Another Me

by Cathy MacPhail

  As I left the auditorium he was calling out for the three witches to go over their scene with Macbeth and I could feel Monica’s unsmiling eyes follow me even after I’d closed the door.

  It was strange being in the school at night, in the dark. Strange and eerie. The lights from the auditorium shone into the corridor from its high windows, but apart from that the corridor was gloomy.

  Gloomy and silent except for my footsteps, and the faraway sound of my classmates’ voices. I pushed through the swing doors which led to the next corridor and as they swung to behind me I realised it was even darker in here. Far away, too far now for comfort, I could hear the rantings of the three witches, Dawn and Kaylie making the most of their parts. I stopped and glanced back. The doors swung back and forth, back and forth . . . almost as if someone had stepped through them a second behind me.

  And all at once I was afraid again, and I didn’t know why.

  I was in my own school. I spent almost every day here. Nothing to be afraid of here. Yet, I watched mesmerised as the doors swung back and forth as if I was waiting for—

  Nonsense! I stamped my foot. I was just being silly. I will not be afraid, I told myself. And I turned round, saw it, and screamed.

  How stupid can one person be? It was only my reflection. A dark image on a classroom window. I let out my breath in a long relieved sigh. Light. I needed light. There would be nothing to be afraid of in the light. I found the switches and threw them on. A long string of lights beamed down the corridor to the staffroom. Better. So much better. My steps even sounded more confident as I clicked along.

  In the staffroom, I immediately switched on the light there too.

  Donald’s battered leather briefcase lay half open on the floor. I lifted it up and held it against me. Nothing strange here, I told myself, looking round at the posters on the wall. Mel Gibson, and Homer Simpson, a cartoon of the headmaster. Not unlike the posters we all kept in our lockers. Ordinary, safe, normal.

  Suddenly, the light went out, plunging the staffroom into darkness. A blown light bulb, I told myself, refusing to be frightened. I took a step back into the corridor and closed the door.

  I had only taken one step towards the swing doors when the light above me went out too.

  One bulb, that could be an accident, but two? I ran as I passed beneath the next light.

  It went out, too.

  And the next.

  Now, I was frightened. What was happening?

  I ran, breathing hard. Above me, the next dim light was extinguished. My breath began to catch. I was really afraid now, because surely I could hear footsteps behind me. I glanced back quickly but all was pitch dark, a tunnel of blackness reaching down the corridor.

  Nothing.

  And yet . . . wasn’t that a movement? There in the shadows. Something. I didn’t want to find out what. I ran even faster, feeling as if the darkness itself was chasing me as, one after another, each light went out above me.

  Then I heard them. No mistaking it now. Footsteps were coming up behind me in the blackness.

  I had to reach the swing doors. Beyond them was light, the school auditorium, other people.

  It was as if I was in a dream, a nightmare. Running but getting nowhere. As if the swing doors were moving further and further away. Too afraid to glance back, too afraid that those footsteps would catch up with me.

  They were closing in on me, coming nearer and nearer. I was sure I could feel something, a hand almost brushing against my back. I threw myself forward. It mustn’t touch me. Somehow, I knew I mustn’t let it touch me.

  Fear got the better of me. I couldn’t take it anymore, and I screamed. I screamed at the top of my voice.

  ‘Help me! Somebody help me!’

  I fell through the swing doors and landed in a heap, scattering the contents of Donald’s briefcase everywhere.

  The corridor was suddenly filled with people swarming out of the auditorium. Kaylie and Dawn were there first. They looked shocked when they saw me, lying breathlessly against the wall, crying. I pointed to the darkened corridor, beyond the still swinging doors. ‘There. In there,’ I gasped.

  They looked baffled.

  ‘Someone’s after me. The lights all went out. They were behind me.’

  ‘Who was?’ Dawn asked.

  I shook my head, as baffled as they were. ‘I don’t know. Somebody. I was so scared.’

  The swing doors flew open again. I covered my face with my hands, and let out a yell. I was afraid to look.

  ‘Who’s been tampering wi’ my lights?’ It was Mr Gray, the school janitor. He thought the school was his private property.

