Her stare on me is like acid on an etching plate, cutting through to the truth of the situation. I open my mouth to deflect her, but I’m not fast enough.
“Someone died, didn’t they?” she breathes, her eyes gleaming with an unholy light of satisfaction. “And you’re involved in it some way, otherwise there’s no way you’d be out of class. Talk about Kiss of Death! What on earth is wrong with you?”
I’ve been doing so well. Really, I have. Not responding to extreme provocation. Actually removing myself from the field of conflict. But now Plum’s hit the target, gone for gold. She’s triggered all the memories of her and her set at St. Tabby’s, whispering “Kiss of Death” at me in the corridor, ostentatiously pulling their clothes away from any contact from me, pretending that I might contaminate them with some deadly infection.
And even worse, she’s made a connection between Dan’s death and Jase’s father’s, planting in Jase’s mind, perhaps, the idea that I really am cursed in some way. That the deaths that happen around me are, after all, somehow my fault …
I’m on my feet and hurtling toward her so fast she doesn’t register my approach till I’m right up in her face. That’s the thing about taking on someone who’s used to sprinting like a demon to get up enough kinetic energy to do two handsprings plus a front tuck somersault, I think vindictively as I reach her.
Plum may be the world champion at winding people up, but she’s so confident about her skills, she forgets I’ve got a few of my own.
She doesn’t flinch at first. She just takes another cigarette out of a silver case and puts it in her mouth. I pluck it from her lips and chuck it on the ground.
“That’s a filthy habit,” I hiss at her. “It’s as disgusting as you are.”
As twin spots of red flare with anger on her cheeks, Plum raises her hand to slap me. And as soon as it gets physical, she’s in my territory, not her own. Not that I’m used to fist-fighting. I haven’t been in a proper fight in my life. But my reflexes are great. I have fast-twitch muscles, which contract really, really swiftly, and I catch her wrist with my left hand as it comes toward me and push her arm down, away from our bodies, holding it there with ease, my fingers biting into her wrist bones.
Without conscious intention, my right arm flies up. She shrinks back, her other hand coming up to protect her face, but I knock it away so hard she’d have spun around if I hadn’t still been holding her wrist.
Her face is terrified, all color drained from it. Her green eyes are wide, her mouth open in an O of shock and fear. Finally, finally, Plum is as scared of me as I am of her. And honestly, I swear, I want to hit her with everything I have, and feel justified in doing it, because she started it, she started every single fight we ever had, and this punch has been coming to her a long, long time—
“Scarlett! Stop!”
I can’t see Plum’s white mask of terror any longer. Jase has shouldered between us, grabbing me and breaking my grip on Plum, bringing my arms up and crossing them over my chest, holding them tightly.
“Scarlett, stop!” he yells at me again, as instinctively I wrestle to be free of him. “She’s not worth it!”
I take a breath to say something, but Jase is turning his head, shouting at Plum.
“Get out of here, now! We’ve had about enough of you bitching at us. That’s my father they took out of here in an ambulance this morning, I’ll have you know! And Scarlett found him. Can you imagine what kind of state we’re in, you cow? Sod off and leave us alone!”
Plum shrinks back, looking genuinely shocked at the realization that she’s been taunting us over the death of someone so closely related. Her lips part, as if she’s about to say something.
I wait. Maybe Plum will drill down into whatever tiny reserve of human feeling she’s got left under that facade of ice, and do the decent thing: apologize.
I twist around Jase enough to fix my eyes on Plum. Her gaze is lowered. She looks almost contrite.
And then she shoves her chin up high in the air, defiantly, and turns away without another word.
She tosses her mane of hair back and stalks off, her heels pounding the stone, the skirt of her coat swishing from side to side as furiously as a cat thrashing its tail.
“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” Jase mutters. “You okay now? Can I let you go without you smacking me in the face?”
I nod gruffly as he releases his grip on my forearms.
