by Kara Silver
“No!” she cried and darted forward, almost tipping over trying to see—nothing. Nothing there! The stone was smooth. That was good, right? Well, not good in that she was seeing things, was exhausted, or stressed, or going crazy. “I’m not crazy!” she shouted. “I know shouting that sounds crazy, but—”
What was the noise that cut her off? A chipping sound? Christ, she hadn’t noticed there were tombstones so close! One weathered rectangle, stained like a smoker’s tooth, was right over there and… No. Kennedy peered hard, then forced herself to move, springing over to the slab before she changed her mind and bolted for the road. But she was too late—the familiar symbol she’d seen, this time not as a tattoo or a birthmark but carved into the stone, vanished as she got there.
A tink-tink noise had her sprinting to another stone, this one rounded and oval, like a freestanding mirror on a frame, in time to see the symbol up close and personal before it melted back into the headstone, leaving no sign it had ever been there. “No! You come back here!” Kennedy shouted, too furious to be scared. She reached out to thump her palm against the granite, but a squealing—no, a creaky grinding—had her spinning to a slim column pointing up like a post from a two-tiered plinth.
This time, she got a finger to the mark, actually touched it before it slid away, like water down a drain, leaving no trace. She pulled her hand away as if it were burned. Unable to make her muscles turn, she backed away, out of the dip in the ground, and only faced the way she was going when she was clear of the space. Which was when she ran. Fumbling for her phone and headphones, she blasted music on the maximum volume as she sprinted back to college and her room. If Heylel had a track team, she’d have qualified for any event. Fuck, she could have run for the city, or even the UK.
Kennedy shook her laptop free of her backpack and started it, typing Oxford, headstones, symbols, and getting hits for monumental stonemasons and marble and stone businesses. Vanishing symbols grave markers brought up sites about the meanings of headstones, or humorous ones. Putting in No Souls cemetery got the question Do you mean All Souls? Kennedy slumped back, defeated, against her headboard. So, that was that. Nothing. She’d tried and gotten nowhere.
Meaning Kennedy Smith, scholarship student at Heylel, could go back to her regularly scheduled programming…or dig deeper for answers, even if she didn’t quite know the questions. Raising her chin, Kennedy chose door number two and to dive in so deep, she’d need an oxygen tank.
7
I survived my first Oxford tutorial!
Yass, queen! You wanna get that on a T-shirt!
Kennedy laughed out loud in the middle of the quad at Chandyce’s reply. She bloody should get T-shirts with that slogan made for first years and included in their Welcome Packs. No. Chandyce would scoff at that and tell her not to be such a Mother Teresa: she should sell them. In the Junior Common Room, perhaps? Or, as the slogan applied across the board, in the varsity clothing shop in the town?
Did everyone feel that drenching waterfall of relief after their first time presenting and discussing their essay with their tutorial group? Kennedy felt shaky and a little weak. But that could have been due to the lack of sleep and too much coffee, the ingredients that had fuelled the essay writing. Or it might have been the ebbing adrenaline after her fight-or-flight mechanism had kicked in when Dr Crane had started by saying, “I didn’t have time to read your essay since you delivered it so late; could you read it out?”
She’d bristled—she’d dropped it into the don’s mail slot well before breakfast—then seen by the winces on Emma, Maja and Liam’s faces that this was a ‘thing’, and that had nudged her anger into fear. If she could have gotten out of it at that point, the fight sliding into flight, she would have. But she’d survived!
And standing here, in the middle of a quad in the light of day, her first Oxford college milestone behind her, the impulse to dismiss what she thought she’d seen in the cemetery tugged at her. After all, she had no proof to back up what she’d imagined she’d seen there, either time, and here, now, standing on well-kept green grass in the midst of beautiful buildings at one of the world’s most prestigious seats of learning, a place where she was a freaking student, for God’s sake—
No. I know what I saw. Kennedy firmed her lips against the bliss that remaining in ignorance promised her. That state of unknowing was a lure, but one she wouldn’t fall for. Fine, here she was, off on another crusade. She could hear Chandyce asking her if her costume was in the wash, and that it was probably lame, anyway; Chandyce would have skin-tight leather pants and a corset with fuck-off-sized buckles. Oh, and some sort of really cool hood—Chandyce hated her hair getting wet and frizzy.
