I did as I was told, trailing behind her down to the ground floor, across the walkway, and to the side of the dining hall.
“Give me a leg up!” Amelia ordered. We were standing underneath a small window, which was open about an inch.
“We can’t!” I said. “We’ll get into trouble.”
“Just do it,” she said. “If I don’t eat, I’m no use.”
Reluctantly, I cupped my hands and used the little strength I had to heave her foot up towards the window, which she expertly pushed open and climbed through. A few seconds later, the side door to the kitchen opened.
“Welcome to my world,” she said, ushering me inside and closing the door behind her. It was dark inside, but Amelia knew how to find her way around. She grabbed my hand, taking two spoons from the cutlery tray en route, and walked me towards a large steel door.
She let us in, closed the door behind her, and fumbled in the dark for a moment.
“Ta-da!” she said, the flickering light of two small candles revealing our location.
It was a fridge. It was bigger than my cubicle, and filled to the brim with buckets and boxes of food: meatballs in tomato sauce, soup, pasties, Bolognese, partially cooked pasta, lettuce, bread, sprinkles, Flakes, raspberry sauce, wafers, waffles…
“Check this,” she said, opening one of the freezers at the back. Inside were tubs and tubs of ice cream. She took a foot-high tub out of the freezer, poured a stupid amount of sprinkles on top, then lashings of thick red raspberry sauce, then grabbed a can of scooshy cream from a shelf, and scooshed ten inches of white sugar fluff onto the top. To finish off, she stuck ten Flakes around the edges like birthday candles, handed me a spoon, and said, “Bottoms up!”
“It’s freezing!” I said, taking a small spoonful of ice cream.
“Here,” she said, grabbing two expensive-looking sleeping bags from the back of the top shelf. “I hide them here for moments like this.”
“You do this often?” I asked, zipping myself into the down-filled mummy.
“Maybe.”
“Is there enough air?”
“I stayed five hours one time. There’s a wee grate at the top…See.”
Indeed there was.
Satisfied that I wasn’t going to freeze or suffocate to death, I took a spoonful of ice cream. But I felt too breathless and sick to eat.
Somehow, our illegal candlelit refuge felt intimate and safe. Bar Amelia’s frantic gobbling, we were comfortably silent.
After a while I said, “Will you chuck this up after?”
“I’ll try not to.”
“Why do you do that?”
“That’s the biggie. The one my folks pay Dr. Halliday to figure out. Apparently I have low self-esteem.”
“You?”
“Hard to believe, isn’t it? I dunno if it’s true. All I know is it makes me feel better, for a while anyway.”
“Why don’t you feel good? You should. You’re gorgeous, rich, clever, popular.”
Amelia had gobbled an impressive ditch into the tub of ice cream. She put it down and sighed. “All I know is sometimes I feel like a spaceship has dropped me down here from another planet.”
This made me smile. I paused before I said what was on my mind. “I know exactly what you mean.”
Amelia smiled at me and it melted the frost on my face. Other than Sammy, she was the first person to look at me as if she understood me. If I wasn’t a miserable pent-up Scot, I might have hugged her and told her I was so glad we were friends now. Instead I said, “We’d better go. We’ve got lots to do.”
Amelia put the tub of desecrated ice cream back in the freezer, and said, “Right, Detective Inspector Ross. Let’s solve this thing.”
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
Miss Rose had a cubicle in the middle of my floor. Her walls went all the way to the ceiling. Her door had a lock. It wasn’t going to be easy. In fact, it was going to be risky. But Amelia had an idea.
“You ask her for help,” she said, “then I’ll sneak in while she’s talking to you.”
It was genius.
I knocked on her door. Then knocked again. Eventually, Miss Rose appeared wearing a white dressing gown. Her short thick hair seemed traumatized from her time in bed. It stuck up wide and round like an excited peacock.
“Rachel, are you all right?”
“Actually, I’m not. I’m so sorry to wake you.”
“You didn’t wake me…I was reading.”