“She just keeps digging till she gets to you,” I mumble furiously. “I didn’t really want to hit her, but she was going to slap me first and—”
“It’s okay, Scarlett. I don’t think you’re some sort of violent psycho, I promise,” he says, hugging me. “My dad used to say all kinds of stuff, but that girl could make a nun so angry she’d brain her with a crucifix.”
I giggle weakly, my nose squished against his chest. But deep down, I’m in a spin of insecurity. Plum’s words have cut me very deeply. Dan’s death wasn’t my fault. I do know that. But is there something about me that means people keep dying around me? Am I the Kiss of Death Girl after all, only not in a literal sense?
“You can tell me all about your past whenever you’re ready,” Jase says, hugging me even tighter. “But don’t worry, I won’t rush you. I’ve got secrets enough of my own.”
Oh God, I think, clinging to Jase in the cold winter air. I can’t deal with anything more. I don’t want to know.
twelve
WITHER AND PERISH
“There is one more announcement today,” my grandmother says, a diminutive figure behind the huge carved lectern on the stage of the assembly hall. Even without a microphone of any sort, her voice carries effortlessly right to the very back row, where the Upper Sixth sit.
We don’t see that much of the Upper Sixth around school; they all have a fanatic gleam in their eyes. They’re constantly studying to ensure they get As in every single A-and S-Level they take, so they can swan into Oxford and Cambridge and the London School of Economics. Their parents pay large sums of money to get their daughters on the Wakefield Hall conveyor belt, which sweeps its best and brightest to the most prestigious universities in the country, but at this school no one takes anything for granted.
“Some of you may have noticed that an ambulance was called to school yesterday, and that it was attended by police vehicles,” Lady Wakefield continues, her aristocratic, old-fashioned accent giving the last word three long syllables: it comes out as vee-hih-culls. “I have no doubt that this has occasioned some speculation among you. Sadly, Kevin Barnes, our long-serving head gardener, suffered a fatal accident yesterday morning. It is a tragedy to everyone at the Hall, and we can best show our respect by discussing this as little as possible to minimize the distress to his family.”
She pauses for a moment.
“For government-mandated health and safety reasons,” she adds airily, “it is possible that the police may find it necessary to circulate the grounds and ensure that all the proper regulations are being observed. This is perfectly standard procedure when an accident occurs, and they may not even find it necessary to talk to any of you girls. Please do not impede them in the performance of their duties.”
She turns over a piece of paper on her lectern, signaling that this subject is now closed.
“And now, our final hymn, number fifty-six. Mrs. Patel?”
The organist, invisible to us, seated high up in the organ loft, brings her hands down on the keys and her feet on the pedals in unison for the first crashing chords that introduce the hymn and give us all time to riffle through our hymnals for the correct page. The Hall reverberates with the resonance of the organ pipes as hundreds of girls shuffle back their chairs, rise to their feet, hymnals in hands, and open their mouths to sing:
Immortal, invisible, God only wise
In light inaccessible, hid from our eyes …
This has always been one of my favorite hymns, partly because it has such a lovely tune, uplifting and rousing. And it’s fun to sing, beca
use the notes jump all over the place and you have to concentrate to hit them all. I’m almost enjoying myself, till we come to the words:
We blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree And wither, and perish—but naught changeth Thee.
And then I go very quiet. I can’t sing the rest, I just move my lips to the music. Taylor, beside me, notices at once, because she never sings herself. She says she’s so tone-deaf that her drone would frighten the little girls. The verse is over, though, and she doesn’t realize why I’ve fallen silent.
And wither, and perish—
I shiver, thinking of Mr. Barnes’s dead body beneath the tree.
The hymn is over. We’re sliding the red-leather-bound hymnals into their slots on the back of the wooden chairs in front of us and filing out of the Hall. There are fifteen minutes before the first lesson starts, and Lizzie Livermore is on me like a rash immediately, her eyes wide and shiny, asking:
“Is it true? Is Jase’s dad really dead?”
