The Misper

by Bea Davenport

  It was a tiny shop, down a few steps, dark and smelling strongly of some kind of earthy incense. There was loud music playing that I didn’t recognise and it was hard to get to anything because even a handful of people made the shop crowded. I could see the kind of things that I reckoned Zoe would love: candles that looked like skulls, racks of dark, theatrical clothes, tarot cards, heavy silver jewellery shaped like crosses and daggers.

  I wasn’t entirely sure why I was here.

  I fingered a fat notebook, the cover embossed with a design of the kind of weeping-lady statues you find in graveyards, all grey except for the red of the roses at her feet. The inside pages were plain, so Zoe could use it as a sketch book, I thought. It was ten pounds, which felt crazy for a plain notebook, but I had enough money with me and without really thinking too hard I took it up to the till. I could barely find the space to put the book down because the counter was cluttered with lit candles in glass jars, their flames wavering at every movement, baskets of knotted-up jewellery and messed-up piles of leaflets and flyers.

  ‘I like your book,’ said a voice behind me and I turned to see Zoe.

  My insides gave a little flip. ‘Glad you said that. It’s for you.’ I held it out to her and hoped I wasn’t blushing.

  She didn’t take it. ‘What for?’

  ‘I thought you could draw in it.’

  ‘I can see what to do with it. I meant, why are you giving it to me?’

  I felt my face grow hotter. ‘It’s – it’s to say thank you for looking after me this week. I know you didn’t want to. I suppose I was a complete pain in the neck.’

  She thought about it. ‘No, you weren’t. I kind of like you. If I didn’t, I’d’ve sent you into the boys’ changing room and left you there.’

  ‘Right. Thanks for not doing that.’ I held out the notebook again and this time she took it.

  ‘I didn’t have you down as a goth,’ she said, looking at my chain store jeans and my pink hoody, which felt over-bright and completely unsuitable, like I’d arrived at a funeral wearing a clown suit.

  ‘I – I’ve only just found this shop,’ I said, as if that was an explanation. ‘I love the stuff, though.’

  ‘Want to get a drink?’

  I found myself following her out into the bright morning, blinking in the faint sunshine and the breeze, and strolling towards a little cafe next to the art gallery. The scent of incense was still clinging to our clothes.

  Zoe ordered a green tea with peppermint, so I did, too. I paid with the last of my money. She looked even more striking out of school. She had dark eyeliner that made her pale eyes look like pearls and she wore deep, deep red lipstick. Her hair was in two heavy plaits. Under her coat she was wearing a blood-red velvet T-shirt that I longed to stroke.

  I told her I’d been reading Dracula and how much I loved it. We talked about it and then about Mary Shelley and she mentioned some books I’d never heard of. Then I burbled on for a bit about my mum and dad. Zoe told me she just lived with her mum too.

  ‘Do you see your dad much?’ I asked.

  ‘Hardly, he’s dead,’ she said.

  I put my face in my hands. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Zoe gave a little pout. ‘It’s fine, I never knew him. I just wish it’d been my mum who died instead. He can’t have been any worse than she is.’

  I stared at her. How do you answer that? ‘That’s a pretty drastic thing to say. What’s the problem?’

  Zoe shrugged and clinked her spoon around inside her mug. ‘We just don’t get on.’

  I waited, but she didn’t say any more.

  After that, we started hanging around together, at school and at home. I reckon Mum was a bit put off at first by Zoe’s clothes and make-up, but she was cool about it, even when I started trying to dress the same way.

  ‘Your grandma was really strict about clothes when I was your age,’ Mum told me. ‘I was dying to spike up my hair and wear the sort of things my friends had, but she wouldn’t let me. I always swore I wouldn’t be the same. It’s not worth us fighting over something as daft as clothes.’

  Dad wasn’t quite as cool, though. He would come to see me at the weekends and he got a bit moody when I would rather be with Zoe. In some ways, I wondered if it would be easier if he didn’t come at all. It was all so weird. He rang the doorbell like a visitor and stood on the step rather than coming inside. If he did pop in for any reason, he’d just have to make a tiny little comment and Mum would go up like a nuclear mushroom cloud. They’d start screaming at each other, while I stood there as if I was invisible. I sometimes thought it wasn’t worth the hassle.

