Dead Girls

by Abigail Tarttelin

  What I believe in

  Ghosts

  Ghouls

  Witches

  Angels

  Elves

  Banshees

  That heaven is basically living on the clouds, and we can’t see anyone up there because we are below them.

  Three urban legends: the blood in the shower one, the ghost woman on the road (so if you hit someone with your car on the road, don’t stop! It might be a poltergeist. Just call the police), the one specific to our village about the dogs, poison, luncheon meat, and the hanging.

  That Billie and the dead girls were all killed by a bad man, and they can’t cross over to heaven until someone enacts bloody revenge.

  I know why I would hang around if I were dead and my killer was still out there. If a man has killed Billie, and maybe some of these girls, the girls still living in the world would be safer for his not being here. If it were me, I would want him gone.

  The girls are asking me for something. Not the police. Me. I look from where I am sitting, cross-legged on my bed, at the five ghost girls. They have come to visit me, and they sit like they are at a vigil, quietly staring at me. Each holds hands with the next one, lined up along the wall of my room. Billie is in the middle. Her expression is more vacant than usual, as if she feels faint. They terrify me, but I am trying to be okay with them and not to scream and run out the room like I long to do, because I know they are in so much pain and they need my help.

  I hold up my diary, where I have written down all my thoughts. “Is this what you want me to do?”

  The one next to Billie—the one who told me the story about the car—smiles.

  Mrs. Underwood’s shop is in half of a terraced house. It’s really tiny and it sells sweets and Panda Pops and orange Calypsos. You can buy the sweets in a 10p bag or a 20p bag. In the 10p bag usually you get ten one-penny sweets, but in the 20p bag you might get ten one-penny sweets and five two-penny sweets. She mixes them up, though. It’s always a surprise.

  Nathan and me both buy a 10p bag at the counter on Wednesday after school. Mrs. Underwood is ancient, with white, whispery hair. She could be a witch. But a good witch, though. A white witch, only doing good magic.

  “I think I’m going to get a strawberry lace as well,” I say. They’re 5p. “Do you want one, Nathan? I’ll get it for you, as a present,” I add, remembering what Mum and Dad told me after the memorial.

  Nathan mutters back weirdly: “Um, no—I’m all right.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Underwood,” we both say politely.

  “Goodbye, Thera—goodbye, Nathan,” she says, and we wave at the door and walk toward the fields and the main roadway. We go past my house and then cut across a farm track and walk down into a pasture that sometimes has a horse in it. The horse is there now, tied to the fence, eating. We go and pet it. It’s a Lincolnshire shire horse, with shaggy hair over its hooves. It’s black and cream. Normally they are just cream. Then we go and sit on the fence, a little way away. Lincolnshire shire horses are ginormous. We don’t fancy being eaten, and it might want our sweets. Horses are always desperate for mints. I’m not sure if they love gelatin, but I’m not taking the chance of losing the rewards of my hard-earned pocket money. (I occasionally load the dishwasher and get ten pounds a month for it.)

  “What have you got?” I ask Nathan.

  “A coconut mushroom, a shrimp, chocolate mice…some pink-and-blue sour fizzies.”

  “They’re my favorites. Do you have two?”

  “I’ve got three. Do you want one?”

  “I’ll trade you for my spare cola bottle.”

  “Is it fizzy?”

  “Yeah.”

  We sit quietly, breaking the sweets in two with our teeth and chewing for ages.

  “Would you have sex with me?” I ask Nathan.

  His head snaps toward me really quickly. “Like…” Nathan’s eyes are wide, and he looks me up and down. “What?”

  “Do you like me enough to have sex with me? I mean, I’m just thinking about why the killer chose Billie. You know, because she was pretty. So, I was thinking, if you had to rape someone, like, you absolutely had to…would you choose me?”

  Nathan swallows, looks uncomfortably at his sweets and rips the head off a coconut mushroom. “Yeah, I guess. You’re pretty.” His voice is getting low and croaky.

