Mirror, Mirror

by Cara Delevingne

  ‘Oh, do you?’ Ash looks up at me. ‘Except they didn’t notice the tattoo on her wrist, did they? Or the bruises that look like fingerprints.’

  ‘I’m probably wrong,’ I say. ‘I’m probably seeing shit that isn’t really there.’

  ‘But what if you’re not?’ Ash leans close enough for me to be able to taste her breath, spicy and sweet. ‘What if you’re not, Red? What if you and me are right about this and no one is listening to us?’

  ‘I don’t see what we can do. We’re school kids!’

  ‘There’s loads we can do. All I needed was to find a place to start to look, and you were the one that found it. The tattoo. If we can find who did it, and when, that’s a big lead. Did you take a photo?’

  ‘No.’ I shrug, feeling like a dumb-ass for not thinking of it. ‘It didn’t seem like a good time.’

  ‘Fuck.’ Ash slams her desk, and I stand up.

  ‘I’ll get one tomorrow, when I visit.’

  ‘No, that’s a waste of hours. I’ll go now. Ash really is angry with me for not photographing the tattoo.’

  ‘They won’t let you in. She said no more visitors before tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll find a way in,’ she says, ‘It’s my thing.’

  ‘You’ll get into trouble, hacking is a serious crime . . . ’

  ‘I looked,’ she says, pulling on a hoodie over her jeans and zipping it up. ‘I didn’t hack. Hacking is stealing, or lying, or scamming. I just went to see if there was a way in, and there was. And I looked. That’s all.’

  ‘What if you get into trouble, what about your dad and Jackie? It would kill them!’

  ‘Don’t you think I don’t know that,’ Ash says sharply. ‘I bloody know that. But I also need to know what happened to my sister. I need to find out in case . . . ’

  ‘In case of what?’ I ask her.

  ‘In case she doesn’t make it, and whoever did this to her gets away with it.’

  Ashira, Red

  Ashira

  Red, I’m serious. Don’t talk to anyone about this.

  Red

  Course not. But Ash is it worth it? If you get caught, get into trouble. It would be bad, man. Your parents . . .

  Ashira

  I got to know. It’s the only thing I can do. I’ve got to find out.

  Red

  KK. I’ll help you if I can.

  Ashira

  And you won’t talk?

  Red

  Didn’t I say that?

  Ashira

  Sure, ok. I’ll trust you. Fuck with me and I’ll be in all of your internet accounts in less than five minutes.

  Red

  Threat not needed, but ok!

  Ashira

  Wait to hear from me. And only message on this forum, it’s encrypted.

  Red

  Understood. Over and out.

  11

  ‘Finally,’ Rose says as I exit Nai’s front door. ‘What were you up to?’

  ‘Ash wanted to talk,’ I say, rubbing the back of my neck. It feels wrong to have a secret from these two, but it feels to wrong to talk about Ash, too.

  ‘How is she doing?’ Leo asks. I shrug. I’m glad when neither of them ask me more.

  As we walk down to the river, the heat of the September evening gradually warms my skin and the sunlight leaps off the water with flashes and sparkles. As I look at the city, unwinding along the riverbank, like every high rise and tower block has been there a thousand years, I smile. I love this place. It’s hard not to be happy when you see all the life, and all the possibilities out there, clamouring with ideas. Pushing everything Ash said to me to the back of mind, I break into a run and hang over the railings that separate me from the muddy shore below, my feet dangling in the air, a breeze that’s travelled all the way from the sea cutting across my face. Leo and Rose join me a few seconds later, Leo climbing up and sitting on the railing, and for a little while we just look at this place we live in. I haven’t travelled very much, but I don’t need to know that London is the best place in the world, and looking at it like this, I feel like part of its army, invincible.

  Back there with Ash, her theories and ideas seemed so real. But now, in the sunlight, with my friends at my side . . .? Ash is pretty intense, what if this is all in our heads? It would be easier just to let the adults deal with it, to trust them. That would be so much easier. After all, that’s what they are for, right?