Kennedy had time between classes and headed for the font of all knowledge, the library, starting by turning to the back of her notebook and making a list of all the things she needed to research. Oxford, the list started…and ended, as she sat tapping the page with the end of her pen. University, she added, looking all around her, then plunged in. Begin at the very beginning…
Aeth’s take on the origins of the place had been a bit…skewed, she noted, wondering where he was. He’d said he went here, Heylel, and there were only twelve first-year anthropology students so— But maybe he wasn’t in that subject, of course. She dragged her mind back to her search. Oxford, rivalry with Cambridge, in everything from number of firsts awarded to sports success to pranks! Wow. How did they get that car on that roof? And currently Cambridge was lagging behind Oxford in an area that was in the news across the board, that of creating more diverse campuses: widening access for disadvantaged students. Disadvantaged. Huh. Kennedy noted the synonyms. Unequal-opportunited. Under-represented. Deprived background.
“You mean the poors!” she said out loud, and ducked her head down when people turned to look. And yet, Heylel more than met access targets for increased state school student intake, or working-class quota, whatever you wanted to call it. The number of scholarships this college alone awarded brought the university up. She read down the list. They were mostly for girls. Was that another two-birds-one-stone thing, a way to also increase female participation in STEM subjects?
Yet, I’m in Anthropology and so are Maja and Liam. And he’s a guy. With Emma, paying full fees, they were one tutorial group. Khloe was reading History, Kennedy knew, and she’d heard Jodie and Leanne were in the English Department. Hmm.
Frowning, she searched for scholarship girl and her eyes rounded at one hit—an article from the Oxford Herald about a missing student. Kennedy clicked on it at once. It was an update, written just last week, although there was nothing new to report. Nia Ambro, who’d gone missing a year before, was still missing, her disappearance never solved and there were still no leads. The article didn’t say anything outright, but the way it was phrased seemed…off. And Nia had been a scholarship student…at Heylel…
She was from Blackwood Heath, in Birmingham. That name seemed a little familiar. Oh, yes. Kennedy bit the end of her pen. One of the most economically deprived areas in the UK, with over fifty percent of children born into poverty. She sat back in her chair, looking at Nia’s picture, imagining how she’d felt to be awarded a place here, the opportunities abounding all around her and the possibilities lying ahead of her. Kennedy could imagine them easily—she was within grasp of them herself, despite not having attained such good grades in her exams, she’d have betted, as the other students sitting in this library. She was lucky that Heylel College had discreetly lowered its entry requirements a little, adjusting the offer they’d made, taking her background into account. Had they done the same for Nia? Probably. It seemed their standard. Standard—
As if electrocuted, she shot forward and typed in the Herald’s search engine. And within seconds, had results—Nia wasn’t the only girl to have gone missing. Kennedy raced through stories going back years. Girls…on scholarships. What were the odds? How did that compare to the country as a whole? Where could she find that information? Another search pulled up
info on the high proportion of black and brown girls missing in several US states, and Kennedy, horrified, read the theories about kidnapping and trafficking…and murder.
Fuck. What if there was targeting, here? The college’s offer to her of a place here was lower than Oxford should have asked, and she’d had been told by her teachers not to make that fact widely known: there was a lot of loud and angry opposition to moves to lower requirements for the have-nots and thereby, the logic went, lower the standards for everyone. “A political hot potato,” the Sixth Form director had called it. So, what if people, or a group, or groups, or whatever, were actively targeting—
“Eeeyarr!” Kennedy screamed.
“Jesus!” Emma stepped back from where she’d tapped Kennedy on her shoulder. “Wow. Sorry! Are you coming? We’ve been waving at you for ages from over there. Why didn’t you join us anyway? What on earth are you doing? Googling the address of the police station? Is everything—?”
