Kisses and Lies (8 page)

I sit for ages, staring at the heavy vellum paper. This is proving really hard to write. All these lies. And even though I tell myself that, by finding out how Dan died, I’m doing what his parents would surely want, what happens if it turns out that the truth of his death is something they would much rather never have known?

I shiver.

really kind of you to let me. I am having a very hard time with what happened, as you must be too. I do feel that maybe by meeting up with you and your family Dan’s brother and sister, and talking about it, we would all feel better afterward, even if it’s weird difficult.

My phone number, address, and e-mail are below. Please get in touch with me when you can. I could come up to where you live if that’s easiest. I hope you will say yes.

Best wishes Very sincerely,

Scarlett Wakefield

I stare at the black ink for a while, thinking about what this means. I’m angling for an invitation to meet the McAndrews—the family of the boy who died in my arms. I remember Mr. and Mrs. McAndrew at the inquest, though I could hardly look at them, it was so upsetting. Mrs. McAndrew cried all the time, and Mr. McAndrew might have been carved from a single piece of granite. Am I really considering sitting down with them face to face and talking with them? Even if it’s the one chance I have of getting close to Callum and Lucy?

I read the letter over. I don’t think it expresses everything as well as I would want to, but it’ll have to do. God, I think that was the hardest thing I ever had to write, harder even than the Tacitus essay last week, which strained my brain so much I thought blood was going to spurt from both my ears.

I’m trying very hard not to think about the fact that, if this comes off and I find out that Callum is in any way involved, through his girlfriend Lucy even, that would be horrendous news for the McAndrews. I know that might be a possibility, awful though it would be. But not for a moment does it make me think I should stop here, while I still can, with the knowledge that I have no responsibility for Dan’s death apart from having accidentally eaten the wrong thing and kissing him afterward.

I can’t stop, though. I have to keep going. I have to find out the truth even if it burns me and everyone else involved with it.

Dan died in my arms. I’ll do whatever I can to find out how that happened. I owe that to him.

And maybe when I find out the truth, I’ll stop having nightmares.

ROUGH JUSTICE

“Taylor! No bouncing! How many times do I have to tell you?” shouts Miss Carter. The last bit is clearly not a question, as she doesn’t wait for a response, but continues: “This is netball. We do not bounce in netball!”

“Sorry, Miss Carter!” Taylor yells, shoving her hair back. Her face is corrugated into one enormous frown, her dark brows pulled down so far that I can barely see her eyes.

“You’re in England now,” Miss Carter says, rather unnecessarily, as I feel Taylor is all too aware of which country she’s in.

“Sharon Persaud bounces in netball,” I mutter to Taylor in an attempt to cheer her up. Like me, Sharon Persaud has a well-developed chestal area, but unlike me, Sharon has clearly not bothered to work out that she needs to wear a minimizer and a sports bra to stop her boobs swinging around like a pair of oranges being juggled by a blind person. The effect actually adds to Sharon’s general scariness on the sports pitch—not only has she apparently taken out at least one girl’s front teeth with her terrifying lavender hockey stick, but as she plows toward you, her boobs look like extra weapons, bouncing violently in all directions.

Taylor doesn’t even snigger at my joke. She takes team sports incredibly seriously. Which I don’t, not in the same way. I spent years and years doing gymnastics, which is really competitive, of course, but although technically you’re on a team, when it counts it’s just you and you alone out there on the bars or on the mat. I preferred it like that: being dependent on no one but myself, and trying to better my own best performance. It’s funny, because Taylor is actually more of a loner than I am. But she loves team sports, which is why she’s trying so hard to excel at netball. Even though, because she’s used to basketball, she keeps trying to bounce the ball.  .  .  .

“Right, net practice!” Miss Carter blows her whistle. “Blue team, stretches; red team, practice shots! Five minutes each team and then change over. Off you go, girls!”

Taylor and I, wearing blue tabards over our T-shirts and gym skirts, run over to the side of the netball court where the rest of the blue team is heading for stretches.

“Front splits?” Taylor suggests. We sit down facing each other on the cold tarmac, our legs wide. I put my feet against the inside of her thighs and we clasp each other’s forearms. I lean back, pulling her toward me.

“Nose to the ground,” I chant, “nose to the ground  .  .  .”

“Ow!” Taylor says as I pull her forward, straighter and straighter.

“You’re lucky I’m not sitting on your back,” I say. “Ricky, my gym coach, used to come around and do that. Honestly, sometimes I thought something was going to split, he weighed so much.”

“Scarlett! Taylor!” a familiar voice cries faintly.

Taylor pulls on my arms so I’m sitting upright again.

“Guess who?” she whispers. “It’s the neediest girl in the world!”