  The only problem is that adults like reasons, neat little answers that fit inside a box they can slap a label on. What happened to Nai isn’t neat, it doesn’t have a reason that makes any sense, and it doesn’t fit in a box, but they don’t want to admit that. Maybe they are afraid to.

  ‘I don’t want to go home yet,’ I say.

  ‘We don’t have to,’ Rose replies. ‘All I’ve got to go home to is my dad and the insipid stepmother, and they’ll want us to do something together. Like watch a movie or play fucking Scrabble. As if spending time with her will make me any less disgusted that she is young enough to be my big sister.’

  Without any need for further discussion we peel ourselves away from the riverbank and head towards the shop at the end of the road.

  ‘I just know that Mum will just be stressing about Aaron when I get home,’ Leo says. ‘Soon as I walk in the door, I’ll be getting lectures up to here.’ He taps the top of his head.

  ‘Thing is though. . .’ I look at Rose and she raises her brows quizzically. I know she’s wondering what I’m going to say, and the truth is so am I. I say it anyway. ‘I can kind of see why your mum is worried, mate. You got into a lot of trouble round Aaron. And since he’s been out of the picture, like hardly any. So . . . ’

  ‘Fuck off, Red,’ Leo says, not angry but blunt, shutting me down. ‘I’m not a little kid. I’m my own man. I make my own choices. Aaron is my brother, he’s not Al fucking Capone. Everybody needs to calm down. I’ll get some more booze.’

  ‘Just leave it,’ Rose says to me as we stand outside the Spar waiting for him. ‘It’s not worth it.’

  ‘But do you want him to end up like he was before?’ I say. ‘Aaron knifed a bloke, put him in hospital. What if Leo got dragged into that shit?’

  ‘Leo’s right, he is his own person. And he’s not the same kid he was a year ago. We should trust him.’

  ‘I trusted Nai,’ I say in a low voice.

  ‘Yeah, but Nai isn’t Leo. Leo had it tough all his life, Red. I fake my poor-little-rich-girl routine, but we know that my life is pretty cushy, even though my dad is a twat. And you, you have a home to go to and food in the fridge even though your mum is, like a textbook drunk. But Leo. Leo has never had that, and he knows exactly what’s coming, and when the time comes he’ll decide what to do about it, and you and me with our nice houses, and full bellies, and bills paid, don’t really get to tell him what that is.’

  I study her face, like I’ve never met her before, even though I know every sweep and plane of every feature. She always surprises me, always amazes, she’s deep when you think she’s shallow, kind when you think she’s cruel. And more than any of those things she is brave, one of the bravest people I know.

  ‘Bad things have happened to you,’ I say very quietly. ‘You know more about being strong than anyone I know.’

  Rose says nothing, turning her face away from me.

  ‘Yeah well, I’m all good, so . . . ’

  ‘And my life . . .’ I struggle to find the words. ‘It’s not exactly textbook.’

  ‘It could be.’ Rose still doesn’t look at me. ‘Hey, what do you think of Maz Harrison. He’s cute, right?’

  ‘Tina Harrison’s older brother?’ I look at her. ‘He’s like twenty-five.’

  ‘And?’ Rose gives me a ‘so what’ look.

  ‘Well you are disgusted by your not-that-old stepmother, hypocrite,’ I remind her.

  ‘That’s totally different. Anyway, he likes me.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because he messaged me on Facebook.�
�

  ‘On Facebook! That’s how you can tell he’s old, he uses Facebook.’

  Rose giggles. ‘Yeah, right? I haven’t looked at that account since I was like, thirteen. It’s deadly.’

  ‘So, he’s a twat then.’

  ‘But he is really cute,’ Rose says. ‘And if you can connect with someone spiritually, romantically like a meeting of true minds, why does age matter?’

  ‘Because it’s gross,’ I say.

  Leo comes out of the shop walking past us, bottles clinking in his plastic bag and the subject is dropped.

  ‘Come on then,’ he says and we follow him, leaving the subject of Maz Harrison behind us. Or at least I hope we do.

  Leo and Rose pass the bottle of vodka between them as we watch the river change colour from grey to pink to something like purple, as the sun is finally swallowed whole by the ragged-toothed skyline.

