Chapter 10
In the middle of the Court, the fountain has been shut off and the huge Christmas tree is up, storeys high, alive with light twirling on glass and tinsel. On the speakers, a woman with a little-kid voice is chirping ‘I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus’. The air smells so good, cinnamon and pine and nutmeg, you want to bite into it, you can feel the soft crunch between your teeth.
It’s the first week of December. Chris Harper – coming out of the Jack Wills shop on the third floor in the middle of a gang of guys, bag of new Tshirts over his shoulder, arguing about Assassin’s Creed II, hair glossy as conkers under the manic white light – has five months and almost two weeks left to live.
Selena and Holly and Julia and Becca have been Christmas shopping. Now they’re sitting on the fountain-edge around the Christmas tree, drinking hot chocolate and going through their bags. ‘I still don’t have anything for my dad,’ Holly says, rummaging.
‘I thought he was getting the giant chocolate stiletto,’ says Julia, stirring her drink – the coffee shop called it a Santa’s Little Helper – with a candy cane.
‘Ha ha, hashtag: lookslikehumourbutnot. The shoe’s for my aunt Jackie. My dad’s impossible.’
‘Jesus,’ Julia says, examining her drink with horror. ‘This tastes like toothpaste-flavoured ass.’
‘I’ll swap,’ Becca says, holding out her cup. ‘I like mint.’
‘What is it?’
‘Gingerbread something mocha.’
‘No, thanks. At least I know what mine is.’
‘Mine’s delish,’ Holly says. ‘What would actually make him happy is for me to get a GPS chip implanted, so he can track me every second. I know everyone’s parents are paranoid, but I swear, he’s insane.’
‘It’s because of his job,’ Selena says. ‘He sees all the bad stuff that happens, so he imagines it happening to you.’
Holly rolls her eyes. ‘Hello, he works in an office, most of the time. The worst thing he sees is forms. He’s just mental. The other week when he came to pick me up, you know the first thing he said? I come out and he’s looking up at the front of the school, and he goes, “Those windows aren’t alarmed. I could break in there in under thirty seconds.” He wanted to go find McKenna and tell her the school wasn’t secure, and I don’t know, make her install fingerprint scanners on every window or something. I was like, “Just kill me now.”’
Selena hears it again: that single note of silver on crystal, so clean-edged it slices straight through the syrupy music and the cloud of noise. It falls into her hand: a gift, just for them.
‘I had to beg him to just take me home. I was like, “There’s a night watchman, the boarders’ wing has alarms on all night, I swear to God I am not going to get human trafficked, and anyway if you go hassling McKenna I’ll never talk to you again,” and finally he went OK, he’d leave it. I was like, “You keep asking why I always take the bus instead of letting you pick me up? This is why.”’
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ Julia says to Becca, making a face and wiping her mouth. ‘Swap. Yours can’t be worse than this.’
‘I should just get him a lighter,’ Holly says. ‘I’m sick of pretending I don’t know he smokes.’
Selena says, ‘I’ve been thinking about something.’
‘Ew,’ Becca says, to Julia. ‘You were right. It’s like little kids’ medicine.’
‘Minty ass. Bin it. We can share this one.’
Selena says, ‘I think we should start getting out at night.’
The others’ heads turn.
‘Out like what?’ Holly asks. ‘Like out of our room, like to the common room? Or out out?’
‘Out out.’
Julia says, eyebrows up, ‘Why?’
Selena thinks about that. She hears all the voices from when she was little, soothing, strengthening: Don’t be scared, not of monsters, not of witches, not of big dogs. And now, snapping loud from every direction: Be scared, you have to be scared, ordering like this is your one absolute duty. Be scared you’re fat, be scared your boobs are too big and be scared they’re too small. Be scared to walk on your own, specially anywhere quiet enough that you can hear yourself think. Be scared of wearing the wrong stuff, saying the wrong thing, having a stupid laugh, being uncool. Be scared of guys not fancying you; be scared of guys, they’re animals, rabid, can’t stop themselves. Be scared of girls, they’re all vicious, they’ll cut you down before you can cut them. Be scared of strangers. Be scared you won’t do well enough in your exams, be scared of getting in trouble. Be scared terrified petrified that everything you are is every kind of wrong. Good girl.
At the same time, in a cool untouched part of her mind, she sees the moon. She feels the shimmer of what it might look like in their own private midnight.
She says, ‘We’re different now. That was the whole point. So we need to be doing something different. Otherwise . . .’
She doesn’t know how to say what she sees. That moment in the glade sliding away, blurring. Them dulling slowly back to normal.
‘Otherwise it’s just about what we don’t do, and we’ll end up going back to the way things were before. There needs to be something we actually do.’
Becca says, ‘If we get caught, we’ll get expelled.’
‘I know,’ Selena says. ‘That’s part of the point. We’re too good. We always behave ourselves.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ Julia says, and sucks gingerbread something mocha off her hand with a pop.
‘You do too – yeah, Jules, you do. Snogging a couple of guys and having a can or a cigarette sometimes, that doesn’t count. Everyone does that. Everyone expects us to do it; even adults, they’d be more worried about us if we didn’t do it. Nobody except Sister Cornelius actually thinks it’s a big deal, and she’s insane.’
‘So? I don’t actually want to rob banks or shoot up heroin, thanks. If that makes me a goody-goody, I’ll live with it.’
‘So,’ Selena says, ‘we only ever do stuff we’re supposed to do. Either stuff we’re supposed to do because our parents or the teachers say so, or stuff we’re supposed to do because we’re teenagers and all teenagers do it. I want to do something we’re not supposed to do.’
‘An original sin,’ Holly says, through a marshmallow. ‘I like it. I’m in.’
‘Oh, Jesus, you too? For Christmas I want friends who aren’t freaks.’
‘I feel criticised,’ Holly says, hand to her heart. ‘Should I use my D’s?’
‘Don’t be Defensive,’ Becca drones, in Sister Ignatius’s voice. ‘Don’t be Despondent. Take a Deep breath and be a Dickhead.’
‘It’s OK for you,’ Julia tells Holly. ‘If you get kicked out, your dad’ll probably give you a prize. My parents will freak. The fuck. Out. And they won’t be able to decide who was the bad influence on who, so they’ll just play it safe and never let me see any of you again.’
Becca is folding up a silk scarf that she already knows her mother will never wear. She says, ‘My parents would freak out too. I don’t care.’