I didn’t have to lie. I was feeling dreadful. My breathing was becoming more labored again—probably not helped by spending an hour in a fridge—and a fever had taken over my head so that even my hair felt sore.
“My goodness, you’re burning up,” she said. “When did you last have painkillers?”
It had been six hours since my last dose, and as soon as she mentioned it, I felt desperate for the pain to be covered over, for my aching head and body to be soothed.
“It’s one hundred and two,” Miss Rose said, looking at the ear thermometer in the medical room. She’d put the nebulizer on. Masked and stationary, I realized just how terrible my condition had become. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to stand up again.
“Rachel, I think you should go to the hospital.”
I used the same argument with her that I used with Amelia about the baby. “Please, just give me till morning. If I’m no better, I’ll go, I promise.”
She agreed in the end and tucked me into my bed like my mother used to do when I was little, when I called her Mummy, when we lived in Edinburgh, before she told me a secret and the good lord took away all loveliness.
“Here,” she said, handing me a carton of apple juice and directing the straw into my mouth. “You must keep your fluids up, honey.”
As the liquid made its way down my throat, Miss Rose gently moved the hair away from my forehead. Soothed by her gentle attention, I found myself wondering if someone as caring as she was could ever abandon a baby.
As soon as Miss Rose left my cubicle, Amelia stormed in.
She was like, “Omygod! Omygod! Omygod!”
“What? Tell me. Show me!”
She had an envelope in her hand. “You are not going to believe this.”
“Show me!” I said, dragging my aching limbs and struggling lungs from out of my snug tucked-in-edness.
Amelia opened the envelope and took out a small note, the kind that usually comes attached to flowers.
“My love, we’ll be together soon. I’m going to tell her tonight, Px”
“It came with roses,” Amelia said. “P for Pete…the chef.”
We had several suspects now: the girl with the ponytail, who’d allegedly done it with the PE teacher; Viv Metstein, who’d recently visited the family planning clinic; Taahnya, who’d allegedly been pregnant once before; and Miss Rose, who was having an affair with our married chef.
“What do we do next?” I asked.
Amelia decided we should look on MSN and Facebook, see if we could find out anything more about our suspects.
It was after two in the morning. I was exhausted and ill, but using Amelia’s iPhone, we methodically checked the social networks of our suspects and as many other girls as we could remember. We discovered that nearly half those on social networks did quizzes, posted photographs, wrote in text speak, and defined themselves as being “in a relationship.” Most of them spoke at length about what boys had said and what they were planning to wear that night—for example, the latest exchange between Taahnya and Mandy: “He said that? Gasp! Ime wearin my jeggings n sleeveless blue top n hoodieeee…” “What the fudge! Jeggings! But meee tooo. By the way, do you know macaroons have potato in them?” None of them had posted anything that might help us find who had the baby.
“Let’s have an emergency clinic after breakfast,” I said. “We’ll ask cryptic questions.”
“Good idea.” Amelia yawned. “Let’s devise a questionnaire and see if we can catch them out.”
�
�They might not answer,” I said, silently adding: especially Taahnya and Viv.
“Pretend it’s for your talk tomorrow. For research. Y’know, questions like: What was the hardest part of your academic year?”
She dictated several other questions:
Did any unexpected incidents make life at school difficult?
What do you want to do when you leave school?
Did any health issues concern you?
Have you been able to talk to someone if something is worrying you?
I was writing these down when the monitor light went on. I turned the volume dial on low so I could hear if the baby was crying. To my surprise, he wasn’t, but someone was whispering. Oh my god, I’d left the key in the door after checking the baby last time. Someone was in the darkroom.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
I know!” someone said over the monitor. “Let’s steal her revision notes.”
“Good idea. We could hide them in the sewing room,” the second girl said.
“Or throw them away,” the first said. “Retard boy-tease. You see what she wore to that dance?”
“I know. Quiz is so gay.”
