Zara

by Mary Hooper

  ‘No,’ Zara said. ‘It just confirms things. Look.’ She held up the card, which showed three people in a dark, tangled wood. One figure was in the foreground, the other two stood behind him with masks over their faces.

  ‘Three people in a wood,’ Sky said.

  Zara nodded. ‘Exactly. The eternal triangle. This figure, in front, stands for Anton.’ She pointed first to one figure, then the next. ‘And this one here is you … and this is your rival in love.’

  Sky gasped, so did some of the others. ‘It’s so spooky that you should get that exact card!’ India said.

  ‘Does it say … I mean, do I get any guidance about what I should do?’ Sky asked breathlessly.

  Zara shook her head. ‘This is just the situation as it stands. It’s up to you to make use of it as you will. I mean …’ Her eyes flickered over the rest of the girls. ‘It all depends on your rival, really; who she is, how clever she is, how determined she is to hold on to Anton. Do you want to put up a fight for him, or do you want to just let him go?’

  ‘Hang on,’ Sophie said. ‘Aren’t you jumping the gun a bit? I mean, Sky hasn’t even spoken to Anton about all this yet. Suppose you’ve got it all wrong.’

  Zara looked at her steadily. ‘I haven’t.’

  There was a pause, a very loaded, silent pause. I was thinking about my card and wondering if Zara had made all that stuff up, then became aware that she and Sophie were staring each other out.

  ‘Oh, come on!’ India said suddenly, looking at her watch. ‘The rest of us are waiting to have our go and we’ve only got ten minutes!’ Laughing, she pulled Sky out of the seat next to Zara and sat herself down instead.

  Zara shuffled and India cut the cards. She’d chosen a woman sitting on a chair, which could have been a throne, with several people surrounding her.

  ‘This is something to do with your domestic life,’ Zara said. ‘It could be a holiday together or a celebration coming up.’

  India beamed. ‘Spot on!’ she said. ‘It’s my gran’s birthday and we’re giving her a big party.’

  Everyone clapped, then Sophie muttered something about it all being stupid and having something better to do with her time. She said she wasn’t going to hang about any longer.

  Sky grabbed hold of her, holding her back. ‘No, come on, don’t be a spoilsport!’ she said. ‘You can go next.’ And Sophie was pushed into the hot seat.

  She sat there sulkily, shaking her head so that her hair flicked backwards and forwards across her face. ‘This is crazy,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t believe a word of it.’

  ‘Sophie!’ Sky said. ‘Lighten up. It’s just a bit of fun. And who knows what you’ll find out.’

  Sophie stuck her lip out moodily, but cut the deck and showed the card to Zara without looking to see what it was herself.

  Zara stared at it and a funny expression came over her face: triumph, cunning …I wasn’t quite sure what it was. She then held it out to the rest of us and we all saw that it was exactly the same card that Sky had chosen.

  There was a moment’s silence.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Sky said then, clearly startled. ‘Have we chosen the same card because we’re best friends or something?’

  Sophie looked at the card for the first time, shrugged, went to say something and thought better of it.

  ‘Wow!’ someone else said.

  ‘Would you like to say what it means, Sophie?’ Zara asked quietly.

  Sophie looked contemptuous. ‘How the hell should I know?’ she said rudely. ‘It’s just some card with three people on it. Three people in a wood. What am I supposed to say about that?’

  Zara had a small, tight smile on her face. ‘These situations are difficult, I know,’ she said. ‘Especially when it’s your best friend.’

  I was puzzled, looking at the small twitch which had started up at the side of Sophie’s mouth, but didn’t read any more into it. I obviously couldn’t be at all psychic or I would have realised what Zara was getting at; had been getting at for some days now.

  ‘This is you, isn’t it?’ Zara said to Sophie suddenly. ‘You’re the other figure in the triangle.’

  Sophie flung back the hair from her face in a dramatic gesture. ‘Whoa! What is this? You’re crazy.’

  ‘I’m not at all,’ Zara said. ‘I’m just speaking the truth. You and Anton …are an item.’ There was a little scream from Sky and a collective intake of breath from everyone else.

