Skeletal by Katherine Hayton Page A

you get a job as the stationery monitor you can nick loads of stuff and no one ever notices.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    Susie shrugged. ‘They have a stock of all the school equipment at the back of the music room. It’s in the cupboard there, along with all the broken synthesizers and shit. They bring it out every January and have it all in one room so you can order everything you need from the school. They cream it in fees. The markup’s nearly double what you can get it at The Warehouse.’
    ‘Where everyone gets a bargain,’ Melanie trilled in an odd moment of joy.
    ‘Take this, anyhow,’ Vila said, extending an exercise book. ‘I can’t help you with the calculator but seeing as how you’re pretty much doing my homework you can at least share in my old offcasts.’
    I took the book out of her hand. Vivid crossed through her name in pen. Half of the pages were missing.
    ‘So generous,’ scoffed Susie, leaning over to examine it in detail.
    I felt a flash of anger, an emotion I didn’t generally allow myself. I was dressed in someone else’s discarded blouse. St Vincent de Paul provided my backpack and my shoes. I had a rubber band tying my hair back. I couldn’t afford a haircut, and I couldn’t afford a frigging scrunchie because they only sold them in packs of twenty and I could at most afford one at a time. And now I was meant to be grateful because I had a discarded exercise book from someone who didn’t even know how to add in their head. Grateful.
    Vila nudged me in the ribs with her elbow. ‘Sorry about the other day. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.’
    I nodded and looked at her. ‘Your mother really didn’t seem that bad.’
    ‘Yeah, well. Sometimes what you see in a few minutes isn’t what a person’s really like.’
    It could have been a barbed comment, but she softened it with another nudge in the ribs. And I got her point. My mother had once been the starlet of a dozen open days at primary school. She’d outshone every other mother there with her stunning hair and carefully applied makeup. She’d charmed and flattered every other parent in attendance until they hung on her every word.
    And four hours later she’d be passed out cold while I’d be trying to work out how to feed myself. Hard to tell a lifetime of misery in a few short minutes. ‘I’ll trust you on that, then. Thanks for this.’
    ‘Can’t have you being kicked out of maths class,’ Vila responded, standing as the bell went for class. ‘I’m now fully reliant on you for any chance of passing.’
    I laughed, but again I felt that firm flash of anger. I pushed it down and out and walked to class in step with Vila.
     
    ***
     
    Once the coast was clear I slammed my locker door closed. One step towards the music class, and a man came in through the double doors. I turned back to my locker, trying not to look as though I was doing anything wrong.
    An arm reached over my shoulder and I froze. I haven’t even started to do something wrong, I wanted to protest. A helmet was lifted from the top of the lockers and the man walked back the way he’d come.
    My heart was beating fast - thum, thum, thum – the sound prominent in my ears and the vibration visible in my chest. This was no good. I headed back to the exit from the prefab. This was stupid and pointless. I wasn’t about to feel this bad just to get my hands on a calculator. I wasn’t a thief.
    My hand on the wired glass of the double doors I stopped. But what else was I going to do? If I couldn’t turn in work during the year then my final results would be based solely on work already submitted. At different schools. With a total of eleven weeks missing already.
    I had one chance to get away from this hellhole of an existence, and that was with a scholarship to university. That and a student loan, and I’d never have to live with my mother again. But they don’t hand them out to dimwits. And they don’t hand them out to students who stuff up entire