by Susie Day
She nods, slow, deliberate. “I was always going to come here tonight. One of those big unchangeable facts that even a wishgirl can’t mess with.”
“Right,” I say. “Did you see the film, up on the cliffs?”
She nods, smiling tightly. “Yeah. You did really well, putting everything right. You did it beautifully.”
Her voice cracks, and she dips her head in the dark.
“Oh, Red, don’t.” I dart forward, wishing I could hug her: hold her hand, even. I haven’t forgotten. The end of my Penkerry summer is the end of her. She’ll disappear, for ever. “I’m sorry. I don’t want you to go. I wish you could stay.”
I wonder for a second if wishing it might be enough. It’s not my birthday, but they do come true, sometimes.
“I wish Red can stay!” I say, the words echoing back at me, fading to nothing.
Red keeps her head lowered, her wing of hair flickering green in the odd light.
“Blue, I’ve got to tell you something.”
I wait, listening to the drip-drip-plink from the cave roof.
“I’m not really here because of a birthday wish,” she says, very quietly. “I’m not the fourteen-year-old you. There is no fourteen-year-old you.”
Drip drip plink. Drip drip plink.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I say, holding my phone up closer to her face, so I can see her grin flash, and laugh the eeriness away.
“I knew you’d come here, because I did too,” she says, not grinning, not laughing. “I didn’t know about the Cave; didn’t know to check the stripes on the Bee rock outside. I wandered off from the crowds at the Fest. I found the cave and came inside. I had a look around, but when I wanted to go it was too late. The tide was too far in.”
“What happened?”
“I died, Blue,” she says softly. “I drowned.”
I stiffen, breathing in.
Water flows over the pebbles behind her, a single wave trickling down and washing over her feet. They melt away into wisps of smoke, as if she isn’t there at all.
I see it, now.
What she is.
Not a wishgirl. A ghost. The ghost of the girl I wanted to be.
“You couldn’t get out of the cave?” I say, my voice small in the big space.
She gives a tiny shake of her head.
I stand very still.
“Can I get out of the cave?”
Another tiny shake.
“Am going to die?” I whisper.
My hand’s shaking too much to hold up the phone, and I can’t see Red’s face.
She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t need to.
“No,” I murmur, starting forward. “No, there’s got to be a way – if I know now, I can stop it—”
“It’s too late. This is a tidal cave. Once the tide reaches a certain point, not even an Olympic swimmer could get themselves out. You were dead the moment you walked in here.”
I shiver, hearing her say it so blankly. As if she accepts it.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“How do you tell someone they’re going to die in a few weeks?” Her voice bounces off the cave walls, echoing around us as the drips begin to splash into puddles on the ground. “No one would want to know that, before. I wouldn’t have.”
“I would!”
“No, Blue, you wouldn’t.” She steps closer, her ankles disappearing into wispy smoke again. “Think about it. If I’d told you, you’d have had a more miserable summer than I did – and where would be the point in me being here? This way’s better. Short sharp shock.”
“Like ripping off a plaster,” I whisper numbly.
“Yeah.”
“Ripping off a plaster hurts.”
“I know it does, Blue. But not for long.”
I look at her pale little face, and remember she’s done this before.
“Where will we go?” I say, as the dip in the pebbles outside begins to crumble away, and water starts to pour into the cave. I shriek and stumble back as the cold swirls round my legs, rising, rising, so fast, so strong, trying to sweep my feet from under me.
“I don’t know,” she says, running her hand through the dark water, letting it dissolve into coils of smoky nothing. “Sorry. That’s not a lie. I don’t remember, I don’t know where I came from. I don’t think we get to know.”
I stumble again, bumping against the boulder I climbed.
“Peanut,” I say suddenly. “Is Peanut a boy or a girl?”
Red shakes her head. “I don’t know. I never knew. I . . . we won’t be around to find out.”
“That’s really sad,” I say, my voice thick and strange and it’s obvious, so obvious it doesn’t need to be said out loud here in the dark but it is. It’s really sad.
“I mind too,” Red says quietly. “I think it’s all right to mind.”
She reaches for my hand, and when I touch her fingers, they don’t disappear.
I keep holding her hand, tight tight tight, all the way down.
It will be a cold November day when they come back: a father, a sister, a mother carrying a new baby.
They will meet with a cluster of friends and stand at the end of Penkerry Pier in wind and rain, to throw flowers on the water. Not bluebells: sunflowers, bold and bright and happy. They will cry.
The father will close his eyes and – privately – wish that she’d had just a little more time: enough to keep a secret, fall in love, grow up.
The sister will – telling no one – wish they had never fought: that she’d lent her that cheap purple T-shirt with the smiley face logo.
The mother will wish that when she died, she wasn’t alone.
After, they will pin the glowing girl in the top hat to every wall, every surface, to their skin, for ever. Each of them will fill in her empty silhouette in their own way, but it will always be a beautiful picture.
Acknowledgements
This book needed to be rescued, several times over. My gratitude to Florence + the Machine and the creators of Midget Gems for keeping me at my desk through the lumpy bits, and to my nephew Dave for telling me to watch a film I can’t name without spoiling it horribly. Cheers, Dave!
Big love to fellow Oxford kidlit folks Pita, Sally and Jo, for coffee, hugs and thinking; far-flung but much-beloved writing friends Sarah, Ruth, Josie and Caroline, for fixing broken things (me included); Keris, Luisa, Keren, Cat, Tamsyn, Sophia for sanity and giggles; and to the Girls Heart Books authors and readers, who make me smile every single day.
Huge thanks to my agent Caroline Walsh, for cheerfully continuing to believe in me even when I’m rubbish. Thank you to all at Scholastic – Anna, Jamie, Alyx, Lisa, and all the behind-the-scenes lovelies. Above all, my thanks to my wonderful editor Marion Lloyd, for her remarkable patience and insight, and for not letting me off my own hook.
First published in the UK in 2012 by Marion Lloyd Books
This electronic edition published in 2012 by Marion Lloyd Books
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eISBN 978 1407 13361 4
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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