Mirror, Mirror

by Cara Delevingne

  This hurts much more than a slap, or a punch. This feels like an invisible wall has been built all around me. I’m frustrated and confused. Rose is always there, I rely on her to be always there, I hate this space between us.

  Sitting up in bed, my thumb finds Rose’s number on my phone.

  I never make calls, hardly ever. It’s just not the way I talk to my friends, or to anyone if I can avoid it. Pressing her name on the screen, waiting for the long moments it takes the phone to connect, and then even longer while it rings. I’m expecting her voicemail, and so I’m surprised when there is just silence, and the sounds of her being there, not speaking.

  ‘Rose?’

  ‘Hi.’ It’s a short word, and I can’t tell anything from it. There isn’t a handy emoji to go along with it, just one word, flat and unreadable. Just the silence that comes after she’s spoken.

  ‘Are you OK?’ I ask her.

  ‘Yeah.’ Short again. But she is still there. She hasn’t hung up, not yet.

  Breathe, and think. Don’t put one word wrong.

  ‘Look, I am sorry about what happened. I made such a dick of myself. I never meant to fall for you, and I certainly never meant to ever tell you. It was . . . I was stupid for doing what I did, but I’m not stupid for caring about you the way I do. You are amazing, the most amazing person I have ever known. And I feel the way I do about you because I do know you. Not because of what you look like, or anything else. But because you are you.’

  Silence still. Take a breath, try again.

  ‘I think I know why you are so angry with me. And I get why you’ve blocked me from everything, but . . . well, I hope you will change your mind one day. Because I miss you. And not in that way. I miss my best mate . . . I need a best mate more than anything else.’

  ‘So we are going to rehearse on stage tomorrow, yeah?’ she says.

  ‘Yeah.’ I say. ‘But . . . ’

  ‘What I did, that post. That was dickless and I hate myself for it. I’ve tried to fix it. I think it will be OK at school now.’ She pauses, I hold my breath. ‘But the truth is, Red, I thought we felt the same way about each other. And now I know we don’t. And that makes me feel weird, like we’re not honest with each other, like what you say and do isn’t because you are my friend, it’s because of how you feel. ’

  ‘It doesn’t have to make you feel that way because—’ I begin to say but she cuts me off.

  ‘It does have to, it should have to. What you feel, it matters. You should want it to matter. And I . . . I just need a break from us for a bit. A break from what we used to be. I don’t hate you, OK? Not at all, I just need a break. I’ve got . . . stuff. Something important happening, and I think it’s better if we don’t hang out so much. I’ll do the concert, but then I’m leaving the band.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I’ll see you at rehearsal tomorrow.’

  ‘Rose, please, can we talk about this some more?’

  ‘Stay out of my life, OK? I just need some distance right now.’

  ‘But . . .’ But she’s already hung up by the time I say it, I didn’t even get a chance to tell her about Nai’s phone.

  Collapsing back onto my bed, I have no idea what to do next. Outside grey sky smothers every trace of blue, and it feels like winter. A whole day with nothing to do but sleep seems like torture.

  So when my phone rings, I almost fall out of bed trying to reach it, hoping that it’s Rose calling me back, that she’s changed her mind and we can laugh about all the drama and get over it. But it isn’t.

  ‘Red, I need help.’

  It’s Leo.

  I sit up, feeling at once anxious and uneasy because Leo hates talking on the phone even more than I do. And more than that, even more than that the anger, the swagger; it’s all gone. Now all I can hear is fear.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Red, I think I’m fucked.’ Leo is whispering, and I can barely hear him. Somehow at once I understand this is serious, he means this. ‘I’m in deep and now I can’t get out.’

  ‘What, why? What’s happening?’ I ask.

  ‘Wait, wait a minute.’ There are shuffling noises on the other end of the phone and I hear a door slam, footsteps.

  ‘I had to get out for a minute. I can’t talk in here. Fuck, Red, I am so fucked. I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘What is it, Leo?’

