When the storm comes, p.9
When the Storm Comes, page 9
The cut on the back of my head didn’t throb quite so much anymore and, with the prospect of eating on the horizon, my hunger felt more anticipatory rather than just horrible. With each moment that passed, I knew that we would be rescued soon, but for the first time since the doors were sealed shut on us in the library, I realised that there was a part of me that didn’t want this to end. I knew that it had to, but it was very strange to notice the change within me.
We’d agreed that we wouldn’t eat any of the food until we made it back to the classroom. Partly, I think we wanted to share the moment of finally properly eating with Ms. Devine, who had looked so pale and distracted when we last saw her. Jonesy reminded us that she’d eaten even less than us and with how pregnant she was that must have been really hard for the baby. So everyone was talking about what they were going to eat when we got there.
‘I’m going to start with a Kit Kat’ Fara said. ‘But immediately after that, I want two bags of Monster Munch.’
‘No way. Savoury first,’ Petey said. ‘Nik Naks, Monster Munch, maybe even some of those Mini Cheddars for like, health. And then Peanut M&Ms.’
‘That’s way too many crisps, you’ll never make it to the M&Ms,’ Jonesy said.
‘Try me,’ Petey said, and Jonesy burst out laughing.
And it was as we turned the corner, with Jonesy laughing, with our bags of loot, feeling jubilant for the first time in the last twelve hours, that we heard the first of Ms. Devine’s screams.
Chapter Seventeen
It was an animal sound, the scream. At first I couldn’t believe that it came from a human.
Jonesy broke away from us and sprinted towards the classroom door and the rest of us quickly followed on.
When we got through the door, Ms. Devine was standing, but doubled over, clutching Lowly, who looked as ashen as Ms. Devine did.
‘The baby?’ Jonesy said.
Ms. Devine’s face was contorted in pain but then in the next moment, it passed and the pain seemed to have leaked from her body.
‘It’s OK,’ she said, when she could speak. ‘I think it’s just a false labour. And it doesn’t mean the baby is actually coming. Probably just brought on by the stress of everything.’
‘How do you know that though, Miss?’ Fara asked quietly but directly. ‘It could be real labour.’
‘Honestly I don’t think it is,’ Ms. Devine said. ‘My contractions are not regular; when they get to be regular, that’s when it’s time to worry.’
But nothing could shift the worried looks from Jonesy and Fara’s faces.
‘Tell them,’ Ms. Devine said to Lowly.
‘She’s had about three pains like that,’ Lowly said and then he looked again like he was doing a sum in his head. ‘They’ve been twenty, fifteen minutes apart, something like that. If the baby is coming, it will take a while yet.’
‘Yes, exactly,’ Ms. Devine said. ‘First labours can go on for days.’
‘That sounds awful,’ Jonesy said, crinkling up her nose. Then, when she realised she’d said it aloud, she rushed to explain herself. ‘I mean, that sounds tiring.’
But Ms. Devine just smiled weakly at her and said, ‘It does sound both of those things. But it will be OK. Now, what do you have there?’
We laid out the clothes and food we’d found and all of us changed out of our wet things. pulling on bits of clothing that would fit us. There were lots of classrooms close by to us where we could change, and then we reassembled, looking like a strange group. None of us were wearing shoes as they’d all got wet. Lowly had stuffed them with paper to soak up the water. I was wearing what I think was once a lion costume and Fara had a strangely patterned tabard; I couldn’t imagine what it could’ve been used for. Jonesy had managed to find a more straightforward red jumper, but it was crazily oversized for her. Petey had donned a funny cagoule that looked normal apart from it had lots of little birds stuck to it. It seemed right somehow that we all looked different now; we were no longer that bored group that had sat around the table in the library on a Friday afternoon, looking grey in our school uniform. Now we were us: a bedraggled, motley crew, losers together.
Ms. Devine and Lowly seemed different wearing their new clothes too. It felt less like they were the adults somehow, less like they were the ones in charge. Ms. Devine had a huge woolly dress and Lowly was wearing what looked like a pirate’s outfit, although there was no hat or parrot or sword.
