“I’m Thera. I’m one of Nathan’s friends, Mrs. Nolan.”
“And where’s he, then?”
“In the toilet.”
“Nathan?”
“Coming,” he mumbles, and the toilet flushes, and he comes out.
“What have you been up to? You look as guilty as your father.”
“Nothing,” he says, putting his hands in his pockets. His face is totally red, and he is looking down at the floor. He does look guilty. I nudge him to make him stop it. He’s not acting very cool, and she seems suspicious already. “I was just showing Thera the trailer.”
She whips her hand forward almost so fast I don’t see it, and whacks him on his side. “What-have-you-been-doing?” she says, fast.
“Nothing!” he whines.
“Don’t hit him!” I say. “That’s abuse!”
Nathan’s mum squints at me. “You’d better go on home, Little Miss, I’m not feeding another ungrateful little shit.”
“That’s okay. We’re having spag bol for tea,” I say. She turns away and ignores me as I head for the open door. “Thanks for having me, Nathan. Bye!” I smile at him to cheer him up, but he doesn’t look at me, even though I defended him. He just stands there, blushing and staring at the floor.
It’s making me feel a bit better to be doing something productive about Billie’s death, so I decide it’s time now to start getting into shape. The dead girls said it was important to be strong. I take off around the village, running. Last night I saw the dead girls in my dreams again. They were playing Ring Around the Rosie to amuse the little one. She’s the cutest, tiny and blonde and sweet. I think about them as I jog along the main road, through the village and past the church. The police watch me wherever I go, so unless the killer is a police officer, I’m safe. When I get out onto the school playing field, I do fifty press-ups, one hundred stomach crunches, one hundred star jumps, and half a pull-up on the bars in the kiddie playground. Pull-ups are hard. The policewoman guarding the playground waves and shouts, “Training for Sports Day?”
“Um,” I say, “yeah.” She keeps watching me, so I smile at her and she goes away.
I practice my kicks and punches, like Billie and I would have learned in kung fu. Maybe I’ll still go when all of this is over, if I make it through. I run all the way home afterward and collapse in a sweaty mess on a deckchair in the back garden. Sam comes up to me.
“Hey, Thera.”
“Hey.”
“Want to play Tekken?”
Sam’s been staying indoors on the PlayStation a lot in the past two weeks. He’s scared to leave the house.
“Why don’t we go and play on the field?” I suggest.
“No. I don’t want to go looking for clues again.”
“We don’t have to do that.”
“Don’t we?”
“Well, I’ll keep an eye out. But you don’t have to.”
He rips some grass up and splits it down the middle. “Hmm. No thanks.”
“How about we play tag?”
“Is it just going to be about whether I can catch you again?”
“That’s the game of tag!”
“Thera,” Sam whines. “You only want to play weird games now. Like battling ghosts. All your games and stories are all scary. And!” he exclaims, louder, “I don’t want to be strangled—”
“Shh!” I sit up. “Nan will hear you!”
“I don’t want to be strangled,” he whispers.
I tut crossly. “I only did it once.”
Poor Sam. I didn’t think until afterward that I shouldn’t have practiced strangling on an asthmatic. But Poppy said in school that Billie was definitely strangled to death. Her parents were watching the news and she overheard. I wanted to get Nathan to do it on Wednesday, but his mum came home. It’s still good, though, to know a bit about what rape feels like. It’s important to figure out exactly how Billie died. I watched seven taped episodes of a police TV show last night, just to find out more about rape and strangling. (I fast-forwarded through the episodes where the victim died of different causes.) There were only two stranglings, but the evidence for them was very similar to how Billie’s body looked—bruised necks, pale faces. They had peh-tee-kee-al (don’t know how to spell it) hem-orr-radging (don’t know how to spell that either), which is dots in their eyes, but I didn’t know to look for that then. There was only one episode on rape, but they didn’t show the rape itself, which I thought was a bit rubbish.