“Remember what my gran—I mean, Lady Wakefield—said about discussing it as little as possible?” I’m not sure I can blame Lizzie for gossiping. After all, the best way to ensure teenage girls will talk about something is to tell them not to.
“Is Jase okay? Plum was talking about it yesterday, but it just seemed so ridiculous. I mean, a death at school?” Lizzie babbles. “This is Wakefield, nothing happens here, ever!”
Feel free to swap lives with me for a couple of days, I think dryly. That’ll change your mind fast enough.
“I heard you found the body, but that can’t be true, can it?” Lizzie carries on. “That would just be so, I don’t know, unbelievable!”
I can barely believe it either.
“And after—you know—that thing when you left St. Tabby’s—” Lizzie knows all about Dan’s death and the Kiss of Death Girl nickname. But Lizzie is very easily cowed, and her fear of my grandmother is all-encompassing; she knows not to breathe a word of it to any girl at Wakefield Hall.
She nudges me, her wrist jangling with the beaded bracelets she’s copied from Plum. “I don’t know how you deal with all this death and stuff,” she breathes.
Suddenly, Taylor is upon us and staring hard at Lizzie. “Exactly,” she says, “which is why Scarlett doesn’t need any more gossip spreading about her. Got that?”
Lizzie visibly wilts under Taylor’s gaze, like a flower dying in a vase in a speeded-up motion sequence. Her backbone seems to dissolve as she shrinks a couple of inches. Taylor cracks her knuckles, making her point very clear.
“I haven’t been, Taylor, honestly,” Lizzie says fervently.
Taylor nods in approval and Lizzie straightens up a little, smiling submissively at my best friend.
Lizzie really just wants someone to tell her what to do all the time, I reflect. She’s like a little poodle.
“Careful, Lizzie,” drawls Plum, and Lizzie’s head snaps round immediately, hearing her mistress’s voice. “You’re not talking about the Thing We’re Not Supposed to Talk About, are you? Scarlett’s pet butch will bite your head off if you do.”
Plum’s entourage of girls giggle dutifully at the way Plum has put capital letters onto her words for sarcastic emphasis. Plum strolls up, wearing a long belted sweater-dress that her tall, thin frame carries off very well. But just behind her is Susan, even taller and skinnier, wearing pretty much the same outfit, and though Plum looks great, Susan looks like a model. Now that she’s taken to pulling her blond hair back, mascaraing her near-invisible lashes and eyebrows, and dressing fashionably, she’s so beautiful that I can’t take my eyes off her. Of course, she’s wearing the copycat bead bracelets as well, like half the school.
I was already making more of an effort with my clothes and makeup at school, because of Jase, by the time Plum arrived, but I have to admit that her presence has got me to up my efforts even further. It’s quite true that girls dress more for other girls than they do for boys.
So I’m wearing a fitted sweater belted over slim jeans, over boots with a two-inch heel, the maximum height we’re allowed. The sweater is perfectly decent, but it does show off my boobs nicely—it’s emerald cashmere, with a V-neck—and the belt is ancient leather I got from a secondhand shop, pretty much falling apart, which is the way you signal that you’re confident enough not to have to wear designer labels from head to toe. I know I look pretty good, and it helps to take on Plum when I feel reasonably okay about how I’m dressed. Especially now, when I’m reminding her, in code, that she can’t mention anything about my previous involvement with violent death.
“Actually, I’d worry more about Lady Wakefield. She’s very strict about gossip,” I say, glaring at Plum. “So I’d watch your step.”
Plum rolls her eyes.
“You’re so lucky that your grandmother runs things around here, Scarlett,” she coos mockingly. “How I wish I was you.”
“Oh, sod off back to the French docks,” I say, which gets a laugh from the other girls. Even Susan, who’s usually Plum’s faithful yet silent sidekick, can’t help stifling a snicker.
But as we walk down the corridor in the direction of our respective classrooms, I notice that Taylor’s eyebrows are drawn tightly together in a frown of annoyance.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. “You weren’t wound up by Plum, were you?”
