The Memory Game (10 page)

‘Sorry I got you
in trouble earlier,’ I say. 

She shoots me a
sideways glance and swallows her bread. ‘You seem to be good at that.’

‘I just wanted
to make you laugh.’

‘You did. 
It’s just a shame Mr Bauer didn’t find it so funny.’

‘To be fair,’ I say,
‘if he could have seen me he would have done.’

‘No, he would
have given you detention too.’

‘You got
detention?’

‘After school.
  I think I got off pretty lightly,
though.’

‘How long?’

‘Only thirty
minutes.’

I think about
thirty minutes.  Another half hour I have to wait by myself at the end of
school.

‘No need to look
so miserable,’ she says. ‘You can come and wait with me but just don’t talk.’

‘But if I don’t
talk I might as well be alone.’

‘At least
someone knows you’re there, though.’

‘Maybe.
But I think I’ll wait outside, just in case.’

She shrugs.
‘If you want.’

‘You want to do
something after school? I understand if you don’t –’

‘Yeah, I do.
That would be good,’ she says quickly.

‘Great. Where do
you want to go then?’

She’s thoughtful
for a moment. ‘You still haven’t decided what you want to do about Raven.’

I’m just about
to reply when she holds a finger up and looks sharply at the opening of the
alleyway. 

‘Who’re you
talking to?’ Matt says as he stands with his arm hanging off Ingrid.

Bethany’s
mouth works silently for a moment. ‘I was on my phone,’ she says finally.

‘You’ve got a
phone? Is it made out of wood and pebbles?’ Matt snipes and Ingrid snorts. Bethany
doesn’t say anything. ‘Well, you can clear off, freak,’ he says taking a step
towards her. ‘This spot is ours.’

Bethany
glances quickly at me as she scoops her leftovers into her lunchbox and snaps
the lid on.  She sidles past Matt and Ingrid, who seem to be doing their
best to fill the space and make it as hard as possible for her to get away, and
I follow her.  Even though they’re being vile to her, she shoots Ingrid
the most pitying look as she passes by and I see Ingrid shrink back a little,
sort of freaked by it. I’ve seen that knowing look from Bethany
before, it’s like she can see right into your soul.  I think that’s why
people don’t like her, it’s almost like she knows too much about you. It makes
you feel kind of guilty, I suppose.

Then we’re out
on the open yard. Bethany swings
her bag onto her shoulder. She gives me a tiny knowing look, and heads back
into the building, and all I can do is watch her go and think about how long it
is until the end of school.

I wait for Bethany
by the gap in the fence. I watch the kids file out when the home time bell
goes. The air is full of voices and laughter, but then there’s a lull until the
detention kids follow a while after, their conversations more subdued.  It
feels like I’ve been waiting my whole life when she finally shows.  She
squeezes through the hole in the fence without a word and we walk together in
silence until the slope of the fields puts us out of view of the school yard.

‘Have you been
ok?’ she asks me.

‘Of course I
have,’ I say. ‘What did you think was going to happen to me?’

She shrugs.
‘Just asking.
  It must be boring hanging around for
me.’

‘I don’t mind,’
I say.  The sun is starting to sink low but it’s still bright and casts a
glow that sets fire to the gold bits in her hair as she walks. For a few
seconds I can’t look at anything but that. ‘It’s not like I can go and hang out
with anyone else,’ I add quickly.

‘I suppose not,’
she says.  She rifles in her bag and pulls out a packet of crisps. ‘Do you
want to do the remembering thing?’ she asks as she opens them.

‘It’s ok, you
can eat them.  I’m not sure if I like salt and vinegar anyway.’

‘So, did you
decide about Raven?’

‘It’d cost too
much money,’ I reply.

‘I thought about
that,’ she says in between crisps, ‘I could get a job.’

‘Where?’

‘Paper shop.’

‘No way.
  There’s not a parent in this village
who
will let their kid have a paper round after what
happened to me. Old
Bert’s having
to take the
papers out in his car.’

‘I know,’ she
says giving me a knowing smile. ‘That’s why he’ll snap my hand off when I
offer.’

‘What about your
dad?’