  “Cool.” I bite my lip to keep from smiling loads. “Do you…do you think I’m prettier than Billie?”

  “Yur,” Nathan mutters.

  I grin broadly. This is the best news! Nathan can’t be the killer because if he likes me more than Billie he would have killed me, wouldn’t he? I swing my legs happily. This means I can ask Nathan for help with figuring out who the killer is, which is great because I have something I want to ask him to do. (Also I am so excited Nathan Nolan thinks I’m pretty. I think I would like him to be on top of me, like in sex, when we’re older. I like it when he hugs me.) I break a piece off my strawberry lace with my teeth.

  “Do you fancy me too?” Nathan says quietly.

  “Yes. I’d definitely pick you to marry if you were at my school when we played Will You Marry Me.”

  Nathan smiles. “Really?” He eats the stalk of the mushroom. “That’s cool. I guess it’s kind of the same thing.”

  “Not really. People who are married don’t get raped.”

  He looks at me sideways. “How do you know that?”

  I talk while chewing my lace in my mouth. “It’s true, isn’t it? Right?”

  He opens his mouth, and closes it, then shrugs.

  I finish my lace and spit on my hands to wipe the stickiness off. “Nathan, I want to find Billie’s killer.” Nathan’s face goes pale at this. “But to do that, I need to understand how and why he murdered her, and that means doing some research—”

  “You really think you can find her killer?” he says, kind of meanly. “’Cause you’re such a smarty-pants, aren’t you?”

  I frown. “I’m intelligent, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Bet you’re top of your year.”

  “It’s not hard. There’s only eleven of us.”

  “Think a lot of yourself, do you?” he says, kind of funnily.

  “Being clever doesn’t make you a better person,” I tell him. “Trying your best to right wrongs makes you a better person.”

  “Is that why you’re so interested in Billie?”

  “She’s my best friend. I have to do something. I have to at least understand”—I bite my lip—“what happened. Maybe I can stop it from happening to anyone else.”

  “You’ll never make her alive again. She’ll always be dead.”

  I frown. “Why are you being so negative? Do you not want me to find Billie’s killer?”

  “I’m not being negative.” Nathan says this like it’s a really long word and I’m showing off. “Smarty-pants.”

  “What are you talking about? The word ‘negative’ only has three syllables. A baby could say it. You’re changing the subject on purpose by teasing me.”

  “No, I’m not. I don’t care whether you find the killer.”

  “You don’t care that there’s a killer on the loose?”

  “It won’t make her alive again, that’s all I’m saying. What’s the point?”

  “She’s not quite dead,” I say.

  “Huh?”

  I look in his eyes. “Well, she is dead, but…I see her.”

  “Like at the memorial?”

  “No, like pretty often.”

  He looks around wildly then back at me, and narrows his eyes. “Is she here now? When have you seen her?”

  “Outside my window, before I found her. In the playground. At the memorial. In the copse, the other night.”

  “You went back to the copse?”

  I nod.

 
“You shouldn’t hang out there!” he says, panicked.

  “I’m not scared.”

  “She can’t be a ghost,” Nathan says miserably. He stares into his bag, and then picks out the fizzy cola bottle and chews off its cap. “She’s not a ghost,” he says finally, as if he’s trying to convince us both.

  “Yes, she is.” I rip another bit off my strawberry lace.

  Nathan is still pale. “Are you afraid of ghosts?”

  “No!” he says quickly. “Not unless…”

  “Unless what?”

  “Well, if I…if I had done something bad to her, I’d be afraid. Because she might be back to get me. Has she said why she’s back? Is she here for revenge?”

  “Revenge.” My eyes widen. “Yes, I’ve been thinking about that—because if her killer was gone, it would redress the balance of good and evil, and protect other—”

  “I don’t believe in ghosts anyway,” Nathan suddenly says. “You’re wrong.”

  I frown at him for interrupting me and saying I’m wrong. “I’m not wrong,” I say darkly. “In fact, I’m rarely ever wrong.”

