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A policeman shows me into a room with a faux-leather sofa and some plastic chairs. He looks like a teenager: trendy black moustache, hollow cheeks. He offers me coffee and I shake my head, already seeing flashes of the story I have to tell him: Georgia dropping from our hands into the stream; racing around the empty assembly hall with Lydia and Mina, laughing, gloating, high; Tristan’s eyes wide, blood dripping from the open gash on the side of his face, his hands shaking.
53
NOW
I hear myself saying that I don’t know if what I’m about to say is useful, that I’ve realised something, and it might have something to do with Jenna going missing.
He nods. He tells me not to worry about if it’s useful or not, to tell him everything.
And then I’m there again. It washes over me like the breaking of a dam.
Dry earth, hot grass, salty air. The smells of the summer fill my head and I’m running, Don, Spanish, Whip running with me.
That’s what they call us:
Tristan is Don.
Lydia is Spanish.
Mina is Whip.
I’m Princess.
I skipped my one-to-one. I’ll make up some excuse when I next see Miss Smith.
We sneak to the clearing the back way, over the school fence. We hide in the bushes, watching as Georgia – my ex-best friend, who we call Barbra – steps closer and closer to Tristan. Part of me wants to run out, tell her to piss off, put an end to it.
But part of me wants to see what she’ll do. After all we’ve done to her, will she fall for it? Will she finally get her first kiss with my brother?
And that part of me wins.
But it goes wrong.
Georgia falls and Tristan climbs on top of her. I see his knee pressing between her legs and I feel like my heart has frozen. He pins her arms back, and Lydia and Mina go silent beside me. The breeze in the leaves becomes a roar filling my ears.
I jump up and run out and Mina and Lydia run after me.
It’s all a joke. It’s nothing. Stupid Georgia falling for our trick. I wrench her arm up and we carry her to the stream and toss her in and keep running, not looking back, out of the clearing, through the trees, back to the fence.
I feel sick but I laugh, wild and high.
We streak across the field and Tristan checks his watch. ‘Just in time,’ he says, then he grins. ‘Don’t want to keep Miss Smith waiting now, do I?’ He pauses to unzip his bag, checking he has the tape he borrowed from me this morning. It’s bright pink and has a smiley-face sticker on it, wearing thin.
‘Oh, she’s waiting,’ says Mina, and we all laugh, even though we made it all up. Even though when Miss Smith followed Tristan into the store cupboard it wasn’t to reach into his pants like we told the whole school, but to ask him to get some chalk.
But it didn’t matter. It was the truth now. Everyone knew it.
He laughs. ‘Maybe Baa Baa Barbra’s too frigid for me, but she’s just a little girl.’ He keeps talking but I drown it out with thoughts of finally being free of the Smiths, those hippies posing as normal people, infiltrating our lives and trying to take it apart at the seams.
Because there’s no way Georgia can come back to school. How much more can a person take?
Guilt slices through me but I pause by the school doors to catch my breath and push it far away.
They’re dirty, evil, sick. Unchristian. They deserve everything they get.
We sneak round the empty school, waiting for Tristan to finish his one-to-one so we can all get a lift back from my mother. Mina and Lydia are staying with us for the weekend.
The only sounds are coming from the kitchen. It’s Friday so no clubs or study hall. All the boarders are in their dorms or on the fields. I think dinner is at six.