  Plus, I was pretty angry with him myself, because he was living with some new woman called Ellie who I refused to go and meet. Even if I wanted to — and I definitely didn’t — I reckoned it would hurt Mum if I hung out with this Ellie, like she was just some normal person instead of the witch who broke up our family. I would find myself starting a row with Dad about nothing and I didn’t quite know why I’d done it. So all in all, it was best when I went out with Zoe instead of my dad.

  I haven’t said much properly about Kerry, and it’s time I did. I’m going to say what no one says about Kerry any more. She was a total pain in the butt. There are good reasons why no one says this about her now, but it was true. Even when I made my mind up to be nicer to her, she didn’t make it easy. Most of the time, she was the last person Zoe and I wanted to see.

  The whole Kerry thing was all my fault, really, right from the start. Zoe and me got pretty close, after a while. That was just as well, because being goth meant that most of the other girls treated us like something they trod on. Maxine and her gang of hanger-ons were the worst. We were their new target for snipey comments and insults. But Zoe gave off attitude like some kind of force field. When we were together, no one really messed with us.

  It all started on this one day when Zoe was off school. The teacher said she had a stomach bug, but I’d noticed Zoe would take the odd mystery day off and she would never tell me much about it, even if I asked. If there were fresh bruises, she wouldn’t be persuaded to say anything about them.

  So I was on my own. We were being sent out on what they called a cross-country run, although there was no countryside for miles. And we had to go in pairs. I didn’t want to be caught on my own out of school by any of the other girls and get beaten up or pushed into a skip – that did happen from time to time. And I knew that Kerry was the only other one in the class who would have no partner. She didn’t have anyone to hang about with at all. She spent her break times pestering the teachers and helping them tidy classrooms and all that little-kid stuff. I’d thought at first she had some kind of learning problems, but that didn’t seem to be true, because she got great marks in things like maths and science. She just wasn’t someone you wanted to be seen with. I’d mentioned it before, because I felt a bit sorry for her, but Zoe said she was most definitely not our problem.

  So – stupid, stupid me! – I wandered up to Kerry and asked if she’d partner me for the cross-country lesson. She looked like I’d just given her a hundred quid or something.

  She couldn’t have been more different to Zoe. Or me, for that matter. Kerry was a head taller than either of us and a bit plump, with a haircut that looked like her mum did it with a pair of blunt scissors. And she had a loud voice and an even louder laugh that made me want to cringe. I tried to jog beside her and keep a bit of a distance, at the same time. Neither of us were sporty types, so soon everyone else went past us. One or two girls made some comments about nerds and loonies and all the usual rubbish. One of them pelted some chewed-up gum at us. But I had some kind of a ‘Look after Kerry’ head on that day, so I swore right back at them and gave them the finger.

  We went towards the little row of shops near the school and Kerry offered to go to the bakers and get us something to eat.

  ‘You’ve g
ot money?’ I asked. We weren’t supposed to take money out with us, because we weren’t supposed to spend our PE lessons in the shops.

  Kerry gave me a big grin and pulled out a purse she was wearing on a cord round her neck.

  I laughed. ‘I haven’t worn one of those since primary school.’

  Kerry pushed the purse back down her gym shirt. ‘I have to,’ she said. ‘Where ever else I put my money, someone finds it and takes it.’

  ‘Just keep it in your bag,’ I suggested.

  Kerry shrugged. ‘People take things out of my bag, all the time.’

  ‘Right.’ I couldn’t think of anything else to say, because I knew what she meant. Some of those girls would grab your bag, pull things out of it right in front of you and then deny it to your face. I’d seen Maxine empty Kerry’s books out all over the floor and stamp on them, just because she felt like it. No one ever stopped her.

  I could smell the bready, meaty scents from the baker’s now and my stomach growled. As we walked in from the grey, cool morning, blowing on our fingers, the shop was warm and steamy. There was a young lad behind the counter who I’d noticed before. Black hair and a crinkly sort of a smile.

