Skippy Dies (65 page)

And now Zora Carpathian is calling her the Death Girl and all over the school someone keeps writing
LORI L’S DANIEL 4 EVER
it must be Tara Gately, she copies everything Lori does, she has all of her things, bangles, hairbands,
BETHani
badge on the strap of her schoolbag, she’s probably never even kissed
anybody herself well if she wants to be her so much Lori wishes she could just let her, say to her okay you can be Lori and
see how you like it and I’ll be nobody I’ll just be some air in the sky up where nobody can breathe it but then what would
she do about CarlCarlCarlCarl

They are back in the toilets in school. Janine is wiping Lori’s eyes and cheeks. Denise and Aifric Quinlavan are smoking cigarettes
and talking about boys. Would you do it if you really liked him?

I wouldn’t ever like someone who would want me to do something like that.

They all want to do it, Aifric says, they see it on the Internet and then they want you to do it. You should see the stuff
my brother has on his computer, it’s totally vile.

Like what sort of stuff?

Like, you know, men spraying their, you know, on girls’ faces? Like their semen?

Ewww, that’s so gross!

Or sticking their thing up your arse.

There’s no way I’m ever doing that, Denise says. Like why would anyone want to do that?

You can’t get pregnant, Janine says. If they shag you up the arse it means you can’t get pregnant.

How romantic, Denise says.

It’s like going to the toilet in reverse, Aifric says. It’s fucking sick, I don’t care.

He tried to talk to Lori at the graveyard but she ran away from him. She blocked his calls from her mobile and he hangs up
whenever Dad picks up the house phone. At night she can feel him outside in the dark under the trees looking up at her window,
and a part of her wants to go out to him in spite of everything. But Janine says, Stay away from him. She says he tried to
talk to her too, after school one day. What did he say? I didn’t listen I just blanked him. And you should too, Lori. There’s
something wrong with that guy, I’m serious.

And it’s true, what kind of psycho would do something like that? When he knew about the Plan, when she’d explained that it
wasn’t real! But inside she knows why he did it, it was because he was jealous of her and Daniel. If only he hadn’t been jealous,
if only he’d believed she just loved him! (Though then she thinks of Daniel’s hand on her breast…) And she thinks of him hanging
around with all those weirdo knackers selling drugs, they give her the creeps, and of his horrible dad who had sex with a
girl in sixth year and his mom wandering around the house stinking of drink and chain-smoking and listening to Lionel Richie,
and Carl says he doesn’t care if they split up but that’s why he’s acting weird even for him, it’s got to be, and she knows
what he really needs is someone to care for him?

Janine says, He’s a bad guy, Lori, I mean it. There’s something missing from him. He’s dangerous.

You don’t know him like I do, Lori says.

Janine thinks for a minute. Maybe not, she says. But I can still tell.

And she’s right, Lori knows it, he’s bad, he’s all fucked up, you can see it in the marks on his arms, and if her dad ever
had a clue that a guy like him had gone near her she’d be sent off to boarding school in a split second because you can tell
he’s never going to be all right or good, and he swears and he’s always in a bad mood and all he ever talked about was wanting
to have sex with her like does he even really care about her but then she thinks of his teeth that are just the right amount
of crooked and she thinks of his body crushing hers like a door into a world of mmmm and stuff she had never thought about
before not really and now she can’t stop lying in bed and her mom came in I was thinking of you I had my eyes closed oh my
god I’ve never done that before and when you press against a body did you think it could get so hot like your skin’s in flames
and everything underneath like a volcano and even when you’re not touching me it’s like you are it’s like I can see the secret
fire beneath everything even if we’re just standing outside McDonald’s or on the roof of Ed’s that
time you were setting the paper planes alight and throwing them at the guy down on the ground I’d drunk a can my head was
spinning I never laughed so much and then I stopped laughing and I lay my head down and looked at you and the black sky and
I loved you and the air was full of burning full of sparks coming off the fiery planes full of candybursts of sugarflames
of honey-fire of dreamruindisobey, I am never going home…

You were a million miles away, Mom says.

Thinking of your TV career, Dad says with a grin. Here is the news: Lori Wakeham is going to be famous!

It’s just a screen test, Daddy, she says, they might say no.

