Never Evers Read online

  I sneaked another glance at him, but he was still staring straight at the screen. Watching Leonardo DiCaprio look at Juliet made me want to look at him even more. It was like Leo’s stares were catching.

  It was kind of nice not to be expected to talk. A break from pretending to be OK. I could just exist in the dark with Connie and Keira next to me, passing me sweets every so often. But it was like once I knew the boy was there, I couldn’t unknow it.

  ‘The sex bit is coming up now,’ Connie whispered to no one in particular.

  Watching sex scenes with your parents is horrendous, but it turns out watching them with loads of people your own age is also pretty bad. Some boys started to laugh as Juliet took Leonardo’s shirt off.

  I obviously couldn’t bear to look at Scruffy Jumper during the sex bit. Once it was over, though, I couldn’t help but flick my eyes back across to him. He was holding his hand out to his friend next to him, who filled it with Haribo.

  Keira tapped me on the knee. ‘Who are you looking at?’ she hissed.

  ‘No one,’ I whispered, turning back to the screen.

  ‘You are!’ she hissed again. ‘You so are looking at someone!’

  She sat up and stretched so she could see over me.

  ‘Please don’t,’ I whispered, grabbing her arm. ‘Please, Keira!’

  ‘Who?’ Connie went to stand up, and I pulled her back down in to her seat. Keira burst out laughing. Miss Mardle shushed us from the back of the hall.

  ‘Come on, which one are you looking at?’ Keira whispered after a few minutes.

  ‘Keira, I beg you,’ I pleaded.

  ‘What? It’s not against the law to look around a room.’

  Both Connie and Keira were now scanning the hall. Connie even had her hand over her eyes, like she was a sailor looking for land.

  My stomach flipped in panic and I could feel my face flooding with heat.

  ‘Which one is it? It’s the one in the blue jumper, isn’t it?’ Keira whispered triumphantly, slumping back down in to her chair and getting out her Starburst.

  I shook my head furiously.

  ‘Liar,’ Keira laughed. ‘You are the worst liar ever.’

  Keira pulled her knee up to her chest and started drawing stick people on her jeans. Then she drew a heart and put ‘Mouse’ on one side of it and a big question mark on the other. I shook my head again but I could feel my face was redder than ever.

  At the end of the film, when Romeo and Juliet died, I wanted to cry, even though we’ve watched it twice already in English. We even learnt a scene from the ballet in year eight. I had been one of the guests at the ball. Afterwards, in the dorm, we had all talked about what it would be like to dance it for real, at the Royal Opera House. The memory stung hard in my chest.

  The lights came on and we got up, filtering out of the hall. I tried to look for the boy, but he’d been swallowed in the crowd behind us.

  ‘This place smells like the PE changing rooms,’ Keira said as we walked back down the corridor.

  ‘Look, Mouse, there’s a disabled toilet,’ said Connie loudly. ‘If Loverboy wants to get off with you, there’s the perfect place!’

  ‘It’s not exactly the perfect place, is it, Connie?’ Keira was kicking a Coke can down the hall.

  ‘Guys!’ I whispered as forcefully as I could. ‘He could be right behind us!’

  ‘I know what we can do,’ Keira said, grinning, and another wave of panic washed over me. ‘A love spell.’

  The panic melted. A love spell probably didn’t involve anything embarrassing. Not publicly embarrassing, anyway. It might be insane, but no one would ever know it had happened.

  Keira groaned. ‘Oh, wait, no. We don’t have the main thing we need for a love spell.’

  ‘Gillyweed?’ Connie said.

  ‘No, we don’t know his name.’ Keira stamped on the Coke can in frustration. ‘We have to know his name for the spell to work.’

  Connie stopped dead in the middle of the corridor. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’m on it.’ Then she turned and ran back towards the hall.

  Jack

  How do you know if someone’s looking at you because they like you, or just looking at you because you’re looking at them? It’s basically impossible to tell.

  The girl with the long hair was out the door pretty much as soon as the lights came up. I definitely heard her and her mates giggling at some point. I really hoped they weren’t giggling about me. Or maybe it’s a good thing if girls are giggling about you? Who knows? They should cover giggling in Biology.

