Plan B

Chapter Thirty-three

“Five stitches?  That’s a lot better than I thought it would be,” Rico commented as he finished putting resin on his bow.  “How long until you can get them out?”

Fran shifted awkwardly on her chair.  She’d come to the music department to forget about everything that was bugging her, and just as she’d wished, she’d bumped into Rico in the foyer.  As usual, he’d raised no objections to her listening in to him practising.

“The doctor said about ten days, but he wants me to go back at the end of the week to make sure the cut’s not infected.”

“That’s in half term, right?”  Rico pointed his bow towards the light and squinted along its length.  Fran had no idea what he was doing, but he seemed to be satisfied, because he whipped the bow down to get rid of the excess resin and then placed it on the piano while he took his violin out of its case.  “Have you got much planned for the holidays?”

“I’m staying at Brookie’s.  Otherwise, no.”

Rico smiled, and Fran had to make a conscious effort not to start ruminating about his dimple.

“You two seem to have really hit it off now.  Are you sure you don’t have a crush on him?”

“Rico!  No!”

Chuckling, Rico fitted his shoulder rest onto the base of his violin and quickly plucked the strings to check their tuning.  He made a face at the E-string, which sounded perfectly in tune to Fran, and then picked up his bow and proceeded to tweak the pegs of all four strings.  Fran didn’t notice any difference at all between the starting point and end result, but given that Rico looked a lot happier, she guessed that his violin hadn’t been perfectly in tune.

“Don’t worry.  I’m just winding you up.  I know you’re just good friends.  Just try not to get caught in bed with him, ’kay?”  He winked at her.

Exhaling through clenched teeth, Fran shook her head.

“I swear to God, if you didn’t happen to be holding a near-priceless violin at the moment….”

Rico quickly scanned the room for objects near enough to Fran that could be used as potential missiles.  Even the smallest were music stands and seats.

“Um, yeah, no airborne piano stools, please.  And what happened to your master poking device?”

Fran’s expression turned glum.  She missed her crutch.  “The doctor said that I should try walking normally again because I need to keep exercising my muscles and ligaments.”

“Bummer.”  Rico swung his near-priceless violin casually around in his hand.  “What are we going to hit Simon and Kevin with next time?”

To his complete surprise, Fran’s despondency resolved itself into an impish smirk.

“Oh, God,” he said, backing away in resignation.  “I know that look.  Please tell me it doesn’t involve either me or rats.”

Fran had to put up with the usual jibes from Joey in Maths that afternoon, and she missed her crutch even more than usual.  He’d tended to tone things down in the classroom when Fran was within ‘prodding’ range with her crutch because she’d left him with some sizable bruises when the teacher wasn’t looking.  With Mathilda’s help, she managed to ignore Joey as best she could until the bell rang, but he insisted on following her back over to the boarding house.  Things very nearly reached a head when he started sniggering at her limp in front of all the Frankie-anti-fans and Brookie-fans, and the pair of them were saved by a timely intervention by Brookie, who appeared out of nowhere.