Ho-Yen When the Storm Comes

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-915820-35-8
Verlag: Knights Of
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 240 Seiten

The storm had been brewing for weeks. When I look back and remember those days of dripping rain, the thick grey cloud blanketing the sky, the rolling thunder, I wonder how we didn't see it coming. We didn't realise it was building into something. Back then, we just thought it was stormy weather. We had no idea what lay ahead. We couldn't ever have imagined how it would engulf us. Mali, Jonesey, Fara and Petey are reluctantly gathered in the library. They're not friends and they each have reasons they don't want to be there. As the rain starts, they do not bond as a group. Mali does not engage, Jonesy takes offence, Petey ridicules the others, Fara is silent, and their teacher Ms Devine is distracted. Outside, the bad weather steadily worsens. Soon they are trapped in the school, and pulling together may be the only way out when the storm begins.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ho-Yen, Polly

Leseproben

Chapter One

Before I was Mali, I was Amaryllis. A word that is not only so hard to pronounce that a lot of teachers used to mumble it when they read it on the register, but is even more annoying for the fact that it is actually the name of a plant. It’s the one you see a lot at Christmas time, that looks all stalky and tall and then erupts into a giant red flower.

It was my mum’s favourite plant, which is how I ended up with it as my name. My dad wanted to name me after something that would remind him of her even though I know, just by looking at me, I remind him of my mum all the time. He doesn’t have to say it; I can just see from the way his face changes when he’s looking at me that that’s what he’s thinking.

It was OK when I was little. I would lift my head right up when I heard my name being called in the morning register; no-one picked up on the fact that my name was something so odd. I’ve always been the smallest in the year, and so making myself a little taller made me feel like I was just like everyone else. I didn’t want to hide away back then.

But, it did become a problem when I left primary school. When my name was first called, there was a snigger in the classroom, and the young teacher with a high ponytail stumbled over the syllables.

‘A-ma … A-ma-lis, no Amaryllis - that’s a plant, right?’ she said, looking up, all innocently with big eyes and a nervous smile. She was new.

‘Are you a plant?’ a boy called Petey shouted, and the sniggers grew into laughter.

Someone else prodded me, and I squirmed in my seat.

‘Are you Amaryllis?’ the teacher asked me.

Another eruption of laughter.

I could see the teacher’s eyes widen a little, as she realised that things were beginning to turn out of her control.

I said ‘yes’ under my breath and gave her the smallest of nods.

She locked eyes with me for just a moment and I realised that she was sorry; sorry for bringing it to everyone’s attention and sorry that it had exploded. But it was too late for sorry.

I was haunted, hunted by my name. Someone, and I say someone because I think it was a few people revolving and taking it in turns, would throw a handful of grass in my direction during registration. It would come from different tables and at first, I turned my head sharply to see who did it, but when I couldn’t work it out, I tried my best to ignore it. I’d stare forwards as the blades of grass would settle around me like confetti. I was pretty sure that boy Petey, who had first shouted out about my name, was one of the people who threw grass. He always had a mocking smile on his face, like he had a not-very-secret secret, when it happened.

And I don’t quite know how it happened, but in the corridors, I always seemed to be in his way. Petey was bigger than me, in every way: taller, thicker, broader. When I accidentally bumped into him, it felt like I was hitting a wall.

The first time it happened, at the beginning of school, I mumbled sorry and looked up to see who I’d inadvertently walked into. Petey looked down at me, with small piggy eyes, and for a second before I looked away, I took in his freckles, his short, shaved at the sides, light hair; we didn’t look we came from the same species. I adjusted the sleeves of my jumper, pulling them down a little to cover my bony hands and wrists. How could we be the same age when I was so tiny, and he was so huge?

‘Watch it,’ Petey said.

‘Sorry,’ I said again, but even quieter than the first time.

I tried to step around him, but he feinted as though he was going to stamp in that direction and so I tried to go the other way. Stamp. His shoe came down again, thunderous and heavy.

I was still for a second and then he stamped again, right towards me, and this time his shoe came down on mine. It was all I could do not to cry out as I felt my foot being crushed.

