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name. Something horrible then occurred to me.
    ‘You . . . you r-really are my new driver, aren’t you?’
    ‘Of course, Miss Sephy. Your mother employed me this morning. I can show you my ID card if you’d like.’ Karl’s smile flitted fleetingly across his face.
    ‘No, that’s OK,’ I said. I sat back in my seat and clipped up my seat-belt.
    We drove off. I saw some others, pointing to me and whispering or laughing or both as our car went past. My sitting at the noughts table had spread around the school like a bad dose of the flu. And I knew I hadn’t heard the end of it. Mr Corsa threatened that he was going to send a letter home to my mum and e-mail my dad. No doubt a protest to the Queen was in the offing too. And I wouldn’t have minded any of that if Callum hadn’t turned his back on me. But he had. And I was never going to forget it. He had looked away from me like . . . like he didn’t know me. Like I was nothing. Maybe Mother was right, after all. Maybe Crosses and noughts could never be friends. Maybethere was too much difference between us.
    Did I really believe that?
    I didn’t know what I believed any more.

fourteen. Callum

    I don’t know how long I sat there, watching the sun burn into the sky as it set, watching the night grow steadily more secretive. Why had my life suddenly become so complicated? For the last year all I could think about, or even dream about, was going to school. Sephy’s school. I was so busy concentrating on getting into Heathcroft that I hadn’t given much thought to what I’d do when I actually got there. I hadn’t really thought about what it would be like to be so . . . unwanted. And what was the point anyway? It wasn’t as if I’d get a decent job after it. No Cross would ever employ me for more than the most mundane, menial job, so why bother? But I wanted to learn. A yawning hole deep inside me was begging to be filled up with words and thoughts and ideas and facts and fictions. But if I did that, what would I do with the rest of my life? What would I be? How could I ever be truly happy knowing that I could do so much more, be so much more, than I would ever be allowed?
    I was trying so hard to understand how and why things were the way they were. The Crosses were meant to becloser to God. The Good Book said so. The son of God was dark-skinned like them, had eyes like them, had hair like them. The Good Book said so. But the Good Book said a lot of things. Like ‘love thy neighbour’, and ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. If nothing else, wasn’t the whole message of the Good Book to live and let live? So how could the Crosses call themselves ‘God’s chosen’ and still treat us the way they did? OK, we weren’t their slaves any more, but Dad said the name had changed but nothing else. Dad didn’t believe in the Good Book. Neither did Mum. They said it’d been written and translated by Crosses, so it was bound to be biased in their favour. But the truth was the truth, wasn’t it? Noughts . . . Even the word was negative. Nothing. Nil. Zero. Nonentities. It wasn’t a name we’d chosen for ourselves. It was a name we’d been given. But why?
    ‘ I DON’T UNDERSTAND . . .’ The words erupted from me in an angry rush, heading for the sky and beyond.
    I sat there for I don’t know how long, furious thoughts darting around my head like bluebottles, my head aching, my chest hurting. Until I suddenly snapped out of it with a jolt. Someone was watching me. I turned sharply and a shock like static electricity zapped through my body. Sephy was further up the beach, standing perfectly still as the wind whipped around her, making her jacket and skirt billow out. We were about seven metres apart – or seven million light years, depending on how you looked at it. Then Sephy turned around and started to walk away.
    ‘Sephy, wait.’ I jumped to my feet and sprinted after her.
    She carried on walking.
    ‘Sephy, please. Wait.’ I caught