‘I don’t have to
tell him.  It’ll only be for a week or two while we get enough cash to pay
her.’

‘He’ll notice
you gone every night, surely?’

‘As long as I
get back to do his tea, he won’t care.’ 

I think about
this for a moment. ‘Ok, what if you do the paper round and save up and she’s
useless?’

‘We won’t have
lost anything by trying.’

‘Other than a lot of money.’

‘Who cares about
money?’

‘You don’t have
much,’ I say.

‘I have enough.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘I
don’t want you to do it.’

‘Who made you
the boss of me?’ She stops and turns to face me. ‘If I decide to get a job,
then I get one.’

‘It’s just…’ I
don’t know how to say what I want to tell her.

‘Nothing will
happen to me,’ she says, guessing what’s in my mind. ‘What are the chances
of two kids being killed the same way on the same road doing the same job?’

‘Maybe you
should tell that to all the parents.’

‘Parents freak
out about stuff like that, it’s what they do.’ She starts to walk
again. ‘I might as well go and see Bert now, I’m already late and it’s on
the way home anyway.’

I follow
quietly. That new Bethany is with
me again and I don’t know what to do with her.

The bell tinkles at the door of the
paper shop and we go in. It’s gloomy and smells of dust and dried tobacco, just
like it did on that last night when I picked up my papers. The shelves where
Bert keeps emergency stocks of stuff like teabags and bread look like they
haven’t been cleaned for years.  Mum never bought food from here; she
always drove to the supermarket on the ring road no matter how late it
was. At least that’s something still in my memory.

 Bert seems
doubtful. He looks at Bethany
through his one good eye as if he thinks she’s a lowlife, just like the kids at
school do. I never noticed adults do it before.

‘The bag is
heavy, and it’ll be dark as the nights draw in,’ he says scratching his head
through his thinning hair. 

‘I don’t mind,’
she replies brightly. ‘I’m stronger than I look and I don’t get scared by the
dark.’

‘Are you sure?
A young girl on your own?’

‘I’m sure. We
live in a pretty safe place, after all.’

Not that
safe,
I think, but I don’t say anything.

‘What about your
dad?’ Bert asks, frowning.  ‘He won’t be coming in asking after you, will
he?’

‘No, he says he
doesn’t mind me bringing a bit extra into the house,’ she replies.

I’m actually
impressed how good she is at lying.  Bert’s gaze flicks to the bound up
piles of papers that have just arrived and then back at Bethany
again.

‘I suppose I
could give you a trial,’ he says with a sigh.  

‘Will you pay
me, even though I’m on trial?’

‘You’ll get
paid, don’t worry.’

‘So… you want me
to start tonight?’

He nods.
‘Why not?
  Come back about five.’

‘Cool.’

I follow her
from the shop.  She stops outside and peers at the cards in the
window. When she sees the one with the medium’s number on she roots in her
bag for a notebook. 

‘Raven.
Cool name,’ she says writing down the woman’s
details.

‘Stupid name if
you ask me.’

‘That’s because
you have no imagination.’

‘That’s because
I’m dead.’

‘How long do you
reckon it’ll take me to do the round?’ she asks, ignoring my last
statement. 

‘Depends on
which half of the village he gets you to do.
Hour, maybe hour
and a half.
  It’s too big to do it all by yourself.’

‘But if I can do
it by myself maybe he’ll pay me double and I won’t have to do it for as long.’

‘That’s crazy.
You can’t do the whole village by yourself.’

‘It’s not that
big.’

‘No, but it’s
still a lot of papers. It’d weigh a ton.’

‘You managed
ok.’

‘
Me
? I
didn’t do the whole lot myself.’

‘No, but you’re
not exactly
muscley
, are you?’

I’m about to
snap a reply when I see her smile a little.

‘Ha ha.’

‘If it makes you
happy, I’ll just do the one lot and see how that goes.’

‘I wish I could
help you,’ I say, staring down at the floor. I feel like such a loser right
now.

‘You can,’ she
says. I look up at her and she’s smiling again. ‘You know the quickest route
around so you can show it to me.’

I think about
the quickest route. I decide to show her the safest one.

