AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Is this about Rose, or is it something to do with this… older boy?’
She started running a corner of the ruler over the notches in the desk. It was ancient, like everything in this place. I had even found some of my own carvings from when I was a pupil. DIE BITCHES DIE. I can’t pretend I had been at my creative peak.
Jenna slapped the ruler on the desk. ‘All of the above,’ she said.
‘Okay, so, what did you see?’
‘I could go to Glastonbury, you know, if I wanted,’ she said.
I frowned. This was affected, this jumping about. She wanted to tell me something, and she didn’t. She wanted me to force it from her. But people have to want to tell you.
‘That’s wonderful,’ I said.
‘It is, isn’t it?’ And she picked up the ruler and snapped it in half and walked out.
I felt lost, which wasn’t something I felt often. I wanted to run to Neil.
But I had to remember. I had a plan for Jenna Beaufort-Bradley. I had to let this play out.
45
BEFORE
‘Will you please just leave me alone?’
The look on Miss Smith’s face when I snap at her makes my stomach turn. Why do I have to be like this? Why can’t I just get in the car, be nice and take what’s offered to me? She only wants to help.
I walk on, trying not to stomp, trying not to let my bottom lip jut out like a baby.
The sun is too hot and the bright yellow rapeseed in the field by the road smells too sweet. I need to sneeze. The dry grass scratches my ankles.
Miss Smith rolls on beside me, window open. She stays with me for a good minute then sighs and drives away and I have to clench every muscle in my body, dig my fingernails into the palms of my hands, to stop myself from running after her.
Nothing good can come of me meeting Princess in the clearing in the woods.
But Baa Baa Barbra does what she’s told. Baa Baa Barbra follows orders.
Princess must really want to apologise. There’s no one she talks to like me. I’m the only one who knows how fucked up things are with her family, and even now, even through all of this, I haven’t told anybody. If this was the test, I’ve passed it.
I come to the rickety stile and scratch my hand as I climb over like I always do. I suck the blood as I walk down the hill, close to the hedge, trying not to draw the attention of the cows, and then climb over the fence at the bottom, into the forest.
I can’t help but feel more hopeful in the dappled light. When I come to the stream, I remember crouching in it with Princess, before she was even called that, studying the brine shrimp living among the rocks when we were barely teenagers.
Upstream, the trees thin, and then it opens out into a sunny grass circle about twenty metres across, split by the line of water. We once saw a vixen and her cubs here and we’ve called it the fox field ever since.
And then I see him.
Don sits on a tree stump by the fire pit, reading something. He looks up and waves, smiling. ‘Hey!’
I start walking again, towards him, but slowly.
‘Princess forgot she had to go for her one-to-one with Miss Smith, so she sent me.’ He flicks his hair out of his eyes. ‘She said she’d come right after. She didn’t want you to think she’d stood you up or something.’
I come to a halt a metre away from him.
‘Look, come here,’ he says, and pulls another stump upright and closer to him.
I stay standing.
