The Secret Place

Finn Carroll, head flicking away too sharply when he sees Becca see him looking across the doughnut stand? Finn is smart; he could do it. Chris Harper, crossing them on the escalators with a red slash on his cheek that might not be just sunburn, Selena’s eyelashes flickering fast as she bends her head low over her carrier bag full of colours? The thought of Chris fishhooks Becca under the breastbone in weird sore ways, but she doesn’t flinch: it could be. Seamus O’Flaherty, everyone says Seamus is gay but someone cunning could start that rumour himself, to get close to girls off guard; François Levy, beautiful and different, different could make Selena feel like it didn’t count; Bryan Hynes, Oisín O’Donovan, Graham Quinn, for a second every one of them leaps out with a wet red grin like it’s him him him. He’s everywhere; he’s claiming everything.

The air in the Court has been processed to something so thin and chilly that Becca can hardly breathe it. Next to her Holly is talking too fast and insistent to notice that Becca’s not answering. Becca pulls her cardigan sleeves down over her hands and keeps watching.

She watches at night, too. It’s Selena she’s guarding – not that she knows what she would do if – but when she finally sees the slow rise and unfurl of bedclothes, it’s on the wrong bed. Becca can tell by the delicacy of every movement, the wary flash of eyes before Julia straightens, that she’s not going to the toilet.

The sound comes out before Becca can stop it, rips out of her gut, dirty and raw. This guy is running all through them, like an infection looking for the next place to erupt, he’s everywhere-

Julia freezes. Becca turns and flops, doing bad-dream mutters; lets them subside, breathes deep and even. After a long time she hears Julia start moving again.

She watches Julia sneak out, watches her sneak in an hour later; watches her change fast into her pyjamas and jam her clothes deep into the wardrobe. Watches her disappear to the bathroom, come back a long time later in a thick fog of flowers and lemon and disinfectant.

There’s no phone down the side of Julia’s bed, the next evening during second study when Becca finds an excuse. There’s a half-empty packet of condoms.

It scalds Becca’s fingers like hot grease; even after she shoves it back it keeps scalding, corroding right into her blood and pumping all through her body. Julia isn’t Selena; no one could sweet-talk her into this, no amount of puppy-dog eyes and sensitive stories. This had to be something vicious, clotted with cruelty, a hard jerk of her arm up behind her back: Do it or I’ll tell on Selena, get her expelled, I’ll send tit shots of her to every phone in the school- Someone more than cunning. Someone evil.

Becca, kneeling on the floor between the beds, bites into the meat of her palm to keep that sound from wrenching out of her again.

Who who?

Someone who doesn’t understand the immensity of what he’s done. He thinks this is nothing. Turning girls from what they are into what he wants them to be, twisting and forcing till they’re nothing but his desires, that’s no big deal: just what they were there for, to begin with. Becca’s teeth make deep dents in her hand.

Those moments in the glade that were supposed to last forever, that were supposed to be theirs to reclaim no matter how far away and apart the four of them travel: he’s robbing those. He’s scrubbing away the glowing map-lines that were supposed to lead each of them back. Selena’s and then Julia’s, he’ll go after Holly next, he’s a crow gobbling their crumb-trails and never full. The road of dots across Becca’s belly leaps with fresh pain.

Who who whose smell in the air of her room, whose fingerprints all over her friends’ secret places-

Outside the window the moon is a thin white smear behind purple-grey clouds. Becca unclenches her teeth and holds out her palms.

Save us

The clouds pulse. They bubble at the edges.

Julia broke the vow; even if she was forced to, that doesn’t matter, not to this. So did Selena, whatever she did or didn’t do with him. If she danced along the line, if she broke up with him before they went right over, this doesn’t care. None of those things change the punishment.

Forgive us. Burn this out of us turn us pure again. Get him out get us back to how we used to be

The sky simmers and thrums. The answers heave under a thin skin of cloud.

Something is required.

Whatever you want. You want blood I’ll cut myself open

The light dims, rejecting. Not that.

Becca thinks of poured wine, clay figurines, flash of a knife and scatter of feathers. She has no clue where she would get a bird, or wine actually, but if-

What tell me what