Becca does it. The others were taking for granted it would be Holly or Selena, in case the nurse notices the key gone missing; Holly is the best liar, and no one ever thinks Selena’s done anything wrong, while Julia is always one of the first people teachers think of, even for things that would never occur to her. When Becca says, ‘I want to do it,’ they’re taken aback. They try to convince her – Selena gently, Holly delicately, Julia bluntly – that this is a bad idea and she should leave it to the experts, but she digs her heels in and points out that she’s even less likely to be suspected than Selena, given that she genuinely never has done anything worse than sharing homework and everyone thinks she’s a huge goody-goody lick-arse, and that might as well be useful for once. In the end the others understand that she’s not budging.
They coach her, after lights-out. ‘You need to be sick enough that she keeps you in her office for a while,’ Julia says, ‘but not sick enough that she sends you back here. What you want is something she’ll want to keep an eye on.’
‘But not too much of an eye,’ Selena says. ‘You don’t want her hovering.’
‘Exactly,’ says Julia. ‘Maybe you think you’re going to puke, but you’re not sure. And you think probably you’ll be fine if you just lie still for a while.’
They’ve left their curtains open. Outside it’s below freezing, frost patterning the edges of the windowpane, the sky a thin sheet of ice laid over the stars. The shot of cold air hits Becca like it’s been fired straight through the glass from the huge outside, wild and magic, pungent with foxes and juniper.
Holly says, ‘But don’t act like you want to puke. That looks fake. Act like you don’t want to puke. Think about trying your hardest to hold it in.’
‘Are you sure about this?’ Selena asks. She’s propped up on one elbow, trying to see Becca’s face.
‘If you’re not,’ Holly says, ‘no probs. Just say it now.’
Becca says, ‘I’m doing it. Stop asking me.’
Julia catches a glance and the tip of a smile from Selena: See, our shy Becca, this is what I meant— ‘Good for you, Becsie,’ she says, reaching across the space between the beds to high-five Becca. ‘Make us proud.’
The next day, lying on the too-narrow bed in the nurse’s office, listening to the nurse hum Michael Bublé as she does paperwork at her desk, Becca feels the wild cold of the key strike deep into her palm, and smells running vixens and berries and icy stars.
Before lights-out they lay out their clothes on their beds and start getting dressed. Layers of tops – outside the window, the night sky is clear and frozen; sweatshirts; heavy jeans; pyjamas to go over it all, until the moment comes. They fold their coats away under their beds, so they won’t need to rattle hangers or squeak wardrobe doors. They line up their Uggs by the door so they won’t have to fumble.
Now that it’s turning real, it feels like a game, some geeky role-playing thing where someone will give them fake swords and they’ll have to run around smacking imaginary orcs. Julia is singing ‘Bad Romance’, cocking a hip and whirling a jumper by one sleeve like a stripper; Holly joins in with a pair of leggings on her head, Selena whips her hair in circles. They feel stupid, and they’re turning giddy to dodge that.
‘Is this OK?’ Becca asks, spreading her arms.
The other three stop singing and look at her: dark-blue jeans and dark-blue hoodie, the hoodie stuffed spherical with layers and the hood strings pulled so tight only the tip of her nose shows. They start to laugh.
‘What?’ Becca demands.
‘You look like the world’s fattest bank robber,’ Holly says, which makes them all worse.
‘You’re twice your size,’ Selena manages. ‘Can you even move in all that?’
‘Or see?’ says Julia. ‘That’s just what we need: if you can’t make it down the corridor without smacking into walls.’ Holly does Becca, lurching along blinded and unwieldy. The giggles have hold of all three of them, the helpless kind that keep going even after you run out of breath and your stomach muscles hurt.
Becca has gone red. She turns her back to them and tries to get the hoodie off, but the zip is stuck.
‘Becs,’ Selena says. ‘We’re only having a laugh.’
‘Whatever.’
‘Jesus,’ Julia says, rolling her eyes at Holly. ‘Chillax.’
Becca yanks at the zip till it dents her fingers. ‘If it’s just a great big joke, then why are we even bothering?’
No one answers. The laughter has faded to nothing. They glance at each other sideways on, eyes skidding away from meeting.
They’re looking for a way to ditch the whole thing. They want to throw their clothes back in the wardrobe, bin the key and never mention it again, blush when they remember how near they came to making idiots of themselves. They’re just waiting for someone to say the word.
Then one of the second-floor prefects slams their door open, snaps, ‘Stop lezzing it up and get changed, it’s lights-out in like five seconds and I will so report you,’ and bangs the door closed again before any of them can shut their mouths.
She didn’t even notice their entire outdoor wardrobes spread out on their beds, or the fact that Becca looks like an inflatable burglar. All four of them stare at each other for a second and then collapse on their beds, screaming with laughter into their duvets. And realising they’re actually going.
