Let's Get Lost (3 page)

“What did you do to her?” he shouts, and he’s blocking out the sun so all I can see are the
shadowed, angry lines of his face. “Stop making that bloody racket and tell me what you did!”

I crashed back into consciousness, sitting bolt upright and screaming again, even though my throat felt rubbed raw, as I saw him glaring down at me, Felix peering out from behind his back with an anxious expression. Big faker. Underneath that whey-faced, wimpy little body clad in Superman pajamas for extra cuteness is a violent thug. When it’s not the middle of the night and his big sister is screeching like a banshee, he spends the daylight hours punching, pinching, and flaunting his bodily functions in my face.

“For God’s sake, Isabel,” Dad barked. “You’re hysterical. Stop it this instant.”

My mouth snapped shut so suddenly that I bit my tongue and couldn’t help the whimper that escaped from my mouth, which just made his jaw tighten up.

“Is? Are you okay? You sounded like you were being attacked by killer zombies.” Felix sidled out from behind Dad and pulled a disgusted face. “Urgh! You’re all sweaty.”

The black dress was clinging damply to me and I’d pulled the bottom sheet off the mattress.

If it was possible, Dad was looking at me with even more distaste. “I think this is an object lesson in the consequences of going to parties and no doubt drinking yourself into oblivion,” he intoned darkly. “And please don’t go to bed with your shoes on again, you’ll rip the sheets.”

“I had a bad dream,” I muttered, and then shut up. He was giving me a careful, assessing look that was painfully familiar. Like, when I’m just about to give away the triple-word score on a game of Scrabble, or I’ve told one too many lies, dug myself a great big pit and all he has to do is apply some gentle pressure so I fall right in.

But he decided it wasn’t worth the effort. “Oh, go and have a shower, Isabel, and then get back to bed.

You’ve wasted quite enough time with your melodramatics as it is.”

I couldn’t sleep after that. I listened to the sounds of the night; a car speeding up the road, the angry yowling of a couple of cats, and the hum of the streetlight outside my window, but none of it was loud enough to drown out the buzzing in my ears, and in the end, I gave up on sleep, rolled over, and switched on the TV so I could watch old black-and-white films without the sound on, until the sun started creeping in through the curtains, leeching all the darkness out of the room, and I could sleep.

3

School was meant to be this big deal now that we were doing A-levels. Like, we were suddenly adults because we didn’t have to wear the revolting bottle-green uniform and had permission to go into town when we didn’t have lessons. That was the general idea, but as I sat on a hard-backed wooden chair in

Mrs. Greenwood’s office with Ella, Nancy, and Dot, she was doing her utmost to make us feel like naughty Year Eights.

“I absolutely do not want a repeat of what happened last term,” Mrs. Greenwood said sternly, eyes scanning our faces for signs of contrition. I could feel Dot practically shaking beside me, but I faced down Greenwood’s bifocal glare. “I will not tolerate bullying, and the prolonged campaign you waged against certain members of your form was inexcusable.” She tapped her pen sharply on the desk. “We had to call in a guidance counselor! And all mobile phones now have to be left with your teachers before first bell.”

Ella choked back a giggle at that, while Nancy wore a faint expression of confused pride that her Nokia antics had had such far-reaching consequences.

“As you know, the subject of suspension was mooted, but in light of subsequent events, the governors felt that the matter should be left to die a natural death . . .”

There was a collective gasp, and Mrs. Greenwood dropped her pen. “I’m sorry . . . Isabel, that was a very tactless way of putting it . . .”

I gave her my most serene smile. “Don’t worry about it, Mrs. Greenwood. It’s fine. I didn’t even notice .

. . much.”

She inclined her head in a gracious nod. “So, despite no action being taken last term, I’ll be watching the four of you very closely. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to split you up because Isabel’s father felt that she needed the support of her friends at such a difficult time.”

There was another titter from Ella, which Mrs. Greenwood quelled with a pointed cough before blathering on for a few more minutes about how the younger pupils looked up to us blah, blah, blah, and we had to apologize to Lily Tompkins yadda, yadda, yadda, and finished with a rousing chorus of “Year Twelve privileges can easily be revoked, you know.”

