Zara

by Mary Hooper

  ‘So you told him you weren’t going?’

  ‘Yeah. Sophie agreed with me. She said that I’d be mad if I went; that if my mum and dad found out they’d be so angry they’d never trust me again.’

  ‘She was probably right,’ I said.

  ‘So I told Anton that I wasn’t going and he threw a huge wobbly, said I couldn’t love him if I could treat him like that, and if I was such a coward all my life then I’d end up miserable and alone.’

  I made consoling noises.

  ‘And since then he’s been really off me. He never rings, he turns up late – everything’s changed. I do still love him, though,’ she added in a small voice. ‘That’s why I want to talk to Zara and find out if we’ve got any sort of a future.’

  We were at Zara’s house by this time. I rang the bell and though I could hear noises inside it was ages before anyone answered. The front door, I noticed, was in a right old state and looked as if it had been kicked repeatedly by someone trying to get in.

  Zara started when she saw it was us. She was wearing her usual out-of-school uniform: black T-shirt and black jeans, and she’d drawn thick black lines round her eyes. I was surprised to see that she had a brand new piercing: there was a silver stud in her eyebrow.

  ‘You can’t come in,’ was the first thing she said, and she stepped outside and pulled the door behind her so that we couldn’t see into the house.

  I thought immediately that it must be something to do with her mum, that she was drunk. ‘Sky’s been trying to ring you,’ I said. ‘And I tried as well.’

  ‘The phone’s out of order,’ Zara said.

  ‘Have you reported it?’ Sky asked. ‘D’you want me to do it for you when I get home?’

  An odd look crossed Zara’s face. ‘No, don’t bother,’ she said after a moment. ‘It’s not working because the bill hasn’t been paid. Mum … Mum forgot to do it yesterday.’

  No one knew what to say to this because it so obviously wasn’t true. From inside the house came a noise: laughter – a drunken sort of laughter – but we pretended not to hear it.

  ‘Sky just wanted to ask you something,’ I said.

  Zara tried to look interested; her face did brighten a little.

  ‘It’s about Anton,’ Sky said, looking embarrassed at the situation. ‘I’ve been worrying and worrying and I thought of you and knew you’d be able to tell me the truth.’

  The laughter from the house was getting more and more hysterical and now it seemed to be turning to crying. I felt sorry for Zara, actually. Here was Sky on her doorstep wanting to know something, asking for help, and she couldn’t let her in.

  ‘If it’s difficult with your mum …’ I lowered my voice, ‘… being drunk and everything, you can come back to my house if you like. My mum and dad are out.’

  Zara nodded. It was cold out but she didn’t bother to get a jacket or even shout goodbye; just pulled the door shut behind her and pushed past us down the path.

  ‘Zara!’ we heard faintly from behind us. ‘Zara! Come back!’

  But she didn’t. She just walked on in front of us, very quickly.

  We talked about all sorts of rubbish on the way back to mine – anything to keep the conversation going, because I think we were all embarrassed. Zara told us about the piercing which she’d had done at some funny old tattoo place in town and I wondered how she’d got the money for it. Her dad sent her pocket money occasionally, though, so I suppose she might have used that.

  I listened to the way she directed the chat, steering the topic around to whatever she wanted to know and hardly ever giving anything of herself away. She asked about Sophie a couple of times. First she wanted to know where Sophie was, and Sky said she wasn’t sure; that they didn’t usually see each other on Sundays, then she wanted to know what Sophie thought about Anton.

  ‘Well, she’s not that keen on him, actually,’ Sky said. ‘It’s funny, really. Usually we fancy the same type of guy, but she’s never got on that well with Anton. They’re always having digs at each other.’

  ‘Oh, really,’ Zara said. ‘And is Sophie seeing anyone at the moment?’

  ‘She’s always seeing someone!’ Sky said. ‘I can’t keep up with her.’

  We were in my bedroom by then: Sky was sitting on my one chair and Zara and I were sprawled on the flowery duvet cover. I was glad that I’d stuffed all the toys down the side of the bed before I’d gone out.

