Follow Me Back

by Nicci Cloke

  The policewoman, the one who seems to be doing all the talking, nods and passes Selby a brown cardboard folder, a thin thing, like the kind you find in a filing cabinet. He looks down at it, takes a step back, and ushers them both into his office. I feel a shiver travel through me as I wonder what’s in that file.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket and I slip it out as the door to Selby’s office shuts. It’s a Facebook notification: one new message. I unlock the keypad and open my inbox.

  Cheska Summersall.

  Whoa. Probably the very last name I expected to see.

  Hey, she writes. Want to talk to you

  She’s friend-requested me as well. Despite the fact I think Cheska Summersall is the worst kind of human, I accept. Curious, I guess. And you know what they say about curiosity.

  Sure, I type, even though the thought fills me with dread. Seeing as I’m pretty sure Cheska Summersall previously had no idea I even existed, I guess she’s yet another person to hear about the police interviewing me.

  It takes her exactly thirty seconds to reply.

  Are you free tomorrow afternoon?

  I have a free fifth period so after 2.30, yeah

  Cool

  And that’s it. Nothing else. I flick back to my newsfeed and see an update she’s posted two minutes ago.

  Cheska Summersall is excited about this week’s shoot! It’s getting juicyyyyyy!! ;-)

  When her sixteen-year-old sister’s missing. See what I mean? Worst. Kind. Of. Human.

  Spoilt in the Suburbs has been filmed in and around Abbots Grey for two years now. It was meant to be a one-hour documentary about wealthy teenagers in the home counties, but when the producers came here to scout for possible locations, and started interviewing a few of the kids who would eventually become the cast, they quickly decided it had more than enough material to carry a show all by itself. The first series was a smash hit, despite the fact that the ‘acting’ is really awful (although everyone involved in the show swears it isn’t acted or scripted and is all about real people and real lives). It focuses mostly on who’s sleeping with who, who’s throwing a party that episode, and who will have an argument with who at that party. Cheska got a smallish part towards the end of the first series, and she’s been working pretty hard to make herself the star ever since.

  ‘Hey,’ someone says beside me, and I jump. I’ve been too busy glaring at Cheska’s profile picture (her in a bikini, from a cast promo shoot for Spoilt in the Suburbs) to notice Scobie come up beside me.

  ‘Hey,’ I say, pulling my bag off the seat next to me so he can sit down.

  ‘Police are about again today,’ he says.

  I nod. ‘They’re in with Selby.’

  ‘Birchall reckons they’re gonna start interviewing everyone in our year.’

  ‘Really?’ Ollie Birchall is the biggest gossip going, but, as the son of one of our deputy heads, he’s usually accurate when it comes to school stuff.

  ‘Yeah.’ Scobie takes off his glasses and fiddles with them, frowning. ‘I dunno, sounds like she’s just gone. Without a trace. How is that even possible?’

  I shake my head. ‘I don’t know.’ I think about our conversations, the words on my laptop screen. Without a trace. It doesn’t feel that way to me.

  He sighs. ‘God. Lizzie. I really hope she’s just run away. It could still be that, right? She’s off having fun somewhere?’

  I nod, because it’s the kind thing to do, because it’s what I want to hope too. ‘Yeah, probably. Maybe she had a row with Cheska or something.’

  Scobie gives a half-hearted smile but doesn’t say anything, and we sit and watch Selby’s closed office door. A few of the girls in our year come in, giggling about something. I notice Lauren Choosken, Deacon Honeycutt’s on-again off-again girlfriend, among them and look quickly away.

  Scobie picks my book up and looks at it. ‘Any good?’

  I shrug. ‘Yeah, it’s alright. Sad.’

  He puts it down. ‘Done your Pure yet?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Want me to help? Don’t want to give poor old Ladlow one of his migraines.’

  ‘You sure?’ I’m already taking my book out of my bag.

  ‘No worries.’