The other day, I got Sam to strangle me, and then I fought him off in several different ways. The best way of stopping someone from strangling you is to put both your arms straight up outside of their arms, then bring the right one down over both their arms, all the way until they have to let go of your neck, then elbow them in the face with your right elbow (which Sam got a tiny bruise from that we covered with makeup). Yesterday evening we also played some other games designed to get me strong and prepare me.
I made Sam tie me up, and then I wriggled out of the ropes (we don’t have rope, so we used dressing-gown cords).
I took the Swiss army knife Dad gave me a year ago for camping, and we stabbed into a pillow to practice how to stab someone, and how far it might go in.
Chasing (tag).
I made Sam promise not to tell Mum and Dad. It’s good for him too. We have to learn to protect ourselves. In battle, I can imagine myself as a leader. In fact, I am a leader. I’m the leader of Sam, and I was the leader of Billie and me, when she was alive, so I have to keep being a brave leader now one of my troops has fallen. She still needs me. So does Sam.
“All this stuff is making me uncomfortable,” Sam says, picking his fingernails. “I don’t think I’m old enough to do those things, and I think you’re being a very bad big sister. I keep thinking you’re going to want to try and kill a cat or something, to see if you can. I know you’re upset about Billie, but this is getting silly now, Thera.”
Sam can sound very sensible at times. I nod, but I’m thinking about what he said about the cat. I did actually wonder about killing a cat, because the neighbor’s cat is evil so it wouldn’t be so upsetting to sacrifice it for research purposes. It’s a horrible ginger hissing thing, and it eats all the little baby birds, just like a murdering pervert, picking on the weak.
“Thera, you’re not paying attention to me,” says Sam.
“I’m sorry I’ve been a bad sister,” I say. “I just have to catch this guy. We’re not safe until I do. And my preparation is going well—”
“It’s the policemen and -ladies’ job to catch the killer, Thera.” Sam sounds just like Dad.
I bite my lip. “Maybe we should be pooling resources. I’ve had this idea—”
“You’re just little, Thera! And a girl! You can’t—”
“Girls can do anything these days. That’s what girl power is about. And Billie is visiting me, not the police.”
He looks annoyed, so I take his hand and say, “Sam, if somebody killed me, wouldn’t you want to know who?”
“I gue-e-ess…”
“And wouldn’t you want to avenge my death?”
Sam sighs. “No, but I think I would have to or you would come back and haunt me and be really annoying about it.”
“I’m not annoying.” I frown. “Am I?”
“Also, if I didn’t, I suppose I would feel like I had let you down.”
“Exactly. So I have to do what I have to do, and if you want to play with me right now, you’re going to have to play catch the killer.”
“Okay.” Sam nods at me. “I’ll help. As long as I’m not busy with Tekken or Gran Turismo.”
“Good. Now get on my back. I’m going to do more push-ups.”
Later, I look it up in the dictionary. It’s petechial hemorrhaging.
Sports Day is on the last Tuesday in term. The wind
has picked up and it sounds like screams coming from far away. Every race I run, I think about running away from a killer. I run until my legs are like Play-Doh, with no bones in them, and my heart is pounding. When I go through the red tape at the end of the seventy-meter race, everyone else is miles behind me. I look around at all the faces of the parents and adults who are supposedly relatives. But are they? If I were the killer, would I come back to gloat? Is he here now? I search for the walker. My breath is raggedy, so I lean over with my hands on my knees and scan the crowd, trying to work out where I have seen every face. I am going to be like a superhuman, always alert, always ready. I’m not going to die because I wasn’t prepared, because I hadn’t exercised enough or because I wasn’t aware of what was going on around me.
“Thera? Thera!”
I turn around. The woman at the scores table is calling me over. I give the crowd one last look and then go over to her to tell her I came in first and get my badge. Next is the sack race, and then the egg-and-spoon race, and then the mums’ race.
