The Truth About Celia Frost
Read The Truth About Celia Frost Online
Authors: Paula Rawsthorne
In memory of Paul Rawsthorne,
my wonderful Dad
First published in the UK in 2011 by Usborne Publishing Ltd., Usborne House, 83-85 Saffron Hill, London EC1N 8RT, England. www.usborne.com
Copyright © Paula Rawsthorne, 2011
The right of Paula Rawsthorne to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
The name Usborne and the devices
are Trade Marks of Usborne Publishing Ltd.
All rights reserved. This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or used in any way except as allowed under
the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or loaned or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement
of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to
actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Epub ISBN 9781409537663
Kindle ISBN 9781409537670
Batch no. 00657-03
CONTENTS
3. Frankie Byrne Investigations
28. If My Life Depended Upon It...
Celia Frost allowed her body to relax just a fraction as she lifted her coat off the peg in the bustling cloakroom. All she had to do now was get to the staffroom, where
somebody would be waiting to give her a lift home. Usually she cringed at having members of staff ferry her to and from school, but today Celia couldn’t wait to get into the safety of a
teacher’s car.
She dared to believe that she’d survived the day. Maybe he wasn’t going to come after her. Maybe now he realized that she wasn’t going to be one of his victims any more. Maybe,
just maybe, he felt a grudging respect for what she’d done. Of course she’d been careful; getting out of the classroom quickly, making sure that she wasn’t alone, doing her best
to melt into the crowd. Although for Celia, being inconspicuous was never easy.
At almost fifteen, her increasingly gangling body showed no inclination to curve or protrude. She habitually walked with an apologetic stoop, and from her bowed head sprang a mass of untameable
orange hair. From a distance, her sliver of a face, with its oversized features, looked like it was engulfed in a tangerine cloud.
However, it wasn’t just her appearance and her gloved hands that made Celia a curiosity. She’d decided long ago that Mother Nature was nothing but a cruel old hag who’d ensured
that she was in a league of her own when it came to “standing out”. After all, not many pupils starting a new school get an assembly dedicated to them. And unfortunately for Celia, each
“new start” was worse than the last, as she became more self-conscious and her peers less tolerant.
Six months ago Mr. Powell, her latest headmaster, had done his best, but it had still been excruciating as he’d addressed the packed hall about “Celia’s
special condition”. She’d longed for the ground to open and swallow her up, as the eyes of every pupil turned on her. She’d slouched down in her chair, staring fixedly at the
floor, as the intense heat of embarrassment rose from deep inside her and flooded her chalk-white face, turning it scarlet. The girls on either side of her had instinctively leaned away and the air
filled with exclamation marks as the hall had erupted with voices.
“Oh my God, that is
sooo
terrible!”
“It makes me feel ill just thinking about it!”
“She should be in a special school, it’s not right to have her with normal people!”
“What if you bump into her by accident? I’m not getting done for killing her!”
“Well I’d rather die than live like that!”
The headmaster had struggled to quieten down the assembly. He’d warned them that anyone not showing the necessary care and consideration around Celia would be severely punished, but all
Celia had tuned into was the hushed chants coming from behind her, led by Max Jenkins.
“Freaky Frost! Freaky Frost! Freaky Frost!”
She was annoyed with herself for even letting it register. After all, it wasn’t very original. She’d heard it before, in all the other schools that she’d passed through.
At least in the other schools she’d always managed to find a couple of girls who would let her sit with them at breaks. She was under no illusions – they’d never been her
friends; they’d regarded her as a charity case and they didn’t seem to be aware of how torturous it was, having to listen to them making plans to meet up after school and never being
invited. Celia didn’t blame them – why should anyone hang around with a liability like her? But at this latest school in Wales things were much worse. Jenkins had made sure of that.
Celia had soon discovered that Max Jenkins was more vicious, more toxic, than anyone she’d ever encountered. No one was safe from him. He fed off people’s fear and operated with
impunity throughout the school and, unfortunately for Celia, ever since that first assembly, he’d decided to make her his special project. He let it be known that anyone thinking of
befriending her would be dealt with and for the last six months he’d revelled in watching his isolated, passive victim being ground down by his taunts and threats. Jenkins had a knack for
homing in on people’s weaknesses and strengths and then using both to his advantage. Therefore, as soon as he noticed all the A grades Celia was getting, he started delegating his homework to
her.
It was unthinkable that Celia would ever fight back. Janice’s words were ingrained in her: “You’re not like other people. You must never do anything where you might get
injured.”
Everything Celia did, every decision she made, was dictated by this rule. In school this meant that she was excused from PE, DT, food tech and any other activity that was deemed a potential
threat. At home this meant endless, lonely hours confined to the house by Janice; tormented by being able to witness the hustle and bustle of life but never being able to join in.
Celia felt like she lived her life trapped in a gloomy bubble, a gripping fear sealed in there with her. It was exhausting trying to fight off the gloom as it seeped into her mind, leaching out
all the light. But she couldn’t let it take hold of her; after all, how could Janice cope if Celia stopped coping?
Throughout her life this fear of injury had always overridden any other desire; until, that was, last week, when Max Jenkins had walked out of their maths class and thrown his homework book at
her saying, “You’d better make it a good one.”
As she’d stood there, with his book in her hands, Celia was suddenly overwhelmed by temptation.
Use binary numbers to write a coded message
.
Oh yes
, she’d grinned to herself.
I’ve got the perfect message for you, Jenkins
.
So it had been earlier that day that thirty-five pupils had sat in their maths lesson, yawning and lolling their heads on their desks, having already decoded seven dull binary
messages, when they got to Max Jenkins’s effort.
“Now, Mr. Jenkins, let’s see what pearl you’ve come up with,” said the uninspired maths teacher.
He wrote the digits on the board and, to chivvy them along, he made one of the boys come up and write each decoded letter in large capitals under its corresponding numbers. He chose pupils at
random to work out each letter, and at first their droning voices were barely audible.
“Yes, come on, come on. Look at what we’ve got so far.
Max Jenkins is an
...” The teacher paused, looking concerned. “Now, Mr. Jenkins, this had better not be
anything offensive. Is it offensive, Mr. Jenkins?”
By now, Jenkins was shifting in his chair, looking increasingly uncomfortable. “Course not. No one would be so stupid as to write something that would get them into
really, really
big trouble,” he said, glowering at Celia. She turned her head defiantly to face him, revealing just a trace of a smile. At this, Jenkins started to panic. “I don’t want mine read
out,” he shouted. “I haven’t finished it. It’s not very good... I can do better.”
“Well I never, Max. It’s not like you to be bashful. Now I
am
intrigued. Let’s continue,” said the teacher, gesturing to his scribe.
But now, instead of having to prise the answers out of the half-asleep class, it seemed that everyone was wide awake and furiously trying to be first to crack the code.