  I work my way through the questions, picking my way through Scobie’s minuscule writing to check I’m doing the working the same way he has. Occasionally he glances over and helps, but mostly he just plays a game on his phone. He gets a bit itchy if he’s away from some kind of CGI for more than ten minutes.

  I’ve just finished, feeling a bit of the satisfaction I usually get from looking at pages of completed maths – there’s something about the logic of it, the neatness of the numbers – and I’m passing Scobie’s book back to him when Selby and the two officers come out of his room. We both watch them as they head down the stairs towards the playground. Scobie looks at his watch.

  ‘Feel like going into town for lunch?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, stuffing my books back in my bag. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  After school, Marnie is waiting for me by my car.

  ‘Look at this,’ she says, and she flips her phone round to show me Hal Paterson’s profile page. It’s a locked profile, and she’s obviously accessed it from her own account, not Lizzie’s, because all that’s visible is the public stuff: his profile picture, the number of friends she has in common with him. Which is one: Lizzie. He doesn’t have a network so it just says his location, London. There’s a little blue box saying ‘Friend request sent’ where she’s tried to add him, and I wonder how long she’ll wait for him to accept.

  ‘You friend-requested him?’ I ask, my mouth dry.

  ‘Not that,’ she says, exasperated, and she scrolls down. Way, way down. There isn’t very much to see – he keeps everything locked tight. Just some people he’s added as friends, some apps he’s used. ‘Look,’ she says again, thrusting the phone closer to my face.

  But all I see are the same things. Hal Paterson is playing Burger Battle. Hal Paterson scored 30 points on Jungle Fever. Hal Paterson scored Spider-Man on the quiz ‘Which Marvel hero are you?’

  ‘I don’t see anything, Marnie,’ I say. ‘So he wastes a lot of time on the internet. Big deal.’

  She rolls her eyes and zooms in a bit. ‘Look at the location.’

  And then I see it. Underneath the post about the quiz, Facebook’s location services have added, ‘Near Kings Lyme’.

  Kings Lyme, as in the town only a couple of miles down the road. Kings Lyme, as in not London.

  ‘See?’ Marnie says. ‘Now do you get it? Maybe she didn’t meet him online after all.’

  INSTEAD OF GOING home, I drive straight to Scobie’s, Marnie’s words ringing in my ears. I keep thinking of Lizzie, under that spotlight in the drama studio. At home, crouched in front of her laptop. The same confused, desperate four words batting around inside my head: Where has she gone?

  The Scobies live in a neat little townhouse down by the river. I park my car next to some railings overlooking the riverbank, waiting for an old couple to pass my door before I get out. The water is steel-grey and swift, the ducks huddled into themselves as the current sweeps them along. We’re not far from the town centre, which also hugs the river, but it’s quiet here, with little traffic. If I glance behind me, I can still see the spires of Aggers rising spitefully over the houses.

  I cross the road and head for the Scobies’, number seven, in the middle of the little stretch of five identical houses. The front doors are all framed by perfect white pillars, and the windows all have black iron grilles fitted over them, curly and ornate. On the street where I grew up, when we put bars over our windows, we just put bars over them. Here, they have to be a feature.

  Scobie’s brother answers the door – Liam, the eldest. He’s the opposite to Scobie – tall and broad where Scobes is short and skinny – but they have the same white-blond hair, and the same round, pale blue eyes.

  ‘Alright, Aiden,’ he says, opening the door w
ider to invite me in. ‘How’s that hamstring?’

  Liam’s studying sports science at uni and has taken much more of an interest in me since he found out I play football. He knows more about my ligaments than I do.

  ‘It’s good,’ I say. ‘Hasn’t given me any more trouble.’

  ‘Good stuff.’ He loses interest instantly. ‘Tom’s upstairs.’

  On the way up the stairs, I hear thuds coming from one of the rooms, and a computerised voice.

  ‘Right foot two step! Left foot one step! Slide! Sliiiiiiide! You’ve got the moves!’

