Looking Glass Girl

by Cathy Cassidy

  I had wanted to believe that Savvy liked me, that Lainey and Yaz could be my friends again. I’d wanted to believe that things could be different, that I didn’t have to be a victim any more; instead I felt humiliated, tricked, traumatized. I was here to be teased, wound up and laughed at; I was part of the entertainment.

  Was the power cut even real, or had Lainey fed me a pack of lies and then gone through to the utility room to flip the trip switches? I didn’t know, but suddenly the whole concept of a game of hide and seek seemed sinister, pre-planned. Taking me to the cellar, locking me in – was Lainey carrying out more instructions from on high?

  Shame at my own stupidity flooded through me, quickly followed by anger.

  I’d almost convinced myself tonight that Savvy was beautiful and cool and misunderstood; but behind the smiling face and Bambi eyes, she was coldly cruel, calculating; the kind of girl who might pull the wings off a butterfly for fun. I was the butterfly, clearly.

  I gritted my teeth and wiped away the tears, determined to find a way out of the cellar, not to let my tormentors win. Slowly I made my way across the cellar again, hauling myself up on to the cupboard counter that ran beneath the window. I stretched up to the grille that shielded the window, tugging at the metal bars, but they were solid and no matter how hard I shook and pulled them, they didn’t budge at all.

  Maybe if I could find something to poke through the bars and smash the glass, I could shout and yell until someone came to my rescue? I was groping around in the dark for something to use when the first few shreds of logic began to surface in my panicked mind.

  My mobile, uselessly, was upstairs in my coat pocket; no help there.

  I sat back on my heels. How long would they leave me locked in here? It wouldn’t be forever; I wasn’t in real danger. Logically, I knew that. Savvy and her crew may have been bullies, but they weren’t idiots. This was a sleepover, not some elaborate murder plot; sooner or later someone would let me out, perhaps pretend it had all been an accident, a mistake, a muddle. Savvy would smooth things over, switch on the charm and turn it all round so that if I complained I’d just look like a wuss, a troublemaker or a victim.

  I was probably all those things, but I didn’t want to be, not any more. I was sick of being invisible, sick of slinking along in the shadows like a beaten dog, grateful for any scraps of attention. My shame was slowly turning to anger.

  By morning, this ordeal would be over, and I’d be able to walk away with my head held high. In school I would ignore Savvy and the others, and I would tell the teachers the next time they began messing up my school books or hiding my shoes after PE lessons. I would speak out, stand up to them and fight back.

  And if I had to do all that alone, then so what? I’d manage.

  I felt calmer now, stronger. The panic had ebbed away and reason was returning.

  That’s when I heard the soft click of a door, the shuffle of feet on stone steps and the turn of a key in the lock.

  I jumped down from the counter and picked my way across the cellar again, found the door and turned the handle. It opened, and I stumbled out into the little hallway, right into the old bicycles which were stacked against the wall.

  ‘Lainey?’ I called, untangling myself from the bicycles. ‘Savvy?’

  There was nothing but silence.

  37

  ICU, Ardenley General Hospital

  The ICU is quiet when Lainey arrives trailing a metallic pink helium balloon with the words ‘get well’ printed on it. Alice is still the same, dark lashes fringed against paper-white cheeks, lips tinged faintly with mauve. She looks like Snow White after she has swallowed the poisoned apple, or Sleeping Beauty waiting for her prince.

  Lainey cannot quite work out how someone can look so sick and yet so peaceful, so beautiful.

  There is a plump, middle-aged woman sitting at Alice’s bedside. Lainey knocks politely and hesitates in the doorway, and the woman beckons her in and explains that she is Alice’s grandma, and that she is sitting with Alice for the afternoon while Mrs Beech has a break.

  ‘Cool,’ Lainey says. ‘Do you remember me? It’s Elaine. I used to be Alice’s best friend; well, I still am, really. Do you remember, you used to take us to the park sometimes when we were little? We used to call in at the bakery on the way home and you’d buy us cream cakes.’

  The older woman’s eyes widen.