  We don’t talk. Leo looks at the water as he drinks, steadily without pleasure, like it’s a task he’s got to get through. Rose is messaging someone, I don’t know who, but I see how the corner of her mouth twitches with a smile every time another notification pops up on her home screen, how her expression softens. There’s a boy on the other end of the notifications, which is nothing new, just another one in a long line of fools that she will have dumped before the week is out. I wonder if it’s Maz, and hope not. Maz is all about his flashy car, and not much else.

  ‘Park?’ Leo says, twisting the lid off the second bottle.

  ‘What about Seren?’ Rose says out of nowhere, as we take the short walk to the park. Seren is this girl with blue eyes, and long legs and a very high voice that makes it sound like she’s been sucking on helium. ‘She fancies you, bad.’

  ‘What about her?’ Leo says, glancing at Rose.

  ‘Girlfriend material, Leo,’ Rose says like it was obvious, like we’ve been talking about this all along. ‘Come on, you are the hottest boy in the school and you don’t have a girlfriend, why not? You telling me all those muscles aren’t for us girls?’

  Why Rose is choosing to do this now, I don’t know, but I do know that out of all the girls he wants to tease him about seeing someone serious, Rose is the very last on the list. He rises to her challenge, and her eyes flash.

  ‘Why have one, when you can have them all?’ Leo says, rolling his shoulders and puffing out his chest. ‘Girlfriends just give you grief, Rose, they just pull you down. Telling you what to do, what to say. I don’t need that, not when I can just get a little action and be on my way.’

  Rose laughs at him, as we tumble into the park, empty now and dark.

  ‘That’s right, you are the big man, aren’t you?’ she says, jumping onto the roundabout and sailing away and back again. ‘OK, so who did you last fuck? Out of all of the girls that have given it up for you, who was the last?’

  ‘I’m not telling you that,’ Leo says.

  ‘Because you can’t.’ Rose grins at him as she rolls past. ‘Because you’ve never fucked anyone.’

  I sigh, she’s hard to understand this girl, who’d bait and torture someone she cares about so much. Someone she was, just a little while ago, talking about with such love and respect.

  ‘Fuck off, yes I have,’ Leo says and Rose comes round again.

  ‘Leo, Leo, it’s OK, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, being a virgin. Is it, Red? Red’s a virgin too. You two could be in a club. Or maybe you two should get together, you’d make a sweet couple, the oddest gayest couple there’s ever been, but I dunno, you kind of suit each other.’

  I shrug, nothing she says can bother me, and anyway it’s true. There’s no point in denying it, I don’t look like the kind of person who has ever had any kind of meaningful sexual contact, because I never have.

  ‘Why do you care anyway?’ Leo asks her. ‘What’s it to you?’

  Rose stops at the roundabout and looks at Leo for a long time, and Leo looks right back at her, right into her eyes, like he was going to kiss her or something. And I know that any second this friendship between them could turn into something else, something I’m not part of. I feel this ripping in my gut, and it hurts and I have to do something.

  ‘Annabelle Clements,’ I say.

  Leo’s mouth opens as he gives me this WTF look. ‘Not cool, Red.’

  ‘Annabelle Clements, you had sex with Annabelle Clements. I’m just saying. Nothing to be ashamed of, she’s fit.’

  I shrug, talking like this about Annabelle doesn’t make me feel good, but at least it will shut them both up.

  Rose recoils as if she’s been slapped, and at once I regret every word.

  ‘Whatever. I don’t care.’ Turning away from Leo, Rose nicks the almost empty bottle from his hand, draining it.

  ‘Got anything on you?’ She looks at Leo, after pills or weed or both. Leo shakes his head. ‘Nah, skint.’

  ‘Ugh,’ Rose tosses her head back in frustration. ‘This is so lame, getting pissed in a fucking park, and we can’t even get pissed properly. I want to get wrecked, man, I want to get out of my head.’

  She rounds on me, winding her arm around my neck, and pulling me in close, somewhere between a headlock and hug.

  ‘Go get some more, Red.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I say, wondering where to look as she pulls my face close to hers. ‘They know me in there, they know I’m underage.’

