What are they arguing about? What could fashion-victim Lizzie and butch, tree-climbing Taylor possibly have to argue about?
My mind is racing with excitement and speculation, so much that I actually jump when another shape walks into the twin circles of my binoculars. I pull back quickly, fiddling to get this new actor in the scene in focus. It’s Meena. Yawn. Meena’s the archetypal Wakefield Hall girl, a dowdy brainiac whose only aim seems to be to pass as many exams as possible. How my grandmother would love a school full of girls just like her, with her lank hair, baggy cords, oversize fluffy sweater and equally oversize brain. Meena’s arms hang awkwardly by her sides and she stands there, looking confused at the fight going on in the classroom.
Still, Meena . . . could she be the one who left the note? I remember how nice she was to me when I pulled that ink-stained envelope out of my desk, how concerned she was, how she leaned forward. I thought she was being caring, but maybe she was trying to see how stained the envelope actually was, whether her message inside was still readable. And for Meena, who sits behind me, it would be pretty easy to leave a note in my desk.
But why on earth would Meena leave me a message like that? What could dowdy, unchic Meena know about anything that happened at a super-cool St. Tabby’s party?
Meena’s saying something, looking back and forth between Taylor and Lizzie. Lizzie waves her arms about again. Taylor shrugs, her expression bored. Lizzie flops back down into the chair again and sinks her head in her arms once more. I tilt the binoculars, fiddling again with the focus, trying to keep all three girls in view.
Just then, Taylor’s head turns toward the windows and for a second she’s looking directly at me, those green eyes meeting mine. Even though I know she can’t possibly see me—I’m too far away—it’s a shock. I jump, and the binoculars slip momentarily in my suddenly sweaty hands. And then Taylor turns on her heel and walks quickly out of the classroom. Had she come in to leave the note? Was she so frustrated to find Lizzie there that she said something that made Lizzie angry? And why is she walking out without saying another word?
Meena pulls up a chair to sit next to Lizzie, puts her arm round Lizzie’s shoulders, and hands her some tissues to dry her eyes. Lizzie raises her head, dabbing at her face with the tissues. They talk for a while, their heads close together. Then they stand up. Lizzie gathers up her nasty green bag, and they walk toward the door. Lizzie’s ahead.
And then Meena stops by her desk. She opens the lid, and my heart slams. Is this it? Did she come in to leave that note; is it in her desk, is she about to fish it out and put it in mine? Lizzie’s left the classroom by now. Meena is completely unobserved, as far as she knows.
But no such luck. The lid goes down again and all Meena has in her hands are a couple of books—probably what she came into the classroom to get. She’s going out. That’s it. All that drama for nothing. No note left. It’s not Meena.
My shoulders sag in disappointment.
Then Lizzie darts back inside again. Her mouth is moving, her head’s turned toward the door, she’s saying something—to Meena, I assume, who is still invisible. My heart is suddenly pounding: is this it? Is it Lizzie? She’s moving fast across the room, going straight for my desk—no, no, she isn’t, she’s going toward Meena’s, which is just behind mine. She’s picking up the pack of tissues, which Meena left on her desk. She’s taking the tissues and slipping them into her bag.
It’s not Lizzie.
And then I gasp. Because Lizzie, passing my desk on her way out, the tissues tucked away, is pulling out something else from her bag. A white envelope. In one smooth movement, she cracks open my desk lid with one hand and slides in the envelope with the other, never slowing her stride.
It’s Lizzie.
She’s gone. Oh my God. I can’t believe I actually saw it happen! My plan worked! I stay watching the room for another ten minutes or so. It’s an effort even to hold the binoculars straight, I’m so excited now. But I wait and watch for a while, because that’s the good super-spy thing to do.
Also, I’m sure that if I tried to climb the rope back up to the roof in my advanced state of excitement, fizzing with ideas about how to confront Lizzie and get the truth from her, I would be so buzzy that I would slip, fall off, break my ankle, and lie here in a deserted room padlocked from the outside till I starved to death.
