by Cat Clarke
This is what I know to be true. Polly has asthma. She carries inhalers with her wherever she goes. She knows what to do when someone’s having an attack. Polly knew Tara had asthma. She saved Tara’s life once. She did not do it twice.
The place my thoughts are leading me towards is so disturbing that I can’t look at it head-on. I have to squint at it out of the corner of my eye. Danni must be wrong. It’s as simple as that.
I text Cass and ask her to meet at the coffee shop we used to go to before our lives were over. Cass likes it because it’s got a pinball machine; I’ve never understood the appeal of pinball.
She texts back – she’ll be there at five. That gives me half an hour to shower and make myself fit for public viewing. I haven’t left the house for six days. I haven’t washed my hair for three. I am officially disgusting.
Dad’s shocked to see me in actual clothes. He makes a half-hearted effort at persuading me to stay home (You can’t go out with wet hair … can you? Doesn’t that mean you’ll catch a cold … or something?), but I think he’s just pleased to see me vertical again. Bruno looks up hopefully from his favourite lounging spot in front of the fire, but puts his head back on his paws when he clocks that I’m not brandishing a lead.
Cass is there when I arrive – playing pinball, of course. She looks up when I call her name, and the little ball drops down through the hole at the bottom of the machine. I know enough about pinball to know that this is undesirable.
‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to ruin your game.’
‘Don’t worry about it. I wouldn’t have got anywhere near my highest score anyway – haven’t been practising enough recently,’ she says pointedly. The point being: we haven’t been here for ages and it’s all your fault.
Cass has already got a drink – a can of Coke (not diet) is on the table next to the pinball machine. Our table. At least it used to be. I grab a can of Diet Coke from the fridge and pay at the counter. For the first time my hands are as clammy as those of the boy at the till. Cass and I always tried to get our change from him without actual physical contact. It was a challenge – one that Cass excelled at. I failed pretty much every time, and today’s no exception.
Cass looks at me warily as we sit down opposite each other. She fiddles with the ring pull on her can until it breaks off. ‘So …?’
It’s weird seeing her here; I wish I’d chosen somewhere else. It doesn’t seem right to stomp all over those memories. ‘I need to talk to you about something.’
She makes a big show of looking at her watch – a huge diver’s watch that dwarfs her tiny wrist. ‘I haven’t got all day, you know.’
‘Sorry. Yes.’ The cafe is empty apart from the boy behind the counter. He’s busy watching the football on a tiny TV in the corner. The volume must be turned up as far as it will go. Which suits me just fine. ‘It’s about Tara.’
Cass winces and looks around before leaning across the table towards me. ‘There’s nothing to talk about. I think you’ve made your feelings quite clear, don’t you?’
‘Cass, listen to me. I need to know what happened.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘That night. In the woods.’
She scrunches up her face and shakes her head. ‘You know what happened,’ she says in a fierce whisper.
‘No. I don’t. When Rae and I went back to the cabin …’
Cass holds onto the edges of the table with both hands as if to steady herself. ‘No.’
‘What do you mean, no?’ This isn’t exactly what I was expecting.
‘I mean, “I don’t want to talk about it.” It’s pretty simple really.’ There’s real hatred in her eyes and it makes me so sad I could cry.
‘This is important, Cass. Please.’ I put everything I’ve got into that please.
The only sound is the roar of the crowd on the TV. Someone must have scored. Clammy boy is clutching his head in his hands, so I’m guessing it wasn’t Arsenal.
‘You never asked. Not once.’ Cass isn’t looking at me. She’s not looking at anything. ‘I kept on waiting for you to ask. I mean, why wouldn’t you? Surely you’d want to know what happened? Surely you’d know how awful it must have been? Surely my best friend would want to know if I was OK, having been through something like that?’ She’s firing the words at me like machine-gun bullets. Each one hits me smack-bang in the heart.
I’m stunned. Cass is right. I never even thought about it – not once. I didn’t think about how terrible it is to watch someone die. Ironic, really.
