The Changeover by Margaret Mahy Page B

meal.
    "He'll think you're out to get him," said Laura darkly, and Kate laughed, looking back from the kitchen door.
    "He's a grown man — he can look after himself," she said. "In fact I thought back there he was going to." She was beginning to sound rather mischievous again.
    "He's all right if you don't mind a bit of baldness," Laura muttered, alarmed all over again at the ease with which Chris was insinuating himself into their lives, even though she had helped him to do so herself.
    "Well, I don't mind it," Kate said flatly. "I'm bored with thick hair." (Laura's father, Stephen, had particularly thick, dense hair like Laura's own.) "And I'm bored at the thought of playing games — pretending not to be interested, trying to make out I don't really care if he goes or stays ... If he's childish enough to need that, then I'd get bored with him too, sooner or later. I do like him and I want him to know."
    "What's this about philosophy?" asked Laura apprehensively. "He's not a philosopher, is he?" She couldn't help seeing that if Kate had to have a man friend there would be wonderful advantages in a rich one, and felt instinctively that philosophers needed philosophy because they didn't have money.
    "He's the next best thing to a philosopher ..." said Kate. "He's a librarian at the Central Library ... in charge of the New Zealand Room."
    "A Canadian in charge of the New Zealand Room!" Laura exclaimed. "What's wrong with a good, honest Kiwi joker?"
    "It may be International Swap Over Year in library circles," Kate suggested. "Or they may be promoting Commonwealth understanding."
    "There's too much understanding in the world as it is," Laura declared. "I don't know why people think it's so great. A lot of the things you find yourself understanding are nasty."
    Chris came back an hour later saying the tickets had been successfully returned and, when Jacko was better, he and Kate might try to go to another concert together. He came with gifts ... a bottle of lemonade, and a bottle of non-symbolic sherry which he suggested they try out to take away the memory of the symbolic sherry drunk earlier. Laura had a little bit in a glass topped up with lemonade.
    "It makes it symbolic all over again, but in a different way," Chris said. "Kate tells me you need a clear head for your homework."
    In the room next door Jacko remained quiet.
    Laura tried to concentrate on her homework while Kate showed Chris her bookseller's course.
    "I freely admit it's not high-class entertainment," she said, "but I haven't got a piano at present, so I can't sing to you."
    They both laughed, though Laura did not think it was particularly funny. In Kate's bedroom Jacko suddenly gave a curious magpie cry.
    "I'll go," said Laura. "I need a bit of a stretch away from history." She pushed open the door of Kate's room and went in. She did not need to turn the light on, for a shaft of light, coming over her shoulder from the living room behind her, fell right across the pillows and she could see Jacko quite clearly.
    The whole room seemed to gasp with a dirty sweetness, and she breathed it in before she could stop herself. The scent of used peppermint came unmistakably along with it.
    Jacko slowly turned his head to look at her. His Ruggie lay on the pillow beside him, but he showed no interest in it. He was smiling dreadfully, his teeth unnaturally large, his face in retreat around the smile, but his eyes — at least his eyes were still his own, though brimming with a still flood of tears. A clammy hand pressed Laura down on to her knees beside Jacko's bed. It was the hand of terror, nothing less. A moment later her heart began to bang so hard it rang alarms through all her bones and made the world vibrate itself into rapid extinction, except for the feel of the bare floorboards under her knees. She concentrated on this feeling until, little by little, the world came back to her and she felt her own clothes sticking to her as if it were a hot day, felt too, the