  ‘Hey, Frank,’ I say, sticking my head into Scobie’s little brother’s room. Aged six, he is the cutest kid I’ve ever met – super happy, like, all the time, and really polite. He wears glasses like Scobes but his hair’s a darker kind of blond than his brothers’ and his face is rounder, softer than theirs. He waves at me from his dance mat where he’s puffing away, his cheeks pink, and I carry on down the hall.

  Scobie’s door is closed as always. It’s dark blue, like all the other doors in the house, but Scobie’s taken full advantage of this and posted a ‘Police Public Call Box’ sign across the top to make it look like the Tardis. I really love this kid.

  I knock, and from inside I can hear the muted bleeps of Facebook Messenger.

  ‘Yeah?’

  I open the door and stick my head in. ‘Hey.’

  He’s at his desk with his back to me, and he swivels round, his face surprised. ‘Hey. What’s up?’

  Scobie’s room is tiny; most of the space taken up by his big wooden desk and his giant, glowing Mac, his pride and joy. The walls are bare and dark blue, and the only personal thing he has around is a framed photo on the windowsill of him, Liam and Frank, when Frank was about three or four. I sink down on the narrow bed.

  ‘I kind of need your help,’ I say.

  He spins the chair properly to face me. ‘At your service.’

  ‘It’s about Lizzie,’ I tell him, and he wrinkles his face as if to say No surprise there. ‘It’s like everyone’s saying, she’d met some guy online. Marnie got into her Facebook.’

  ‘Marnie Daniels?’ He pulls a face. ‘Huh. Impressive.’

  ‘Yeah, well, it didn’t get us very far. Reckon you could see what you can dig up on him?’

  Scobie nods. ‘Sure.’ He’s practically flexing his fingers with glee. This is Scobie’s idea of fun. Information – finding it, storing it, sharing it – is his thing. I haven’t met his dad – Scobie never talks about him, so all I know is that he left when he was like six – but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear he was Steve Jobs. Or Julian Assange maybe – they even kind of look alike.

  He’s already swung back round to face the extra-large screen. ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Hal Paterson. With one t.’

  He types it into the search bar and the Facebook profile page comes up as the first entry. He clicks on it and scrolls through.

  ‘Not much here,’ he says. ‘It’s pretty private.’ His mouse hovers over the tab that says Friends: 57. ‘Hmm,’ he says, and shakes his head.

  He clicks on the profile picture and we scan through the album. Only four pictures: the sunglasses one, a bright orange sunset, a group of boys in rugby shirts, and a yellow Labrador.

  ‘Hmm.’ Scobie clicks through them again.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Dodgy,’ he says, right-clicking on the first one, the one in sunglasses. ‘Real people have profile pictures. And friends.’

  My heart starts to skip. ‘So you don’t think he’s a real person?’

  ‘Nope.’ He opens up a search page and clicks on a tab that says ‘Images’. He pastes the photo in and hits ‘Search’. I watch the little pinwheel spin as it loads, and now my heart feels like it’s going ninety miles an hour.

  1 match.

  ‘Bingo,’ Scobie says, and he clicks on the link.

  Another Facebook page. Only this one belongs to a James McArthur (University of Liverpool). James McArthur has 562 friends. James McArthur has at least twenty pictures in his Profile Pictures album.

  ‘Oh,’ I say, the wind knocked out of me, but Scobie is already back on Hal Paterson’s page. He copies the picture of the rugby boys and puts it through the search engine. This time the pinwheel seems to spin for an eternity.

  1 match.

  Another Facebook page. Grant Marlowe (Sussex Boys’ School). Friends: 712.

  ‘Stolen,’ Scobie says triumphantly, and I nod numbly.

  He’s already back on the ‘Hal Paterson’ profile, and this time he actually clicks on the Friends tab. He goes through the list, and then turns to me. ‘See? All of these people are totally random – they’re from the States, Australia, Malaysia. There’s no, like, one network where he has loads of friends, like a school or a uni or whatever.’

