The Secret Place

Sometimes she wants to punch Selena right in the soft pale daze of her face and keep punching. Not because she got off with Chris Harper and lied to them and broke the vow that was her idea to begin with; those aren’t even the problem. But because the whole point of the vow was for none of them to have to feel like this. The point was for one place in their lives to be impregnable. For just one kind of love to be stronger than any outside thing; to be safe.

Becca is not stupid and, no matter what people sometimes think, she’s not twelve. And a place like this is riddled with secrets but their shells are thin and it’s crowded in here, they get bashed and jostled against each other; if you’re not super-careful, then sooner or later they crack open and all the tender flesh comes spilling out.

She’s known for weeks that something is wrong and spreading. That night in the grove, when Holly was going on at Lenie, Becca tried to think it was just Holly having a mood; she does that sometimes, digs into something and won’t let go, all you need to do is pull her attention somewhere else and she’s fine. But Julia doesn’t care about Holly’s moods. When she jumped in to make everything all sweet and smooth, that was when Becca started knowing something real was wrong.

She’s been trying hard not to know. When Selena spends the whole of lunchtime staring into her hand wrapped in her hair, or when Julia and Holly snap like they hate each other, Becca digs her heels into the ground, stares at her beef casserole and refuses to get pulled in. If they want to act like idiots, that’s their problem; they can fix it themselves.

The thought of something they can’t fix sends her mind wild, yipping with terror. It smells of forest fires.

It’s Holly who corners her into knowing. The first time Holly asked – Does Lenie seem, like, weird to you, the last while? – all Becca could do was stare and listen to her own crazy heartbeat, till Holly rolled her eyes and switched to Never mind it’s probably all fine.

But then Holly starts sticking to her harder and harder, like she can’t breathe right around the others. She talks too fast, she makes smart-arsed jabs at everything and everyone and keeps going till Becca laughs to make her happy. She tries to get Becca to do things just the two of them, without Julia and Selena. Becca realises that she wants to get away from Holly; that, unbelievably, for the first time ever, they all want to get away from each other.

Whatever’s wrong, it won’t go away by itself. It’s getting worse.

A year ago Becca would have kept slamming doors and turning keys between her and this. Got a load of books out of the library, never stopped reading even when someone talked to her. Pretended to be sick, stuck fingers down her throat to puke, till Mum showed up tight-jawed to take her home.

Now is different. She’s not a little kid any more, who can hide on her friends when something bad is happening. If the others can’t fix this, then she needs to try.

Becca starts watching.

One night she opens her eyes on Selena sitting up in bed, texting. The phone is pink. Selena’s phone is silver.

The next day Becca wears last term’s outgrown kilt to school, and gets sent back to her room to change into something that doesn’t show the world her legs. It takes her like thirty seconds to find the pink phone.

The texts turn every soft part of her to water, spilling away between her bones. She’s crouched on Selena’s bed and she can’t move.

This little thing, harmless, this is what’s turned everything wrong. The phone feels black and hot in her hand, denser than rock.

It takes a long spinning time before she can think. The first thing her mind holds up: there’s no name in the texts. Who who who, she thinks, and listens to the lonely hoot of it through her mind. Who?

Someone from Colm’s; that’s obvious, from the stories about teachers and rugby matches and other guys. Someone cunning, to fracture a crack into their high white wall and wiggle his sly way through. Someone smart, to guess how Selena would sway to all these poor-sensitive-me stories with her arms out, how she would never abandon anyone so special who needs her so much.

Becca keeps watching. Down at the Court, as they wander through the chilled hollow air and the candy-coloured neon, she watches for some guy who looks over their way too much or too little, for some guy who changes Selena just by walking past. Marcus Wiley’s eyes ferret down Selena’s top but even if he wasn’t disgusting Selena would never, not after he sent Julia that picture. Andrew Moore checks if they’re looking as he dead-arms one of his friends and howls with lunatic laughter; Becca is about to think Yeah right, a no-personality moron like that, she would never, when she realises like a punch in the gut she has no clue what Selena would never.

Andrew Moore?