Solitaire
: Part 1 – Chapter 8

I’M SPRAWLED ON the computer desks in the common room at 8:21 a.m. on Monday with Becky raving on about how cute Ben Hope was at Lauren’s (that was six days ago, for God’s sake) when someone bellows with extreme resonance from the door, “HAS ANYONE SEEN TORI SPRING!?”

I wake from the dead. “Oh Christ.”

Becky roars my location across the air, and before I have time to hide under the desk, Zelda Okoro is standing in front of me. I flatten my hair, hoping it will shield me from her dictatorial intervention. Zelda wears full makeup to school every day, including lipstick and eye shadow, and I think she might be certifiably insane.

“Tori. I’m nominating you for Operation Inconspicuous.”

It takes several seconds for this information to register.

“No, you are not,” I say. “No. No.”

“Yes. You haven’t got a say. The deputy heads voted on who they wanted in Year 12.”

“What?” I slump back onto the desk. “What for?”

Zelda puts her hands on her hips and tilts her head. “We’re facing a crisis, Tori.” She speaks way too fast and in extremely short sentences. I don’t like it. “Higgs is facing a crisis. A team of eight prefects just isn’t going to cover it. We’re upping the stakeout ops team to fifteen. Operation Inconspicuous is a go. Tomorrow. 0700.”

“I’m sorry—what did you just say?”

“We’ve come to the conclusion that most of the sabotage must be happening during the early hours. So we’re staking out tomorrow morning. 0700. You’d better be there.”

“I hate you,” I say.

“Don’t blame me,” she says. “Blame Solitaire.” She clip-clops off.

Becky, Evelyn, Lauren, and Rita are all around me. Lucas, too. I think he’s one of Our Lot now.

“Well, you’re obviously in the teachers’ good books,” says Becky. “Next thing you know, they’ll be making you an actual prefect.”

I shoot her a look of severe distress.

“Yeah, but if you were a prefect, you could skip the lunch queue,” says Lauren. “Fast food, man. And you could give Year 7s detentions whenever they’re being too cheerful.”

“What did you even do to make the teachers like you?” asks Becky. “You don’t exactly do much.”

I shrug at her. She’s right. I don’t do much at all.

Later in the day I pass Michael in the corridor. I say “pass,” but what actually happens is he shouts “TORI” so loudly that I manage to drop my English folder on the floor. He lets out this deafening laugh, his eyes scrunching up behind his glasses, and he actually stops and stands still in the middle of the corridor, causing three Year 8s to bump into him. I look at him, pick up my folder, and walk right past.

I’m in English now. Reading Pride and Prejudice. Now that I have reached chapter 6, I have established that I hate this book with a profound passion. It’s boring and cliché, and I constantly feel the need to hold it over a lit match. The women only care about the men, and the men don’t seem to care about anything at all. Except Darcy, maybe. He’s not so bad. Lucas is the only person I can see who is reading the book properly, with his calm and quiet expression, but every so often he checks his phone. I scroll through a few blogs on my own phone under the desk, but there really isn’t anything interesting on there.

Becky is in the seat next to me, and she is talking to Ben Hope. Unfortunately, I can’t avoid them without moving to a different seat or leaving the class or dying. They are playing dots and boxes in Ben’s school planner. Becky keeps losing.

“You’re cheating!” she exclaims, and attempts to grab Ben’s pen. Ben laughs a very attractive laugh. They have a small wrestling match over the pen. I try not to throw up or dive under the table from sheer cringe.

In the common room at lunch, Becky tells Evelyn all about Ben. At some point, I interrupt their conversation.

“What happened to Jack?” I ask her.

“Jack who?” she says. I blink at her, and she turns back to Evelyn.