by Sarah Dalton
“Why do they run away from your house?” Jack asks, taking the steep turn onto my drive.
“There was a bad murder about a hundred years ago. A whole family was killed. The house stood empty for a long time after that. The locals were convinced that the place had some sort of bad mojo or something. I think we’re only the second owners since it all happened. Even now, if I mention Ravenswood to locals they give me a funny look, like I’m crazy, or possessed, or evil.”
He stops the car and peers through the windscreen. “So this is a murder house?” It could be my imagination, or the dim light of the moon, but I could swear that his eyes brighten with excitement. “It’s a beautiful building. Aren’t you scared of it?”
“Not anymore,” I say.
“You don’t think it’s haunted, then?”
“No, I don’t.” Before he can say anything else, my seatbelt is off and I’m out the door. “Thanks for the lift. See you at school tomorrow.”
I don’t look back on my way to the house, but I can feel the headlights at my back. I can feel his eyes, too, even stronger than the bright headlights, burning into me. My fingers tremble as I push my key into the lock. Inside, I let myself lean against the door and close my eyes.
“Mary?”
I let out a sigh.
“It’s me, Mum.”
“What are you doing back?” she asks. And then she sees my face. “Oh, love. What happened? Come here.”
As I’m about to fold into her arms, my phone vibrates. I pull it from my bag and check the screen. A Snapchat message comes through from Grace. My chin wobbles. The picture is of Anil, bruised and unconscious in a hospital bed. The caption reads: You did this. You’re rotten.
I delete the photo.
*
I’m not quite sure whether it’s me who shuns Grace, the opposite way around, or a mutual decision, but as soon as I get to registration, I move to the other side of the classroom. Seeing as I barely know the others, there’s not much I can do except sit by myself and ride it out. Mrs. Blake gives me a concerned look, but doesn’t say anything about the new arrangement. At one point, Terri glances over in my direction and sneers.
But it’s not until first break that I notice something very wrong. It’s not just Grace and her friends who stare at me oddly, it’s the entire school. In fact, it seems everyone is talking about me, because when I walk into a room, or past a group of laughing kids, everyone shuts up. There are whispers behind hands, stifled giggles, and one lad pretends to throw something at me.
That’s when I realise. They’ve all seen the video.
I hurry through the school, barging past the laughing students, searching for an empty, private space. It’s a rainy day. Everyone is indoors, and the classrooms are full of students glued to their smartphones. Eventually, I find a small corner of the common room to hide in, and quickly log on to Twitter.
From Grace’s account: “Scary Mary acting like a freak. Check dis.” And then a link to YouTube.
I click on the link, turning the sound right down on my phone. My stomach lurches. I already know what it is.
It’s a shaky video, which is probably because Colleen was laughing so hard at the time. In the centre of the room, I jerk around like a mad woman, screeching and slapping my body all over. I could be possessed, or having an epileptic fit. I put the phone on the floor, draw my knees up to my chin, and wish for the school to ebb away.
“Mares.” It’s Lacey’s voice. “I’ve seen it. I’m so sorry.”
I lift my head. “How could she do this to me?”
As the bell goes off, and everyone else filters into class, I remain, coiled tight like a spring. I wait until the last have gone before getting to my feet. For once, Lacey is lifeless, and I’m the one full of energy. I can feel it sparking from me: rage, shame, frustration. The common room blurs into nothingness, a blank space on the peripheral edge of my vision. There is nothing except the way I feel.
“How many more comments?” I ask, chewing on a thumbnail.
“I don’t want to say,” Lacey replies.
“Tell me.”
I only glanced at them before letting go of the phone. A glance was bad enough.
Freak.
Weirdo.
Did you notice her back fat?
Those burn scars are minging.
She’s a munter.
Flat chested too.
“Maybe a dozen,” Lacey admits.
I sink into one of the armchairs and retrieve my phone from the floor. Some of these commenters are in my classes. Some are people I sit less than two feet away from almost every single day.
