The Truth About Celia Frost (2 page)

The letters came rattling out from the animated pupils faster than the teacher could stop them and before he knew it, there on the board, in large bold capitals for everyone to see, was:

A communal gasp of disbelief was immediately followed by the first nervous titter, which was followed by another, then another, until the whole classroom exploded into laughter. Hysteria
overpowered their fear; tears rolled down contorted faces, bodies bent double with laughter and others, too giddy to speak, pointed from the words on the board to the silently seething boy. Even
the dour maths teacher, who knew Jenkins’s malicious nature only too well, could not suppress a smirk as he shouted over the uproarious class, “Mr. Jenkins! What a very peculiar thing
to write about yourself!”

The whole school soon heard what had happened in the maths class and, for the first time since Celia had arrived, people weren’t trying to avoid her eye, but actually acknowledged her in
the corridor with approving nods and secret smiles. However, everyone knew that there would be a terrible price to pay for what she’d done. Celia knew this too, but the planning and execution
of her revenge had stirred a potent mixture of excitement and dread in her that pressed dangerously against the sides of her invisible prison. It had all seemed worth it just to see Jenkins’s
face puce with rage, as humiliation and laughter threatened his reign of terror.

Suddenly there was a flurry of activity in the cloakroom, as pupils scattered like a shoal of fish when a great white suddenly cuts through the dark waters. Celia kept her back to the exodus and
continued zipping up her bag that was on the bench. Her mind was racing, desperately trying to work out her next move.

“Hey, Frost, you freak!”

She could feel him moving in on her. The fumes from his paint-stripper aftershave clogged up the air.

Celia was aware of her body beginning to tremble.
Don’t show fear. Don’t show fear
, she repeated over and over in her head. She knew that any sign of distress would only
excite a sadist like Jenkins. She steadied herself and turned to face him. The room was now completely empty apart from her and her tormentor.

Max Jenkins was tall and powerfully built, but once Celia straightened up her shoulders, she stood level with him. She met his stare, trying to appear unperturbed, but her owl-round eyes, framed
by a thicket of lashes, always made her look slightly startled. She convinced herself that someone would have gone to get a teacher, so she decided that she just had to keep him calm and at bay
until help arrived.

“You think you can do that to me?” His voice was a low rumble; a volcano on the verge of erupting. “What you did wasn’t very nice, was it? You’ve hurt my feelings.
People can’t seem to appreciate this, but I’m a very sensitive person. I’m just misunderstood.” He cocked his head to one side and pouted mockingly.

“Yeah. I’m sure Hitler felt the same,” she blurted out, regretting the words as soon as they left her mouth. But Jenkins only gave a hollow laugh.

“Well, Freaky, aren’t you full of surprises? First your little stunt in class and now an attempt at sarcasm. You obviously don’t take me seriously. Perhaps I’ve been too
kind to you – but I’m about to put that right. You see, you’ve given me no choice. I now have a duty to teach you a lesson. I have a reputation to maintain. People have got to be
shown that anyone who takes me on will be punished. So I’ve been wondering what would really make an impression on you.”

He paused and put his forefinger and middle finger together. He pressed them against the base of her neck, before moving them lingeringly up her face, tracing them over her sharp chin, across
her thick gash of a mouth and climbing along her broad nose. They came to rest in the middle of her forehead, where Jenkins flicked up his thumb to form a gun and said, in a slow, deep whisper,
“Bang! Bang!”

Celia blinked as his fingers jabbed into her forehead, her flesh crawling, but she remained composed. Her lack of response disappointed him, but he was far from finished.

“I’ve decided that your punishment should benefit the whole school. You must know that we’ve all been dying to see what would happen if your freaky body got sliced.”

At these words, panic shot through her. She pushed past him. “You’re going to let me go now. I’m going to walk out of here and I promise not to tell anyone what you’ve
just said, okay?” she said firmly.

But as she quickened her pace towards the door, he grabbed her and dragged her back, pinning her against the coat rack.