  Just as I was about to ask Max for his views on the female giggle, the tall, curly-haired girl who had been sat next to Long Hair Girl came slinking back into the hall. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched her walk to within about five or six seats of us and start looking at her phone. She literally just stood there, by herself, checking her phone. What the hell was she doing?

  Flynn came over and clapped me on the shoulder.

  ‘There you go, lads,’ he boomed. ‘That wasn’t so bad, was it?’

  ‘Yeah, sir, it was all right, I suppose.’

  ‘“It was all right, I suppose.”’ Flynn repeated loudly. ‘I’m sure the Bard would be delighted with that eloquent appraisal, Jack. Now, let’s get back to the rooms please. Big first day of snowboarding tomorrow.’

  Everyone in our group started shuffling towards the exit, and I noticed the curly-haired girl scurrying back out ahead of us. As she disappeared in to the corridor, I felt Max grab my shoulder tightly.

  ‘Oh my god,’ he hissed. ‘Look how fit they are!’

  He was staring at three random girls who were stood near the entrance, checking their phones and glancing around the hall. One was blonde, and the other two had darkish brown hair, but apart from that, they all sort of looked the same. Like, with these huge, round eyes and red, pouty mouths and kind of scarily perfect hotness about them. They almost didn’t look real.

  ‘Three of them, three of us,’ whispered Max.

  ‘So?’ I said, with a slight sinking feeling.

  ‘Well, the numbers add up, don’t they?’

  ‘I don’t think it really works like that, Max,’ I frowned.

  ‘Course it does.’

  ‘What, so, if Demi Lovato, Rihanna and Taylor Swift walked in we’d have a shot with them too, would we?’

  Max wasn’t paying attention. He was properly transfixed by these girls. ‘We’ve got to go and talk to them,’ he mumbled.

  Toddy kicked at a bit of loose carpet on the floor. ‘You can’t be serious, man.’

  Max rolled his eyes and groaned. ‘Oh, come on, Toddy. What are you afraid of?’

  I knew exactly what Toddy was afraid of, because it was the same thing I’d been afraid of that night with Maria Bennett. He was afraid that no fit girl in their right mind would be interested in someone half their height who looked about half their age.

  ‘He’s right, Max,’ I said. ‘I know we said we’d try a bit harder with girls on this trip but there’s no way we can just go over and chat to girls like that. I mean, look at them.’

  Max leant in towards me. ‘You do realize that if we don’t go and chat to those girls, then Ed or Jamie or somebody else, will? Do you really want to stay stuck on zero while that lot get even further in to double digits?’

  ‘Well, no, but—’

  ‘You do want to win the bet, don’t you? Because I definitely do.’

  ‘Yeah, but Max—’

  It was too late. Max was marching over towards them. I don’t think I’ll ever stop being impressed by Max’s confidence. Or maybe it’s not confidence – just craziness. Either way, I felt myself being dragged along behind him, like I was attached to his jeans by an invisible rope. I turned to look at Toddy, and he shrugged, sighed, and followed us.

  The girls looked even hotter close up. I felt like I was on autopilot, like I wasn’t really even in my body. My tongue felt twice as heavy as normal and my knees twice as weak. I had literall
y no idea what to say to these girls. Luckily, Max piled straight in, like he always does.

  ‘All right!’ he said, as they turned to look at us. ‘How’s it going? I’m Max.’

  The girls flashed their pouty smiles at him. They were about our age, maybe a bit older, though it was hard to tell. The blonde one giggled and said, ‘Hi, I’m Lauren,’ and the other two sounded off with their names, which were Scarlett and Melody.

  ‘I’m Jack,’ I said, feeling my face temperature shoot up about ten degrees. Toddy said nothing at all. He just kept staring down at his shoes like it was the first time he’d ever seen them.

  ‘So,’ Max grinned. ‘Rubbish film, yeah?’

  The girls looked at each other. ‘I actually really liked it,’ said Melody.

  Max didn’t miss a beat. ‘Yeah, it was great, wasn’t it?’ he nodded. Then, as the girls looked understandably confused, he added, ‘We call all great things “rubbish”. It’s a slang thing, y’know. So, what was your favourite bit?’

  I couldn’t tell whether they thought Max was a hilarious maverick or a total idiot. Probably the second.

