Class

“Good morning, Olivia…are you feeling better today?” Miss Cooper asked, putting her hand around my shoulders as I stepped into her lair.

“Yes, thank you, Miss…I am sorry if I caused any trouble yesterday, Miss?” I said, and she gave my shoulder a friendly squeeze.

“Say no more about it…but your mummy says you are making a fresh start today…so, I am expecting a new you, Olivia?” She suggested, smiling down at me, raising an eyebrow as if she was not sure that was possible.

“I’ll try, Miss.” I assured her, wondering what she would say if she knew that she was already talking to a new Olivia Montague. I followed some other girls, and found where we had to put our coats and hats, and then traipsed into a fairly small classroom, with five tables with four chairs around each, set around what was clearly Miss Cooper’s desk. And all but one chair was taken by a girl in a striped blazer, because I was the last one in, which made it much easier to find my place. None of the other girls had said a word to me, and if I was reading their looks right, Olivia was not a popular girl. Not that she cared, according to the shadows. Bitchy snobs were the words I heard in my head, but I decided not to share those thoughts. And luckily, Miss Cooper was ready to distract everyone. She quickly took the register, and then dived straight into what she called a warm up quiz, where she fired out questions and we had to put up our hands and answer, when she picked us out.

I liked quizzes. In fact, although it was often hard at Redstone, I liked learning. And since I was quite good at maths, mental arithmetic was right up my street. So, nervously at first, but soon with some enthusiasm, momentarily forgetting the whole life swap thing, my hand was going up a lot, eager to answer. But so were lots of others. It was a small class, just twenty girls in all, when Redstone usually had over thirty, but they were all eager students, and Miss Cooper had plenty of choice for each question. In all, she chose me to answer nine, more than anyone else, I think, seven mathematical calculations, a challenge to spell the word Massachusetts and the name of King Henry VIII’s third wife. And I got them all right, which cheered me up no end, until I reminded myself that I was actually a year older than all my classmates. But it was still a fillip, and I had enjoyed the quiz, so I was feeling a little better about things. I sat there is my prim uniform feeling quite smug. I still had the tests to worry about, but maybe I could carry it off, I started to think, and if I could steady the ship around me as far as everyday life was concerned, I could then turn my attention to coming up with some sort of plan to get my real life back. I had no idea how, but if magic had swapped Olivia and I over, I was assuming that magic could put us back in our rightful places again. I had to believe it could, otherwise I was really going to fall apart.

Miss Cooper and her two classroom assistants then got us working on algebra, which I was in my second year of learning and felt quite confident with. We had a worksheet to go through with thirty sums to do, and I finished it before most of the others. Miss Cooper looked at my work and raised her eyebrows, before letting me go to the loo. It was nearly breaktime anyway and Caroline had promised that she would make sure I could slip out to wee, which was the cornerstone of our plan to stop me wetting my pull-ups. I was dry as a bone, which pleased me even more, and I was soon pulling my coat and hat back on, because that was apparently the rule, eager to get back outside to see the twins and tell them about my minor successes. The rest of the class were doing the same, as they finished their worksheets, but I was planning on ignoring all of them, as they seemed to be ignoring me. I was just easing my way to the door past everyone, when a tall girl with her ginger hair in a ponytail stepped in front of me.

“Everyone hates you.” She said, looming over me. It was crazy, really. She was probably six inches taller than Olivia, which did not make her a giant, and if I was in my own body, I would be several inches taller than her, I reckoned, but I was still intimidated. Olivia was tiny, and the girl had back up, in the form of three friends, whilst my lack of knowledge put me at a huge disadvantage. I knew that Olivia had been at Deepdene for five terms, one term less than two years, because she only transferred to the school after her father married Caroline. I had learned that from Caroline, just the night before, and the shadows at the back of my mind were telling me that Olivia had hated it, from day one. But they were not telling me who the girl with the ginger hair was, or why she seemed to have a problem with Olivia, which in that moment meant me. Not that it mattered, really. I was a Redstone girl, and I was fairly sure that the Kelly part of me, which was in my brain, could cope with any Deepdene girl, because they were hardly streetwise. Kelly was not a fighter, but girls seldom get physical, anyway. Bullying at Redstone was predominantly verbal, and more often than not online. I had endured some of it, like most people. Mum always said that sticks and stones could break your bones, but words could never hurt you. However, whilst I agreed with the principle, and had dealt with any problems easily enough as Kelly, being Olivia was still new, and just so confusing. I did not know the girl’s name, or anything about her, or why she had a specific beef with me. “Go on…poo yourself and burst into tears…we’ll just laugh some more…everyone hates you, freak…we all wish you would leave…or die?”

I offered no response. Kelly might have, because she had a sharp tongue, but I was not Kelly in that situation, and I did not understand the dynamics of the confrontation. So, I just pushed past ginger and her friends, and headed outside, fighting back more hot, bitter tears. But I was shaking again, still overwhelmed by the complete chaos engulfing me. It was madness, a living nightmare. Twenty-four hours before, I had been getting off the coach at the museum, messing around with Gemma, and enjoying myself as we both looked forward to our big day out. I was manically trying to get my head around things somehow, trying to think of a way to reverse the life swap, but Olivia’s daily world was making that impossible. It took all my time and energy just to get through the next problem, and the ginger girl had really upset me. Everything was out of control, and as I hurried out into the playground and saw the twins waiting for me, I just ran into their arms, almost surrendering to another episode. And that was precisely when I first met Felicity Blackstone.

“Mummy said no one would say anything nasty to Olivia?” Grace said, not at all happy about what had happened to me. She was talking to an even taller girl, who the twins had dragged me over to as soon as they got the general idea about why I was so upset. “But Samantha Fitzgerald was just really mean to her…what should we do, Felicity?”

“Can we tell your mummy?” Chloe asked, just as incensed as her sister. I stood between them trying not to cry. I was not used to feeling so helpless. In my own body, I knew how life worked most of the time. I knew the rules, and the people I had to deal with. Kelly was, I suppose, very comfortable in her own skin, as well as accustomed to her own environment, and I could fight my own battles, with the support of my friends and my mum, if I really needed to involve her or anyone else. But being Olivia was new and very scary. I was still reeling from the shock of the changeover, drowning in a sea of new experiences, and I was floundering. The false dawn of the pop quiz had faded away to nothing, leaving behind nothing more than a frightened little girl who just could not stop crying. “Mummy talked to Auntie Sheila, too? As well as Miss Cooper…should we tell Miss too?”

“She made Olivia cry…she needs to be told off!” Grace insisted, indignantly. “She just had an accident…Samantha is just a mean bully!”

“What should we do, Felicity?” Chloe asked, clearly upset on my behalf. “She said some very bad things…she needs telling off?”