“Sorry.” Kennedy slammed shut her laptop. “I didn’t see you. Am I coming to…?”
“Practical?” Emma eyed her. “Intro to Material Culture?”
“The Ashmolean! Right.” Kennedy had been to the famous art and archaeology museum once before, when she’d been a lot younger. She still remembered the mummies. Had that sparked off her interest in studying in related fields? Huh.
“Well, better get a move on,” Emma prompted, nodding at Maja, who was signalling madly from the main desk.
“Hurry!” Maja urged, her thin blonde hair flapping as she sped them along the path to…the bike shed.
“I haven’t got a bike,” Kennedy informed them.
“Aha! You’ve got a loaner, wait and see! Kirsty and Andi, those second years, mentioned it.”
Emma entered the code for the door of the musty metal shed and unlocked her shiny bike with its basket. Maja followed suit, pulling free from the slots a less new but still pretty model. Curious, Kennedy saw a note left for her on an older, weathered, thin-seated men’s bike.
“It’s a hand-me-down, from the cull. Left at the end of last year and not stickered for this one?” Emma explained. “The Common Room Committee grab a few before the college ditches them, to hand out. Or hand on. I mean, that’s been around for years. It’s practically a legacy!”
That was unexpected. Andi must have remembered Kennedy saying she needed a bike and—
“Please!” Maja was already ahead, pushing frantically. Right, no riding on campus. “And you haven’t got a lock—you can lock yours with mine when we get there.”
It hardly took any time at all, Kennedy’s backpack bouncing and thudding on her back as her thin-tyred bike jolted along the road and cycle path. She’d sold her bike, the one she’d used to get to school and Sixth Form and her part-time work in Wyebury. She’d known she’d need a bike in Oxford, but she’d needed the coach fare to get there, not receiving any living allowance or stipend until she got there.
“This way!” called Emma, leading the way down a narrow passage.
Shrugging, Kennedy followed. Emma seemed to know what she was doing—they emerged onto St. Giles, with the huge museum on the corner up ahead.
“And we can park here?” Maja enquired as Emma padlocked her bike to the railings, the bike stands being full.
“Maja, this is Oxford! If it doesn’t move, it’s a bike rack!” Emma patted her on the shoulder. Looking all around as though stealing the Crown Jewels, Maja locked her bike and Kennedy’s together to the railing. She gave Kennedy a spare key to the lock, just in case.
The Ashmolean, Britain’s first public museum, and the world’s first university museum, was just as huge as Kennedy remembered. She’d assumed her being a kid had invested the building with giant proportions, but, no, the entrance, with its columns and pediment, was still as impressive, and the edifice itself as big. Am I really having classes here? She could hardly believe it and her eyes were the size of saucers all the way to the belowground Antiquities Study Room.
Damn. Her hair was sticking out all over the place and her face pink after that mad bike ride. She smoothed down her flyaway tresses as best she could, using the glass of cabinets and the reflective surfaces of metal plates as quick mirrors as she walked along the corridors. Any burgundy-suited custodians who happened to be in front of anything she needed to use stepped solemnly aside for her, as if they knew her plight. How did all the other female students look less windblown? Maybe that was what the baskets on the front of bikes were for: a mirror and small makeup kit. And a comb.
“You look fine,” observed a hulking blond guy she didn’t know, leering down her shirt.
“I wasn’t looking for your approval.” Kennedy stepped closer to him, almost toe to toe, until he stepped back.
“She’s a bit of a spitfire,” he observed, nudging a brown-haired guy with him. “I still would though.”
“And I thought the dodo was in another museum!” Kennedy smiled at Dim Blond’s frown. “But here we have something just as antiquated! Fossilised, even. A real specimen, by any standard. Sorry for using difficult words. You can look them up later.” She stalked past the twosome and entered the room, finding a place at a table and staring at the samples it held.
“I’m not that interested in this field,” complained a student from another college, but Kennedy was gripped by the introduction to analysing and interpreting material culture, wishing she could study archaeology and art and art history too.