“Delete your account,” Lacey says. “Delete them all now, and ignore it.”
I look at the view count. Over two thousand already. Three hundred likes. This thing is going to be bigger than school. It’s going viral.
“I can’t put up with this,” I say. I have to do something. My first instinct is to go straight to Grace and confront her, but that would just lead to more public outbursts. No, my only choice is to go to someone I trust. A teacher, maybe. Mrs. Blake.
Luckily for me, the school screens show where she’s teaching right now.
“Where are you going?” Lacey asks, skipping to keep up with me.
“I’m stopping this,” I reply.
“Hold on. Think about this. If you’re going to find Grace, that’ll make you seem even crazier. There’s no way you can confront her without some sort of shouting match going on. If you go to a teacher… Well, in my experience grassing makes the bullies worse.”
“I can’t ignore this. Not this time.” Because all I can think about is how I don’t want to be the victim anymore. I won’t go through this again. I won’t be the one bullied by the mean girls. I’m not that girl. I refuse to be that girl.
I storm into the classroom. “Mrs. Blake, there’s a message you need to take outside,” I say, trying not to look as insane as I feel, hoping that my eyes aren’t as wide and wild as I suspect they might be.
“Are you sure, Mary?” she asks. She glances toward the group of year tens.
“Yes,” I say.
“Well, all right, then.” She turns to the class. “Chapter fifteen. Read it. And I mean all of it.”
When we’re out in the corridor, I show her the video. She stands silently. Expressionless.
“What is this?” she asks eventually.
“Grace put this clip of me on YouTube. Everyone’s seen it. Look, over two thousand hits. Read the comments.”
“Yes, I can see. They’re vile. Mary, what are you doing in this video?”
“Travis Vance threw a spider on me and it went down my pyjama top. Grace put this on YouTube because she hates me.”
Mrs. Blake sighs. “I thought you were friends.”
“We were. She tricked me.”
Her face softens a little and she puts a hand on my shoulder. “Mary, I’m sorry, chuck, but there are more important things going on right now. Anil Masood is in hospital—”
“How is he?” I ask.
“He’s conscious. It sounds like broken bones and bruises but nothing internal.”
“Oh, that’s a relief.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” she says.
“Aren’t you going to help me?” I ask. “Are you going to do something about Grace?”
Mrs. Blake takes her hand from my shoulder. Her eyes harden, and she frowns at me. “Grace is my goddaughter, and I know you’re in some little spat with her right now, but she’s a good girl. I think she might be acting out because of Anil’s accident. Look, you’re a bright girl and I like you, but you’re also nearly eighteen. I think you should contact the site and ask them to take it down. This will all blow over, you’ll see. I need to get back to my class now. Oh, but one thing I will do, I’ll mention to the head teacher that you might need some extra counselling. You had a therapist before coming here, right?”
“Yes, but—”
“Maybe it’s time to go back
to him.”
She offers me one more half-sympathetic smile before disappearing through the door.
Chapter Thirteen
By the time it’s lunchtime, I’m considering leaving school. I don’t care if my car is in the garage at home; I’ll run. I’ll run all the way, and get into my bedroom and lock the door and never come out. I can’t take it anymore. The stifled laughter, the whisperings, the blatant stares. A few people shout ‘Scary Mary’ at me. Each time, the tears threaten at the backs of my eyes.
But Lacey stays next to me. Sometimes she shouts, to drown out the rest of school. Sometimes she runs a finger down the arm or face of some annoying cat-caller, leaving them with a look of confusion and fear etched on their pubescent face. All the time she offers me words of encouragement. All of it boils down to: This too shall pass. The pet phrase of Pinterest and Tumblr. I should get it on a t-shirt. It’s funny how we only think if it during the bad times. We stupidly only apply it to when we’re sad or suffering. What about during times of joy? Those times pass, too. Everything does.
