I asked, turning to face her.
“You found me,” she said with a grin.
And somehow, that was enough to make me feel better.
We met Ariadne waiting in the hallway outside the art room, obviously trying to stand as far away from her new roommate as possible.
“Was it all right?” I asked.
Ariadne nodded. “She didn’t really say very much in the room,” she whispered. “But I’m sure she’s just saving up her meanness.”
Muriel was leaning against the wall, her nose in a book. She didn’t seem like she was about to start bullying anyone. There were a couple of other girls I didn’t recognise as well in amongst the crowd of our class that was forming, two of them huddled together and whispering.
And then there was Ebony McCloud. She swanned down the hallway and suddenly everyone was silent and staring at her. She acted like she didn’t even notice, and instead just walked up to the art-room door. She really was fascinating.
Dot Campbell leant forward and said, “Um, Miss said we weren’t allowed in until …”
But Ebony just completely ignored her and went straight into the room.
“Well then,” I shrugged. If she was going in, I was going in. And it didn’t take long for everyone else to follow me.
Noisily, everyone found a seat, Muriel going right to the back as we made our way to the front. The desks were bigger and messier in art and there was no seating plan. At that moment, the bell rang, and not long after that, Miss Pepper walked in.
She pushed her red glasses down her nose and stared around at us. “I thought I’d told you not to come in before the bell, girls?”
Everyone looked at the new girl, but no one said a word. Ebony just smiled.
Miss Pepper didn’t seem to know what to do. “Right then,” she said. “Onwards and upwards. Art to be made. Still life!” She pulled a cloth off her desk, revealing a bowl of fruit of all shapes and sizes.
Anna Santos raised her hand. “Can we eat the fruit, Miss?”
Miss Pepper stared at her. “Where would be the art in that exactly, Miss Santos?”
Anna just blinked. She had always been a few bananas short of a fruit bowl.
“Moving swiftly on,” the art teacher continued, “let’s start by looking at the light and shade …”
By the end of the lesson, I had drawn something that at least vaguely resembled a bunch of fruit. I peered over at Ivy’s – it was slightly better than mine, but she was left-handed and had smudged some of her pencil as she’d leant over the page. She made a face at it.
“Leave them on my desk, please, artists,” Miss Pepper said.
One by one, we all left our masterpieces for her to mark. But when Ebony went up, Miss Pepper stopped bustling around and peered down at Ebony’s sheet of paper through her glasses. “You, girl,” she called out after her. “What’s your name?”
Ebony stopped and turned back slowly. “Ebony McCloud,” she answered.
Miss Pepper reached down, picked up the drawing and stared at it. “What is the meaning of this?” she asked. There was an undercurrent of something in her voice that might have been anger, or perhaps it was fear.
Ebony just stared at her. “I drew what I wanted,” she said. “Isn’t that okay?” And then she sat down.
I waited, holding my breath. If she had said that when Miss Fox was around, she’d have been in for a caning. Thankfully, Miss Pepper was a lot less violent, but she still didn’t usually take any nonsense from her students.
Any moment now, I thought, she’s going to launch into her speech about how you have to follow the rules of art before you can break the rules.
But something unexpected happened. Miss Pepper just stood there silently for a moment and then said, “Right. Well, that’s enough for today, ladies. You need to head to the hall now to pick your sports.” She put Ebony’s drawing back on the pile and blinked at it. “Right,” she repeated. And then she left the room. The bell hadn’t even rung yet.
I looked around at the class, but everyone was just sitting there. I had to see what was going on. So I got out of my seat and went over to look at Ebony’s drawing.
In amongst the many drawings of the colourful bowl of fruit, there was a picture that stood out. It was black and white, and it was of a castle. There was a silhouette of a lady standing in the window, and bats flying from the tower. The lady was weeping white tears, her hair streaming out behind her. She was staring at a row of fresh graves, marked with crosses in the dirt. It was beautiful in a strange and dark way.
I picked it up and waved it at the new girl in disbelief. “I can’t believe you drew this instead of the fruit!” A murmur started up around the class as everyone stood up to leave, all of them casting nervous glances at Ebony as they went.
She just smiled at me. “Why? Don’t you like it?” she asked.
“It’s very … artistic,” Ariadne piped up.
Ivy was blinking at it, as if she were wondering whether it would transform into a fruit bowl before her eyes.
I didn’t know what to say. I settled for, “You’re a strange one, aren’t you?”
It wasn’t meant to be an insult, and Ebony didn’t seem to take it that way. In fact quite the opposite. “Why, thank you,” she said as she stood up. She flashed me a brilliant white smile, swung her black satchel over her shoulder and walked out like she was floating on air.
“There’s something about that girl,” Ivy said, once her eyes had followed Ebony out of the room. “I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s definitely something.”
My mind was elsewhere. “Why did Miss Pepper act like that?” I said out loud. “Why did she just let it go? How come the new girl doesn’t get a lecture? I painted a tree the wrong colour once and she said I was ‘insulting Turner’s legacy’!”
“It
