Keeping it Real (15 page)

Since the afternoon of the evil hell turd, I hadn’t risked even setting foot on that bridge, let alone crossing it, so I’d never seen the actual site of the leak. I suspect that’s why I’d been invited along. Brice thought it was time I knew the score.

One thing’s for sure; words like ‘crack’ and ‘leak’ don’t come anywhere near describing the hyperactive evil portal in the boys’ changing rooms.

I backed in revulsion from the swirling sucking thing in the floor, then got a double jolt of horror as I saw the ghostly green graffiti on the changing room wall, the words still visible through the watered-down emulsion. YOU WON’T GET AWAY WITH IT SHAY.

The graffiti was quite old, yet the hate vibes coming at me from the wall still packed enough of a cosmic punch to make me physically shaky.

I heard myself stuttering, “Did - did the EAs ever find out how that crack started?”

Brice’s tone was super-casual. “Not really. They’ve got a few theories. We know when it appeared though,” he added, like he just thought he’d mention it. “It was exactly the same time as your funeral.”

Chapter Eighteen

M
r Allbright once gave out this cute little print-out explaining why the Universe is exactly like your ideal soul-mate.

One example I remember is that when the Universe sends you helpful signs, and you totally refuse to pay attention, instead of going into a major huff and washing its hands of you, it generously sends bigger, even more disturbing, signs, until weeks, or maybe it’s centuries, later, you finally get the message.

I’m only telling you this because I was just about to get a deeply disturbing sign.

It was the evening of the dress rehearsal and the night before the show. The rehearsal went brilliantly. Jordie was over his cold, Magic Boy had recovered from his mysterious ‘injury’, and Marlon stood on his mark like a pro.

Unfortunately it was Jools’ night to baby-sit the Powers of Darkness, which was a shame, because for the first time the kids were performing to a select audience. At least ten other teachers joined Mr Lupton and Miss Rowntree in the hall for a preview of PURE VIBES.

Afterwards they seemed genuinely impressed, though I did see two female teachers tutting over Sky’s tiny clingy dress.

Sky seemed as delighted as everyone else that things had gone so well. I actually saw her throw her arms round Karmen and give her a genuinely affectionate hug.

Karmen’s eyes narrowed suddenly. “What’s this in your hair, girl?” She tried to pick off the teeny acid-green splodge.

Sky winced away, laughing. “Ow, don’t! It’s paint, you muppet! I’ve been helping my brothers decorate their room and of course Olly has to start a paint fight! Now their bunk beds look exactly like modern art!”

I felt as if all the breath had been knocked out of me. That’s because I knew something Karms and Jax couldn’t possibly know.

It was a cute family picture Sky was painting, but the only time she went back to her mum’s these days was to blag money off Dan, and grab a change of clothes.

And for the record, the green paint in her hair was not the kind you use in a little kid’s room. It was the kind you get in a spray can. The kind bored or angry kids use to spray graffiti.

I just beamed myself straight to the Nolans’ flat.

I was literally frantic, pushing my head into closed drawers and cupboards, almost sobbing, “Don’t let it be here, please please please don’t let it be here.” I was abusing the cosmic angels’ gift to invade my friend’s privacy and it felt like the most shameful thing ever.

When I finally found the aerosol cans, wrapped in her paint-stained hoody, I still couldn’t take it in. I found myself making excuses for her; she’d had a disturbed childhood, the graffiti at the Cosmic Cafe was just a stupid one-off, any number of kids could have splattered those other hate-filled words around Park Hall.

But I knew it had always been Sky.

I beamed back to Matilda Street and pounded up flights of stairs to the room where Jools was babysitting the PODS.

Lately, this door was always kept shut but I rushed in without even knocking. “Jools!” I gasped. “Something awful’s—”

Jools practically dived to block my view of the monitors, in a belated attempt to stop me seeing the devastating sight.

I couldn’t move.

There Sky was caught on camera, just letting herself through the shabby back door. I glimpsed shadowy stairs and a floor littered with junk mail, then the door closed.

“She had a key?” I whispered. “She had a key to that house?”

Night after night, Sky had waved laughing goodbyes to the other Pinks and gone straight to this evil place.

Jools was in tears. “I’m so sorry, Mel.”

“Were you ever going to tell me?” I asked numbly.

“It just never felt like the right time,” she almost wailed. “You were doing so well with the others. We started to think maybe you could help Sky too. When she agreed to be in the show, we all thought that was such a hopeful sign. I still think that production could turn her around.”

“She doesn’t care zip about the show,” I said in a bleak voice. “Jordie’s right not to trust her. It’s Sky who’s been writing all that hate graffiti about Shay - that’s what I came to tell you.”

Jools looked genuinely shocked. “How do you know?”

“Karms spotted green paint in her hair. I checked Sky’s room and found, well,
evidence
.” I let out a choking sob. “It’s almost funny - on my way back here I thought things were about as bad as they could be. But they were so,
so
much worse!”

Jools was practically wringing her hands. “She’s not a bad person, Mel, you have to believe that. That girl is just so totally desperate to belong to someone.”

I sat down and covered my face. “Let’s face it -you’ve got to be a tiny bit desperate to date a PODS,” I said with a slightly hysterical laugh.

“No, I swear,” Jools said in a pleading voice. “We checked that out. He’s just an unsavoury human boy sharing a really unsavoury squat.”