I really ought to start carrying my mobile with me on dangerous spying missions. Just in case.
eighteen
A DISEMBODIED HEAD
I positively swarm back up the rope, easily managing even the hardest part, which is getting a good enough foot grip on it so that I can grab onto the open skylight frame and boost myself up. The iron frame cuts into my fingers when I put my full weight on my hands. This would have been so much easier a few years ago, when I had the body of a little girl. But everything was easier when I was twelve. I flew on the bars so easily. Lifting my own body weight was nothing.
I push away the momentary flash of self-hate—I’m so fat, etc., etc.—and clamber out onto the roof. Squatting down, I lower the skylight back into place, propping it slightly open with the coil of rope, just in case I ever need to sneak in there again. And then I’m running across the roof, lowering myself down onto the fire escape, and picking my way down it to the top-floor window, in a tearing hurry to find Lizzie and confront her.
Only there’s a bit of a hitch with that, because as my head comes round the corner of the window, scouting out to check that there’s no one in the corridor, I freeze in horror. I’m looking directly into the beady eyes of Miss Newman, who is just coming round the corner of the corridor, heading toward the staircase.
Noooooooooo! I duck my head back again and flatten myself against the wall, praying to God that she didn’t see me.
There’s what feels like the longest silence ever in the history of the world. Then, over the sound of my heart trying to pound its way right through the wall of my chest, I hear a booming “Oh, dear God in heaven!” so deep that it sounds like a melancholy whale complaining about how miserable the world is.
I hardly dare to breathe.
“Maureen? What ees eet?” comes another voice.
This one is equally recognizable. It’s Mademoiselle Fournier, the French teacher.
“Louise, the most extraordinary thing just happened. I thought I saw a disembodied head in that window!”
“Mon Dieu!” exclaims Mademoiselle Fournier.
I have to say that despite my panic at being discovered, I am also very creeped out by hearing teachers call each other by their first names. It’s not that I don’t know on some level that teachers have private lives and first names like everyone else. But I really don’t want to think about it.
“Was eet floating in the air?” Mademoiselle Fournier asks. “Like a ghost?”
“No, no,” Miss Newman’s voice rises in pitch. “It was more . . . fleeting. Like a sudden vision.”
“So eet was just zere for a moment?”
“Yes, that’s right. Just a moment.”
Mademoiselle Fournier, I think, clears her throat.
“Are you sure eet was a ’ead? Per’aps eet was a bird zat you saw? Or a pigeon?”
There’s a pause.
“I don’t know,” Miss Newman confesses. “I could have sworn it was a head . . . but maybe . . .”
“Maureen?” says Mademoiselle, “ ’Ave you been feeling quite well? Do you per’aps ’ave a ’eadache?”
“Not really,” Miss Newman sighs. “But I think I feel one coming on. . . .”
“ ’Ave you been per’aps under stress?”
“Not really. But now I feel very stressed indeed.”
“Well, naturellement . . . eet ees very stressful to see ’eads that are not zere! Very stressful! I zink per’aps you should menzion zis to the school nurse, Maureen.”
“Maybe it was one of the girls! Larking around!” Miss Newman booms, clearly not madly keen on this portrait of herself as an incipient loony
two steps away from a straitjacket and a padded cell.
I hear firm strides on the stone floor, and freak out. Someone is coming straight for the window. I cower on the fire escape, not daring to make a dash for it up onto the roof. They’d hear my feet on the iron steps.
I’m trapped. I am in so much trouble my head can’t even get round the amount of trouble that I’m in. And then I hear a third voice. It’s unmistakable, because it, too, has an accent.
An American one.
“Miss Newman! I just saw this gigantic squirrel!”
I can hear Miss Newman swing round. Nothing in this world, not even a mysterious disembodied head, will stop her from sinking her teeth into a girl who’s breaking school rules.
“Taylor McGovern!” she says. “You are completely out of bounds!”
