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note through the front door. And clearly the note-leaver doesn t want to trust the post they want to make absolutely sure that I get the envelope. So, my desk it is
during lunch break or after school, because those are the only opportunities they ll have.
Sending them straight into my cunning trap.
The only trouble is, I have to get into it, too.
I put my books into my desk, taking my time doing it. When I ve finished, the classroom has practically cleared out. One of the good things about my desk being
against the far wall is that I can linger at it until everyone else has left the room, making sure that no one can slip anything into it when my back s turned. I wait till
everyone else has long gone, and only then do I leave the classroom.
Unlike everyone else, I don t go toward the main stairs. Instead, I turn away and walk down the corridor in the direction no one wants to take this time of day unless
they have to the teachers  block. It s strictly out of bounds, unless you re being called in there to be hauled over the carpet by some teacher or, worst of all, by my
grandmother, whose palatial rooms stretch over the first floor of the building.
To picture Wakefield Hall s layout, imagine a capital E. Then take out the middle stroke of the E. What s left is the shape of the main building, the ancient, historical,
dating-back-to-the-sixteenth-century one. The schoolrooms are in the left-hand wing; the assembly hall-slash-theater, plus the teachers  flats and my grandmother s
grand suite of rooms, are in the long main part, and the other wing, well, that s where I m going. Because the top two floors of the other wing are abandoned. My
grandmother would call them  unoccupied,  but abandoned is what they are.
She wanted to make them into a big flat for my parents and me, when my dad eventually decided to move back here from London. And then my parents died, and that
was the end of that plan. I don t like to think about that what my life would have been like if my parents hadn t died in that accident. What can t be cured must be
endured, as my grandmother would say.
Still, she hasn t exactly recovered from it either. Because she hasn t touched that part of the building since then. It s completely closed off.
I doubt she s even been in it.
I run up the stairs that lead to the top floor of the teachers  wing. I know it s pretty unlikely I ll bump into a teacher here this time of day they re all supervising play
time, or teaching after-school special classes. Sure enough, there s nobody around. I nip along the corridor until I reach the parallel staircase on the other side of the
building, and the door that leads to the far wing. It s padlocked shut. No going through there. So I have to use the window at the top of the staircase, which overlooks
the fire escape.
When I was checking this out yesterday, I didn t want to open the door to the fire escape. It has a big ALARMED sign on it in red. So I boost myself up onto the
window ledge, swing open the window one of those old-fashioned ones that hinges open like a door and climb through, onto the fire escape. I push the window
nearly shut behind me, enough to look like it s completely closed, but open just a crack, so that when I come back I can slip a finger between the window and the
frame and ease it open to get back inside.
And then I m on the fire escape stairs, scampering up them to the roof, climbing over and dropping down behind the big stone castellations (Wakefield Hall, despite its
name, has some very castlelike features). Phew. I breathe an enormous sigh of relief. Climbing out the window, being in open sight on the fire escape, a place that s
completely and utterly out of bounds to any student, even if she s the headmistress s granddaughter, is the most dangerous part of this entire escapade. Now that I m
on the roof, hidden behind the battlements, no one can see me.
Still, I don t have time to congratulate myself. I need to get into place as quickly as possible, in case envelope delivery is already taking place in Lower Sixth C. If I only
had an accomplice, this would be so much easier. I could have her hang around the classroom, making sure anyone who wanted to slip an envelope into my desk
would have to wait till she was gone, to give me enough time to get to my observation point. It s so much harder planning and carrying this all out on my own. I dash
across the roof to the skylight, which I levered open yesterday, and is cracked ajar a bit by the rope that s tied to its hinge. I lift it up, grunting with the effort it s
leaded glass and it weighs a ton and lower it down to lie on the roof. Then I uncoil the rope and drop it down into the room below. And then I sit down on the edge,
my feet dangling into the room, take a good grip on the rope, and swing myself off into empty space.
Every time I do this, I think I m going to fall, that my arms won t hold me. Every time. I hang there for a long, scary moment, my feet scrabbling to find the rope, my
right leg trying to hook around it to bring my right foot into position underneath it so my left foot can grab onto the rope and sandwich it between my feet to take some
of my body weight. . . . Ow, my hands hurt. . . . My arms are aching with the drop and the strain of holding me up. . . . My feet feel completely 
uncoordinated. . . . The rope keeps slipping out of the hook of my right knee. . . .
And then I ve got it. Phew. Now my feet are in place, it s infinitely easier. I lower myself down, hand over hand, feet taking enough weight so I don t get rope burn, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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