Magic at Silver Spires (14 page)

“I'm definitely going to do that!” a girl called Holly said. Then she turned to her friend, Mikki, and I heard her say something about rowing with her brother at home.

“Or there's a sailing course,” Mrs. Truman went on, “which is also over three weekends, but in the second half of term. And then there are two mountain-biking courses, one this half term, and one next. And lastly, for those of you who want a bit more adventure, there are a few additional one-day canoeing courses.”

“Yea!” said a girl called Sophie from across the changing room. “Sounds great!” And quite a few other girls agreed.

Mrs. Truman smiled. “It's important to think carefully before signing up for anything. You girls lead very busy lives here at Silver Spires, with all your extra-curricular activities on top of your lessons, so don't overload yourselves.” She smiled again. “On the other hand, there's a lot of enjoyment to be had out of sport, and you're amazingly lucky to have so much on offer…”

“Is the sculling a beginner's course?” asked Holly.

Mrs. Truman nodded. “Yes, it is.” And I saw Holly's face drop.

I think Mrs. Truman must have noticed that too. “But there are seven sessions in all, so there's lots of chance to progress. The first one takes place here at the school swimming pool, then the others are at a lake not far away. Have you done sculling before, Holly?”

“I went out loads on the river with my brother over the Easter holidays. He's in a sculling eight but we went out together, just him and me, in a Virus double. It was great.”

I looked round my group of friends to see if any of them seemed at all confused, but none of them did. So maybe I was the only one who didn't know the difference between sculling and rowing, and had no idea what a “Virus double” was, though it sounded like some kind of illness.

“He let me cox one time, too,” Holly went on enthusiastically.

“What's that?” asked Bryony, and I felt relieved that at least one other person was in the dark. Bryony is Emily's best friend and she never wastes words.

“The cox—” Mrs. Truman started to answer, but Holly interrupted.

“It's the person who sits at the stern of the boat – that's the back – facing the way the boat's moving, so they can direct all the oarsmen to help them keep together and go as fast as possible.”

“Well explained, Holly!” said Mrs. Truman. I agreed it was well explained but I still didn't understand what she'd said before about “viruses”. I'm not like Bryony though. I'd never dare ask. Mrs. Truman was carrying on anyway, so I didn't have a chance to ask, even if I'd wanted to. “All the info about the various activities is on the sport noticeboard, so go along and sign up for whatever you want when you've had a good think about it.

“And one more important thing,” she added. “General fitness. Up till now you've only used the main gym for PE lessons and dance, but if you want to use the equipment in the smaller gym to build up stamina – the treadmills, the bikes, the rowing machine, et cetera, that's fine. But you can
only
use that gym once you've had an induction, which is an introductory session to show you how to use the various pieces of equipment safely. Even then,” she went on, “there has to be a member of staff with you at all times. And I'm afraid you're absolutely not allowed to use the weights, under any circumstances. But if it's raining outside, for example, and you want to work on your general fitness, that's where the gym comes in.” Mrs. Truman smiled around at us, as if to see what we thought so far, but everyone was quiet and thoughtful. “The best time to use the gym is after school,” she carried on, “though one or two older students sometimes try to squash in a session before breakfast, as long as it's after seven thirty. I'm afraid teachers get priority before that. But now –” she gave us another bright smile – “let's get down to the athletics field!”

Izzy and I found ourselves practically at the back as everyone else broke into excited chatter and plunged after Mrs. Truman. It's not that we don't like PE, just that it's not our favourite thing. Izzy's favourite thing is ballet, definitely. She's totally brilliant at it. And my favourite thing is…I don't know. I haven't got one. There's nothing I'm specially good at, really. I wish there was. It must be fantastic to be talented at something you also enjoy doing, like Izzy is.

I love the time of day when prep has finished and we're free for half an hour before we have to get ready for bed. Prep is like homework, except that we're not at home, of course, we're all in a big room and we have to work silently for about an hour. There's so much to get used to at a boarding school, but now that we Year Sevens have been here for two whole terms we feel completely settled.

As soon as prep was over that night, the six of us went up to our dormitory, which is called Emerald. All the Year Seven dorms are named after precious stones, but we've got the best one. Actually, I think we've got the best boarding house too – Forest Ash. The boarding houses are named after trees, and Forest Ash sounds warm and friendly to me. Our housemistress is Mrs. Pridham. She's very gentle and kind, but can also be firm at times. And our matron is Miss Callow. She's really good fun. Then there's Miss Stevenson, the assistant housemistress, who is the youngest of the Forest Ash staff, and although she's the quietist and can be quite strict, everyone gets along well with her.

“I was a bit rubbish at that maths prep,” said Emily with an over-the-top sigh, as she climbed the ladder to her cabin bed and lay down, hands behind her head. “I just don't get fractions.” Then she turned onto her side and looked at Nicole, who is definitely the brainiest one of us all. “Tell me again, does the nominator go on the top in fractions, or is it the denumerator?”

Nicole laughed as she went up to sit with Antonia on her bed. “Oh, Ems, it's the
numerator
on the top, and
denominator
on the bottom!”

“Never mind maths,” said Antonia, smiling round at us all. “What I want to know is which extra sports you have chosen. Nicole and I have signed in for tennis.”

“Signed
up
,” said Nicole straight away. Then she looked apologetic. “Sorry, Antonia! You must get sick of me correcting you all the time!”

Antonia shook her head. “I want to be just as good as all of you at English, so keep correcting me till I am!”

“You
are
as good as us!” I told Antonia, because I think it's brilliant the way she's learned English in only two terms. Last September, when we joined Silver Spires, she couldn't really speak it at all and had a strong Italian accent, but now she's great at it, and has practically lost her accent too.

