Missing Ellen Read Online Free PDF Page B

Bouncer said dismissively. ‘She must have meant during PE this afternoon.’
    ‘Oh no, sir,’ Ellen said confidently. ‘She specifically said it had to be this morning. Apparently it’s very urgent. Actually she said she would ask you herself but she obviously ran out of time or something.’
    She was looking at him with such innocent wide greeneyes, I had to put my hand over my mouth to stop myself from giggling.
    Bouncer looked annoyed. ‘We have quite a lot of work to do today, I really can’t see why a basketball trial should be more important than that.’
    ‘Do you want me to go and find her, sir?’ Ellen suggested. She was probably thinking that at least she’d get a few minutes out of class even if she wasn’t going to manage to get us all out with her fairly ambitious scam.
    ‘Yes, please do. As quickly as you can,’ the teacher said. ‘Now everyone, open your books at page 53.’
    Ellen made a big deal of scraping back her chair and picking up a tissue from the floor, taking the opportunity to whisper to me ‘Bet I can get old O’Neill to go along with it! Lunch is on you if I’m right!’
    Then she was gone, banging the door behind her in her usual subtle way.
    Dear Ellen,
    When the guards were asking me about you, it was so hard to know what to say. I wanted to be helpful, but telling them too much personal stuff just felt like a betrayal. They were very focused on your state of mind. Isn’t that a funny phrase? State of mind – as if that was something I would ever be able to describe to them with something as elusive and slippery as words. They tried putting words on it for me. Angry. Frightened .Mixed up. Out of control. You were all those things, and yet you were happy too, most of the time, this kind of exhilarating buzz which was sometimes completely infectious and sometimes just plain annoying. And underneath, I know you were just this scared kid who’d had to grow up much too fast and really wanted someone just to hold you and tell you everything was going to be OK.
    I talked to that nice guard Declan – remember? From the cinema night? – a few times. Well, mostly he talked, and I just listened, because there wasn’t much I could say that would have been any help.
    Sometimes it feels like I’m the one who’s missing, like I’m not really present in my own life any more – I’m like a ghost or something, wandering through school or home or town looking on at everything that’s happening and not really a part of it at all.
    Love,
    Maggie.
    I waited, wondering how on earth Ellen thought she could convince the hearty and loud-voiced Miss O’Neill to play a joke on a fellow teacher. She had never struck me as being possessed of much of a sense of humour, her two main passions in life being exercise and fresh air.
    Ellen was gone for a good ten minutes. I began to suspect that she’d been unable to convince Miss O’Neill. She hadprobably just decided to take the long way back to miss as much algebra as possible. Then, just when I was finally getting my head around the sum Bouncer was trying to explain, the door opened and a triumphant Ellen marched in, followed by an unexpected figure – not Miss O’Neill, but our very grand principal Mrs Carmichael!
    ‘I’m so sorry to interrupt your class,’ she said politely, ‘but I’m afraid Miss O’Neill needs the girls in the gym. The basketball trials are terribly urgent as we are playing St Luke’s next week, and the entire school’s honour is at stake.’
    ‘Of course, of course,’ Bouncer blustered, clearly taken aback at the arrival of the principal. ‘Right girls, pack up your bags and off you go.’
    I stared in amazement at Ellen. How on earth had she managed to pull that one off? As Mrs Carmichael left I saw her give Ellen a little wink and could hardly believe it. Our usual staid and sensible principal was actually helping perpetrate an April Fools’ Joke and making us miss maths!
    Ellen arrived back at my side.