  Zara looked round my room. ‘I didn’t think to bring anything with me to address the spirits with,’ she said. ‘Not my Tarot cards or my dowsing pendulum or anything.’ She stood up and started looking along my bookshelves. ‘Have you got anything I can use to dowse with?’

  Sky looked at me curiously.

  ‘To dowse you need something hanging on a string or a line,’ I explained. ‘A crystal bead or a ring or something. You ask a question and it goes one way for yes and the other way for no.’ I pulled my tiger’s eye out of my pocket. ‘Can you use this?’ I asked Zara, though I knew she couldn’t really, because it didn’t have a hole in it.

  She didn’t bother to answer me, just clasped her hands together and looked at Sky really seriously. ‘What is it that you want to ask?’

  Sky took a breath. Her blue eyes looked shiny, as if they were full of tears. ‘I want to ask if Anton really loves me. I mean, I know it sounds ditsy but I’m so mad on him that I can’t think straight. If he’s gone off me I don’t know what I’ll do.’

  Zara looked at her for a moment. ‘I think I’ll go into a trance,’ she said. ‘See what comes through.’

  I sat up, startled. She hadn’t tried anything like this before. In fact, we’d only talked about it once, and that had been when she’d told me about the Victorian spiritualists.

  ‘Wow,’ Sky said. ‘Can you really do that?’

  ‘Sure,’ Zara said.

  We didn’t have a bell or anything to cleanse the room, so Zara opened the window wide and said some sort of mumbo-jumbo in front of it – something about cleansing winds and free spirits which I thought she was just making up as she went along. I had two white candles and we lit these, then Zara took over the straight chair and sat in it, perfectly still, her head fallen forward and her eyes closed.

  Sky and I sat on the bed and looked at each other. I really had no idea what was going to happen. Nothing did happen for ages, then Zara kind of shivered all over and said in a high, faraway voice, ‘Spirits of the upper air! We come in peace and seek your guidance. Please give us the answer to a question.’

  Sky clutched my hand, looking utterly amazed, seeming to be taken in by everything, and I … well, I thought Zara was probably just mucking around but it all sounded so eerie and weird that I couldn’t help feeling scared.

  ‘Ask the question,’ Zara intoned.

  ‘Does Anton love me?’ Sky said.

  Zara shook a little, as if she was freezing cold, and then lifted her head. Still with her eyes closed she said in the same faraway voice, ‘No. He loves another.’

  ‘Oh!’ Sky clasped her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, no!’

  I wanted to say to her that it might not be true, that Zara was probably only having a bit of a joke, but I didn’t dare say anything at all because it so clearly wasn’t a joke to Sky.

  Zara gave a small gasp and seemed about to say more, but then her eyes suddenly shot open and she stared ahead of her. ‘No!’ she cried.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked, because she sounded completely terrified.

  ‘There’s something evil around this house!’ She stood up, rushed to the window and started taking in big gulps of air. ‘Some bad spirit!’

  ‘What?’ I cried.

  ‘Some awful thing … This house is in the grip of a dark secret!’

  And, leaving me and Sky just sitting there, horrified, Zara ran down the stairs and out of the door.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘I tell you, I can’t remember,’ Zara said as we walked into school together. ‘Yesterday afternoon i
s all kind of hazy. I can’t remember what I said when I was at your house. I was in a trance.’

  I glared at her. I felt like having a real go at her, actually, for what she was putting me through; for the sleepless night I’d had and for the horrible kicked feeling in my stomach. ‘You can’t just go round saying things like that, saying things about people’s houses being evil …’

  ‘Did I actually say that?’ she asked incredulously.

  ‘Something like it. Something about my house being in the grip of a terrible secret.’

  ‘I can’t remember. Honestly,’ she looked at me wide-eyed. ‘I was kind of semi-conscious. That’s what happens when you go into a trance.’

  ‘Oh really?’

  ‘Someone – something – took me over. I can’t remember anything about it, what I said or who I spoke about.’ She looked at me intently. ‘What did I actually say to Sky?’

