Scarlet Wakefield 01 - Kiss Me Kill Me (8 page)

After the whole inquest fuss was over—after it became clear that nothing had been resolved by the verdict—Aunt Gwen came and got me and smuggled me out to a car in the middle of the night and brought me here. Wakefield Hall’s giant iron gates clanged shut behind the car.

They just transferred me from one prison to another.

At least in this one I’m not trapped in my bedroom all the time. I get the run of the grounds. But I still have a jailer who’s taken against me. Unhappy as I am to be back in the gatehouse of Wakefield Hall, believe me, Aunt Gwen is ten times unhappier about having me here full-time.

I used to be able to avoid coming back here by staying with Luce and Alison for the holidays. But that’s not an option anymore. Speaking of which, I’ve tried to ring Luce and Alison on several occasions, but they wouldn’t talk to me. Their phones went straight to voice mail.

I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t talk to me, either.

The noise I’m making as I walk along, sullenly digging my toes into the gravel and churning it up, is loud in the quiet of the afternoon. Maybe that’s why I’m doing it, just to have something to listen to. Wakefield Hall is always like a ghost village when it’s not full of girls’ voices screaming, bells ringing, and the whistles of PE teachers.

And the crackle must be loud enough to have attracted someone else’s attention. A head pops up from behind a big lavender bush, one of a whole row that runs along one side of the drive. I jump with surprise, and skid slightly (and embarrassingly) on the gravel.

“Sorry if I startled you,” the head says.

I glare at it with contempt. “You did startle me,” I snap.

“What do you think you’re doing, skulking around behind a bush like that?”

The head moves, and the rest of its body comes into view—or most of it, as the middle part is still partly concealed by the rounded side of the lavender bush. It’s a man—or, now I look at him more closely, no, it isn’t. Though his voice is deep, he’s actually more a boy. Probably only a few years older than me. Tall, broad-shouldered, but with that teenage-boy leanness that means he doesn’t have that much flesh on his bones yet. Beyond that, I barely take in what he looks like, because I’m deliberately not looking at his face. Boys are off-limits to me from now on. I’m basically trying to pretend they don’t exist.

He holds up a pair of what I think are called secateurs, and I notice as he does so that while he’s not exactly bulky, his forearms are veined with muscle. Which means he must be pretty strong.

“I was trimming the lavender,” he says, a bit unnecessarily, but considering my grumpiness, he probably feels the need to overexplain. “And then I heard you coming down the drive, and I thought, That must be a girl, cuz teachers don’t kick gravel like that. Not in my experience, anyway.

So I was curious and I popped my head up to see who it was, because term hasn’t started yet.”

“Well, now you’ve satisfied your curiosity,” I say flatly.

“Not really,” he says, looking straight into my eyes. There must be a flash of sunlight on his face as he does that, because his eyes seem golden. It’s a weird optical illusion, but  .  .  . wow, it’s so striking, especially added to the fact that he’s staring at me, that I have to duck my head.

I can’t look directly at him. Even this simple little conversation is overloading my brain. God, I am so messed up.

“You’re Scarlett, aren’t you?” he asks, but he doesn’t wait for me to answer. “Couldn’t mistake you. There’s a picture in the Great Hall that could be you, a girl wearing a dress and one of those crown things.”

“Tiaras,” I say.

“Yeah. You’re a Wakefield, all right. No mistaking that. Back living here, then? You were away in London, weren’t you?”

Every question he asks is like a file grating directly onto my skin, cutting me raw. Which is odd, because he has a really nice voice, deep and warm.

“You must be bored here after London, eh? Can’t be much for you to do round here.”

“I’m fine,” I say shortly, and because I can see he’s about to add yet another comment on how boring and sad my life is, I turn away and keep walking down the drive.

“See you later!” he calls after me.

Not if I can help it, I want to shout back.

I can barely cope with talking to a boy, let alone one who seems like he might be remotely interested in getting to know me. How can I even think about boys? The only one I ever kissed dropped dead while we had our tongues in each other’s mouths. And I don’t know why he died. No one does. It doesn’t look like we’ll ever know what killed Dan. And that means that I might as well go into a nunnery. Because after what happened with Dan, how can I even think about kissing a boy ever again?

