I didn’t know Taylor was so confident with boys, I think. Or at parties. Or, come to that, with bongo drums. But we’re so sheltered at Wakefield Hall, so cut off from the world, that I just haven’t had the opportunity to see what she’s like in a normal setting. And I forget that she has a brother, a pretty cool, jet-setting brother capable of passing himself off as a playboy at smart parties in Venice, no less. It makes complete sense that with an older brother like that, Taylor would be much more comfortable hanging out with boys than I am.
“We should really stay here,” Callum says, laying his violin in its case. “To, you know, watch our stuff.”
“Yeah,” Ewan agrees, voice artificially serious. “That stuff won’t watch itself.”
He takes one of the bongos from Taylor, who says something to him as they walk away that makes him snuffle with laughter.
“They get on really well,” I observe to Callum.
“Yeah,” he says thoughtfully, looking after their figures as they disappear into the dark. I was implying that I thought Taylor and Ewan were getting together—hooking up, as Taylor says, though I’m never sure what that means, exactly, how far hooking up goes. But that’s not how Callum sounded. He doesn’t seem convinced, and I wonder why.
Silence descends, and I fidget awkwardly. I’ve been alone with boys a few times now, and even that limited experience has taught me that silence is necessary, essential, even, so that the mood can shift into something different; something charged with excitement and possibility.
And then I feel that shift happen between us. It’s palpable, and I realize I’ve forgotten to breathe; my rib cage is tight, my stomach feels hollow. I look at Callum, which is maybe a mistake, because even though I can barely see his face, with the fire flickering behind him, I know that we’ve made eye contact. It’s like an electric shock.
I reach for the bottle of wine, and simultaneously, Callum leans over to pull a can of beer off the six-pack, our movements almost synchronized. He moves the beers that are left to the edge of the blanket, propping them against his violin case, using that as a way to end up sitting next to me, his leg now firmly touching mine. Clearing his throat, he pops his beer can open.
“So, um, I was right,” he says, drinking a little.
“Right?” My voice comes out higher and squeakier than I would like.
“About girls not liking beer,” he says, turning to look at me.
I have the bottle uncapped, but there’s no way I’m tilting a nearly full bottle of wine to my mouth in front of him when he’s this close to me. I’ll look ridiculous, like an alcoholic. So I hold it clumsily beside me, and say:
“I’ve never tried beer, only cider. So I don’t know.”
“Want to try?” He holds the can out to me, so close now that he hardly needs to move much. I twist the cap back on the wine and take the can from him, our fingers brushing against each other, my heart jumping as we make that contact.
I lift the can to my lips, bubbles rushing out at me, the taste sour and sharp and yeasty.
“Ugh!” I grimace, and Callum, seeing my reaction, laughs and takes the can back from me.
“It does taste weird the first time,” he admits. “I should’ve told you.” He pauses. “You’ve got froth all over your mouth.”
He reaches out and smooths some of it away with his thumb. Testing my reaction, seeing if I’ll pull back, say something quickly, turn away to grab the wine instead.
But I don’t. I turn my face up to him, and wait.
He lowers his face toward me, slowly. I close my eyes, my heart beating almost louder than the drums that are pounding by the bonfire, making the ground below us throb with their rhythm. I smell the beer on his breath as his mouth comes down on mine, taste it on his lips, and I must admit it does put me off for a moment.
Callum senses that, and pulls back.
“Oh shit,” he says quickly, “I taste of beer, don’t I? Sorry!” He grabs the bottle of wine and takes a swig from it, almost gargling it around his mouth. It should be funny, but I’m too wound up now, too nervous, to be able to make a laughing comment or reassure him; I just sit there, feeling glued to the spot, as he kisses me again, with less hesitation this time.
“That better?” he says against my mouth, and I nod and mumble “Uh-huh,” because it is. It’s lovely. He’s warm, and the wine’s intoxicating as I kiss him back, first with small, delicate nips, finding each other, finding the connection; then, leaning against each other with more weight, Callum’s body heavy and solid, my hands coming up to wrap around his neck, feeling him wind his arms round my waist to pull me closer.
