Dead Girls

by Abigail Tarttelin

  “Rebecca, you’re in shock. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “She has always been pushy. Bossing Billie around,” Billie’s mum says. “If it’s her fault, I want to know, Georgina. She made my daughter follow him. She made her go up and talk to that pervert. Get her to tell you what happened. Ask her his name, for Christ’s sake. Just do your job and ask her!” Billie’s mum is shrieking now, and it’s like her words have so much anger in them, the weight of it all has broken her voice. I’m sweating in my armpits, in my hairline.

  “Officer Jones!” Georgie snaps, and the young policeman stands up and runs out.

  “Don’t touch me—don’t fucking touch me,” Billie’s mum growls. I feel sick and dizzy. Everything sounds like I am underwater, and my cheeks are burning.

  I swallow down the sick. “What pervert?” I must have said it quietly, because I barely hear myself, but Mr. Kent turns to me. He puts his hand on my leg, trying to keep me sat down, but when he touches me, I jump. Georgie and the young policeman stand in the doorway and look at us both weirdly. I address Georgie: “What pervert?”

  Georgie comes back in the room, alone, and shuts the door. She is mad at me now. I realize she was only pretending to like me before. “Thera, I need to ask you about your diary.”

  It’s my fault, Billie’s mum said. My fault Billie went missing. It’s true, it was my game to follow the walker. I make up all our games. If I hadn’t dared Billie, if I hadn’t thought it would be funny, maybe she would still be here. It was just a joke! That must be why they’re here, questioning me. Because the pervert took Billie, and he’s keeping her somewhere, and it’s my fault. Maybe he drove her for miles and when he was done with her she didn’t know where she was. Maybe he has her tied up somewhere.

  “I’m sorry,” I blurt out.

  “It’s okay,” she says, but she says it snappily, like she doesn’t mean it. “You said in your diary that you met a man, someone who was out walking?”

  I try to hold back the tears so I can be helpful for Billie. “Is…is he a pervert?”

  She holds her hand up. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I just want to know if you remember anything more about him. What he looked like? How old he was? If he gave you a name?”

  “No, he didn’t tell Billie his name. At least, she didn’t say he did. He looked older, but good-looking, so maybe about Leo DiCaprio’s age.” I try to remember. “He had stubble and a green jacket and big boots. And Billie said he had a wallet. But she said he was really nice!”

  “I remember in your diary you said he showed you pictures of his nieces?”

  “No, he showed Billie the pictures, because he said they looked like us.”

  “Did he tell Billie their names?” I shake my head.

  “Can you remember anything else? Did he look like he was out walking?”

  “I guess. I think he was wearing a grayish-black T-shirt and blue jeans. And the green jacket was light, because it was hot, and had a brown collar.”

  “That’s very observant of you,” Georgie says, almost suspiciously.

  My cheeks are hot. “We thought he might be a spy. We followed him for a while.”

  “Through the village? Where?”

  “From the school to the grass triangle at the crossroads near Brackerby Lane. He sat on the bench.”

  “Good. That’s very clever that you remember all of that, Thera,” Georgie says, but I figure she really thinks I’m stupid, because I introduced Billie to a pervert. I fight the tears back and try to keep my face really still.

  “Was he carrying anything else?”

  “Um, I think he had a sandwich.”

  “Was it from a shop? Was it in plastic, or tinfoil perhaps?”

  “I…I don’t remember. I didn’t see.”

  “Okay, that’ll be all for now. Thanks, Thera.” Georgie nods at Mr. Kent. “Thank you.”

  “Not at all,” he says. “If there’s anything we can do…” Because I’ve been worried, I’d almost forgotten Mr. Kent was there, but now I realize he has heard everything. That means soon Mrs. Adamson will know too, and I won’t be able to look her in the eye, at least until Billie escapes from the pervert.

