Secret Place (9780698170285)

by French, Tana

  The realization that she’s trying to dodge her best friends slams her with another tsunami of sleep. Sounds spiral away from her, Holly saying something and the slam of Becca’s bedside table, Rhona still gibbering far away and a song playing down the corridor, sweet and light and fast, I’ve got so far, I’ve got so far left to—and Julia’s gone.

  That night, after lights-out, Julia realizes what the knockouts were for: now she’s wide awake, couldn’t doze off if she tried. And the others, wrecked after last night, are out for the count.

  “Lenie,” she says softly, into the dark room. She’s got no clue what she’ll say if Selena answers, but none of the others even move.

  Louder: “Lenie.”

  Nothing. Their breathing, rhythmic and dragging, sounds drugged. Julia can do whatever she wants. No one is going to stop her.

  She gets up and gets dressed. Jeans shorts, low-cut top, Converse, cute pink hoodie: Julia does drama club, she knows about dressing the part. She doesn’t bother to be quiet.

  The corridor light gives the glass panel above the transom a faint gray glow. Julia flares it to a blaze and looks down at the others. Holly is sprawled on her back, Becca is one neat curve like a kitten; Selena is a whirl of gold and a loose curl of fingers on the pillow. Their steady breathing has got louder. In the second before she opens the door and slips out into the corridor, Julia hates all of their guts.

  Outside is different tonight. The air is warm and restless, the moon is enormous and too close. Every noise sounds sharper, focused on her, testing: twigs crack in the bushes to see if she’ll jump, leaves rustle behind her to make her whip round. Something is circling among the trees, making a high rising call that runs down her spine like a warning—Julia can’t tell if it’s warning something about her, or the other way round. It’s been so long since she was afraid of anything the grounds could hold, she’d forgotten it was possible. She moves faster and tries to tell herself it’s just because she’s on her own.

  She is at the grove early. She slides behind one of the cypresses and leans against it, feeling her heart pound at the bark. The thing has followed her; it lets out its rising call, high up in the trees. She tries to get a look, but it’s too fast, it’s just the shadow of a long thin wing in the corner of her eye.

  Chris is early too. Julia hears him coming a mile away, or at least she hopes to Jesus it’s him, because otherwise something else the size of a deer is crashing down the paths like it doesn’t care who hears. Her teeth are in the bark of the cypress and she tastes it on her tongue, acrid and wild.

  Then he steps into the clearing. Tall and straight-backed, listening.

  The moonlight changes him. Daytime, he’s just another Colm’s rugger-bugger, cute if you have cheap chain-restaurant tastes, charming if you like knowing every conversation before it begins. Here he’s something more. He is beautiful the way something that lasts forever is beautiful.

  It goes through Julia like the punch off an electric fence: he shouldn’t be here. Chris Harper, half-witted teenage tit-hound, could come here and do his half-witted teenage tit-hound stuff and wander away safe and oblivious, no different from a mating fox or a spraying tomcat; the grove wouldn’t shift a twig to take notice of something so small and so common, just doing what its kind do. But this boy: the grove has taken notice of him. This boy like white marble, lifted head, parted lips: the grove has a part for him to play.

  Julia understands that the only smart thing to do here is get the fuck out. She is way out of her depth. Head very very quietly back to her bed, hope Chris thinks Selena was messing him around and flounces off in another snot. Hope the grove will allow him to walk back to his daytime self. Hope it all goes away.

  It won’t. What got her here hasn’t changed: if she doesn’t do this tonight, Selena will do it tomorrow, or next week, or the week after that.

  Julia steps out onto the grass, and feels cold moonlight pour down her back. Behind her, the cypresses shiver into readiness.

  Her movement sends Chris whirling towards her, bounding forward with his hands out, his face blazing up with what looks like sheer joy—the guy’s even better than she thought, no wonder Lenie fell for it. When he sees who it isn’t, he screeches to a stop like something in a cartoon.

  “What are you doing here?” he demands.

