by James Dawson
‘The look on your face was something else!’ Caine pointed at Naya, doubled up.
‘Me? Dude, you didn’t look so hot yourself!’
Sadie was in a similar state, supporting herself against the wall next to Grace, who maintained her uncanny impression of a cold, wet fish. Sadie cackled, ‘That was priceless! You looked like you were going to actively soil your pants!’
‘Thanks for that, Sadie!’ Bobbie offered her an outstretched hand, which Sadie shook. ‘Okay, I’ll admit that was diverting fun for a Hallowe’en night. Well done on a first-rate frightfest. Now, I don’t know about you but I’m going to bed.’
‘Thank God for that,’ Grace sneered. ‘Caine?’
‘Babe, we gotta head back. I’m staying at Mark’s tonight.’
Grace’s lip curled with disappointment before she remembered who she was: nobody’s fool, and above all else, a Piper’s Hall Lady. ‘Fine. I’ll catch you later then.’ She swept out of the bathroom, closely followed by Sadie.
Caine cringed at Mark. ‘Dude, never mind Bloody Mary, I’m in deep trouble now!’
‘She’ll get over it,’ Naya smiled sweetly. ‘No offence, hon, but she drags a different village boy up here every weekend. Can you find your way out?’
‘The way we got in?’ Mark replied.
‘Yeah, you’re a quick study.’
‘Good times tonight, girls.’ Caine said ‘girls’ like ‘gewls’ and Bobbie kind of loved it. She wondered where he was from – it wasn’t a local accent. Caine embraced Naya in a friendly hug. ‘See you soon, yeah?’ He approached Bobbie with an identical gesture, which she awkwardly returned. Her heart stopped beating and she forgot to exhale, taking in a giant mouthful of his boyish scent – washing powder and macho deodorant. It was a nothing, throwaway gesture to him – he’d never think about it again and she’d remember it forever. Typical. ‘Good to meet you, Bobbie – cool name by the way.’
‘Yeah. Thanks.’ Her tongue was tied in a fat knot.
Checking the coast was clear, the boys made for the exit and Bobbie turned back to the dark rectangle of the mirror, blowing out the candles. They may not have summoned a spirit, but something had sure been awoken deep inside Bobbie. She shook her head and sent her inner simpering girl to the naughty corner; she was meant to be above the Judy Blume stuff.
Bobbie followed Naya out of the shower room, not even noticing the monotonous drip, drip, drip that echoed off the tiles.
DAY ONE
Chapter 3
The Message
Bobbie was woken up the same way she was every morning, by Naya singing at the very top of her voice. In Spanish.
‘Dear God,’ Bobbie pleaded, rolling over in bed. ‘Won’t you please give it a rest? It’s a Sunday – a whole day specifically designed for rest!’
She shoved her head under the pillow, but Naya kindly removed it and sang a few words in her ear. ‘Wakey-wakey. Places to go, people to see!’
‘Are you tripping? It’s Piper’s Hall. There are no places to go, literally.’
‘Come on, it’s Sunday. Church!’
Bobbie sat bolt upright in bed, pushing her hair out of her face. ‘What?’
‘Got ya!’ Naya giggled. ‘But at least you’re up now. Come on or we’ll miss breakfast.’
Now that they were Uppers, Bobbie and Naya were lucky enough to have a twin room – the Lowers sometimes had to squish four girls in a room the size of a sardine tin. Comparatively, this was luxury.
‘Do you think I look fat?’ Naya stood in front of the mirror, prodding at an almost non-existent belly.
Bobbie pulled her duvet back. ‘You’re insane, you know that?’
‘I swear I’m giving up carbs … ’
There was a tap at the door and Mrs Craddock stuck her head into the room. ‘Roberta, dear, phone call for you.’
That meant only one thing: time for the weekly update from her mother. Bobbie wrapped her dressing gown around her body. ‘Naya, will you save me some breakfast, yeah?’
‘Sure thing, hon.’
She walked with Naya as far as the office next door to Mrs Craddock’s quarters, which the girls called the Lodge for some unknown reason. Bobbie had earned her reputation as one of the ‘good girls’ (last night notwithstanding) so was left unattended in the poky room.
‘Hi, Mum.’ Bobbie surprised herself with how solemn the greeting was.