My head tips to the side, and Callum follows me eagerly, urgent now. God, I love kissing, I think, my heart surging, my body flooding with the thrill of it, as Callum’s tongue meets mine and I let myself go completely. Everything I have is going into this kiss. I want nothing more than to forget about Jase, forget about Dan, forget about anything that’s ever gone wrong for me, just lose myself in kissing Callum McAndrew, right here, right now, on a blanket in front of a bonfire, drums pounding, music swirling around us, his mouth tasting of wine, his tongue sliding past my open lips.…
My eyes snap open. My hands, even though they’re around his neck, touching his warm skin, are suddenly clammy and cold.
Something doesn’t feel right.
I pull back, unwrapping my arms from him, rubbing my hands together, mumbling awkwardly:
“Sorry—my hands were freezing—”
“Yeah, it’s pretty chilly,” Callum agrees. “Like, um, the wind got up all of a sudden.”
“I know,” I agree instantly, though I haven’t felt even a breeze and I don’t think he has either.
“Do you want me to warm them?” he asks, awkwardly, but he doesn’t make a move to reach out to take my hands between his, and when I shake my head, he doesn’t insist. I make a big show of rubbing my hands together, even putting them into my armpits under my jacket and pantomiming shivering, as if I were a really talentless children’s TV presenter, miming being cold so obviously that even a two-year-old would understand what I was trying to convey.
Thank God for the music, the rise and fall of voices around the bonfire and up on the quarry ledges, the crackle of flames from the fires. Without them, our silence would be even more obvious. And it’s embarrassing enough as it is.
Callum shuffles his legs nervously. I can’t sit there any longer with my hands in my armpits. I’m beginning to feel like I’m not miming cold anymore, but imitating a gorilla instead, again at a two-year-old level: I have a crazy impulse to squat and start going ‘Ooh-ooh! Ooh-ooh!’ Pulling my hands out from under my jacket, I rest them in my lap and look down at them.
“Better?” Callum asks.
“Yes,” I mumble.
Callum shifts uncomfortably. I pull my legs up to my side, unable to sit still. I’m twitching as if my skin is crawling off my body. I open my mouth, needing to say something, anything, to break the silence, and what comes out is:
“Um … I really need to go to the loo.”
Nice, Scarlett. Really nice. First you do a gorilla impersonation and then you talk about going to the toilet.
“Everyone goes in the bushes,” Callum offers. “Over there, usually.”
He turns, extending an arm, pointing to the thick undergrowth bordering the access path to the quarry.
“You just have to be careful not to get scratched up,” he adds. “Um—do you want me to come with you?”
“No!” I almost scream, jumping to my feet as if I’d just been stung by fire ants. “I’ll be fine! Thanks! But I’ll be fine!”
I take off in the direction of the bushes in such a hurry that I stumble over a hillock of stubbly dirt and turn my left foot over on the plastic flange on the heel of my trainer. Ow. I bite my tongue to avoid gasping in pain, and don’t even break stride, hobbling along as Callum calls:
“You all right?”
I raise one hand to reassure him and keep
going grimly, ignoring the stabbing pain in my ankle. Not till I reach the undergrowth and can bury myself safely inside its shelter do I stop, grab a branch, and balance on my right foot while circling my left one way and then the other, easing out the ankle strain.
I think I must be in shock. I can’t believe what just happened.
Kissing Callum was lovely, just as lovely as it was last year. Until—and I can’t think of a nicer way to put this—until his tongue slid into my mouth.
And then all I wanted to do was scream at him to get it out.
It’s not Callum’s fault, not in any way. I wanted him to kiss me, and I wanted to kiss him back just as much. I opened my mouth, I tightened my arms around him, I met his own tongue with the tip of mine. Up until that moment, I was yearning to press my whole body against his, to lie down next to him on the blanket, kissing and touching till we worked each other up into as high a state of excitement as we could manage.
So what just went so badly wrong that I scarpered away as if my trainers were on fire?
