That night, despite everything, Angus and Stu slept soundly, whereas I of course couldn’t sleep a wink. In my desperation I even thought about calling my mother. But what was I going to tell her? Mum, forget about Spain. Four ghosts are hunting me, and their leader called me Hartgill and threatened to kill me? No. She would tell everything to The Beard, and there was probably not a single dentist on this planet who believed in ghosts. He would just convince her that this was another one of my ploys to make her life difficult.
Get used to it, Jon Whitcroft, I told myself. Looks like you’re not going to be alive to see your twelfth birthday. And while the sun rose I was wondering whether, after they killed me, I would also turn into a ghost, haunting Salisbury until the end of time, scaring Bonapart and the Popplewells. It’s quite likely, Jon, I told myself, but first you have to make sure of one thing: that you don’t become the joke of the whole school. Not that it should have really mattered to someone who was going to be dead soon, but I’ve never been good at being laughed at.
The next morning I told Angus and Stu that I’d only made up that whole ghost story to fool Bonapart. Both looked at me with great relief (after all, who likes to share a room with a lunatic?), and Stu’s concern immediately turned into admiration. During breakfast he spread around my new version of events so successfully that, later, while Bonapart was trying to explain Richard the Lionheart’s strategy during the attack on Jerusalem, two fourth graders started screaming, claiming that they could see his royal ghost, covered in blood, standing by the blackboard. For that they got to join me for detention in the library. At least I was no longer considered crazy but actually some sort of a hero.
If only I could have felt like one. Instead, my fear nearly choked me. During lunch, while all the others were gorging themselves on meat loaf and mashed potatoes, I stared out of the window, wondering whether this gray September day was going to be my last.
I tried to force down a bit of meat loaf, telling myself that I wouldn’t be able to run if I starved myself. Suddenly a girl sat down opposite me.
The meat nearly went down the wrong pipe.
That just did not happen. Ever. Girls my age usually stayed well clear of boys. Even the younger girls constantly felt the need to show us older boys how childish they thought we were.
She wasn’t one of the boarders, but I had seen her a few times around the school. Her most striking feature was her long dark hair. It fluttered around her like a veil whenever she walked.
“So, there were four?” she said casually, as if asking me about the food on my plate (and there really wasn’t much to talk about there).
She eyed me intently, as though she were measuring me inside and out. Only Ella can look at someone like that. But I didn’t know her name yet back then. She hadn’t introduced herself. Ella never wastes time with unnecessary words.
Despite having two sisters, I wasn’t very good at dealing with girls. My sisters may have actually made that worse. I just didn’t know what to talk to them about. And on top of that, Ella was pretty—something that would bring an embarrassingly red blush to my face. (Luckily, that’s under control now.) So, anyhow, I began to recite my Bonapart prank story. But one cool glance from her made the words die right there on my lips.
She leaned over the table. “Keep that version for the others,” she said in a low voice. “What did they look like?”