  “Huh.” Nathan puts the rest of the cola bottle into his mouth, but he looks sick and sweaty again, like in the memorial. “I hope she doesn’t come ’round here.”

  I swallow my lace and watch him chew. He yaps. He obviously hasn’t been taught to eat with his mouth shut. But that makes sense, given what Mum and Dad said. Nathan looks afraid.

  “I need to know what happened to her, Nathan,” I say. “Her ghost wants me to find out.”

  He looks at me sideways. “Do you think she will go away if you do?”

  “Yes. So you’ll help me, right? Can you pretend to rape me?”

  Rape is the worst thing that can possibly happen to you. It’s even worse than being dead, because it hurts so much and you’re haunted forever by it. People who are raped are empty shells…That’s what I’m told. Or maybe I wasn’t told. I don’t know how I know that, but that’s how I understand it; that’s what everyone believes. Here’s what I have a problem with, though: if that were true, it would mean Billie is better off dead. I don’t want her to be dead, and I don’t think Billie would want to be dead. Billie really enjoyed fun, and that’s something you can’t have if you can’t move your own body and you’re stuck underground, and the only sound you can hear is the bugs slithering and making tiny scratching noises outside the thin wood of your coffin, and you know one day they’ll break through and eat you, but until then you have to listen to them and know that that day is coming, for about fifty years. I imagine this a lot. It stops me from sleeping.

  If I’m going to understand what happened to Billie, and solve her murder, I’m going to have to understand what perverts do, better than most people would. So what does it feel like? Why would they want to do it? How do you die from it? Why is it so bad that you’re better off dead? And, most importantly, how could you escape from it?

  Nathan looks at me with his mouth open, and then his face screws up. “You want me to pretend to rape you?”

  “Yeah.” It occurs to me too that Nathan would be very close to me when we do it, which makes me feel excited. Maybe he will kiss me again.

  Nathan looks nervous, though. “Mm…”

  “Come on.” I leap off the fence. “Let’s go to your trailer.”

  “Why can’t we go to yours?”

  “’Cause my nan’s in. And Sam.”

  “Oh,” Nathan says, still sat on the fence. “Okay.”

  “What’s the matter?” I say, starting to feel embarrassed. Maybe he doesn’t really want to touch me, because he doesn’t find me pretty after all. Maybe he was just saying it to be nice. “Don’t you know how?”

  “Yeah! Of course I do,” he says, annoyed for some reason. He puts his sweets away in the pocket of his school pants and grabs my hand roughly. “Come on, then. I’ll show you what happened to Billie.”

  We tramp through the field, toward the trailer park. Behind it the copse looks dark and ominous. When we get across one field, we push through a hedge. It’s a shortcut. In the trailer park there is a creaking of something metal nearby, as if a door is swinging off its hinges, and a few ratty dogs wandering around sniffing things, but beyond that the park looks deserted.

  Nathan’s trailer is one of the nearest, and medium-sized compared to the others. It has a laundry line outside and some rusty crates by the door. He unlocks the door with a key that looks like our car key, and I follow him inside. My eyes adjust to the darkness after the bright sunshine outside. It’s cramped, and sort of musty-smelling. There are dirty dishes in the sink.

  “It’s not…” Nathan mumbles. He picks up an empty packet of Pop-Tarts and puts it in the bin. “…That nice.” He picks up a cloth that smells and wipes the little table down. It’s a plastic table, with bench seats on either side.

  “It’s okay,” I say charitably.

  “Bet your mum cleans your house really nice,” he says.

  “Mum works. We have a cleaning lady that comes once a fortnight. And Nan does the laundry.”

  “A cleaning lady? You’re well posh.”

  “Not really. Not compared to most people. Where are your playing cards?” I ask.

  “Huh?”

  “You said you were playing cards the night Billie died.”

  “Oh. Yeah. They must be around here somewhere.” He picks up a bunch of empty baked bean cans and puts them in the bin, and pushes the dishes into the washing-up bowl.

  “Who were you playing cards with?” I ask.

  Nathan doesn’t answer.

  “Your mum?”

