Once

Thirty

Farway High was like a ghost town that morning. Most of Year 8 and 9 were off on an end-of-term school trip to a nearby theme park, and Year 11, as of this week, were officially on study leave - which for most of them meant not even bothering to get out of bed until lunchtime. The library was completely deserted as they made their way through the rows of bookcases toward the private study rooms.

"Hey! Wait up!"

Elle turned to find David hurrying to catch them. She checked the time on her phone. Already ten past nine.

"You're late this morning," Russell pointed out.

There was a very faint note of suspicion in his voice.

David looked at his watch, then gave them a wry smile.

"Guess I am. So, have you worked out what you're going to tell them?"

Elle sighed.

"The truth, I guess. But I don't see why they'd believe it now. They didn't before."

"We'll make them believe us," Russell said. His voice was adamant, his eyes oddly fierce.

"And I think we'll be more successful this time," David said. "This time we have proof."

He fished something out of his pocket and held it up with a grin.

Elle stared blankly at it for a second, then smiled.

"You kept it?"

"Of course I did. Now come on. We've got a job to do."

*

They were all there already when they walked in - Jax, Maggie and Sellan. Maggie and Sellan had been looking bored and tetchy before they arrived, but they both looked up as Elle stepped in with a look somewhere between concern and curiosity. Jax almost leapt up in her chair; there was a look of genuine distress on her face.

"What's happening?" she said, the minute they were through the door. "We got Russell's message."

The others slid into seats around the round table. Elle felt their eyes on her, and immediately she was having flashbacks to the Ginger Cat Cafe. She was relieved it was Russell who spoke first. The words rushed out of him like water gushing out through a crack in a dam.

"Look, everyone. Elle was right. About the girl, about Letty, about the dreams - about everything."

Elle saw Maggie and Sellan shoot a quick look at each other, so obvious they might as well have said the words out loud: Oh god, not another one.

Jax, on the other hand, didn't look at all sarcastic or annoyed. She looked just like she had from the minute they walked in - genuinely worried, and incredibly intense to the point of looking as if she might cry.

"What happened?" she said.

Elle noted that she didn't ask What do you think happened? Just, What happened? An open and genuine demand for information. She'd decide for herself what she made of it when she heard it.

Elle realised in a flash that she'd misjudged her friends on Saturday - or more specifically she had misjudged Jax. The others had thought she was losing her mind (and they had every right to, after all) but Jax almost certainly hadn't been thinking that. Jax was the sort of person who'd believe the sky was green if one of her friends told her so. She hadn't been judging, only trying to understand.

So, for the third time in three days, she told the story in painstaking detail. Only this time it ended with her scaring away a ravenous wolf from Russell's grandma's hallway.