The Call of the Wild (2 page)

There was a poster for the Wild Club pinned up on the noticeboard outside the girls’ toilets. The poster showed our sponsored orangutan, Bunga. His big brown eyes stared out at me pleadingly, his head tilted in an impossibly loveable way. The little tufts of red hair that stuck up from the back of his head just made me want to hug him.

Bunga the orangutan needs you!

Join the Wild Club and find out how you can help.

I didn’t know how anyone could resist Bunga. I’d signed up for the Wild Club as soon as the poster had appeared. I thought it was so cool that we could sponsor an orphaned orangutan.

‘What do you think?’ I asked Kimmi when she emerged from the toilets, flicking water from her hands.

‘We should go shopping this afternoon to get our accessories,’ she said.

‘No.’ I nodded at the poster. ‘What do you think about joining the Wild Club?’

Kimmi stood back and considered the poster, as if she’d never seen it before. ‘Cute monkey.’

I sighed. ‘You know he’s an orangutan, not a monkey,’ I said. ‘But what do you think? Are you going to join?’

The club met every Friday at lunchtime. I’d missed a few meetings lately because of a conflict with debating, but I was definitely going today.

Kimmi shrugged. ‘Suppose,’ she said eventually.

‘Really?’ I said, not quite believing what I was hearing. I’d been begging Kimmi and Annabel to join for months. I really liked some of the people in the club and I wanted my friends to meet them. And now, finally, Kimmi had agreed to come along. I gave her a big hug. ‘You won’t regret it, I promise. The club is really great. Jack ’n Liam have all kinds of plans to raise money to help save animals.’

‘Cool,’ Kimmi nodded, clearly not listening to what I was telling her. But I didn’t mind too much. It was enough that she’d agreed to join the club. She could catch up on the details later.

‘Don’t make plans for lunch,’ I told Annabel when we saw her in the corridor outside our French class. She was still staring at pictures of Ryan on her phone.

‘We’re going to save some monkeys,’ Kimmi said.

‘Orangutans,’ I corrected her. ‘Kimmi’s decided to join the Wild Club. You have to come, too.’

Annabel raised her eyebrows. ‘Is this about Bunga again?’

I nodded. ‘Please come. It’ll be fun.’

‘It’ll be a bunch of nature nerds,’ Annabel scoffed. ‘Any chance of encountering cute, wild males there?’

I smiled to myself. ‘There are a few cute ones.’

‘What? Monkeys or actual guys?’ Kimmi asked, laughing.

I elbowed Kimmi as Madame Clements popped her head out of the classroom and stared at us.

But Annabel was too busy miming a passionate smooch with a photo of Ryan to notice. ‘Sorry, Ryan. I’ve gotta leave you at lunchtime to save some orangutans. Miss you already.’

Madame Clements cleared her throat. ‘
Entrez, s’il vous plaît!
Will you ladies be joining us this morning? Or would you like to stay out there? You can explain to the headmaster why you’re kissing your phone in the corridor.’

Annabel stuffed her phone away. ‘Coming, Madame.’

We marched single file into the classroom behind another group of stragglers, mumbling a greeting to Madame Clements in French. The lesson hadn’t even started and we were already in trouble, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t wait to introduce Kimmi and Annabel to my ‘nature nerd’ friends.

The bell for the end of class and the start of lunchtime came and went and still we sat at our desks, listening to two girls mangle the days of the week in French. I mean, seriously.
Mercredi
and
vendredi
weren’t that hard to remember or pronounce. But now we were all being kept in. We’d be late for the Wild Club meeting.

‘Let’s all have one more try to get it right,’ said Madame Clements.

So, off we all went, reciting the days of the week. Once we had been through that ten times, she made us write the words out another ten times before finally letting us leave.

‘Glad that’s over,’ Annabel said when we got outside.

‘So annoying,’ I agreed. ‘I hate being kept in.’

Kimmi just groaned. She marched across the quad to the bench where we normally had lunch.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked as Kimmi and Annabel sat down. ‘We’re going to the Wild Club, aren’t we?’

‘Really?’ Kimmi whimpered. ‘That French class fried my brain. I don’t think I’ve got anything left for the monk …orangutans.’

Annabel looked pleadingly at me. ‘Can’t we just let this one go? I know you love animals. But I really love a lunch break.’

‘But you guys said you’d come,’ I protested. ‘And you’ll really like the others in the club. There are two really great –’

‘Okay, okay,’ Kimmi interrupted. ‘I’ll come.’

