‘He might be just waiting for the right moment to tell her,’ I suggested at recess time.
‘I don’t care what he’s doing,’ said Soph.
At lunchtime I said, ‘I’m sure there’s a perfectly logical explanation for all this.’
‘Really,’ Soph said, ‘I don’t care.’
It looked like the affair was over before it had really begun.
But I had reckoned without Vicky Lind. As we were putting our books away in our lockers at the end of the day, Soph and I suddenly found ourselves confronted by Vicky Lind and her two best friends, Misha and Lacey. All three of them were glaring at us with overt hostility.
‘Hey, Sophie,’ Vicky said. ‘I heard you had an interesting day on Saturday.’
‘Where’d you hear that?’ Soph asked.
‘It doesn’t matter where I heard it,’ Vicky said. ‘I just want to know one thing. Where do you get off, pashing someone else’s boyfriend?’
‘For your information, he was pashing me,’ Soph said.
‘We know all about it,’ Misha purred nastily. ‘He was just using you. We laughed when we found out.’
‘We laughed and laughed,’ Lacey echoed, nodding.
Soph flushed angrily, but she wasn’t going to let Lacey and Misha push her around. ‘You don’t own Ravi. If he wants to see other people, that’s his business.’
‘Actually,’ Vicky said, ‘it is my business. He’s my boyfriend, and if I catch you sleazing onto him again you’re going to be sorry.’
‘Oh yeah?’ Soph said. ‘What are you going to do?’
Lacey and Misha exchanged nasty smiles. Vicky just fixed her with the death glare.
‘Try it and see,’ Vicky said. ‘Come on, girls.’
Vicky wheeled around and strutted off with Misha and Lacey in tow and I heard one of them hissing ‘Slut!’ loud enough for half the corridor to hear as they departed. Heads turned. People stared.
‘What?’ Soph said combatively. The heads turned away again.
‘Did you notice Vicky gets kind of cross-eyed when she’s angry?’ I said, trying to sound unrattled.
Soph said nothing. But her nostrils were pinched together. This was never a good sign.
‘She’s all talk,’ I said.
Soph slammed her locker shut and swung her school bag onto her shoulder.
‘Think she can intimidate me, does she?’ she said.
It’s ironic really. If it wasn’t for Vicky’s intervention, I’m pretty sure Soph would have stood on her dignity and completely ignored Ravi after he cut her dead in the corridor. I know she really really liked him, but a girl’s got limits and there are some things you just shouldn’t put up with. But as soon as Vicky started throwing her weight around, that just got Soph’s back up. She wasn’t going to let herself be pushed around by anybody, least of all by Little Miss Perfect.
She decided she was going to teach Vicky a lesson. And she was going to do it at the school social. She didn’t tell me what she had planned, but I had a feeling it probably involved me, my powers, and a lightning bolt.
I’d hoped that Soph might have forgotten about the whole finding-a-boyfriend-for-Melissa plan now that her own hopes for Ravi had been dashed, but I soon discovered I was wrong.
‘Have you asked him yet?’ she asked, five days out from the social.
‘Who?’
‘Ben. Have you invited him?’
‘No, not yet.’
‘Why not? You’d better hurry up or he might be busy.’
Four days out from the social she rang me again.
‘Have you called him yet?’
‘No.’
‘You’d better call him.’
Three days out.
‘Meliss?’
‘I’m going to do it!’
‘I’m beginning to think he’s a snuffleupagus.’
‘He’s not a snuffleupagus. He exists!’
‘Then prove it.’
‘All right, I will!’
But I didn’t call him.
Two days out.
‘He doesn’t exist, does he?’
‘Shut up!’
I decided I couldn’t stand it anymore. I hung up the phone and went to my school bag and rummaged around inside it, looking for my address book. (I’d written Ben’s number in it so I wouldn’t lose it.) But wouldn’t you know it? It wasn’t in my school bag.