  ‘He’s not real,’ I say. I feel shivery, my heart sinking like lead. Scobie is unravelling this profile effortlessly, without even trying. And Lizzie. Lizzie fell for it. Where is she? I think again, desperately.

  Scobie looks back at the screen, at the photo of the guy – James McArthur – in sunglasses. ‘He might be real,’ he says, ‘but that’s not him.’

  How was your day?

  good thanks

  You?

  yeah, good

  Good

  how’d your audition go?

  ok, I think!

  what about yours?

  yeah fine

  we find out tomorrow

  eeeeek

  who’d you want to be?

  i don’t mind

  Bottom it is then

  haha

  probably!

  Can I ask you something?

  you just did

  lol

  Nah, kidding – course, go ahead

  what do you think of it here?

  Here, like abbots grey?

  yeah

  erm…

  it’s fine

  nice

  the people are

  …

  polite

  haha

  you hate it

  lol

  nah

  I don’t hate it, it’s just different to what im used to

  I hate it sometimes

  so fake

  yeah… it is a bit

  Did you hear about that tv show they’re gonna film here?

  yeah think so, it’s like a reality thing right?

  i think so

  just saw the audition ad cos Jorgie reposted it

  haha fancy it?

  god no

  that’s my actual worst nightmare

  not a reality show fan?

  they’re not even reality

  they’re scripted

  it’s so…urgh

  tell me about it

  all the girls at my old school went mad for that stuff

  haha bet you hung out with loads of girls didn’t you…

  ;)

  nah, not exactly

  Yeah right

  I was dedicated to football i’ll have you know

  far too busy

  lol

  suuuuure

  haha

  So you ready for English tomorrow?

  no why???

  we’re doing the court scene!

  omg

  I forgot

  tut tut Mayella

  haha

  I wanted to be Scout so bad

  I love that book

  to kill a mockingbird? yeah it’s good

  so good

  who did you get for tomorrow?

  Jem

  Oooh big time!

  haha I know

  pressure

  that scene is so sad

  I know

  Dickheads

  lol

  yeah they are

  so what are you up to tonight?

  learning my lines now!

  but also family dinner, it’s my mum’s birthday

  ah nice

  not really
/>   my dad’s working late so she’s upset

  also she can’t cook

  aww that sucks

  What’s he do?

  He’s a doctor

  at the hospital in kings lyme

  oh right

  cool

  he works a lot

  but I guess it’s important

  yeah

  what do your parents do?

  Dad does bathrooms

  Mum’s an architect but she’s taking some time off at the moment

  wow that’s cool

  my little sister wants to be an architect

  she’s seven though

  haha

  when i was seven i wanted to be a vet

  me too!!!

  lol no way

  yeah

  I used to have a ladybird hospital in our shed

  hahaha ahh bless

  I don’t think many of them made it

  it was more like a ladybird prison

  evil Lizzie

  lol yeah

  so what happened to the vet plan?

  i found out you had to be good at science

  haha yeah think it helps

  and you?

  I found football

  is that really what you want to be? Footballer?

  yeah… I know it’s a kinda crazy career plan

  no it’s cool

  it’s amazing you have something you love that much

  yeah I guess. just need a back-up!

  that’s what my parents keep telling me

  anyway I should go

  Birthday dinner calls!

  have fun!

  see you at school tomorrow

  You will x

  ‘YO, KENDICK!’

  Great. Honeycutt. I haven’t even made it out of the car park yet; what a lovely way to start a day. I ignore him and keep walking.

  ‘Talking to you, Rapeface.’

  I spin round. ‘What’s your problem, Deacon?’

  He spreads his palms out in a fake gesture of innocence, grinning. ‘Haven’t got a problem. Just saying hi.’

  ‘Yeah, well I do have a problem with being called a rapist.’

  He pokes out his bottom lip, like an Aww, baby face. ‘Just a bit of banter, mate.’

  I turn back round and keep walking. Don’t lose your temper. Do. Not. Lose. Your. Temper. I can’t do that again. I can’t.