‘Bobbie? Are you okay, sweetheart?’ her mother yelled. Her mum never spoke in anything less than a bellow.
‘Hi, yeah, sorry, I’m fine. I just woke up.’
‘Okay, I was worried for a second! You shouldn’t freak Mummy out like that, darling!’
‘Sorry. How’s New York?’
‘Sweetie, I’ve hardly been outside since I stepped off the plane – I haven’t so much as set foot in Barney’s. Rehearsals have been absolutely non-stop. I’ve barely had a chance to scratch my arse, darling!’
Bobbie wasn’t sure what she was meant to say to that. In New York it was still pretty early in the morning. Bobbie guessed her mum had just staggered in from a cocktail party or something and was calling her before she collapsed. This was the part where her mum would endlessly complain about the director, the script, the theatre, all the time loving every minute of her madcap existence. ‘But you will fly over for opening night, won’t you, darling?’ her mum finished.
‘Perhaps,’ Bobbie replied. ‘My exams are coming up after Christmas – I need to work.’
‘Oh, don’t be such a drama queen, darling.’ That was rich, coming from her. ‘You can fly over from Heathrow in less than eight hours and you can revise or do whatever it is you do on the plane! I’ll even get a driver to collect you from the school.’
‘Okay, Mum, whatever. I’d love to see the play.’
‘Of course you would, it’s absolutely the best play I’ve ever been in!’ She said that about all the plays. ‘How is school, darling?’
Bobbie shrugged before remembering you can’t hear shrugs down the telephone. ‘Yeah, fine.’
‘Bobbie, I don’t pay the astronomical fees for fine!’
‘Oh, it’s marvellous, Mum, I can’t get enough. They’ll have to surgically remove me from the place when I turn eighteen!’
‘Don’t be sarcastic, Roberta, you’ll get wrinkles.’
‘I thought that was frowning?’
‘Don’t get smart either! You know Mummy loves you, right?’
‘I love you too, Mum.’ And she did. Not everyone would like a semi-famous, semi-faded actress for a mother, but Bobbie hadn’t ever had any other mums and she loved the one she had. She was insane, but always at the end of a telephone. Some of the girls at Piper’s Hall were lucky to get an annual visit from a nanny.
‘Extra-big transatlantic kisses please!’ her mum ordered.
Bobbie made an enormous smacking noise down the phone, confident that no one was around to hear. She was wrong. An immaculate head snaked around the door. It was the Principal, Dr Price. ‘Mum, I have to go. Love you.’
‘Love you too, sweetie.’
Bobbie replaced the receiver. Dr Price entered the room, dressed in a slick, tailored skirt suit, even on a Sunday. The Head was a beautiful woman in her late forties, if slightly angular, reminding Bobbie of the laconic, ice-cool women in the de Lempicka paintings they’d studied in Art. She had a neat strawberry-blonde bob and looked down at Bobbie through heavily hooded eyes. ‘Sorry to interrupt your phone call … er … ’
‘Roberta, Miss.’
‘Roberta, that’s it. But you’ll miss breakfast if you’re not careful.’
‘Sorry, Dr Price. I’ll go now – I’ll have a super-quick shower.’ Bobbie was always so shy around the teachers for some reason, even though she’d known many of them for almost five years. Her grades were FINE, her behaviour was GOOD, her attendance was PERFECT – as such, Bobbie had been able to glide under the radar all the way through her time at Piper’s Hall. She clammed up especially badly around Dr Price; not onl
y was she in charge but she was always so poised and glamorous, whereas Bobbie was well aware that even when she was in her uniform she looked like an urchin.
She didn’t need to ask why the Head was in school on a Sunday. Bobbie knew a workaholic when she saw one, and rumour had it she was going through a ‘bitter divorce’ too. Head down, she slipped past the Principal and awkwardly tottered back to the dorm to grab her wash-bag.
The thought of what charred offal horrors might be left in the canteen at 9 a.m. on a Sunday spurred Bobbie into action. She’d twisted the shower to life before even remembering last night’s escapades. In the light of the day, the bathroom was a whole other room. She faced the smeared mirror, splattered in the toothpaste, zit pus and lip gloss of at least a dozen girls, and grinned at herself. What had they been thinking? So lame.
