“You’re all pink,” he comments, smiling again. “You were really racing along there.”
“I didn’t see you,” I say, very glad that he’s misinterpreted my blush.
“I’m just the invisible man where you’re concerned, aren’t I?” he says, looking me straight in the eye. “I waved to you earlier, when I was pruning the hedge over by the rose garden, but I don’t think you saw me.”
I stare back into his eyes, golden and glowing in the afternoon sunlight. I’ve never seen a color like that before. It’s mesmerizing. He’s mesmerizing.
“My name’s Jase, by the way,” he adds, rubbing his hand on his jeans and reaching it out to me. “Short for Jason. My granddad’s the head gardener here. Old Ted.”
“You’re Ted Barnes’s grandson?”
My eyes widen. Ted Barnes is wizened, ancient, and definitely one hundred percent white, with a face covered in broken veins from gardening in all sorts of weather, and, my aunt Gwen says darkly, a drinking habit to boot. His grandson couldn’t look less like him if he was actively trying.
Completely unoffended, Jason Barnes grins.
“Not that much alike, are we? Lucky for me. Granddad’s no oil painting.”
He’s still holding out his hand. I grab at it, feeling I’ve made him wait too long, and as I touch it, I don’t understand why he even needed to wipe it. He’s dry as a bone, his palm rough from the work of gardening, and I can feel calluses studding the base of his fingers. Without thinking, I touch them with the pad of my index finger.
He jerks his hand away. It’s the first awkward gesture or movement I’ve seen from him.
“I shouldn’t have shaken hands,” he blurts, shoving his into his pockets. “Mine are all cracked. Sorry, it’s all the digging.”
I think he’s blushing, though it’s harder to tell on him than on me.
“I’ve got those, too,” I jump in quickly. “Look.”
Three months have diminished my calluses a bit, but they’ve been built up by years of training, and you don’t lose that kind of thing overnight. I turn my hands over to show him my palms.
“God, you do as well,” he says in surprise.
“Asymmetric bars and rope climbing,” I explain. “If the calluses get big you have to pumice them down, or they really hurt when you’re holding on to something. They dig into you.”
“I pick mine off,” Jase admits, grinning.
I can’t believe we’re bonding over calluses. How weird is that?
Jase takes my hands in his. My whole body fizzes at the contact as if I’m radioactive. My hands rest in his larger ones, on his palms, which are a pale pink gray edged by caramel, and are much, much bigger than mine.
“You’ve got tiny hands,” he says. “I’m amazed they can hold you up when you’re upside down like that.”
I laugh, and then I hear the sound I’m making. It’s not a laugh. It’s a full-on girly giggle.
I am giggling with a boy.
Now it’s my turn to pull my hands away, though not as fast as he did. I stand there and look at Jase, at his wide shoulders and his bright golden eyes, and I feel a rush of excitement flood through me.
“Are you okay?” he asks curiously.
I swallow hard. “Yeah, I just need to get back. I’ve got to do some revision, there’s this test tomorrow . . .”
“Oh, okay then.” Jase looks a bit disappointed, and it makes me grin a little. “See you round?”
“Definitely.”
“At least you know my name now, eh?”
“Jase,” I say, and my voice comes out wobbly, to my great embarrassment.
“That’s right,” he says, quite seriously. “Don’t you go forgetting it, now.”
“I won’t.”
I turn away and start walking across the Great Lawn, taking a shortcut through the grounds to the gatekeeper’s cottage.
“Scarlett?” Jase calls after me.
I turn round and look at him.
“Good luck with the test!” he yells.
I can only manage a wave and then I break into another run, not because I’m in any hurry to get back to Aunt Gwen’s, but because there are so many feelings inside of me that I’m scared I’ll explode all over the Great Lawn.
After a few minutes, I stop for a minute at a bench and take a deep breath. What I need right now is some time by myself, alone in my room. At the end there, talking to Jase, I got sort of overloaded, like a computer just before it crashes, because I suddenly found myself being reminded of Dan. Dan was really impressed when he saw me do gymnastics. Just like Jase. And while the circumstances were different—I was deliberately showing off for Dan, and I didn’t know Jase was there when I threw myself into that handspring bounder—it still felt weird, like déjà vu.
