Secret Place (9780698170285)

by French, Tana

  After a minute Joanne appears in the doorway, frizz-haired and wearing pale-pink pajamas that say OOH BABY across the chest. “Um, that’s Holly Mackey?” she snaps, examining Holly like something in a display case. “Are you retarded or what? I was asleep.”

  “Her hair,” Alison bleats, just above a whisper, behind her. “I just saw her hair, and I thought—”

  “OhmyGod, they’re both blond, so is like everybody? Holly doesn’t look anything like her. Holly’s thin.”

  Which is the biggest compliment Joanne knows. She smiles at Holly, and rolls her eyes so they can share a laugh at how thick Alison is.

  The thing about Joanne is you never can tell. Today she could be your snuggled-up best friend, and she’ll get all wounded if you don’t play along. It puts you at a disadvantage: she knows who she’s dealing with; you have to figure it out from scratch, every time. She makes Holly’s calf muscles go twitchy.

  Holly says, “Who did she think I was?”

  “She came out of the right room,” Alison whines.

  “Which means she was going the wrong way, duh,” Joanne says. “Who cares if she goes to the loo? We care if she goes out. Which, hello, is that way?” Alison chews a knuckle and keeps her head down.

  Holly says, “You thought I was Selena? Going outside?”

  “I didn’t. Because I’m not retarded.”

  Holly looks at Joanne’s tight face, too hard for the cutesy pajamas, and it occurs to her that Joanne is kicking Alison because she’s some strange combination of relieved and disappointed. Which is crazy. She says, feeling her way, “Where would Selena be going?”

  “Don’t you wish you knew?” Joanne says, tossing Alison a smirk. Alison lets out an obedient sharp giggle, too loud. “Shut up! Do you actually want to get us caught?”

  Holly’s heartbeat is changing, turning deeper and violent. She says, “Selena doesn’t go out on her own. Only when we all do.”

  “OhmyGod, you guys are so cute,” Joanne says, with a nose-crinkle that doesn’t thaw her eyes. “All this blood-sisters-tell-each-other-everything stuff; it’s like an old TV show. Did you actually do the blood-sisters thing? Because that would be so totes adorbs I could just die.”

  Not bessie mates, not tonight. “Just give me a sec,” Holly says. If Joanne shows you her teeth, you bite first and hard. “I’m trying to look like I actually care what you think about us.”

  Joanne stares, hand on her hip, in the thin dirty light. Holly catches the moment when she starts seeing a more interesting football than Alison. “If you’re such perfect little buddies,” she says, “how come you don’t know where your friend goes at night?”

  Holly reminds herself that Joanne is a lying cow who would do anything for notice, while Selena is her best friend. She can’t picture Selena’s face.

  “You’ve got trust issues,” she says. “If you don’t do something about them, you’re going to turn into one of those crazy women who hire private investigators to follow their boyfriends around.”

  “At least I’ll have a boyfriend. One of my own, not one I had to steal.”

  “Yay you?” Holly says, turning away. “I guess everyone has to be proud of something?”

  “Hey!” Joanne snaps. “Don’t you want to know what I’m talking about?”

  Holly shrugs. “Why? It’s not like I’m going to believe you.” She starts for the toilets.

  The hiss flicks after her: “Come back here.”

  If things were normal, Holly would wave over her shoulder and keep walking. But they’re not, and Joanne’s clever in her own special way, and if she actually knows any of the answers—

  Holly turns. Joanne snaps her fingers at Alison. “Phone.”

  Alison scurries back into the sleep-smelling cave of their room. Someone heaves herself over in bed and asks a drowsy question; Alison lets out a wild shush. She comes back carrying Joanne’s phone, which she hands over like an altar boy at the offertory. Part of Holly’s head is already hamming up the story for the others, snorting into her palm with laughter. The other part has a bad feeling.

  Joanne takes her time pressing buttons. Then she hands the phone to Holly—the curl of her mouth is a warning, but Holly takes it anyway. The video is already playing.

  It hits her in separate punches, with no room to get her breath in between. The girl is Selena. The guy is Chris Harper. That’s the glade. It’s turned into something Holly has never seen it be; something gathered and dangerous.