I gave her a little clap as she got to her feet.

‘All right, then,’ said Annabel. ‘If you’re both going.’

‘You’ll like it!’ I grinned. ‘You know, Jack ’n Liam from the Wild Club went to Borneo last year and visited some orangutans,’ I said as we headed towards the meeting. ‘How cool is that?’

‘That’s amazing.’ Kimmi smiled. ‘Where’s Borneo?’

I rolled my eyes. ‘It’s the biggest island in Asia. The bottom is part of Indonesia, the top is Malaysian, and Brunei is in the corner. There are rainforests and beaches – and some very cute orangutans!’

Annabel’s eyes sparkled. ‘Imagine lying on a beach and watching orangutans playing in the trees.’

When we arrived at the meeting room, the door was closed. We were so late that the meeting was already underway. This was going to be awkward. I gently turned the door handle, but it didn’t budge. ‘I think it’s locked,’ I whispered. ‘That’s weird.’

Annabel nudged me aside. ‘Probably just stuck. The building’s a hundred years old.’

She turned the handle and gave the door a shove. Nothing. So she shook it a bit. Still nothing. Looking determined, she turned the handle and shoulder-barged the door, like she was a cop bursting in on the scene of a crime. The door swung open and Annabel flew in. She staggered across the classroom, arms and legs flying everywhere, finishing up in front of the whiteboard – with a picture of an orangutan projected on her face.

‘Ta da!’ she cried, throwing her arms in the air, like she’d planned the dramatic entrance. Typical Annabel.

Kimmi snorted. She followed Annabel into the meeting room, but kept her head down.

‘The comedy workshop is two doors down,’ came a voice from the back. A ripple of sniggers went through the room as a girl got to her feet. It was Polly, president of the Wild Club. She was very, very serious about the club, and a bit on the scary side.

‘I’ve brought some friends to save Bunga. Sorry we’re late,’ I said, glancing over at my usual bench. Jack and Liam were both there, smirking at us.

‘That’s great,’ Polly said, relaxing. ‘Just in time to help out with our next fundraiser.’

‘Okay!’ I smiled as Polly sat down again.

‘This is totes awkward,’ Kimmi whispered. ‘We should go.’

I shook my head and started walking towards my usual seat.

‘What’s this stupid fundraiser?’ Annabel muttered under her breath. Then she saw where I was headed. ‘Oh my god,’ she whispered. ‘You weren’t kidding about the cute guys.’ She sashayed confidently towards Liam and Jack. It was weird. When I first met Liam at the start of the year, I’d definitely noticed him. There was something about his blue eyes that went right through you. And Jack was cute, too, in a quiet way. But they were both in the year above, so they felt a bit out of my league. Since then, we’d become good friends. I guess I’d sort of forgotten about Liam being OMG cute.

‘Hey, Phoebe,’ Liam said, as I sat down next to him. ‘Long time no see.’

‘Thought you’d quit the club,’ Jack added.

I shook my head. ‘I told you I had debating. Couldn’t get out of it. Did you miss me?’

‘Of course!’ Liam said, and he looked at me, just a little too long, until Annabel cleared her throat.

As I turned to introduce my friends, I couldn’t help noticing that they looked a bit dazed. It was as if they’d never seen guys before. Kimmi got tongue-tied when she tried to say hello, and Annabel started giggling about nothing.

‘So, you guys like orangutans?’ Annabel smiled as she sat down across from Liam. ‘They’re sweet, huh?’

Liam frowned. ‘Yeah, we like them, but not because they’re
sweet.
We’re here because they’re endangered.’

‘Right!’ I said, cringing at Annabel’s clueless comment. ‘Kimmi and Annabel are really concerned about deforestation and the way it affects wildlife…’ I went on with a long list of things I was sure my friends weren’t even slightly concerned about.

The way Liam was watching me wasn’t making it easy. Why was he being so weird? Everything had been completely fine the last time I came to a Wild Club meeting. Jack had been sick, so Liam and I had sat together and talked about everything
except
orangutans. I’d told Liam all about my crazy family and he’d told me all about his. He had a whole family full of scientists. His parents were marine biologists and his sisters were both studying environmental science. That’s when he’d told me about his family holiday to Borneo last year, which Jack had come on too.

It had been really chilled back then, but now Liam seemed … different. I wondered if bringing Annabel and Kimmi had changed things, or if I’d done something wrong.