‘I …’
‘You were too busy blaming me, right?’ She leans forward again, eyes blazing. ‘Well, you know what, Alice? You could never, ever blame me more than I blame myself! So if that’s what this little reunion is all about, you can save it.’ She pushes her chair back and it hits the wall behind her. The boy looks up from the TV. ‘What are you looking at?’ Cass shouts at him, and he returns his gaze to the screen pronto.
This isn’t going to plan. One last try. I look up at her, my eyes pleading. ‘Did you try to save her? Did Polly try to save her?’
She stands over me for a second, making up her mind. Then she shakes her head and slumps back down in her seat. ‘It was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen. I didn’t know what to do. I mean, I don’t know first aid or anything, and you know how squeamish I am.’ She’s not kidding. Cass can’t bear being in the same room as an ill person. She never goes to the doctor, even when she’s really unwell – she can’t bear breathing the same air as ‘those diseased freaks’ in the waiting room.
‘So what did you do?’
‘I was going to try giving her mouth-to-mouth or something. I mean, I didn’t know what I was doing, but I’ve seen it on TV enough times.’
‘What happened?’ I say.
‘Polly stopped me. She said it was too dangerous. She was the one who knew first aid, so I had to listen, didn’t I?’
‘She said it was too dangerous?’
Cass nods vigorously. ‘But Tara needed air, right? She needed to breathe. It was like watching a fish out of water. The panic in her eyes … I think she knew she was dying. Can you imagine what that feels like?’
I ignore the question. ‘What did Polly do?’
Cass shrugs. ‘She just … watched. I think she must have been in shock or something. There was nothing else we could have done, right?’
I find myself shaking my head slowly, as if agreeing will make this nightmare go away.
‘Alice, are you OK? You look … I dunno …’
‘I’m fine.’ I reach across the table and take her hand. She looks taken aback but she doesn’t snatch her hand away. ‘Cass, I need you to understand something. You did everything you could. You were out of your depth – we all were. You can’t blame yourself.’ I don’t know why I don’t tell her. It’s not like I make a conscious decision not to tell her. Not really.
‘But it was my idea. The stupid joke.’ There are tears in her eyes. She tries to blink them away.
I squeeze her hand. ‘Yes, but you had no idea what would happen. None of us did.’
Cass shakes her head. ‘I took it too far though. Putting the pillowcase over her head … pretending to be that guy. Polly said it was too much, but I didn’t listen.’
‘When? When did Polly say that?’
The tears are flowing freely now. She doesn’t bother to wipe them away. ‘When we were orienteering – remember when we were supposed to be lost? I wanted to talk it through with Polly before telling you. I just wanted to scare Tara, you know? Really scare her. She deserved it.’ I can’t argue with that. She deserved a scare. She did not deserve to die. ‘At first I was just going to jump out at her wearing that stupid balaclava. But then I had a better idea – to drag her out of bed in the middle of the night and lock her out of the cabin. Then Polly said she’d seen this film once where they staged a kidnapping – made it look really real and everything. Said they tied this guy to a tree and pretended to be a gang of psychopaths … I jumped on the idea – th
ought it was genius. Way better than my plan. Polly said it was too cruel, but I wouldn’t let it go … Why the fuck didn’t I just let it go?’ She’s sobbing now, out of control.
I feel sick.
Why can’t she see that Polly played her from the start? Planted the idea in Cass’s head, then pretended to be horrified by it.
Why can’t I tell her?
‘Cass, you made a mistake. We all did. We’re all to blame.’
She looks up, her face a blotchy, tear-stained mess. ‘You don’t really believe that, do you? What about Rae?’
‘We all had a choice – Rae included. You can’t blame yourself for what she did. You just … can’t. Look, I’ve got to go. Dad wants me back by six. Are you going to be all right getting home?’
She nods. ‘I think I’ll stay here for a bit. Get my head together – play some pinball … Alice, is it going to be OK?’ She whispers the question.
I don’t know whether she’s talking about our friendship. Or something bigger. Whatever she means, I know there’s only one answer. And I know it with a cold, sharp certainty.
No. It is not going to be OK.
‘Yes. It’s going to be OK, I promise.’
