Dead Girls

by Abigail Tarttelin

  I don’t want to go talk to the police in real life because I’m scared of Georgie, so we ring 999 from the red phone booth at the top of the hill, and tell the lady who answers that we have found a dead body, then we walk home. I have to drag Sam because he can barely move his legs. I lead him down the side of the house, around to the back door, and then let go of his hand.

  “Thera?”

  “Just tell Nan I’m out playing.”

  “But…but she’ll be angry at me. We were supposed to stay in the garden,” Sam says. He is still crying.

  “No, tell her I made you leave. It’s my fault. I won’t be long.”

  “Where are you going?” he wails.

  “I just want to…see. I don’t want to leave her there.”

  “But the police will be there with her in a minute, Thera, you don’t have to go!”

  “The police being there isn’t the same! I’m her friend. I have to go and take care of her, Sam, like I’ve just taken care of you.” He watches me as I climb over our fence. I run back, retracing our footsteps through the fallow field to the top road. My heart is beating hard against my chest. The police cars are already moving toward the copse, but the road they have to use is lumpy and longer than cutting through the fields. I know if I race along the top, roll down the side of the hill and run through the trailer park, ’round to the back of the copse, I could get into the den area quicker than them and hide, and watch them find her. I don’t know why I want to. That intellectual curiosity, I guess. I don’t want to leave her on her own, and maybe they will find how she died, or a really important clue, and I want to know about it.

  When I get just past the copse, the cars are parking at the gate. I lie flat at the top of the hill and push myself down. The first field is fallow so I roll right over it, getting bruised and knocked around, but the second is crop and I have to stand and run, keeping low so the police don’t see me. I get to the trailer park and run through the main entrance, past the trailers. Not many of the people who live here are out and about. They are probably all inside eating tea, or still at work. There are a few old men and women lying out in the sun, but they ignore me. I push through the hedge at the back of the field and only have a little way to go, across the corner of another enclosure, to get to the copse. When I get there, I hear them cutting through the thicket with a chainsaw. I take a run-up to the ditch and try to leap over. I trip at the edge, splashing my feet into the water. It’s the same water Billie is lying in. This makes me upset and I stay, clinging to the bank for a moment to calm myself down. I feel my neck. My heartbeat is really fast. But I have to keep moving. I scramble up the bank and climb the tall tree on the edge of the den, right up into the thin branches, where I have a bird’s-eye view of Billie. I still have the binoculars around my neck and I train them to the scene, watch Georgie push her way through the undergrowth, and try to quieten my heavy breathing. I’m panting like one of those black dogs.

  The police are very hushed. First Georgie runs her eyes up and down Billie, then she calls over a man and a lady in white suits and they start to look at Billie too, lifting up the sheet and talking quietly to each other. Other police set up some tall lights pointing at Billie, even though the sun won’t be going down for hours. One light is near me, so I slip even higher up the tree and jam myself in between a fork in the branches.

  When I look back to Billie, I can’t see her. There is a cluster of people around her, doing police stuff I suppose, like getting fingerprints. I peer through the binoculars. I catch glimpses of her as the police move, but I can’t see her face. People surround her, touching her, lifting up her hands and her hair, and turning them over, studying them, and there is something I don’t like about that. Billie is my friend. She belongs to me, not them. I feel sick and sweaty.

  The sun is shining right onto me now, through the trees. I look up at the small streaks of fluffy cloud in the blue sky and start to cry, thinking about heaven. Is Billie there already? Will I never see her again? Or is she down here, with the dogs that turned into ghost girls? Will she stick around, or will they leave together for the spirit world?

  Suddenly I hear someone clear their throat, very loudly, just below me. I look between my legs.

  “Thera,” says my dad, looking up at me. I didn’t see him come in the den. I guess I was watching Billie very intently. I am about to ask if I can stay a bit more, but then I see his face. “Time to go home.” I scramble down the tree quickly.

