The Secret Place

by Tana French

  She shouldn’t have let him touch her even that once, back in the hall. She understands that.

  She wants the world to be that real again.

  Chris says, ‘Are your friends going to wonder where you are?’

  They will. Selena feels another nudge of unease: she never even thought of telling them. ‘I’ll text them,’ she says, feeling for the pocket in the unfamiliar dress. ‘What about yours?’

  ‘Nah.’ Chris’s half-smile says his friends expected him to go missing tonight.

  To Holly: Am just outside, wanted to get out for a few mins, back soon. ‘There,’ Selena says, sending it.

  The hall door opens, letting out a rush of thumping bass and squeals and hot air, and Miss Long sticks her head out. When she sees Chris and Selena, she nods and points a threatening finger: Stay. Someone shrieks behind her, she whips round and the door slams shut.

  Chris says, ‘Back in there. I wasn’t trying to tell you what you guys should wear.’

  ‘Yeah, you were,’ Selena says. ‘It’s OK, though. I’m not mad.’

  ‘I was just saying. If you wear jeans to a dance and do your hair like that, people are going to laugh at you, end of. Your friend Becca – I mean, I know she has to be the same age as us, but she’s like a kid. She doesn’t get it. You can’t just let her walk out there to get eaten alive by Joanne Heffernan.’

  ‘Joanne would say stuff anyway,’ Selena points out. ‘No matter what Becca was wearing.’

  ‘Yeah, because she’s a total raving bitch. So don’t give her extra excuses.’

  Selena says, ‘I thought you liked Joanne.’

  ‘I was with her a few times. That’s not the same thing.’

  Selena thinks about that for a while. Chris bends over his shoelace, untying and retying it. His cheek glows. Selena can feel the heat of it, deep in her palm.

  She says, ‘I think maybe Becca doesn’t want to be that.’

  ‘So? It’s not like those are the only two options. Be some bitch or be some freak. You can just be normal.’

  ‘I don’t think she wants to be that either.’

  Chris’s eyebrows pull together. ‘What, like she thinks she can’t because she’s not . . . ? I mean, with the braces, and the . . .’ He nods downwards. ‘You know. She’s flat. She’s worried because of that? Jesus, that’s no big deal. It’s not like she’s some total ditch-pig. She just has to make, like, this much effort and she’d be fine.’

  He was telling the truth about not being into Becca. He doesn’t want anything from her. He’s doing it all wrong, but all he wants is to build a castle around her and keep her safe.

  ‘Your sister,’ Selena says. ‘Who you were talking about. What’s her name?’

  ‘Caroline. Carly.’ That brings up a smile on Chris’s face, but it gets jammed with worry and breaks apart.

  ‘How old is she?’

  ‘She’s ten. In a couple of years she’s going to be coming here; Kilda’s. If I was at home I could talk to her, you know? Prepare her or whatever. But I only see her for, like, a few hours every couple of weeks. It’s not enough.’

  Selena says, ‘Are you worried she’s not going to like it here?’

  Chris sighs and rubs a hand up the side of his jaw. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I worry about that a lot. She won’t . . . aah. She does stuff like Becca: like she’s actually trying to be weird. Wearing jeans to the Valentine’s dance, that’s totally something she’d do. Like, last year everyone in her class was wearing those stupid bracelets, right? The ones with the different-coloured links and you all wear each other’s colours to show you’re friends, I don’t know. And Carly’s all pissed off because some girls slagged her for not having one. So I’m like, “Get one, I’ll buy you one if you’ve run out of pocket money,” right? And Carly turns around and tells me she’d cut off her arm before she’d wear one of those bracelets, because those girls aren’t her boss and she’s not their slave and she doesn’t have to do anything just because they want her to.’

  Selena is smiling. ‘Yeah, that’s like Becca. That’s sort of why she’s wearing jeans.’