My brain flashed to that night outside on Nadia’s terrace, and I couldn’t quite deal with it. I had to run away and get some space, find somewhere to be alone so I could sort through all of my emotions, which are completely at war with one another—happy shock over the note, excitement from talking with Jase, sadness at the thought of Dan. It’s all a blur.
I begin running toward home again. I weave through the ornamental garden, round the hedge (which is looking nicely trimmed, I notice: good work, Jase), and arrive at our front door. It’s unlocked. Aunt Gwen is in. But there’s one very positive side to living with Aunt Gwen: like Lady Severs, she wants to see as little of me as possible. She may be large and pale and have big buggy eyes like a frog’s, but she never comes near me unless it’s absolutely necessary. I can just about see her shoulder—she’s in her study, as she pretty much always is, sitting at her desk—but she doesn’t turn round as I come in, let alone say “hi” or acknowledge me in any way.
That’s fine. It’s just the way I like it. For years, Aunt Gwen and I have basically pretended that the other one doesn’t exist. It’s a system that has worked very well for both of us, and neither of us sees any reason to mess with it now. I run upstairs and into my room, closing the door behind me. For an instant, I shut my eyes. Peace and quiet, I think.
A chance to look again at that note (which is shoved deep into my jeans pocket) and see what deductions I can draw from it. A chance to absorb the impact of meeting Jase Barnes again and properly seeing him. A chance to feel again the incredible sensation of him taking my hands in his and saying how small they were.
Heat rushes over me as I remember Dan kissing me on Nadia’s terrace, and my heart is beating so loudly, I think I can actually hear it.
But suddenly I hear a crashing noise, which is certainly not my heart beating.
My eyes snap open. I sweep a quick look round the room and realize that it’s not as I left it. My folder with all the articles about Dan and me is lying on my bed, open. The articles are scattered all over the bed. Some have blown to the floor because there’s a breeze coming in from the window, which I’m sure I didn’t leave wide open this morning. . . .
I run to the window and look out.
That’s where the noise was coming from. Someone was in my room. And now they’re—I lean further out and look down—climbing down the drainpipe, which is rattling as it’s knocked against the wall by her weight.
I don’t need to identify the shock of shaggy hair directly below me.
It’s Taylor. Taylor was in my room, spying on me.
Any wish for a moment of peace and quiet has gone in a flash. I vault up onto the windowsill, look for my mark, take a deep breath, and jump out the window.
fifteen
BEING TARZAN
I know I’m going to catch the branch. When you’ve spent as much time as I have swinging from one asymmetric bar to the other, you’re not worried about your aim. What I don’t know—and this is the big question—is whether the branch will bear my weight.
I always used to climb out of this window when I was smaller, and under curfew, by crawling along the big branch of the oak tree just behind Aunt Gwen’s house. I could still do that, but by the
time I’d crawled along it and climbed from one branch to another, down the trunk of the tree, Taylor would be long gone.
So I have to improvise. There’s a smaller, whippier branch a foot below the big one, narrow enough for me to get a grip on it. I launch myself toward it, aiming as close to the trunk as I can, because it’ll be stronger there, and as soon as my fingers clasp round the branch, I let it take all my weight for one split second, and then I kick forward, swing back good and high, and launch myself yet again in a long powerful swing that sends me flying through the air, feet reaching out, arms stretching back, making myself as long and as aerodynamic as possible, so that I land on the thick lush grass yards and yards beyond the tree.
It’s as soft a landing as I could have hoped for. I don’t even stumble: I hit the ground running. Taylor’s only a few feet in front of me and as she looks back, gobsmacked to see me so close to her, she loses a precious second or two gaping at me in amazement.