The next day at school I went to my locker to see whether I’d left it in there. But it wasn’t there either. My address book had vanished. I suppose I should have realised then that something was up. But I was so distracted by the thought of the social and what Soph was going to say when I confessed that I was too much of a loser to invite Ben that it never even occurred to me to wonder how my address book – and only my address book – had gone missing from my locker. It’s not unknown for me to lose stuff. I just assumed I’d lost it.
I went home on Friday afternoon and had one more really good search of my room. I thought even if my address book had gone astray, maybe I’d be able to find the original piece of paper that Ben had written his number on. I knew I hadn’t thrown it away – it was the first thing Ben had ever given me, and it would’ve felt wrong to just chuck it in the bin. So I’d kept it.
I searched all the crap on my desk. I opened up my books in case it had accidentally got tucked away inside them. I looked on the floor, in the bin, I looked everywhere. I couldn’t find it.
‘Mum, have you seen a piece of paper with a phone number on it that was on my desk?’
Mum hadn’t seen it.
‘Jason, have you been in my room?’
‘No.’
‘Did you take the phone number that was on my desk?’
‘No.’
‘I need that number!’ I snapped.
‘Whose number is it? Is it your boyfriend’s?’
‘No!’
Jason’s eyes went as big as saucers. ‘Melissa’s got a boyfriend!’ he screamed.
‘I have not!’ I shouted.
‘Melissa’s got a boyfriend! Melissa’s got a boyfriend!’
‘Shut up or I’ll tear your head off!’
‘Melissa’s got a boyfriend!’
I slammed my bedroom door and pulled a pillow over my head. I tried thinking about a quiet lagoon with white sands and crystal waters and palm trees, which was a technique I was trying out. It was supposed to help me manage my anger.
‘Melissa’s got a boyfriend!’
It wasn’t really working. I threw the pillow away and called Soph.
‘Soph,’ I said. ‘I’ve lost his phone number.’
Jason was still chanting in the background.
‘Meliss,’ Soph said. ‘You’re pathetic.’
In a way it was a relief that I hadn’t been able to find his number, because the more I thought about it the more stupid it seemed. I couldn’t imagine me asking him. Him consenting. Him actually attending. I imagined him filling an evening with chitchat. Meeting my friends. The questions, the whispers, the where-did-you-meet-him, the is-he-your-boyfriend, the what-school-does-he-go-to. I imagined him meeting Soph and fielding her questions, which could well lead to other questions, which could lead to other people finding out what I’d become and who my new boyfriend really was. I imagined slow-dancing in a clinch with Ben, and felt a little shiver of nervous excitement in the pit of my stomach. The snake on my wrist gave an inquiring little ‘shall I summon him?’ quiver, and I slapped my hand over it in a panic. ‘Don’t you dare,’ I whispered to it, and felt it go quiet under my hand.
There was also the problem that he wasn’t even slightly interested in me. I wasn’t an expert in these matters, but I could tell.
No, there was absolutely no way I could have invited him to be my date for the school social.
But a part of me wished things were different.
Oubliette
The Saturday of the social would normally have been a cricket day, but luckily we had a bye, so I had the day free. I’
d arranged to go over to Soph’s place at five to start getting ready for the social but by three I was already poking through my wardrobe, trying to find something cool to wear. The options did not look good, and I was on the brink of going to Mum and begging her to take me for an emergency shop (at least for a new top) when I felt a sudden, weird, plummeting sensation in my stomach, like I’d stepped into a lift shaft but the lift wasn’t there. I felt my bracelet squirm against my wrist, and when I looked at it, its eyes were vividly green.
Ben. He’s in trouble.
He was calling to me, just as he had that first night, but this time I knew it was for real. I could sense his fear, I knew he was in danger, and I knew I had to go to him. An image of a seedy motel jumped into my mind: ugly pale brick and concrete, a tiny desolate pool crammed behind a fence, neon signs advertising colour television. The sign on the wall identified it as the Slumberwell Motor Inn. He was there, I knew it. But where was there? And how was I supposed to get there?