  Mrs. A will probably say something in class. Sometimes Mrs. A says things that are embarrassing, like when Hattie got her bra and Mrs. Adamson commented on it, and said she didn’t really have a chest yet but she supposed it was good practice, and young girls were growing up so fast these days. The rest of us don’t have bras yet. When that happened, I could see Hattie was upset and I felt sorry for her, even though she makes me feel upset all the time. It was a mean thing for Mrs. A to say. She can be mean like that sometimes. Another time, Poppy got her hair cut and it looked really nice, and Mrs. A said she preferred it the old way and this way was too mature. If Mrs. A says something in class about the pervert, then Hattie will know the police think it’s my fault. Her meanness to me will be vindicated. Hattie will love that. She’ll tell everyone in the whole world, ever.

  Mr. Kent lets me go to the toilets, and I sit down on the seat and let my tears out silently, wiping them into the cuffs of my sleeves. I really hope nothing bad has happened to Billie. She’s incredibly brave and tough and feisty, more so than any other girl I know our age. Except me, of course. We’re equals. Billie has got gumption. I think if someone attacked her, she’d just say, “Well, I won’t stand for that nonsense, you poopsicle!” Then she’d pretend to fence them, and they would find it so weird they would just leave her alone. Or she would give them a huge boot in the head.

  Nothing really bad could ever happen to her. Even if a pervert grabbed her, I know she would fight him off and run and hide. Maybe that’s what she’s doing. She’s hiding somewhere, and she’s waiting for him to leave the area, and then she’ll come out. Billie’s not book-smart like me, but she’s street-smart. Suddenly I remember something else, so I run out of the bathroom back to the hall. Luckily Georgie is still there, talking to Mr. Kent. “Have you found Billie’s bag?” I ask her.

  “Her bag?” Georgie says. “Billie had a bag with her when she disappeared?”

  “Yeah, she had a backpack with Mickey Mouse on it.”

  Georgie turns away from Mr. Kent, forgetting him, and speaks urgently. “Do you know what she had in the bag, Thera? Try hard to remember, it could be really important.”

  “She had the predictor, her diary, a red felt-tip pen, two empty Rice Krispies Squares packets, an empty Ribena carton, and a Nano Pet,” I say nervously, wondering if now Georgie will arrest me for withholding information, as well as following a pervert and getting Billie kidnapped.

  My heart is beating hard in my chest.

  “Well done, Thera,” Georgie says, and then turns and rushes out of the school, talking on the police radio attached to her shoulder.

  My cheeks are burning when I walk back into class. Break is over and I sit back down, opposite Hattie this time, because now we have a history lesson and we don’t get put into groups for history. The seat where Billie usually sits, next to me, is empty. I will her to be there with my mind. I even will the girl I don’t know to be there, so I can ask her if she knows anything about Billie, but neither of them appear.

  “So?” Hattie says in a low voice, while Mrs. A is writing on the board and explaining we’re learning about the Ancient Greeks next. “Did you tell them?”

  “Did I tell them what?”

  “Did you tell them it’s all your fault?”

  I look quickly down at my textbook, but not quick enough to avoid their faces—Hattie’s and Poppy’s. I’m not quick enough to dip my head before the tears come either. I wipe them away quickly. I have a promise to myself that I’ll never let Hattie see me cry. I shouldn’t be the one crying, anyway. Billie is the one that’s missing. I’m the one who got her lost.

  The lesson starts and I concentrate on the textbook i
n front of me and what Mrs. A is saying, but it’s all a blur, and when I press my pencil to my workbook I press so hard the lead breaks off.

  I want to talk to the girl who was a black dog and ask her if she knows something about Billie, and if that’s why she has been watching me. Sat on my bed at home, I stroke the red lettering of the book I borrowed from Nan and Granddad’s house, Ouija: The Most Dangerous Game. I open it. I have already read the first chapter, about the history of Ouija. It is at least 2,500 years old. Many different cultures, including Ancient China, Rome, and Greece, created different versions, in the same way that different cultures built stone circles and worshipped the stars. Everyone wants to talk to the dead, because everyone dies. Well, everyone has died so far. Granddad says with stem cells they might be able to figure out how to keep people young forever, so I’m crossing my fingers that my generation will be the first to become immortal. I don’t want to die.

