Secret Place (9780698170285)

by French, Tana

  That gets another stifled pop of laughter out of Becca. “Like you’d care,” Julia says. They’ve all drawn close, so they can keep to whispers; the forced nearness prickles like they’re about to fight. “Skip to the part where you tell us what you want.”

  Joanne drops the saint thing. “If you get caught this easy,” she says, “you’re obviously too stupid to have the key. You should give it to someone who’s got the brains to use it.”

  “That leaves you out, then,” says Becca.

  Joanne stares at her like she’s a talking dog who’s said something revolting. “And you should really go back to being too pathetic to talk,” she says. “At least then people felt sorry for you.” To Julia and Holly: “Can you explain to that uggo why she needs to watch her nasty metal mouth?”

  Julia says to Becca, “I’ve got this.”

  “Why bother?” Becca wants to know. “Let’s go to bed.”

  “Oh. My. God,” Joanne says, smacking her forehead. “How do you manage not to kill her? Hello, keep up: you need to bother because if I call Matron and she sees you dressed like that, she’s going to know you’ve been outside. Is that what you want?”

  “No,” Julia says, standing on Becca’s foot. “We’d all be delighted if you could just go to bed and forget you ever saw us.”

  “Right. So if you want me to do you a massive favor like that, you should actually probably be nice to me?”

  “We can do nice.”

  “That’s great. The key, please,” Joanne says. “Thanks so much.” And she holds out her hand.

  Julia says, “We’ll make you a copy tomorrow.”

  Joanne doesn’t bother to answer. She just stands there, staring at none of them in particular and holding out her hand.

  “Come on. For fuck’s sake.”

  Her stare widens a fraction. Nothing else.

  The silence twists tight. After a long time Julia says, “Yeah. OK.”

  “We might make you a copy someday,” Joanne says graciously, as Selena’s hand slowly comes up towards her. “If you remember to be nice, and if you can teach Little Miss Smarty over there what nice even means. Do you think you can manage that?”

  It means weeks months years of smiling meekly when Joanne flicks bits of bitchiness their way, of asking pretty-please with a cherry on top can we have our key now, of watching her cock her head and consider whether they deserve it and decide regretfully that they don’t. It means the end of these nights; the end of everything. They want to wrap the dark air around her neck and pull. Selena’s fingers open.

  Joanne touches the key and her hand leaps. The key skids and whirls away from her down the floor of the corridor and she’s squawking like she doesn’t have enough breath for a shriek, “Ow! OhmyGod, it burned me, owowow it burned what did you do—”

  Holly and Julia are in her face and hissing violently, “Shut up shut up!” but not fast enough: at the end of the corridor one of the prefects calls, drowsy and annoyed, “What do you want?”

  Joanne whips around to scream for her. “No!” Julia whispers, grabbing her arm. “Go; get in your room. We’ll give you the key tomorrow. I swear.”

  “Get off me,” Joanne snarls, terrified into pure fury. “You’re going to be so sorry for this. Look at my hand, look what you did—”

  Her hand looks totally fine, not even a mark on it, but the light is streaky and Joanne is moving; they can’t tell for sure. Down the corridor, less drowsy and more annoyed: “If I have to come out there, I swear to God—”

  Joanne’s mouth opens again. “Listen!” Julia hisses, with all the force she can cram into it. “If we get caught, then nobody’ll have the key. Get it? Go to bed; we’ll sort it tomorrow. Just go.”

  “You are total freaks,” Joanne spits. “Normal people shouldn’t have to be in the same school as you. If my hand’s scarred, I’m going to sue you.” And she whirls back into her room in a nightie-flounce of gaping lip-prints.

  Julia grabs Becca’s arm and runs for their door, feeling the others behind them silent and speedy as down the paths to the glade, Selena barely breaking stride to scoop up the key. In, door closed, Holly presses her ear to it; but the prefect can’t be arsed hauling herself out of bed, now that the sounds have stopped. They’re safe.

  Selena and Becca are giggling, wild and breathless, into their sleeves. “Her face—ohmyGod, did you see her face, I almost died—”

  “Let me feel it,” Becca whispers, “come here, let me feel—”

  “It’s not hot now,” Selena says. “It’s fine.”