Four:  Raven

‘Actually, I think Bert’s a bit
tight making you do this.  He should do the papers in his car and let you
look after the shop while he’s gone.’

Bethany shoots
me one of those looks that I’m getting used to, the one that says I haven’t
thought through what I’ve just said one bit. She’s leaning to one side, trying
to balance out the enormous weight of her paper bag, and looking at the
laminated list of addresses by the light of her torch.
‘As if
he’s going to do that.’

‘Just saying…’

‘He doesn’t even
know me.  He’s not going to trust me alone with all the money in his
till.’

‘He knows who
you are,’ I remind her, ‘he asked about your dad.’

‘I know,’ she
says. ‘That’s not going to help either.’

I wonder what
she means by that but it doesn’t seem the time to ask.

‘It would help
if you could remember this list,’ she says. ‘We’d be much faster if I didn’t
have to keep stopping to look at it.’

‘Sorry,’ I
shrug. ‘It’s just gone out of my head.  I do remember that it gets easier
once you’ve been on the bit with the new houses – you dump loads of papers
there and your bag’s lighter,’ I explain, almost as an apology.

‘It’s the long
way around, though, this road,’ she says.

‘Yeah, but –’

‘There has to be
a quicker way.’

‘There isn’t.’

‘There is.’

‘Where?’

‘Yarrow Lane’s
quicker.’

‘It’s too
dangerous.’

‘This is
stupid,’ she says dropping the bag to the floor. ‘This bag weighs a ton, the
sooner I can empty it the better.  Let’s go the quickest way.’

No!’ I almost shout
at her. ‘I’m not taking you there,’ I say, trying to get my voice under control
again.

‘If you don’t, I
can still figure it out myself eventually, so you might as well.’

We stare at each
other in silence.  I can see that she’s not going to budge and I finally
have to give in. ‘Right, ok. But we are going to be careful.’

‘Nothing is
going to happen to me there. I’ll look out for cars and all that talk of it
being haunted is just stupid. Ok?’

I nod. ‘Ok then.

‘Thank you,’ she
says, pulling the bag back onto her shoulder.  She looks a bit like a
sapling holding the weight of a vulture the way the bag is bending her to one
side.  We start to walk again.

‘This is a lot
of work just for me,’ I say. ‘I don’t understand why you’d want to do it.’

She glances at
me quickly and then turns to face ahead once more before she answers. ‘I’ve got
nothing else to do. Same as you said before, it’s not like I can go hang out
with anyone else, is it?’

‘But,’ I say,
‘if this woman does figure out why I’m still here and she knows how to sort it,
then I suppose I’ll go… wherever it is I’m supposed to go.’

We’re both quiet
as soon as I’ve said this; you can almost see the question mark hanging in the
air.

‘We’ll just have to see what happens,’ she says eventually.

The moon disappears behind a bank
of cloud so that the only light is the white streak of Bethany’s
torch. Yarrow Lane is deserted and silent, the same as always.
Almost always.

‘Can you show
me where it happened?’ she asks quietly.

I look at her.
‘You want to see where I died?’

‘Yes. Can I?’

‘What for?
Isn’t that a bit creepy?’

She shrugs. ‘I
don’t know. It just feels important.’

 I walk
ahead and look for the place.  ‘Here…’ I call Bethany
over.  She comes over and stands next to me. We look down at the ditch together.

‘This is it,
then?’ she asks.  Her voice is quiet but it still seems to echo through
the trees.  ‘This is where you died?’

‘Yes.’

‘There’s nothing
here,’ she says, ‘where are all the flowers? You always see flowers where there
are road accidents.’

‘I don’t know,’
I say. ‘I suppose people have forgotten me by now.’

‘I don’t think
so,’ she says, ‘it wasn’t all that long ago. What about
your
mum? She would leave some.’

‘I think it
would make her cry too much to come here. I’m glad she doesn’t.’

She’s quiet for
a moment. Then she says, ‘I feel like I should do something to mark the spot.’

‘It doesn’t need
marking, I know it,’ I say. ‘It’s like there’s a part of me still in the soil
and it draws me to the right place without me even having to try.’