  ‘Hiya,’ he said, looking at Kerry like he knew her. ‘What can I get you?’

  ‘Two sausage rolls and two cups of soup.’

  I looked from one to the other.

  ‘Oh,’ Kerry said. ‘This is my brother, Luke. This is Anna. She hasn’t been at our school very long.’

  ‘Hi.’ I turned away to look at the fridge full of cakes, because I could feel my face warming up. He was kind of good-looking. On the way out, Luke grinned. This time I was sure it was meant for me and not for his sister.

  We took the steaming cardboard cups of tomato soup and the oily packets of sausage rolls and we started our slow stroll back towards school. I began quizzing Kerry about Luke. He was seventeen and at the local Further Education college, but he worked part-time at the baker’s. When I pressed her, Kerry said he didn’t have a girlfriend right now.

  ‘He seems very –’ I hesitated. ‘Nice.’ Most girls would immediately start teasing me, but not Kerry. ‘He doesn’t really look like you, though, does he?’

  Kerry shook her head. She was wolfing the sausage roll and making a bit of a noise as she ate. I tried not to cringe. ‘He’s only my half-brother really,’ she said. ‘My dad was married before.’

  ‘Right.’ For a horrible moment, I thought about my own dad and his girlfriend. Half-brothers or sisters? I pushed that thought away. ‘That must be awkward.’

  Kerry shook her head. She had flaky pastry crumbs on her mouth and I wiped my own lips with a tissue, hoping she would do the same. She didn’t notice. ‘No, it’s really fine. Luke’s my best friend.’ She crumpled the greasy paper bag and threw it in a litter bin. ‘I don’t really have any others.’

  Again, I didn’t know what to say. Kerry finally swiped her mouth with the side of her hand, with almost no effect on the crumbs, and linked arms with me. ‘Thanks for being kind to me,’ she said, making me wince a bit inside.

  I put up with her arm in mine for a few minutes then wriggled away, pretending to do something to my shoe laces. I didn’t want to think too hard about what it must be like to be Kerry.

  I felt quite pleased with myself afterwards, because I thought I’d done a good-deed-for-the-day. That should’ve been the end of it. Trouble was, the next morning Kerry bounced up to me and Zoe like she had the right to be there, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her to push off.

  Every time Kerry spoke, Zoe just looked stunned, as if she’d been punched in the face. She finally got me on my own in the girls’ toilets at the end of break. ‘What the hell happened?’ Zoe demanded. ‘How come we have that big klutz following around like she suddenly owns us?’

  I confessed about the cross-country walk.

  ‘You asked her?’ Zoe smacked her hand on her forehead and swore. ‘Are you mad? She won’t leave us alone now. She’ll think you’re her best buddy.’

  ‘She’s OK, really,’ I said. ‘I think she’s just lonely.’

  Zoe shook her head and turned away from me. ‘You sap.’

  ‘Hey,’ I said. ‘Have you seen Kerry’s brother?’

  ‘Pasty Boy?’ Zoe wrinkled her slender nose. ‘What about him?’

  I followed her out into the corridor. ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘We just saw him yesterday, that’s all.’

  Zoe turned to me with eyes like tiny knives. ‘Tell me you don’t fancy him?’

  ‘Course not.’

  ‘You’ve gone red.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ I said. ‘It’s just hot in here.’

  Zoe was right, of course, about everything. After that day Kerry clung to us like that sticky weed that attaches itself to your clothes and won’t be brushed away. And I did kind of like Kerry’s brother.

  Funny, though. We thought we’d never get rid of Kerry. Now, it’s getting harder to see her real face in my head. Only the picture from the police posters is really clear.

  3

  And Jodie

  I started spending all my Saturday mornings with Zoe, hanging around Dead Bouquet and the little cafe nearby, wishing we had more money. That’s where we met Jodie. That name didn’t suit her: it was too pretty and sunny. She was working at the shop one weekend when we went in and I sort of recognised her: she lived somewhere near us, because I’d seen her using The Cut. She was tall and skinny like a cardboard cut-out, her skin pale as if she’d been carved from a lump of grey-white candlewax. And the carver hadn’t taken much trouble: her nose was so flat it almost didn’t stick out of her face and her eyes were stone-coloured and lashless. She had a deep scar down one cheek that looked like someone had crumpled up her skin and forgotten to smooth it out again. Zoe called her Scarface, behind her back, of course, and to be honest, it suited her better than Jodie.