  They find her, in the darkness, and sift among one another’s reaching fingers to touch the key in her open hand. It’s palm-warm; nothing more.

  “Did you see it jump?” Becca says. She’s almost dizzy with delight. “Zooming down the corridor, away from that cow—”

  “Or it bounced,” Julia says. “Because she dropped it.”

  “It jumped. Her face, that was beautiful, I’d give anything for a photo—”

  “Who even did that?” Holly wants to know, switching on her reading light half hidden under her pillow so they can change without knocking anything over. “Was that you, Becs?”

  “I think it was me,” Selena says. She tosses Julia the key, its glint like a tiny meteor streaking between them. “It doesn’t actually matter, though. If I can do it, you guys can too.”

  “Ah, cool,” Becca says, wriggling out of all her layers at once and kicking them under her bed. She throws on her pajamas and bounces into bed, where she balances the cap off her water bottle on edge on her bedside table and starts trying to knock it over without touching it.

  Julia is stashing the key back inside her phone cover. She says, “Next time, could you save that stuff for when it’s not going to get us into huge amounts of shit? Like, please?”

  “I didn’t do it on purpose,” Selena says, muffled in the hoodie she’s pulling over her head. “It just happened, because I was getting all wound up. And if it hadn’t, Joanne would’ve taken the key.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not like she’s going to forget the whole thing. We’ll have to deal with it tomorrow instead, is all. And now she’s raging with us.”

  That cools the air. “Her hand’s fine,” Selena says. “She’s just being a drama queen.”

  “Right. So she’s a total drama-queen bitch who’s raging with us. How is that better?”

  “What do we do?” Becca asks, glancing up from her bottle cap.

  “What do you think we do?” Holly says, tossing jumpers into the wardrobe. “We make her a copy of the key. Unless you actually want to get expelled.”

  “Why would we get expelled? She can’t prove we did anything.”

  “OK: unless you want to never go out again. Because if we do, Joanne can go running to Matron and be all, ‘Oo Matron I just happened to see them going downstairs and I’m so worried about them,’ and then Matron waits and catches us coming back in and then we get expelled.”

  “I’ll do it,” Julia says, kicking into her pajama bottoms. “I’ll talk to her. I think the hardware place beside the Court does keys.”

  “She’s going to be a total bitch about it,” Holly says.

  “Yeah, no shit. I’m going to have to apologize to her for what you said, smart-arse.” She means Becca. “You think I’m looking forward to groveling for that ass-faced cow?”

  “You won’t have to,” Becca says. “She’s scared of us now.”

  “For the next ten seconds, she is. Then she’ll turn the whole thing into some drama in her head, like she’s the heroine and we’re the evil witches who tried to burn her to death but she was just too special. And I’ll have to apologize for that, too. And convince her that the key just felt hot because Lenie’d been holding it and her hand was hot from running or whatever.” Julia climbs into bed and throws herself hard onto her pillow. “Fun fu
n fun.”

  Selena says, “At least this way we get to keep our key.”

  “We would’ve anyway. We’d have talked her out of it, or just robbed another one. You didn’t need to go all fucking poltergeist on her.”

  Becca says, and her voice is tightening up, “Better than going all Yes Joanne no Joanne three bags full Joanne, letting that stupid cow be the boss of us—”

  The bottle cap hops on the bedside table and tumbles over. “Look!” Becca yelps, and claps a hand over her mouth as the others hiss “Shhh!” at her. “No, look! I did it!”

  “Awesomesauce,” Holly says. “I’m gonna try in the morning.”

  “What are we doing?” Julia demands, suddenly and vehemently. “All this shit; this, and the lights. What are we getting into here?”

  The others look at her. In that light she’s the unreadable silhouette from the glade again, propped on her elbows, a tense arc.

  “I’m getting happy,” Becca says. “That’s what I’m getting into.”

  Holly says, “We’re not blowing stuff up. It’s not like it’s about to go all horrible.”

