"Here! Malcolm, wake up!"
Christopher doesn't know that I haven't been asleep. That I couldn't possibly sleep. That I've been lying here living through what happened to me, over and over again, sweating and shuddering in the dark as memory after memory rolls over me.
I open my eyes and see him standing beside my bed in his pyjamas, with a shielded torch in one hand. He has a piece of cake on a plate in the other, and he's looking around nervously in case Daniel or Vihaan wake up. I don't think they will, because they both sleep really heavily, but he must have waited a long time, just to be sure.
Maybe it was my imagination that they stayed awake longer than usual, and I'm sure I heard the rustle of notes being passed between beds. At one point I caught Vihaan staring at me like he'd never seen me before, though he looked away really quickly when he saw me looking back at him.
I got sent straight to bed without any supper, but that's the last thing I'm worried about right now. I don't even want to think about eating, because some time over the last couple of hours it occurred to me that sooner or later something is going to happen that it makes me sick just to think about, and eating will make it happen again.
"Thank you," I whisper with difficulty. "Can you ... can you put it in my locker, for later?"
I can't imagine there being a 'later', ever. But I cling to the hope that maybe tomorrow the pain will be a bit easier to bear, and I don't move much. Ever since I've crept into bed I've mostly just lain here like a block of wood, with my teeth clenched so not a single sound will escape.
He looks around again, and carefully eases the door of my bedside locker open.
Unfortunately, the plate dislodges something that I'd hoped was accumulating tidily out of view at the back. He turns back to me with a lump of tissues in his hand, and in the torchlight the stains on it look black and his face looks perfectly white. Under his fringe of blond hair his eyes are round with fear.
I can't get out of bed, but I'm still bleeding. I daren't mark the sheet underneath me, so I stole two rolls of toilet paper out of the bathroom and have been using them ever since.
"Malcolm–!"
"Ssh!" I wave a frantic hand. He's almost shouted aloud in his fright.
We both freeze like hunted animals till we hear the other two boys' steady breathing continue.
"Malcolm, what happened to you?" he whispers. "You're hurt!"
If he wasn't one of the most despised boys in the school he'd already know. His father's a Reverend, and I've heard talk that it's only a matter of time before religion gets banned. When that happens, the talk says anyone who refuses to give it up will be guilty of 'treason against the Empire', and that makes them Bad people. I don't know how much of this Christopher knows or senses, but he's even thinner than I am, and nervous all the time. I suppose I would be too, if I had a father who might be accused of being Bad.
He believes in God, too, but God wasn't listening this morning. I know, because I begged and begged Him to help me and He didn't.
It was already doing the rounds by the time I was marched out of the Head's office. Even with my head down, my eyes on the floor, I caught the whispers, the sniggers along the corridor.
"Nothing happened," I hiss as fiercely as I dare. "You mustn't tell anyone! Promise!"
He looks down at the tissues in his hand. I think for a dreadful minute he's going to cry. "But are you going to be all right? You're ... you're not going to die are you?"
The fear that's been sitting in my tummy like a stone rushes up and into my throat, so hard I can barely breathe. "Of course I'm not," I say stoutly, lying to both of us because I can't even imagine that I'm going to die because I wanted to pick anemones for Mother. "It'll ... it'll be better in the morning."
He shifts from one foot to the other. The bare floor's cold. "Cross your heart?" he mumbles.
I don't know what he means by this, so he shows me, and tells me that if you do this and you're not telling the truth you'll go to hell.
Actually I've never been really sure what hell is, but since lunchtime I've a much better idea. And I don't want to go back there, not ever, so I pretend to do it but don't actually touch my chest, hoping that means that if I'm not actually better in the morning then it won't count. Anyway he looks relieved, and after asking if I want a drink or anything (I'm very thirsty, but I know that if he gets spotted going out of the room he'll be in trouble, so I refuse), he pads back to bed.
And I grope under my pillow for the nearest roll of toilet paper, which is already a lot smaller than it was, and hope desperately I won't have to use the second before the morning.