What if the next boy I kiss drops dead, too?

Aunt Gwen’s out today, thank God. I go in the back door and up the stairs to my room. I don’t go over my schoolwork, of course. I take out the file, the special one, sit down on the floor, and spread all the clippings out around me. I do this when I’m feeling upset, or lonely, or depressed.

So guess what? I do this a lot.

It’s as if I’m looking for clues, even though I know I won’t find any.

BOY, 18, DIES IN FREAK ACCIDENT

I turn the clippings over one by one. I don’t need to read them; I know them by heart. But somehow looking through them gives me a sense of calm, reminds me why I have this aching sense of emptiness and desperation lurking deep down inside me.

It’s not even that Dan died in my arms, terrible as that was. It’s that no one believed me when I tried to tell them I had no idea in the world what happened to him. Not the coroner at the inquest, not the police, not even, I think, my grandmother. No one.

And I sort of understand why. After all the lab tests came back inconclusive (they even went as far as testing my lipstick), the investigators were completely out of ideas. How on earth could Dan have died? The conclusion everyone seemed to jump to was the only one left: he somehow died from kissing me. It’s ludicrous, I know. But we don’t live in a world that deals well with the unexplained.

BAFFLING DEATH: “KISS OF DEATH” GIRL QUESTIONED

“KISS OF DEATH” GIRL: I WON’T CHANGE MY STORY

Yes, I got a nickname, like a serial killer they haven’t caught yet. Like the Yorkshire Ripper or Son of Sam. And I should be grateful, because the reason they gave me a nickname is that I’m not eighteen yet. I’m still a minor, and you can’t put a minor’s name in the newspapers if they’re connected with a crime, unless they’re guilty.

Or dead.

They could print Dan’s name all right. No problem there.

FOOD ALLERGY THE LIKELY CAUSE OF DAN MCANDREW’S TRAGIC DEATH

That’s part of the mystery. The only thing the autopsy did show was that Dan had died of some type of extreme anaphylactic shock. Which means an allergic reaction. Dan was dangerously allergic to a variety of foods, including nuts, shellfish, and strawberries, but he didn’t like talking about it with people. He was embarrassed by it and saw it as a weakness, his mother explained tearily during her testimony. Even though I cried the entire time, I was also trying to remember if I had eaten any of those things. But there was nothing to confess. I hadn’t eaten anything that day which was on the list of toxic foods for Dan.  .  .  .

So that could only mean one thing. I’m the poison that killed him.

INQUEST ON “KISS OF DEATH” DAN: DEATH BY MISADVENTURE

EPIPEN WOULD HAVE SAVED TRAGIC DAN, SAYS CORONER

This is the other part of the mystery: Where was his EpiPen? His mum and dad swore blind at the inquest that he would never have gone anywhere without it. So how could he have forgotten it on the night of the party?

I wish there was a way to ask him. I wish there was a way to see and touch him. And although I dreamed for so long of kissing Dan’s perfect lips, I wish above all that I never had.

PLASTIC SURGERY–FREE ZONE

One of the very few bright spots in all of this is that I can set my alarm for eight-twenty and still be at school on time. It’s a bare five-minute walk across the back lawn to the main house—or, as it is now, my school.

I pull on my favorite jeans and a purple sweater with green trim that Grandma got me for Christmas. (The colors sound awful together, but honestly, it looks nice. The green trim is really narrow. Grandma’s good at clothes presents. And it’s cashmere. Yummy.) I twist my hair up and fasten it at the back of my head with a silver clip, long and slender and pointed at one end, like a dagger. I’ve had this for years, but haven’t worn it for a while, because at St. Tabby’s, long hair clips have been out for the last six months. Elaborate big round tortoiseshell clasps, worn over buns at the nape of the neck, are in.

Count your blessings and all that. It’s a ray of sunshine: at Wakefield Hall Collegiate, nobody cares about what they wear. There are no fashion police walking the corridors to laugh, point, and ridicule you because you’re wearing a hair clip, which means you’re out. It’s super-intellectual here and, like I said, you have to wear the ghastly brown school uniform till you’re sixteen anyway, so there’s much less opportunity for fashion terrorism. The girls barely wear makeup, for God’s sake. Phew. Much more relaxing.