It’s fun cheering on Mum. She comes in second. She goes to stand with Dad, Nanny, and Granddad again, and Dad looks at her nicely, which is unusual. He’s usually moody, and so is she, but they haven’t fought all day. It’s a Sports Day miracle. In the dads’ race, Dad runs faster than everyone and wins. It’s nice to know he’s fit, because if the killer broke into the house, at least I would have backup in fighting him. As long as he isn’t the killer…I have a plan to find out for sure about that one.
Afterward we have a family party at home, with homemade curries. Granddad sits on the wall Dad built around one of the flowerbeds to smoke his cigar after teatime, and I sit on his lap.
“You believe in ghosts, don’t you, Granddad?”
“I certainly believe in spirits, and souls, although how to reconcile that with my atheistic tendencies is another question.” He thinks for a minute and I wait, because he always tells stories just after he is quiet. “There was a young man—I believe his name was Harry Martindale—working as a plumbing apprentice in the cellar underneath the Treasurer’s House in York in the nineteen fifties. Have I told you this story?”
“No.” I snuggle into his shoulder.
“It’s a very famous one. While he was working, out of the darkness strode twenty men, dressed in Roman uniform. They looked very tired and dejected, as if they had lost a battle, and Harry remarked specifically that he could not see their feet. Their calves were beneath the floor, as if they were walking through deep snow. It transpired that the path of the old Roman road ran beneath the building, fifteen inches lower than the level of the cellar floor. Harry kept his story to himself for quite some time, I believe, but later on it began to be believed by certain experts, when he reported details of their appearance that he could not possibly have known to be true. Who knows what battle those men had come from, what friends they had lost, what young loves they had waiting at home, or when they died.”
“Perhaps shortly after they walked down that road,” I suggested. “And maybe that’s why they haunt it. Because if only they had gone the other way, they wouldn’t have run into trouble.”
“Perhaps. It has rarely been said that ghosts are unreasonable. Alas, for many it must be far too long since they passed from this world for us to know why they linger.” He takes a puff on his cigar and blows the smoke away from me.
“Granddad?” I ask.
“Yes, Thera?”
“Why do ghosts hang about?”
“Largely, I suspect, because they have unfinished business.”
I smile slowly. Granddad’s always right. And he has confirmed what I suspected.
“Why do you ask, my lovely, inquisitive granddaughter?”
I shrug and play innocent. “No reason.”
Just then, everyone else comes out into the garden, Dad and Sam call me to play football, and Nanny exclaims how beautiful the sunset is.
Two days later is our last day at primary school ever. I still can’t quite believe Billie’s not there for it. In the morning we have a talent show, which she would have loved, and we do a choreographed dance after all, to “Bring It All Back” by S Club 7. Mrs. A helped us put it together. We’d normally do something special like that anyway, but I think this year the teachers thought it would be particularly good for us to have something to focus on instead of Billie’s death. It just reminds me of how much Billie liked to dance about and sing, though.
I bring a bag of sweets from Mrs. Underwood’s shop to school, and at lunchtime I throw them around in the middle of the playground and the little ones run around catching them. I get everyone to sign my shirt. I get three presents and lots of goodbyes. The Littles tell me they will miss me, and I will miss them, but I promise to visit on my Baker days—which are like bank holidays for kids. They all tell me they love me and Billie, which makes me sad, but is also nice. I’m not sure they really understand that she isn’t coming back. But then again, since they are so young and close to the spirit world, maybe they see Billie too, which is a nice thought. I say goodbye to them all. It’s funny—when I pass school people from now on, they will be like, “Hi, you’re from my school,” and I’ll have to say, “No, I’m not anymore.” I’ve never been to school anywhere else in my life.
I’m looking forward to the grammar school, except that Billie won’t be coming. The induction day there was really cool. We did assembly, form time, a tour, break, English, science, IT (which is computers), lunch, PE, and home time. We met three friends I can remember the names of: Freya and Morgan, who are identical twins, and Tammy. I don’t know what it will be like without Billie, though. We had so many plans, like starting a club that meets in the big library to read spy books, and me slipping her answers to all the exams so we both get to go to Oxford.