Then she recalled Caine and her insides were suddenly candyfloss. Bobbie placed her glasses on the side of the sink and studied her face in the mirror, which was no longer a black tunnel of doom. She wasn’t ugly by anyone’s definition, but she was no Grace or Naya. Certainly not what boys like Caine were looking for anyway. Bobbie figured there were two types of girls in the world: ones who wore tights even in thirty-degree heat and ones who got their legs out. She was in the former category, the Graces and Nayas of the world were in the latter. Thank God she hadn’t told anyone about her crush; The Elites would crucify her.
The mirror started to steam up and she pulled off her robe. Roll on the Christmas holidays when she’d be able to shower in a room without the collective DNA samples of twenty other girls. At least the water was hot. The pressure wasn’t bad either and she let the jet pummel her back for a few minutes before washing her hair. She had the shower room to herself for once – a rare luxury – and she’d have stayed longer if her stomach hadn’t been rumbling.
She twisted the shower nozzle off and, not wanting to get soap in her eyes, blindly reached for her towel on the rail. She curved an arm around the curtain, waving it left and right, unable to locate the towel rail just outside the cubicle.
Her hand brushed against someone – specifically someone’s hair.
She recoiled. Bobbie was sure she’d been alone. ‘Sorry! I didn’t know there was anyone … ’ She wiped the water out of her eyes and gingerly pulled back the mildewed shower curtain. The washroom was empty.
Bobbie wrapped the towel around her soaking body and listened carefully. The room was thick with steam and there was a constant drip, drip, drip from the shower, but the room was deserted. ‘Hmmm,’ Bobbie said, stepping out of the shower stall and onto the cool tiles. ‘That’s weird.’ Perhaps she’d grazed her hand on the towel, but it really had felt like hair.
As the extractor fan creaked and groaned, removing the excess steam, Bobbie saw the mirror clearly. Someone had written in the condensation on the glass, little streams of water running like veins from the words.
It didn’t make any sense to Bobbie. The two words simply read:
FIVE DAYS
Chapter 4
Sunday
Bobbie didn’t dwell on the watery words, her growling stomach taking precedence. If she thought about them at all, she dismissed them as the name of a new boy band that some horny fan-girl had dedicated the mirror to. By the time the steam on the mirror had faded, she’d already forgotten about it.
The canteen was a high-ceilinged hall in the old building, with grand wooden beams arching up to a point – Bobbie always liked to imagine she was inside Noah’s ark. Leaded slit windows only allowed in meagre light on even sunny days so today the room was especially bleak and oppressive. It was the end of the sitting so the room was about half full – the competitive bulimics compensating for the absence of the competitive anorexics. Whatever the competition, boarding school sure had a way of bringing out the killer instinct in high-achieving teenage girls.
As Bobbie shuffled past Grace and the rest of The Elites, who always sat at the informal ‘head’ table, she could hear them whispering about what she was wearing or something equally trivial; they always did. Bobbie rolled her eyes. She didn’t know what disgusted her more: the existence of a blatant hierarchy that the teachers chose to ignore, or that everyone seemed oblivious to the fact that the plural of elite is elite. Bobbie couldn’t even be bothered to get involved – she was never going to be the cleverest, prettiest or fastest. That said, she was one of the best writers. That was her thing.
Naya waved her over. ‘Hey, I grabbed you a bit of everything.’
‘You’re the best.’ The pre-mixed scrambled eggs didn’t look edible, but Bobbie took a stab at a rasher of bacon.
‘What’s the plan for today?’ Naya asked.
‘Dunno,’ Bobbie admitted through a forkful of congealed beans. ‘I was going to work on that new story I was telling you about.’
‘No, that’s boring! Let’s head into Oxsley! Oh come on, not like there’s anything else to do, is there?’ she said, picking up on Bobbie’s lack of enthusiasm. ‘Sit around here and watch paint dry?’
Piper’s Hall is what paint watches when drying gets too exciting, Bobbie thought. On a weekend, Piper’s Hall Ladies are supposed to better themselves in some way that would enrich their applications to Cambridge or Oxford. Bobbie took a creative writing class on Saturday mornings, but Sunday was all sports stuff – so not her thing. ‘Yeah, okay. We could hit the library.’ Not as dull as it sounded; the librarian was keeping some Susan Hill books to one side for her and they had free DVD loans.
‘Child, you know how to party!’