I couldn’t wait to get out of there and scrub her monotone drone out of my head, but Mrs. Greenwood motioned for me to stay behind.

I turned around to see Dot close the door with a shrug and a “what can you do?” expression before swiveling around to find Mrs. Greenwood doing the head tilt. I was so sick of the head tilt because it was always a prelude to, yup, here it came. . . .

“So, Isabel, how are you holding up?” she asked, concern dripping like honey from every syllable.

“Really.”

“Okay,” I said, studying the hangnail on my index finger.

“I’ve spoken to your father about this wonderful family therapist I know who does a group session with teenagers in a similar—”

“I’m not going!” I yelped immediately. Sit in a room and listen to a whole bunch of sad sacks whining about how depressed they were? I got enough of that at home.

“That’s what your father said. Though he was a little less strident. ” She smiled thinly. I could imagine exactly how that conversation had gone. “But if you change your mind . . .”

“All I really need to do is arrange a time to re-sit my Maths GCSE.”

That totally took the wind out of her. I think she thought we’d have a cozy little chat and I’d break down and confide in her about how sucky life without a mother was shaping up but, hello, never going to happen.

Instead, she looked down at my school folder. “Well, you have an excellent academic record, and we have high hopes of a place at Oxford for you, but if you feel that things are getting too intense, you should let me or your form teacher know.”

“They won’t,” I stated firmly. I had a perfect A-grade for well, everything, and it was going to stay that way. “I just want everything to be normal, like it was before.”

“Isabel, I’m afraid that nothing is going to be like it was before,” she said softly, fingers tapping out a quiet tattoo on the desktop. “You’ve lost your mother.”

People kept saying that all the way through summer. All the well-meaning relatives and neighbors trooping through the house with food that tasted of the Tupperware containers it had been stored in. And that was how they phrased it, “lost your mother,” like I’d left her on the bus and she was propped up in a

corner of some Lost Property Office waiting for me to claim her.

Mrs. Greenwood was still waiting for me to prostrate myself on her office carpet, so I shuffled around on my chair. “I’m going to be late for French,” I reminded her, and she gave this gusty sigh that fanned through the papers in my case folder.

“Fine,” she said, straightening up from the head tilt and losing the “I’m your friend, not just your headmistress” expression pretty damn quick. “Fine. And though it might not have been your phone that that
disgusting
picture was sent from, I’m under no illusion as to who was behind it. You’re on your last promise, young lady.”

I could feel her eyes boring into me as I walked out of the room and shut the door with just enough force to let her know that she hadn’t totally whipped me.

I walked into class as the register was being called. There was a moment of perfect silence as all heads swiveled to see my entrance. And for once, it wasn’t to see what the most popular and feared girl in the school was wearing or what color I’d dyed my hair. They thought I’d changed over the summer because life had crapped all over me and that they’d be able to see it on my face. Like the tracks of all the tears that I didn’t cry would have worn grooves into my cheeks.

The minute you show any sign of weakness, they start circling around you like sharks who’ve just smelled blood in the water. So I pasted on my trademark supercilious smile and sauntered over to the empty seat next to Ella. There was an audible sigh of disappointment.

The fierce whispers trailed behind me for the rest of the week. I was kind of used to that. Not because I was the prettiest girl in school or the funniest or even the cleverest. Those A-grades were the result of serious slog and staying up past midnight with ink-stained fingers and a mound of boring textbooks.

No, my place at the top of the school pecking order, heading up the inner clique of all inner cliques, is a result of being the biggest bitch to ever stalk down the hallowed halls of Brighton School For Girls.

The way I see it, school is like one of those documentaries about big cats on the Discovery Channel. It’s maul or be mauled. It’s not fair. It’s not right. It just is what it is. I spent two years of middle school having my lunch money stolen and my clothes, hair, and teeny, tiny, almost unnoticeable lisp mocked by a bunch of girls who were bigger and uglier than me. So when I got to senior school, it was beyond time to reinvent myself.

I’m the queen of the rumor. Of the veiled insult. Of the nudge and a wink and a smirk. And that’s how I rule the school. I have my three little minions. I decide who’s on the shit list for that week, and they make that poor girl’s life a misery, and the rest of the school follows suit. Maybe they’re not big cats, but stupid, mindless sheep.

