Between the Lies

by Cathy MacPhail

  “You’re going to get done for Frances,” someone shouted.

  “That wasn’t me. And I can prove that as well.”

  I threw one of the crutches across the floor and it clattered on the wood and slid to a halt at Belinda’s feet.

  “That could have killed somebody!” she yelled.

  And I screamed, “I want to kill somebody. I could have been killed in that shaft! What’s been done to me is killing meeeee!” My screams echoed like a wail across the auditorium.

  “Got to get her out of here.” Robbie waved for someone to come over and help him. It was the three witches who came, never wanting to miss the action: Tracey, Belinda and Andrea.

  “We’ve got to get her to calm down.”

  I screamed again. “Calm down? After what’s been done to me? I’m not the one who should calm down.” I was shaking. I was actually shaking.

  Andrea tried to take my arm. “Get away from me!” I screamed at her, and I hobbled from the auditorium.

  Robbie was right beside me. He gripped my arm again. “You’re making a fool of yourself.”

  “Oh you wait and see! See who’s going to be the fool when I’m finished.”

  I heard Belinda laughing. Hard to disguise her big daft laugh.

  I swung round at her. “What are you laughing at? You’re not going to be laughing when I tell the head what I know.”

  Robbie had to force me towards the janitor’s closet. “Get in there, Abbie, calm down, please.” He looked back at Andrea. “You gonny stay with her? I’m away to get a teacher. She’s out of control.”

  “I’m not! I’m not! I’m not!” But my screaming only proved I was.

  The closet had shelves, buckets and brushes, there was a small desk piled high with boxes. I backed against one of the shelves and yelled again, “I don’t want them in here.”

  Andrea waved Tracey and Belinda away. I was glad to see them go. I didn’t want everybody there. It was hard enough.

  “I’m not out of control, Andrea,” I told her, as she closed the door behind them. “I know you don’t like me, but I’m the victim here.”

  There was a time when I thought she did like me. The phone call she had made, praising me for all I was doing for Jude, asking if there was anything she could do to help.

  “You said you know who this UNKNOWN is?”

  “I do.”

  “Who is it then?”

  “I’m only telling the head.”

  “He won’t believe you, Abbie. Nobody believes you.”

  “But they will, Andrea, when I show them the proof.”

  “Who is it, Abbie? Don’t keep me in suspense.”

  And I couldn’t keep from saying it any longer.

  “It’s Jude.”

  She looked totally surprised. “Jude?”

  “I know, last person you suspect, eh? She fooled everybody, but I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, and it’s so clear to me. She made it look as if I was the one behind the plan and everybody believed that, because wee Jude’s too stupid to come up with a clever plan like this. Isn’t that what everybody says? And her staying at my auntie’s…? Jude would never have thought of that. So that must have been me as well. Do you see what she was doing, Andrea? Fooling us all. But I’m telling you, Andrea, Jude is smarter than any of us.”

  “Jude?” she said again.

  “I know, I know, it took me a long time, such a long time to figure it out. I blamed everybody else, I kept dismissing her, but when you really think about it, it’s the only explanation.”

  “Well, I suppose, if you say so…” Her voice drifted off.

  “Andrea, you were taken in too. And you don’t believe it because you like her. But you know it was you that started all this.”

  “Me!” she straightened, moved back, but I pulled her toward me.

  “You dumped her, remember? She was heartbroken. I found her and she was crying her eyes out, and I told her…” I stopped. What I had told Jude had been pretty insulting to Andrea. “Never mind what I told her, but I was trying to help her. I gave her good advice and she starts phoning me and thanking me, and then she says, ‘I’ve got a great idea.’” My voice was breaking but I had to go on. “I should never have listened to her, it just seemed to be such a good plan, a clever plan. But of course the clever bit was not coming back when she said she would. So I’m left getting all the flack, and then she does come back – in full view of the cameras. Class, Andrea, pure class. You and me could never come up with anything like that. We’re just not in her league.”

  “Nobody’s going to believe it was Jude, Abbie. Everybody knows she’s thick as a brick.”

  I shook my head. “That’s what she wants people to think, Andrea. But, no offence, Andrea, when it comes to Jude, you’re the one that’s thick as a brick.”

  Andrea stifled a giggle with her hand. “Me? Thick as a brick? Jude Tremayne cleverer than me?”

  “Hard to believe I know, but it’s true… and I’ve got the proof.”

  “Proof? What proof?”

  “I’ve got a photo on my phone of Jude pushing me down that shaft.”