  The police watch as Dad and I walk out. All of their faces are sad, except for Georgie, who looks crosser than ever. There, just past Georgie, are Billie’s mum and dad.

  As we approach them, Billie’s mum walks toward me, her mouth open, her lips trembling. “I know it was you who called the police, Thera. How did you know she was here?” Her eyes are desolate and searching, but she speaks softly. “Come here to me, sweetie, I just want to know.” Dad pulls me gently away from her, onto the other side of him. Then she tries to get around him, and Billie’s dad puts his arm out in front of her, gently cupping the side of her waist. He’s much bigger than her, and when she tries to move forward she just stops. She can’t get past his arm. She looks shocked, then frustrated, then suddenly she screams at me. “Thera, tell me how you knew!” The word “knew” echoes through the woods. Billie’s mum pulls at Billie’s dad’s arm, scratching it with her long nails. “Let me go, Paul! Let me bloody go, Jesus Christ, let me go!”

  “Rebecca,” Billie’s dad says. He buries his face in her shoulder and puts his other arm around her too. “Rebecca.”

  “No.” She’s whispering now. “No.”

  Georgie comes over to us all, and Billie’s mum yells at her. “A child found her! A child found her! What have you been doing, you fucking—”

  Dad puts his hands over my ears, then picks me up and carries me like a baby out of the wood, holding onto me so tightly that I can’t see or hear or really even breathe. He is breathing funnily, heavy and hot, his breath steaming up my neck.

  Lots of people are outside the gate, watching everything: police, a man with a big camera, people with notepads, the farmer, people from the village, and people I don’t know, from town I guess; all silent, with their arms folded. Some children are up on the hill. I look to see if Hattie or Poppy are there but the children are too far away for me to tell who they are. The only one I recognize is Nathan Nolan.

  When I get home, the TV is blaring in the living room. A lady’s voice is saying, “The body of Billie May Brooke was found…” Mum runs out of the room and shuts the door, but I hear it loud over her shoulder while she hugs me. “Police are looking for witnesses…a jeep seen leaving the area late Saturday evening…stationary vehicle in nearby turnout…any additional information, please contact the local police force…number at the bottom of the screen…” I put my hands over my ears to silence it, and scream. The tears are coming now that I’m home, now that I don’t have to look after Sam or keep watch over Billie. Dad takes me straight upstairs and puts me in bed. He sits on my bed for ages, but I can’t stop crying.

  I must have fallen asleep, though, because after that I keep seeing Billie, pale and dead. I see other faces too: the faces of the dead girls who morphed out of the black dogs, and I know now that they are murder victims, and Billie is one of them. In my dreams they have pale faces with cloudy eyes, and they are reaching for me and crying out like they want something, and I wake up, screaming, and Mum comes in and holds me and strokes my hair until the sun comes up. By dawn, I feel dried up, like all the water in my body has been cried out of me. I lie there unable to move, my lips and eyes dry and open, shocked to stillness. How can Billie be dead and gone, when I am alive and here?

  Nathan Nolan lives in the village and he’s two years older than us. We all met him on Bonfire Night last year, and he scratched me for no reason while we were playing tag, which is what boys do when they like you. That, or they thump you. His parents are p
oor, though, so he lives in a trailer and he doesn’t go to the grammar school, which is where Billie and I were supposed to go in September, along with Hattie, Poppy, and a boy called Tim from my year, because we passed the eleven-plus.

  Nathan is the same height as me. He has dark brown hair in curtains, blue eyes, and long, dark brown eyelashes like a puppy dog. His family is Irish. That’s why they live in a trailer. Poor English people tend to live in public housing (I learned that from Hattie). There’s something weird going on with his dad. I don’t know what exactly; he’s just the kind of person there are rumours about.

  When we met Nathan on Bonfire Night, he was wearing a tracksuit like a townie, but when he goes to school he wears black pants, and a black sweater with a small green emblem on the chest. His cuffs are snot-stained and chewed on. I haven’t been up close to him in a while, but you can still tell from far away.