  “That’s flattering,” Julia says, before she can stop herself. She knows better than to be a smart-arse tonight. She knows exactly what to be; she’s watched enough girls force themselves into the right shapes, pull the strings tighter till they can barely breathe. She does a lash-bat and giggle that’s pure Joanne. “Who were you expecting?”

  Chris shoves floppy fringe out of his face. “No one. None of your business. Are you meeting someone? Or what?”

  His eyes are everywhere but on her, leaping to the path, to every rustle. All he wants from her is a fast exit, before Selena comes.

  “I’m meeting you,” Julia says, ducking her head coyly. “Hi.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Hello? I’m the one who texted you?”

  That gets Chris’s attention. “Are you fucking serious?”

  Julia does some combination of a shrug and a wiggle and a giggle.

  Chris’s head goes back and he moves, a tight fast circle around the clearing. He’s furious with her, for not being Selena and for seeing that look on him, and Julia knows she should have planned for this.

  She sends her voice up an octave, coaxing little whine, good and submissive to the big important boy. “Are you mad at me?”

  “For fuck’s sake.”

  “I’m sooo sorry for . . . you know. Fooling you. I just . . .” Julia tucks her head down and looks up at him sideways. Itsy-bitsy voice: “I wanted to meet you. In private. You know what I mean.”

  And just like that, Chris has stopped moving and he’s looking at her. The edge has fallen off his anger; he’s interested now.

  “You could’ve just come up and talked to me. At the Court, or wherever. Like normal people do.”

  Julia pouts. “Excuse me, if you weren’t so popular? There’s always, like, literally a queue to get near you.”

  And there’s the beginning of a gratified grin, at the corner of Chris’s mouth. This is so easy, Julia can hardly believe it; suddenly she can see why everyone else has been doing it all along. “Sooo,” she says, doing a boob-stretch. “Can we, like, sit down and talk?”

  Chris says, suddenly wary, “How did you . . . ? That phone you texted me off. How did you . . . ?”

  He wants to know if Selena was in on this. For a second, Julia considers letting him think she was. But then he might go off on Selena about it, and that would complicate everything. She goes with the truth, or part of it. “Me and Selena share a room. I found her phone and I read your texts.”

  “Whoa,” Chris says. He steps back, hands going up. “You know about us?”

  Julia does a winsome giggle. “I’m smart.”

  “Jesus,” Chris says, face curling up in undisguised disgust. “Isn’t she your friend? I mean, I know girls can be bitches, but this is, like, something special.”

  “You have no idea,” Julia says. She doesn’t bother to put a cutesy twist on it, and for a second Genius Boy’s brow furrows, but before he can start to wonder if this is some elaborate scheme to take the piss out of him, she takes a condom out of her hoodie pocket and holds it up.

  That knocks everything else out of Chris’s head. His eyes pop. He was expecting a snog and a bra-based struggle. This never entered his mind.

  After a moment he says, “Seriously? I mean . . . like, we’ve talked, what, three times?”

  Julia manages a giggle. “Come on. James Gillen must’ve told you about me. Right?”

  Chris shrugs uncomfortably. “Well. Yeah. But James talks a load of bullshit. I thought you’d told him to get lost, and he was ju
st being a prick.”

  For one second, Julia feels that shake her. Here she thought everyone believed shitty little James Gillen, and all the time Chris, the last guy she would ever have thought of— The creature calls a warning in the cypresses again and things pelt at her, if Chris was actually serious about Selena, meant the things he texted, if he was someone she might actually like instead of— They’re chipping her away, battering her soft. Another second and she’ll be cracking apart, gone.

  She says, “James is a total prick. But he’s not a total liar. Hello, it’s the twenty-first century? Girls are actually allowed to like sex too? You’re a babe, and I heard you’re a great kisser. That’s all I need to know. I’m not looking to marry you.”

  And Chris can’t have been all that in love with Selena, after all, or else the condom has him hypnotized. He steps forward.