“Don’t let them get to you,” Lacey says. “Seriously. They don’t matter.”
I think about buying a packet sandwich and disappearing into some quiet corner of the sports field, but the weather is damp, and I didn’t bring an umbrella. Even the rain is better than staying in this room filled with people who are talking about me. Grace sits at a table a few feet away, her large eyes flicking up to me, marble-hard under her mascara-clogged eyelashes.
“Mary, why don’t you sit with me?”
I turn away from Grace, unclenching my fists, to see Willa Maynard waving me across to a table on the outskirts of the canteen. She has a mouth full of sandwich, but still flashes me a bright smile. Lacey crackles next to me.
I move hesitantly towards her, bouncing the packet sandwich between my hands. I’m not even hungry, but I should try to force something down. There’s one thing my mother’s always right about, and that’s that nothing is worth starving for.
“Are you sure?” I ask.
She speaks with her mouth full. “Absolutely. Sit down.”
“Thanks. I’m having a bit of a weird day.” My voice cracks.
“I’ve had a few of those. But they’re the best days, too,” she says.
“You’ve got to be kidding.” I stare at her open-mouthed.
“Normal days are boring days. Weird days are when special things happen. They’re when the unusual and the fantastic happen. I love weird.” She glances across at Grace and the others. “Imagine being like them. They’re so dull. They have to be mean to other people to make anything interesting happen in their lives. But us”—her finger flicks between me and her—“we attract weird stuff, because we already are interesting people.”
I pull my sandwich packet open and shoot a glance at Lacey. My best friend sits across from Willa, her eyes unmoving and serious.
“Don’t you ever just want to fit in?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Not really.”
“But don’t you feel lonely?”
“I’m not lonely. The world is bigger than this school.”
I nod. “I wish I had friends outside here. I just moved to the area, so I don’t know it too well.”
Willa puts on a film-noir style American accent. “Stick with me, kid. You’ll go far.”
She makes me laugh even when I don’t feel like it.
Willa flips her hair and leans back in her chair. “Jack told me you were asking about Judith Taylor.”
“Yeah. It sounds like he knew her pretty well. I didn’t know Grace bullied her. I never would have become friends with Grace if I’d known.”
“It was pretty awful,” Willa says. “The poor girl. And all the hypocrites in this school act like they care. They were even on the news talking about the big tragedy, when they were the ones who laughed at her YouTube videos and slagged her off behind her back.”
“YouTube videos?” I ask.
“Yeah. She used to put up videos of her and the orchestra playing. They were really good. But then Judith put up her own videos with her own music and Grace and co added super mean comments. She got insecure about how she looked and her weight and stuff. Then she sent that card to Jack and things only got worse.”
I shake my head. “And there was no one she could turn to?”
Willa stares down at her sandwich. “I could kick myself for not seeing it, and I know Jack would, too. Sometimes suffering doesn’t look how you expect it to look. She was shy and quiet at school, but when we hung out with her, she seemed happy. I like to think that we did make her happy, at least a little bit, before she took her life.”
“I should talk to the orchestra,” I say, half to myself and half to Lacey.
“About Judith?” Willa says. “Why are you asking so many questions?”
“I don’t know. I guess I feel sad for her and want to know her story.”
Willa’s eyes narrow. “Is that all?”
For some reason, the scrutiny in her expression makes me feel nervous.
“I should go,” I say. “I have some… stuff… Thanks for letting me sit with you.”
“Anytime,” she says. “Look. I’d like to get to know you better. And, Mary, there’s something I want to talk to you about. It’s pretty important. I can’t tell you yet. I want to tell you when you’re ready.”
“What do you mean? You can tell me now, if you like.”
She shakes her head. “No, I can’t. I’ll tell you soon, though.”