I thought about going into the lounge room where Dad was watching the cricket and saying, ‘Hey, Dad, any chance you could give me a lift to the Slumberwell Motor Inn? I don’t know where it is and I don’t know how to get there and I can’t tell you why I need to go there but I need a lift, pronto.’
So not.
I gathered up all that remained of my pocket money and ran into the lounge room. ‘Dad,’ I said. ‘Is it all right if I go over to Soph’s early?’
‘Sure,’ Dad said, his eyes glued to the screen.
It was going to have to be the train.
I hurried off to the station, my mind racing. What on earth had happened to Ben? Had the agents of order tracked him down at last? I couldn’t think of any other reason he’d call me – not that I was likely to be able to help. I’d never even seen an agent of order, let alone fought one. I didn’t even know how you fought them. I hoped I wasn’t going to have to punch them out because that was totally not my area of expertise.
The train pulled in and I climbed aboard. I should probably be trying to come up with a rescue mission, I thought, as I found a seat. What I really need is a foolproof plan. But how could I start planning until I knew what I was dealing with? And how could I know what I was dealing with until I was right in the middle of it and it was way too late to back out?
I began to wish I hadn’t come.
We stopped at an interchange station and something prompted me to jump off my train and onto the train waiting on the other side of the platform. That train whisked me off on a line I’d never been on before, and I watched the factories and the shopping centres and the backyards whiz past until at last something told me I had got to where I was going and I jumped off.
I was running entirely on instinct now. I left the station and turned left. It was a long walk down a wide and desolate stretch of road, six lanes almost devoid of traffic. It was eerily quiet.
And then I saw it, just as I’d seen it in my mind’s eye: the Slumberwell Motor Inn. I ran across the six empty lanes and peered around a hoarding to see what I could see. There were a few cars in the car park. Televisions playing audibly. No sign of anyone standing guard. But something told me that Ben was here somewhere.
I snuck round the corner and scurried over to where the buildings began. The first room was empty. So was the second room. The third room was occupied, but when I peeped in I saw a middle-aged guy in his underwear drinking a beer and watching the cricket. The fourth room was empty. Then I peeped into the fifth room.
Ben was there, lying on the bed, channel-surfing. From what I could see, peering through a gap in the curtains, he seemed to be all alone. I tapped ever so gently on the window but still he didn’t look up. I tapped a little louder. Still nothing. I tapped a third time. What was he, deaf? I turned and checked the car park one more time, terrified that an agent of order was about to pounce on me. But there was no-one in sight.
I decided to try the door.
Ever so carefully, I put my hand on the doorknob and turned. To my amazement, it opened. The door was unlocked and there was no chain across it either. I opened the door a crack and looked in at Ben. At last he looked up, and a look of horror crossed his face.
‘No, Melissa! Don’t cross the threshold!’ he shouted.
‘Why not?’ I asked, letting go of the door handle in alarm.
‘This is an oubliette,’ Ben said.
‘A what?’
‘A kind of prison cell. Once you’re inside it you can’t get out.’
‘But it looks like an ordinary hotel room.’ And a very ugly hotel room too: the carpet was brown and orange and the curtains were the colour of slime.
‘The forces of order have set up a dampening field to stop me using my powers, so I can’t get out,’ Ben explained. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘You called me,’ I said.
He stared at me, and I saw the colour drain from his face. ‘I didn’t mean to do that,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to get out of here, now.’
‘But I only just got here.’
Ben came to the door and peered out. ‘There was an agent guarding the door,’ he said.
We both scanned the car park anxiously. There was still no-one in sight.
‘I didn’t see anyone,’ I said. ‘Maybe he gave up and went home.’
‘I doubt it,’ Ben said. ‘He’ll be waiting for you to show up.’
‘And then what?’
‘Then they can do what they like with us.’
I remembered the story Ben had told me about the time he’d been ambushed. They hadn’t neutralised him straightaway then either – they’d kept him alive to give Marcus time to find them. They had to be using the same strategy again – using one of us as bait to catch the other.