  “You don’t know. I’m not saying OMG we’re going to unleash demons; I’m just saying this is weird shit. If it only worked in the glade, then fine: it’s something separate, with its own separate place. But it’s here.”

  Holly says, “So? If it gets too weird, we just stop doing it. What’s the big deal?”

  “Yeah? Just stop? Lenie, you didn’t even want the key to get hot: it just happened, because you were stressing. Same with Becs, the first time she turned the light off: that was because we were fighting. So if Sister Cornelius gives me hassle about something, do I just go ahead and zoom a book into her fat face, which yeah would be lots of fun but probably not the greatest idea ever? Or do I have to watch myself the whole time to make sure I’m totally zen, man, so I can live like a normal person?”

  “Speak for yourself,” Holly says, through a yawn, as she wriggles down in her bed. “Me, I am normal.”

  “I’m not,” Becca says. “I don’t want to be.”

  Selena says gently, “It just takes getting used to. You didn’t like the lights thing at first, right? And then tonight you said that was fine.”

  “Yeah,” Julia says, after a moment. The glade leaps in her mind like a flame; if it weren’t for Joanne, she’d get back into all her jumpers and get back out there, where everything feels clean and straightforward, nothing looks blur-edged and flashed with danger signs. “That’s probably it.”

  “We’ll go out again tomorrow night. You’ll see. It’ll be fine then.”

  “Oh, God,” Julia says on a groan, flopping backwards. “If we want to do tomorrow, I’ll have to sort that bint Heffernan. I was trying to forget about her.”

  “If she gives you any hassle,” Holly says, “just get her own hand and smack her in the face with it. What’s she going to do, tell on you?” and they’re falling asleep before they finish laughing.

  When the others are asleep, Becca reaches one arm out of bed into the cold air and eases her bedside table open. She takes out, one by one, her phone, a little bottle of blue ink, an eraser with a pin stuck in it, and a tissue.

  She stole the ink and the pin from the art room, the day after they made the vow. Under the covers, she pulls up her pajama top and angles the phone to light the pale skin just below her ribs. She holds her breath—to make sure she doesn’t move, not to brace herself against the pain; pain doesn’t bother her—while she pricks the dot into the skin, just deep enough, and rubs in the ink. She’s getting better at it. There are six dots now, arcing downwards and inwards from the bottom right edge of her rib cage, too small to notice unless someone was closer than anyone’s going to get: one for each perfect moment. The vow; the first three escapes; the lights; and tonight.

  What’s been coming to Becca, since all this began, is this: real isn’t what they try to tell you. Time isn’t. Grown-ups hammer down all these markers, bells schedules coffee-breaks, to stake down time so you’ll start believing it’s something small and mean, something that scrapes flake after flake off of everything you love till there’s nothing left; to stake you down so you won’t lift off and fly away, somersaulting through whirlpools of months, skimming through eddies of glittering seconds, pouring handfuls of hours over your upturned face.

  She blots the extra ink from around the dot, spits on the tissue and dabs again. The dot throbs, a warm satisfying pain.

  These nights in the grove aren’t degradable, they can’t be flaked away. They’ll always be there, if only Becca and the others can find their way back. The four of them backboned by their vow are stronger than anyone’s pathetic schedules and bells; in ten years, twenty, fifty, they can slip between those stakes and meet in the glade, on these nights.

  The dot tattoos are for that: signposts, in case she needs them someday, to guide her home.

  13

  The fourth-year common room felt smaller than the third-year one, darker. Not just the colors, cool greens instead of oranges; on this side the building blocked out the afternoon sun, gave the room an underwater dimness that the ceiling lights couldn’t fight.

  The girls were clumped tight and jabbering low. Holly’s lot were the only quiet ones: Holly sitting on a windowsill, Julia leaning against it snapping a hair elastic around her wrist, Rebecca and Selena back to back on the floor below; all their eyes focused and faraway, like they were reading the same story written across the air. Joanne and Gemma and Orla were in a huddle on one of the sofas, Joanne whispering fast and ferocious.

  That was only for a flash. Then everyone spun to the door. Sentences bitten off in mid-word, blank faces staring.