  ‘Well, what the fuck?’ Chris’s hands fly up, frustrated. ‘I’m not asking her to cut her arm off. I’m like, who cares if you actually want a dumb bracelet? You definitely don’t want to be that girl who no one will go near her and everyone’s texting around stories about how she eats her snot and pees herself in class. So just do this one tiny thing that everyone else is doing.’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘No. I bought her the fucking bracelet, and she binned it. And if she pulls something like that in Kilda’s? People like Joanne, if Carly swans in here like it doesn’t matter what any of them think, they’re going to . . . Jesus.’ He rakes a hand through his hair. ‘And I’ll be in college by then; I won’t even be around to do anything about it. I just want her to be happy. That’s all.’

  Selena says, ‘Has she got friends?’

  ‘Yeah. She’s not super-popular or whatever, obviously, but she’s got these two girls who’ve been her best friends since they were all in Junior Infants. They’re coming to Kilda’s too. Thank God.’

  ‘Then she’ll be OK.’

  ‘You think? They’re two people. What about everyone else? What about all them?’ Chris jerks his chin at the hall doors, the muffled jumble of beats and screams. ‘Carly can’t just ignore them and hope they leave her alone. It’s not going to happen.’

  He sounds like they’re one great bristle-backed creature, laser-eyed and dribbling for throats to rip out, never sated. Selena realises that Chris is afraid. For his sister, for Becca, but bigger than that. Just afraid.

  There are things stronger than that creature. There are things that could rip it limb from limb if they felt like it, spike its head a hundred feet high on a cypress tree and use its sinews to string their bows. For a second Selena sees the white arc of a hunting call flash across the sky.

  ‘Not ignore them,’ she says. ‘Just . . . not let them matter.’

  Chris shakes his head. ‘It doesn’t work that way,’ he says. For a second the full curves of his lips harden; he looks older.

  Selena says, ‘Becca’s happy in there, right? In her jeans.’

  ‘She can’t exactly be happy about those geebags bitching about her.’

  ‘She’s not. It just . . . like I said. It doesn’t matter.’

  Chris stares. ‘If that was you. If they were bitching about your dress. That’d be fine with you?’

  ‘I bet they are,’ Selena says. ‘I don’t care.’

  He’s turned towards her on the steps. His eyes are hazel, a cool hazel speckled with gold. Selena knows if she could just touch him she could draw out the fear like snake venom, roll it into a glistening black ball and throw it away.

  He demands – like he’s really asking, like he needs to know – ‘How? How can you not care?’

  People talk to Selena. They always have. She doesn’t talk to them, except Julia and Holly and Becca. She almost never even tries.

  She says, slowly, ‘You have to have something else you care about more. Something so you know that some geebags bitching aren’t the most important thing; you’re not the most important thing, even. Something enormous.’

  It’s just words, sounds, it doesn’t come near what she means. This isn’t something you can tell.

  Chris says, ‘What? Like God?’

  Selena considers that. ‘Probably that would work. Yeah.’

  He’s open-mouthed. ‘Are you guys going to be, like, nuns?’

  Selena laughs out loud. ‘No! Can you see Julia being a nun?’

  ‘Then what . . . ?’

  The more she tries, the more she’s going to get it wrong. She says, ‘I just mean: maybe, depending, Carly could be fine just the way she is. Better than fine.’

  Chris is looking at her, very close and very intent, and his eyes have warmed. He says, ‘You’re a once-off. You know that?’

  Selena wants to say nothing at all. The thing finding
its shape in the space between them is so new, so precious, the wrong touch could burst it like a bubble. ‘I’m not anything special,’ she says. ‘It just worked out this way.’

  ‘Yeah, you are. I never talk to people about stuff like this. But this, talking to you, this is . . . I’m glad we came out here. I’m really glad.’

  Selena knows, like he’s reached out and dropped the knowledge into her lap, that he’s going to try to take her hand. The handprint on her arm burns, a painless gold fire. She wraps her fingers hard around the cold stone edge of the step.

  The hall door flies open, and Miss Long points at them. ‘Your time’s up. Back inside. Don’t make me come out there and get you.’ And she slams the door.

  Chris says, ‘I want to do this again.’

  Selena is still working to breathe. She can’t tell if she’s grateful or something else to whatever sent Miss Long. She says, ‘Me too.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Next week, after school? We can meet outside the Court and go for a walk.’

  Chris shifts on the step, like the stone hurts him. He presses his thumbnail into the wood of the banister. ‘Everyone’d see us.’

