Read Party at Silver Spires for Free Online Page B

what comes next. Do you know, Suki?”
    Suki laughed. “How should I know? People who can recite things like the Greek alphabet and the kings of England and the periodic table of elements are really sad, in my opinion. They ought to get a life!”
    I felt my shoulders rising with tension and my face getting hot. I was one of those people who Suki thought was sad, because I could recite the Greek alphabet and the kings of England. I just love learning things like that and memorizing them. I know quite a bit of the periodic table too, but not the whole lot. It’s really difficult. Thank goodness I hadn’t jumped in with epsilon, zeta, eta, theta when Bryony had asked what came after the first four Greek letters.
    As soon as I’d wolfed down my pudding I got up to go, because Suki’s presence just made me feel uncomfortable, and I went to the break-out room on my own before prep.
    The silence in prep is one of my favourite moments of the day. There’s hardly ever any silence when you’re at a boarding school, apart from in some lessons. You’re just surrounded by a buzz the whole time. I don’t mind that, because it makes you feel as though you’re a real part of something big and exciting. But it’s lovely for just five short times a week to be able to bury yourself in silent work for a while. The only trouble is, I always get through my prep really quickly and even when I’ve checked and checked it, there’s often time left over and I get a bit bored. But I don’t want to bring a book in, or people might think I’m showing off.
    This evening the prep was quite tricky because it was chemistry, and funnily enough, after we’d only just been talking about it, there was a big question about the periodic table. When I finished my own work I happened to glance across at Antonia’s. I could see that she’d been given nearly the same prep as mine even though we’re in different sets. I noticed she hadn’t filled in the grid of the periodic elements at all, and I don’t know whether she sensed me looking, but she suddenly turned to me and pointed to her empty grid, then gave a huge shrug, rolling her eyes as if to say, This is impossible! Don’t you agree?
    Before I even knew it, I’d given her the same look, followed by a big smile to show just how much I agreed. I don’t know why I did that when I’d actually filled my whole grid in without any problem. I think it was just that I hadn’t been expecting Antonia to be smiling at me, and I wanted to make the most of this little moment between us, trying to pretend we had something in common. I shut my book as subtly as I could to make sure Antonia didn’t see that I’d actually filled in the whole grid, but she nodded at my closed book and mouthed, “Can you do it?” – her expression changing to an anxious one.
    I had to think quickly. Should I show her my work and let her copy it? Or would she wonder then why I’d given her that look as though she and I were in the same boat, when we clearly weren’t? Suddenly I could hear Suki’s voice loud and clear as though she was sitting right here in the room with us. People who can recite things like the Greek alphabet and the kings of England and the periodic table of elements are really sad, in my opinion. They ought to get a life!
    I quickly made a decision and mouthed back, “Sorry,” to Antonia. Then I gave another friendly smile and a shrug, and got such a warm smile back that I thought at last there was a tiny chance that Antonia and I might become friends. I hoped so, because Sasha and Izzy always seemed to sit next to each other in class and at lunch, and so did Bryony and Emily. It would make sense for Antonia and me to kind of pair up, because I still didn’t have a best friend. But in my heart I never really thought that could happen.
    When prep finished, the six of us went along