  We’d got to the shop around ten o’clock in the morning when it had just opened up. No one else was in there. We did our usual routine of wandering round picking everything up, looking at the price in the useless hope that it had gone down since last week, then putting it down again. Sometimes we sneaked a sample of the tiny bottles of perfume oils, which you weren’t supposed to do because they weren’t testers like in the high street shops. And they were fearsomely expensive, with names like Dark Medicine, Death of Summer, and Absinthe Roses. We’d sniff them every week, make swooning gestures and sometimes get a dab on our wrists, if no one was looking.

  But this morning, just after it opened, only we were in the shop and Jodie was watching us all the time. Eventually she said: ‘Is there anything in particular you actually want?’

  I looked at Zoe. Fact was, there was very little in the shop we could ever afford.

  ‘We’re just browsing,’ Zoe said, wandering up to the counter and leaning on it. ‘We come every weekend. We love this shop.’

  Jodie was expressionless. She didn’t even blink.

  ‘You don’t usually work here, do you?’ Zoe went on. I went up to join her at the counter, because Zoe’s chatter was making Jodie watch me even more carefully. I was sure she thought I wanted to pinch something.

  Jodie shook her head. ‘No, I don’t. I’m just helping someone out for the day. Friend of a friend.’

  ‘Would that be Geena?’ Zoe was persistent, even though Jodie was talking in the kind of clipped tone that told me she didn’t want to have a conversation. ‘Geena owns the shop, doesn’t she? She knows me quite well because I’m in here all the time.’

  Zoe adored Geena, the goth-queen owner of Dead Bouquet, with her flawless make-up and her berry-coloured hair. Trying to impress Geena was the only time Zoe dropped her ice-queen pose.

  ‘Yeah, Geena, that’s right.’ Jodie wasn’t giving anything away.

  ‘Shall I go and get you a coffee from the cafe? I sometimes
do that for Geena,’ Zoe offered.

  ‘No, thanks.’ Jodie picked up some flyers and patted them into a tidier pile.

  I was sure we were getting on her nerves and I tried to make a face at Zoe, to get her to shut up. It didn’t work. Zoe was making out that we were practically part-time staff at Dead Bouquet.

  ‘OK if we try some of the clothes?’ Zoe asked. Later in the morning there’d be a queue for the tiny little changing cubicle and Geena wasn’t keen on us trying things on, because we never shelled out in the end.

  Jodie shrugged. ‘Long as you put them back properly.’

  We spent about half an hour picking out some of the most gorgeous things on the rack. There was a black jacket with a kind of a bustle that made Zoe look like a Victorian schoolmistress and there was a full-length leather coat that trailed on the floor behind me. There was a black spiderweb cape and an amazing tartan mini dress that would even make my mum draw the line. It was just like being a kid again, with a huge dressing-up box.

  ‘If I had hundreds of pounds I’d buy all of these,’ said Zoe, stroking the spiderweb lace. ‘Every single thing.’

  Jodie almost smiled, but not quite.

  The weird thing was that we saw Jodie again, just a few days later. We were walking home from school through The Cut, with Kerry tagging along as usual, and Jodie was standing there, leaning against a bare bit of fence, smoking a cigarette. She dipped her head as we went past, but we recognised her.

  ‘Hi,’ Zoe said. ‘Scarface,’ she hissed to me, from the side of her mouth.

  Jodie mumbled something and sucked hard on the cigarette.

  I stopped. I can tell when someone’s been crying and they’re trying to hide it. ‘You all right?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ She sniffed loudly.

  Zoe shook her head at me, to get me to keep walking, but I’m hopeless if someone’s upset. I just can’t walk past and leave them to it. I put my hand on her arm. She was much taller than me, but thin as a paper straw. She wasn’t that much older than us, I reckoned – probably only around eighteen.