41
Three in the morning and still no sign of sleep. I don’t know if I’ll ever sleep again.
Ghost Tara and I have been talking, and I’m actually glad of the company. Maybe this is how madness works. At first you’re worried you’re going crazy, but in the end you don’t even care. You embrace it; it’s the only thing you’ve got left. The only thing you can trust when the rest of the world has gone to shit.
‘She fucking killed me, didn’t she?’ Tara’s pacing the room. Her legs are pale and goosebumpy. I shiver.
I lean over to scratch Bruno behind his ears. His tongue lolls out of his mouth.
‘Polly Sutcliffe killed me? Christ, that’s embarrassing.’
If this girl wasn’t a figment of my imagination I would throw something at her head.
‘Is that all you can say? It’s embarrassing? It’s … fucking fucked up is what it is.’
‘Well, yeah. Obviously. Who’d have thought Polly would turn out to be a bona fide psychopath … or is it sociopath? What’s the difference between those two anyway? I’ve never been quite sure …’
‘Tara, will you please shut up for a minute? I’m trying to think.’
She throws herself down on the bed with such gusto that Bruno should have been catapulted off, or at least woken up. He wasn’t and he hasn’t. ‘What are you thinking about? Maybe I can help. Tell me tell me tell me.’
I close my eyes and press my fingers into my eye sockets. It hurts, but the pain feels good and right. It grounds me – anchors me to what is real. My hands are real. My eyes are real. I wonder if my eyeballs would pop right into my brain if I pushed hard enough. I wonder if anyone’s ever committed suicide that way.
I’m trying to form coherent, ordered thoughts, but it’s like trying to knit with candyfloss. ‘She didn’t kill you. Not really. It was an accident.’ My voice rises up at the end of the sentence. It’s an almost-question mark. I open my eyes and blink away the red spots in my vision.
‘Yeah, course it was. I accidentally got dragged out of bed and tied up in the middle of the night. A pillowcase accidentally fell over my head and Cass accidentally pretended to be some sleazy fucker who wanted to rape me.’ She counts off each ‘accidentally’ on her muddy, blood-encrusted fingers.
‘We didn’t know you had asthma!’
‘She knew. She knew and she didn’t say anything, and she stopped Cass from trying to save me. Open your eyes, Alice.’ My eyes are open, but that’s not what she means. ‘This isn’t going to go away. You can’t escape this. Rae couldn’t escape, and she didn’t even know the truth. Or maybe she did.’
Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. We’ll never know. That’s part of the joy of the whole ‘being dead’ thing. The unanswered questions, the secrets, everything you never said. A laugh escapes from my mouth and I have no idea what’s so funny. But I can’t stop. The laughter is manic and high-pitched. It doesn’t sound like a noise I would ever make. It doesn’t sound like a noise a normal, sane person would ever make. And then before I know it I’m crying so hard I have to stuff my fist in my mouth to keep from screaming.
‘Alice, will you please shut the fuck up? You sound like some kind of rabid animal. Seriously, you’re making my ears bleed.’ I look up and she’s right. Blood is trickling over her ear lobes and tracing a precarious path down her neck.
Everything goes blurry and fuzzy. Then dark.
I wake up with a wet ear. My first thought: blood. My ears are bleeding. I’m dying.
My second thought: Bruno. He’s now slobbering all over my mouth. Gross. But it’s a relief. It’s normal. I get a saliva wake-up call at least twice a week.
Dad’s banging on my bedroom door and banging on about me being late. This is also normal. I lie in bed and breathe. Breathing means I’m alive. And being alive is a good thing.
Isn’t it?
I need to think about this. But I really, really don’t want to think about this. It’s too big to fit inside my head. It’s too big and serious and not the kind of thing a sixteen-year-old girl should have to deal with. This sixteen-year-old girl cannot deal with it.
I have to do something. Ghost Tara is right. This isn’t going to go away, no matter how much I want it to. But I need more time.