  She pushes me away in disgust. ‘Then go home and nick some of your alco mum’s.’

  I probably deserve that after bringing up Annabelle, but still it stings.

  ‘No.’ I shake my head and she walks away from us, the empty bottle hanging from her hand. She tips her head back until she’s looking up at the sky and she just sort of . . . roars.

  She just fucking roars.

  This banshee howl of fury and sadness and all the things that I know she can never say out loud, the things I know that no one else in the world knows, are there, a chorus of fury and sadness and loss.

  Rose stands there looking at the sky and she ROARS.

  And after a second, I go and stand next to her and I roar too, except my roar is more like a howl, and then Leo joins in and his is a long raspy shout and we stand there, and we scream at the last of the daylight bleeding away into the night.

  So none of us notice the squad car pulling up, until two cops get out, one bloke, one woman.

  The bloke cop says, ‘Hadn’t you kids better be getting home?’

  Rose says, ‘What the fuck is it to you?’

  And he says, ‘You better watch your mouth, young lady.’

  And she says, ‘Fuck the patriarchy!’

  And he says, ‘Right, that’s it, you’re coming with me.’

  And Rose runs away, she runs away.

  It’s the funniest thing I have ever seen in my life, Rose running, cackling her head off like a crazy person, while the cop chases her and she dodges him, and doubles back and runs in circles and he skids and puffs after her, Leo and me, and the other woman copper standing there, her open mouthed, us two trying not to laugh and failing.

  ‘He is never going to live this down,’ the woman says, grinning at us. ‘I’ll make sure of that.’

  But then Rose slips, falling onto her arse, and she just sits there and laughs as he helps her to her feet, and escorts her towards the car, punching the air in victory.

  ‘Officer.’ Leo has to make an effort to smile politely, as the cop opens the passenger door of the car. ‘Look, she’s an idiot, but she’s having a rough time. Our friend, she was the girl that was missing, the one that turned up in the river?’

  ‘Funny that,’ the cop says as he opens the door, putting his hand on the top of Rose’s head as he pushes her in. ‘I hear that a lot recently.’

  ‘You can’t just take her away, she’s a minor,’ I say, not knowing if that’s true, but thinking it worth a go.

  ‘No I’m not! I’m a major!’ Rose shouts from the back of the car. ‘Come on, you lot, are you getting in? Taxi’s here!’

  We try to, but
they won’t let us.

  ‘Go home,’ the woman copper tells us. ‘She’ll be all right, I’ll keep an eye on her, and once he’s calmed down he’ll let her go home with her dad. I know you kids. You’re in that band aren’t you? My son really rates you.’

  ‘But—’ Leo puts his hand on the door.

  ‘Son.’ The woman, she was nice, kind. ‘I know you, too, and I know your brother. So take it from me when I say the best thing you can do is go home. I’ll take care of her.’

  She reaches into her pocket and hands me a card: P.C. Sandra Wiggins.

  ‘What your pal needs to do now is calm down, and we can all get home quickly.’

  I tuck the card in my pocket, shaking my head at Rose as she bangs on the window of the squad car, gesturing for me to take a photo.

  I don’t even hesitate, taking my phone and taking a snap.

  I mean, why the hell not?

  Nine hours ago . . .

  We were all sitting in a row on the edge of the stage, in the main hall, feeling like a row of pricks. Well, maybe not Leckraj, because he doesn’t talk much. He sat on the end and took out his packed lunch, setting it out neatly on the dusty stage.

  Mr Smith was there with Miss Greenstreet, our drama teacher, standing close enough together that their elbows touched, heads bent towards each other, in close conversation. I studied them for signs of unresolved sexual tension, or more interestingly, resolved sexual tension.

  We know Mr Smith is single, because when we ask him about it he always says he’ll invite us to the wedding when he meets the right woman. Miss Greenstreet isn’t quite as obvious though, she’s not the sort of teacher to be drawn into gossip like Mr Smith is. I like her a lot, I like the way her yellow hair is longer at the front than at the back, and if you are very close to her you see that there’s a hole in her nose from a piercing. I like to think she puts it back in on the weekends. Could she and Mr Smith be having sex?