  I start reading where I left off. I’ve shut the door to my room so no one sees me reading it. I’m scared to tell Mum and Dad about the dogs. They will think it was my fault Billie is missing, just like the police and Billie’s mum do. The book says, in America, the Ouija board has always been very popular. In the eighties (when Billie and I were born), they sold more Ouija boards than Monopoly boards. Everyone I know has Monopoly!

  The book says Ouija isn’t just used to communicate with the dead. Some people use it to enhance their psychic abilities, making them better at mind reading and predicting the future, and some use it to find people who are missing. Several missing-persons cases in America have been solved using Ouija boards. I look over at the board. I got spooked after the black dogs, so I folded it in half and stuffed it into my white bookcase. If I followed the instructions in the book, maybe I could contact Billie and ask her where she is. But what if an evil spirit does come through? In the book, it says if you don’t perform the right rituals to send the spirit back to the spirit world, they can stay in the real world and haunt the person that brought them forth. Is that what happened with the dogs, and the girl? Is she a ghost, haunting me?

  There is a creak by my window. I slowly turn my head.

  There’s nothing there.

  Holding my breath, I look back at the book.

  There is a very interesting page about skeptics that makes me question everything. It says that some people think the Ouija board’s messages aren’t from dead people at all, but from the subconscious of the person operating it. The book says spiritualists believe that spirits talk through the board, but nonspiritualists think the person using the board is imagining it all.

  Am I a nonspiritualist or a spiritualist? We go to a Church of England school, so we are supposed to be Christians, but what do I really believe? Do I believe I could talk to the girl/dog through the board? Do I believe it would help me communicate with Billie? Granddad always says belief is a powerful force. He says if you believe you can do something, you can.

  “Thera!”

  Suddenly Mum’s voice is calling up the stairs, and I jump and scream. I guess thinking about ghosts is freaking me out.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah!” I shout back, my heart thudding loudly. “I’m fine!”

  “It’s bath time—go and start the hot water tap.”

  “Okay.” I look down at the book, shivering with fear.

  The next bit is about— “Now, Thera.”

  “I’m doing it!” I say, and slam the book shut, tucking it under my pillow.

  At lunchtime the next day, Hattie and Poppy rush ahead of me to the playground, holding hands. I look around when I get there. No Billie. Sam and his friends are playing on the tire at the back of the playground by the fence, and Hattie and Poppy are sitting on the climbing frame, talking. I slope over to them because I don’t have anywhere else to go.

  “Hey, guys,” I say hesitantly. “Do you want to play a pretend game?” It seems awful playing a pretend game without Billie, but I want to at least try to be normal. Then the time will go quickly and before I know it she’ll be back, talking in a funny accent and being louder than everyone else.

  Hattie looks at me and sniffs. “A pretend game?”

  “Yeah. We could pretend we’re in an all-girls boarding school. One of us has to be the matron.”

  Hattie shakes her head. “How can you even think about playing pretend games when Billie is missing because of you?”

  My cheeks immediately get really hot because now she’ll think I don’t care about Billie as much as she does.

  “It’s okay if you don’t feel like it,” I say quickly. “We could play something else. Anything you want.”

  Billie and I have the best playground games. I invent most of them, but Billie makes up loads. We have imaginary games, like families, or boarding school, but we have other games too. There’s one called Batchelors Mug, where we wander around the playground singing the song, “We always get together with a Batchelors Mug! Our job is making everyone happy in love, happy, happy, happy, happy!”, and then we ask people what’s wrong, and see if we can help them be happier. We do that one with both of us in the same coat, two arms down one sleeve. Then we have a dance to the Animaniacs theme tune that we do on the tires, but we made up our own words, which go, “We are the Animaniacs, and our bums are full of wax. My shoelace is undone, and I weigh a single ton. We’re the Animaniacs!” Hattie and Poppy think our games are childish, but they would never say that with Billie here.

  “It might be dangerous playing with you,” Hattie says.

  “Huh?”

  “I might disappear!” She pretends to be frightened and Poppy giggles.