  “I was playing solitaire, Thera,” he says, kind of mechanically.

  I look around. The only bedroom is at one end. The door is open and I can see a double bed, and then the trailer stops. “Where do you sleep?”

  He turns to what I thought was a cupboard and pulls a sliding door back to reveal a bunk bed. “In here.”

  “You’ve got teddy bears.”

  “Everybody’s got teddies,” he says.

  “I just didn’t expect it. You’re older. And a boy.”

  He just looks at me.

  I nod to the little ladder leading to the bed with a duvet on it. “Get on the bunk, then.”

  Nathan wrinkles his nose, then bites at the cuff of his sweater and pulls his sleeve down, and then the rest of the sweater off.

  “So that’s how your cuffs get so shredded.”

  Nathan is quiet. He throws the sweater on the bottom bunk, which is just a big pile of clothes and schoolbooks. “You go up first.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause you go on the bottom.”

  “Oh. Okay.” I clamber up the little ladder, and scooch into the small space. I can press my toes on the ceiling. It’s not much bigger than a coffin. Nathan’s head pops up next to me. Suddenly he’s really close and I can smell his breath. It’s fizzy-cola-smelling. His eyes are huge, and blue-gray like the North Sea. His eyelashes are dark and long. He slides on top of me.

  “You’re squashing my tummy,” I say.

  “Open your legs. I’m supposed to be in between.”

  I part my legs and my foot dangles off the bunk. “Your eyes have a gold circle around the pupil.”

  He blinks. His cheeks are red. His face is really close to mine. His chest is pressed against me and is rock-hard. He must be really muscly underneath his T-shirt. “Okay. Just don’t move for a second.”

  “Okay.”

  He takes my hands and puts them behind my head, with his hands on them.

  “Ouch. You’re hurting my wrists.”

  “That’s what’s supposed to happen.” Nathan starts to move forward and back, our stomachs rubbing together.

  “Do we kiss?” I ask, watching his eyes. They are really wide and staring into mine.

/>   “No.”

  “Oh,” I say, disappointed.

  “Do you want me to talk to you?”

  “Like…chat?”

  “No, like, call you names.”

  “What names?”

  “Like…‘slut’ and stuff.”

  “Is that what men do?”

  “Some of them.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I, um…” Nathan hesitates. “I saw a video. Just rub on me.”

  I move my body a bit like he’s moving his, but it just makes it more bumpy, and I’m sad that he had a chance to kiss me and didn’t take it. I start to feel hot and uncomfortable. “Can you let go of my wrists? You’re hurting me.”

  “I’m supposed to hold you still,” he grumbles, but he lets go, and I put my hands on his back. “That’s much more comfy.”

  “Should I do it harder?”

  “Why?”

  His voice goes really quiet. “I’m going easy on you.”

  “Don’t go easy on me!” I hiss. “I’m not a wimp. Do it properly.”

  “Um, okay.” He moves forward and backward faster, our groins banging together a bit painfully. His whole body feels hard and like you could smash me up with it.

  “Ouch, it hurts.”

  “Sorry,” Nathan says. He is breathing heavily, and he looks confused and like he’s in pain too. And then he looks away from me, like he doesn’t want me to see his face.

  “Put your hands around my neck,” I instruct.

  “What?” Nathan gasps breathily. He doesn’t get it. “Put—”

  Suddenly there is a shout from the open window by the door.

  “Jan, I’ve got them dresses sewn up for you! I’ll bring them ’round after dinner.”

  Nathan jerks suddenly upward and off me. He bangs his head on the ceiling, then races quietly down the ladder and runs into what I guess is the bathroom, slamming the door.

  I sit up, climb down, and stand in the middle of the trailer. “Weird,” I mutter. I smooth down my clothes.

  The door opens. A lady comes in. She must be Nathan’s mum. She is a bit chubby and dressed in old, baggy jeans, and a very dirty kind of lab-coat-type thing with red smears all over it that look like blood. She has a cigarette burning in her hand. “And who are you, then?” she says, looking me up and down.