“I know, Miss Newman. I’m really sorry. I got completely turned around looking for the back staircase and now I’m, like, totally lost. But just now out of the window, I saw this, like, humunguous squirrel running along the fire escape! It really freaked me out! I didn’t know you had, like, giant squirrels in England!”
Taylor has adopted a stereotyped American Valley Girl voice. It makes her sound brainless, like the kind of girl who really might get lost in the teachers’ wing. Good acting, if Miss Newman doesn’t spot it . . .
“A squeeerrel!” exclaims Mademoiselle. “Zat is ze answer, Maureen! Eet was a squeeerel zat you saw!”
“A squirrel?” Miss Newman says, skeptical. “Let me just have a look outside to make sure.”
Oh no. I can hear her heading for the window again.
“Zere is no one out zere!” cries Mademoiselle, her high heels clicking on the floor behind Miss Newman. “Look, ze window ees too ’igh to reach, you would ’ave to climb up zere!”
“I just want to have a quick look outside!” Miss Newman insists, and she’s so close now that she sounds right next to me; any moment she’ll see that the window’s open a crack.
“Ohmigod, it’s over here!” Taylor calls, sounding like she’s further away. “It’s running down the fire escape—you can see it from the hall window! Wow, it’s as big as a dog! A big dog!”
Okay, Taylor, I think, don’t overdo it. . . .
There’s a clickety-clack of running heels, as presumably the teachers turn and hurry down the hall to where Taylor is standing.
“It just jumped into that tree,” Taylor says, “can you see it?”
“I can see nozzing,” Mademoiselle declares. “But Maureen, you realize now eet ees a squeerel you see? Zis girl, she sees it, too, and she sees it ees a beeg squeerel, nozzing else.”
There’s a long pause as Miss Newman frowns gloomily.
“Come downstairs, we weell go to see ze nurse, she weell give you somezing zat weell ’elp you to feel better. You, Taylor ees your name? Follow us, please. I weell show you ’ow to return to the main staircase.”
The voices move away again, and I realize from the sounds that they’re all going down the stairs. My legs have gone all wobbly. I actually feel them collapsing underneath me. I sink to my knees, taking deep breaths, dropping my head down to get the blood flowing back to it. I must have been there for at least five minutes, calming myself down. I could do with a dose of whatever the school nurse is currently doling out to Miss Newman.
And then a beautiful thought floods through me, icing on the cake. Every time Miss Newman picks on me in class from now on, all I need to do to cheer myself up is remember her desperately trying to prove to Mademoiselle Fournier that she isn’t going mad, while Mademoiselle Fournier drags her off to the school nurse to stuff her full of maximum-strength tranquilizers.
I sigh with happiness. This is turning out to be a really good day.
But there’s another mystery to solve now: how on earth did Taylor manage to turn up just in time to save my arse?
nineteen
THE CENTER OF THE MAZE
Taylor’s waiting for me as soon as I step onto legally permitted-for-students territory—the head of the staircase at the beginning of the central school wing. She’s sitting on the big stone newel post, swinging her legs, looking like she could wait there all day if she needed to. She doesn’t say anything, so I make the first move.
“Thanks,” I say. “I owe you one.”
“Yep, you sure do,” Taylor says with confidence.
Wow, she’s direct.
“Why are you even here?” I ask curiously.
Taylor leans toward me, darting a quick look around to make sure no one can overhear us.
“Well,” she begins, “I went back to the classroom to get something from my desk, and Lizzie was in there having a one-girl pity party.”
“Oh yeah, what was that about?”
She laughs. “You’ll love this. She’s scared of the trampoline in gym class. But she’s even more scared of Miss Carter, so she won’t ask her if she can be excused having to do it. What a total wimp, right?”
“That was it?” I can’t help laughing, too. “All that big sobfest was about gym class?”
Can that be true? I wonder. Was Lizzie really crying about jumping on a trampoline, or were the tears about leaving that second note for me? I file this question away for later, when I’m alone. I have no intention of confiding everything in Taylor, even if she did just save me from imminent disaster.
“Uh-huh. So she told me, and I burst out laughing, which really wound her up.”