  ‘Elaine!’ she says. ‘Oh, my! I wouldn’t have recognized you! You look so grown up! I’m so glad you’re here. Alice needs her friends more than ever right now!’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ Lainey agrees. ‘I’ve been in a few times already. Well … once. I’d have been in more, but it’s just so upsetting to see her like this.’

  Alice’s gran nods, and Lainey notices that she looks older, frailer than she once did. Is the strain of what’s happened to Alice the reason her face looks so grey, so defeated?

  ‘I was at the sleepover on Saturday when Alice fell,’ Lainey confides. ‘I was the first one to reach her. It was so scary; such a shock. I just … I wondered if I could talk to her alone? Is that allowed? You see, I haven’t always been a very good friend to Alice the last couple of years, and I want to explain and say sorry – you know – just in case …’

  Alice’s gran squares her shoulders.

  ‘In case nothing,’ she says briskly. ‘Alice is going to be all right; you know that, don’t you? She is going to be fine; I know it in my bones. Trust me, Elaine!’

  Lainey looks miserable, her lower lip trembling.

  ‘Oh, I hope so. It’s just … she looks so ill! It’s scary!’

  ‘Oh, pet, of course it’s scary,’ Alice’s gran sighs. ‘But our family are fighters, and I know Alice is fighting now to come back to us. She has her whole life ahead of her. School … career … friends … even that nice boy who came in earlier. She has so much to live for!’

  ‘Boy?’ Lainey echoes, her voice a whisper.

  ‘Yes! Laura was so pleased – a lovely lad by all accounts; Alice has known him since primary. He was in that play at the school, I think. So you see, old friends do count for a lot, pet. And you have nothing to be sorry for; I know that Alice has always thought kindly of you, Elaine. She often talked about you. And you will have years ahead of you both to set things right, so please don’t worry.’

  Lainey turns away, her cheeks burning, her hands trembling. She doesn’t know whether she wants to hug Alice’s gran or slap her; she just knows she cannot look her in the eye.

  She wonders now why she came; the bright helium balloon seems too showy – too cheap – for this sad, sterile space. Still, she ties the string of the balloon to the end of the bed and fixes on a brittle smile.

  ‘I’ll leave you then, Elaine,’ Alice’s gran says gently. She pats Lainey’s arm kindly and leaves the room.

  38

  Alice

  ‘Hello, Alice. It’s me, Lainey. I thought we should talk. I need you to listen; I need you to understand.’

  I press my face against the mirror glass and take in a ragged breath. Tears blur my vision and roll slowly down my cheeks, smearing the glass. I can’t get through. I can’t get home, no matter how hard I try.

  ‘You’ll never do it, Alice,’ the voice says. ‘You’ve forgotten how …’

  The Cheshire Cat is sitting in the branches of a tree just above me, all smiles. I’m so relieved to see it, although I can’t help noticing that it has very long claws and surprisingly sharp teeth. I wouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of it.

  ‘I need to remember,’ I say. ‘I need to get home.’

  The Cheshire Cat laughs. ‘I think it might be better if you stay here,’ it says. ‘Life would be so much simpler, so much safer for you. You don’t need to remember, Alice. No good will come of that …’

  Sleepover

  I was used to the dark by then, used to the hammering of my heart. I picked my way through the hallway and up the stone steps; I opened the door at the top. A part of me had ho
ped that the lights would be on in the rest of the house, but of course they weren’t. My fingers slid across the wall, found the light switch and flicked it on and off, but nothing happened. Power cut. The world was still velvet-black, silent, but I didn’t care because I wasn’t underground and it didn’t smell of damp and neglect and my fingers weren’t snagged in cobwebs or grazed by broken glass.

  There was no sound, no sign of the girls, but I was free, and all I wanted to do was to get out of there. I was fuelled by shame and anger, gutted that after all the effort I’d put into tonight, things had still ended this way. I may as well have had ‘victim’ scrawled across my forehead in Savvy’s black eyeliner pencil.

  Staying here was not an option, but as I reached the front door I remembered that my coat, holdall and sleeping bag were still upstairs in Savvy’s room. I hesitated. It was a cold night, and it was a long walk home. I needed my coat; I wasn’t willing to leave my bag either, and that meant facing my tormentors.

