Free Heartbeat Away by Laura Summers Page B

‘freaky girl with the bad heart’ – the one that sees and does weird stuff.
    â€˜Your gran told my mum you’ve gone vegetarian since your transplant,’ Masher chimes in, grinning like a monkey. ‘Guess what? Hitler was a vegetarian!’
    I get up out of my seat and head for the classroom door. I’ve had enough.
    â€˜Becky, stop!’ Leah calls after me.
    I spin around to face her, the growing anger inside me smothering all other emotion. ‘I thought you were my friend!’ I snap.
    â€˜I am . . .’
    â€˜Well, forget it. I don’t want anything more to do with you.’
    Leah stares back at me, the colour in her cheeks draining away. I look around at the sea of grinning faces, then rush out of the classroom.

31
    â€˜Whoooa, steady on now!’ A shiny grey polyester suit and bottle-green knitted tie are suddenly blocking my exit. ‘Becky? Shouldn’t you be in class now? It’s nine-fifteen. I think you’ll find the bell went at least ten minutes ago, young lady.’
    I bite my lip. I might be completely distraught but I still have a small sliver of dignity left in me. There’s no way I’m going to start blubbing over MacNamara.
    â€˜Are you feeling all right?’ he asks, peering at me over the top of his bi-focal glasses.
    â€˜Not really, sir,’ I mumble, not daring to lift my head and meet his eye. I wonder if the wave of rumours about me has hit the staff yet.
    â€˜I suppose you’d better get yourself down to the office then, pronto,’ he says finally. ‘Mrs Andrews’ll sort you out.’
    â€˜Yes, sir.’
    He hurries away, dismissing me without another thought.
    Down in the office, Mrs Andrews is busy, so after a quick check that it isn’t anything to do with my heart, she sits me down in the sick room. It’s some time now since I’ve been in this chilly, sunless room, but in the months before my operation it was my second home.
    Shortly before breaktime, Mrs Andrews finally susses out that I’m not actually ill, so she sends me back to join my class. There are about ten minutes left before the bell goes so I dive into the girls’ loos and lock myself in a cubicle.
    Completely unhygienic, and the last place I’d choose to spend my time, it’s the only place I can think of where I can get away from everyone. I get a teen mag out of my backpack and spread it over the lid of the toilet seat, careful not to touch anything, then sit down on it. For the next five minutes, I use up the last of my anti-bacterial wipes to thoroughly clean my hands.
    I stare miserably around the graffiti-scrawled cubicle and catch sight of the words
BECKI SIMMONS IS A SI CO
scribbled several times in huge letters with a thick black marker pen. I close my eyes and desperately try to visualise myself somewhere else, anywhere but this depressing, smelly toilet cubicle.
    Within seconds, I’m looking at a big wire-fenced space. It’s floodlit and the night air is chilly. Out of the blackness, I catch glimpses of faces with blurred features. There’s a fleeting glance or nod or gesture from people who seem to know me as well as I’m sure I know them.
    Escaping into my other world still frightens and disturbs me, and I jump as the breaktime bell rings shrilly and thereal world suddenly intrudes. Outside in the corridor, doors bang and loud voices erupt as everyone spills out of the classrooms. I shudder as my vision fades.

32
    I begin to spend a lot more time on my own at school. You’d think that this would be pretty difficult in a place where eighteen hundred kids and an army of teachers spend seven hours a day, five days a week, but I soon discover that there’s plenty of truth in the saying ‘you can be alone in a crowd’.
    I sit at a single desk at the back of the classroom in most lessons, eat a packed lunch in the cloakroom on my own instead of braving the dinner hall, and