Secret Place (9780698170285)

by French, Tana

  Holly’s forearm is steel, pressing down across Becca’s shoulders. “And the other thing is: they lie. OK? Detectives make stuff up all the time. So if they’re all, ‘We know you were getting out at night, someone saw you,’ don’t fall for it. They don’t actually know anything; they’re just hoping you’ll get freaked out and give them something. You have to look stupid and go, ‘Nuh-uh, they must’ve got mixed up, it wasn’t us.’”

  Someone behind them sobs, “He was sooo full of life,” and a wavering wail rises above the fug of the room. “Jesus Christ, someone shut those dumb bitches up,” Julia snaps, shouldering Holly’s arm away. “Fucking ow, Holly, that hurts.”

  Holly jams her arm back where it was, clamping Jules in place. “Listen. They’ll make up mental stuff. They’ll be like, ‘We know you were going out with Chris, we’ve got proof—’”

  Becca’s eyes snap wide open. Holly is looking straight at Selena, but Becca can’t tell why, if it’s just because they’re opposite each other or if it’s because much more. Selena doesn’t feel staticky. She feels too soft, bruised to jelly.

  Julia’s face has gone sharp. “They can do that?”

  “OhmyGod, here, have some more duh. They can say whatever they want. They can say they’ve got proof that you killed him, if they want, just to see what you do.”

  Julia says, “I have to talk to someone.” She shrugs Holly’s arm off and heads across the classroom. Becca watches. There’s a high-pitched huddle around Joanne Heffernan, who’s draped artistically over a chair with her head back and her eyes half shut. Gemma Harding is in the huddle, but Julia says something close to her and they move a step away. Becca can tell by the angles of their heads that they’re keeping their voices down.

  Holly says, “Please tell me you get that.”

  She’s still looking at Selena, who, without the tight brace of the fake hug on both sides, rocks a little and comes down on someone’s desk. Becca’s pretty sure she hasn’t heard any of it. She wishes she could tell Lenie how utterly OK everything is, shake out a great soft blanket of OK and wrap it round Lenie’s shoulders. Things will run their own slow dark ways, down their old underground channels, and heal in their own time. You just have to wait, till you wake up one morning perfect again.

  “I got it,” she says to Holly, comfortingly, instead.

  “Lenie.”

  Lenie says obligingly, from somewhere way off outside the window, “OK.”

  “No. Listen. If they say to you, ‘We’ve got total proof that you were with Chris,’ you just say, ‘No I wasn’t,’ and then you shut up. If they show you an actual video, you just say, ‘That’s not me.’ Do you get it?”

  Selena gazes at Holly. Eventually she asks, “What?”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Holly says up to the ceiling, hands in her hair. “I guess that could work. It’d better.”

  Then Mr. Smythe comes in and stands in the doorway looking skinny and petrified at the soggy heaving hugging mess in front of him, and starts flapping his hands and bleating, and gradually everyone unweaves themselves and brings the sobs down to sniffles, and Smythe takes a deep breath and starts in on the speech that McKenna made him memorize.

  Probably Holly is right; what with her dad and everything else, she would know. Becca figures she should really be terrified. She can see the terror right there, like a big pale wobbly lump plonked down on her desk, that she’s supposed to hold on to and learn by heart and maybe write an essay about. It’s a little bit interesting, but not enough that she can be bothered picking it up. She pokes it off the edge of her mind and enjoys the squelchy cartoon splat it makes hitting the floor.

  By mid-afternoon the parents start showing up. Alison’s mum is first, throwing herself out of a mammoth black SUV and running up the front steps in spike heels that send her feet flying out at spastic angles. Alison’s mum has had a lot of plastic surgery and she wears fake eyelashes the size of hairbrushes. She looks sort of like a person but not really, like someone explained to aliens what a person is and they did their best to make one of their own.

  Holly watches her from the library window. Behind her the trees are empty, no flashes of white or fluttering crime-scene tape. Chris is out the back, somewhere, with efficient gloved people picking over every inch of him.