  As I passed the ornate mirror on the hall table, I glimpsed a dark, shadowy figure moving through the gloom; small, bowed, but not defeated. I straightened my shoulders. My shoes clip-clopped on the tiled floor and then there was quiet as I crept up the carpeted staircase, clinging on to the bannister. There was no sign of the game of hide and seek, but then that had started almost an hour ago and I was pretty sure it had been an excuse to play a sick joke on me.

  My heart was racing and my belly churned with a mixture of fear and anger as I climbed. As I got to the top floor, a chink of light appeared, spilling across the landing, and I could hear the low buzz of chat and laughter as I paused outside Savvy’s door.

  Peering through the partly open door, I could see Savvy and her friends lounging about on sleeping bags and cushions, their faces lit by the light of half a dozen flickering candles – the posh kind that smelled of vanilla. They’d changed into pyjamas ready for bed, and they looked younger somehow; too innocent to be the kind of girls who bullied and tormented others.

  I knew better.

  ‘I’m just saying, it feels a bit mean,’ Savvy was saying to the others. ‘I know we said we’d give her a challenge, a test, but … well, switching the lights off and not trying to find her for a while would have been enough. There was no need to do the whole cellar thing as well – it’s creepy in there. Horrible. And you should never have locked it. Yuk!’

  ‘But I thought that was what you wanted?’ Lainey asked. ‘To scare her?’

  ‘Well, yes, a bit,’ Savvy said. ‘I just think you took it too far, that’s all.’

  ‘You made us do a challenge,’ Yaz reminded her. ‘Or a dare, or whatever it was supposed to be. To see if we were the “right” friends for you. You made us go skinny-dipping in the lake in the park at night – don’t you remember? That was worse. It was dangerous. We could have been drowned, or anything!’

  ‘You didn’t skinny dip, though,’ Savvy pointed out. ‘You kept your clothes on. And you only paddled, in the end. I let you off.’

  ‘Still,’ Yaz reasoned. ‘You asked us. You said it wasn’t a proper dare unless it was scary and difficult. You said we had to prove ourselves.’

  ‘Did I say that?’ Savvy sighed. ‘Look, I was only eleven then. I’d probably been watching too many American teen movies. It was a stupid idea.’

  ‘I unlocked the door again,’ Lainey said. ‘She’s free. She can do whatever she wants now, OK? Look, don’t get mad at me, Savvy. I was doing what I thought you wanted me to do.’

  ‘You obviously don’t know me as well as you thought, then,’ Savvy snapped. ‘I’m going to go down and see if she’s all right; she must be freaked out. I like Alice. She’s OK. Not at all the way you described her.’

  ‘Oh, I get it,’ Lainey fired back. ‘Little Miss Perfect has you fooled too; don’t you see, Savvy? She’s a vain, self-centred little nobody. She’ll get her claws into you and she’ll get her claws into Luke, and she’ll use the two of you to fool people into thinking she’s cool, but actually she’s just a stupid, attention-seeking little …’

  I shoved the door open wide, unable to listen to any more of Lainey’s spite. I think her words wounded me more than the whole being locked in the cellar thing; I had thought she was my friend, in spite of all the things she’d said and done. I’d never really believed that she would want to hurt me, but now I knew better.

  ‘What am I, Lainey?’ I asked, my voice shaking. ‘You might as well tell me what you really think of me. Go ahead; you couldn’t hurt me any more than you have already.’

  The girls’ faces looked pale and shocked in the candlelight, but there was a coldness about Lainey’s expression. I wondered if it had been there all along; if I’d just been too blind to see it.

  ‘You know what you are,’ Lainey said spitefully. ‘You know what you’ve done.’

  ‘Lainey!’ Savvy said. ‘That’s enough!’

  I was too shocked, too hurt, to speak. There are no words for how you feel when you find out that your ex-best friend hates you, that you’ve been making excuses for her, blaming all the mean things she’s done to you on somebody else. I must be a lousy judge of character, because Lainey had had me fooled. It was almost a relief to hear her say it out loud … at least I knew now what she thought of me.

  When we were six years old, Lainey had told me that best friends were forever, and I’d believed her. More fool me.