  Sam and I are on our way to school with Dad at eight thirty on the Tuesday after I find Billie. Since I found her, there have been tons of police about, wandering all over the village in their yellow jackets. It makes me feel tense and like I’m being watched, but Mum and Dad seem to like having them around. They even argued less this weekend, which is a miracle. We spent most of it gathered around the TV, watching our favorite films, like The Land Before Time, The Jungle Book, and Terminator 2. Mum and Dad didn’t want us to go outside, but Sam and I didn’t feel like it anyway because we were upset about Billie. Dad walked us to and from school yesterday and he’s doing it again today. I counted Sam and me as very independent before Billie went missing. Now I’m scared of leaving the house alone. I’m scared the black dogs will come back. I’m scared there’s a killer out there. I think most of all, though, I’m scared of walking into the world and Billie not being there. She was always with us when we played outside, and when we went to school. Being out of our house without her feels so wrong it makes me shake.

  Sam holds Dad’s hand while we walk, and I walk just in front of them. There are a group of older kids at the bus stop. Nathan is with them, but he is younger than them. I hope he’s not their friend, because they are bullies, really. They also go to the comprehensive. One of them has a light-up yo-yo. Hattie’s sister is there. Sometimes we see the older kids on Saturdays, when we go to the supermarket in Eastcastle. They just stand in the town center, laughing really hard at their own jokes. Thinking about it, they were probably the group on the hill with Nathan, when Dad came and got me at the copse.

  There is a policeman across the road from the bus stop, watching them.

  When we walk past the bus stop kids, they all go quiet, including Nathan. He hasn’t talked to me since Bonfire Night. He just stares at me mostly when I am walking past. Today, he waves.

  He’s never waved before. I look back over my shoulder and watch him through my hair. Then we walk through the kissing gate into the cut, and I can’t see him anymore. The cut is a dark, leafy tunnel of young trees, bent over the top so you can’t even see the sky through them. It’s a quicker way to school than walking on the pavement. It also has a bend in it, so it’s creepy to go down alone because you don’t know who could be ’round the corner. We notice someone has started cutting down some of the trees. Sam asks why and Dad says it’s because of Billie. Sam and I exchange a look but we don’t ask what lopping off the treetops down the cut has to do with Billie. When we get to school, Dad squats in front of us and says, “Call me from the school office if you’re upset and need to be picked up. Don’t leave school without someone with you, okay?” We nod.

  “And I don’t mean each other.” We shake our heads.

  Usually we go to the playground in the morning, but it’s empty today and the dinner ladies and police are standing there to shepherd us in through the double doors of the school building instead. When we are inside, I look back. Dad is still there, his arms folded, watching us. It feels awful to be stared at all the time. It’s like they are expecting the killer to come back and murder every last one of us. Maybe they are. Grown-ups never tell kids what’s going on, until it’s too late.

  Our names are called in registration, and it’s strange when Mrs. Adamson doesn’t call Billie’s name. She pauses for a moment, and I expect her to cry, but she just continues, seeming only a bit more moody and distracted than usual. I pick my nails. There is a hole in my heart like the hole in the register, like my chest has been punched straight through. Is no one going to mention Billie has gone?

  After registration, we set up the chairs for assembly. Our classroom is where we have assemblies, so we have to stack the tables and chairs away. Everyone sits cross-legged on the floor, apart from the teachers, who sit on chairs along the sides, and Year Six. We sit on the long, wooden gymnastics bench right at the back of the room. There are eighty-seven pupils in our school, from my village and the surrounding ones, and Years Four, Five, and Six are all in Class Three. This part of the school used to be the whole school in Victorian times, and they used to have a net above it all, attached to the ceiling, where the bad children were put. I’m not sure about that, actually, because it sounds false, but Mrs. A said it once and I didn’t think at the time that she might have been joking. Or lying, to creep us out.