  They’re in the library because nobody knows what to do with anybody. A couple of the tougher teachers have managed to get the first- and second-years under control enough to do some kind of classes, but the third-years have outgrown their little-kid obedience and they actually knew Chris. Every time anyone tried to jam them down under a lid of algebra or Irish verbs, they boiled up and burst out at the cracks: someone started crying and couldn’t stop, someone else fainted, four people got into a shrieking row over who owned a pen. When Kerry-Anne Rice saw demon eyes in the chem supplies cupboard, they were basically done. The third-years got sent to the library, where they’ve reached an unspoken agreement with the two teachers supervising them: they manage not to lose it, and the teachers don’t make them pretend to study. A thick layer of whispering has spread over the tables and shelves, pressing down.

  “Awww,” Joanne says, low, next to Holly’s ear. She’s big-eyed and pout-lipped, head to one side. “Is she OK?”

  She means Selena. Who is skew-shouldered in a chair like she was tossed there, hands dumped palms-up in her lap, staring at an empty patch of table.

  “She’s fine,” Holly says.

  “Really? Because it just totally breaks my heart to think about what she must be going through.”

  Joanne has one hand over her heart, to demonstrate. “They were over ages ago, remember?” Holly says. “But thanks.”

  Joanne crumples up her sympathy face and tosses it away. Underneath is a sneer. “OhmyGod, are you literally retarded? I’m never going to care about anything any of you feel. Just please tell me she’s not going to start acting like she just lost her true love. Because that would be so pathetic I might have to puke, and bulimia is so over.”

  “Tell you what,” Holly says. “Give me your mobile number. The second you get any say about how Selena acts, I’ll give you a text and let you know.”

  Joanne examines her, flat eyes that suck in everything and put nothing back out. She says, “Wow. You actually are retarded.”

  Holly sighs noisily and waits. Being this close to Joanne is trickling cold oil down her skin. She wonders what Joanne’s face would do if she asked, Did you do it yourself, or did you make someone do it for you?

  “If the cops find out what Selena was doing with Chris, she’ll be a total suspect. And if she goes around acting like some big tragedy queen, then they’re going to find out. One way or another.”

  Since Holly is not in fact retarded, she knows exactly what Joanne means. Joanne can’t take the Chief Mourner seat that she’d love, because she can’t afford to have the cops start paying special attention to her, but no one else is getting it either. If Selena acts too upset, then Joanne will upload that phone video online and make sure the cops get a link.

  Holly knows Selena didn’t kill Chris. She knows that killing a person does almost-invisible things to you; it leaves you arm-linked with death, your head tilted just a degree that way, so that for the rest of your life your shadows mix together. Holly knows Selena down to her bones, she’s been watching Selena all day, and if that tilt had happened since yesterday she would have seen it. But she doesn’t expect the detectives to know Selena that way, or to believe her if she tells them.

  Holly won’t be asking whether Joanne did it herself. She’s never going to be able to give Joanne, or anyone else, one hint that the thought has crossed her mind.

  Instead she says, “Like you know so much about how detectives work? They’re not going to suspect Selena. They’ve probably arrested someone by now.”

  They both hear it in her voice: Joanne’s won. “Oh, that’s right,” Joanne says, fli
cking one last sneer at her and turning away. “I forgot your dad’s a Guard.” She makes it sound like a sewage sorter. Joanne’s dad is a banker.

  Speaking of whom. Dealing with Joanne has taken Holly’s attention off the window; the first she knows about Dad arriving is when there’s a tap on the door and his head pokes round it. For one second the rush of helpless gladness blows away everything else, even embarrassment: Dad will fix it all. Then she remembers all the reasons why he won’t.

  Alison’s mum must have got snared by McKenna for a de-panicking session, but Dad doesn’t get snared unless he wants to be. “Miss Houlihan,” he says. “I’m just borrowing Holly for a minute. I’ll bring her back safe and sound, cross my heart.” And gives Houlihan a smile like she’s a movie star. She never thinks of saying no. The fog-layer of whispers stops moving to let Holly pass underneath, watched.