  ‘I really love the language they speak in,’ said the ultra-, ultra-fit one called Scarlett. ‘I wish people still talked like that.’

  ‘Totally,’ nodded Max. ‘The language is the best bit. One kid next to us said he needed subtitles. What a div.’

  The girls all laughed. Me and Toddy exchanged a sideways glance.

  ‘Where are you lot from, then?’ asked Max, and Lauren said, ‘London.’

  ‘Cool,’ said Max. ‘We’re from Winchester.’

  ‘Ladies!’ shouted a woman at the entrance in a fluffy pink jumper. ‘Come on now, time to get back to your room.’

  ‘Ah, that’s our teacher,’ said Lauren. ‘We’d better go.’ She grinned quickly at Scarlett and Melody and then said to Max, ‘Hey, if you want, though, you guys should come and knock for us later. We’re in room 22.’

  Before any of us could answer, they all walked off, giggling. Seriously, what is it with girls and giggling?

  Max turned to me and Toddy, his eyes nearly boggling out of his head. ‘Oh my god!’ he hissed. ‘Amazing! And you two wanted to go back to the room without chatting to them!’

  ‘Yeah, fair play,’ I conceded. ‘You did quite well there.’

  ‘Quite well,’ snorted Max. ‘Three ridiculously fit girls just invited us to their room! And they don’t even know we’re in a band yet! Imagine how mental they’re gonna go when they find out we’re in a band! They’ll probably just start jumping on us and, like, ripping our clothes off.’

  ‘Seems unlikely,’ I said.

  ‘We can’t actually go and knock for them, y’know,’ said Toddy quietly. ‘I mean, we’ll get in so much trouble if we get caught sneaking around the corridors at night.’

  Max clicked his tongue against his teeth. ‘God, Toddy, would you think outside the box for just one second, man? Room 22’s on the ground floor – it’s like ten doors down from our room. So, we don’t need to sneak around the corridors – we’ll just climb out of our window and then go and knock on theirs!’

  ‘You’ll probably get in more trouble wandering about outside the hotel in the middle of the night,’ said Toddy.

  Max snorted. ‘Fine, Toddy, don’t come. Whatever. I don’t think they’ll particularly care whether you’re there or not. You weren’t exactly the life and soul of the conversation, were you?’

  ‘Chill out, Max,’ I said.

  ‘What, are you wimping out too?’

  I glared at him, but as nervous as I felt, I knew this was a seriously big deal. Invitations to knock for hot girls in the middle of the night don’t come along every day. In fact, this was the first one that had come along in fourteen years.

  ‘She’s actually crazy,’ Keira laughed, as we opened the door to our room.

  ‘It’s awful,’ I said, but I couldn’t help laughing along with her. ‘I’m going to have to go around in disguise for the rest of the trip so he doesn’t see me.’

  ‘Are you group crying?’ Connie burst in behind us. ‘Let me join in.’

  ‘What did you do?’ I was laughing and horrified at the same time. ‘Did you speak to him?’

  ‘I employed masterful spy tactics, actually.’ Connie beamed.

  ‘Does that mean you marched right up and said, “We’re going to do a spell about you, what’s your name?”’ Keira climbed on her bunk.

  ‘I won’t bother next time, then,’ Connie said, crossing her arms over her chest, making a humpfing sound.

  Keira chucked her bag of Starbust at Connie but she didn’t notice. It hit her head and exploded wrappers and sweets everywhere.

  ‘Sorry, Connie.’ Keira leant over the bunk. ‘That was supposed to be a thank-you.’

  ‘Did you actually do something?’ I asked. My heart started to race a bit at the thought of her talking to him. ‘Seriously, what did you say?’

  Connie climbed up the ladder. ‘Well, I didn’t say anything, actually.’

  Most of me was relieved but a tiny sliver was disappointed. Maybe he would have said, ‘Your friend is enchanting, would she like to gaze through a fish tank with me sometime?’

  ‘Thank god,’ I said, slumping down on to my bed. ‘So what did you actually do?’

  ‘I did exactly what you told me to,’ Connie beamed. ‘I found out his name.’

  Me and Keira both yelled at the same time, ‘What is it?!’

  ‘Do you really want to know?’ Connie said, climbing on to the bunk with Keira. ‘It might ruin the mystery.’

