Valentine

by Jodi McAlister

  And written across the mirror in my favourite lipstick are the words THEY ARE COMING FOR YOU. DON’T LEAVE THE HOUSE OR THEY WILL KILL YOU.

  OMG.

  Who’s They? Why do they want to kill me?

  And why are Holly-Anne and Julian writing me warning messages in lipstick?

  I read somewhere that the human mind’s natural way of dealing with inexplicable things is to develop a mundane explanation. ‘Werewolves howling at the moon? Never. It must have been a sheet of corrugated iron flapping in the wind combined with a freak noise created by a gust of wind whistling through a drainpipe.’ Our brains have been trained to shy away from the supernatural. Everything must be explained, and it must be explained in the realms of the real.

  You dreamed it, Pearl. Of course you dreamed it. There is no way that Holly-Anne and Julian were in your room. You were just in hospital again with a bleeding head wound. It might seem real, but do you really think –

  What I think is that there is a message scrawled across my mirror in lipstick that I can’t just ignore. What I think is that something is seriously, seriously weird with Finn. And if something is weird with Finn, why shouldn’t things be weird with other people I go to school with?

  Marie’s face floats across my mind. I think I want to throw up.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Phil, it’s Pearl.’

  ‘Pearl, it’s half-past five in the morning. Saturday morning.’

  ‘I know.’ I hold my phone between my ear and my shoulder as I scrub vehemently at my mirror. ‘I just have one quick question.’

  She groans. ‘What?’

  ‘Did Julian stay with you last night?’

  She’s quiet for a second. ‘Pearl, did you seriously just call me at this godforsaken hour to ask me if I’m having sex with my boyfriend?’

  ‘I wasn’t – I just – you shouldn’t,’ I say. ‘Don’t, Phil. I don’t trust him.’

  ‘Pearl,’ she says, ‘I love you. You know that. And I respect your opinion. But you don’t get a vote on this one. Now go back to bed.’

  ‘Phil, I –’

  She hangs up.

  I swear. Not only have I not got an answer to what I really wanted to know – whether Julian had an alibi or not – now I have to worry about them sleeping together and him infecting her with . . . whatever it is that made him sneak through my window late at night to keep me inside.

  Holy crap, is that what happened to Holly-Anne? And we all know who she’d be sleeping with. Are she and Finn on the same – I don’t know, team? Is Finn the one trying to kill me?

  Deep breaths, Pearl. Crazy actions and opinions are not sexually transmitted diseases. Calm down. Think clearly. If Finn was the one trying to kill you, he would have done it by now. He could have just not let you wake up. Or snapped your neck when he had his hands all over you in that storeroom.

  Finn Blacklin with his hands all over me. I let out a shaking breath.

  But Holly and Julian could have killed me too, if they were secret murderers, and they didn’t. They just seemed to want to keep me in the house. Under orders from . . . Them.

  Probably crossing Them is a very, very bad idea. They sound dangerous. I would bet a lot of money that They are the ones with an army of black birds and cats and horse(s?) out there being creepy, and that They are responsible for what happened to Marie. Maybe it would be a good idea to obey Them and stay in my house where it’s safe. That’d make Disey and Shad happy, for sure.

  But there is no way I’m going to find out who tried/is trying to kill me if I just stay in here. There is no way I can keep an eagle eye on Julian to make sure he doesn’t do anything to Phil if I lock myself away. And there’s no way I can corner Finn and find out WTF is going on here unless I can get my hands on him. What am I supposed to do, lock myself away in an ivory tower for the rest of my life and never do anything again?

  I think it might be time for Pearl Linford to become a troublemaker.

  ‘Oh my God, Pearl! It’s so good to see you!’

  ‘Hey Pearl, welcome back!’

  ‘You’re so brave, Pearl!’

  ‘Good to have you back!’

  ‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘Good to see you all too. Nice to be back.’ Yada yada yada.

  Truth is, I don’t know if anyone in their right mind would want to be here. I can think of several places more fun to be than on an overnight school excursion to Sydney to listen to some boring people lecture us about exams. But fun isn’t exactly high on my agenda right now what with Them (whoever They are, whatever They are, insert all-different-other-kinds-of-ever words here They are) rampaging around, knowing exactly where I live and sending Holly and Julian to waltz in and out of my room apparently whenever they feel like it. I have problems to solve and a best friend to protect and answers to get.