  ‘You might just as well admit it,’ Zara went on. ‘I knew you had a secret, but I wasn’t sure what it was. Now I know. We all know.’

  ‘It’s not true!’ Sophie said. ‘It’s utter rubbish!’

  Sky’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Oh, Sophie! That’s why you kept telling me not to go to Paris! And where you’ve been going those evenings we haven’t seen each other … and why you tried to put me off him!’

  ‘No, no, no!’ Sophie interrupted. ‘It’s not true, I tell you!’

  ‘It is! It all falls into place now!’ Sky cried. ‘You’re just a wicked, two-faced cow! How could you do that to me, Sophie! You’re supposed to be my friend!’

  ‘Oh, you believe her, do you?’ Sophie said. ‘Believe that trouble-making bitch over me!’

  And so it went on: first one, then the other, while we just stood there staring at each of them in turn, at the two girls who’d been best friends in all the world suddenly reduced to slagging each other off.

  None of us knew what to say or do for the best. Should we comfort Sky? Back up Sophie? Pretend it wasn’t our business and just drift away?

  The bell went and we still stood there making raised-eyebrow faces at each other. Only Zara seemed in control of the situation; calm, all-seeing and all-knowing. She finished folding the cards into the purple velvet and then gave me a meaningful look, nodding towards the school for us to go indoors.

  ‘Now let’s see what happens,’ she whispered in my ear as we walked away.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘Is it true?’ I said to Zara as we went into school. ‘Is it really true about Sophie and Anton?’

  ‘Probably,’ she said, shrugging carelessly. ‘That’s what came through.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘I’m the messenger and that’s the message I got. I just passed it on.’ She ran her finger along her eyebrow, touching the swelling around the new piercing, which looked now as if it might have gone a bit poisonous.

  ‘But should you have told? I mean, it’s all a bit drastic, isn’t it?’

  ‘Everyone wants to know things about their life,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘All I do is tell them. They pick the cards; I just interpret them. If they’re not prepared to find out stuff, they shouldn’t ask me in the first place.’

  ‘Oh.’ It was pitifully inadequate, but I didn’t know what else to say. It just hadn’t seemed right, somehow, to just come out with such a devastating thing as Zara had done. It felt to me as if it was upsetting the order of things; interfering too much with people’s lives.

  Word of what had happened to Sky and Sophie spread through the rest of the class. We had Games next and in the changing rooms everyone gathered in little groups discussing it, putting their opinions forward, saying it was disgusting, marvelling how Sophie could do that to Sky, saying how Sky would be beside herself …

  What no one did was question what Zara had said. That was just taken as the perfect truth.

  Sky wasn’t in the changing rooms and word came back that someone had seen her walking across the playground towards the school gates. Sophie didn’t turn up until we were in our sports kit and just about to go outside for a jog, and when she did everyone just kind of froze, waiting to see how she’d act and if she’d say anything.

  She didn’t say a word, though. She just came up to Zara and, with all the rest of us still goggling, slapped her round the face!

  There were a couple of gasps and cries from everyone. Imagine bein
g slapped round the face by the most popular girl in the class! I knew Zara had a temper so I waited, breath held, to see what she’d do next, to see if this was going to be the first blow struck in a big brawl. Zara hardly reacted to the slap at all, though. She just stood there with a funny half-smile on her face and said, ‘You’ll pay for that.’

  That was all. I got the feeling that she’d somehow won the round, though.

  We all went off on a run – apart from Sophie, I think she stayed inside – but as soon as we got out of sight of our games teacher we gathered in little gossiping groups to talk about what had happened and what might be going to happen. We talked of nothing else for the rest of that afternoon, and Zara and I became the most sought-after girls in the class. They bombarded us – well, Zara mostly – with questions. How long did she think it had been going on? Did she think Sophie would go to Paris with him now? She’d said ages ago that Sophie had a secret; had she known what it was? Did she think they’d ever be friends again?