“Be nice, okay?” I turn my head to watch through the net surrounding the court as Lizzie runs toward us across the grass of the hockey pitches. “All we do is bully her and make her do things she doesn’t want to do.”

“Yeah, well, she’s like a Lab my aunt used to have. My cousins were really mean to that dog, they’d kick it and tease it and pull its ears, and it still ran after them, wagging its tail. ’Cause it would rather have negative attention than none at all,” Taylor says cynically.

“Could you be any more depressing?”

“Plumgotexpelled!” Lizzie cries. “Plumgotexpelled!”

She crashes into the netting and hangs there, holding on to it with both hands, panting like—well, the Labrador Taylor was just talking about. To be honest, it’d be a fair comparison.

“Ijustheard! Venetiatextedme! Plumgotexpelled!” she gasps.

“Because of the YouTube clip?” Taylor asks.

Lizzie nods, winded. People in the smart set are finally letting her in enough and giving her real gossip, which she is obviously salivating over. This is not good. Still, I have to pretend I’m not bothered by this.

“Well, even St. Tabby’s wouldn’t exactly be keen on one of its pupils being filmed doing drugs,” I say.

“That’s not all!” Lizzie’s recovered some breath, enough to allow her to space her words out a bit more. “It was Nadia! Nadia put that clip on YouTube!”

Taylor and I look at each other. I can see that she’s processing this information as fast as I am, and coming to the same conclusion.

“It can’t be a coincidence,” Taylor says.

I shake my head.

“What can’t?” Lizzie asks eagerly. But when we don’t answer, she rushes on: “I can’t believe Nadia did that to Plum! It’s like they’re at war now! I mean, they were best friends! But Nadia told Venetia it was her who did it! Isn’t it unbelievable ?”

A whistle blows practically in my ear.

“What’s going on over here?” Miss Carter bellows—again, not really a question. “I said stretch, not gossip! Lizzie Livermore, stop distracting Taylor and Scarlett right now or I’ll make you jog round the hockey pitches!”

Lizzie falls away from the netting immediately, eyes and mouth so wide with horror at the thought of jogging that everyone bursts out laughing. Miss Carter blows her whistle again.

“Switch over, girls! Blues shoot, reds stretch! And Taylor—”

“No bouncing!” the entire courtful of girls shouts back.

“You know what this means,” Taylor says as we walk back to school after netball practice.

“Nadia used us,” I say. “She got us to wipe that video from Plum’s phone and then she put up the video she had of Plum.”

“No question,” Taylor says. “They must have been in this Mexican standoff.”

“Mexican standoff?”

“It’s like you’re each holding a gun on each other, so neither of you wants to shoot ’cause then the other one would too.”

“Why is that Mexican?” I’m as bemused by Taylor’s American expressions as she is by our English ones.

“No idea. But anyway, that’s probably what happened.”

I nod. “That explains why Plum didn’t show that video to anyone. I never quite believed that she wouldn’t have sent it to a few people. So I guess Nadia couldn’t show anyone the clip of Plum doing drugs—not until you deleted Plum’s clip.”

Taylor looks at me. “You pissed at Nadia?”

I think it over.

“Well, yeah, because it feels shitty to be used,” I say. “And besides, if you’d been caught going through Plum’s bag, you’d have been in real trouble.”

“Ha! As if I would have gotten caught!” Taylor says cockily.

“But honestly,” I admit, “Plum has always been an absolute cow to me. I can’t be too upset that she’s got her comeuppance.”

Plum is an awful person. And she’s only got what she deserved. I mean, there’s no one in that clip making her do drugs, or say that diets are for poor people.  .  .  .

“So, what? It’s rough justice?” Taylor asks.

“I suppose so,” I say doubtfully. “But it’s still not right. No wonder Nadia laughed like a drain when she’d answered all my questions. She got what she wanted, and she didn’t have anything that useful to tell us in return. And she sort of lied to us when she didn’t tell us why she really wanted us to delete that clip of her throwing up.”

Taylor cracks a grin.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “I wiped it off Plum’s phone. But I sent it to mine. We’ve got the dirt on Nadia anytime we want.”

I gawp at her.

“That’s awful!” I say.

“But brilliant,” Taylor says complacently. “I am an evil genius.”

In her triumph, she automatically bounces the netball she’s carrying, and immediately looks appalled.

“Some evil genius,” I tease, “you can’t even play netball properly!”

Then I duck as Taylor makes a grab for me, uttering dire threats about bouncing my head off the nearest wall. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot someone, and as Taylor makes another grab at me, I throw myself into a showy and completely unnecessary dive roll, lunging far enough away that I don’t kick Taylor in the face as I fly into it. I land on the grassy verge and roll easily. I’m on my feet again in a couple of seconds, and as I come up Taylor’s saying, sounding very indignant:

“Jeez, Scarlett! I was just messing. I wasn’t going to hurt you or anything.”