  ‘What is the point of fancying someone if you don’t know their name?’ Keira picked up a pillow and put it on Connie’s tummy before sitting on it.

  ‘Romeo and Juliet didn’t know each other’s names.’ Connie squirmed. ‘I can’t breathe.’

  ‘It’s called Romeo and Juliet,’ Keira said. ‘Romeo, Romeo … Remember.’

  ‘Yeah, but they don’t know in the beginning, it gets the romance going. Keira, I’m gonna vom!’

  ‘I don’t fancy him,’ I said. But even I could hear how weak it sounded. ‘I only … looked at him.’

  ‘That’s how it all started with Juliet,’ Keira said. ‘A couple of looks through the fish tank and then – BOOM! True love.’

  ‘Maybe we should all ask for a fish tank for Christmas,’ Connie said.

  Keira wailed. ‘Connie, can you please just shut up and tell us his name?’

  ‘It’s not actually physically possible to shut up and—’

  ‘Tell us his name!’ Me and Keira both screamed at the same time.

  ‘OK, OK … Look, if you guess his name, I’ll tell you. That makes it more fate-ish.’

  I groaned. Keira said, ‘Is it Leonardo?’

  ‘No.’ Connie wriggled herself free from Keira and reached across to the top of the wardrobe and got Mr Jambon out. He purred in her hand as she fed him a bit of carrot.

  ‘Leroy?’ said Keira. ‘No, actually not Leroy. Link?’

  Connie shook her head. ‘It’s not a fancy name. It’s just a normal boy name.’

  ‘George?’ Keira said, and started doing a tiny plait in her hair.

  ‘It’s exactly like George but not George. It’s the most like George you can be without being George.’

  ‘Porge?’ I said.

  All three of us simultaneously burst in to hysterical laughter. It was the first time I’d properly laughed for ages. I could hardly breathe. Each of us kept trying to speak but couldn’t because we were laughing so hard. It was like crying; once I started I couldn’t stop.

  ‘OK, OK,’ Keira said at last, wiping her eyes. ‘Not Porge, then. What about John?’

  ‘John is super close.’ Connie started waving her arms about. ‘It’s actually closer than George. It’s the most John name without being John.’

  ‘Jack?’ I said.

  Connie squealed and leapt in to the air. ‘Yes! It’s Jack. Oh my gosh, it’s actually Jack!’

  �
��Oh my god, it’s definitely true love,’ said Keira. ‘You guessed his name!’

  ‘So, how did you find out if you didn’t speak to him?’ I asked.

  ‘I just stood near him and pretended to check my messages,’ said Connie. ‘And then their teacher came over and called him Jack.’

  ‘No way,’ Keira said, shaking her head.

  ‘I think Jack suits him,’ Connie said.

  ‘We don’t even know him,’ I laughed.

  Keira jumped down to the floor and walked over to the window and opened it. ‘Jack, Jack, wherefore art thou Jack?’

  Connie was rocking and unable to speak she was so hysterical. I covered my eyes in mock horror. Keira shut the window and pulled the curtains closed dramatically. She went over to her bag and rifled through it before taking out a book. In purple sparkly letters on the front it read: ‘The Teen Witches’ Book of Spells’.

  ‘Right,’ said Keira, opening the book. ‘Love spell time. Let’s do this.’

  I had absolutely no idea what was happening, but I just went with it.

  ‘First,’ said Keira, ‘we need to form a coven. But we have to do it properly. Magic is a powerful and chaotic art form. It’s about the energy you bring to the spell. This is not some childish game – it’s deadly serious.’

  ‘Can Mr Jambon be our mascot?’ Connie said, giving him a kiss.

  Keira sighed. ‘He can be our familiar. You don’t have mascots in magic.’

  Connie whispered, ‘Did you hear that, Mr Jambon? You’re a familiar now.’

  Keira tapped the book with her finger. ‘Now, the next thing is to cast a circle. Let’s make one with our clothes.’

  We all rolled our clothes in to sausages and made a weird little oblong circle between the bunks. Keira looked at the book. ‘The only problem is we are all supposed to have a wand.’

  ‘We need to go to a wand shop.’ Connie said. ‘Monsieur, où est le shop de wand?’