I grab my old leather satchel and run downstairs just as Aunt Gwen starts to call my name. She’s about to leave for school, too. (She’s a teacher at Wakefield Hall—geography and maths. See how awful my life is?) I wave a breakfast bar at her as she begins to spout off about growing girls needing to sit down to a proper meal in the morning, and dash out of the house, her grating metallic tones following me out the door. It’s ten to nine as I pause outside the entrance to the old part of the school, which only the sixth-formers are allowed to use.

It’s strange. I’m almost excited to be here.

Girls are flooding up the drive, the younger ones in their brown uniforms flowing past like a river of mud and through their own entrance in the nasty new modern building, glancing curiously at the older girls in normal clothes as they pass. I scarf down my breakfast bar and look around me at the girls my age. They’re so dowdy by comparison to what I’m used to. Wakefield Hall is the anti–St. Tabby’s. It’s where parents send their daughters to get the best intellectual education money can buy, and, just as importantly, to be isolated in the countryside, free from the temptations of the big city (no fashion crazes, boys, drink, or drugs here). In a way, I’m grateful for that right now. The last thing I need is St. Tabby’s, Part Two: The Revenge. Two years of boring dowdiness is just what I need to recover.

Nobody fashionable. Nobody wild. And no boys at all (well, apart from that gardener boy, but I’m just going to ignore him completely, so he doesn’t count). Which is good, because I don’t want to kill anyone else.

Oh, Dan  .  .  . I see him lying on the terrace, the swiveling light of the ambulance below casting those eerie blue flashes over his body. I see them easing him onto a stretcher and covering him with a blanket, and I have to dig my finger nails into my palms to stop myself from breaking down. The pain brings me back to the here and now. There are nasty red half-moons on my palms, but that’s okay. As long as I didn’t cry in public.

I look around and realize that, while I’ve been lost in miserable memories, everyone else has already gone up the steps. We’re due in our classrooms any minute. No problem. I’ve been exploring this school building since I was tiny. I know it like the palm of my hand. I sling my satchel over my shoulder and dash inside and up the stairs, heading for Lower Six C. Right at the top, down the corridor, first right—

No! It’s all changed! Lower Six C is now some sort of science lab! Grandmother—sorry, Lady Wakefield—has been doing massive remodeling without even mentioning it to me! And now there’s no one around to ask for directions, because I’m so late that everyone’s in their classrooms already, and I’m going to be there well past nine on my first day of school  .  .  . oh bugger.  .  .  .

I arrive, panting and doubtless red-faced, at the new and, by the looks of it, not-much-improved Lower Six C, to find everyone already there but me: girls sitting in massed ranks at their desks, teacher looming in front of hers. Horrors. The whole room turns to stare as I stand in the doorway, and I know every girl there is thinking devoutly: I’m so glad that isn’t me.

I don’t know the teacher in charge, but she’s glaring at me as if I’m something nasty she just stepped in.

“Scarlett Wakefield, I presume,” she says nastily. “Since you probably haven’t bothered to inform yourself of my name, I am Miss Newman.”

No one is labeled a Ms. here. Grandmother—Lady Wakefield—is very old-fashioned.

“Yes,” I blurt out. “I’m so sorry I’m late. I—”

“Oh, no need to explain, Scarlett. No need at all. We all assumed that you thought you could waltz into class any time you felt like it.”

“No, honestly, I—”

“But let me tell you, Miss Wakefield, that just because your grandmother is the headmistress here, and your aunt the head of geography, I will not allow you any special privileges in my class. Your grandmother and aunt have issued strict edicts to that effect.”

As Miss Newman is yelling at me, I somehow manage to notice that there’s a clear mustache shadow above her upper lip. I think I can see a nose hair or two as well. She probably has hairy knuckles. And I don’t even want to think about what her back’s like.