There’s a
movement in the shadows, just out of the reach of the torchlight. Bethany
sweeps the grass with the beam and we see the fox with her cubs dive out of
sight. ‘They must live nearby,’ I say. ‘They’re always here when I come.’

Bethany
turns the light back to the ditch as if she hasn’t heard me. ‘Did you bleed a
lot?’ she whispers.

‘I think so. It
looked like a lot to me.’

‘You can’t even
tell anything happened here,’ she says.

She drops the
paper bag and pulls her front door key from her pocket.  With her weight
against the old tree that overhangs the ditch, she holds the torch in one hand
and, with her key in the other, slowly makes a series of jagged marks in the
trunk. I watch as it takes shape.

David

Around my name
she carves a heart. 

‘Thank you,’ I
say. It’s such a tiny phrase for such a massive thing.  

She turns to me
and smiles as she puts the key away. I think her eyes are shining wet in the
torchlight but I can’t be sure.  ‘Nobody will ever forget now,’ she says.

By the time the last paper has gone
through the last letterbox it’s seven-thirty. 

‘I really need
to get home,’ Bethany says.

‘Will your dad
be missing you?’

‘He’ll be
hungry,’ she says. ‘I should have gone home and cooked first and then come to
do this.’

‘Don’t you get
sick of looking after him all the time?’ I ask as we stride back towards her
house.

‘It’s just me
and him now.  It doesn’t matter if I get sick of it or not.’

‘Don’t you have
any other family?’

She shrugs. ‘Mum
hadn’t spoken to my grandparents for years, not that I remember them.’

‘Were they from
the village?’

‘Yes, but they
moved away.’

‘People don’t
usually move away from here.’

‘I don’t know
what happened, but I think there was a lot of trouble when she married my dad;
they didn’t approve of him and there was a massive bust up. Perhaps that’s what
made them move.’

‘What about your
dad? Has he got family?’

‘He has some
family, down South.  We see them sometimes, weddings and funerals and
stuff, but Dad doesn’t really like them much.’

‘Beth… did your
dad ever…’ She looks at me sharply, as if she knows the next question and
doesn’t want me to ask it.  ‘My mum remarried eventually,’ I say, changing
the subject. ‘Perhaps your dad will. It might get you off the hook a bit.’

She rubs her arm,
deep in thought.
‘Perhaps.’

‘How did your
mum fall down the stairs?’

‘I don’t
know.  Clumsy, I suppose.’

‘Were you there
when it happened?  Was she dead straightaway?’

‘Do you mind if
we don’t talk about it?’ she asks looking ahead and picking up the pace.

We reach her yellow door after
walking the rest of the way in silence. 

‘Shall I come
for you tomorrow morning?’ I ask.

‘Yeah.’

I look up at her
house.  There’s just one dim light in the front downstairs window. 
‘Will he give you a really hard time for being late?’  

‘Nothing I can’t
handle,’ she smiles, though the smile doesn’t look quite real; it’s not the one
that changes her face when it’s just us, but the one that she wears at school
for the teachers.

‘Maybe I could
come in?’ I say. 

‘I suppose it’s
lonely on your own all night?’ 

‘A bit.’
  

She glances up
at the house and rubs her arm absently before she replies. ‘Don’t come in
tonight.’

I nod slowly.
‘Ok, I won’t.’

‘See you
tomorrow,’ she says and crosses the road to her house. 

I watch as she
climbs the steps and the front door closes behind her. 

The road is
quiet, only the muffled sounds of televisions along the row and the snorting of
the horse in the field behind me.  Suddenly, the night air is sliced by a
high pitched squeal. It sounds as though it’s coming from one of the houses.

I run away so
that I don’t have to hear it again.  

Bethany
hasn’t come out of her house yet this morning.  I think it’s pretty late
but I have no way of knowing. Her green flowery curtains are still closed as
though she’s in bed.  I could go inside, fade through the walls and see,
but it doesn’t seem right to do that when she told me last night not to go
in.  Besides, she might be getting dressed or something and then she’d be
really pissed off. The horse from the field comes up to me.

‘Have you seen
her yet? Have I missed her already?’ I ask him.  Bethany
told me the horse was a boy. 

He looks at me
as he blows a warm breath from his muzzle, and then walks back across the
field.