Amelia and I recognized the voices at the same time. Mandy Grogan and Taahnya Scot, our ex-best friends. They were obviously talking about me, a need to torment me reinvigorated by my growing friendship with Amelia O’Donohue.
I turned the monitor’s volume off, and we headed downstairs, then stopped at the door to the darkroom. We pressed our ears against the door—they were still talking, but the baby hadn’t woken, thank god. I opened the door, scaring Mandy and Taahnya to death.
“jesus christ!” Mandy said.
“You girls planning something?” Amelia said.
Taahnya was like, “Whatever.”
“We heard you,” I said.
Taahnya looked at Mandy, and then at Amelia. She made a quick decision. Switch alliances.
“Not me. It’s Mandy,” Taahnya said, looking at Mandy, with whom she’d been hitherto conniving. And at that moment, I felt kind of sorry for her. She was obviously so desperately in awe of Amelia O’Donohue, so in need of her love and devotion, that she’d do anything, hurt anyone, to win her affection.
“Why don’t you tell Rachel here why you’ve been such a bitch since the September weekend?” Taahnya said to Mandy, her change of sides now complete.
Mandy was dumbstruck. How had the tide changed so suddenly?
While I wanted to know more than anything what Mandy had done behind my back this time, all I could think about was the baby. He was in the cupboard, just behind the dirty little rats. Sleeping, hopefully. But he might not be sleeping. He might be sick. He might be dead. He might have stopped breathing while I was on some stupid investigation or eating some stupid ice cream in some stupid kitchen fridge.
“I don’t care,” I said. “Just please get out of this room.” Please please please please leave this room, I was thinking. Amelia, have you forgotten who’s in the cupboard?
“I want you to know what your best friend did to you, Rachel,” Taahnya said. “I want you to know why she’s been so mean.”
“Shut up,” Mandy said, her lips trembling with worry.
“I don’t care. I really don’t. I just want you to get out. Please!” I looked at Amelia, then at the cupboard door. My eyes were saying, goddsake, get them out of here!
“Rachel’s right,” Amelia said. “Get out. We can talk about it another time.”
Taahnya did as she was asked, leaving the room in a huff, her copycat teddy floating behind her.
But Mandy refused to leave. Who was she? This school had turned her into an evil alien. “You’ve turned so boring since you came here,” she said. “All you do is study. You’re like some hermit.”
“It’s guilt,” Amelia said. “Guilt makes you mean.”
Mandy was like, “Shut up, Amelia. What do you know?”
“I know you slept with Rachel’s boyfriend that first time you went home. Taahnya told me. I know you’ve been dating him ever since.”
“John?” I asked.
“Aye, John,” Mandy said, her eyes cruel. She pushed her floppy wool turtleneck down to reveal a grotesque love-bite as evidence.
“I really don’t care. I just want you to leave this room!”
“He says he loves me. He says you’re a slut.”
For a moment, I forgot about baby Sam. I forgot that just behind Mandy a little boy was sleeping, hopefully. I stared at her, wondering who she was. How could she be so cruel?
A cat noise.
“What was that?” Mandy asked.
Amelia and I stared at each other and closed the door to the darkroom.
Sammy was making noises. Nice ones, not crying, he was talking baby talk.
“A cat,” I said.
Another noise. Definitely not a cat.
“There it is again,” Mandy said, moving towards the cupboard. I stood in front of it, my arms outstretched, desperate to stop her finding him.
“I don’t care about John,” I said. “But you must leave this room NOW.”
“I will not,” she said, pushing me out of the way and trying to open the cupboard door.
There was a struggle. Her yanking me this way, that, trying to grab the handle. Me holding her back. Amelia pushing against the cupboard door so it’d stay closed.
It was a noisy struggle, one that made Sam’s happy sounds turn to crying.
“Holy shit,” Mandy yelled, recognizing the noises and forcing the door open with all her strength.
The three of us stood before the cupboard, watching little Sam watch us, his body twitching baby twitches, his eyes firmly on mine.
