by Mary Hooper
So – what was I thinking? That it was better not to know things? That Sky, if she hadn’t found out about Sophie, might have gone on seeing Anton until they’d broken up naturally when he’d gone back to France? That at least would have preserved the best-friendship between her and Sophie.
And what about my dad’s secret? Suppose I found it out and it ruined our lives? What about Chloe? What of the seance where Lois was going to contact her mum? Would knowing any of that stuff make us happier?
Maybe it was better if secrets stayed just that.
Chapter Nine
I didn’t go out with Zara that Saturday because my brother came home from uni for the weekend and – big surprise – asked me if I wanted to go with him to Sweet Sounds, this really cool second-hand CD shop in town.
This was fine by me – great, in fact, because I hardly ever got to spend time with him – but I’d already arranged to meet Zara. I told Toby this, thinking that maybe she could come with us.
He groaned. ‘Not her,’ he said. ‘Anyone but her.’
‘She’s my best friend!’ I protested.
‘I’m amazed you’re still going round with her.’
‘God, you’re such a snob!’ I said, giving him a shove. ‘You’re just like Dad.’
‘It’s not being a snob, Ella. Or maybe it is,’ he grinned, ‘but she does look a bit pikey, you must admit.’
‘Don’t be so horrible!’ I protested, but of course I did know what he meant. I quite fancied going out with him on my own, anyway, so on the Friday I told Zara that my brother was around and we were going out as a family, so I wouldn’t be able to meet her. She was OK about it; she didn’t sound as if she minded.
I did see her in town that morning, actually, but she didn’t see me. Toby and I had spent a couple of hours in Sweet Sounds and had been walking back home when I’d spotted her on the other side of the road in a crowd of shoppers.
‘Oh look, there’s Zara,’ I said to Toby, nodding towards her.
Toby looked and made a barking noise. ‘What a state!’ he said, and he dragged me into a shop doorway to hide until she’d gone by.
I felt a bit bad to be hiding from her, but I had to say she did look grim. She was wearing possibly the shortest skirt ever, plus huge army boots with great thick woolly socks. She had black lipstick and her hair was hanging all over the place.
‘She’s gone Goth,’ I said as we watched her going up the road.
‘Half-Goth, half-dog,’ Toby said, which made me laugh, though it shouldn’t have really.
* * *
‘When you do the seance, will I actually be able to speak to my mum?’ Lois asked one day the following week. ‘Will she have messages for me?’
‘I don’t know,’ Zara said. ‘I can’t choose who comes through. It all depends whether your mum wants to contact you or not on that particular day. If she does, she’ll make her presence felt.’
Funny, I thought. She was speaking about it so easily, making it sound as if contacting the dead was something she could do as easily as getting someone on the phone. She must have been reading up on how to do it.
I looked at Lois. Her expression was really wistful, almost sad, and I wondered again if what Zara was doing was right. Or even if it was genuine.
It was the Monday following the Sky and Sophie disclosure and half the class were sitting around waiting for the other half to come in and talking about what had happened. Had Sky and Sophie seen each other over the weekend and had a full-scale row? we wondered. Had Sky been to see Anton? Had Anton been to see Sophie?
Various rumours spread about the place: someone swore they’d seen Sophie at the mainline station catching a train to London, someone else said they’d seen Sky out with Anton, shopping and looking in a jeweller’s window. This was so not true that we started laughing, and then the stories got more and more wild: Sophie had been seen snogging Anton, Sophie and Sky had been seen rolling round the floor fighting in the hairdresser’s, Sky had been seen buying a wedding dress …
It was the number one topic of conversation. And when that flagged then the number two topic was Zara and her skills.
‘Don’t forget you’re going to do the Tarot cards for me,’ Chloe said, draping her arm around Zara’s shoulders. ‘Can’t we do it now – before class?’
Zara shook her head. ‘It can’t all be done in a rush,’ she said, and I knew what she really meant. She couldn’t do it there and then because she liked to build things up and set the scene. She was now a psychic, a person of great importance. And besides, since she’d hinted that Chloe had something interesting going on in her life, she obviously wanted an audience around to marvel at her pronouncements.
Sky eventually came in, looking a bit subdued, and everyone made a great fuss about saying hello to her and asking what sort of a weekend she’d had. Poppy went to sit next to her, they had a hurried, whispered talk and then both went outside. We all looked at each other – where had they gone? – and then someone peered around the door and saw that they were moving all Sky’s things to a spare locker further along the row, away from Sophie’s locker.
This was all amazing and startling. I mean, Sky and Sophie had been best, closest, most intimate friends for years. And now that friendship was all over.
Sophie came in while they were outside, so she must have had to walk right past them. She looked really good, actually. Her hair was straighter and glossier than ever and she’d had her school skirt shortened drastically so that her legs looked amazingly long underneath it. They looked browner, too – I knew she and her family belonged to a health club so she’d obviously been on a tanning bed at the weekend. Lois went over to Sophie and they went into a little huddle.
After a moment Sky came back in with Poppy and everyone in the class simply stared at them, wondering what was going to happen. All that did, though, was that Poppy and Sky stayed sitting together and so did Lois and Sophie.