“I was going to do you the courtesy of taking you aside and making this little point to you,” she continues after a deep breath. “But since you have failed to show me and your fellow students the courtesy of showing up to class on time, I think I should respond in kind. I see that you are the type of girl to think that she can get away with anything she wants to because she has some sort of special status. Well, believe me, Miss Wakefield, that will not be the case at all for you. Your grandmother wished you to transfer to Wakefield Hall in the sixth form to have the advantages of our superb educational system for your A levels, not because you were to be in any way pampered while you were here.”

That’s the official story—that I’m back here because Wakefield Hall is second to none in its record of girls getting top marks in their exams. No mention of my being effectively expelled from St. Tabby’s for killing a boy. Grandmother thought that would put a bit of a damper on my ability to make friends. Goodness knows why.

“You may find a desk and take your seat in the few minutes we have remaining before leaving for assembly,” Miss Newman says, her voice icy enough to freeze hot soup.

I’ve been ducking my head to avoid her awful sneer. I manage to lift my head and look around me frantically for a spare desk. Oh God. The only one left is in the second row, of course. I’m sitting with the keen, swotty girls. Great.

I do the Walk of Shame across the room and slip behind the desk, the last one in the row, next to the window. Grandma’s kept the old wooden desks from when she first started the school: they’re ancient and battered, scarred by girls incising them with the nibs of fountain pens that they would fill from the built-in inkwells at the back. You can tell they were inkwells because they’re stained from decades of leaks. Now they’re just used for standing ballpoints in. I lift the lid of my desk and slide in my books. That’s all that gets left in the desks: there are lockers downstairs now, with combination locks, for serious stuff. You can’t have just wooden desks that anyone could open anymore, not when girls have iPods and cell phones and all kinds of expensive stuff that’s highly nickable.

I look around. Hardly anyone meets my gaze. Great. They all hate me already. Miss Newman has managed to make everyone think I’m trying to take the piss and get away with murder because I’m the headmistress’s granddaughter. God, I hate my life.

There’s one girl who does look back at me, though, and I’m immediately curious about her. She’s tall, with wide shoulders and well-built upper arms. (I’m not being weird, but I notice these things because of gymnastics, okay?) Her hair is short, dark, and shaggy, falling round her face in an artfully clipped style that makes me think she’s carefully arranged every lock, pieced it with wax or something, to seem so trendily disarranged. Her eyes are wide set and green, and the look she’s giving me is absolutely unreadable. I’ve got no bloody idea what she thinks of me at all.

The nine o’clock bell goes, and we all stand up and prepare to file into the Assembly Hall so Grandmother—Lady Wakefield—can lecture us all about Wakefield Hall’s core values, and why good character is the most important possession a woman can boast, and all that Edwardian Young Ladies’ Manual stuff she loves so much. And still none of the other girls are making any effort to include me in their tiny circles. I wasn’t expecting to make a best friend on the first day, but this is definitely the worst-case scenario.

Stupid me. I should never say things like that. Because when the worst-case scenario really does turn up, I’ll be left longing for the time when twenty girls in Lower Sixth C put their noses in the air and wouldn’t look at me, and the twenty-first, having given me a long look, seemed to have decided that it wasn’t worth her while even to make a point of ignoring me on principle. She’s wearing a navy wool sweater with pieces of leather on the elbows, the kind of thing you only see on fishermen or someone’s granddad. It’s very old; I can see how frayed the cuffs are. Her combat trousers look equally ancient, like someone might actually have worn them into combat. They’re clean—she’d never get away with wearing something stained at Wakefield Hall—but they’re definitely screaming “hand-me-downs.”

I look at the line of girls in front of me, and despite the noses in the air, I do see one reason to be cheerful: none of the aforesaid noses are bobbed or filed-down or artificially sculpted. As well as being fashion, boy, drink, and drug free, Wakefield Hall is equally a plastic surgery–free zone. It’s such a world away from St. Tabby’s that I really doubt anyone here has any connections to the London, Teen Vogue, shiny happy people scene, which means they’re very unlikely to be aware that Scarlett Wakefield is known to the tabloid press by a much more lurid nickname.

If I’m lucky, I’ll manage to keep my secret. Girls won’t be keen to make friends with the headmistress’s granddaughter. But befriending the Kiss of Death girl? That would be a whole different story.