*
The music room is in the art block behind the main school building and across from the sports field. Stark against the grandeur of the main school, this 80s prefab concrete slab is a drab blot in an otherwise pretty location. The kids call it the ‘Farthouse’. Ashforth isn’t a school that champions the arts. It’s too practical for that. I’ve noticed a little extra sneer added to mentions of the orchestra or the A-Level art students. They’re dossers, people who won’t go on to great careers. It’s something that sets a precedent for hating the weird kids, and I don’t like it one little bit.
As I get closer, the sound of instruments tuning up clashes and disharmonises. For a moment, I’m thrown back to that feeling of despair from Judith’s cello. I can feel her presence. This is her place, her sanctuary. It’s so removed from the rest of the school that I feel awkward about going in. I knock lightly on the door before entering. Pointless, seeing as the instruments drown out the sound anyway.
Lacey stays close to me. She’s quiet, and has been since leaving Willa in the common room. I try not to dwell on it, because the more I think about it, the more I realise the inevitable: Lacey is attracted to a girl. But Lacey is dead, and she can never have a relationship again. That knowledge makes my insides twist up with guilt and sadness and something else… Fear, perhaps.
“Hi,” I say, raising my voice slightly to be heard. “Um, hello. Are you the orchestra?”
The room is about the size of two normal classrooms, half of it filled with desks, and the other half filled with a piano, a drum kit, and a semicircle of chairs facing music stands. I take a glimpse at the sheet music, which is a foreign language of squiggles and lines. I know some of the squiggles are notes. Some of them are crotchets. That’s about all I know.
The noise stops in an instant, leaving me exposed in front of half a dozen expectant faces. No one answers my questions, probably due to the fact that the answer is obvious, and I’m a moron for even asking. I spot a guy from my English Lit class, Eddie Chung, and decide to direct my questions to him.
“I’m helping out some people with Judith Taylor’s memorial page and wanted to get to know more about her. I know she spent a lot of time with you guys.”
Eddie puts his flute onto his lap and leans forward a little. “Yeah, we knew her. Isn’t that page set up by her mum? Why are you bothered about it? You’re new.”
“It’s just…” I take a deep breath and rub the scars on my neck. “Look, I was bullied at my old sch
ool, okay, and I know she was bullied too. Her story moved me, and I want to know more about her. And not from some memorial page with phony people commenting on what a tragedy it all was; from her actual friends. From people who actually knew her. Like you guys.”
Eddie shares a look with a couple of others in the orchestra. “Well, you seem to be the first, so I guess we’ll tell you what you want to know.” He shrugs. “There’s not much to tell. Judith was kind. We even dated for a few months. She was the best cellist in the school. For some reason, Grace Templeton decided that she was a victim and that she deserved to be humiliated and teased every single day. They called her a freak, they said she was fat, they trashed her YouTube videos with nasty comments. Someone even edited her videos so that all she said was ‘I’m a twat’ over and over again. They never let up. They practically murdered her. Here. I’ll show you.” Eddie pulls his smartphone out of his pocket and loads up YouTube. I make a mental note of Judith’s YouTube channel. All the videos are still up. He clicks into one and scrolls down to the comments, which all sound familiar.
Freak.
Fatty.
Total dyke.
Weirdo.
Headcase.
Loser.
Geek.
And then more. Death threats. Rape threats. All anonymous. All cowardly.
“Check out the tweets she got.” Eddie loads up Judith’s Twitter page. At first, the direct replies are all about her death, how it’s such a tragedy and a loss to the world, that she had a beautiful soul and that she’ll be missed. Then comes the nastiness. More of the same: empty threats from anonymous accounts, familiar faces from the school making jokes at her expense. There are even memes of Judith from her video, holding her cello at an awkward angle: chick so fat, her chins play the instrument. You’re fat, don’t sugar coat it, coz you’ll eat that too. On and on they go.
“Jesus.” I back away from the phone.
“She wasn’t even fat, for fuck’s sake,” Eddie says, shaking his head. “She was barely overweight. She just had a round face.” He meets my gaze and holds it. He’s as fierce as Judith’s ghost is angry.