  My words came out in a sob when I answered him. ‘I didn’t touch your lights.’ I peered behind him into the shadows. ‘Someone was after me.’

  ‘Aye! Me!’ he snapped, and his attention turned to Donald, who was standing watching me. ‘Are you lot nearly finished in here?’

  Donald looked at me with something close to annoyance. ‘Yes, Mr Gray. I think we’ll be calling it a night quite soon.’

  I wanted to make him understand. ‘It wasn’t Mr Gray who was after me, sir. It was someone else.’

  ‘It was only your imagination, Fay,’ Donald said softly.

  Why wouldn’t anyone believe me? Why were they looking at me as if I had made it all up? I yelled back at him: ‘It wasn’t my imagination. Somebody was running after me . . . and it wasn’t him!’ I jabbed a finger towards the janitor.

  Donald patted me on the shoulder. ‘There, there, calm down, Fay.’ He said it as if I was a bad-tempered little girl. I could have screamed at him.

  ‘What’s all this commotion?’ Monica stepped out of the girls’ toilets behind me. She took the situation in and sneered at me. ‘You causing more trouble? Like to be the centre of attention now, don’t you?’ She pushed past me in disgust and strode back to the auditorium.

  ‘How long was she in the toilets?’ I asked Kaylie.

  She shrugged. ‘Ages. Left just after you . . . takes her that long to make herself beautiful.’

  Dawn laughed, wanted me to laugh too. But I couldn’t. I was still shaking.

  ‘What I don’t understand is,’ Kaylie said, ‘if you were so scared why did you go back down the corridor?’

  Something in me shivered. ‘What do you mean, go back down the corridor?’

  ‘You stood at the door of the theatre, and just stood there staring into space . . . as if you were in a dream.’

  ‘Yes,’ Dawn tutted. ‘You didn’t even answer me when I called to you. You just turned round and went back down the corridor. I thought you must have forgotten something.’

  Now I was shaking. Shaking so hard I couldn’t stop. ‘No, no! That wasn’t me.’

  I was beginning to annoy my friends. ‘Of course it was you, Fay.’

  ‘Are you trying to make out we’re daft, or something?’

  Suddenly, I was yelling again, yelling so loudly I could have awakened the dead. Everyone stopped to stare at me. Monica turned and just looked, with a satisfied smirk on her face.

  ‘That wasn’t me!’ I screamed at them. ‘That wasn’t me!’

  Chapter Eight

  My outburst finished any possibility of continuing the rehearsal. Donald wound the whole thing up and sat with me until Dad came to collect me. ‘Would you like to speak to Mrs Williams, the school counsellor?’ he asked while we waited.

  I snapped out my answer. ‘No! I wouldn’t.’

  Donald and his like thought the answer to everything was in counselling. I did want to talk to someone, but only so they could explain what was happening. But how could they? It sounded crazy even to me.

  Drew Fraser came up to me before he left. ‘Well, Lady Macbeth does go mad. Is this you building up to that, or what?’

  ‘That’s enough, Drew!’ Donald scolded him angrily. ‘Fay’s had a bit of a fright, that’s all.’

  Drew shrugged his shoulders and went off sniggering, surrounded by his adoring fans – one
of whom was Monica.

  Dad looked really concerned when he saw me. I had stopped crying, but my eyes were red-rimmed. ‘I got a real fright,’ I explained to him. ‘I thought someone was coming after me in the corridor.’

  Now he really was worried. ‘And was there?’

  Yes, there was, I wanted to say. Someone waiting in the shadows, watching me, laughing at my fear. But how could I explain it, even to him?

  ‘It was the janny,’ I said finally.

  He breathed a sigh of relief.

  ‘But Dad, funny things have been happening over the past few days. Things I don’t understand,’ I said on the way home in the car. ‘People keep saying they saw me, but I wasn’t there. It wasn’t me they saw.’

  He glanced at me, taking his eyes off the road for just a second. ‘Mistakes happen. Somebody told me only last week they saw me in town. Wasn’t me. I was fixing a woman’s washing machine in Airdrie at the time.’ He smiled. ‘Everybody’s got a double they say.’