That’s what made Lizzie so angry. I remember her jumping up and shouting at Taylor.
“And then Meena came to see what was going on, and when Lizzie told her, Meena ticked me off for laughing at Lizzie,” Taylor continues, “blah blah blah, more crying, hearts bleeding everywhere, and then I saw this flash of light in the window. I figured out straight away what it was—the sun reflecting off binoculars. Plus, it had to be coming from the opposite wing of the building. So I guessed it was you. I mean, you’re the only person round here who’s involved in any sort of mystery. And I thought there was something sketchy about that envelope stunt you pulled today, even if I couldn’t figure out what it was.”
I’m stunned into silence. Taylor’s really, really good.
“And even if it wasn’t you,” she continues, “I wanted to know what was up with the whole binocular thing. So I sneaked into the teachers’ wing to get closer to what was going on. And then I heard Miss Newman yelling about a head, and I knew she must have spotted you somehow. I figured you’d need some help. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I thought it’d be a good distraction to make up a story about a giant squirrel. Might buy you time to get away, or something.” She looks a little embarrassed, which is no mean feat for Taylor. “After you didn’t tell on me about climbing into your room, I thought I owed you something.”
“You completely saved me,” I admit.
She grins. “You’re welcome.”
I stare at her.
“How come you’re so good at this?” I ask.
She actually goes a little pink. Taylor? Blushing? I don’t believe it.
“I want to be a private investigator when I leave school,” she says. “I practice a lot.”
I can’t help it, but I’m impressed. “Well, I’d say it’s probably your ideal career.”
“You could be my first client,” Taylor says excitedly. “I could help you investigate! I know something’s going on. It’s all about that boy who died, right? Dan? Okay, I read all your press clippings, I admit it, but you already knew that, didn’t you? Come on, Scarlett, please. I’m going crazy with boredom here. This place blows. There’s, like, nothing else going on but work work work and totally sucky PE classes. I’m bored out of my mind.”
We look at each other for a long time in silence.
“I’m still really pissed off that you broke into my room and read my private stuff,” I say.
Her eyes widen in protest.
“I just made up for that!” she exclaims. “By saving you! Come on, you know I did!”
“You can’t just make bargains in your own head,” I say, “like ‘I did this for you, so now it’s okay that I did that other thing that pissed you off.’ It’s my decision whether you made up for it, not yours.”
This comes out a bit convoluted, so I’m very surprised when Taylor ducks her head and blushes once more.
“Yeah, my dad says I do that,” she admits. “He gets really ticked off with me. I’m sorry.”
For the first time, she seems genuinely contrite. I’ve managed to push exactly the right button.
“It’s pretty lonely here if you don’t fit in,” Taylor adds eventually.
She looks nonchalant, and her words are a generalization, but I know how much it costs butch, self-reliant Taylor to make that kind of admission. I know because it would be just as hard for me to admit, even obliquely, how lonely I feel here at Wakefield Hall, surrounded by a school full of intellectual geniuses whose idea of a great Saturday night is to make hot cocoa and sit around translating Shakespeare sonnets into Latin. (I’m serious. That’s what Meena and Susan do on the weekend.)
I weigh things up in my head. On the pro side, Taylor seems incredibly good at anything spying-related: she broke into my room and went straight for the most important secret there was to find, not to mention that she was able to recognize the flash of the binoculars and get over to the teachers’ wing in time to concoct a plan to save my bum. That makes her a really good ally. Cons: well, I was furious when I caught her in my room, going through my stuff. But she did make up for it by saving me just now, I decide. Without her, I’d have been toast.
And it is lonely here, particularly if you have a whacking great mystery to solve all by yourself.
“Okay,” I say cautiously. “But not here. Come back to my place and I’ll fill you in on a couple of things.”
Intense excitement lights up Taylor’s face, and she whoops and punches the air. But then, realizing she’s showing weakness, she gets control of herself, reverting to her usual stone-cold, too-cool-to-show-emotion persona.
Kiss Me Kill Me Page 14