  “Hiya, chickadee,” Dad says, in the corridor. The hug is one-armed, casual as any weekend hello, except for the convulsive gripe of his hand pressing her head into his shoulder. “You OK?”

  “I’m fine,” Holly says. “You didn’t need to come.”

  “I wasn’t doing anything else, figured I might as well.” Dad is never doing nothing else. “Did you know this young fella?”

  Holly shrugs. “I’ve seen him around. We talked a couple of times. He wasn’t my friend. Just some guy from Colm’s.”

  Dad holds her away and scans her, blue eyes lasering right through hers to scour the inside of her skull for scraps. Holly sighs and stares back. “I’m not devastated. Swear to God. Satisfied?”

  He grins. “Smart-arsed little madam. Come on; let’s go for a walk.” He links her arm through his and strolls her down the corridor like they’re headed for a picnic. “How about your pals? Did they know him?”

  “Same as me,” Holly says. “Just from around. We saw the detectives during the assembly. Do you know them?”

  “Costello, I do. He’s no genius, but he’s sound enough, gets the job done. Your woman Conway, I only know what I’ve heard. She sounds OK. No idiot, anyway.”

  “Were you talking to them?”

  “Checked in with Costello on my way up. Just to make it clear that I won’t be stepping on their toes. I’m here as a dad, not a detective.”

  Holly asks, “What’d they say?”

  Dad takes the stairs at an easy jog. He says, “You know the drill. Anything they tell me, I can’t tell you.”

  He can be a dad all he wants; he’s always a detective too. “Why? I’m not a witness.”

  This time, says the space in the air when she stops.

  “We don’t know that yet. Neither do you.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  Dad lets that lie. He holds the front door open for her. The air spreading its arms to them is soft, stroking their cheeks with sweet greens and golds; the sky is holiday-blue.

  When they’re down the steps and crunching across the white pebbles, Dad says, “I’d like to believe that if you knew anything—anything at all, even something that was probably nothing—you’d tell me.”

  Holly rolls her eyes. “I’m not stupid.”

  “Furthest thing from it. But at your age, going by what I remember from a few hundred years ago, keeping your mouth shut around adults is a reflex. A good one—nothing wrong with learning to sort stuff out by yourselves—but it’s one that can go too far. Murder isn’t something you and your mates can sort. That’s the detectives’ job.”

  Holly knows it already. Her bones know it: they feel slight and bendy as grass stalks, no core to them. She thinks of Selena, rag-dolled in that chair. Things need doing, things she can’t even get hold of. She wants to lift Selena up, put her in Dad’s arms and say Take good care of her.

  She feels Joanne behind her, high in the library window. Her stare zipping through the sunlit air to fingernail-pinch the back of Holly’s neck, twisting.

  She says, “I’ve actually known that for a while. Remember?”

  She can tell by Dad’s head rearing back that she’s taken him off guard. They never talk about that time when she was a kid.

  “OK,” he says, a second later. Whether he believes her or not, he’s not going any farther down that trail. “I’m relieved to hear it. In that case, I’ll have a word with Costello, ask him to interview you now, get it out of the way. Then you can pack up your stuff, nice and discreetly, and come home with me.”

  Holly was expecting this, but she still feels her legs go rigid against it. “No. I’m not going home.”

  And Dad was expecting that; his stride doesn’t change. “I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. And it’s not forever. Just for a few days, till the lads get this sorted.”

  “What if they don’t? Then what?”

  “If they don’t have their man locked up by Monday, we’ll review the situation. It shouldn’t come to that, though. From what I hear, they’re pretty close to an arrest.”

  Their man. Not Joanne. Whatever the detectives have against this guy, sooner or later it’s going to crumble in their hands, and they’re going to go hunting again.

  “OK,” Holly says, turning docile. “Lenie and Becs can come with me, right?”

  That gets Dad’s attention. “Say what?”

  “Their parents are away. They can come home with us, right?”

  “Um,” Dad says, rubbing the back of his head. “I’m not sure we’re equipped for that, sweetheart.”

  “You said it’s only for a couple of days. What’s the big deal?”