  Joanne feels closer, licking up anything Holly lets out. Holly makes herself start breathing again and says, with no blink and her dad’s amused half-grin, “OMG, some blond chick is snogging some guy. Call Perez Hilton quick.”

  “Oh, please, don’t act stupider than you can help. You know who they are.”

  Holly shrugs. “It could be Selena and Chris Whatshisname from Colm’s. Sorry to ruin your big moment here, but so?”

  “So oopsie,” Joanne says, pursed-up and cute. “I guess you’re not bessie blood sisters after all.”

  Bite fast and hard. Not one I had to steal— “What do you even care?” Holly says, lifting an eyebrow. “You were never with Chris Harper. Just fancying him doesn’t make him your property.”

  Alison says, “She was too.”

  “Shut up,” Joanne hisses, whirling around on her. Alison gasps and vanishes into the shadows. To Holly, icy again: “That’s none of your business.”

  If Chris actually dumped Joanne for Selena, Joanne is going to take Selena’s throat out. “If Chris cheated on you,” Holly says, carefully, “he’s a prick. But why be pissed off with Selena? She didn’t even know.”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Joanne says, “we’ll get him.” Her voice calls up a sudden cold gleam, away in the thick dark corners of the corridor; Holly almost steps back. “And I’m not pissed off with your friend. It’s over between them, and anyway I don’t get pissed off with people like her. I get rid of them.”

  And with that video, she can do that any time she wants. “Clichés give me a rash,” Holly says. She hits the Delete button, but Joanne is watching for that: she grabs the phone back before Holly can confirm. Her nails scrape down Holly’s wrist.

  “Excuse me, don’t even think about it?”

  “You need a manicure,” Holly says, shaking her wrist. “With, like, garden shears.”

  Joanne slaps her phone back into Alison’s hand, and Alison scuttles off to put it away. “You know what you and your pals need?” Joanne says, like it’s an order. “You need to stop acting like you’re such super-special amazing bessie friends. If you were, that manatee wouldn’t be lying to you about shagging Chris Harper; and even if she did, you’d like know telepathically, which you so didn’t. You’re exactly the same as everyone else.”

  Holly has no comeback to that. It’s over between them. That scraped-out look to Selena, ice wind ripping right through her: this is why. This, the most obvious typical clichéd reason in the world, so typical she never even thought of it. Joanne Heffernan got there first.

  Holly can’t take one more second of her face, swollen fat with all the delicious gotcha she was after. The corridor lights flicker, make a noise like paint spattering and pop out. Through the surge of chicken-coop noises from Joanne’s room, Holly feels her way back to bed.

  She says nothing. Not to Becca who would freak out, not to Julia who would tell her she was talking bullshit, not to Selena; especially not to Selena. When Holly can’t sleep a few nights later, when she opens her eyes to Selena’s whole body one curve of concentration over something cupped glowing in her palms, she doesn’t sit up and say softly Lenie tell me. When a long wait later Selena takes a shivery breath and shoves the phone down the side of her mattress, Holly doesn’t start making up excuses to be on her own in the bedroom. She lets the phone stay where it is and hopes she never sees it again.

  She acts l
ike Selena is totally fine and everything’s totally fine and the biggest problem in the world is Junior Cert Irish which OMG is going to destroy her brain and turn her whole life into a total failure. This makes Becca chill out and cheer up, at least. Julia is still a bitch, but Holly decides to think this is because of exam stress. She spends a lot of time with Becca. They laugh a lot. Afterwards Holly can’t remember about what.

  Sometimes she wants to punch Selena right in the soft pale daze of her face and keep punching. Not because she got off with Chris Harper and lied to them and broke the vow that was her idea to begin with; those aren’t even the problem. But because the whole point of the vow was for none of them to have to feel like this. The point was for one place in their lives to be impregnable. For just one kind of love to be stronger than any outside thing; to be safe.