  “Orla,” Conway said. “We need a word.”

  Orla looked like she might be going pale, far as I could tell through the orange tan. “Me? Why me?”

  Conway held the door open till Orla got up and came, widening her eyes over her shoulder at her mates. Joanne hit her with a stare like a threat.

  “We’ll talk in your room,” Conway said, scanning the corridor. “Which one is it?” Orla pointed: down the far end.

  No Houlihan this time. Conway was trusting me to protect her. Had to be a good sign.

  The room was big, airy. Four beds, bright-colored duvet covers. Smell of heated hair and four clashing body sprays thickening the air. Posters of thrusting girl singers and smooth guys I half recognized, all of them with full lips and hair that had taken three people an hour. Bedside tables half open, bits of uniform tossed on beds, on the floor: when the screaming started, Orla and Joanne and Gemma had been changing into their civvies, getting ready to do whatever they did with their bite of freedom before teatime.

  The scattered clothes gave me that shove again, stronger: Out. No good reason, no bras on show or anything, but I still felt like a pervert, like I’d walked in on the four of them changing and wasn’t walking back out.

  “Nice,” Conway said, glancing around. “Nicer than we had in training, am I right?”

  “Nicer than I’ve got now,” I said. Only a bit true. I like my place: little apartment, half empty still because I’d rather save for one good thing than buy four crap ones straightaway. But the high ceiling, the rose molding, the light and green space opening wide outside the window: I can’t save for those. My place looks straight into a matching apartment block, too close for any light to squeeze in between.

  Nothing said whose bit of room was whose; it all looked the same. The only clue was the photos on the bedside tables. Alison had a little brother, Orla had a bunch of lumpy big sisters. Gemma rode horses. Joanne’s ma was the image of her, a few fillers on.

  “Um,” Orla said, hovering by the door. She’d swapped her uniform for a light-pink hoodie and pink jeans shorts over tights, looked like a marshmallow on a stick. “Is Alison OK?”

  We looked at each other, me and Conway. S
hrugged.

  I said, “Could take a while. After that.”

  “But . . . I mean, Miss McKenna said? Like, she just needed her allergy pills?”

  Another look at each other. Orla trying to watch both of us at once.

  Conway said, “I reckon Alison knows what she saw better than McKenna does.”

  Orla gawped. “You believe in ghosts?” Not what she’d expected; not what she’d been looking for.

  “Who said anything about believing?” Conway flipped a magazine off Gemma’s bedside table, checked out celebs. “Nah. We don’t believe. We know.” To me: “Remember the O’Farrell case?”

  I’d never heard of the O’Farrell case. But I knew, it slid from Conway to me like a note passed in class, what she was at. She wanted Orla scared.

  I shot her a wide-eyed warning grimace, shook my head.

  “What? The O’Farrell case, me and Detective Moran worked that one together. The guy, right, he used to beat the shite out of his wife—”

  “Conway.” I jerked my chin at Orla.

  “What?”

  “She’s just a kid.”

  Conway tossed the magazine onto Alison’s bed. “Bollix. You just a kid?”

  “Huh?” Orla caught up. “Um, no?”

  “See?” Conway said to me. “So. One day O’Farrell’s giving the wife the slaps, her little dog goes for him—trying to protect its mistress, yeah? The guy throws it out of the room, goes back to what he’s doing—”

  I did an exasperated sigh, rubbed my hair into a mess. Started cruising round the room, see what I could see. Handful of tissues in the bin, smudged that weird orangey-pink that doesn’t exist outside makeup. A bust pen. No scraps of book.

  “But the dog’s scrabbling at the door, whining, barking, O’Farrell can’t concentrate. He opens the door, grabs the dog, smashes its brains out on the wall. Then he finishes off the wife.”

  “OhmyGod. Ew.”

  Gemma’s phone was on her bedside table, Alison’s was on her bed. I couldn’t see the other two, but Joanne’s table door was an inch open. “OK if I have a look around?” I asked Orla. Not a proper search, that could wait; just having a look-see, and unsettling her a little extra while I was at it.