“Get off me. You’ve had your fun,” she shouted, struggling against the weight of his leaning body.

“Who said anything about fun? I’m undertaking a serious scientific experiment here, but, of course, to do that I need my implements.” With this, he reached into his trouser
pocket and pulled out a small, red-handled penknife. She recoiled as Jenkins prised out the shiny, silver blade and without warning sliced it across his thumb. He winced as blood immediately sprang
from the short, narrow cut.

“Surprisingly, that hurt more than you’d think,” he said coolly, as he sucked the blood from his thumb. Then he answered Celia’s open-mouthed stare. “I wanted to
demonstrate to you just how sharp my blade is,” he said leeringly. “And now it’s your turn!”

He gripped Celia’s left wrist and yanked at the cuff of her blouse, causing the button to fly off. He pulled up the sleeve roughly, exposing Celia’s long, translucent arm, her vivid
veins like blue water running under a thin layer of ice.

“Don’t do it, Max,” she said softly, but the beads of sweat springing from her pores belied her outer calmness. “Just let me go.”

He erupted, bawling in her face, the veins on his neck bulging. “Do you really think I’m going to let you go?! People were laughing at me because of you. You freak!”

“Just think about it.” She fought the tremor in her voice. “Say I bleed to death? You’ll spend years banged up in prison. It’s not worth it, is it, Max? It’s
not too late. You can walk away from this right now.”

But Jenkins responded by seizing her elbow and positioning the knife so it hovered over her upper arm.

“What do you think?” he taunted her. “Should I do it, should I?”

She daren’t move, she daren’t breathe.

Suddenly, quick, urgent footsteps could be heard coming down the corridor.

Teachers
, she thought with blissful relief.
The teachers are here!

The cloakroom door flew open. The teachers froze at the sight that faced them, with only seconds to decide what to do next. Jenkins panicked, tightening his hold on her elbow.

Oh God, he’s going to do it! I’ve got to do something!

She jerked her arm out of his grip. There was a flash of silver, and a searing, white-hot pain as the blade sliced along her paper skin. She heard a short, high-pitched scream puncture the air
– it was coming from her.

Jenkins shot away from her, still clutching the knife. Everyone seemed nailed to the spot, watching, sick with anticipation. Celia too was transfixed by the line of blood
surfacing from the narrow wound and oozing down the contours of her quivering arm.

It was Mr. Powell who made the first move from the doorway into the room. He spoke calmly but firmly to Jenkins, all the time edging closer towards him until he’d placed himself between
the boy and Celia.

“Just drop the knife, Max, and we can sort this out. Don’t make things worse for yourself. Let me help Celia. You just keep back.”

Jenkins looked around at the sea of anxious faces watching the scene. One of the staff was already on their mobile asking for the police and an ambulance. He unclenched his fist and let the
knife fall to the ground. Immediately two of the watching teachers ran and tackled him to the ground. He didn’t put up a fight but lay there, his cheek pressed against the cold, dirty tiles
of the cloakroom, staring up at Celia.

“It was her fault!” Jenkins found his voice. “She moved. There’s no way I was going to do it. I was only messing with her. I’m not getting done for this.”

The head teacher sat the dazed girl down on the bench. The slash across her arm stung as if vinegar was being poured into it, but the pain didn’t concern her. All she was concentrating on
were the crimson trickles of blood.

She spoke without looking up. “When will it begin?”

“I don’t know, but you’re going to be okay,” Mr. Powell said gently. “An ambulance is on its way.”

He turned to his staff. “Get me the first-aid kit and gloves. We need to apply pressure to the wound. Phone her mother – and for God’s sake get him out of my sight.” He
gestured towards Jenkins in disgust.

The paramedics arrived within minutes and quickly wheeled Celia down the corridor, which was lined with gawping pupils who’d flooded back into the school as news of the attack spread. Mr.
Powell climbed into the back of the ambulance with Celia, but despite his efforts to distract her, she remained eerily silent, mesmerized by the blood seeping through the bandage.