  No one was quite sure what to do about Sophie, whether to snub her or what. I think that anyone else who’d done what she’d done – what we thought she’d done – would have been snubbed, but she and Sky had been Most Popular for so long that it was impossible for Sophie to lose her status just like that. When all was said and done she was still extremely pretty, still had the longest, blondest hair and was still clever and sophisticated.

  Four o’clock came, everyone gathered on the gravel for the bus and there was still no sign of Sky, so everyone decided that she must have gone home. The bus came and we all got on, but no one sat in the back seat, not even Sophie. She sat with India in the middle of the bus and – so those around her reported – never said a word.

  Jenna and Chloe, who hadn’t managed to cut the Tarot cards in all the Sophie/Sky excitement, came up to Zara and asked if she could do a reading for them the next day.

  ‘Maybe not tomorrow,’ Zara said, pretending to fan herself. ‘I’ve got psychic overload. I don’t want to overdo it.’

  ‘Well, whenever you can,’ Chloe said, sounding respectful. ‘When you feel like it.’

  ‘She’s going to try and contact my mum for me soon,’ I heard Lois telling Chloe as she moved further down the bus. ‘I might even be able to speak to her.’

  ‘So what’s psychic overload?’ I asked Zara.

  ‘It just means that I’d like to get the Sophie and Sky business over with before I drop any more bombshells.’

  ‘Are there any more bombshells?’

  She grinned at me and raised her eyebrows.

  I bit my lip. ‘Don’t you think …aren’t you concerned about what’s happened?’ I asked. ‘Aren’t you worried about how you’ve split them up?’

  ‘Why should I be?’ she asked, sounding surprised. ‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’

  ‘But if you hadn’t told in the first place …’

  ‘If I hadn’t said anything then Sky would have carried on not knowing.’

  ‘Maybe that would have been best,’ I said, half to myself.

  ‘Anyway,’ she went on. ‘There’s Chloe. That’ll be more trouble.’

  ‘What d’you mean? How d’you know that?’ I asked, startled.

  ‘There’s something about her aura which isn’t quite right.’

  This didn’t mean a thing to me and I frowned, trying to remember what had happened when we’d been doing the psychometry thing and Zara had held Chloe’s silver ring. As far as I could remember, Zara had just said something about the person who’d given her the ring not being around any more, and I’d forgotten about it afterwards because of the more dramatic happening with Lois.

  ‘Is there something awful going on with Chloe, then?’ I asked.

  ‘You’ll see,’ she said, and there was a sly note in her voice which I hadn’t heard before. ‘You’ll all just have to wait and see.’

  It was different now, on the bus. Quiet. Fragile. Everyone was looking at Sophie and whispering behind their hands. There was no giggling – and certainly no singing. I stared down at my hands and said, ‘Do you sometimes wish you hadn’t started it all?’

  Zara looked at me as if I was half-cooked. ‘Are you crazy?’ she said. ‘These last weeks have been the best ever. I’m positively famous across school. We’re somebodies, Ella! Everyone wants to know us.’

  ‘But all this – all the psychic bit. I didn’t think it was going to be like this,’ I said, for it seemed to me that somehow we’d moved from just playing a game to being in deadly earnest. ‘I thought you were just going to tell people what their favourite colours were and whether their boyfriends’ star signs were the right match for theirs. That sort of messing-about stuff.’

  ‘Per-lease,’ Zara said, rolling her eyes. ‘I consider myself a bit more talented than that.’

  The bus pulled up at my stop. When I got off and called goodbye, it sounded to me as if nearly everyone on the bus answered.

  I walked the short distance home trying to smooth down my hair a little. It had been raining, though, which had turned it into a mess of fluffiness. I was smoothing it down because I’d seen a nice-looking guy around and was really hoping to see him again. He was quite tall – I referred to him as ‘Lofty’ in my head – and had very fair, almost blond hair. I thought he might have moved into the block of flats at the end of our road.

  Despite walking as slowly as I could I didn’t see him around that day, though, so had to be content with just daydreaming about him. At least, I thought, I knew for a fact that no one in our class lived in those flats, so I had a good chance of getting to him before anyone else did. Maybe, maybe, it would develop into something …

  * * *

  ‘I saw Zara’s mum in town today,’ Mum said that evening. We were in the sitting room; she and Dad were watching some boring old news programme and, through sheer laziness, I hadn’t managed to get myself off the sofa and upstairs to my room.