There’s no way they’ll say no. Look at you, you were born to be on television! I’ll tell you a secret – I always knew you
were going to make it big.

Oh stop, Mom laughs, you’re embarrassing her!

Seriously, the day you were born, I looked at you and I thought, This girl’s got it. Star potential. Dad sits back and rests
his hands behind his head. Something good may yet come out of all this, he says contentedly. And you deserve it too, after
all you’ve been through.

She is back in her house. Mom and Dad are all excited because during the day the woman from the modelling agency called again,
and a different woman from a different modelling agency, and a producer from a TV company who thinks she might be perfect
for a new kids’ programme they’re making. Maybe Dad is right, maybe everything will work out after all. But tonight she just
can’t concentrate on it.

She’s got this weird feeling in her stomach.

Dad is talking about some big deal going down at work, secret plans to take over another company.

‘Mouth closed when we eat, darling,’ Mom says. ‘No one’s going to let you on TV with a mouthful of chewed food.’

‘Sorry,’ Lori says.

It’s different to earlier. Then she just felt empty. This is a definite
tingling
, like something is
alive
down there.

Lilya comes in and clears the plates. Mom tells Dad about a new kind of tan you can have injected into your skin. ‘Maybe we
should get Lori a salon session before her screen test…?’

And now worry beats into her head, she feels it strike her temples and cheeks with each fresh wave of blood and she bows her
head so Mom and Dad won’t see. (
What if the stuff leaks through her stomach into her womb?
) (Don’t be a spa, it doesn’t work that way, you know it doesn’t!) (But what if it
does
?) (But Janine said it couldn’t happen just from a BJ.) (But Denise said it could.)

Oh fuck. Another crash of worry, now she feels sick and there are tears in her eyes and the Taste in her mouth and the tingling
in her stomach gets stronger. Why is she only thinking of this now? Why didn’t she think of it before, you can get that magic
pill that Janine got that time she was with Oliver Crotty?

‘It’s a kids’ show, they’re not going to want her waltzing in like she’s just arrived from St Tropez,’ Dad is saying. ‘They
want the natural look. That’s what Lori’s got. Natural, fresh-faced, innocent.’

‘But I’m telling you, this is how they all look these days,’ Mom says. ‘What if she goes for the screen test and all the other
girls have tans?’

Lori is trying to remember the sex talk they had in school and what they said about getting pregnant. But all she can remember
are the diagrams of the Reproductive Organs, all that equipment secretly packed in there, coiled up on itself like a bomb
in a suitcase,
waiting
, and those freaky horrible words,
womb
,
uterine
,
fallopian
, that sounded like the names of aliens not her own insides…

‘Well, let’s let her decide for herself,’ Mom says. ‘Darling?’

‘What?’ Lori says.

‘If you had the choice, would you rather be a model or a TV presenter? Modelling’s classier, I think.’

‘But TV has more exposure,’ Dad points out.

‘I don’t know.’ It’s all Lori can do to mumble.

‘I think it’s a waste of a girl with Lori’s looks to just plonk her on the television,’ Mom says.

In the average ejaculation there are roughly 350 million sperms, that is another thing she remembers. 350
million
! It’s like an army, it’s like a whole
country
marching through her insides – taking her over, searching for the egg – and suddenly it’s like she can
see
them, in the great hollow cavern of her stomach, white slithery terrorists hiding in the shadows, waiting till nightfall
to creep into other parts of her body, their tadpole-tails flickering almost too fast to see – oh God, stop or I’m going to
–

And then Lilya comes in and sets a bowl down in front of Lori.

‘What in God’s name is this?’ she hears Dad ask from a long way away.

‘It’s tapioca pudding,’ Mom tells him. ‘Remember I was telling you, about retro desserts?’

‘Retro is right, I haven’t eaten this in twenty years.’ Dad digs his spoon into the white-grey mess and lifts it to his mouth.

‘It’s a bit runny…’

‘May I be excused?’ Lori says.

