started making plans. âWho wants to be shooter?â
Me? Iâd have been delighted if it happened. By the time Mrs Tallentire came back with the team sashes and ball, Iâd have been tucked in the gap under the gym stairs, quietly reading. And if she was cross with me, Iâd have been ready to argue. âWell, what was I supposed to do? Nobody picked me.â
But Imogen stood there, drooping. (âLike a lily in a floodâ, as Mr Hooper calls it.) Her eyes were bright with tears. No-one in our class is positively spiteful. It was the old âdrift-awayâ business working again. Nobody else even noticed, not even Mrs Tallentire, who hardly gave Imogen a glance, let alone one of the sashes. So she did end up on our team, but on the very edge, along the wall, and I donât think the ball was thrown in her direction once, for the whole game.
âThatâs it!â I told her, after. âTomorrow, after school, weâre off to the library.â
âThe town library? Why?â
âYouâll see.â
She kept up the pestering, but I wouldnât tell, in case she wouldnât come. Next day, we walked straight up the stairs to Reference , and still she hadnât guessed why we were there. I left her staring at the huge Map of World Animals while I got started.
Magic . Superstitions . Legends . If you donât believe them, then theyâre fascinating. Iâve sat for hours hunched over tales of banshees wailing to warn of deaths on the way, and soldiers who had died at midnight in a field hospital along the line scaring the wits out of their fellow officers by turning up again on the dawn watch.
But if, like me, you have begun to think youâre practically living in one of these stories, youâre looking for something different. And it wasnât there. I ran my eyes down list after list on the computer screen, and scoured shelf after shelf. There were whole books on tarot cards and palm-reading, half a bookcase on haunted houses, tomes on black magic and spell-making, lots about poltergeists, even a pamphlet on spirit-writing.
But nothing at all about giving it up.
Imogen wasnât helping. âLook, Melly,â she kept saying. âThis isnât your problem. Stop worrying about me. Iâm perfectly happy with things the way they are.â
âOh, yes?â
âYes.â She made a face. âI know itâs all sometimes a little bit upsettingââ
âA little bit upsetting ?â I stared down from where I was balancing on one of the stumpy little library ladders. âYou practically fall into the most upsetting books. You even know when members of your family are coasting towards accidents. Everyone avoids you, and you canât even get on with your work. And you call that âa little bit upsettingâ? Well, you must have nerves of steel.â
âAll right!â she flared. âSometimes itâs horrible, and I canât sleep at nights. But I still canât see what youâre hoping to find in all these books.â
I reached up higher, to pull a couple of books without titles on their spines off the top shelf. âListen, Imogen. There has to be some way you can get out of this.â
âGet out of it?â
âLose this âgiftâ of yours. Turn back into a normal person.â
âI am a normal person!â
âYou know what I mean. And if your mumâs right, and what youâve got is like blue eyes, or curly hair, then you canât be the first.â
âSo what are you looking for?â
âA book,â I said. âIâll know it when I find it. Itâll be something that explains what all the people who were like you before did to get rid of it.â
She looked quite blank.
âListen,â I told her patiently. âYou donât think youâre the first of your sort to be unpopular, do you? Iâm sure seeing into the future