  In fact, my answers are glaring at me from over there. Finn so does not look happy I’m here.

  I chalk that one up to the ‘maybe Holly and Julian ARE in league with Finn’ ledger I have running in my brain.

  Getting Shad and Disey to let me leave the house was, as you can imagine, a task. I spent days brainstorming ways to persuade them to let me come. I considered screaming and crying and throwing tantrums and bribery and blackmail and plain ol’ sneaking out before I realised that the simplest method would be the best. Negotiations were long and bitter and contentious and I had to point out several times that I was no longer in any danger of brain damage before they would even begin to consider the possibility.

  Actually, in the end, it worked better than I hoped. The conditions they put on my coming were that I stay in Phil’s company at all times. And there is no way that Phil can be running off to get demon-possessed or whatever by Julian if she has to babysit me. Plus, it gives me all the more opportunity to plant subtle seeds of ‘OMG I should totally break up with him he is the worst’ in her mind.

  That’s not to say that it’s without its embarrassments, though. Disey lectures Phil on all the medications I’m supposed to take while Shad gives Ms Rao a rundown on all the million and one doctors she has to call if anything, I mean anything, happens to me, up to and including me breaking a nail. I can sense, rather than hear, Lili and Tricia laughing. I want to turn around and shoot them a death glare, but Holly-Anne is with them, and I don’t want to give her even the slightest inkling that I know she’s involved in . . . whatever this is.

  Knowledge is power, right? And if I know something she doesn’t think I know, that gives me the slightest bit of leverage.

  ‘And don’t hesitate to call me,’ Disey says to Phil. ‘Anytime. Day or night. For any reason.’

  ‘I’m going to be fine, Disey,’ I say, not even a little bit sure if that’s true. ‘You don’t need to worry.’

  ‘I’ll call,’ Phil promises.

  Disey hugs her. ‘Thank you.’

  Julian ambles over after Disey and Shad leave. ‘Is your sister hitting on my girl, Pearl?’ he asks.

  Both Phil and I shoot him a look. Maybe convincing her to break up with him will require less work than I thought.

  They herd us all onto the bus. Phil, bless her heart, shoos Julian away and sits with me. This invalid thing is totes going to be useful in Project Break-up. ‘Sit down, everyone!’ Mr Molloy yells. ‘I’m going to call a roll. Anelli?’

  ‘Here!’

  ‘Balakrishnan?’

  ‘Here!’

  ‘Blacklin?’

  ‘Rules!’

  Mr Molloy rolls his eyes and continues. ‘Cardigan?’

  ‘Here!’ Cardy is across the aisle from me and Phil. He smiles at me. He’s sitting next to Jenny. Spew. She catches my eye and sort of smirks.

  ‘Greene? Greene? Jenny, are you here!’

  ‘Oh, yes – sorry!’ she says.

  Hahahahaha. Sucked in, Jenny. Guess our staring war was just so intense you didn’t hear your own name. Probably because your tiny brain is incapable of comprehending more than one thing at a time.

  ‘Kostakid
is?’

  ‘Here!’

  ‘Linford?’

  ‘Here!’

  ‘Welcome back, Pearl,’ Mr Molloy says, smiling. ‘Hey everyone, let’s have a round of applause for Pearl, who’s back with us today!’

  There’s a round of half-hearted claps. Cardy applauds appreciatively and smiles again. Jenny sort of puts her hands together limply once or twice.

  ‘Sullivan!’

  ‘Here,’ Holly-Anne says, and breaks out into an extended fit of coughing.

  ‘Are you all right, Holly?’ Mr Molloy asks.

  ‘Fine, fine,’ she splutters.

  Finn catches my eye. He’s sitting right down the back of the bus and the force of his glare is palpable. The way the light is falling makes his green eyes look almost black. But it takes more than a glare to scare Pearl Linford these days.