Then she sees Jase, and realizes why I was showing off. He’s standing underneath a group of elm trees, a wheel barrow and a broom propped a little way away, enough to suggest that he saw us approaching and walked out to meet us.

“Nice escape,” he says to me, his eyes glimmering. “I was wondering if you needed any help.”

I giggle. Ugh, it’s the kind of giggle I only do with boys, and I hate it. I never sound this coy or pathetic with girls.

“No, she’s not as scary as she looks,” I reply.

“Yes, I am,” Taylor says indignantly.

Jase laughs.

“I wouldn’t like to get in a fight with you,” he says to Taylor, which completely wins her over.

“Jase, this is Taylor,” I say, and then wonder if I shouldn’t have done that the other way around. Does it sound like Jase is more important to me than Taylor?

“Hey,” she says, blushing only very slightly. “Um, we met before, in the maze.”

I wish Taylor hadn’t mentioned that, because when Jase found us in the maze, Lizzie was sobbing and we were standing over her, harshly interrogating her about the anonymous “It wasn’t your fault” note, which turned out to be from conniving Nadia.

I try to nudge Taylor to get her to shut up about it, but the tips of her ears have gone pink, so it looks like she’s realized it for herself.

“That was ages ago,” I say brightly, trying to gloss over it.

Ugh. I start to fiddle with my hair, out of nerves, and realize to my horror that I put it in bunches today, which, as always, have gone curly from the damp weather. It’s an old habit from gymnastics, because if you’re doing forward or backward rolls, a ponytail on the middle of your head will bump on the ground and dig into you, whereas bunches never get in the way of anything. But bunches—particularly curly ones—make me look thirteen years old. Plus, I’m not wearing any makeup and I’m in a white T-shirt, brown gym skirt, and pale blue tabard over the top. It’s the ugliest outfit you ever saw.

I hope Jase remembers how I looked on our date.

Behind us, I can hear the stream of netball players giggling and whispering as they trail past down the path that leads back to the changing rooms. I don’t really blame them—I’d be doing the same thing. We barely see any men around here at all, apart from poor Mr. Theobald, the maths teacher, who for many and various reasons doesn’t count as a man in any meaningful way. Jase Barnes is like catnip to a lot of very bored and frustrated cats.

And I’m the girl he stops when she’s coming back from netball practice. I wish I felt more deserving, and less guilty. There’s so much about me he doesn’t know. If he found out everything, would he still look at me like he’s about to push Taylor aside and kiss me?

“Your dad’s the gardener here, right?” Taylor asks politely.

Jase grins, his white teeth flashing.

“Yeah—my dad and his dad before him. I’m following in their footsteps, you might say. Got my gap year now, so I’m sweeping leaves and saving up to travel. Then I start at agricultural college next year.”

“Oh, cool,” Taylor says enthusiastically.

While I really like it that Taylor seems to approve of Jase, I’m all too aware that Miss Carter won’t—no way I’d be allowed to talk to a boy during school hours, even if he is working here. And Miss Carter can’t be far behind us on the path.  .  .  .

“We should get going,” I say, pulling a face. “Our PE teacher’s really strict.”

Although this is nothing but the truth, saying that I have to go seems to prompt Jase into more than just making conversation.

“So, I was wondering  .  .  . what are you doing later?” he asks, looking straight through me.

I’ve been doing so well being cool, and now I dig my nails into my palms to remind me not to gush with excitement. I didn’t think I’d see Jase till Friday, half-term—we’ve texted a couple of times and sort of agreed to meet up then—and here he is asking to get together with me today. He must be really keen to see me. My whole body floods with warmth at the thought, even though it probably shouldn’t.

“After school?”

“Yeah,” Jase says, shifting on his feet and lowering his gaze, as if he doesn’t care one way or the other what I say. But I know he does. “You free?”

I actually manage to be cool enough to turn to Taylor and look at her inquiringly, like I’m asking her if I’m free or not. She quickly grasps what I’m doing and says, “We haven’t got anything planned.”

I look back at Jase.

“Okay then, I’m free,” I say casually, though my palms are slick with sweat.

“Great.” His face lights up. “Want to go for a walk around the lake?”

“It’s out of bounds,” I say warily. “There’s a gate, it’s always kept locked—”

Jase grins and pats his pocket. “I’ve got the key,” he says. “I thought we could have a bit of, you know, time on our own.  .  .  .”

Oh my God, I can’t believe he said that at all, let alone in front of Taylor. I guess it’s clear that he and I aren’t just going to have a talk about the weather. I must be blushing madly by now.