  She looked really puzzled. “You’ve got your phone? A photo of her?” Then she smiled. “But I mean… how are you going to prove that’s Jude? A photo of a clown?”

  And I stepped back before I said, “What makes you think it was a photo of a clown, Andrea?”

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Andrea took a deep breath. “You said it was a clown chasing you.”

  I shook my head. “No, I never mentioned a clown near the shaft, Andrea. I knew nobody would believe me. So how did you know?”

  You can see a face changing, from an innocent schoolgirl to something menacing. And that’s what I saw in that moment. Andrea’s whole expression changed.

  I asked again, “How did you know, Andrea? Did Jude make you do it, Andrea? Did she trick you the way she tricked me? Because we can both go to the head and tell him.”

  “What? Jude Tremayne trick me? Make me do something? Nobody makes me do anything I don’t want to do. It was never Jude, Abbie. It was always me.”

  I shook my head. “No. You’re not clever enough for this.”

  And that got her, as I knew – hoped – it would. She snapped at me. “Me? Not clever enough for this? Clever enough to be in the toilets that day when wimpy Jude is crying all over the sinks. You didn’t know that, did you? I heard everything. You called me a loser? You? No-mates-Abbie calling me a loser! Me… You said you’d never let anybody, especially somebody like me, get to you – nothing would break you. That’s when I came up with my plan, Abbie Kerr. Mine! I would see you go down and down, till you could go no further. I would break you. We’d see who was a ‘strong person’. Jude was up for it – she’d be up for anything if I promised to be her ‘friend forever’. You were the one I thought would be hard to convince, but no, I got Jude to ask, and you were up for it too. I got a copy of your auntie’s keys one day when you left your bag lying around. Dead easy. I was the one told Jude to stay where she was that night of the vigil. I even told her exactly when to come back. I knew the tv was on her doorstep, but a real bit of luck you were there as well.”

  “And UNKNOWN? You’ve been UNKNOWN all along?”

  “Dead easy to send a message from a withheld number. You know I’m good at I.T., Abbie. Just as easy to lift your dad’s phone for ten minutes and send you a text.”

  “Were Tracey and Belinda in on it too?”

  She laughed outright. “Them two? They’re thicker than Jude. No, Jude was the only one, and she had nothing to do with the texts. Apart from the ones in the supermarket.” She had such a cruel smile. “Didn’t spot her there, did you? She saw you with the chicken, and then she bolted and messaged me.” She folded her arms and stared at me, smug written all over her face. “Finding out you were so scared of clowns was the icing on the cake.”

  “And you got into my garden just to frighten me?”

  “You should have seen yo
ur face. I thought you were going to faint.”

  “And you lured me to the shipyard?”

  “Remember Jude was on the phone when you arrived that day? Who do you think she was talking to? I heard you telling her you’d fallen out with your dad. It was perfect.”

  “You saw me falling down that shaft, Andrea. I could have died down there. You didn’t know if I’d broken my ankle or my neck. And they were getting ready to hammer a steel pillar into that shaft. If I’d been unconscious…” I shuddered. How could she do such a thing?

  She waved it aside. “So? You’d be no loss to anybody. I told a few folk that you’d run away cause you wanted more attention. A wee whisper here, a wee whisper there. So easy. Everybody in this school’s thick.”

  “Why… why are you telling me all this, Andrea? I’m going to Mr Barr.”

  That only made her laugh. “Oh Abbie, who is ever going to believe a word you say?”

  The door opened.

  It was Robbie. “Just about everybody, Andrea. Come and see.”

  Andrea followed him out, still talking. “She’s definitely lost it, Robbie, you should hear the things…” and then she stopped. There was her face, up on the big screen in the atrium, and she was confessing everything. “What? What’s happening?”

  I came out behind her. “Smile, Andrea, you’ve just been framed.”

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Andrea’s confession was played over and over on every screen in the school. Our whole year group had seen it live in the auditorium. People had to grab Tracey and Belinda to stop them from going after Andrea. “Thick as bricks are we?”

  I would have let them at her.

  But I had got UNKNOWN at last.

  And who did I owe it to? It was all thanks to Robbie.

  He was the one at the door that night when Dad went to Benny’s.

  “Hi Abbie,” he had said. “I’ve got something that belongs to you.” And he’d held out my phone.

  For a second I thought he was UNKNOWN, but only for a second. Because then he’d smiled and said, “Proves everything you said was true, Abbie. You did get a text from your dad, and there was a clown.”