  It takes several hours to get from Haylesford to Sydney. I had intended to spend most of it brainstorming ways to find myself alone with Finn (up to and including ambushing him in the coach toilet, if it came down to that) but there are some things that are irresistible, and when you’ve barely slept for days because you’re afraid someone is going to slit your throat in the night, sleep is one of them. About fifteen minutes out of Haylesford, I close my eyes, intending just to rest them for a minute . . . but nature doesn’t work that way.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ Finn whispers to me.

  I lean back against his chest and pull his arms tighter around me. We’re standing on the point up near the lighthouse. ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ I say.

  ‘It’s dangerous.’ His breath is warm against my ear.

  ‘I can look after myself.’

  ‘I know you can,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t make it any less dangerous.’

  I turn. ‘Do you want me to leave?’

  He looks at me, his eyes dark in the fading light. ‘Not for a second,’ he says.

  ‘Good, because I’m not going to.’

  ‘You have no idea what’s going on,’ he says raggedly, resting his forehead against mine. ‘You need to stay away from me.’

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ I reply, ‘and there’s no way you’re going to make me do something I don’t want to do.’

  ‘It’s dangerous.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ I say.

  We kiss in front of the lighthouse for a second, a year, a lifetime. ‘I hate myself,’ he gasps. ‘God, I hate myself for putting you in this –’

  ‘Pearl, wake up,’ Phil says, shaking my shoulder.

  ‘Nngh?’ I say, blinking. ‘Are we there yet?’

  ‘No,’ she answers. ‘Halfway – we’ve just stopped for a bit so everyone can stretch their legs and caffeinate.’

  We’re stopped at one of those twenty-four-hour service-station diner places that you sometimes find in the middle of nowhere. I grab a table while Phil goes and gets coffee for us. It’s pretty gross in here but I don’t mind. It feels good to be out of Haylesford, where black horses dance like snake charmers and my friends die and people invade your bedroom.

  Holly-Anne and her friends are sitting two tables across – interestingly, a long way away from Finn, who is chewing gum and listening to Cam tell some story on the other side of the restaurant. Her friends are all gossiping but Holly seems strangely subdued. She’s incredibly pale and her strawberry hair looks vividly orange. I’m reminded powerfully of Ranga Dave, pale in his white hospital bed apart from the scarlet of his hair.

  ‘Chips?’ Julian says, sliding into the chair across from me. ‘I got a selection.’

  ‘Oooh, you read my mind,’ Phil says, sitting next to him.

  They kiss. Ugh. This needs to stop immediately. But I have to think of a way to break them up that makes it look like I had nothing to do with it. I should have spent more time watching Gossip Girl. Blair Waldorf would know exactly how to play this.

  The coffee is awful. It’s certainly not decaf, however, and if the bus hadn’t been equipped with seatbelts, I think I’d have been bouncing off the walls the rest of the way to Sydney. It’s strange, the effect that caffeine has on you when you’re already exhausted. It makes you feel even more tired than you already are . . . in an energetic way, like someone’s zapped electricity through your veins. And it’s kind of like being drunk, in that it gives you really, really stupid ideas.

  They herd us straight into a lecture theatre when we get to Sydney. There are hundreds of students from all over New South Wales, and I’m not sure whether I should feel comforted by the anonymity (would They really try something in front of so many people?) or worried by it (who’d miss just one?). I tell Phil to save me a seat while I go to the bathroom but she’s clearly taken Disey’s dire warnings to heart, because she doesn’t leave my side. Which means I have to rethink my original plan, which was to surreptitiously pull Finn aside before he got inside and force him to spill his guts.

  Yep, stupid idea. I am so not firing on all cylinders just yet.

  But luck actually goes my way for once. The bathroom detour makes Phil and me a little late. The only two seats together are right up the back. And guess who has a penchant for sitting up the back of rooms, given his Bad Boy™ status?

  The look Finn gives me as I slide into the seat next to him could melt rock. He is furious, and I kind of love it.

  I wait until Phil is engrossed in the lecture before I slide a note into his lap. You have to talk to me sooner or later.

  Shouldn’t you be paying attention? he scrawls back.

  I am. I can multitask.

  He doesn’t write back.

  You can’t ignore me forever.

  He just looks at me. I can see the words ‘watch me’ written all over his face.

  If I didn’t need him so badly, I’d kill him. If you don’t talk to me, I’ll tell everyone you woke me up, I write.

