“Do you have a pen?” I asked Max.
“Do I –” The rest of what he said was drowned out when he opened his mouth and literally inhaled a drumstick. I rustled around in my backpack for something to write with. By the time I found a pen, I’d forgotten why I needed it.
I sat there confused. “What’s wrong?” Max asked. He’d stopped eating for a second at the look on my face.
I scrubbed at the bridge of my nose. “I keep feeling as though there’s something I should be remembering, but whenever I try to figure out what it is, my mind goes blank.”
“Maybe it’s not important.”
The problem was, I had a feeling it was very important. I just couldn’t remember why. For the whole of lunchtime, I sat there with the pen in my hand. I ended up just writing the word “remember” in big block letters on my palm. “You really do think way too much,” Max said.
“As opposed to what?” He shrugged, leaning back against the tree. “Maybe you don’t think enough.”
He was in the middle of laughing when a pair of girls sauntered around the corner. The smile disappeared immediately to be replaced with taut wariness. The girls had their heads together. They both stopped when they spotted us. One of them was a Fae. The other a shifter. They gave us a long look before disappearing into the gate of the kitchen garden. For a moment I thought they’d been spying on us. The bell rang.
I frowned. Where had lunchtime gone? Beside me, Max had gone still. I tried not to let the rigid set of his shoulders bug me. After all, I hadn’t really fallen for his meek act. He was in this for the food. It wasn’t as though we were friends. Of course he’d be annoyed that he’d been spotted hanging out with me. I tried to convince myself that it didn’t hurt when his head kept turning in the direction where the girls had disappeared.
Without a word, I packed up my things. “Bye.”
He didn’t respond.
I couldn’t help glancing back at where our lunch spot was. He’d disappeared. Oh well. At least now that he’d been found out I could go back to eating lunch on my own.
Some of the kids didn’t show up for our Mystical Creatures class either. We were supposed to meet up in the billabong today to see if we could coax the bunyip out of its watering hole. Professor Allen was not impressed.
“Am I keeping you awake, Sibyl?” he grunted. Sibyl covered her mouth but couldn’t help the yawn that broke through.
“I’m so sorry, professor. I’m just so tired.”
Her lethargy triggered something in me. I glanced down at the word I’d written on my palm. Remember. What was it I was meant to remember?
“Maybe a little less time on the MirrorNet would help,” the professor sniped. A silverback gorilla shifter, his hair was pitch black with white tips. He was always unflinchingly gentle with the creatures he dealt with, but he had little patience for the rest of us.
“I wasn’t on the Net!” Sibyl complained. Her yawning set off a bunch of other kids. In fact, out of the fifteen or so of us, I was the only one who didn’t look like I had gone a hundred rounds with a hexed broomstick.
There were even fewer kids in Weaponry and Combat. Jacqueline turned up midway through and took Professor Eldridge to the side. My ogre sparring partner was like lead on her feet. All the human mythology books had it dead wrong. Ogres weren’t known for their speed on the upshot, but once they got going, their hits were unstoppable.
Olivia was not on her game today. She stumbled and snorted as I darted around her. I was human. Speed was not my strong suit either. Today I felt like a roadrunner next to her coyote. She paused, holding her side. “Gimme a sec,” she said.
“Sophie,” Jacqueline called my name. Olivia huffed in relief. Lowering my staff, I walked over to the headmistresses.
“Hi,” I said.
“How are you feeling?”
“Fine.”
“Do you mind?” Before I could ask what she was intending, she pressed her hands to the side of my face and lifted up my lids.
“Ummm…”
“Are you experiencing any fatigue?”
I nodded. “A little. But it doesn’t seem to last. Especially not after lunchtime.” That was something that had played on my mind. Whether or not I’d woken up feeling like death, after lunch, the ominous cloud disappeared.
As she released me, Jacqueline noticed the scribble on my hand. “What’s that about?”
I stared at the offending note. “I’m not sure. I keep getting this feeling like I’ve forgotten something. It’s not exactly the best reminder if I’m honest.”
“Well, you’ll tell me if you start feeling unwell, won’t you?”
I couldn’t help being startled. She was the headmistress. Minor ailments were well below her pay grade. “Did my parents say something to you?”
But she had already turned on her blue velvet heels and walked away to speak to Olivia. The rest of the class gave up after that. At one stage, Olivia put her staff down, leaned on the end and started snoring. I didn’t know how on Earth to wake her. So I left her in that position until the bell rang.
Determined to figure out what it was I should be remembering, I was like a whirlwind around the kitchen garden. For dinner I ate some leftover chicken and a big salad made from the fresh leaves picked in the garden. I hauled wheelbarrows of compost from the huge bays behind the garden and helped Peter top up the mixes in the newly fixed raised beds.
“You’re full of energy!” Peter observed. “The kids in the last class looked like they were going to drop dead on the spot.” He yawned.
There it was again. That twinge in my gut that made me feel listless. I rushed to finish the