  ‘You told her that her boyfriend doesn’t love her. That he loves someone else.’

  ‘Did I say who that someone was?’

  I shook my head. We were getting off the subject. Sure, I was interested in Sky and her romance, but I was more interested in my house and my family. Some awful thing, Zara had said. A dark secret …

  ‘How long was I in a trance?’

  I sighed heavily. ‘You must know. You do know! You’re just saying all this, aren’t you? Just pretending you were in a trance to try and impress everyone.’

  ‘I’m not!’

  I’d started walking again by this time and she caught me up and put her arm through mine. ‘Honestly, Ella. I wouldn’t deliberately say something like that to upset you. You know I wouldn’t!’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘You’re my best mate. We’re a team!’ I didn’t reply and she squeezed my arm. ‘Of course we are. We’d be nothing without each other, would we?’

  I still didn’t say anything.

  ‘You’re the best friend I ever had. My mate! We don’t need any of those others, do we?’

  I thought I could just about see where she was coming from here. Did she think that I was going to go off with someone else? With The Four? Well, as if that was going to happen …

  ‘You really can’t remember anything, then?’ I asked, beginning to unbend a little. ‘Anything else about what happened and what you said about my house?’

  ‘I can’t! But honestly, even if I said something about bad spirits, it’s probably nothing at all. Mischievous little spirits can mess up all sorts of things, and if the room isn’t cleansed properly and the vibes are wrong they can turn everything haywire. I’m sure there’s nothing wrong really in your house.’

  ‘But you said something before about my dad.’

  She spread her hands. ‘It’s probably nothing. It was just a feeling. I can’t help my feelings, can I?’

  We didn’t speak for a while and then I glanced at her eyebrow, which looked red and swollen. There was no stud or ring in it because we weren’t allowed to have them at school. ‘Is that all right?’ I asked, pointing to it. ‘It looks a bit raw.’

  ‘It’ll be OK,’ she said dismissively, feeling with her fingers along the raised flesh.

  ‘What made you have another one? What did your mum say?’

  She shrugged; looked away from me. ‘She didn’t notice.’

  Too drunk, I thought. Or too something. Disinterested, maybe.

  ‘Is your mum OK?’ I asked suddenly.

  ‘Yeah,’ she replied sharply. ‘Why shouldn’t she be?’

  ‘Well, I wondered why you … you know, wouldn’t let us in.’ I wasn’t probing, really. Well, maybe I was, but I wasn’t doing it to be nasty. I was doing it in case Zara wanted to talk to me about her mum and her problems.

  ‘We’d just had a bit of a row, that was all,’ she said in a niggly voice. ‘It was nothing. She wasn’t drunk! I wish you hadn’t said that in front of Sky.’

  ‘Oh, well, sorry,’ I said, shrugging. ‘I didn’t think.’ So if her mum hadn’t been drunk, then what had all that laughing and crying been about?

  ‘What did you and Sky do after I left?’ Zara asked as we went into our tutor room. ‘Did she stay round at yours chatting for ages and ages?’

  ‘Not really,’ I said.

  ‘I bet your dad likes her, doesn’t he?’

  I shot her a glance. ‘He didn’t see her. She was gone by the time they got back.’

  ‘Oh. Did she talk about Anton and what I’d said?’

  ‘Of course she did. She didn’t talk about anything else.’

  And that was lucky for me, really, because she’d been so devastated about the Anton business that she’d hardly registered what Zara had said about my house having a dark secret. Maybe she’d just thought that was an elaborate bit of staging. All she’d wanted to talk about was Anton; had he ever loved her? Did he really have someone else? Would she get him back? She’d asked me not to say anything to any of the others, and I’d promised I wouldn’t.