‘I said, watch where you’re going,’ Petey said.’ I mean, no wonder you can’t see what you’re doing with that ridiculous hair.’

Despite what he said, I let the curtains of my dark hair fall over my eyes, hiding me just the smallest amount, and bit down on my lip, both features I’d inherited from my mum. People said that I looked like her a lot, and I used to think that was a good thing, but suddenly, like my name from her, it felt like something I should be ashamed of.

I scuttled away, glad for a moment to escape the stamping but it didn’t last long when I realised he was in fact the boy from my tutor group who I would see every morning, every day of term.

But, as I said, I felt sure it was more than just one person, more than just Petey, as horrible as he was. It felt like it was coming at me from every direction.

It was Shiyoon who first called me Mali, Shiyoon who changed everything for me.

The first day I met him, he was carrying a rucksack that looked so comedically big for him that I honestly thought that he was going to fall backwards from the weight of it. He was not much bigger than me in height or stature, and yet he seemed much taller and bigger somehow. Maybe it was because of the huge grin plastered across his face, a smile that lit up his eyes in a way that suggested mischief.

He was new, transferred from another school. I didn’t learn until later on that it was not just that he’d moved from another school, he’d moved countries. His mother’s job meant that his family had set up homes in Germany, Singapore, and now the UK, all before his twelfth birthday. Maybe it was because he was so used to starting over, but on his first day, Shiyoon didn’t seem remotely nervous. The opposite, in fact. He was practically beaming, and somehow, his open friendliness wasn’t seen as a sign of weakness or an object of humiliation; people liked him. He was in his own little bubble of Shiyoon.

When the grass came raining down from behind me that morning, he looked over at me and then plucked a blade of grass from my shoulder.

‘Old joke?’ he said.

‘Something like that,’ I mumbled.

He said something next like ‘old joke gone bad’ or ‘old joke gone stale’ – I’m not entirely sure because he didn’t exactly say it to me, it was more to himself.

When he grinned over at me and said, ‘I’m Shiyoon’ with an open friendliness that I wasn’t used to, I found myself saying, ‘I’m… I’m… I don’t want to tell you my name.’

‘Ah, you want me to guess!’ He seemed delighted; by me or by the thought of guessing, it was hard to tell.

‘No, it’s not … my name’s the joke around here,’ I said and picked another blade of grass from where it had landed in front of me. I let it float to the floor.

‘Can I tell you a secret?’ he said. He leant towards me a little. ‘They only care because you care.’

‘You haven’t heard the name yet,’ I said.

‘I’ve heard them all,’ he said. ‘Honestly, you cannot shock me. At my last school, the parents got pretty er … creative. You actually stood out if you were called something normal. I had a friend called Sarah who felt so left out that she insisted we all started calling her Saturn.’

‘Did you?’

‘What?’

‘Call her Saturn?’

‘Yeah, why not?’ Shiyoon wrinkled his nose a little and cocked his head to one side. I would later learn that he would do that anytime someone said something that seemed strange to him.

‘Maybe I should change my name,’ I said. ‘Not to Saturn though,’ I added quickly.

‘Do what you’d like,’ Shiyoon said. ‘Maybe I was wrong about not caring – I know it’s hard not to care what other people think. I’ve just changed schools so many times that I’ve realised I can turn that off somehow and then it’s weird that, because of that, people don’t seem to pick on me. Although there’s plenty of reasons why they could.’ He gestured to himself; his scrawny thin arms, his overlarge rucksack. His teeth were wonky and stuck out just a little bit, and his bowl-cut hair stood out in untamable tufts.

I nodded and remembered the week he’d joined when he’d been so open and friendly but also like he was waterproof to anyone not liking him; no-one could be bothered to pick on him.

‘I’ll try it,’ I said.

Shiyoon nodded.

‘Which part?’

‘Both – I’ll try not to care and I’ll change my name.’

‘Woah, the double whammy,’ Shiyoon grinned.

‘Just have to think of one now,’ I said.

‘Hmm,’ said Shiyoon, looking thoughtful.

‘What do you think of...