Dreamstone

Life Swap

Much to my disgust, our miserable minders stopped us all disappearing into the rabbit warren of rooms, and boring exhibits, by out flanking us. So, most of year eight were in a kind of long and disorganised crocodile with teachers at the front, rear and sides, stopping us from spreading out and causing chaos. Not that year eight at Redstone School was the worst group ever. There had been quite a lot of trouble, at Chessington World of Adventures, when we were still in year seven, but the current year ten held the record, after running riot on a theatre trip. And that was why we were being marshalled so closely, to ensure that our sink estate comprehensive did not make any more negative headlines. It was typical of Mr Carpenter, our demon headmaster, to go so over the top, but I was not one of the headcases anyway, so I sucked it all up, and tried to go through the stupid questionnaire we were supposed to complete. Because it was obviously an educational trip, and whilst most of the others were not even looking at their worksheets, I was trying to learn something, if only to stop the day being such a complete waste of time. And to make some cash, of course.

"This is all shit," Gemma sneered, dismissing the efforts of the numerous Victorian explorers whose efforts had filled the Victoria and Albert Museum to show the grateful nation the fruits of the British empire. My best friend was not into history or culture, and I had to admit that the huge room we were in was not the most exciting we had seen, but the worksheet said that we had to find something called the Dreamstone, in there, somewhere. "And what are all those sad losers getting so excited about over there?"

"Oh...that might be it," I replied, looking up from my worksheet, to see another school group swarming around a huge slab of what looked like granite. Not a large group like ours, just thirty odd kids. The museum was not that busy on a wet March Monday, but there were a number of school trips around, and all the children gathering around the Dreamstone were from the same place, from the look of their rather distinctive and old-fashioned uniforms. That was why Gem had called them sad losers, of course. She had seen the striped blazers, dark blue and light blue vertical stripes, and the silly felt hats, and dismissed them as well, as being beneath our obvious level of streetwise coolness. I was tempted to point out the illogical nature of that point of view to her, because we were all wearing our school uniform as well, albeit that ours was much less Mallory Towers than Waterloo Road, and the girls in blue were at private school, which meant that they had all the advantages in life we did not, but she would not have listened to me. "Come on, we have to read the plaque and get the date it was first brought over here, and where it came from...it won't take long."

"Who cares?" Gem complained, hitching her bag up on her shoulder as she followed me with obvious reluctance. But she followed me. We came as a pair.

"I do...the best worksheet wins a twenty-pound voucher, which I will share with you, if you just stop moaning!" I grinned, taking her arm as we edged past a few of the striped blazer girls in an effort to get to the front, where the plaque would be. They were all girls, I noticed, as one of our lads barged rudely past two of them, and they all had clipboards and worksheets, which they were all concentrating on really hard, like it mattered to them. I edged past one small girl lost in thought, pen poised over worksheet, who was so much shorter than me, and reached the information plaque at the front of the stone as expected. The Dreamstone was just massive, like half a mountain, apparently dug out of a gold mine in South Africa in the eighteen-fifties and brought back by ship, as a gift for Queen Victoria. Gemma hung back, letting me do all of the work, and so I scribbled down the answers we needed, beside the little girl doing the same. She was pretty, I thought, but just a kid, probably a lot younger than me. But that was hard to tell because of the way she was dressed, and her lack of make-up. I was thirteen, and she looked about nine.

"It's so big...isn't it?" She said, catching me looking at her.

"I don't get how they got it back here in one piece," I agreed, as she grinned shyly at me. "Or why it is called the Dreamstone?"