Rachel pushes down the edge of one of the photographs on the display board outside the geography classroom. She removes the pin that makes one of the eyes of a skull picture that one of the kids must have poked into the yellow display border and pushes it into the curled corner of laminate plastic. 'Miss Barnes, Mrs Fleet and Mr James enjoying an ice cream on Ainsdale Beach' the caption reads. She looks at Mrs Fleet's ringless fingers holding the ice cream cone. No one had even noticed. It had surprised her.
The noise from the classroom distracts her. There are kids shrieking with laughter as Miss Barnes adds vinegar to a model volcano filled with baking soda. The smell reminds her of cleaning sinks. It doesn't work as well as the coca-cola and mentos mixture that Mrs Fleet had used. The papier-mâché mountain disintegrates onto the bin liner.
"Right, Lily, yours is next." Lily is the only year seven girl in geography club; it has always had the stiff competition of the year seven dance club that also runs on Mondays.
Lily sets a papier-mâché volcano down in the pool of vinegary liquid. It has small plasticine people and pipe-cleaner flowers on a rocky outcrop and toothpick flags that label the cross-section that has been painted onto the side.
"Are you sure you want to ruin it, Lily?" Miss Barnes asks. "That's a really nice one, we could use it for the display as a model instead."
"Yeah, you should keep it, Lily." One of the year ten girls tells her. They all join in. A year eight boy even lifts it out of the murky bin liner liquid for her.
"No, it's for this." She places it back down. "It's for this." she tells them adamantly, as though they haven't understood her. "I want that eruption thingy."
"Okay." Miss Barnes slots a test tube of baking soda into the top of the volcano, then pours in the vinegar. The foam falls over the labelled cross-section, and the pipe-cleaner flowers wilt into the pulpy mess and the plasticine people are carried down to the bin liner in a flow of cloudy vinegar. Lily giggles with the other kids and dumps the model into the bin.
Her hands are sticky with the vinegary gloop. She plucks a tissue out of the box at the front and then stops and stares back at Rachel.
"I liked your volcano." Lily smiles at her, then steps closer to whisper something.
"I think it would be better if they did mentos and Pepsi." Rachel nods.
"Me too." Lily stares down the corridor. "I'm so proud of you, you know, Lily-girl." Rachel's fingers tuck a strand of blonde behind her niece's ear. "I'm so proud of you, more and more every day. You-" Lily's gaze flicks back up and she nods towards something further down the corridor. "What?" Rachel glances over her shoulder, then straightens her back and walks towards a shaking Elijah who is being taunted by a small gang of year nine boys.
She has forgotten her calculator. She wants to roll her eyes at the man in a blue shirt who is using words like 'responsibility' and 'organisation' and 'carelessness'.
"That's a lunchtime detention, it's the second one this week, Lily. It's only Tuesday." She is too tired to care.
"Okay." she mumbles. He hands her a calculator as though it is the last thing he wants to do.
Her name is written on the board and another little line is added next to it. Soon there will be enough little lines for him to make a tally, and it will look like the gate she used to wait for her mum at when she was in year one. She rather likes that.
Lily locks herself in the bathroom and pretends she is capable of breathing rather than going down the corridor to her Drama lesson. She hates Tuesdays. It feels as though her lungs are burning. It feels like dying. Her Drama workbook pokes out of her bag. Auntie Rachel's bag. She hangs it on the peg on the back of the door and takes off her tie and her blazer and unbuttons the top of her shirt to make room for the air to drop into her lungs.
She falls asleep on the toilet seat, curled up and sticky with sweat, the blonde hair dries slick against the back of her neck.
Her feet drag her to the geography classroom on the second floor. The year eight boys are in there and they are talking about Minecraft. For the next half-hour she is safe.
"Lily?" Mr James. Holding a radio between his fingers. "Come out here. Bring your bag." She follows him out of the geography classroom and into the corridor. "You're meant to be in detention, aren't you?" She doesn't want to go. She doesn't want to sit there and write an essay about the importance of organisation in secondary school. "Off you go then." He nods in the direction of the staircase.
"I don't feel very well." she whispers.
"If you're well enough to sit in the geography classroom, you're well enough to go to detention." She isn't. She just can't. She thinks it would actually kill her. She flattens her back against the side of the corridor and stares down at her shoes while Mr James talks into the handheld radio.
Auntie Rachel comes around the corner, shaking her head.
"Where's your tie?"
"In my bag." she mumbles. It isn't her bag.
"Put it on." Rachel tells her, grinding her teeth and checking over her shoulder to make sure no one else is watching. Lily reaches into Rachel's canvas bag and pulls the green tie out and tightens it around her neck. "Properly." Rachel snaps. Lily looks down at the tie, trying to work out what is wrong with it. She turns back to at Rachel. "Oh, for god's sake." Rachel drops her radio on the floor to undo the tie and refasten it under Lily's shirt collar. "You're old enough to know how to dress yourself." she sneers as she yanks the tie to lie flat over the buttons.
If Lily could talk, she would choke out the words, 'stop it, Auntie Rachel'. Instead, she cowers and pushes her fingertip over her bottom teeth. She wants to cry. She wants her mum. She wants the tears to seep back from her eyes.
"We're waiting for you to go to detention." Rachel snaps. Lily doesn't dare to look up as Rachel follows her down the staircase.
She cries in the toilets after school for twenty minutes while the year elevens compare their latest prom arrangements by the sinks outside. Her eyes swell as though she is allergic to her own feelings. Her jaw aches. Her nose is so blocked up that she can only breathe through her mouth. Her lungs are burning.
Her face has been soothed by cold water and fresh air by the time Rachel finds her in the library. Her nose is still blocked.
"Hey, Lils." she whispers. Lily stares up at her. Rachel smiles back. "You about ready to go?" Lily slots the textbook into the tote bag. "I don't know what we're going to do for dinner." Lily doesn't say anything. She pulls the bag slowly onto her shoulder and follows Rachel out of the library.
Rachel glances down at her. "You okay, sweetheart?" Lily nods uneasily. "Are you tired?" Lily nods again. "Alright." Rachel squeezes her shoulder and kisses her hair as they walk. "We'll have a nice, chilled out evening, yeah?" Lily feels herself nodding again, at whoever this version of Auntie Rachel is.