  ‘Aaron. The guy he has business with, the one he thinks made a fool of him, whose fault it is that he is inside. Aaron’s had his mates around here all night. Staying up taking hard shit, music turned up so loud you can hear it across the estate. Mum tried to get them out, and Aaron locked her in her bedroom. I tried to let her out and he . . . he got real mad, Red. Him and his mates, they have been winding each other up, getting ready for shit to go down. And now. Now they’re gonna do it, Red. They found out where this bloke is gonna be, and they are going over there, he says I’m going over there with him, I’ve got to be more of a man, and I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Leo, do what?’ I ask him. ‘What are they going to do?’

  ‘I saw a gun,’ he says. The moment I hear that word my mouth goes dry, and fear races down every nerve ending at high velocity.

  ‘He’s going to shoot someone?’ This time I am the one who’s whispering.

  ‘He wants me with him, Red. If I don’t go, I don’t know what he’ll do. He won’t let Mum out, not even now. He took her money, her phone. I heard her crying all night and I can’t get near her to talk to her. He’s had zero sleep, he is fucked up, paranoid and angry. I don’t know what he’ll do.’

  ‘Hang up on me. Call the police now, tell them,’ I say.

  ‘I can’t, I’m not a grass, if he even knew I’d phoned you . . . and anyway I don’t know where it’s happening, or when. All I know is that I’ve got to go with him.’

  ‘Leo, you can’t go. That’s not you. Just don’t go!’

  ‘I don’t know what else to do . . .’ Leo’s voice wobbles in a way I have never heard before. ‘I’m scared of him, Red. I’m scared of what he’ll do.’

  ‘Just leave, now. Keep walking and come to me. We can talk to my dad and get help.’

  I hear a distant shout.

  ‘He’s calling me. It’s time. I gotta go.’

  ‘Leo wait . . . don’t go!’ I shout. The call ends. I stare at the phone, my mind’s gone blank. Did my best friend just hang up on me to go and take part in a murder?

  31

  The seconds go past, and I run that thought around and around in my head until it solidifies and becomes real. It’s fucking real, and I can’t let this happen to Leo, I can’t. But I can’t stop it either. Somehow I need to find Leo, get him and drag him away from Aaron before it’s too late.

  But how? Where do I even start looking? Dragging on my jeans and a T-shirt, I think again of going to my parents but what’s the point? What can they do for me when they can’t even take care of themselves? Then it hits me, Find My Friends on my phone. When we first got it, it was a laugh, a game. And then the novelty wore off because I always knew where they were, but now? This could work.

  I open the app and look for Leo, and see him, a small pulsating dot. He’s still at home. Shoving my feet into my trainers, I shrug on my hoodie and stuff my keys into my pocket, running out of the front door towards Leo’s estate, keeping my eye on my phone, wanting to get as close to him as I possibly can before that dot starts moving.

  I am about halfway to his place when it does.

  Slowing to a jog, I keep my eye on the dot trying to work out where he is going, cutting back and forth through streets and side streets to try and meet him head on, but as quickly as I go, he keeps moving just out of reach. Then my phone rings again.

  Fuck’s sake. It’s Ash.

  I reject the call, but she rings again, and somehow I know that it’s going to keep ringing, so I just put her on speaker and keep following the dot.

  ‘Where are you?’ she asks, without bothering with a ‘hello�
��.

  ‘I’m not totally sure,’ I say looking around me. ‘I’m trying to find Leo. Ash, he’s in trouble. It’s serious so I can’t really talk right now.’

  ‘What kind of trouble?’ She sounds annoyed, not concerned.

  ‘Big trouble. I need to get to him before something bad happens.’

  ‘Like actual bad, or mega teen drama bad, because I’ve got something to tell you. Something really fucking huge.’

  ‘I’m talking about something really serious,’ I say. ‘Leo’s brother has a gun, and I think he’s going somewhere to use it.’

  ‘Fuck,’ she says. ‘OK, where are you?’

  ‘I don’t really know,’ I take a left down one road, and see that Leo is two parallel streets away, still ten minutes or so ahead. ‘Going towards Brixton tube, I think.’

  ‘OK, I’ll get there and then track your phone.’

  ‘You’re not on my Find My Friends list,’ I say.

  ‘I don’t need to be.’

  I choose not to think about that. Stay focused on the bigger picture.

