The Changeover Read Free Page A

school face but one which she found very exciting because it looked dangerous.
    "Well, I know he rides a motorbike, not a broomstick," Kate remarked, giving her long, curly grin.
    "A Vespa!" Laura said with a sigh. "I knew you wouldn't believe me."
    "Lolly, how can I?" Kate asked, stopping the car outside the school. "I've never understood your warnings — and be fair — until now you only mentioned them after something has happened, not before. But I do know this: I'm going to have to go because I'll be late for work, and what if I arrive to find Mr Bradley on the doorstep, fuming because I haven't opened the shop in time? But Lolly, be careful with yourself, and later on be careful with Jacko ... just in case." She gave Laura a quick, warm kiss.
    "Kissing tigers!" said Jacko from the back seat, turning them into animals just for fun, for he particularly liked tigers. Laura undid her seat-belt reluctantly and walked towards school while Kate and Jacko drove on to Jacko's babysitter and Kate's work.
    Laura was alone with the day. It panted at her with a stale sweetness on its breath, with a faint, used- peppermint smell that made her want to be sick in the gutter, but she shut her mouth tightly and walked on.
    "Hurry up, Chant!" said the prefect at the gate. It was Sorry Carlisle himself, checking that people riding bikes were doing so in a sober fashion, not doing wheelies or riding on the footpath. "First bell's gone!"
    He had grey eyes with the curious trick of turning silver if you looked at them from the side. Some people thought they looked dependable, but to Laura there was nothing safe about them. They were tricky, looking-glass eyes with quicksilver surfaces, and tunnels, staircases and mirror mazes hidden behind them, none of them leading anywhere that was recognizable.
    Laura and Sorensen looked at each other now, smiling but not in friendship. They smiled out of cunning, and a shared secret flicked from eye to eye. Laura walked past him in at the school gates, bravely turning right into the mouth of the day, right into its open jaws which she must enter despite all warnings. She felt the jaws snap down behind her and knew she had been swallowed up. The day spread its strangeness before her resigned eyes, its horror growing thin and wispy as it sank away. The flow came back into the world once more, and the warning became a memory, eagerly forgotten because it was useless to remember it. The warning had come. She had ignored it. There was nothing more to be said.

2 The Jack-in-the-Box Man
    Every evening Kate would ask Laura, "Well, what happened at school today?" and Laura usually said, "Nothing!" meaning nothing she could be bothered to talk about. There was always school work, of course, somehow taking the interest out of quite interesting things, and then there was her school friend, Nicky, who was busy at present with a boyfriend. She was trying to find a boyfriend for Laura too, so that they could all go out together and she could tell her mother that she was going out with Laura without totally lying.
    "You're a bit dreamy," Nicky said at break. "Don't be such a dead loss! I'm trying to arrange your future happiness."
    "It's Thursday, you know, Thursday! Late night!" said Laura. "It's my day for domestic responsibility, not future happiness."
    "Couldn't you have domestic responsibility towards Barry Hamilton?" pestered Nicky, smiling triumphantly. "He likes you."
    "I'll bet you're just making that up," Laura replied, but felt flattered because Barry was quite handsome and was allowed to drive his mother's car to school some days.
    "I'm not," said Nicky. "He asked my brother to ask me if you liked him and I said you did."
    "I do quite like him," Laura replied, looking around the school grounds to see if she could see Barry, and imagining how it might feel to go out with him. "I mean, he's not outstanding, but he's quite nice."
    "You've got big ideas," said Nicky, rather annoyed, for she thought she had