I’ve got to give it to her: she recovers quickly and snaps her head round again, pumping those super-strong legs, sprinting away from my pursuit. But I have the wind in my sails, and, just as important, I know these grounds so well I could run through them blindfolded. Taylor has barely been at school for a couple of weeks. And it swiftly becomes apparent that she has no idea where she’s going, apart from Away From Me.
I bide my time, keeping pace with Taylor, and the moment I see her hesitate, I pounce. She’s just rounded the corner of a hedge, and there’s the ornamental garden to her left, another hedge stretching away on her right. Taylor doesn’t know which way will be faster. In the moment that she wavers, I speed up, zooming toward her, and as she realizes what’s happening I spring at her, grabbing the back of her T-shirt, crashing into her and forcing her to fall to the ground under me.
Taylor lands really well. She rolls, tucking her head in, and if it wasn’t for having me on her back, she’d have been able to roll right over and come to her feet easily enough. But I’ve thought this through—I’ve sent her crashing into the hedge, and I have her trapped between me and a face full of nasty spiky branches. If she doesn’t want her face torn off, she won’t struggle. And her arms, in that tank top, are bare: she won’t want to get them cut up. I keep her wedged in there, half-sitting on her. We’re both sweaty, but I’m used to spotting other girls in gymnastics, and being this close to someone else’s sweaty body doesn’t freak me out. I put my weight on her to stop her escaping.
“What the hell were you doing in my room?” I ask, my breath coming in big gasps.
Taylor is not as breathless as I am, which I find deeply annoying.
“How did you get out of there so fast?” she asks, her chest heaving but her voice sounding only curious. “Did you just jump out the window?”
“Of course not! I’d have broken both my ankles!”
“Then how did you do that? You couldn’t have climbed down the drainpipe, you would have been miles behind me!”
“I swung off a branch.” God, I make it sound like I’m Tarzan.
Taylor’s green eyes widen. “Jeez!” she exclaims. “Have you done that before?”
“No.”
“Then how did you know it’d hold your weight?”
“I didn’t.”
“Wow,” she says, her eyes widening further.
This is ridiculous. I just caught this girl going through my most private stuff, chased her out of my window, and rugby-tackled her to the ground, and now I’m actually flattered that she thinks I’m some kind of minor super-heroine.
“You can let me out from under this bush.” Taylor tries to turn her head away from the branches in her face. “I won’t run away.”
“How do I know you won’t?” I ask.
I couldn’t beat her in a fight. No way. Look at those rope-climbing muscles. Taylor is probably twice as strong as I am. My only advantage now is that she’s trapped under the hedge.
“Where would I go?” Taylor points out. “You’d only catch me again if I ran. You know this place way better than I do. Besides, you could turn me in to your grandma.”
I stare at her, thinking this over. I can see that Taylor’s right. Eventually—I don’t want to give in too easily and make her think I’m a pushover—I nod begrudgingly and release my grip on her. She wiggles out from under the hedge and sits up cross-legged, wiping leaves and her messy fringe off her face. I realize that I have become distracted from the main issue here, which of course is Taylor’s breaking and entering.
“How dare you break into my room!” I shout.
“I’m sorry,” she says simply.
“You don’t look sorry.”
“Well, it was sort of fun climbing up the drainpipe and getting in,” Taylor admits.
I can completely see that it would be a lot of fun, but that is Not The Point.
“You looked through my private stuff! That is so . . . wrong!” I’m practically seething with anger now.
“Yeah, that was bad,” she says. She looks straight at me. “You gonna tell anyone?”
Oh, I hate her. Hate her. Because she already knows the answer somehow, I can see it in her face. And she’s cut right to it—she hasn’t gone through the ritual of apologizing, explaining, asking me for forgiveness, pleading with me not to tell, all the polite back-and-forth that would make me feel that she’d done some penance for invading my privacy.
“I ought to tell my grandmother right away.” The tone of my voice is sharp and curt, just like Lady Wakefield’s.
“But you won’t,” Taylor says slowly, as if she’s confirming something to herself.
I narrow my eyes at her.
“You’re really pushing your luck,” I snap.