  I still couldn’t take it in. “How did you get that?”

  He grinned. “I went back to the scene of the crime. Took a bit of finding – it was sunk right in the mud. But there it was. And once I’d cleaned it up and recharged it, I could turn it on.”

  “But why… why did you go back?”

  “Because when they started saying it was you that made Frances trip, even I struggled to believe that. You drive people potty, but I didn’t think you would set a trap like that, and I began to think… if you didn’t do that, maybe you didn’t do any of the other things.”

  “My hero,” I said.

  “Don’t be sarcastic. Anyway, after you were rescued, everybody heard about the text you said you’d got, and how your phone was missing, and how handy that was for you. And I thought, what if she is telling the truth, and she really did lose her phone when she fell?”

  “I could kiss you, Robbie.”

  He took a step back. “Please don’t. I’ve not got the antidote.”

  That made me laugh. “I know who sent that text. Robbie, I think I know who has been behind this all along.”

  Because I had been figuring out something else. It was what had been niggling at me when I was trapped in the shaft. That text I got from Dad.

  Meet me at 5 at Ferguzons shipyard. Made me remember another text I’d seen from Andrea. My bestezt friend. She had that little habit of putting a ‘z’ instead of an ‘s’.

  The answer’s on the television, Sara Flynn had said in my dream. That kept coming back to me. She was right. I remembered the piece I’d seen about folie á deux. Two people who, when they get together, can do evil things. Of course it couldn’t just be Jude; Jude wasn’t clever enough or bad enough to come up with such a plan. But someone else was, and who else but Andrea? Andrea, so proud of her own I.T. skills, Andrea, who knew how desperate Jude was to be her friend again, so desperate she would agree to anything.

  And when I thought about it like that, it all came together.

  But how to prove it?

  It was Robbie who had come up with the idea of tricking her. “Saw it in an old episode of ‘Criminal Minds’” he had told me. “It’s called ‘reverse psychology’. If you tell her she wasn’t clever enough to come up with this but Jude was, if you keep on and on about it, Andrea won’t be able to take that. She’ll break. And we’ll record it all.”

  He said he’d set up tiny cameras from the studio in the janitor’s closet, disguise them, and our whole conversation would be fed live through the school. It sounded so simple when he said it, but I was shaking all over that day. What would I have done if it hadn’t worked? I don’t know. I didn’t think that far ahead. It had to work.

  EPILOGUE

  Andrea left the school. She was charged and shamed. Her confession, caught on camera, went viral on YouTube. (Well, she always wanted to be famous.) Now she was the one discussed on tv. ‘Folie á deux’ now referred to Andrea and Jude. Jude broke like an egg as soon as she was questioned. Confessed everything, blamed Andrea. Somehow I don’t think that particular ‘friends forever’ duo will last.

  Andrea had more than just a cruel streak. The police psychologists said there was something really wrong with her.

  I still have nightmares about being down in that shaft. What if I hadn’t been found? What if I’d been an unsolved mystery?

  I shake the thought of that away. Didn’t happen.

  And so, what did happen to me? Do you think I am now the most popular girl in the school? Ha! No way, that title belongs deservedly to Frances, the only one through all of this who was kind to me. Nice to everyone. Good people do exist. They’re everywhere.

  I enjoy school. I still argue all the time with Robbie, but I kind of like that. Josh Creen will never forgive me; he still glares at me in the corridor, and I can’t really blame him.

  But I wasn’t going crazy, I wasn’t mad. I was so close to madness it scared me. It made me realise how people can manipulate you and play with your mind. That was what Andrea had done. She had spread so much evil with her wicked whispers.

  I don’t use my phone so much now. I turn it off at home, and talk to my dad. At night, I put it in my bedside drawer. And when I go out with friends (me, with friends!), it stays in my bag.

  I still feel a chill when I hear the ping saying I have a new message. My first thought is always, A message from who? And I hold my breath before I look, and pray: as long as it isn’t from UNKNOWN…

  COPYRIGHT

  KelpiesEdge is an imprint of Floris Books

  First published in 2017 by Floris Books

  © 2017 Cathy MacPhail

  This eBook edition published in 2017

  Cathy MacPhail asserts her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be recognised as the Author of this Work. All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced without prior permission of Floris Books, Edinburgh www.florisbooks.co.uk

  The publisher acknowledges subsidy from Creative Scotland towards the publication of this volume

  British Library CIP Data available

  ISBN 978-178250-384-2