  At break that morning, though, it was obvious that her own little crowd knew, because they were fluttering about and making a big fuss of her, saying that he must be mad not to want to go out with her, and it was his loss, and all those other things you say to your friend when she’s been given the elbow. I thought it was odd that she hadn’t actually spoken to Anton yet and asked him what was going on, though. I wanted to tell her not to jump the gun; to say that we didn’t know that Zara was right, didn’t know for sure that she was psychic, but I could hardly barge through everyone and bleat it out. Besides, it would have sounded so disloyal to Zara, seeing as I was her so-called psychic assistant.

  Anyway, in some odd way, Sky seemed to be enjoying the drama of it all. She had Sophie, Poppy and Lois beside her, cooing and sympathising, telling her that blokes were all the same and that they’d thought all along that he was too good to be true.

  ‘You and he weren’t really suited anyway,’ Sophie said.

  When we went over to them, Sky gave Poppy a little push to one side to allow Zara through to the inner circle. ‘Here’s my guru!’ she said. She looked round at everyone. ‘Really, Zara was just so amazing. I asked her the question about Anton and she just went all weird and …’ she pulled a zombie-like attitude, ‘… came out with the answer!’

  Everyone exclaimed and marvelled a bit, and Zara shrugged and said it was nothing and anyway, she’d been in a trance and couldn’t remember what had happened. Then Sky said, ‘What d’you think I ought to do now?’

  ‘About what?’ Zara asked.

  ‘Well, should I finish with him properly, seeing as I know he’s going to finish with me?’ She looked down and sighed. ‘I know I sound strong now but honestly I’m heartbroken.’

  ‘I don’t really want to suggest what you should do next,’ Zara said, ‘but I brought my Tarot cards in. We could see what they say if you like.’

  I looked at her in surprise because she hadn’t told me she was bringing the cards in and we hadn’t arranged any sort of scam with them, but in some ways I was relieved not to be involved in it. It wasn’t just Sky who wanted to have her Tarot cards read – a load of others did, too – so Zara said that after lunch she’d just let everyone cut the pack once, see what card they got and then give her interpretation of it.

  ‘I’m not saying it’ll be a hundred per cent accurate or that I’m always right or anything,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to get the blame if you act on what you find out and then it all goes wrong.’ And then everyone said they didn’t mind that and that they just wanted to have their fortunes told.

  At lunchtime that day there was a music group practising in our tutor room, so we went outside to one of the wooden benches that stood in front of the school’s reception area. There were nine of us altogether: the same little crowd that had come along to the psychometric thing, plus a girl called Jenna. Sophie was there, of course, making a great fuss about not wanting to go and having to be literally dragged there by Sky and Poppy.

  I think some other girls r
eally wanted to be included, but because it was The Four most of them kept a respectful distance, hoping (as I’d often done) that someone might invite them along. As before, everyone was quite excited, partly because it was just something different and partly because we were all wondering what Zara was going to come up with next.

  I couldn’t go round with the bell in four corners seeing as we were outside, but Zara said it would be enough to shake the bell in the air a few times, so I did this. Then she carefully took out the pack of Tarot cards, which had been wrapped up in a square of purple velvet. She said that you had to be careful how you put them away because it could be bad for one card to lie next to one that opposed it.

  She shuffled the cards carefully. ‘Look, I’ve hardly done this before,’ she said as we all gathered around her, ‘and I’m not even sure of all the meanings, so if it’s just a meaningless load of rubbish …’

  ‘It won’t be!’ Sky said. ‘She’s fantastic,’ she assured the others, then added sadly, ‘I only wish she wasn’t.’

  One by one we took it in turns to sit next to Zara and cut the cards.

  I went first. She put the pack down on the bench between us and I picked up a wedge of cards and showed her the one underneath. On it was a woman standing under a tree, with a stream running by. I was a bit apprehensive, scared that she was going to say something scary again, but she said it was a lovely card to have, one of the nicest, and the stream meant that any worries that I might have would flow away and the tree meant I would be sheltered from anything bad happening.

  Poppy went next – something about a meeting with a stranger; then Lois, who was told she would receive something about her future through the post. Sky, still looking forlorn, sat down next and Zara frowned at the card she’d chosen.

  Sky gave an agonised sigh. ‘Not more bad news!’