  ‘Ash, it might not be safe.’

  ‘Which is why I’m not letting you go in there on your own,’ she says. ‘Naomi always makes a big deal of how important friends are. She’s not here to rescue you, so I suppose I’ll have to.’

  How an eighteen-year-old tech-head is going to stop a gang of men with weapons I don’t know, but I haven’t got time to worry about that now.

  One more left turn, one right turn and then I stop dead and step back into a shop doorway. I can see them, a group of young men – around ten of them – standing together under one of the archways of the railway bridge, laughing and talking. People walking past see them and cross the road, or keep their heads down. Searching Leo out, I scan the crowd until I see him. He’s on the edge of the group, head bowed, scuffing the toes of his trainers on the pavement, like a little kid.

  I need a plan. I don’t have a plan after getting here. So . . .

  This is what I’m going to do. I’m going to just walk up to him all casual and be like, hey, Leo, fancy meeting you here, want to come to do something with me? And then he and I can just stroll off, just like that and at least whatever happens after that won’t be happening to him.

  Taking a breath, I shake out my shoulders, running my fingers through my hair. Act cool, Red; look casual, Red; just be normal, Red.

  Leo sees me as I approach and starts shaking his head, covertly gesturing for me to go the other way, but I just keep going, minding my own business, playing it cool, like I haven’t noticed more than ten massive guys crowding by the bridge.

  Until I’m almost on the top of them.

  ‘Hey, Leo, man,’ I say, trying to sound casual and surprised. ‘Oh hi, guys.’

  (Oh hi, guys? I couldn’t sound more fake if I tried.)

  I look around at the rest of the crew, all of them older and bigger and scarier than me, and more importantly suddenly all looking right at me, like I’m a skinny, ginger little insect they could squash with a single stomp.

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ Aaron grabs Leo by the arm, and drags him away from the main group. I follow, determined to stick to Leo like glue.

  ‘Did you tell it what we were doing?’ He kind of growls, and when I see him up close I can see why Leo is so worried. He’s out of it. Strung-out wired, you can see it in his face, which is kind of twisted. There are spots of spit around his mouth and his pupils are huge and black, wiping out every trace of colour from his eyes. Like a zombie, almost. A really angry zombie.

  ‘What? No!’ I say, playing the idiot. ‘What are you doing? Hey, is there a party or something? Leo, you didn’t tell me there was a party, dude, not cool. Where is it? Can I come? And oh, by the way, I’m not an “it” I’m a she.’

  My theory is the more annoying I am, the more disruptive and challenging I am, the more likely it is that Aaron will just tell Leo to go just to get shot of me.

  But my theory doesn’t work.

  ‘Listen Thing.’ Aaron gets right up close to me. Close enough for me to see the tiny rim of colour that encircles his dilated pupils, the sweat oozing out of his pores, and smell his rancid breath. Close enough that my heart thunders in my chest and I wish I was anywhere else but here right now. ‘Now you are here, you ain’t going nowhere. You’re with me until this is done and afterwards, if you say anything to anyone about this, then I’ll be introducing you to my mate.’

  He sounds so much like a soap opera villain that I’d laugh if it wasn’t for the fact that he doesn’t have to do much to reveal the weight and shape of the gun in his tracksuit bottoms. That piece of metal makes it all very real.

  I nod.

  ‘Now stay out of the fucking way.’

  He turns back to the others and Leo pulls me deeper under the archway, as far away from them as we can get, shaking his head.

  ‘What the fuck are you playing at?’ he asks angrily. ‘I told you not to come. Now we are both fucked, Red.’

  ‘You didn’t actually say don’t come and I’m trying to help you,’ I say. ‘Of course I have to help you. What’s going on here? What are they waiting for? Cos they aren’t exactly inconspicuous, are they?’

  ‘See that snooker club over there?’ Leo nods across the road and I see what looks to me like a run-down bar or something, but with a sign made of a snooker triangle filled with balls. ‘They are waiting for a guy to come out of there. Then . . . then I don’t know, Red. Look, when it kicks off just go, OK? Just leg it in the other direction.’

  ‘Come with me,’ I urge him.

  ‘I can’t. Aaron will kill me.’