  ‘That’s OK.’

  ‘They’d . . . you know. Like, they’d slag us. Both of us. They’d think we were going to . . .’

  Selena says, ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘I know,’ Chris says, and there’s a wry laugh in his voice, like the joke’s on him. ‘I know you don’t. I do, though. I don’t want people thinking that.’ He hears himself. ‘No, I mean— Shit. I don’t mean I don’t want people thinking we’re together. I’d be totally fine with that, it’s not like I’m embarrassed or – I mean, not just fine, it would be better than just—’

  He’s knotting himself up. Selena says, laughing at him, ‘It’s OK. I know what you mean.’

  Chris takes a breath. He says simply, ‘I don’t want it to be like that. Like me and Joanne going into the Field to . . . whatever. I want it to be like this.’

  His hand going up. The hall, smoky gold. The small flutters of air in the darkness, far above their heads.

  ‘If we meet outside the Court after school, I’m going to make a balls of it. I’ll say something stupid to make the guys laugh, or else we’ll go somewhere to talk and everyone’ll watch us go and I’ll have, like, not one single thing to say. Or else the guys’ll slag me, afterwards, and I’ll say something . . . you know. Dirty. I wish I wouldn’t, but I will.’

  Selena says, ‘Can you get out of school at night?’

  She hears the hiss of caught breath in the air all around her. She wants to say back, It’s OK, I know what I’m doing, but she knows it wouldn’t be true.

  Chris’s eyebrows go up. ‘At night? No way. You can? Seriously?’

  Selena says, ‘I’ll give you my number. If you find a way, text me.’

  ‘No,’ he says, instantly. ‘Maybe it’s different here, but the guys go through each other’s phones all the time, looking for . . . well. Stuff. The Brothers do it too. I’ll find a way to get in touch. Just not like that. OK?’

  Selena nods. ‘About getting out,’ Chris says. ‘One of my mates. He might be able to figure something out.’

  ‘Ask him.’

  Chris says, ‘I’ll make him.’

  Selena says, ‘Don’t tell him why. And till then, don’t talk to me. If we see each other around the Court or something, we’ll act like we don’t even know each other; like before. Otherwise it’ll all get ruined.’

  Chris nods. He says, obscurely and out to the hall but Selena understands, ‘Thanks.’

  Miss Long bangs the door open. ‘Selena! You, whatsyourname! Inside. Now.’ This time she stays there, staring.

  Chris jumps up and holds out a hand to Selena. She doesn’t take it. She stands up, feeling the movement spin little eddies up into the high darkness. She smiles at Chris and says, ‘See you soon.’ Then she moves around him, carefully so not even the hem of her dress brushes up against him, and goes back into the gym. The handprint, wrapped around her arm, is still glowing.

  Chapter 17

  ‘Search time,’ Conway said. ‘And if we’re stuck in here . . .’ She shoved the sash window up.

  A whirl of breeze shot in, carried the mess of body sprays away. Outside, the light was cooling and the sky was turning pale. It was almost evening.

  ‘One more second of that stink,’ Conway said, ‘I was gonna puke my ring.’

  The stir-crazy was starting to needle at her. I felt it too. We’d been in those rooms a long time.

  Conway pulled the wardrobe open, said ‘Fuck me,’ at the amount or the labels. Started running her hands down hanging dresses. I went for the beds, Gemma’s first. Pulled back the bedclothes, shook them out, patted down the mattress. Not just checking for big lumps of phone or old book, the way I had been the first time. This time we were after something that could be as small as a SIM card.

  ‘The door,’ Conway said. ‘What was up with that?’

  I’d have only loved to leave that. But the way she’d been straight in there, got my back on whatever I hadn’t told her; I heard myself say, ‘When you were off talking to Alison, I thought I saw someone behind the door. Thought it could be someone trying to get up the guts to talk to us, but by the time I opened the door there was no one there. So, when I saw something behind there again . . .’

  ‘You went for it.’ I waited for the slagging – And you went full-on, fair play to you, you’d’ve been all ready to save the day if one of the kids had built herself a nuke in Physics class – but she said, ‘The first time, while I was out. You positive there was someone there?’