Finally, we sat down to eat. There was a huge pile from the vending machine that we’d emptied onto one of the tables.
Ms. Devine started to say something but stopped herself. ‘Let’s eat,’ she said and grabbed a bag of crisps and started eating. There was no talk of rationing this time, and in a way, the green light to eat anything made us stop and wait.
‘Shouldn’t we try to save a bit back?’ Jonesy said.
Through a mouthful of crisps, Ms. Devine said, ‘There’s loads here and people will come for us soon.’
But then when we still wouldn’t dig in, she said, ‘OK, four items each only. That includes you Petey,’ but she said it with a mock sternness.
Then there was a kind of desperate rustling as we fell upon the food and started eating.
I ate my first packet of crisps so fast I almost felt like I wasn’t chewing them, and I had to really force myself to slow down enough to chew them. Then, the second I was able to slow down and by the time I got to my final item, a Kit Kat, I was able to delight in munching along each finger.
‘That’s better,’ Jonesy said.
‘Mmm,’ Fara agreed.
Only Lowly seemed worried about eating. It was only when Petey chose four things for him to eat did he start munching methodically through packet after packet.
We sucked our fingers and beheld the empty packets littered around us.
‘OK, let’s have one more,’ Ms. Devine said, reaching forwards again.
But it was Petey who interrupted her.
‘You should all have more, but I’m going to stop there. Just in case.’
That made all of us lean back again.
But he handed the pack of snack biscuits that Ms. Devine had been reaching for. ‘You should eat them Miss, for the baby and everything.’
‘Thanks Petey, I think I will,’ she said.
‘Hey, you haven’t had another contraction,’ Jonesy said. ‘Maybe it’s stopped.’
‘Yes,’ Ms. Devine said. ‘Maybe the food has helped.’
For a moment, there was a lull between eating and talking, and it was like that moment after a meal where everyone is sated and there is nothing more to say or do but just sit back and let things wash over you.
Petey, Jonesy and Fara found something in the cupboard that they were piling up into towers that kept toppling over and, while Ms. Devine continued to nibble on her biscuits, looking over at them contentedly, I found myself next to Lowly.
He watched the others too.
‘Can I ask you something?’ I said to him.
He nodded.
‘Where’s your name from?’
He smiled as though he had a secret. ‘It’s from a book,’ he chuckled. ‘My little brother’s favourite book.’
It was strange to think of Lowly with a little brother, as odd as hearing Ms. Devine’s first name was Evelyn.
‘That’s even more unusual than mine,’ I said.
‘Mali?’ Lowly asked.
‘My real name is Amaryllis,’ I said.
‘The flower,’ Lowly said and his eyes seemed to light up for a moment as if he was imagining one of them blooming right in front of him. ‘Well, Lowly is actually the character of a worm.’
‘A worm?’ I said, laughing.
Lowly chuckled. ‘Yes, Lowly the worm from the Richard Scarry books. Lowly was my brother’s favourite. He started calling me it and it just stuck. I’m more like a worm than a Jonathan.’
We both laughed together again, and the sound of the rain continued to patter outside, our constant soundtrack.
We’d become so used to it that it was hard to imagine a time when it would not be raining anymore.
‘They’ll be coming for us soon,’ Ms. Devine suddenly said. She sounded so certain, and it felt comforting to talk to Lowly about something else entirely. It made me feel like I could let go of the worry and the stress of the last few hours for just a moment. I leaned back, the scratchiness of the lion fur from my costume feeling snug in that moment. I thought I could see the same feeling in everyone else as they sat back and rested for a moment, munching contentedly. Fara was laughing softly at Petey, who was trying to throw up Maltesers and catch them in his open mouth. When he got one in, she whooped and he looked over at her with a kind of softness I’d not seen in him before. Lowly and Ms. Devine were both eating in a kind of daze and then they caught each other’s eye and smiled that they were doing the same thing.