“What are you looking for?” Maja asked her, nudging her from the side as they bent over their samples. “You’re peering all around.”
“Nothing. Well, Aeth.”
“What?”
“Who. No one.” He wasn’t here. She’d assumed he would be—all the first years from Heylel were. So, where was he?
“Oh, my back!” Emma exclaimed, when the class finished. “Or my legs—which hurts when you stand for too long? Why we couldn’t sit down in between examining the artefacts? And aren’t you all sick of being underground all this time? Charlotte, Petra…” She grabbed hold of two girls who could have been her sisters. “Cup of tea on the roof? Maja, Kennedy, coming?”
“Tea on the roof…” Maja spoke slowly as if it was a joke or she’d misheard, her English letting her down.
Kennedy gathered her things and followed the chattering, exclaiming-in-relief class out. “Thank you,” she said to the instructors as she passed. “That was fascinating.”
“There’s a café on this floor,” she pointed out as they ascended the massive staircase. She had seen signage for it when they entered. “Or it’s not long until dinner anyway.”
“Roof!” called Emma from a few steps above. “Tea, scone, cream, jam, and a view.”
“And tall, dark and handsome foreign guys from the language institute next door!” added Petra.
“I’ll catch you up later.” Kennedy saw the main entrance again and turned to go.
Emma muttered something to the other two, the word bursary part of it.
“Yeah, I am on a budget,” Kennedy admitted to the group now at the head of the staircase. The payment system at Heylel seemed weird to her. Students’ college cards were swiped for purchases—machines in the laundry; snacks in the common room; whatever. But it wasn’t a debit card, taking money from a total and needing topping up. Instead, it racked up the amounts used, and the bill fell due at the beginning of the next term.
Kennedy got free dining hall meals, the machine at the cash register making a tell-tale blip-bleep when her scrap student card was swiped, and she intended to make full use of that benefit. But she had other expenses to meet over the term and knew she had to save as much as possible of her small monthly allowance to pay them, both college ones, due in January, and outside ones, as she went along. And Oxford prices were comparable to London’s.
“But it’s not just that. I have stuff to do.”
This got a collective groan.
“Hey, guys.” This girl was called Sarah, Kennedy thought. “Don’t
be too harsh. Maybe the scraps have to get like, really good marks as part of their conditions, yeah? Liam? Is that it? Although you didn’t duck out of the party early last week.”
Liam tried to say he didn’t know, it maybe depended on the type of assisted place a student had, he wasn’t…and Emma walked over to Kennedy. “Maja’s scholarship, too, and she joins in. Why not come to the next event and stay all the way through, hmm?”
“I’ll try.” Kennedy attempted a smile, barely noticing what she was agreeing to. Her mind was on the next step she was taking, going to the police station to report her suspicions about missing scholarship girls.
8
Kennedy shoved her bike in between two others locked properly to black metal U racks humping up from the concrete ground, reasoning that even if anyone wanted to steal her clunker, which she doubted, they’d think twice about stealing it from outside the police station, wouldn’t they? Thinking about a bait scheme used to trap bike thieves back home, she ripped a sheet of paper from her pad, printed IS THIS THE DECOY BIKE? on it and attached it to the frame. She thought about adding FEELING LUCKY, PUNK? to it, but didn’t. Less was usually more.
Even the police station in this town was pretty, honey-coloured and long and symmetrical. Graceful-looking, it would have been one of the nicest buildings in her town. If it hadn’t been for the two POLICE signs, one on either side of the door under the awning, and that these bits were navy blue, the building could have passed for a minor palace.
Like the street, which was a little removed from the bustle of the centre, inside the station was calm and orderly too. There were a few long wooden counters, all staffed. A female officer attended to a member of the public, a youngish guy with a thick accent explaining in loud, careful words that he’d lost his “card of identity” in either the Holly Bush, the Blue Boar or the Sultan. And that the last was not a pub, but a restaurant, and he knew the people there, so…