“What the fudge! Whose…what…how…” Mandy mumbled.
“We don’t know,” Amelia said. “We’re trying to find out. It’s not yours?” she asked.
“Of course not. Bloody hell. Call the matron. Call the police!”
I picked up Sam and cuddled him. He was quiet now.
“We will, in the morning. We just want to find out whose it is first, give the poor girl a chance and some support. Do you think it could be Taahnya’s?”
“No. She’s a virgin!”
“She is not. She had an abortion,” Amelia said.
“She didn’t. Her big sister made that up to get back at her for staining her favorite T-shirt. She’s a real bitch, her sister. But now Taahnya likes that everyone thinks she did. Makes her seem cool, she says. Don’t tell her I said. She made me promise not to tell.”
“Ever the faithful friend,” I quipped.
“Shut up. What do you know about friends? You haven’t got any.”
“Yes she has,” Amelia said, taking us both by surprise.
Mandy looked at Amelia, shocked, then continued, “Whatever. This is serious. The girl who had this baby abandoned him! She should go to jail. The kid should go into care! We should call social services, that’s who.”
At this, I handed Sam to Amelia and moved towards Mandy, my poise and facial expression enough to scare her into walking backwards into the wall.
“We will not do that.”
“We have to,” she said. “This girl’s crazy. She’s dangerous. She doesn’t deserve our help.”
Before I knew it, I had pushed my forearm into Mandy’s stomach, pressed her so hard against the wall that she couldn’t move, taken the neck of her turtleneck jumper and lifted it up over her head.
“What are you doing? Stop it!”
I didn’t. I grabbed a stapler from the old trestle table under the window and stapled her turtleneck together above her head. One two three four, she was now a wrapped-up toffee apple.
“What are you doing?” Amelia said, scared.
“We’ve got to put her somewhere till morning.” We both knew where.
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
As we snuck back from the kitchen, a distant sun was turning the sky to blue-gray. Time was running out. As if to add to the tick ti
ck ticking clock, when we got to my cubicle, the baby monitor was flashing.
“I can’t go,” Amelia said, “I can’t stay awake. Can you deal with him? We can get up early and get on with the plan.”
Our plan was a good one. At breakfast, I would make an announcement. An emergency clinic would be held in my room, where I would ask our cryptic questions, then—if we were still uncertain—I would make my speech and then go to the office and tell the teachers.
Something peculiar happened when I went down to the darkroom. Perhaps the flu asthma fanfare had made me delirious. I don’t know. But I found myself unable to leave Sam. He was bright red from crying when I got there, and it seemed to take hours for the bottle to warm to the right temperature, but when I gave him the milk, he transformed into the epitome of gorgeousness, sucking away while staring into my eyes. I couldn’t help but stare back, captivated by this tiny boy, this tiny unwanted secret.
He seemed to work on me like ventolin, calming my breathing, soothing me.
And I couldn’t leave him. As much as I knew I should, as much as I knew I needed to look over my English notes and get at least two hours’ sleep, I couldn’t. So I lay on the floor of the darkroom with a little baby called Sam nuzzling into my tummy; watching as he slept; cuddling him if he seemed cold; and time, worry, everything stood still.
I think we both woke when the radio came on at 7:00 a.m. and Miss Rose said, “Good morning, girls!” over the intercom.
I fed, changed, and wrapped him, kissed him on the forehead, then locked the door, careful to take the key with me this time, and snuck back up to my room. It was crunch time.
Crunch—Whose was this baby? Whose was this huge secret?
Crunch—English exam. My first concrete step towards freedom.
• • •
Oh God, the asthma. The pain. The head. The stress. I found myself on the floor, praying. Dear god, even though I don’t believe in you, please can you let me do well in my exams? Please can you let me find this poor scared girl? Please can she be okay? Please can he be okay? Please can I be okay? To the power of infinity. Amen.
• • •
Amelia O’Donohue Is So Not a Virgin Page 10