  “Fine,” I say. “I just thought maybe you might want to make up a dance routine, to do when we leave school, for the younger kids. We could do it in assembly. I bet Mrs. Adamson will let us.”

  “What to?” Poppy says. She looks interested. Maybe she wants to pretend everything is normal, like me.

  I think about the songs Billie likes. “Maybe like a Spice Girls song. Or Steps. Or S Club Seven. We could surprise Billie with it when—”

  Hattie interrupts me: “We don’t want to do a stupid dance, thanks very much. Not with you and no Billie. You’d just boss everyone around and be annoying.”

  “No, I wouldn’t!”

  “Billie thought you were annoying. She told me so.”

  “No, she didn’t!” I shout.

  “And now she’s missing.”

  “She’s not missing,” I say insistently. “She’s just…run away or something.”

  “She’s been gone for ages, you lame-o,” Hattie says. “Where has she been sleeping?”

  “Out…out in the wild.”

  “She couldn’t survive out there alone, she’s only eleven.”

  “So? She’s tough.”

  “She’s just a little girl. Anything could have happened to her.”

  The way Hattie says “anything” is really spooky. It makes a shiver run down my back. “Shut up!” I say. “Stop talking!”

  Her face takes on a pointy look, like she is directing all of her hate toward me. “Who knows? Maybe she’s lying dead somewhere in a ditch.”

  “Shut up, Hattie, that’s ridiculous!”

  “All because you wanted to follow that man. Poppy and I told you it was a stupid idea, but you wouldn’t listen.” Hattie looks like a queen on her throne, sat on the climbing frame. She makes me feel like her subject.

  “Billie wanted to follow him too.”

  “Yeah, but we know who’s the bossy, annoying leader out of you and Billie, don’t we? Who knows. You always wanted to be Billie, Thera. Maybe you got rid of her on purpose so you could replace her.”

  “I don’t want to be Billie!” I wipe my cheeks with a balled-up fist. “She’s my best, true, forever friend.”

  “Maybe,” Hattie says, really cattily and nast
ily, “you killed her because you’re in love with her.”

  Poppy sticks out her tongue at me. “Gay.”

  I’m so shocked I burst out crying. I rush at Hattie and put my hands under her bum and shove. Hattie falls backward off the top bars, onto the rubber. It’s quite a long way to fall, about five or six feet, but she manages to keep hold of one of the bars until her weight rips her hand off it, so she isn’t badly hurt. She bursts out crying too, though, and grabs my leg and scratches it, and I kick her in the head. I’m shocked at how powerful my boot feels driving into her skull. I didn’t think it would actually do any damage to kick her in the head. I thought it would just be like a pinch, but Hattie is bleeding. One of the dinner ladies runs over, shouting my name, steers me out of the playground with a hand on my back and takes me to see Mrs. Adamson. Mrs. A takes me into our classroom and sits me down.

  “She’s SO MEAN! Hattie’s so mean!” I scream.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Adamson says. “I know she is. Mean people are awful.”

  “She was making me scared about Billie,” I moan. “I miss her.”

  “I’m sorry, Thera.” Mrs. A starts to cry. “Don’t you think I miss her too?”

  I start crying, thinking about this. Billie is Mrs. Adamson’s favorite. She always gets her to deliver messages to other classes, even though Billie takes ages because she dawdles and gets distracted by the art projects on the walls in the hall. She makes Billie the lead in every school play, even though half the time she forgets the lines and I have to tell her them, and then she giggles and says them wrong anyway. Billie is always an angel in the Nativity, except for the last two years she’s been Mary. I guess Billie is a lot of people’s favorite, especially older people. They like her because she is pretty, always neat, and very good, although a bit dippy and easily distracted.

  “We’ve got to try to think about other things, Thera,” Mrs. Adamson says. “It’s not our fault this happened. You’re only little, and you can’t help find Billie or anything. Playing with Hattie and Poppy is the best way to take your mind off things. So just…put up with it and, and…maybe Billie will come back.” A couple of tears fall down her cheeks.