“Well, anyway, Nicole and I are going to do extra tennis!” she told us happily.

“I don't think we'll exactly make Wimbledon, this year,” said Nicole. “But we're really looking forward to it all the same!” Then she turned to Bryony. “What are you going to do, Bry?”

“She's coming riding with me,” Emily answered. “Which is totally brave of her because…” Emily stopped suddenly and clapped her hand over her mouth. “Sorry, Bry, is it a secret?”

Bryony shrugged. “Because I'm scared of horses,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice.

Izzy gasped. “I didn't think you were scared of
anything
, Bry!”

And I didn't either because Bryony has been on all sorts of outward-bound trips over the year, like abseiling and rock climbing, and you need tons of courage for those.

“I fell off a horse when I was little,” she told us quietly. “And I've never got back on one since, but now I'm going to give it a go.”

“We won't have time for anything else though, with gardening club and everything,” finished off Emily simply. Then she turned to me and Izzy. “What about you two?”

I suddenly felt a bit pathetic for having no idea. “I don't know. There are so many things…” I was trying to make it sound as though I was interested in everything and just couldn't choose, but the truth was I didn't think I'd be that good at any of the things on offer.

“We can't decide, can we, Sash?” Izzy added, pulling her hair out of its band and starting to brush it.

I was glad at that moment not to be the only one who wasn't really sporty. But immediately afterwards I felt miserable, because of course even though Izzy isn't sporty, she's always got ballet as her special thing in life, and I really admire her dedication to it. And all the others have something that's important to them too. Emily's big passion is the environment. Bryony is the adventurous one, Nicole got a scholarship to Silver Spires because she's so clever, and Antonia is a brilliant linguist and knows more about the world than any of us because she's travelled such a lot. Then there's me. I really feel like a nobody.

When my parents told me last summer that I was definitely coming to Silver Spires, the very first thing I thought was that I might find something here that I could shine at, or at least something I'd really enjoy. But that just hasn't happened.

It's not that I'm unhappy. I'm completely happy, because this is the best boarding school in the world, and I've got my five close friends, including my very best friend, and I'm quite good at all the different lessons, and quite good at everything in fact. It's just that I'm a
quite good
sort of person, who'd love to be a
very good
sort of person at
something
.

I sighed inside and tried to get back to thinking about extra sports, and there suddenly flashed through my mind the memory of that girl, Holly, talking about sculling with her brother. She sounded like she'd really had fun with him. I wished I had a big brother instead of baby twin brothers – someone who might teach me to be a
very
sort of person instead of a
quite
one.

“We could always try sculling,” I found myself saying to Izzy before I'd really thought it through.

“Y-yes…” said Izzy, looking doubtful. “Do you think it's hard?”

“Have you ever done sculling, Bry?” I asked her. “What's the difference between sculling and rowing?”

“Each person on a rowing team uses just one oar, but in sculling they use two,” said Bryony. “I only know that from watching the Olympic Games, by the way.”

“You ought to give it a go, Sash!” said Emily.

I turned to Izzy. “
Shall
we?” I asked, a bit nervously.

She hunched her shoulders up and pulled a face. “I'm not sure. I keep remembering what Mrs. Truman said about it being a commitment. I mean, what if we don't like it?”

“Or what if we're no good at it?” I added quietly, because that was what was worrying me.

“Stop worrying, Sasha, and go for it! You might turn out to be
fantastico
!” laughed Nicole, using one of the Italian words she'd learned from Antonia.

“
Shall
we?” This time it was Izzy asking me.

I suddenly pictured myself phoning home to tell Mum and Dad what brilliant fun sculling was, and Dad wanting to know every detail about it, then Mum trying to get the phone off him so she could hear too. In my heart I knew that wouldn't happen because Dad's always working and Mum's attention is totally taken up by the twins. Maybe if I tried out something new, though, she'd be really curious and ask me lots of questions about it. I liked that thought.

Izzy was looking at me, her head on one side, waiting for my answer. I made the decision in a flash.

“Yes, let's!” I said a bit breathlessly.

The very next day Izzy and I signed up for sculling, then, as Saturday drew nearer, I found myself getting more and more tense, because there was no going back. A very small part of me was excited, but most of me was nervous and anxious. Why was
I
, of all people, about to take up sculling, when I'd no real idea what it actually was? Izzy felt the same, thank goodness, and we would keep turning to each other during the school day – like in the dinner queue, in the middle of a lesson, walking out of assembly, or while we were cleaning our teeth – and saying, “What if we're useless at it?” and “What if we hate it?”

But then we always finished up reminding ourselves that Holly had talked about scull doubles, and that as long as we were together in a boat for two people, surely it would be good fun.

Then Saturday afternoon finally arrived, and I was more nervous than ever in the swimming pool changing room, with Izzy and the rest of the fifteen Year Sevens and Eights who'd signed up for sculling. Mrs. Truman had told us to put our costumes on underneath cycling shorts and a T-shirt. Someone had already asked her why we had to wear cycling shorts rather than any old shorts, and she'd said it was so they wouldn't get caught on any parts of the boat. That was the moment when it had all started to sound very real to me.

“You're going to get a bit of a shock when you see what's in the pool,” she said, wearing a kind of secretive smile. “Come on, girls, quick as you can.”

We knew there would be some kind of a boat in the pool because Mrs. Truman had already mentioned that, but when we walked through from the changing room, every single one of us gasped. There, floating in the middle of the pool, was a long, very, very slim, gleaming white boat. It looked as though the slightest breath of wind would tip it over.

Instantly I knew there was no way I was ever going to be able to manage this sport. I must have been mad even to consider it.

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