  ‘You can’t!’ he hisses.

  ‘Was that a question up the back?’

  Finn looks terrified. Phil is looking at me quizzically, jolted out of her note-taking trance. ‘Ah, yes,’ I say, covering quickly. ‘Um, I’m a bit confused about the difference between Paper One and Paper Two. Why is the English exam split the way it is?’

  ‘It’s very simple,’ the presenter says. ‘Paper One is on your Area of Study . . .’

  I stop listening. It’s hard to care about the minutiae of an exam that’s more than a year away when Finn Blacklin is so wound up he’s practically humming like a harp string next to me.

  I can feel the warmth radiating off his body. My arm is almost touching his – if I moved it just a little to the left, our elbows would be nudging. He’s scrawling down notes haphazardly in his folder. I watch his hands. He has long fingers, like a pianist, and I can almost remember the feel of them on my skin, pulling me out of that dark ocean, wrapped in my hair as we –

  No, Pearl.

  He slides a note under my fingers. I unfold it.

  My room. Midnight.

  Oh God, I wish Phil was dating anyone but Julian. And that she didn’t take her moral duty to me so seriously. If she a) had a non–potentially-very-evil boyfriend and b) would ever let me convince her to go and hook up with him instead of watching me like a hawk, this would be so much easier.

  I have a problem. Phil is a total night owl and escaping from her clutches to go and meet Finn is going to be majorly difficult.

  I seriously consider crushing up one of my drowsy-making pain pills and putting it in her water glass. And then I seriously consider telling her the truth.

  Hey Phil? I think something super creepy is trying to kill me. And I think I should be dead right now, but Finn saved me. With his hair. And also you need to break up with your boyfriend because he and Holly-Anne are probably henchmen of evil.

  Yeah, that’s going to go over really well. If I say anything like that, she’ll call Disey and I’ll find myself back in hospital undergoing a thousand and one brain scans before you can blink.

  Which leaves me with option three: lying and gu
ilt trips.

  ‘Do you mind if we go to bed early tonight?’ I ask her. It’s ten forty-five and we’re stretched out on the twin beds in our motel room, talking. I’ve been trying to slip in some subtle anti-Julian sentiment, but I don’t think it’s getting through. Lights out was fifteen minutes ago but not even Phil and I are that obedient. ‘I get tired. With my head and all.’

  ‘Of course,’ she says. ‘But take your pills first.’

  I obey. I ask her to get me another glass of water and when her back is turned, I swap my painkiller for a Tic-Tac. ‘Night,’ I say, flipping the light off.

  For a while, I think I’ve got away with it, but then I see the dim light of her tablet. Damn it.

  I give it fifteen minutes just in case she puts it down on her own. She doesn’t. Gah.

  I toss and let out a kind of grumble-groan-moan thing that I hope sounds involuntary. ‘Pearl?’ she says. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘It’s just – God, Phil, I’m sorry to be such a princess, but the light from your tablet. It must be some weird combination of these pills, but it feels like it’s a dagger stabbing me in the brain. Do you . . .?’

  ‘Oh God, Pearl, sorry,’ she says. She sounds almost panicked, which makes me feel super guilty. ‘I’ll turn it off.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘Really.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ she says. ‘It’s not your fault.’

  I’m still worried that she’s not going to fall asleep but by the time the digital clock next to the bed reads 11.55, her breathing is deep and even and has been that way for several minutes. Slowly, as quietly as I can, I get out of bed, snag the keycard from the luggage rack, and close the door softly behind me.

  I’m worrying about how to tell which room is Finn’s when I see a door open and Cam Davidson slips out. Quickly, I hide myself behind a plant. He knocks on the door of another room. When it opens, I hear Annabel’s voice. He says something back and then she yanks him inside.

  Seedy overnight excursion hook-ups. Good times.

  Hoping against hope that Finn has been true to form and roomed with Cam, I tiptoe over to the door. Never in my wildest fantasies – yes, I have had fantasies about a seedy overnight excursion hook-up with Finn, because my subconscious is all class – did I imagine I’d be sneaking into his room wearing flannelette pyjamas with Shad’s old rugby beanie jammed over my bald head. This is not exactly my sexiest outfit ever.