  “I think it’s only for a few days, but this gig doesn’t come with guarantees. And I don’t have their parents’ permission to haul them away for the duration. I don’t fancy being had up for kidnapping.”

  Holly doesn’t smile. “If it’s too dangerous for me to stay here, it’s too dangerous for them.”

  “I don’t think it’s dangerous at all. I think I’m a paranoid bastard. Professional deformation, they call it. I want you at home so that any time I start getting panicky, I can stick my head in and look at you and take a few deep breaths. It’s for my sake, not yours.”

  His smile down at her and the weight of his hand on her head make Holly want to let every muscle go floppy: shove her face back into his shoulder, fill herself up with his smell of leather and smoke and soap, daydream there sucking her hair and say yes to whatever he tells her. She’d do it, except for the things Selena’s got stashed in her head, ready to spill out ping-ponging all over the floor if Holly isn’t there to keep them battened down.

  She says, “If you take me home, everyone’s going to think it’s because you know something. I’m not leaving Selena and Becca here thinking a murderer could come after them any time and there’s nowhere they can get away. If they’re stuck here, they need to know it’s safe. And the only way they’re going to know that is if you say it’s safe enough for me.”

  Dad’s head goes back and he snaps a chunk off a laugh. “I like the way you work, chickadee. And I’ll happily sit your mates down and tell them I’d bet a lot of money they’re safe as houses, if you want me to. But much as I like Selena and Becca, they’re their own parents’ responsibility, not mine.”

  He means it: he doesn’t think anyone’s in danger. He wants Holly home, not in case she gets murdered, but in case being around another murder traumatizes her poor fragile ickle mind all over again.

  Holly doesn’t want a lovely Daddy-cuddle any more. She wants blood.

  She says, firing it at him, “They’re my responsibility. They’re my family.”

  Score: Dad’s not laughing any more. “Maybe. I’d like to think I am too.”

  “You’re a grown-up. If you’re paranoid for no reason, that’s your problem to deal with. Not mine.”

  The tightened muscle in his cheek tells her she might be winning. The thought scares her so she wants to take it all back, swallow it down in
a great gulp and go running into the school to pack her things. She stays silent and stretches her steps to match his. Pebbles grind together.

  “Sometimes I think your ma’s right,” Dad says, on a wry one-sided grin. “You’re my comeuppance.”

  Holly says, “So I can stay?”

  “I’m not happy about it.”

  “Yeah, hello? Nobody’s happy about any of this?”

  That brings up the other side of the grin. “OK. I’ll make you a deal. You can stay, if you give me your word that you’ll tell me or the investigating officers anything that could conceivably be relevant. Even if you’re positive it isn’t. Anything you know, anything you notice, anything that just happens to occur to you as a vague possibility. Can you live with that?”

  It occurs to Holly that this might be what he was after all along, or at least his backup plan. He’s practical. If he doesn’t get his dad wish, at least he can get his detective one.

  “Yeah,” she says, giving him all the straight look he could want. “I promise.”

  Selena’s in the bedroom and Becca wants to give her this red phone. It comes with a long explanation that Selena can’t keep hold of, but it lights a grave holy shine all round Becca and almost lifts her off her toes, so probably it’s good. “Thanks,” Selena says, and puts the phone down the side of her bed since that’s where a secret phone belongs, except her own one isn’t there any more. She wonders if maybe Chris came and took it, and left this red one with Becca so he can text her later when he gets a chance because right now he has to be busy, only then that sounds wrong but she can’t track down why because Becca is looking at her, this look that dives down inside Selena and lands right on the place that’s trying hard to hurt. So she just says “Thanks” again and then she can’t remember what they came up here for. Becca gets her flute out of the wardrobe and puts it into her hands and asks, “What music do you need?” and for a moment Selena wants to laugh because Becca looks so calm and grown-up, riffling through her music case neat as a nurse. She wants to say That’s what you should be after school, you should be a nurse, but the thought of the look Becca would give her makes the knot of laughter swell bigger and harder at the bottom of her throat. “The Telemann,” she says. “Thanks.”