Chapter 2
I'd been crouching outside the heavy wooden door, listening intently in almost complete darkness for the entire meeting.
All the other boys in my dormitory were asleep, as I should have been too, but foolish curiosity had overwhelmed me and Mr McClure was not patrolling the corridor as he usually did. Jimmy Perkins, one of the older boys, had once told me that McClure used to "sneak into the girl's dormitories when Ms Marchant was engaged in Board meetings to watch them sleep, and . . . y'know."
I didn't know. Nor did I want to. But I had remembered what Jimmy had said, and so that night I had waited until Mr McClure's clumsy footsteps had faded into nothingness and everyone else was sleeping before slipping out of bed and creeping down the blackness of the corridor in nothing but my nightshirt.
Not much of what they were saying meant anything to me, only that one of us would be lucky enough to get out of here. A dull ache was slowly beginning to climb up the backs of my calves and into my knees, and I was starting to regret this venture. I quickly reached down to maintain my balance, but the palm of my hand caught on a nail sticking up out of the floorboards.
I gasped as I fell back, forgetting momentarily that my mission of reconnaissance required silence.
The murmuring in the room came to an abrupt halt. My heart was pounding as I scrambled to my feet and began to run as fast as I could back towards my dormitory.
I heard the scrape of a chair against the exposed floorboards, the creak of the door hinges as it was thrown open and then that unmistakable, menacing voice which caused me to stop dead in my tracks.
"Finnian Beckett! Get back here now!"