At lights-out they’re in their beds like good little girls – if the prefect has to come back, she might be in a more observant mood. After the bell goes, the edgy giddiness starts to fade. Something else starts to show through.
They’ve never listened to the sounds of the school falling asleep before, not this way, ears stretched like animals’. At first the flickers are constant: a burst of giggles through the wall, a faraway squeal, a patter of slippers as someone runs to the toilet. Then they drift farther apart. Then there’s silence.
When the clock at the back of the main building strikes one, Selena sits up.
They don’t talk. They don’t flick on torches, or bedside lights: anyone going down the corridor would see the flicker through the glass above the transom. In the window the moon is enormous, more than enough. They strip off their pyjamas and stuff their pillows under their sheets, pull on final jumpers and coats, deft and synchronised as if they’d been practising. When they’re ready they stand by their beds, boots dangling from their hands. They look at each other like explorers in the doorway of a long journey, all of them caught motionless in the moment before one of them takes the first step.
‘If you weirdos are serious about this,’ Julia says, ‘let’s do it.’
No one leaps out at them from a doorway, no stair creaks. On the ground floor Matron is snoring. When Becca fits the key into the door to the main building, it turns like the lock’s been oiled. By the time they reach the maths classroom and Julia reaches up to the fastening of the sash window, they already know the watchman is asleep or on the phone and will never look their way. Boots on and out of the window, one two three four quick and slick and silent, and they’re standing on the grass and it’s not a game any more.
The grounds are still as a set for a ballet, waiting for the first shivering run of notes from a flute; for the light girls to run in and stop, poised perfect and impossible, barely touching the grass. The white light comes from everywhere. The frost sings high in their ears.
They run. The great spread of grass rolls out to greet them and they skim down it, the crackle-cold air flowing like spring water into their mouths and running their hair straight out behind them when their hoods fall back and none of them can stop to pull them up again. They’re invisible, they could stream laughing past the night watchman and tweak off his cap as they went, leave him grabbing at air and gibbering at the wild unknown that’s suddenly everywhere, and they can’t stop running.
Into the shadows and down the narrow paths enclosed by dark spiky weaves of branches, past leaning trunks wrapped with years of ivy, through smells of cold earth and wet layers of leaves. When they burst out of that tunnel it’s into the white waiting glade.
They’ve never been here before. The tops of the cypresses blaze with frozen fire like great torches. There are things moving in the shadows, things that when they manage to catch a hair-thin glimpse are shaped like deer and wolves but they could be anything, circling. High in the shining column of air above the clearing, birds whirl arc-winged, long threads of savage cries trailing behind them.
The four of them open their arms and whirl too. The breath is spun out of them and the world rocks around them and they keep going. They’re spun out of themselves, spun to silver dust flying, they’re nothing but a rising arm or a curve of cheek in and out of ragged white bars of light. They dance till they collapse.
When they open their eyes they’re in the glade they know again. Darkness, and a million stars, and silence.
The silence is too big for any of them to burst, so they don’t talk. They lie on the grass and feel their own moving breath and blood. Something white and luminous is arrowing through their bones, the cold or the moonlight maybe, they can’t tell for sure; it tingles but doesn’t hurt. They lie back and let it do its work.
Selena was right: this is nothing like the thrill of necking vodka or taking the piss out of Sister Ignatius, nothing like a snog in the Field or forging your mum’s signature for ear-piercing. This has nothing to do with what anyone else in all the world would approve or forbid. This is all their own.
After a long time they straggle back to the school, dazzled and rumple-haired, heads buzzing. Forever, they say, at the threshold of the window, with their boots in their hands and the moonlight turning in their eyes. I’ll remember this forever. Yes forever. Oh forever.
In the morning they’re sprinkled with cuts and scrapes they can’t remember getting. Nothing that actually hurts; just tiny mischievous reminders, winking up from their knuckles and their shins when Joanne Heffernan flips something bitchy at Holly for taking too long in the breakfast queue, or when Miss Naughton tries to make Becca cringe for not paying attention. It takes them a while to realise it’s not just people being annoying; they actually are spacy, Holly actually was staring at the toast for like ever, and none of them have a clue what Naughton was on about. Their foothold has shifted; it’s taking them a while to get their balance back.
‘Do it again soon?’ Selena says, at break-time, through her juice straw.
For a second they’re afraid to say yes, in case it’s not the same, next time. In case that can only happen once, and they try to get it back and end up sitting in the glade getting colds up their gees and staring at each other like a pack of tossers.
They say it anyway. Something’s started; it’s too late to stop it. Becca picks a sliver of twig out of Julia’s hair and stashes it in her blazer pocket, to keep.