  When he says it, it doesn’t sound like a figure of speech.

  Aaron gets a text on his phone and suddenly the whole group is alert, tuned in to what could happen next, like a pack of wolves about to go on the hunt.

  ‘Right, this is it.’ Aaron eyeballs the group. ‘Get ready.’

  Nobody pays that much attention to the regular city background noise of the sirens until they are really close, just across the road, and I see traffic pulling out of the way to make way for . . . fire engines. Two of them. They come to a stop in front of the snooker hall, and a team of fire fighters rush out, running inside the club.

  ‘What the . . . fuck?’ Aaron’s shoulders drop, he shakes his head. ‘What the actual fuck? You couldn’t make it up!’

  The tension and aggression that knits the group together gradually disperses, as they stand around, watching as people come pouring out of the club and onto the street, slowly realising that whatever they had planned is not going to happen now.

  ‘Well fuck that.’ Aaron turns to us. ‘Fuck it. Who’s holding?’

  ‘I got something,’ a voice comes.

  ‘Let’s get fucked up, then,’ Aaron says and just like that, he stalks away, his mates in his wake. But the only thing I care about is the direction that he is going in, which is away from us.

  Three or four beats pass and I breathe out.

  ‘What just happened?’

  I look at Leo.

  ‘I mean what are the chances of that happening, just then?’ Leo says.

  ‘Pretty high when someone you know calls 999 in order to save your arse,’ Ash says, appearing at our sides.

  ‘You did that?’ I laugh, drunk with relief. ‘Ash, you’re a genius! You just defeated a bunch of tooled-up gangsters.’

  ‘Yeah, well.’ She shrugs. ‘Someone needs to take care of you all . . . Nai’s going to need you when she wakes up. And anyway, it really didn’t take much effort. After I spoke to you I got the tube to Brixton, located you and then when I saw the situation, because – no offence Leo, your brother and his dickwads have got all the subtlety of a fucking nuclear explosion – I called in the cavalry. Not the police, because that’s snitching. Fire Brigade. I checked the scanners to make sure and there weren’t any major fires happening in the area, first, otherwise I’d have had to have thought of something else. Bomb scare, maybe.’

  Leo
and I both stare at her and she stands there, her long hair neatly plaited, her too-new denim jacket buttoned all the way up to the top. She’s like Wonder Woman, the awkward years.

  It’s crazy how high I am, how much I feel like laughing my head off or running around. All of a sudden I feel invincible, powerful and that is fucking stupid. If that’s what being in danger and not dying does to you, then evolution has got a lot to answer for. I am a stupid fucking kid who got into a stupid fucking situation and I feel brilliant. That can’t be right.

  ‘I got to get home to Mum,’ Leo says, ‘and then we got to get out of there, Aaron’s out of control now.’

  ‘Yes, good, let’s do that, I’ll come with you,’ Ash says. ‘But just stop for a minute. Just stop. I need to tell you both something. Something important.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I reply. Ash doesn’t give much away, but I know one thing about her for sure. She doesn’t do drama for the hell of it.

  ‘This morning I got a hit from one of the combinations of the tattoo.’

  ‘You mean you found a website?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Ash nods, her face is grey. ‘On the dark web. It wasn’t too hard to get in once I found it, I guess most people don’t look. It’s a . . . it’s a site where men post about children, the kids they groom and rape. The tattoo. It’s a secret symbol, half of a design that is part of a whole, semi circle becomes a circle, triangle a diamond. The other half is tattooed on the person that owns the girl, but in white ink, so only he’d know it was there. It’s a slave stamp. Someone tattooed a fucking slave stamp on my sister.

  ‘Oh Christ.’ Leo turns from hammering his fist into a wall.

  I shut my eyes, trying to close out the images of just some of the things that Naomi might have been through. ‘Oh God, oh no.’

  Ash’s face is wrought with pain, but still she has more to say. ‘Sometimes, if the images of the girl are very popular and in demand, they persuade her to run away with one of them. The guy tells her he loves her, he isolates her from her friends and family and says they have to leave to be together and then . . . Then the guy imprisons her and lets the other men on the site know when and where they can take a turn.’