Taylor doesn’t answer immediately. In fact, she hesitates visibly, as if she was about to say something and then thought better of it. This is so unlike Taylor that I stop in my tracks, pressing myself back against the wall as the tide of girls rolls past. Taylor stops with me, and as I look at her, she shrugs, an eloquent roll of her powerful shoulders.
“I don’t like it when she says I’m butch,” she mutters eventually. “She’s always doing that.”
I stare at her, baffled. If that’s the case, why hasn’t Taylor stood up for herself? She’s never had a problem with doing that before.
“But you are butch, Taylor,” I say. “You like being butch. You nearly punched that girl in the boutique last year when she put some makeup on you.”
Taylor looks sullen.
“It’s different when you say it,” she mumbles. “You don’t mean …”
She trails off.
“What?”
I’m baffled now.
“Never mind,” Taylor says quickly.
“Plum’s just a total cow, Taylor. You shouldn’t pay any attention to the crap she comes out with.”
Taylor lets out a huff. “Don’t you think that’s a little easier said than done? I mean, look at all the hell she’s caused you.”
There’s the oddest expression on Taylor’s face, like she’s trying desperately to hide something. In fact, it occurs to me, a great deal of Taylor’s world is still shrouded in mystery. She rarely talks about her parents, who are archaeologists based on a dig in Turkey. She’s got an older brother, who travels a lot, and she barely mentions him either. And if she’s ever had a boyfriend, or even had a crush on a boy, she certainly hasn’t ever breathed a word of it to me….
Oh.
“What?” Taylor says in her turn. “You look like you swallowed a lemon.”
“Nothing,” I say quickly.
“Forget I said anything, okay?” Taylor says casually. “See you at one for our run.”
I nod and dive into the classroom where I have double Latin, very relieved that Taylor and I don’t share any subjects. Because the idea that just hit me is unsettling, and I need some time away from her to process it.
It’s true, Plum’s always calling Taylor butch, but I always assumed she was referring to Taylor’s enviable musculature. I never thought any more about it until now.
Is Plum implying that Taylor’s gay? Is that what all those comments really mean—all that needling yesterday about Taylor’s being jealous of my kissing Jase, which seemed so ridiculous at the time? Is that what Taylor didn’t want to tell me—that she’s gay, and Plum’s guessed?
And why does the idea make me feel so we
ird?
thirteen
I SOUND LIKE LIZZIE LIVERMORE
I’ve been waiting for Jase to ring me for what seems like forever. My phone’s scorching hot from all the times I’ve picked it up and called his number, only to hear it click over onto the answering machine after five rings. I’ve practically been stalking him, to be honest. But I can’t give up. I need to talk to him.
I need to make sure he’s okay. That we’re okay.
Because after Plum stalked off and left us alone at the temple, things were awkward. Jase kept saying it was his fault that I’d been dragged into all this. No matter how much I tried to console him, nothing worked.
All that vulnerability, that closeness, that we’d shared when we curled up together on the bench had evaporated; we barely even kissed goodbye. I had to grab a library book and get back to Aunt Gwen’s—and Jase had to go and face the police. The weight of what had happened to his father lay on us so heavily it was hard to breathe, like it is before a storm, when the skies are low above you and the air is so thick with atmospheric disturbance that everything moves more slowly, waiting for the crash of thunder.
And by now, I’m torn between empathy and anger for Jase, because he hasn’t even let me know how everything went with the police yesterday. I haven’t heard from him since we parted at the temple. Over twenty-four hours. It’s not fair of him. I’m so worried, and he must know that! He should at least have sent me a text or something, anything, to let me know he was okay….
Finally! The phone’s ringing, and Jase’s photo has flashed on the screen. I scrabble for the Answer button, so eager that I’m all thumbs. For a moment I’m scared that I’ve cut him off by mistake.
“Jase?” I say, as breathless as if I just did a five-mile run with Taylor setting the pace.
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