My brain’s spinning. The only two logical conclusions I can come to are:
A) I don’t actually fancy Callum after all,
or:
B) I’m so in love with Jase that I can’t even French-kiss a boy without feeling so guilty that I have to stop.
Neither of these theories is remotely consoling.
I set my left foot back to the ground and start pushing my way farther into the bushes. I’m so wound up by now with conflicting emotions that I feel really vulnerable: no way am I peeling down my jeans and tights and squatting to wee on the ground without making sure I’m safely in deep cover. Thank goodness at least that I don’t actually need to go to the loo that badly. It was mostly an excuse to get away from that nightmare situation, Callum and I just sitting there, riven with embarrassment.
Oh. Another thought hits me. If it had been just me pulling away from him—if he still wanted to kiss me—he’d have tried harder to get me back in his arms. He’d have kissed me again, tried to convince me that I really wanted to keep kissing him back. That’s how boys behave; once they’ve started, they hate to stop. And they’ll say, and do, a lot to keep you there.
But Callum didn’t do a thing. He acted like he wanted to stop as much as I did. He didn’t try to hold on to me, and when he offered to warm my hands or walk me to the bushes, he was just being polite. I could tell he didn’t really mean it.
It seemed as if he felt exactly the same as me.
Which leads me to option A: I don’t actually fancy Callum after all. I found that out as soon as our kissing got serious. And it was just the same for him. For some alchemical reason, we just didn’t kiss the way the other person liked. And after that, there’s no going back.
I’ve never heard of this kind of situation before. I really need some girls to talk to, girls who’ve kissed a lot of boys and maybe have had this same kind of experience. Because it’s utterly confusing to me. Unfortunately, all the girls I know who’ve kissed a lot of boys are total cows who’d lie to me just to mess up my head, so I can’t rely on any of them to tell me the truth.
I’m racking my brains to think about anyone at all I could ask, and not coming up with a single name. I’ve been weaving my way through the bushes for a while now; they’re not as dense as they look from the path, and it’s been easy enough to keep walking at a steady pace, lost in thought. But now that I’ve hit a dead end, mentally, my feet stop too.
And now that I’m not making any noise myself, I hear a heavy rustling in the bushes behind me.
The dogs, I tell myself immediately, over the instant terror that surges through me. It’s just those big dogs I saw playing before, chasing each other through the forest.
Nothing to freak me out there: I like dogs. But as I stand, not moving a muscle, my ears practically pricked into points to listen to the sound that seems to be coming closer by the second, it doesn’t seem like a dog, or even two. It’s too steady. Too even.
Too much like footsteps.
And no matter how calm I tell myself to be, the memory of that male figure I saw yesterday evening, following us through the dark streets of Leith, swamps my reason. I’m convinced, suddenly, that it’s Callum behind me in the woods. That it was Callum last night stalking us, and that, though he seemed totally calm and fine about me taking off just now with a rather feeble excuse about needing the loo, he’s a much better actor than I realize, and in fact, he wasn’t calm and fine at all.
After all, that wouldn’t make him the only good actor in his family.
Is Callum playing some weird double game? Is he angry with me because of Dan’s death and everything that happened at Castle Airlie afterward? Or is he following me now—making enough noise so I can’t help but be aware there’s someone else in the woods—to scare me because I pulled away from kissing him?
Wild speculations spin through my mind, speeding up into a whir of panic, and my feet speed up too. I take off, crashing into the bushes, cannoning off branches, my breath coming in panting gasps, stumbling over roots and debris on the forest floor. Acting, in other words, like the kind of pathetic, ridiculous victim that I totally despise when I watch them in horror films.
When I watch those films, I’m always shouting advice to the girls in them. Don’t open the door without a weapon in your hand! Hit him over the head with the frying pan till he falls down—not just once, you moron, keep hitting him till he can’t move! Or, when she’s being followed in a gloomy dark forest: Duck down behind a big tree stump, hide till he’s past you, and then double back!