  I shot a look at Dad, wishing that Mum wouldn’t start talking about Zara or her mum when Dad was around, because it was bound to lead to aggro.

  ‘Oh yes?’ I said.

  ‘In a bit of a state, she was.’

  I didn’t say anything.

  ‘Sitting on the wall outside the pub.’

  ‘No harm in that,’ I said.

  ‘And singing!’ Mum added.

  Dad gave an ohdearwhatevernext kind of heavy sigh.

  ‘I’ve seen you drunk before now!’ I said to him, wondering if that was the sort of secret Zara had hinted at. Something like him being drunk? But she’d talked about evil. Something evil in the house, she’d said …

  ‘You haven’t seen me drunk in public,’ Dad retorted. ‘I’ve not been drunk in the road. And you certainly haven’t seen your mother drunk. Disgusting, that is.’

  ‘Why’s that worse than a man being drunk, then?’ I asked.

  He didn’t reply.

  ‘Well, anyway –’ I began.

  ‘Well!’ Dad corrected me. ‘Speak properly, please.’

  I groaned. ‘Well,’ I said, accentuating the ‘l’s to the point of absurdity, ‘if her mum’s a lush it’s hardly Zara’s fault.’

  ‘No, it’s not her fault,’ Dad said, ‘but you can see why I don’t like you associating with her, can’t you?’

  ‘But that’s not fair,’ I said, and I should have got up and flounced to my room then, but I guess I was feeling too lazy. Either that or I didn’t feel like defending Zara just at that moment.

  Later, up in my room, I started to think about secrets and remembered how I’d once ruined Christmas for myself. I’d been about eight and had stopped believing in Father Christmas. I knew Mum had various secrets and that they were mostly to do with me: I’d been out shopping with her and seen things hurriedly wrapped and shoved to the bottom of her bag, I’d heard her on the phone ordering stuff and had seen parcels being pushed into temporary hiding places. I knew there were presents around and was desperate to know what they were.

  I was hardly eve
r alone in the house, though. Mum told me once that, having waited so long for a second child, they’d rather wrapped me up in cotton wool. But I waited and waited and, when my brother was out with his mates and Mum was busy downstairs, I crept upstairs and looked for likely places to do a more thorough search when I had the opportunity.

  One day I got my chance. It was pouring with rain, Dad phoned from somewhere for a lift home and, as I was deep in a TV programme and had a bad cold, Mum didn’t want to take me out with her. Toby wasn’t around, so I promised Mum that I wouldn’t budge from the TV or answer the door for the half hour she would be gone.

  It was just what I’d been waiting for. The moment her car drove off down the road I set my watch alarm for twenty-five minutes like I was on Mission Impossible or something, and started trawling through all the hiding places I’d previously thought of: at the back of the sideboard, in the bottom drawer of the desk, in a dusty old crate in the broom cupboard, behind all the clothes in the wardrobes and in the suitcases under the bed. Under the stairs I found a box containing presents that were obviously meant for Toby – boys’ things – but I couldn’t find mine.

  With four minutes to go I was getting desperate, and then I thought of the top shelf of the airing cupboard. I got a chair from my bedroom, pulled it into the hall and, stretching right up, just managed to reach the edge of an old duvet cover.

  They were there! I can still remember the thrill of feeling that cover full of lumpy, bumpy objects, loads of them. Dragging it off its shelf and on to the floor I hurriedly opened it and found a Barbie, two books, an expensive game I’d asked for, a new watch, some videos, a soft toy that spoke, a flower-pressing set and a whole load of other little stocking presents. I trawled through the lot and then I stuffed everything back into the duvet cover and shoved it back on the shelf. All in all, it had taken about a minute to look at everything.

  No one ever found out. I never told. But on Christmas morning when I reached for the pillowcase on the end of my bed there was no thrill or excitement. In fact, I burst into tears when I realised there were no surprises, that my Christmas was stale and spoilt and that it was all my fault.