He was a quick-tongued man in his fifties. With a receding hairline and a kind pink face, he was the picture of a school principal. Dr. Broadbent loved to spike his assembly speeches with little wordplays to keep his young audience on their toes.
Today his speech was comparatively lame. Eighth-grader Bradley Benson, a distant cousin of Holly’s, pushed one of the smaller boys out of the way and Dr. Broadbent paused until order had been restored. At the beginning of the school year, he was still in a good mood. The entrance hall filled with more and more people.
“... and we find ourselves back in the hallowed halls of learning. An extended welcome to our teachers, who are no doubt in hiding somewhere in the building and - of course to our parents and the new students. May your stay at Pemberton be as fruitful—” Dr. Broadbent spoke for another ten endless minutes.
Afterward, there were finger foods, mostly handfuls of sausage rolls before the parents left.
Then Pemberton was back to business as usual. The relatively small private school had only two classes per grade. Katherine, Trevor and Chryséis were in the same class this year. So were Holly and her best friend, Natasha Manning.
“Oh joy,” Chryséis moaned.
“Yeah well, nothing we can do,” Trevor whispered.
“We’ll see about that.”
At least, Dr. Wilkins was their homeroom teacher. A dedicated if slightly boring teacher, he had a kind heart. Unfortunately, he was easily thrown off balance. The grade-eights still giggled about a prank they had played on Dr. Wilkins last October. Apparently it had something to do with a whoopee cushion.
After a rushed dinner, rooms were assigned in the dormitories. Garments, books and personal items were sorted noisily from bulging suitcases into yawning closets.
The boys were in the east wing, the girls in the west wing. Soon the common rooms were buzzing with excited chatter.
“Did you see Vanessa? That new haircut!”
“I heard that Bobby’s parents are getting a divorce…”
“No!”
“I’m taking Japanese this year...”
Chryséis shared a corner room on the second floor with Katherine and Sally Holfield, a new girl from Missouri. Being no early bird, Chryséis didn’t like bright morning light and was pleased that their windows faced west. Thank goodness, Holly’s room was on the floor below.
Trevor had put his things away earlier and sat reading on a bench outside. Leaning over the windowsill, Chryséis called out to him. “Hi there, Trevor!”
It wasn’t very cool to call out to girls in their dorms. He waved back quickly and carried on with his book. ‘The Dragonfly’ by H.A. Humphries was a novel about a Chinese boy, who lived during the Ming dynasty. Only 74 pages left. He wanted to finish the book today.
Katherine gave Sally advice while putting away her socks in the bottom drawer. Sally Holfield was nervous about going to such a famous school. She thought that she wouldn’t keep up with the other talented students.
“New kids are sometimes targeted by the snobs here. So expect some hazing.” She knew what she was talking about.
“Sounds scary.”
“Only if you let them get to you. And we’ll also be around.”
“Trevor gave Holly Benson the cold shoulder last year until she gave up on him. He was hopeless as a victim.” Chryséis grinned.
“Who’s Holly Benson?”
“She’s one of the popular girls in our grade. Stinking rich.”
“Trust me, you don’t want anything to do with her,” Katherine said.
They wore their pajamas, because it was lights out at nine. It was 8:37 p.m. according to the LCD clock on Katherine’s bedside table. ‘Lights out’ was at nine sharp. They still had some time left.
Sally brushed her teeth and then sat in front of the dressing table the girls shared, to brush out her hair. “Why did Holly do that? I mean, why is she so nasty?” She asked the mirror. Sally wanted to be everybody’s friend and who was this Trevor?
She combed her light brown hair into a ponytail only to brush bangs back in her face to achieve a sultry starlet look.
Katherine hung up a poster of her favorite girlie band ‘Bliss Five’ over her bed.
“Sally, do you mind handing me the sticky tape over there…?” She pointed to the table while holding the poster up against the wall.
“Holly’s a spoilt brat, that’s what!” Chryséis stated bluntly.
She usually just said whatever popped into her head and wasn’t always diplomatic.
Sally gave Katherine the tape in silence and sat down in front of the mirror to put away her brush and hair clips. Chryséis moved into another yoga position on the carpet, putting her legs straight up into the air.
When Katherine had started at Pemberton, Chryséis had saved her from Holly Benson. That’s how they had become best friends.
If Holly respected anybody, it was Chryséis. Somehow she found it hard to stand up to her and avoided fights with the quick-witted Chryséis.
Soon normality returned to the ‘Pemberton Academy for Advanced Learning’ and everything went its usual way.
Or almost everything..
Chapter 3
What, Time Travel?
“It has to work now, it has to!” Katherine was upset. Tools and bits and pieces of plastic lay in wild confusion all over her lab desk.
“What am I doing wrong?”
Katherine had come up with the idea to work on an endless energy source, based on the principles of quantum mechanics - her favorite subject. Professor Helbert had made it sound so logical in his book. She took a tiny screwdriver off her notes and read the formula again.
The formula was no problem, but when she tried to adjust the differentials, things hit a snag.
“Oh!!!”
She threw the screwdriver impatiently back on the desk. It spun off the surface and clinked onto the floor. Katherine rolled her eyes and bent down. Christopher Higgins slunk shyly past her. He was a stocky little chap with buck teeth and rather brilliant for his age.
Katherine suddenly reappeared behind the lab desk and startled him. His papers tumbled to the floor and he stared at her.
“Christopher!”
The fourth-grader scurried to pick up his papers.
“Sorry,” he muttered and rushed to the far end of the laboratory. Katherine sighed. Now she surely had the reputation to be mean to the younger ones. Great.
She sat down and put her chin in her hand. She had everything to work with here, but the stupid vacuum battery just didn’t want to do its thing.
The science lab was Dr. Broadbent’s pride and joy. Thanks to the generous donation from a past student, the school had been able to upgrade the facilities.
A certain Cecil Whitby had apparently cherished his memories of Pemberton in the sixties to such an extent that he left the school half of his considerable fortune five years ago. The money had been used to upgrade the science lab. It was henceforth called the 'Whitby Wing' and could now probably rival any NASA science lab.
Katherine saw Walt, the janitor, through the half-drawn Venetian window blinds. He instructed the two gardeners in the art of clipping hedges. The hedges looked just fine to her. Which was something that