  Nausea curled in my gut; sharp and sour and dangerous. I felt unsteady, ill, but I tried my hardest to be brave. I walked into the bedroom, picking my way carefully among the candles. Yaz and Erin were sitting on my sleeping bag, so I ignored it and picked up my coat from the bed, shrugging it on. I lifted my bag, half empty now, and slung it over one shoulder.

  The girls were on their feet, all talking at once, trying to stop me from leaving, but I shoved past them, furious. It was easier to be angry than to show them how much Lainey’s words had hurt me.

  ‘You can’t just go,’ Savvy argued. ‘C’mon, Alice, calm down; it was a joke, a mistake, crossed wires.’

  ‘I don’t like your jokes,’ I said shortly.

  ‘OK, that was the wrong word,’ Savvy conceded. ‘We were going to switch the lights off in the middle of a hide and seek game, OK? It was meant to be a sort of test, to see if you kept your cool. Lainey got muddled and thought … well, I don’t know what she thought, but you were never meant to be stuck in the cellar and nobody was supposed to lock anyone up. It was a misunderstanding.’

  ‘Too right it was,’ I snapped at Savvy, my eyes flashing with anger. ‘I didn’t like your test, Savvy, and I don’t like your sleepover. For almost two years you’ve treated me like dirt, laughed at me, broken my stuff, hidden my books, trashed my school bag. That’s bullying, even if you do get someone else to do your dirty work.’

  ‘But … I didn’t!’ she exclaimed. ‘I wouldn’t! I don’t know what you’re talking about!’

  ‘Oh, spare me,’ I snapped. ‘Everyone knows what you’re like. I was stupid to trust you, stupid to think that asking me here was some kind of way of saying sorry. I must be the biggest idiot ever, because I honestly thought you might actually like me …’

  ‘I do!’ Savvy insisted. ‘Don’t go, Alice. We can work this out!’

  I was too angry, too hurt, to stay. I shoved past Savvy and stomped down the stairs to the next landing; the others followed, arguing, pleading, telling me to wait.

  ‘You haven’t got your sleeping bag!’ Erin told me. ‘Seriously, Alice, you can’t go now – it’s the middle of the night! Stay. We’ll talk this through in the morning and it won’t seem anything like as bad, you’ll see!’

  ‘Please?’ Yaz chimed in. ‘Come on, Alice. OK, Lainey was out of order, but don’t spoil a brilliant evening! Chill out!’

  I actually laughed at that. I was to blame for killing the mood? Yeah, right.

  Savvy tried to block my way.

  ‘It’s half one in the morning, Alice,’ she told me, as if I didn’t know. ‘It’s
not a good idea to leave now. What are you going to do; call your parents? What will they think?’

  I raised an eyebrow. For Savvy, it was all about what people might think. She was scared of what my parents might say, scared they’d call her parents and find out there’d been nobody here to look after us, that Carina had gone out clubbing and left us to run wild. She was scared of what they’d say when they found out about the cellar, the lights. In the darkness, her face was pale, shadowed. I could just make out the remnants of her white rabbit nose and whiskers, and she was still wearing the fun-fur ears, drooping a little now. Behind her, Lainey’s cat face smirked spitefully in the shadows and Yaz and Erin, though they’d wiped their face paint off, still wore their animal hats.

  It all seemed surreal and faintly threatening.

  ‘I’ll walk, don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I won’t tell anyone.’

  Savvy looked more anxious than ever. ‘You can’t walk!’ she wailed. ‘Not at this time of night! What if something happened? I’d never forgive myself!’

  ‘So what? I’ll never forgive you anyway. Not any of you.’

  Savvy looked stricken, and she stepped back into the darkness, her arms wrapped around herself. I felt meanly glad that I had hurt her, even though it was just a fraction of what she’d put me through.

  I tilted my chin and turned to go, and Yaz, Lainey and Erin stepped forward as if making a last ditch attempt to persuade me to stay. They were all talking at once.

  ‘Think of it this way, Alice; you passed the test …’

  ‘Don’t do this … come on!’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, stop being such a drama queen!’

  That last one was Lainey, of course. She took my elbow and pulled me back, and I tried to shrug her off but she had hold of my coat. The two of us stumbled down two steps, and I put out a hand to steady myself.