  “Whoa, slow down there,” Julia says, and flat-palms him, giving her nose a cute little scrunch to soften it. “Just one thing. I’m not sharing a guy with my best friend. I don’t care who else you want to do, but starting now, Selena’s off your menu. Deal?”

  “Wha . . . ?” Most of Chris’s mind is still on the condom, but his eyebrows pull together. “You said you didn’t care that I was with her.”

  “Hey. Pay attention. I’m serious. If you try to play us both, I’ll find out like that. I’m going to be watching Selena and watching that phone—I’ll keep texting you off it, just so you know I’m not kidding. If you try anything cute, I’ll tell Selena, and you’ll never get another shot with either of us. But if you leave her alone—like, alone alone, no texts or anything—then every time we get a chance . . .”

  Julia shakes the condom, dry little rattle in the air. In the end it turned out to be easy, getting away from the others down at the Court, where all the toilets have machines covered in pregnancy-related posters and graffiti. Just going to the jacks back in a sec, already moving away from the fountain, and gone before any of the others could stand up. Easy as that, escaping, if you wanted to. Just none of them had ever wanted to before.

  Chris hasn’t moved. Julia says, “Hello? Is there a problem? Because the only reason a guy’s going to turn down a deal like this is if he’s gay. Which I don’t have a problem with, but you could at least tell me, so I can find someone else to play with.”

  He says, “I’m just not sure this is a good idea.”

  He knows something’s wrong here. The poor bastard probably thinks he’s going to figure out what. There aren’t enough small words in the world. “Who cares?” Julia says. “It’s not like you’ve got anything to lose: Selena doesn’t want to see you ever again, or she’d have answered your texts. And anyway, even if you turn around and go home right now, I’m going to tell her we did it. So we might as well.”

  She gives Chris a big perky smile and unzips her hoodie. She can read every thought scrolling through his head, clear as print. She can see all the red-raw places where Selena used to be, the bruise-black hole where he thought she was going to be tonight, the bright flashes of him hating Selena and every girl he’s been with and Julia most of all. She can see the moment when he decides. He smiles back at her and reaches out a hand for the condom.

  Julia knows what to expect. The wind in the cypresses rising to a roar like a hunting pack, the warning call screaming across the black sky. The clearing heaving and rolling under her. The moon smashing to shards, the sharpest of them all arrowing down to rip her open from groin to throat, the smell of hot dark blood spilling from deep inside. The pain, bright enough to blind her forever.

  Nothing happens. The clearing is just a patch of prissily trimmed grass; the cypresses are just trees that some gardener figured would be low maintenance. The calling sound is still circling, but all the spookiness has leached out of it; it’s just some bird, yelping mindlessly because that’s all it knows how to do. Even the pain is nothing special, just a dull unemphatic rasp. Julia shifts her arse off a sharp pebble and grimaces over Chris’s bobbing shoulder. The moon has flattened to a disk of paper pasted to the sky, lightless.

  25

  I stood there in the corridor, just stood, my stupid gob hanging open and a big cartoon bubble saying “!!??!!” bouncing over my fat head. Stood till I copped that Mackey or Conway might come out and find me there. Then I moved. Past the Secret Place, cards jostling and hissing. Down the stairs. Caught myself moving slow and careful, like I’d taken a kicking and something hurt like fuck, if I could work out where.

  The foyer was dark, I had to grope my way to the main door. It felt heavier or the strength had gone out of me, I had to lean my shoulder on it and heave, feet slipping on the tiles, picturing Mackey watching and grinning from the stairs. I half fell outside sweating. Let the door slam behind me. I didn’t know any other way back into the school, but I wasn’t going to need one.

  I thought about ringing a taxi to take me home. The picture of Mackey and Conway coming out and finding me gone, flounced off to have a little cry on my pillow, turned me red in the twilight. I left my phone in my pocket.

