Free Stonebird by Mike Revell

simple. What if our principal was an alien? What if Daisy could fly? What if dinosaurs came back to rule the world?
    All that’s going through my head is what if, what if, what if when the egg’s passed to me and I can feel it hot in my hands and all the faces in the class turn to look at me. And I just talk, talk without even thinking. It just comes out.
    There’s a gargoyle in the haunted church, and it’s alive.
    You might not believe me, but it’s true. It’s there with the shadows and the ghosts. It’s there in the dark.
    I know because I saw it. I saw it with my own eyes, two weeks ago.
    I ran out of my house and all the way up Church Lane until I was in the churchyard, and the building stood over me. It was so dead you could almost imagine it was alive.
    The wind swirled around me and the trees creaked. It sounded like they were whispering. Probably saying Don’t go in there. Don’t go in that church. It’s haunted.
    But I did.
    I opened the door and walked in, and I could hear the ghosts all around me.
    Whispering things.
    But I knew I had to keep going. Because there was something up ahead.
    The gargoyle. There were three claws at the top of each of its wings. Its tail was long and coiled, with a sharp point. And its legs . . . its legs were lion’s legs. It prowled the church in the shadows. And it turned to face me.
    I stared at it and it stared at me, and I could feel its eyes burning into me, flickering like white-hot moonlight, and as I looked at them I knew things in my head. I knew about its cathedral in Paris. It watched over Notre Dame and watched over the people there, and no one looked up, no one cared. I knew it because the gargoyle knew it.
    It showed me.
    Showed me how it flew through the night to find a new home.
    I saw it all when I looked at it.
    And I know it saw everything about me too.
    It didn’t speak, but I heard it. Like when you can almost hear a dog’s thoughts when it’s looking at you. I heard it and I knew what it wanted to say.
    That it was looking out for me.
    That I wasn’t alone.
    That it would protect me.
    I’m staring at the floor, squeezing the egg with everything I’ve got. Every face is on me, every pair of eyes.
    Even Matt. Even Mrs. Culpepper.
    “What an imagination,” she says.
    She doesn’t take her eyes off me as I pass the egg to Tilly, next to me, and she keeps watching me even when Tilly starts talking about trying to break the world record for how many crackers you can eat in a minute.
    I’d quite like to listen to Tilly, because I’ve tried to break that world record myself. We all tried in my old school, but your mouth gets so dry it’s practicallyimpossible. But I can’t listen to her, not really, because Mrs. Culpepper is still looking at me, and it sends eels wriggling up my neck.
    The warmth of the egg still lingers on my hands. I glance down at them, wondering where that story came from. Could I really have just made it up?
    When I look back up, Mrs. Culpepper’s smiling and nodding at Tilly’s story and laughing along with the rest of the class.

15
    After school I walk up High Street, past the post office, where boys and girls are jabbering and giggling. They’ve grown up in Swanbury all their lives. They’ve got friends they’ve known forever, and they walk in big groups, kicking soccer balls and racing each other and tiptoeing along the curb and trying not to fall off.
    I don’t have anyone.
    How do you even go up to kids when you’re the new boy and everyone already has their friends and they’re all laughing and joking? I only have one good joke:
    Why do French people never have two eggs?
    Because one is an oeuf.
    I told that to a girl at my old school and she laughed and her eyes sparkled, and, speaking of world records, at that moment my stomach could have broken the worldrecord for World’s Biggest Backflip. But I had nothing else to say after that, and the quiet stretched on and on, and then she said, “Bye,” and ran