Hollow Pike Read Free Page A

certainly intimidating enough.
    ‘I’m Fiona and this is Harry,’ said Platinum Blonde.
    ‘Not like Harriet, like Debbie Harry,’ explained Honey Blonde.
    ‘Wow, cool name,’ smiled Lis. ‘I’m Lis. Lis London. And today is my first day.’
    Fiona and Harry grinned broadly at each other, wordlessly communicating.
    ‘You are going to like Fulton so much. Are you Year Eleven?’ gushed Harry in her broad Yorkshire accent. She was wearing so much foundation, her skin was matt.
    ‘Yeah, I am.’ An imitation accent slipped out before Lis could stop it.
    ‘Excellent,’ nodded Fiona who hadn’t seemed to notice. ‘We will totally show you round and stuff. Our friends are, like, really nice. You’ll so fit in.’
    ‘Thank you! I’d love that.’ Lis felt her mind-set quickly adapting to fit in with her new guides. ‘I’m totally freaking out about starting a new school!’
    ‘Don’t worry.’ Harry reached forward and squeezed her arm. ‘We’ll totally look after you!’

    Thank God for Harry and Fiona. They kept their promise and made relatively easy the parts Lis had been dreading the most. The girls accompanied her to the main office to collect
her timetable, with Fiona even drawing a helpful map of the school on the back. Lis couldn’t deny a swell of relief as Harry announced they were in the same tutor group.
    Fulton High School served a number of Dales towns and villages, and as such had ballooned over recent years as new rural developments brought extra pupils. It was now an odd mix of grand
gothic-looking towers with brand new annexes stuck onto the sides. Lis felt sorry for the building. Once upon a time, the school must have been imposing; now it looked like it’d had bad
plastic surgery.
    In many aspects, it might as well have been her old school: same lockers, same smell of urine by the toilets, same screams and cheers ringing through the halls, same faded Childline posters,
same downtrodden faces. Lis prayed that something had to be better or at the very least, different.
    Harry led her down an endless tiled corridor, called ‘G Corridor’, that clearly belonged to one of the original blocks; it had the look of a Victorian asylum. Harry was evidently
popular; she smiled and waved at a number of girls with very straight hair and called coquettishly to an even greater number of Year Eleven boys. She pointed out which ones she liked, which
ones she didn’t like and which ones were simply ‘losers’ (unpopular geeks) or ‘tossers’ (popular – but no self-respecting girl would ever consider snogging one
of them).
    ‘OK, so this is G2, our tutor room,’ Harry explained, stopping near the end of the corridor. ‘We’ve got Mr Gray. He’s really nice, and young too. If he wasn’t
a teacher, he’d be quite fit.’
    Lis and Harry entered a high-ceilinged room, again part of the old building, with long narrow windows reaching almost the full height of the walls. Like her old school, the furniture had seen
better days, but her new tutor cared enough to keep bright posters and displays on the walls. Seemingly, her form room was part of the languages faculty; various world flags and foreign vocabulary
prompts were evident.
    The classroom buzzed as Year Eleven pupils greeted each other after the mammoth six-week break. Girls exchanged air-kisses and boys gave each other manly back slaps or handshakes.
    Maybe nothing ever changes , mused Lis.
    Sitting in the furthest corner of the room were the redhead and boy from the weird trio on the bus. The girl had her head buried in a huge book called Gravity’s Rainbow , while the
boy leafed through some geeky TV magazine.
    Without warning, Harry let out a high pitched scream. Lis whirled around, assuming she’d come under attack, but instead saw that Harry was simply thrilled at a new arrival to the
classroom. Lis stared; she couldn’t help it – the newcomer was a stunning girl with thick chestnut curls tumbling down her back. Tanned