I’ll miss Billie so much. It’s weird. She should have been coming with me to the grammar, but now she is trapped forever in this time, maybe doomed to haunt only the places where she went in life. (She came to the induction, though, so perhaps she will be able to haunt the grammar and come and hang out with me.)
We all go into the girls’ toilets and change into non-uniform for the Year Six barbecue in the afternoon. I change into a party dress in the bathroom stall. We used to all change outside the stalls together but Mrs. A doesn’t allow that in her class. She says we are too grown-up for that now. The dress is not the kind of thing I would usually wear. In fact, Billie and I planned to wear our bright green cords and our striped green-and-orange tops together, but it didn’t seem right without Billie, and Hattie got me all worried again yesterday that Nathan thinks she is prettier than me, and since there is a chance his school bus might get in about the same time as we leave for the cinema, I don’t want him to see us both and decide to go and play with Hattie instead. My dress is still babyish, though, compared to what Hattie is wearing. She points it out, but I know already. My dress is white, with a tiny bow on the collar. It comes down to my knees. Hattie is wearing a black crop top that shows her big boobs, and black shorts so small they only just cover her bum and a tiny bit of thigh. She is staring at me too.
She makes a face. “You don’t wear a bra?”
“Why would I wear a bra? I don’t have anything to put in it. Not like you.”
“Poppy wears a bra,” Hattie says.
I turn to her. Poppy is wearing on denim pedal pushers with a matching denim shirt. “Do you?”
Poppy nods. “I have three white ones. I’m an AA cup.”
“I don’t believe you,” I say. “Why would you need one? There isn’t anything to push up!”
“Show her,” says Hattie to Poppy, leaning on the sink.
“No,” Poppy says uncertainly.
“Go on! What is your problem?” Hattie says. So Poppy shows us her bra.
“Okay, now show us your boobs,” I say.
“No!” Poppy shrieks.
�
��Lesbian,” Hattie says to me.
“I’m not a lesbian. I like Nathan.”
“Then why do you want to see Poppy’s boobs?”
“Because I don’t believe she has any! If I were a lesbian, I’d ask to see Mrs. Adamson’s boobs—they’re actually there!”
They both laugh. “You want to see Mrs. A’s boobs!” Hattie teases.
I roll my eyes. “I’ll show you mine,” I say to Poppy. Hattie suddenly stops laughing. “Interesting,” she says.
“How big are yours? I bet you don’t have anything there yet.”
“Whatever, I don’t care,” I say, and lift my dress up.
Hattie lifts her top and bra up at once and shows us her boobs, and so does Poppy. I’m right: there is nothing there.
“You’re cutting off your circulation for nothing,” I say to Poppy, and then I turn to Hattie. “Yours are smaller than they look with your clothes on.”
“It’s a Wonderbra,” Hattie says, like I’m supposed to know what that means.
“What’s it do?” I ask.
“Make boys like you more than other girls.” She smirks, and flounces out of the bathroom.
I stick my tongue out after her, but I can’t be bothered to fight. I’ve felt like that a lot since Billie died. It’s because I have bigger fish to fry now. Later on Hattie cries, and hugs me, and says we will always be best friends. She’s such a hypocrite.
The barbecue starts at two o’clock, and Mr. Kent cooks sausages and burgers. I eye him suspiciously, and listen to him and Mrs. A talking. Mrs. A is helping him, but she’s really just standing about and pretending she can’t do stuff so he’ll do it for her. She keeps acting like, because she’s a woman, she can’t make a fire or cook meat. This is one of those times Mrs. A seems lame. She smiles at us as we walk over.
“Hi, girls! Who wants to help me get the party plates from my car?”
Dead Girls Page 15