  Becca is not stupid and, no matter what people sometimes think, she’s not twelve. And a place like this is riddled with secrets but their shells are thin and it’s crowded in here, they get bashed and jostled against each other; if you’re not super-careful, then sooner or later they crack open and all the tender flesh comes spilling out.

  She’s known for weeks that something is wrong and spreading. That night in the grove, when Holly was going on at Lenie, Becca tried to think it was just Holly having a mood; she does that sometimes, digs into something and won’t let go, all you need to do is pull her attention somewhere else and she’s fine. But Julia doesn’t care about Holly’s moods. When she jumped in to make everything all sweet and smooth, that was when Becca started knowing something real was wrong.

  She’s been trying hard not to know. When Selena spends the whole of lunchtime staring into her hand wrapped in her hair, or when Julia and Holly snap like they hate each other, Becca digs her heels into the ground, stares at her beef casserole and refuses to get pulled in. If they want to act like idiots, that’s their problem; they can fix it themselves.

  The thought of something they can’t fix sends her mind wild, yipping with terror. It smells of forest fires.

  It’s Holly who corners her into knowing. The first time Holly asked—Does Lenie seem, like, weird to you, the last while?—all Becca could do was stare and listen to her own crazy heartbeat, till Holly rolled her eyes and switched to Never mind it’s probably all fine. But then Holly starts sticking to her harder and harder, like she can’t breathe right around the others. She talks too fast, she makes smart-arsed jabs at everything and everyone and keeps going till Becca laughs to make her happy. She tries to get Becca to do things just the two of them, without Julia and Selena. Becca realizes that she wants to get away from Holly; that, unbelievably, for the first time ever, they all want to get away from each other.

  Whatever’s wrong, it won’t go away by itself. It’s getting worse.

  A year ago Becca would have kept slamming doors and turning keys between her and this. Got a load of books out of the library, never stopped reading even when someone talked to her. Pretended to be sick, stuck fingers down her throat to puke, till Mum showed up tight-jawed to take her home.

  Now is different. She’s not a little kid any more, who can hide on her friends when something bad is happening. If the others can’t fix this, then she needs to try.

  Becca starts watching.

  One night she opens her eyes on Selena sitting up in bed, texting. The phone is pink. Selena’s phone is silver.

  The next day Becca wears last term’s outgrown kilt to school, and gets sent back to her room to change into something that doesn’t show the world her legs. It takes her like thirty seconds to find the pink phone.

  The texts turn every soft part of her to water, spilling away between her bones. She’s crouched on Selena’s bed and she can’t move.

  This little thing, harmless, this is what’s turned everything wrong. The phone feels black and hot in her hand, denser than rock.

  It takes a long spinning time before she can think. The first thing her mind holds up: there’s no name in the texts. Who who who, she thinks, and listens to the lonely hoot of it through her mind. Who?

  Someone from Colm’s; that’s obvious, from the stories about teachers and rugby matches and other guys. Someone cunning, to fracture a crack into their high white wall and wiggle his sly way through. Someone smart, to guess how Selena would sway to all these poor-sensitive-me stories with her arms out, how she would never abandon anyone so special who needs her so much.

  Becca keeps watching. Down at the Court, as they wander through the chilled hollow air and the candy-colored neon, she watches for some guy who looks over their way too much or too little, for some guy who changes Selena just by walking past. Marcus Wiley’s eyes ferret down Selena’s top but even if he wasn’t disgusting Selena would never, not after he sent Julia that picture. Andrew Moore checks if they’re looking as he dead-arms one of his friends and howls with lunatic laughter; Becca is about to think Yeah right, a no-personality moron like that, she would never, when she realizes like a punch in the gut she has no clue what Selena would never.

  Andrew Moore?

  Finn Carroll, head flicking away too sharply when he sees Becca see him looking across the doughnut stand? Finn is smart; he could do it. Chris Harper, crossing them on the escalators with a red slash on his cheek that might not be just sunburn, Selena’s eyelashes flickering fast as she bends her head low over her carrier bag full of colors? The thought of Chris fishhooks Becca under the breastbone in weird sore ways, but she doesn’t flinch: it could be. Seamus O’Flaherty, everyone says Seamus is gay but someone cunning could start that rumor himself, to get close to girls off guard; François Levy, beautiful and different, different could make Selena feel like it didn’t count; Bryan Hynes, Oisín O’Donovan, Graham Quinn, for a second every one of them leaps out with a wet red grin like it’s him him him. He’s everywhere; he’s claiming everything.