I get the bus to school. I go to lessons. At lunchtime I throw my sandwiches in the bin. I talk to Danni. I tell her not to go to the police – not yet. For some reason, she listens to me. For some reason, she seems to respect me. God knows why. I see Cass. We talk. But not about it. We talk about the latest episode of that crappy MTV show she loves so much. We talk about the new biology teacher who started last week. Cass says his teeth are so white they must glow in the dark. We talk about her brothers. Jeremy lost a tooth and there was five pounds under his pillow when he woke up the next morning. ‘Five quid?! FIVE QUID?! Can you believe it? I got a pound if I was lucky. It just backs up my argument that Mum loves the boys more than she loves me.’ We laugh, or rather we both make a sort of laughing sound. Then we both stop because it doesn’t sound right.
So I get through Monday, somehow. Tuesday is a repeat of Monday, with the added bonus of a session with Miss Daley after school. I say as little as possible. She doesn’t seem to mind. She seems as distracted as I am. Her hair looks nice though. It’s shinier than normal and I think she’s changed the parting. Jack calls me in the evening. His voice soothes me. His laugh smooths the edges of my fragmented mind. He asks me to go over to his house on Saturday night. Something in his tone suggests that he wants Saturday to be the night. I don’t know what to do about that. I say yes, because that’s what he wants to hear.
Wednesday is the day I start to lose it. Wednesday is the day I spend two hours in the toilets in the art block. I choose the end stall, put down the toilet lid and sit there with my knees drawn up to my chin. If anyone looks under the door they won’t be able to see any feet. They’ll assume the lock is jammed. They’ll leave.
I cry. As quietly as possible.
42
I don’t see her until Thursday. Not that I’ve been purposefully trying to avoid her. Well, maybe just a little bit.
She’s alone. Standing in front of the vending machine. I stop dead, not sure what to do. I watch. She’s just standing there and staring. At first, I think she’s having trouble choosing what to buy, but then she flicks her hair and turns her head to the side – still staring at the glass.
I take a step forward and then a step back. What should I do? Fucking talk to her. Tara’s voice in my head makes my decision for me. I’d feel a whole lot better about this if I’d planned what I was going to say. Stupid.
‘Polly, hi! How’s it going?’ My voice is loud and bright and as fake as it’s ever been.
She takes a second or two to fiddle with her hair before turning to
wards me. ‘Hi, long time no see. I heard you were ill. Nothing serious, I hope?’ Her smile seems genuine enough.
‘No, nothing serious. So …’ I run out of words. My idiotic, frazzled, sleep-deprived brain has finally ceased to function.
Polly reaches into her bag (Mulberry) and pulls out her phone. ‘So, I’d better be going. Got to meet Stephanie for lunch.’ There is no good reason for her to tell me this. She takes a couple of steps away and the Tara-voice in my head is screaming at me to say something – ANYTHING!
‘Polly, wait. Um … could I talk to you about something?’
She turns and smiles uncertainly. ‘Of course. What do you want to talk about?’
‘I’d like to get involved with the memorial … thing.’
‘Really? I thought you found it distasteful in some way.’ There’s suspicion there, but that’s only to be expected.
‘I was wrong. I’m sorry. I’d like to help – really.’
‘Hmm. Well, I’m sure we can find something for you to do. There’s the yearbook thing to sort out for starters. It’s got to be sorted ASAP. Originally it was only going to be two pages, but I managed to get Mrs Flanagan to agree to an eight-page spread, right in the middle. Isn’t that great?’
‘An eight-page spread of what, exactly?’
‘Photos of Tara, maybe some quotes from her friends, things like that.’ She snaps her fingers and points at me. ‘I’ve got it! I know exactly what you can do. Why don’t we get the lyrics of Jack’s song? The one he played at the dance? We could get him to write them out and then we can scan them. Oh, it’ll be perfect, don’t you think?’
‘Perfect,’ I say. Not tacky, tawdry, sick.
‘You’ll be able to get him to agree, no problem. I’m sure you can think of some way to persuade him if he’s not too keen …’ Polly laughs and I somehow manage to smile back at her.
‘Actually, I’m seeing Jack after school. Why don’t I get him to write out the song and then I can meet you later?’ Oh God, what am I doing?