Ben’s face set in a look of grim determination. ‘You’ve got to get out of here. I’ll do what I can to hold them off, but once they’re finished with me they’re probably going to come after you. Try to –’ He broke off, struggling to think of some advice to give me. ‘Look, just head for home and stay there. If you send a general distress call, someone might come and help you. Just don’t let them catch you on your own.’
I stared at him, horrified, realising he was expecting to get neutralised any minute. And then they’d come after me.
‘But I can’t hold them off without you,’ I said, my heart starting to hammer.
‘You’ll have to,’ Ben said. ‘Just – try not to panic.’
Try not to panic? I took a deep breath, doing my best to keep steady. ‘But – isn’t there something I can do to break the force-field?’ I asked. ‘Just because your powers aren’t working, doesn’t mean that mine aren’t.’
Ben looked at me, and I saw a spark of hope in his eyes. But then he shook his head. ‘Forget it,’ he said, ‘there’s no time.’
I probably should have been running for the train station, but for some reason I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. ‘I’m not leaving without you,’ I said firmly. It was all up to me now. A wild and terrible desperation welled up in me and I felt a shot of adrenalin coursing through my system. The back of my neck started to shiver and my bracelet squirmed against my wrist. I had no brilliant idea. No plan. All I had was a mad conviction that somehow, maybe, I could fix this. I shut my eyes and opened my heart and I felt a huge, dark, pulsing power singing and surging through my limbs. Save us, I thought, and thwoomp! A massive surge of destructive energy blasted out into the world.
‘Can you hear that?’ Ben said.
Out there on the spooky deserted highway a lone car was approaching. I felt the hairs prickling on the back of my neck.
‘They’re coming,’ Ben said.
As the car drew closer the sound of the engine became a deep diesely rumble and I realised that it wasn’t a car at all – it was a truck. I turned and watched as it roared up the highway towards us. It was the front part of a semi-trailer – just the cab, with no load attached – and it was coming towards us like a bat out of hell. As it drew closer
I saw it veer across the lanes as if it was making a beeline for us, and I felt a chill in my heart as I wondered what had happened to the driver. It blasted into the driveway of the motel like a guided missile, hit the concrete edge of a garden bed and became airborne.
‘Look out!’ I yelled.
I hurled myself one way, Ben hurled himself the other, as the truck sailed through the air, engine revving insanely, and crashed straight through the wall of Ben’s motel room.
‘Ben?’ I called, through the gap that had been made in the wall. ‘Are you all right?’
All was darkness inside. The engine was revving like it was going to explode and I could smell smoke.
‘Ben?’ I called again.
The brick wall had collapsed inward like it was made of toy blocks and I began to fear that Ben had been pinned under some falling debris, killed by my rescue attempt. But then I spotted him clambering over the wreckage. When he got to the point where the wall had been, he paused, and then crossed without any difficulty. The force-field had been destroyed.
‘It worked,’ he said, surprised.
Inside the cab, the driver of the truck stirred and moaned. ‘Are you all right in there, mate?’ Ben asked. The driver moaned again, and I was relieved to see that he wasn’t actually dead. I hoped he’d been wearing his seatbelt.
The guy from room 3, still in his underpants, stuck his head out the door. ‘What the hell was that?’ he asked.
People were starting to emerge, from the hotel rooms, from the street, attracted by the sound of disaster.
‘Come on,’ Ben said to me. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Call an ambulance!’ I shouted to the underpants guy as we took off across the car park.
The motel receptionist appeared, and saw us hurrying away. ‘Hey!’ he shouted.
But we didn’t stop.
We cleared the car park and turned onto the footpath, and just at that moment a man came around the corner with a bag of takeaway food in one hand and a soft drink in the other. He froze when he saw us.
‘Run!’ Ben shouted.
We ran.
The agent of order dumped his dinner and came after us and all I could hear was three pairs of pounding feet as we ran along the footpath.
Melissa, Queen of Evil Page 10