Jonesy was carefully folding a paper wrapper, making some kind of origami animal.
‘What are you making?’ I asked.
‘It’s meant to be a swan. But there’s not enough paper. More like a demented duck.’
I chuckled.
In the hours that followed, I tried to remember again that little moment when things seemed alright. It was like when the sun pierces through past a cloud-filled sky and fills the world with light for just a moment. But, that moment only lasts for a few seconds, and after that, the clouds drift on, blocking all the light out again.
A minute later, the room was filled with another scream. First of all, Ms. Devine had suddenly stood up and started moaning. Lowly sprung to her side and reached for her hand.
‘It’s OK, Evelyn, it’s OK,’ he said. He was so calm and reassuring, as if he were an anchor to Ms. Devine as she writhed and whimpered.
Suddenly, Ms. Devine started to be sick, and her body ejected everything that she had just eaten. Lowly made no comment as the sick covered the baggy pirate trousers he’d just put on.
Ms. Devine got louder and louder until she reached a crescendo of a scream. It was so deep and loud and huge that it took me a moment to realise it was Ms. Devine who was making it. She’d stood up and was grasping onto a table, her body writhing in sequence with the scream. As it reached it peak, we heard water again. It fell upon the floor with a splash.
Fara, Jonesy, Petey and I locked eyes with each other, but it was Jonesy of course who confirmed what we were all thinking.
‘Her waters have broken. The baby is coming.’
Chapter Eighteen
‘It’s too early,’ Jonesy said, as Ms. Devine continued to bend over the table she’d been holding onto. Lowly still stood by her, and she kept gripping his hand tightly.
But Fara shook her head and said, ‘How pregnant is she? She’s just at term isn’t she?’
‘How do you know all this stuff?’ Petey said.
‘My mum just had my sister, there’s four of us and I’m the oldest so I’ve got used to all the lingo now. At thirty-seven weeks, it’s not actually early.’
‘What’s she even doing here? Shouldn’t she have stopped working?’ Petey said, sounding desperate.
‘I think that might be a bigger discussion around society and maternity rights,’ Jonesy said.
Suddenly, Ms. Devine made another sound, and we looked up just in time to see her being sick again all over the floor.
‘This isn’t good, this isn’t good,’ said Petey.
‘No, it’s OK,’ Fara reassured him. ‘Mum vomited too, it’s just your body getting ready.’
Petey’s face was filled with a mixture of disgust and awe.
‘Kids,’ Lowly said quietly, gesturing us towards him. ‘We’ve got to get out of here. You’re going to have to go and try and get help. One of you who’s OK in the water needs to try to get out of the school and tell the services what is going on.’
‘But the doors are all locked,’ Petey said. ‘We’re locked in. Wouldn’t we have tried to leave by now if we could?’
‘I know,’ Lowly said. ‘But you’ve got to try something else. I mean I would go but I–’
‘Don’t go, don’t leave me,’ Ms. Devine suddenly said. It hadn’t seemed like she had been listening, but she suddenly spoke with an urgent clarity.
Then, in the next moment, she was gripped with another wave of pain. I saw the way she clung onto Lowly’s hand so hard her knuckles turned white.
‘Go, go,’ Lowly urged us. ‘Tell someone what’s happening. We have to get her out of here.’
We retreated through the door although I could also hear Ms. Devine protesting that we shouldn’t go, that someone was probably coming.
As the door swung closed behind us, we heard another scream.
‘What was that she said about the contractions coming regularly?’ Jonesy said.
‘Come on,’ Petey said, ‘let’s go somewhere we can think.’
‘Do you think she’ll be OK?’ I found myself saying aloud. It felt otherworldly to see Ms. Devine in pain and screaming. It was a tiny bit like knowing her name was Evelyn; she’d been our form tutor since we’d started and I could always rely on her being there, kind, strict but fair. Seeing her coming undone made the world feel askew, even more so than being locked up in the school in a rainstorm.