  The air in the Court has been processed to something so thin and chilly that Becca can hardly breathe it. Next to her Holly is talking too fast and insistent to notice that Becca’s not answering. Becca pulls her cardigan sleeves down over her hands and keeps watching.

  She watches at night, too. It’s Selena she’s guarding—not that she knows what she would do if—but when she finally sees the slow rise and unfurl of bedclothes, it’s on the wrong bed. Becca can tell by the delicacy of every movement, the wary flash of eyes before Julia straightens, that she’s not going to the toilet.

  The sound comes out before Becca can stop it, rips out of her gut, dirty and raw. This guy is running all through them, like an infection looking for the next place to erupt, he’s everywhere—

  Julia freezes. Becca turns and flops, doing bad-dream mutters; lets them subside, breathes deep and even. After a long time she hears Julia start moving again.

  She watches Julia sneak out, watches her sneak in an hour later; watches her change fast into her pajamas and jam her clothes deep into the wardrobe. Watches her disappear to the bathroom, come back a long time later in a thick fog of flowers and lemon and disinfectant.

  There’s no phone down the side of Julia’s bed, the next evening during second study when Becca finds an excuse. There’s a half-empty packet of condoms.

  It scalds Becca’s fingers like hot grease; even after she shoves it back it keeps scalding, corroding right into her blood and pumping all through her body. Julia isn’t Selena; no one could sweet-talk her into this, no amount of puppy-dog eyes and sensitive stories. This had to be something vicious, clotted with cruelty, a hard jerk of her arm up behind her back: Do it or I’ll tell on Selena, get her expelled, I’ll send tit shots of her to every phone in the school—Someone more than cunning. Someone evil.

  Becca, kneeling on the floor between the beds, bites into the meat of her palm to keep that sound from wrenching out of her again.

  Who who?

  Someone who doesn’t understand the immensity of what he’s done. He thinks this is
nothing. Turning girls from what they are into what he wants them to be, twisting and forcing till they’re nothing but his desires, that’s no big deal: just what they were there for, to begin with. Becca’s teeth make deep dents in her hand.

  Those moments in the glade that were supposed to last forever, that were supposed to be theirs to reclaim no matter how far away and apart the four of them travel: he’s robbing those. He’s scrubbing away the glowing map-lines that were supposed to lead each of them back. Selena’s and then Julia’s, he’ll go after Holly next, he’s a crow gobbling their crumb-trails and never full. The road of dots across Becca’s belly leaps with fresh pain.

  Who who whose smell in the air of her room, whose fingerprints all over her friends’ secret places—

  Outside the window the moon is a thin white smear behind purple-gray clouds. Becca unclenches her teeth and holds out her palms.

  Save us

  The clouds pulse. They bubble at the edges.

  Julia broke the vow; even if she was forced to, that doesn’t matter, not to this. So did Selena, whatever she did or didn’t do with him. If she danced along the line, if she broke up with him before they went right over, this doesn’t care. None of those things change the punishment.

  Forgive us. Burn this out of us turn us pure again. Get him out get us back to how we used to be

  The sky simmers and thrums. The answers heave under a thin skin of cloud.

  Something is required.

  Whatever you want. You want blood I’ll cut myself open

  The light dims, rejecting. Not that.

  Becca thinks of poured wine, clay figurines, flash of a knife and scatter of feathers. She has no clue where she would get a bird, or wine actually, but if—

  What tell me what

  With a vast silent roar the sky bursts open, the clouds explode to fragments that dissolve before they hit the ground. Out of the white and enormous blaze it drops into her open palms:

  Him.

  She was thinking like a stupid little kid. Booze nicked from Mum’s wine rack, chicken blood; baby stuff, for eyelinered idiots playing witch games they don’t understand.