And of course, when it actually happens to me, I don’t follow my own suggestions. Instead of hiding in the dark, I flail around like a madwoman; if someone didn’t notice I was there before, they certainly do now as I tear through the bushes in a raptus of fear. But it’s stronger than me. I can’t stop. I physically can’t. I’m a running machine, fueled by pure terror. All the events of the last few days—the smoke, the fire alarm, the push over the stair rail, the drugging of my water, the possibility that someone was following me last night—all sweep together in one sharp stabbing scream inside my head, a conviction that the person behind me—Callum, it must be!—is out to kill me.
The bushes part and close behind me. I’m racing out onto some scrub land, moonlight glinting down on the gray, almost lunar landscape in front of me. Loose shingle underfoot makes it hard to keep my balance. I slip and slide, carried forward down a shallow slope, still going at full pelt.
And suddenly, I see a drop in front of me. Darkness below, a steep fall. I realize in a split second what it is: another quarry.
Because the bowl of stone in which everyone’s partying reaches up to high cliffs around us, I assumed there wouldn’t be any lower ground. But that bowl must once have been hollowed from the earth, cut out over years to quarry the stone to build the city. And the stoneworkers kept digging down, looking for more. Opening up at my feet is a huge, gaping maw, like a mouth about to swallow me.
My momentum is unstoppable. I try to dig my feet in, to turn them sideways to brake my body, but that sends me off balance, and I skid sideways, finding no purchase on the shale. I’m being carried inexorably toward the rim of the quarry. In a matter of seconds, I’ll slide over the edge.
And in that moment I don’t care. I shut my eyes and let go. It’s the first time in my life that I’ve ever given up, and it feels better than I thought it would. I’m so tired. I’m so tired of all this drama, the miserable break with Jase, the weirdness with Callum, the fear that someone’s seriously trying to hurt me, maybe even kill me.
I can’t fight anymore: I’ve got nothing left.
So I might as well just fall.
fourteen
“I LOVE YOU, SCARLETT”
A split second later, I realize what an idiot I’m being. An idiot drama queen, getting carried away by the wine I’ve drunk and the nonstop craziness that’s been my life ever since we reached Edinburgh. Of course I don’t wa
nt to fall! Of course I have more fight in me! Of course I don’t want to be found with a broken neck or a broken back at the bottom of a quarry when a search party eventually comes out looking for me!
With every ounce of strength I have, I throw myself backward, aiming to land on my bum. Even though I’m bound to take a tumble, I’ll do much better sliding down the slope on my bottom than I will pitching headfirst into nothingness. My arms flail wildly, pushing away as if through water, a huge paddling motion that, though awkward, does help to tip me backward. I brace myself for a painful landing, for getting scraped and dragged along the rough shale beneath.
And then I’m jerked back with such force that I go flying through the air. Something’s grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and pulled me as if I were a dog being hauled by its collar. The zip of my jacket cuts into the soft skin of my throat, and I scrabble with my fingers, trying to work them under the metal to stop myself from choking.
I fall back like a dead weight, landing with an impact that smacks the breath from my body. Gasping, shocked, I realize that I haven’t hit ground; there’s no sharp shale below me, but a hard, warm body. Nothing soft about it, no yielding flesh, just solid muscle.
Taylor? I think. But Taylor isn’t this big, this wide.…
“Scarlett!” gasps a voice above my head.
I wriggle off him onto my knees in one rush of movement, unable to believe what I think I just heard.
“Jase?” I exclaim, looking down at him. Moonlight is glowing on us, sparking flashes of light off the sharp edges of the gravel. But even if we weren’t so well illuminated, I would recognize Jase anywhere. His touch, his scent, his voice, his shape.
I can’t believe he’s here. But I know it’s him.
“Hey,” he says weakly, still winded by the fall.
“Oh, Jase—”
I throw myself on top of him again, wrapping my arms around as much of his body as I can manage. Breathing him in, taking huge comfort in pressing myself against as much of him as I can possibly manage. And, of course, I’m showering his face with burning kisses, to quote a P. G. Wodehouse novel I recently read in which the hero did that to the heroine.
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