* * *
A couple of days went by and it was really odd to see how everything had changed. From being the absolute centre of everything, the source of most of the laughs we had in class and all the gossip and giggles, Sky and Sophie had become outsiders. Everything had depended on The Two; we all took our lead from them. If we had a supply teacher and they liked her, then everyone liked her. If they were keen on the particular book we were doing in English Lit, then everyone was keen on it. I’m not saying that some of us didn’t have opinions of our own or that we trailed around after them like puppies, but it was just that we trusted their judgement. They were so attractive, confident and all the rest that if they thought a particular way, then everyone knew it was OK – even preferable – to think that way too.
Now it was all different. Sophie and Sky were subdued, so the rest of the class was subdued as well. The Two were no more, and The Four were no more either. Poppy and Lois hadn’t fallen out, but they might just as well have done, because Sophie refused to acknowledge Poppy when she was with Sky, and Sky did the same with Lois when she was with Sophie.
Occasionally, little bits of news drifted back to the rest of us: Sky had texted Anton, told him she never wanted to see him again and was now refusing to answer her phone when she saw it was from him; Sky had said she hated Sophie and would never be friends with her again ever; Sophie hated Sky and had said it was no wonder that Anton had gone off her.
I didn’t know what to believe. But what I did know was that it was all horrible.
And the strange thing was that now that Zara and I were in the middle of everything, it wasn’t so important to be there. The whole dynamics of the class had changed. The Two weren’t The Two any longer.
Zara read the Tarot cards for Jenna and Chloe a few days later in our tutor room at lunchtime. She’d already added an enhancement to her routine before she started a reading: apart from having me sound the bell to cleanse the room, she now said she had to centre herself. This meant, apparently, that she had to have a moment’s silence from everyone to enable he
r to ‘draw light and energy down and get in touch with her psychic side’.
Hearing she was doing this centring, everyone went as quiet as mice, taking it very seriously indeed. And of course Sophie wasn’t around now to throw the occasional spanner in the works by saying she didn’t believe in it. She, someone told us, now went into the library at lunchtimes and had also joined the drama club.
Zara started off by reading Jenna’s cards, but didn’t come out with anything really interesting, just said things like she loved surprises, had a touch of the wild child about her but kept it well hidden, and would like to live somewhere more exciting. She could have said the same thing, I realised, to more or less anyone in class.
She made much more of Chloe’s reading, saying that she would do her something called a ‘cosmic triple’. Chloe had to fan all the cards face down and mix them around on the desk top, then gather them together into a pack again and turn over the first three cards. Zara said that these, in order, represented Chloe’s past, present and future.
She studied these three for some time without saying anything, then asked Chloe if she had any particular question to ask.
‘Yes – when am I going to meet a really fit guy?’ said Chloe.
‘I don’t think that sort of relationship is showing up here,’ Zara said, still looking at the cards. ‘So you’re probably not about to meet anyone important – at least not in the next year.’
Chloe stuck out her bottom lip, pretending to look peeved.
‘But there are some interesting things going on in your life,’ Zara continued.
‘Tell me!’ Chloe said.
Zara gave a slight smile. ‘Well, take this one … your past.’ She pointed to Chloe’s first card, which was of a group of people standing beside a lake. ‘This looks like you and your family embarking on a holiday. Or a big move, perhaps?’
Chloe nodded slowly. ‘Yeah. I know what that was.’ We all knew, actually, that Chloe and her family had been set to go to Canada to live, and had then changed their minds. Or that’s what she’d told us.
‘And this second card shows the reason you didn’t go …’
There was a picture showing someone isolated, on the top of a hill.
Chloe shrugged. ‘Does it?’
Zara nodded and closed her eyes, as if thinking deeply. ‘You didn’t go to Canada because of your brother.’
Chloe didn’t say anything. We all looked at each other and made raised-eyebrow faces. What was she on about?
‘Your brother was convicted of something and he’s in prison, isn’t he?’ Zara went on bluntly, and we all gasped in surprise.
Chloe flushed a deep pink. ‘No!’ she said indignantly. ‘No, he isn’t in prison.’
‘I think he is.’
‘He’s not!’
‘The plans to live abroad got cancelled because of him going inside. And of course they won’t ever let you in now because he’s got a criminal record.’
For a moment Chloe looked as if she was about to burst into tears, but then she composed herself, stood up and glared at Zara. ‘Well, thanks very much for letting everyone know that, Zara,’ she said. ‘But actually, he’s not in prison, he’s in a Young Offenders’ Institution.’
‘Same thing,’ Zara said, shrugging slightly. She looked down at the third card. ‘You don’t want to know about your future, then?’ she said, but Chloe had gone out, slamming the door behind her.
Zara bent over and rested her palms gently on the floor – to earth herself, she explained; to bring herself back to earth after being in touch with her higher self. And then the bell went and everyone disappeared pretty quickly. Another scandal to talk about.
I asked Zara on the way home how she’d known. I mean, to me those cards wouldn’t have meant anything – a group of people beside water, someone up a mountain. How could they have added up to the things she’d said?
‘That’s just the difference between being normal and being psychic,’ Zara said. ‘I told you way back there was something funny about Chloe’s situation.’
