the homework tray.
The story he’d written for Oliver was quite good, apart from the random speech marks and some carefully dodgy spelling. Reece had even put in an ox-bow lake to please Miss Lewis.
“Can I bring my story in tomorrow, Miss?” muttered Oliver, shame-faced. “I forgot.”
“What are you talking about, Oliver? I’ve got yours here.” She shook the sheaf of papers at him.
Now Oliver was really baffled. And when Miss Lewis handed them back out, Reece, across the table, read upside-down the words in green ink on the sheet she gave to Oliver:
Very nice work, Oliver. I liked your description of an ox-bow lake! This is a big improvement.
“But, Miss...” said Oliver. His voice tailed away.
“Lovely descriptive writing, Oliver. I’m giving you a star for effort.”
Reece did not get a star: his sheet just said, Good Work. But he felt as satisfied as if he’d won a dozen stars himself.
“Hey, Oliver?” said Maya, in her wheedling voice. “You really should be in our newsletter group. I wish you’d write us an article about your dad. You could do it better than anybody else.”
Oliver shook his head.
Reece, however, made a resolution. If he could fool Miss Lewis, why shouldn’t he fool Maya?
He started work on the article that evening.
It wasn’t hard to find the facts about Oliver’s father. Sitting at the computer in his dining room, he looked up the story from the local paper online.
It told him the regiment that Oliver’s dad was in, so then he looked that up as well, and discovered that they were no longer fighting in Afghanistan but back in England.
He didn’t think Oliver’s dad was back at home yet, though. From what he’d overheard, Oliver hadn’t seen him lately. Maybe he’d been posted somewhere else.
“What’s that you’re doing, son?”
The soft, husky voice was his own dad’s. It was one of Mum’s evenings for working in the supermarket.
“It’s homework,” said Reece shortly. He wished Dad wouldn’t call him son. He had a name. And he wished Dad wouldn’t peer over his shoulder at the screen like that.
“About the army?”
“It’s for a newsletter.”
“Oh. Want an éclair?”
“No, Dad.”
Dad shuffled around a bit behind him. “Everything all right at school, son?”
“Sure. Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I was just wondering. You seem a bit... distracted.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re happy there, are you? How’s that lad Seth you’ve made friends with? You want to invite him home sometime?”
“Maybe.” Reece wasn’t thinking about Seth. He was thinking about Oliver. He gazed intently at the screen, wishing Dad would get off his case and go away.
Eventually, Dad did. And Reece wrote his article, or rather, Oliver’s. On the internet, he found quite a lot about life on the frontline in Afghanistan: the stifling heat, the tedium, the jokes, the constant need to be alert.
All this went into his article. Reece thought hard about how it would feel to have a dad away and fighting in the army.
br /> A mixture of pride and fear, he thought. Wishing he wasn’t in the army, yet being sort of glad that he was. More than anything, just wanting him to get safely home.
Finally, he decided on a heading.
My father is a hero...
Reece sighed. If only. But who would want to read an article about a bakery shift supervisor? My father is a zero.
He put the thought away and switched on the printer.
Chapter Six