‘Yeah, thanks!’
I call after him. ‘Thanks for nothing.’

I walk down the
row of houses, and then back up again to the wall outside her door. 
Nothing moves at Bethany’s house;
no curtain twitches, no door opens.  Maybe she’s gone to school without
me. I don’t know why she would and I don’t know why the idea bothers me but it
does.  A door a couple of houses away opens and someone comes down the
steps and gets into a car. I think
it’s
Fred Taylor, I
remember he worked with my dad for a while until they laid him off. I suppose
he must have another job now, as he looks as though he’s going to work with his
sandwich bag and a suit on.  I wonder what he thinks of Bethany and her
dad.  I watch Fred drive off and then look up at Bethany’s
door again, but it doesn’t open.

Bethany
is not at school either. I’ve looked in the form room,
then
I went to the IT suite in case she went straight there for first period but
there was no sign of her. I even checked the nurse station in case she had
fainted or something, but the room is empty.

Nobody says a
word about the fact that she isn’t in when morning register is called and when
Miss Jacobs asks if anyone knows where she is, everyone just shakes their heads
and looks like they don’t know and don’t care.  ‘Maybe she’s finally figured
out that everyone thinks she’s a loser and has hanged herself from a tree,’
Matt sniggers to
Paulie
.

‘You piece of
shit!’ I shout at him. I want to hurt
him,
I really,
really want to hurt him so bad.  I go and stand right in front of
him.  I must be able to move something; maybe if I think hard about what I
want to do, I can get something to fly at him. There has to be a use for all
this anger that’s burning me up. I look for something small to start
with. His pencil case is out on the desk in front of him. Not massive, but
he’ll know about it if it hits him in the face. I close my eyes tight and
concentrate. I think about moving the pencil case, about making it fly at
him.  I scrunch my eyes up and I try to pour all my rage into that one act.

His laughter
makes my eyes open again.  He’s cracking up at something
Paulie
has just whispered to him. The pencil case is open
and he’s doodling on the front of his English book.  It hasn’t even moved
one tiny bit, as far as I can tell.  Maybe if I concentrate on being solid
somehow, I can move it with my hand.  So I close my eyes again and think
about my hand being real and being able to pick things up and move them. 
When I open them again, I make my breathing slow and I try to focus and I move
my hand towards the pencil case.  My hand goes through it, the same as
always.

‘BASTARD!’
I scream.  I look up at the class. ‘I HATE
YOU! I HATE YOU ALL!’

Nobody hears me.

Bethany’s
curtains are still closed.  It’s lunchtime at school and she definitely
ought to be up by now.  I suppose she’s ill or something.  What would
she want me to do?  Should I go in and see if she’s ok?  If she’s
puking then I don’t suppose she wants me hassling her, but if I don’t go in
then she’ll think I don’t care.  But what if she’s really worse than ill?
What if something very bad has happened? I wonder if she’ll be ok to do her
paper round later.  Bert would surely sack her if she didn’t turn in on
only her second day. So now I’m thinking that I really ought to go in and find
out if she’s going to make it to the paper shop tonight.

I hear laughter
and see that Matt and Ingrid are coming up the lane towards me.  Matt is
the one laughing about something but Ingrid looks worried.

‘I don’t think
it’s a good idea,’ Ingrid says as they walk past me.

‘Don’t be so
uptight,’ Matt replies, ‘he’s probably too drunk to remember who we are.’

‘He sees my dad
in the pub,’ Ingrid says, ‘so he knows who I am.’

‘
You
don’t go in the pub, though, do you?’
Matt looks at his
watch.
‘We’d better hurry up; it’ll be afternoon registration soon.’

‘This is just
stupid,’ Ingrid moans but she stands at the bottom of Bethany’s
steps anyway and keeps watch as Matt goes up with a parcel in his hands. 
Suddenly, I know what it is he’s doing; it’s a trick we’ve played a hundred
times before. He gets a lighter from his pocket and sets fire to the package
before shoving it through the letterbox.  He bangs on the front door and
then races down the steps, laughing his head off and dragging Ingrid with him,
who’s laughing too now. 

Bethany’s
curtain moves and she peers out.  She sees me.