I agreed that she had, but I could hardly believe that she’d found it out just by looking at some cards. How could she have?
On Thursday I stayed at school late because I had to finish off an art project. Sophie was doing something in the art room too, but we hadn’t spoken to each other. When our tutor left, though, and we started clearing up, she came over to me.
I felt a bit nervous because she’d snubbed me all week, and seeing as she’d fetched Zara a real slap around the face I thought she might be about to do the same to me. It’s nothing to do with me, I was going to say. It’s not me who’s psychic.
She emptied a bowl of paste into the sink and started washing it down. ‘About me and Sky …’ she said.
‘What?’ I asked nervously.
‘I don’t know how your friend Zara operates or what she’s on, but I don’t believe she’s psychic. Psychic!’ She shook her head. ‘That’s just a load of rubbish.’
I didn’t know what to say. Zara and I had made up the scam with the star signs, and the psychometric stuff had been a trick too, so on the one hand it was rubbish. But on the other hand, she’d got so many things right since. So many big things …
‘It is rubbish, isn’t it?’ she repeated. ‘You must know it is.’
‘She found out about Chloe’s brother, though,’ I said. ‘And how did she know about you and Anton?’
Sophie swished water around the sink. ‘I wonder.’
‘It is true, then?’ I asked daringly.
‘Well, it’s definitely true that I fancied him. And true that I went to meet him without Sky being there. But that’s all, though if you listen to Zara you’d think the two of us were on the verge of running away together.’
I didn’t say anything.
‘Zara blew it out of all proportion. She somehow knew I fancied him – I suppose that wasn’t difficult – and played on it. And I met him once but that’s all it was. I wasn’t going to take it any further.’
I pretended to be busy washing up my palette, feeling embarrassed at having her confessing to me. ‘Why are you telling me? D’you want me to tell Sky what you’ve said?’
She shook her head. ‘No point. Everyone knows now and it’s more or less pushed me and Anton together.’
I stared at her.
‘Well, everyone thought Anton and I were an item, so we thought we might just as well go along with it. Be hung for a sheep as well as a lamb, or whatever the saying is.’
‘So …’
‘So, forget us. I’m just concerned about you and your friend making more trouble, interfering where you shouldn’t. What’s she going to do next?’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Someone told me you’re holding a seance. That’s dangerous, all that stuff.’
‘It’s not me doing it.’
‘Course it is. You’re in it together, aren’t you? A right couple of little witches,’ she said bitterly.
‘But I don’t really want to do any more!’ I blurted out, and I would have liked to have told her that Zara had upset me, too, by telling me that my dad had a secret. A secret that I never stopped wondering about …
‘Well, don’t, then,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to. You’ve got a mind of your own, haven’t you?’
‘But she’s my best friend.’
‘Best friend!’ She shrugged. ‘Yeah, I used to have one of those.’
Chapter Ten
‘I don’t know what the matter is with this class lately,’ Miss Robbins said a few days later. ‘All the animation seems to have gone out of you.’
‘What’s that mean?’ someone asked.
‘What I mean is, you’re all looking rather wary – as if you’re walking on eggshells. You look like that when you’ve got a test coming up – but there aren’t any more tests.’
‘Hurray,’ someone said.
‘Of course I can see that something’s been happening as far as your seati
ng arrangements are concerned,’ Miss Robbins went on, ‘and girls who’ve been sitting next to each other for years are no longer doing so.’ She looked at us carefully, her eyes moving across the class. ‘I don’t know what’s caused all this and I don’t want to know, but I’d certainly rather have you all back the way you were, silly and annoying as that sometimes was.’
No one said anything. Miss Robbins was right, though, and obviously had more insight than I thought. Generally, the class was no longer a happy one. We never had giggling fits or gossip sessions, or got together to do impromptu impersonations of teachers in the way we’d done before. And as well as Sky and Sophie not speaking (which in turn made a difference to Poppy and Lois), Chloe and India weren’t speaking to each other either because Chloe was convinced that, because she’d only confided in India about her brother, it had to have been her who’d told Zara.
I felt the walking on eggshells thing too, waiting to see if Zara was going to come up with anything else about my dad; both anticipating it and dreading it. I wanted to know, yet I didn’t.
But a few more days went by and she didn’t say another word about him – in fact she was really friendly and back to her old self – and I wondered if she might have just said both those things for effect and perhaps wished she hadn’t. I was a bit restrained with her, though, for all sorts of reasons I didn’t feel as best-friendly as I used to, so I think it was to try and get back in with me again she offered to do me a proper Tarot reading. At first I refused, scared that it was just an excuse to bring up something about my dad, but she kept telling me it was a love spread she was going to do, and that she’d had really positive vibes about me and the boy I’d seen – about Lofty. In the end (after seeing him again and getting another smile) I was so keen to know whether anything was going to happen between us that I decided to let her do it. As she said, if your best friend is psychic then you’d be mad not to take advantage of that.
The seance to contact Lois’s mum had been put off a while – until the night of the next full moon – so Zara arranged to come over and do a reading for me on Thursday evening, a day when we never got much homework.