“Unsavoury! Hello!!” I said from behind my hands.

I wasn’t mad at the earth angels. I was mad at myself.

The Universe had sent enough signs. The instant I heard that ringtone, I knew.
Something bad HAS happened to her
, Helix had said.

Without me to keep her on track, Sky had taken a wrong
wrong
turning. Now she couldn’t turn back; she had too much hate and pain stored up in her heart. Did she even know why she hated Shay so much, or did she just need someone to hate? I couldn’t begin to guess the answers.

I just knew one thing. Tomorrow, a troubled girl with an evil boyfriend was presenting a show in a school with a dangerous cosmic leak; and there wasn’t a thing we could do to stop her.

Chapter Nineteen

J
ax and Karms had insisted all performers should be backstage one hour at least before the world premiere of PURE VIBES kicked off.

They all made it, even Magic Boy. One of the girls from an R&B group called the Hussies had to be sick in the toilets, but at least she was there!

The first act was unannounced. Twenty kids in dazzling white judo suits just exploded on to the stage and did an electrifying display of a Brazilian martial arts form called Kapoeira, the closest thing I’ve seen to angelic fighting styles.

The kids ran off to astonished applause and Sky flew on to introduce the second act. In the wings, for just an instant, she’d gone deathly white, but now she was at the mike for real, you wouldn’t think she had a nerve in her body. She was actually better than in rehearsals - maybe because the audience so obviously loved her - and she was getting all those warm vibes streaming back.

Sky used to say the thing in comedy is timing. When we screamed with laughter at one of her fave female comics, she’d tell us, “It’s all about timing, guys. OK, it’s partly how she says it, but that’s not nearly so important as when.”

Possibly it’s the same with revenge.

Sky waited so long for the moment she and the boyfriend had planned, I started to think Jools had got it right. Like the other Pinks, Sky had finally, and miraculously, turned a corner.

You know what? I think that almost happened.

All that warm human approval flooding back from the audience did start to penetrate some frozen place in Sky that angel vibes couldn’t reach; showing my friend not just what she could be, but who she really was.

When she ran on to introduce the Hussies, she looked so lovely and luminous that I almost dared to hope.

Jordie’s was the last act but one. The idea was to hand the audience over to the Vibe Tribe totally buzzing, so they could lift the roof with a final feelgood set which they’d dedicated, touchingly, to my memory.

Before Sky could go out to introduce him, Jordie barged right past her on to the stage. “I don’t need no freaking introduction,” he growled over his shoulder. “I’m gonna just storm on and slay all the people dead with my charisma!”

Jordie’s rap was called Pressure, and it was about the pressures of growing up in Park Hall. As he prowled around the stage, spitting lyrics, you could see parents becoming visibly moved. Through this furious, rapping boy, they could almost feel how hard it was for their kids.

After long talks with Karmen, Jordie’s rap had acquired an almost hopeful ending. The Hussies slipped back on stage, becoming his backing singers as he rapped more softly:

“Used to be some forests when this world was new.

Then evolution carbonise ‘em. Same with me and you.

Pressure keep a coming, squeezin’ diamonds outa coal.

Same thing happenin’ to us kids in Park Hall.”

The audience went crazy. People stomped and shouted. Jordie stormed off stage the way he came on, but he was almost crying now.

I was in the wings when Sky went on to introduce the final act. She took the mike from the stand and waited until the audience calmed down.

“Well, guys, it’s almost the end of our show, and the Vibe Tribe are waiting in the wings to play their special tribute for Mel.”

Sky’s voice always took on a special serious tone for her final link. “Everyone who knew Mel knows she would have been loving this show. Sadly she can’t be with us. Just a few hours after her thirteen birthday, she was tragically killed. But we’ve all felt her with us while we were rehearsing and she’s particularly in our thoughts today.”

Sky deliberately threw down her cue cards. “I know Jordan Hickman must be thinking about Mel a lot,” she said in a conversational voice.

Karms and Jax exchanged alarmed glances. This wasn’t in the script.

“I always wonder how he can even get those lyrics out,” Sky said in the same chatty tone. “They must break him up. That bit about ‘trying to run faster than the murder machine, and he can’t find the brake pedal and the wheels keep turning’. That’s so exactly how that joy-rider must have felt when he murdered Mel.”

A chilling new vibe was creeping into the hall.

People in the audience looked uncomfortable as Sky babbled on about Jordie’s lyrics.

“Get her off, Jordie,” Jax hissed. “Do another rap if you have to.”

When Sky saw Jordie coming out of the wings, she gave a theatrical gasp. “Jordie, I’m SO sorry!! I just realised you probably didn’t even know?” She looked down at her fingernails and there was an electric silence in the hall. When she looked up again, there was a weird little smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

“You probably had no idea who was driving that stolen car?”

She deliberately met Jordie’s eyes.

“You genuinely didn’t know it was your brother who’d killed my best friend,” she said in a breathy insincere voice.

There was a collective gasp.

“Poor Jordie,” Sky sighed. “What a truly terrible way for you to find out - in front of all these people!”

And not only for Jordie.

My knees had totally gone from under me. I was hearing screaming brakes and smelling burning rubber. I saw raw rusty metal and a white terrified face: the last face I’d seen in this world.

Now that face finally had a name.