“Yeah, whatever,” Taylor says with a sarcastic roll of the eyes. “I suppose you want to hear me say I’m sorry or something.”
I can’t believe how bitchy she’s being, and how smart. I didn’t tell on her just now, and she’s calculating that I won’t do it this time either. But she’s brave enough to take the risk that I will tell, so she’s apparently not even afraid of expulsion. I’d admire that quality in her if she hadn’t just snooped through my things. “No, I want to know why you were in my room.”
“I don’t know, okay?” Taylor snaps. “Look, I shouldn’t have done it. Anyway, I didn’t see anything important.”
Instinctively, I know she’s lying. But for some reason I also know that she won’t tell anyone what she found. Because if Taylor can recognize that I’m not a sneak, I can see the same quality in her. Both of us fight our own battles: we don’t go running to teachers or anyone else to sort things out for us. We’re both lone warriors. Takes one to know one.
I lever myself up off the grass and wipe off the seat of my jeans. Taylor, sensibly, doesn’t follow suit; she stays sitting there, looking up at me, waiting for my next move.
“Stay away from me from now on.” I point a finger at her and fix her with my best scary stare. “If I ever catch you near my stuff again, you will regret it. That’s a promise.”
I don’t wait for her to say anything. I just turn on my heel and walk away across the grass. I’m still pissed off, but it’s good to have had the last word. Refocusing my attention on the note, I come to the conclusion that although Taylor is a nasty cow who broke into my room, she wasn’t the one who left that envelope in my desk. Taylor only just this minute searched my room, and the note was left for me at least an hour or so ago—probably when Taylor was busy climbing trees. From her sweaty state, she looked as if she’d been in that forest for a good long time. She didn’t have either the knowledge about me—or, from her hostile attitude just now, the empathy—to write a sentence like “It wasn’t your fault.” And most likely, she didn’t have the opportunity to leave the note.
So I can definitely rule her out. Not that that helps much. One girl down, a couple of hundred to go. I need to think very carefully indeed about how to find out who left that note.
I need to set a trap.
sixteen
COMPLETELY COVERED IN INK
“Oh my God!” I stare down into my open desk. It’s the day after I found the envelope, and I spent all yesterday evening thinking up a Cunning Plan. So here I am, executing it. “Bloody hell, I don’t believe it!”
Sharon Persaud (of the killer lavender hockey stick), who has the desk next to me, turns to look.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
“There’s ink all over my books! I don’t know how that happened!”
“Is everything okay?”
“No! God, look at this!” I pick up an ink-sodden envelope and the notebook below it, and wave them both around. “They’re completely soaked!”
Meena, who sits behind me, leans forward.
“How did that happen?” she asks.
“I dunno. . . .” I rifle through the contents of the desk with my other hand. “There was this pen on top, it must have leaked all over my Latin notes, and this other stuff. God, it’s all ruined. I’m going to have to chuck it all out.”
Meena is fishing in her own desk.
“Here,” she says, handing me a pack of Kleenex. “And you can borrow my Latin notes, Scarlett.”
“Wow, really?”
I turn to look fully at her. Her expression is very sympathetic. Meena’s not very attractive. She’s unhealthy-looking, skinny, and pale-skinned for a girl of Indian descent, which makes the dark circles under her eyes even more evident, giving her a slightly raccoonlike appearance. But her smile now is very friendly.
“Thanks so much,” I say. The notebook doesn’t contain my Latin notes, of course: it’s blank. But I wouldn’t at all mind borrowing Meena’s Latin notes. They’re bound to be better than mine.
“Can you read anything, Scarlett?” asks Susan, another girl from my Latin class.
“No,” I say hopelessly. “It’s completely covered in ink. And it’s gone right through to whatever’s inside. Bloody pen, I don’t believe this happened!”
“Yeah, that’s really unlucky,” chimes in Lizzie, the scared girl from gymnastics with the un–Wakefield Hall–like highlights in her hair. “I had that happen to me once in my rucksack. My iPod cover got completely messed up. I had to throw it away. And it was a really nice one, too.”
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