  But tonight, I thought, in the school, my two best friends had seen someone, and were sure that someone was me. And they wouldn’t make a mistake like that, would they?

  Dad had turned his eyes back to the road, and now his voice was bitter. ‘Happens to your mother all the time. People tell me they see her somewhere, but she always insists it wasn’t her. Couldn’t possibly be her.’ He glanced at me again. ‘So she must have a double as well, eh?’

  It was always the same. Everything came back to them, him and Mum. How could I ask him to help me understand now? I was better shutting up. I would try to work it out myself. It would never happen again. I wouldn’t let it.

  I turned and looked out the window. It was so dark all I could see was my own tearful reflection.

  How did I feel that night?

  As if I was on a train hurtling through the dark on a collision course. I couldn’t get off no matter how I tried.

  And I was the only passenger.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Are you feeling better?’ Mum asked next morning as I was leaving for school. She had sat up with me late into the night, listening to me and trying to explain in the best way she could what had happened. I had told her as much as I had told Dad, and her response had been the same as his. People make mistakes. Everyone has a double somewhere. In the dimly lit corridor, she assured me, I had let my imagination take over. All sensible, common-sense explanations, but none of them had helped me sleep.

  Yet, this morning, I did feel better. Here, today, with a frosty sun hovering low in the sky and Kaylie and Dawn waiting for me at the top of the stairs, the fears of last night seemed stupid, unreal. There was a logical explanation for all this. There had to be.

  And all that day, nothing happened. I apologised to Donald and he patted me on the head as if I was a pet poodle. ‘Just know your lines for the next rehearsal,’ he said. ‘That’s all I ask.’

  Yet, as the day wore on, the dark feeling settled on me again, like a shroud being laid around my shoulders.

  ‘I think I’ll take the long road home today,’ I told the girls as we stood chatting at the top of the stairs. I was looking down them as the midwinter dusk was falling. In the dim lights, the bare branches of the trees that hung over the wall were like bony fingers ready to reach out and touch me. The very thought made me shiver.

  ‘Kaylie and I will come down the stairs with you, if you like,’ Dawn offered.

  But I shook my head. I couldn’t face those stairs today, though I wasn’t going to admit that to them.

  ‘No, honestly, I just feel like the walk. I’m going over my lines in my head, you see.’ How they couldn’t see that for what it was, a blatant lie, I do not know. They let me go, however, and stood watching me as if I was an infant heading off for her first day at school.

  I turned the corner, and disappeared behind a row of houses, but as I emerged between them and looked round, there were my two friends, still watching me. Dawn waved. So did Kaylie, and I hurried on, trying not to get annoyed at them. They were worried about me, I told myself, and I was touched by their concern. I was lucky to have such good friends.

  The men were fixing the odd lift when I went into our block. Or rather, they were sitting inside it drinking mugs of tea.

  ‘Sorry, darlin’,’ one of them said and winked at me, ‘you’ll have to use the even lift today.’

  ‘Or else walk up the stairs,’ suggested the other.

  My reflection in the steel at the back of the odd lift made me realise just how pale I was. I needed to get my circulation going to give myself a bit of colour, so I headed for the stairs.

  I was more out of condition than I thought, because I was panting by the time I hurried into the flat. The phone was ringing in the hall and I just made it in time. The mirror on the wall showed me I had colour now. My face was red and damp with sweat and my ribs were aching.

  ‘Hello?’ I was breathless. ‘Who’s this?’

  Dawn sounded worried. ‘What’s wrong? What happened?’

  I giggled. ‘I’m not fit. I’ve just walked up thirteen flights of stairs and I’m about dead.’

  Dawn let out a sigh of relief. ‘You gave me such a fright there. Me and Kaylie are just checking up you got home all right.’

  Annoyance nipped at me again, but I pushed it away. ‘Honestly, what are you two like!’

  Kaylie piped up. I could imagine her yanking the phone from Dawn. ‘You did see us waving at you?’ There was an embarrassed hesitation. ‘Remember? When you went between that block of houses. You waved back? Didn’t you?’