As soon as she’s left the room she starts to run. She makes it to the bathroom just in time. Hanging over the toilet bowl
she hears Sister Benedict’s voice ring through her head, saying, ‘
Though God can do all things, He cannot raise a virgin after she has fallen
’ – she sees the nuns ringed around her, staring at her big belly, they are shaking their heads and whispering
slut
to each other…

And Mom not saying slut but thinking it, and Dad not saying anything just going red and then walking downstairs to the gym
and doing bench presses for three hours, and the woman from the TV production company saying, I’m terribly sorry, no sluts.
But she’s not a slut, she just wanted to make him like her, she just didn’t want him to think she was frigid or a lesbian!
Her stomach is so sore, the muscles there are crying out, and she is crying too, the tears dripping down into the bowl like
kids coming down a waterslide, and after she’s finished she can still feel the things in her stomach! They’re still there!
And in the distance the intercom goes and she hears Mom and someone else
go mumble mumble mumble and then Mom’s voice rings out, Lorelei!

Oh my God, who is it? She looks in the mirror, she is hideous, her eyes are all red and her cheeks too and her hair is straggly
and there is snot everywhere – Lori! Mom calls again. Oh no, is it the producer? This is definitely God punishing her, though
if he punishes her this way maybe he won’t make her pregnant – Just a second, she calls down, and scrubs her face in the sink
so it looks like she’s just been washing not crying and blows her nose which some sick has got into and then puts on some
lip gloss and goes downstairs.

But it’s not the producer or the woman from the agency. Instead it’s an extremely fat boy in a Seabrook uniform. Unless she’s
imagining it, he’s giving her a really evil stare. In a cold
Falcon Crest
-type voice she says, Yes?

I have a message for you, goes the fat boy, and in that instant Lori feels her heart stop dead and freeze up like a ghost
has wrapped its hands around it, even before the fat boy goes on, From Skippy. She looks down at Mom hoping she’ll say, I’m
sorry, dear, we’re having dinner. But Mom has already gone back into the dining room.

Come upstairs, she says to him in a low voice.

Some fat people though not actually attractive can look cuddly or jolly. That’s not the kind of fat he is. As he climbs towards
her he gasps for air. The stairs groan under his feet and when he reaches the top he has sweat on his forehead.

She leads him into her bedroom, where he peers around at everything like he’s never been in a girl’s room before, which is
quite likely. Were you one of Daniel’s friends? she asks, slipping off her scrunchie and swinging out her lustrous black hair.
I was his room-mate in school, he says, studying the pictures on her wall, the horses,
BETHani
and her boyfriend. It was so terrible, what happened to him, she says devoutly. He does not say anything to this, just releases
a kind of a hiss, like steam from a pressure cooker. Suddenly she feels sick again. She wishes he would go. What was the message
he wanted you to give to me?

He wanted me to tell you he loved you, the fat boy says. He says it levelly, icily, like a teacher telling you that you’ll
never amount to anything. It was his last wish, the fat boy says.

I know that, she says.

Now he’s dead, the boy says.

Lori flushes. She doesn’t like that word being said in her room. She considers asking him to leave but another part of her
is advising her to tread carefully, be diplomatic.

The boy has sunk into a chair and flops there motionlessly, staring at the floor. There is a black anger radiating from him.

Was there anything else? she says coldly, the way her mother speaks to shop assistants.

The boy doesn’t respond. He keeps clenching and unclenching his fat fists. Then in a low mean voice he says, It was you in
that video.

Lori flinches. What? she says.

It was you on the doughnut shop roof. You and Carl.

I don’t know what you’re talking about, Lori says in a steely voice.

You pretended to love him, the boy goes on, so you and Carl could play this trick. And now he’s dead.

SHE DOES NOT LIKE THAT WORD BEING SAID
, she does not like it, and in a flash she knows that Carl is outside and all she has to do is cry out and then the fat boy
would know all about dead. But instead she says, Nothing you are saying makes any sense to me.

With that the fat boy erupts, his moon-like face screws into a horrible mask of hate, and he shouts, You lied to him! You
kissed him, you made him think you cared about him, you used him!

That isn’t true! Lori finds her whole body is shaking, maybe vibrating in time with the fat boy, who is wobbling like a jelly
made out of explosives, his face a big swollen blackcurrant. But then he becomes quite still. He stares into her eyes and
he whispers, You are an evil person. You are a person who pretends to love people so you can control them. But you don’t care
about anyone except yourself.