No-one answered me, but I felt Jonesy take my hand and squeeze it gently.
‘What do you think we can do?’ Fara said as we traipsed into another classroom down the corridor. The blinds had been closed, so we couldn’t see the storm outside for just a moment.
‘Let’s go through everything,’ Jonesy said. ‘The doors are locked and we can’t get out of them. The windows are sealed. There’s flooding downstairs and we’re surrounded by water. But we do have the kayak. But we can’t get it outside. The power is down and so we can’t communicate with anyone.’
‘OK, so it’s completely hopeless when you put it like that,’ Petey said.
‘Is there any other way that we can get out of this place?’ Jonesy said ignoring him.
‘I know a way,’ I said quietly.
‘Anything at all – if we all just think as hard as we can, I’m sure we can think of something. Ms. Devine is depending on us,’ Jonesy continued, not hearing me.
‘I said – I know a way out,’ I said again.
Everyone turned to look at me.
‘A way out?’ Fara repeated.
‘How? Where?’ Jonesy said.
‘It’s what you said about windows. Most of the windows can’t be opened right. They are like these ones: completely sealed shut, with no way to open them.’ I pulled up the blinds, and we could see through the sealed glaze of glass the storm continued to rage outside. ‘But the Art room has different windows – old ones – ones that you can open.’
‘Yes, brilliant,’ Fara said.
‘But,’ Petey interrupted although he looked like he didn’t want to say what had just occurred to him. ‘The Art room is on the second floor.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I thought of that. But there’s that big tree next to the window. It’s at just the right height to get out through the window.’
Everyone looked at me more than a little doubtfully.
‘Shiyoon climbed out across it once,’ I said. ‘I think, I think… I could do it too.’
‘Really?’ Jonesy said, her eyes looked so wide it seemed like she might start crying.
‘Let’s go and check it out,’ Fara said. ‘I might be able to do it too. Trees are my speciality.’
‘Yes, it’s a good plan,’ Petey said. ‘Although maybe I could do it too, I like climbing trees.’
We all turned around to look at him in surprise.
‘What?’ he said. ‘Am I not allowed to have other interests?’
‘No, yes, I mean. Yes. It’s just we’re learning a lot about you in one go, that’s all. That’s really really great,’ Jonesy said.
Petey looked exasperated but pleased at the same time.
As we left the classroom, we could still hear Ms. Devine crying out.
‘Do you think we should tell them what we’re going to do?’ Fara said.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Let’s go first to see if it’s OK. We don’t want to worry them more, I mean I know it sounds like a bit of a crazy idea.’
With a tiny bit of a plan between us, we hurried to the Art room.
When we got to the Art room door, Jonesy pushed it open first. I heard her make a little sigh, a kind of disappointed exhale from behind. It was then that I knew that something was wrong, there was a problem in our way.
As I walked in behind Fara, the air hit me straightaway. One of the windows had broken and the wind was whistling through the draughty large room.
Then I caught sight of the tree that grew close to one of the windows. It was swinging wildly in the storm. It was moving so much from side to side that it was as though it weren’t made of wood at all, but some kind of bendy elastic that allowed it to move in this direction and then the other with the greatest of ease.
It wasn’t a tree; it was a wild animal. As a particularly strong gust pushed it this way, I could see that the glass that it had broken was from the window I was proposing I climb through. It had knocked through the panes.
But at the same time that it seemed so impossible that we might be able to escape this way, I had a tiny feeling of hope, of feeling the air rushing around me, that we were close to being able to leave. We were no longer in a sealed-up school, there was a literal hole to the outside right in front of us.
I took a few steps towards the window.
‘No,’ Jonesy said. ‘Don’t, it’s too dangerous.’
‘I can try,’ I said and as I said the words, I realised how much I meant them and also how alien this feeling to me had been for so long. Having hope. Trying. Taking a risk. All of that evaporated for me when Shiyoon had left but now I could feel new avenues and pathways opening up ahead of me.
‘I can do this,’ I said again.