  I didn’t say anything for a moment, and this time I didn’t push the annoyance aside. ‘Do you think I’m daft, is that it? Do you think I’m going crazy?’

  Dawn tried to explain, but I wouldn’t let her.

  ‘Yes, it was me!’ I yelled. ‘This time it was me. I remember. I saw you. I waved back. OK?’

  And I slammed down the phone.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘I don’t think I like this Lady Macbeth very much,’ I said, slamming the book shut. ‘She’s a nag. She’s horrible. She wants her husband to murder somebody.’

  We were in the canteen with another rehearsal looming tonight, and Kaylie and Dawn were doing their best to help me remember my lines. Unsuccessfully.

  Dawn sucked milk noisily through a straw. ‘She’s a very strong woman, Fay.’

  But I couldn’t see that at all. Did you have to be so nasty to be strong? Surely not. I wasn’t nasty. Did that make me weak?

  We suddenly heard Monica’s loud giggle from the far corner of the canteen. She was sitting on a table, waving her arms around, and whatever she had just told her friends had sent them into fits of laughter.

  ‘Now, there’s a perfect Lady Macbeth,’ I muttered.

  Kaylie punched me. ‘No, she is not. You are not going to let old Moaning Minnie Monica get this part.’

  I sighed. ‘It’s not a contest. I don’t care.’

  Dawn gave me a hug. ‘Yes, you do care. You don’t want her to get the better of you either.’

  They were right of course. For that reason alone I would battle on with the play. What was the point of arguing? I couldn’t let my two friends down.

  ‘We’re going to help you with the lines . . . even if it means tattooing them all over your body.’

  That sent us all into the giggles.

  Suddenly, Kaylie snatched the book from me. ‘And gorgeous Drew is your husband. Let me see. Is there any kissing in this play?’

  In spite of all their help, that night at the rehearsal, I was awful, and there were some rather rude words I’d rather not have remembered in front of the boys.

  Whenever I blushed, Monica would let out a scream. ‘Twenty-first-century woman! Ha! Nowadays we’re supposed to be as bold as any man! Not get embarrassed at the slightest thing.’

  I wanted to yell at her. I’d heard Monica swear in the corridor. She thought it impressed people. She thought being a twenty-first-century woman meant d
oing every horrible thing that boys do. Only doing them more often, and worse. So nothing would embarrass her.

  Even I had to admit that Drew made an impressive Macbeth. His voice had broken already and it boomed out through the auditorium. And he told Donald he intended to wear a kilt when the play actually went on. Every girl listening swooned when he said that. Every girl except me. But Drew Fraser in a kilt? That would send the female hearts in the audience beating so fast it wouldn’t matter if he didn’t say a word.

  Kaylie sighed. ‘Drew Fraser in a kilt? I’ll die, so I will.’

  ‘If somebody shouts up from the audience, “What do you see in that wimp, Macbeth?” I’ll be the one who’ll just die,’ I said.

  ‘You’ll have to do something about that self-esteem of yours, Fay,’ Dawn said. They were both enjoying every minute of the whole thing. Revelling in their parts as the witches, screaming whenever Drew Fraser stepped on stage. Enjoying Monica’s jealousy of me. I wished I could be more like them. They never seemed to worry about anything. But, of course, they didn’t have to stand up on the stage on their own, with every eye on them.

  No, I couldn’t call it fun.

  ‘Your dad coming for you tonight?’ Kaylie asked me.

  ‘Not tonight. He’s working late, but Donald said he’d give me a lift home.’

  Dawn gave me a push. ‘You’re not going home with a teacher. My mum’s coming for me. She can give you a lift.’

  Dawn’s mum had us laughing all the way home. Just back from Weightwatchers, she’d put on three pounds and she did nothing but rant and rave that the ‘blinking scales were off’, or maybe she’d ‘worn too much make-up’.

  ‘I starved myself for a week, and I put on three pounds! That’s not possible! I only ever eat half a doughnut!’

  I was still laughing when they dropped me off at the flats. Especially since Dawn’s mum had decided to take them for a fish and chip supper as a consolation.