It’s not like I enjoy it. It’s just what I do to get myself through school. I can’t wait to leave, to head off to University and be someone else. Because my whole queen of mean shtick is exhausting. I can’t let my guard slip or show my true face for even a second. And I’ve paid such a high price for my status that I wonder whether it’s really worth it.

But then I remember how it feels to sit at the loser table in the canteen. Or what it’s like to have to skulk in the cloakrooms until everyone’s gone home in the faint hope that this won’t be the afternoon that I get chased through the streets. How it feels to have someone shove your head down a toilet and then pull the chain—not that I’d ever go to those kinds of extremes— and so I do what I have to.

And what we did to Lily Tompkins—she
so
had it coming. She’d been shooting her mouth off about Nancy getting knocked back by one of the boys from the local grammar school. I don’t even know all the details. Just that if I hadn’t nipped it in the bud, she’d have weakened my power base. So when Dot saw her disappear into the bathroom at a party with Nancy’s brother’s friend, who always wears a baseball cap back to front, like he’s so bloody ghetto . . . well, she brought it on herself.

I’d sidled up to Nancy, who was staring at the heir to her heart while he macked on some giggly blonde.

“I’d love to know what Lily’s doing in the loo with Pimp My Ride,” I’d muttered. “Maybe she’s showing him where her navel piercing went septic. I can’t think of another reason why he was peering down her top.”

I didn’t tell Nancy to go charging in there, though taking a picture on her camera phone had shown initiative I didn’t know she had. “God, I wish Dot was here, she’d love to see that. It’s so very Paris

Hilton,” I’d said when she showed me the surprisingly clear picture of Lily on her knees.

In a lot of ways, I was entirely blameless. It wasn’t my idea to send the picture to everyone in Nancy’s address book, who all promptly sent it on to everyone in
their
address books. Lily had the photo sent to her before she’d even come out of the bathroom, surreptitiously wiping her mouth with some toilet tissue.

But even if she hadn’t seen it, the fact that everyone was making “gobble gobble” noises might have clued her in.

She’d stormed out in tears and took, like, five junior Disprin and went to hospital and had her stomach pumped because she’s such a drama queen. My last week at school was all letters home and disciplinary warnings and then the meeting that never happened. So if Lily was on my shit list before, now she was right there at the top with her name in six-foot-high letters.

I’d been keeping my head down for the week—I was still coasting the wave of my newfound notoriety as “The Girl Who Lost Her Mother™ ”— which meant people stayed away from me if they knew what was good for them, so I was a little surprised when Lily herself came tripping over to our table Friday at lunchtime.

I lifted my head from my plate of wilted chicken salad, gave her a bit of my patented evil eye, and went back to talking to Dot.

“It’s blue with this tiny geometric print,” I explained, trying to describe the skirt I was planning to buy on the weekend. “It’s Marc Jacobs via New Look.”

“Sounds cool,” Dot said, slanting her eyes over at Lily who was shifting from foot to foot.

“It is, but I don’t know if I’ve got anything that goes . . .”

“Isabel, can I talk to you a minute?”

I could hear Lily perfectly, but I carried on extolling the virtues of the skirt to Dot, like it was the finest example of haute couture.

“Look, Isabel, I think we should try to clear the air or something. ”

Dot smiled thinly. “Hey, Is, did you just hear this weird squeaking noise?”

I’ve spent years perfecting the nonchalant shrug that I gave. “Maybe it was just your imagination.”

Lily must have had a total death wish because she pulled out the empty chair next to me and sat down.

Worse than that, she touched my arm. I stared at her stubby fingers curled around my sleeve and very gently shook my wrist.

“What happened last term . . . We both did stuff . . . Y’know, and I thought . . .” She was giving me nothing but word salad, before she exhaled angrily. “Isabel, I’m trying to apologize!”

“Are you going to manage a complete sentence before the bell goes?” I rested my chin on my hand and watched her bottom lip tremble. “What exactly do you want to apologize for?”

I could see her mentally count to ten, though she got stuck around five. “I thought we could forget what happened and I wanted to tell you this all week, but well . . . I’m sorry about your mum.”