The paramedic with them got off the phone to the hospital and spoke to Mr. Powell. “We could do with her GP details. The hospital computer doesn’t have any records for
her.”

“We’ve got his address in the office. We’ve been waiting for a letter from him. There’s been quite a delay, I’m afraid. We had a bit of trouble pinning the mother
down, but she gave us his name eventually.”

“Is the mother uncooperative?” the paramedic whispered, out of Celia’s earshot.

“No, on the contrary,” Mr. Powell said emphatically. “Janice Frost has been extremely helpful, providing us with all our information, keen that the school is aware of
Celia’s condition and knows what to do in case of an accident. It’s just she’s an anxious woman...comes across a little paranoid even, but that’s understandable, given
her daughter’s disorder.”

When they arrived at A & E, Celia was pushed straight through to a treatment cubicle, bypassing the hordes of people in the waiting room. Within moments, a young female
doctor entered the cubicle, trying to look as alert as possible.

The paramedics had rung ahead to the department with information about a teenager with a blood clotting disorder who’d been involved in a knife attack; just what Dr. Ross needed at the end
of a long, exhausting shift. The weary doctor remembered to smile at Celia and Mr. Powell as she carefully lifted the bandages from the wound.

“Hello,” she began. “I’m Dr. Ross, and you must be Celia.”

Celia nodded.

“And you are?” she asked the head.

“Dave Powell, Celia’s headmaster,” he replied.

“Well, Mr. Powell, would you mind waiting outside? I’m going to have to cut Celia’s blouse off to treat the wound. Is that okay, Celia? I’ve got a gown you can put
on.”

Celia nodded again as Mr. Powell made a quick exit.

“So, Celia, you’ve had a nasty shock,” Dr. Ross said as she disposed of the bloodied shirt. “What a terrible thing to happen.”

Celia looked blank.

“I need to ask you a few questions, if that’s okay. What’s your date of birth?”

Celia murmured the date as if in a dreamlike state.

“Okay, so you’re fourteen. Good. Now, Celia, I need to know about your condition. You have a blood clotting disorder, right? Can you tell me more about it?”

Without lifting her eyes from her throbbing arm, Celia mechanically gave the explanation she’d heard repeated by Janice so many times before. “It’s very rare. My blood
won’t clot like normal people’s and if I bleed I might just keep bleeding. So it’s very dangerous if I get cut or injured. I’ve got to be careful. I’ve always had it.
I was born with it.”

“Well then, it’s looking like you’ve been lucky this time, because the blood flow seems to have stemmed nicely,” the doctor said, cleaning the congealing blood from the
wound.

“But how’s that possible?” Celia’s face clouded with confusion.

“Hard to tell without knowing more about your condition. What blood group are you?”

“O, Mum says I’m O.”

“Good, it’s really important we have a record of that, in case you ever need a transfusion through losing too much blood. Has that ever happened, Celia? Have you had a blood
transfusion before?

Celia shook her deathly pale head. “No. I’ve never needed one. I’ve never been injured. My mum makes sure that I’m really, really careful.”

“But what happens when you have your period, Celia?”

“I haven’t even started yet,” she said, cringing. “But Mum says everything will be normal; the disorder doesn’t apply to them. She says I’m not to worry about
it.”

“Okay.” Dr. Ross nodded her head slowly. “But what treatment do you have for the disorder? Do you have injections to help your blood clot? Maybe that would explain why the
blood loss from your wound seems normal.”

Celia looked up from the knife wound to the doctor, her head now throbbing in time with her arm. “I don’t have treatment for it. I’ve looked it up myself you know, on the
internet, and I asked my mum about those injections, but she said that when I was born they did all kinds of tests on me, to see how they could help, but they all agreed that it was untreatable and
the only way to stop it happening was to not get injured. That’s the way it’s always been. I’ll never be cured. I just have to live with it. It’s a life sentence, my mum
says.”