‘Ooh, or maybe we could go hover outside the off-licence and see if we can lure men into buying us drinks with the promise of sexual favours like slutty booze sirens?’ Bobbie’s voice was rich with sarcasm.
‘Very funny. But I wouldn’t mind hanging with those guys from last night. They seemed fun, right?’
As the image of Caine’s face ran through Bobbie’s mind, her cheeks became so hot, she knew they must have blushed a deep crimson shade. ‘Yeah, they seemed nice.’
Naya seized on her red face. ‘Roberta Rowe! Do you have a little crush? You wanton tramp! Which one?’
Bobbie couldn’t look her in the eye and lie. ‘No! You know what I’m like.’
‘Babydoll, we gotta do something about your boy issues or people will start to think you’re same-sex oriented, which, by the way, is fine. I totally support your life choices. Speaking of which … ’
At that moment, Sadie Walsh entered the dining hall, a pale imitation of her usual outdoorsy self. ‘Sadie isn’t a lesbian.’ Bobbie had no idea why she was defending her.
‘She is! I’m not judging, but everyone says she has an internet girlfriend in New Zealand!’
Bobbie rolled her eyes. ‘Well then, it must be true!’
Sadie, dark shadows circling her eyes, shuffled to the servery and took a meagre breakfast before walking towards them, zombie-like.
‘Girlfriend is looking busted,’ Naya whispered. ‘You think she’s sick?’
‘Ssh! She’s coming!’
Sadie flopped her tray onto their table. ‘Can I sit here? I don’t have the energy for The Elites today,’ she said listlessly.
‘Sure,’ Naya said.
‘Are you okay, Sadie? You look a bit peaky.’
Sadie looked for a moment like she was going to bite her head off, but clearly lacked the energy. ‘I’m not sleeping very well.’
‘What’s up?’
‘Weird dreams.’
‘Can you remember them? My mom says all dreams have a meaning,’ Naya offered.
‘Yeah, but isn’t your mum a Scientologist?’ Bobbie couldn’t resist.
‘Thanks, Bob.’
‘No, I can’t remember, but the last two nights I’ve woken up in like a fever, covered in sweat. Maybe I’m getting flu or something.’
‘Must have been quite a nightmare … or maybe it’s one of those dreams. About anyone in particular, Sadie?’ Naya grinned salaciously.
‘Ha ha, very
funny. I don’t know. And there’s a leaky pipe somewhere near our dorm – it’s been dripping for days now. It’s completely doing my head in.’ She pushed her soggy cereal away. ‘I’m not even hungry, and I’m always hungry.’
‘Look.’ Bobbie cleared the bowl onto her tray. ‘Why don’t you go back to bed? It’s Sunday.’
‘I can’t. I coach under-16s hockey, duh.’
‘Don’t take it out on her,’ Naya snarled.
Bobbie lifted the tray, ready to clear it. It was way too early for a Naya bitch-off. ‘I’m going to get ready. Come and get me when you want to head into town.’
Naya backed down at once. ‘I’ll come with you now.’
Excellent, catfight avoided. As they walked towards the exit, Bobbie chanced a look over her shoulder. Sadie really did look gaunt and grey, and the writer in Bobbie couldn’t help but think of the word ‘haunted’.
A single-decker bus rolled through the windswept, lonely moorland that backed Piper’s Hall. The sky and road were matching shades of melancholy grey and the air was ripe with the petrolic whiff that follows a thunderstorm. Today a mist lingered over the moors, part fog, part drizzle.
The bus itself was roasting hot from those foot-level heaters that feel like ankle hairdryers. Bobbie wondered if there was steam coming off her soggy duffel coat as every window fogged up. She and Naya shared one iPod, the headphones hanging between their heads like a telephone cable. They skipped duds and repeated favourites all the way into town in companionable quiet.
On arrival at Oxsley, they headed straight for the library and Naya hoodwinked the librarian into thinking they were eighteen so they could borrow Psycho Killer, Rage and Hatchling 3: The Spawn. There was a tea shop in Oxsley, but it was a proper tea shop with scones and Earl Grey rather than venti mocha fraps so there was little else for them to do other than enjoy the freedom.
Naya checked her phone as they plodded down the damp library stairs. ‘Caitlin says that they’re all at the graveyard. You wanna go?’