you think Iâve been doing?â
âWell, isnât it? Dragging me off to the library when you canât find exactly what you want here in school? Making me hang around while you peer into every single book?â
âIâm only trying to find something that has to be there.â
Her eyes flashed. âOh, yes! It has to be there, of course! You know! And thatâs the trouble with you, Melanie Palmer. You think you know everything . But it doesnât even seem to have sunk into your big, fat, book-swollen brain that in that library there were about a billion books about harnessing the ancient mysteries, but none at all about giving it up!â
And she was rumbled. I had rumbled her. Itâs words , you see. Miss Rorty knows the spin on a ball. Mum senses when Iâm coming down with something. Mr Hooper knows when someoneâs had too much help with their homework.
And I know words. I know exactly how they fit, and where they belong. I know who uses which ones, and I can always sense when they are out of place.
Or have been borrowed.
ââ Harnessing the ancient mysteries â? Is that what your mother calls it?â
It was as if Iâd pressed some button that said, â Detonate! â She went berserk. Tears spurted, and she flew at me, practically pushing me backwards off my chair.
âShut up! My familyâs nothing to do with you! So just shut up!â
And donât we all know those words, too! Neil used to yell them all the time when his dad went to prison, and people in the classroom made even friendly remarks, or asked even reasonable questions. So now I at least had a clue to why Imogen kept secrets from her giddy, childlike mother, and hid the strains of all her days in school, and tried to keep pleasing with this horrible âgiftâ of hers.
Like Neil, she was just trying to protect someone she loved who couldnât help but embarrass her.
And she had made enough noise doing it. Now everyone was staring. And when Mr Hooper came in through the door a moment later, his eyebrows were already raised. He must have heard from outside in the corridor.
I didnât want to make things worse for her. So I just tried to make a joke of it, moving my chair back and raising my arms, like someone protecting themselves from an attacker. But to her, I whispered, âSorry! Iâm really sorry. I didnât mean to say anything nasty. I just thought it didnât sound like you. But I wasnât being rude about your mother again, honestly. In factââ
If youâd seen her tearful face, youâd have lied too.
âIn fact, Iâm sure sheâs right. She knows an awful lot more than I do, after all, having a bit of a gift herself. I only dragged you to the library because I was curious .â
Mollified, Imogen stopped scowling so fiercely.
âFriends?â I asked tentatively.
There was a momentâs silence, then, âAll right, then. Friends,â she agreed, a little unwillingly.
I didnât like to push it, so I was good as gold all day. Mr Hooper helped. Twice, he sent me off on good long jobs, to give us a rest from each other. But things were still a little prickly, so when she rather diffidently asked me if I wanted to walk home with her, I didnât like to tell her it was my swimming evening and I didnât have time, so I invited her along instead.
âWe practically drive down your street. Mum wonât mind stopping to pick you up.â
In fact, Mum was delighted. (Like Mr Hooper, sheâs always relieved to find Iâm not completely allergic to spending time with real people.) So, even though you could tell that something about Imogen made her a bit uneasy, she was nice to her all the way, asking her how she was enjoying being in a new school, and whether she was getting along with Mr Hooper, and what she liked doing best â even trying to get Imogen into the pool as an extra on our