  Twenty to ten, and nearly dark. Outdoor lights were on, turning the grass whitish without actually illuminating it, doing strange eye-bending things in among the trees. I looked at that tree line and saw it the way the sixth-years had to see it, outline sharpened to slicing by the knowledge that it was about to sift away down the sky like a flower-fall, out of view. Something that would be there forever and ever; for other people, not for me. I was almost gone.

  I picked my way down the steps—that light turned them depthless, treacherous—and started walking, along the front of the school and down the side of the boarders’ wing. My feet crunched in pebbles, and that morning’s jumpy reflex—head turning, checking for the gamekeeper siccing the hounds on the unwashed—was back.

  I scrabbled through the mess for something good somewhere, couldn’t find it. Told myself if Mackey was right about Conway—course he was, Mackey has something on everyone, no need to invent it—then she had just done me a favor: better out than in. I told myself I’d be relieved in the morning, when I wasn’t wrecked and starving, when I hadn’t used up everything I had. Told myself in the morning I wouldn’t feel like something priceless had landed in my hand, been robbed away and smashed before I could close my fingers.

  Couldn’t make it stick. Cold Cases waiting for me outside these walls and Mackey had been right, the smirky fucker: now I was the kid who couldn’t hack twelve hours in the big leagues, and he and Conway between them would make sure everyone knew that. Cold Cases had looked so shiny to me, my first day, such a wide glittering sweep of step up. Now it looked like a dingy dead end. This here, this was what I wanted. One day, and gone.

  The only smudge of silver lining I could come up with: it was almost over. Even before Mackey’s backstabbing break, we’d been starting to go in circles. If he didn’t pull the plug soon, Conway would. I just had to wait out the last of their patience, then I could go home and try to forget today had ever happened. I’d’ve only loved to be one of those blokes who drink till days like this dissolve. Better: one of those blokes who texts his mates, days like this, Pub. Feels their circle click closed around him.

  Everyone knows a wife and kids tie you down. What people miss somehow is that mates, the proper kind, they do the same just as hard. Mates mean you’ve settled, made your bargain: this, wherever you are together, this is as far as you’re going, ever. This is your stop; this is where you get off.

  Not just where you are: they tie you down to who you are. Once you have mates who know you, right down under the this-and-that you decide people want to see today, then there’s no room left for the someday person who’ll magic you into being all your finest dreams. You’ve turned solid: you’re the person your mates know, forever.

  You like things to be beautiful, Conway had said, and been right. Over my own dead body was I going to stake myself down somewhere, being someone, that didn�
��t have all the beautiful I could cram into me. For ugly I could’ve stayed where I started, got myself a career on the dole and a wife who hated my guts and a dozen snot-faced brats and a wall-sized telly playing twenty-four-seven shows about people’s intestines. Call me arrogant, uppity, me the council-house kid thinking I deserved more. I’d been swearing it since before I was old enough to understand the thought: I was going to be more.

  If I had to get there without friends, I could do it. Had been doing it. I’d never met anyone who brought me somewhere I wanted to stay, looked at me and saw someone I wanted to be for good; anyone who was worth giving up the more I wanted down the line.

  It landed inside me then, there under the dead weight of the shadow of Kilda’s, too late. That light I had seen on Holly and her mates, so bright it hurt, the rare thing I had come into that school looking to find and to envy: I had thought it came to them showering down with the echoes from high ceilings, reflected onto them in the glow of old wood. I had been wrong. It had come from them. From the way they gave things up for each other, stripped branches off their futures and set them ablaze. What had felt like beautiful to me on the other side of today, balustrades and madrigals, those were nothing. I had been missing the heart of it, all along.

  Mackey had taken one sniff of me, known the whole story. Seen me in school turning down a spliff and a laugh, in case getting caught cost me my chance at getting out; seen me at training college, big friendly smile and vague excuse to wander away from the big friendly guys who were going to be in uniform for life. Watched me fuck Kennedy over, and known exactly what was missing out of a person who would do that.

  And Conway must have smelled it off me too. All day, when I’d been thinking how we clicked, thinking we were getting on like a house on fire. Thinking against my own will that this tasted like something brand-new.