  I flipped the mattress up to check the bottom. Said, ‘Nah.’

  Conway squeezed her way down a puffy jacket. ‘Yeah. We had the same thing last year, a few times: thought we saw something, nothing there. Something about this place, I don’t know. Costello had this theory about the windows being different in old buildings: they’re not the same shapes and sizes as what you get now, not placed the same way. So the light comes in at different angles, and if you catch something in the corner of your eye, it’s gonna look wrong.’ She shrugged. ‘Who knows.’

  I said, ‘If it’s that, it could be why people keep seeing Chris’s ghost.’

  ‘The kids are used to this light, but. And an actual ghost? Is that what you saw?’

  ‘Nah. Bit of shadow, just.’

  ‘Exactly. They’re seeing Chris because they want to. Feeding off each other, trying to impress each other, give each other something good.’ She shoved the jacket back into the wardrobe. ‘They need to get out more, this lot. They spend too much time together.’

  Nothing down behind Gemma’s bedside table, nothing under the drawer. ‘At this age, that’s what it’s about.’

  ‘Yeah, they’re not gonna be this age forever. When it hits them that there’s a great big world out there, they’re gonna get the shock of their lives.’

  The scraping of satisfaction on her voice, I didn’t feel that. Instead I felt the wind that would hit you from every side, raw-edged and gritty, smelling of spices and petrol, whirling hot in your hair, when you stepped out of a place like this and the door slammed behind you.

  I said, ‘I’d say Chris getting murdered made the great big world hard to miss.’

  ‘You think? Even that was all about each other, for these. “Look, I cried harder than her, so I’m a better person.” “We all saw his ghost together, look how close we are.”’

  I moved on to Orla’s bed. Conway said, ‘I remember you from training.’

  Her head was in the wardrobe, I couldn’t see her face. I said – carefully, skimming back – ‘Yeah? Good or bad?’

  ‘You don’t remember, no?’

  If I’d talked to her beyond ‘Howya’ in corridors, I’d forgotten. ‘Tell me I didn’t make you do pushups.’

  ‘Would you remember if you had?’

  ‘Ah, Jaysus. What’d I do?’

  ‘Relax the kacks.
I’m just wrecking your head.’ I could hear the grin in Conway’s voice. ‘You never did anything on me.’

  ‘Thank fuck. You had me worried there.’

  ‘Nah, you were grand. I don’t think we ever even talked. I only clocked you to start with because of the hair.’ Conway pulled something out of a hoodie pocket, grimaced: wad of tissues. ‘After that, but, I kept noticing because you did your own thing. You had mates, but you weren’t hanging out of anyone. All the rest, fuck me: they spent the whole time crawling up each other’s hole. Half of them trying to network, like the little bastards at Colm’s: if I get all buddy-buddy with the Commissioner’s kid, I’ll never have to do traffic duty and I’ll make Inspector by thirty. The other half trying to bond, like this lot here: oh, these are the best days of our lives and we’ll all be best pals forever and tell these stories at our retirement dinners. I was like, what the fuck? You’re grown adults; you’re here to learn the job, not to swap friendship bracelets and do each other’s eyeshadow.’ She shoved clothes down the crowded rail. ‘I liked that you didn’t get sucked into that either.’

  I didn’t tell her: a part of me watched my classmates bonding away like goodo, and wished. Just like Conway said, it was my own choice that I wasn’t in there swapping friendship bracelets with the best of them. Mostly that made it OK.

  I said, ‘If you think back, we were kids; only a couple of years older than this lot. People wanted to belong. Nothing strange there.’

  Conway thought, unrolling tights. ‘I’ll tell you,’ she said. ‘It’s not the making friends that gets on my tits. Everyone needs those. But I had mine back at home. Still do.’

  Glance at me. I said, ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Right. So you didn’t need to go chasing more. If you make friends inside some bubble that’s going to burst on you in a couple of years – like training, or like here – you’re an idiot. You start thinking that’s the whole world, nowhere else exists, then you end up with all this hysterical shite. Best friends forever, she-said-you-said-I-said wars, everyone working themselves into fits over they don’t even know what. Nothing’s just normal; everything’s right up here, all the time.’