  Years One, Two, Three, and Reception—the Littles—troop in and sit in front of us. I turn to my left to remark on something and my words die away when I look at Tim’s face, because that’s where Billie used to sit. I think he realizes my mistake, because he smiles awkwardly and looks down at his lap. I haven’t seen Billie since I found her. Perhaps she just needed me to find her so she could go to heaven with the other dead girls. I feel my throat constrict at this thought. I don’t want her to be gone. I want to be able to see her. I want her to come back and haunt me, so I won’t be alone.

  “Stop shivering. You’re shaking the whole row,” Hattie says, but it’s not as vicious as usual. Tears keep leaking out of her eyes. I’m glad. Maybe she actually liked Billie and didn’t just want to hang out with her because she was pretty. That’s what I suspected sometimes.

  Mr. Kent is taking the assembly today, which is weird. He clears his throat to start talking, and I stiffen up immediately because I realize what he is about to say.

  “Good morning, everyone,” he murmurs, in his soft, creepy voice.

  “Good morning,” we chorus back.

  “I have some very sad news to share with you today. Some of you might already have heard, or seen it on television, but Billie from Year Six died the weekend before last.” How does he know she died the weekend before last?

  Did he kill her? I stare at him.

  Lots of the younger kids turn around to look at the spot where Billie usually sits, and then at me.

  “We don’t know how she died yet, but it is better for you not to focus on that. Billie was a bright, friendly girl who was known to you all, and it’s normal for you to be sad. I know she got along with everyone well, and I liked her very much too.”

  Billie hated Mr. Kent. She thought he was two-faced and always had gross boogies.

  “The village church will be open on Monday night for a memorial service for Billie, and you can speak to your teachers or me about Billie if you wish.”

  How come I didn’t know about the memorial service? Am I invited? Or does Billie’s mum not want me there?

  “First lesson today is cancelled, and we will all have some time to make cards for Billie’s parents…”

  He keeps talking, but I turn away and stop listening. I don’t like the way he’s talking, as if he never said a harsh word to Billie, or shouted at her to stop running, or called her silly. My eyes blur with tears, but I don’t let him, or anyone, see me cry.

  In the playground at lunch a load of the younger children come up to me to ask questions about Billie. The really little ones, who are four or five, just come and hug me, and hold my hand, sucking the thumbs of their other hands. It’s nice. It also makes me want to cry even
more, and I really struggle to hold it in and be strong in front of them all, but I do, because I’m older and I have to be. Hattie and Poppy walk past while this is going on, and Hattie mumbles something about Billie.

  “What?” I say.

  “Nothing.” Hattie shrugs, but then she whispers something else to Poppy.

  I turn around, still holding one of the Littlies’ hands. “What are you saying?”

  “Nothing,” she insists. Her eyes are really red.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  “No. I’m sad about Billie.”

  “I know. I was sort of asking if there was anything I could do.”

  “Make the killer go away, so he doesn’t come for us.”

  I roll my eyes, realizing. “Oh, so that’s what you’re worried about. Yourself.”

  “Of course, I’m sad about Billie too,” Hattie says. “She was my best friend.”

  Even though I know Billie and I are best, true, forever friends, and Hattie is only her best friend, something about this annoys me. But I’m really bad at comebacks, so I just shrug and stand there.

  Hattie taps Poppy on the arm. “Come on, Poppy. Better not talk to the last person who saw Billie alive—and the first person who saw her dead,” she says, and then sobs.

  Poppy bites her lip but goes to follow Hattie. “You’re a sheep,” I mumble at Poppy.

  “You’re a weirdo,” Hattie snaps.

  “You’re a…a nymphomaniac!” I say, which is an insult I heard on the TV that I’ve been waiting for a chance to use.

  “You don’t know what that means, Thera. Always trying to sound smart, even now that Billie’s gone and you should be thinking about her.”