The Secret Place (40 page)

Finn’s eyebrows are up.

‘Yeah, I know. I was a bitch. I apologised. But it was because I
wanted
her to prove it was all true. I wanted it to be real, so
badly
. If I hadn’t cared, I’d’ve been like, “Yeah, whatever, maybe just possibly clairvoyance happens, probably not.” But I couldn’t stand the idea of actually believing in all this amazing mysterious stuff, and then finding out that duhhh I was a big thicko sucker and there was nothing there.’

It’s true: she’s never said this even to the others. With them she’s the one who’s always sure straight through – Julia figures Selena knows it’s more complicated than that, but they don’t talk about it. Something moves through her, unstoppable as the rum: tonight matters, after all.

‘Then what happened?’ Finn asks.

Wariness shoots up in Julia. ‘Huh?’

‘You said, a minute ago: now you do believe in some of this stuff. So what changed?’

Her fucking mouth, always open one sentence too long. ‘So,’ she says, lightly, rolling over onto her stomach to put out her smoke in the grass. ‘You don’t believe in the ghost nun, but you think she might be out here anyway. And I kind of believe in her, but I don’t actually think she’s here.’

Finn is smart enough not to push. ‘Between the two of us, we’re basically guaranteed to get haunted.’

‘Is that why you’re hanging on here? In case she goes boo and gives me a heart attack?’

‘You’re not scared?’

Julia arches an eyebrow. ‘What, because I’m a girl?’

‘No. Because you believe in it. Kind of.’

‘I’m out here every
day
. The ghost hasn’t got me yet.’

‘You’re out here in the daytime. Not at night.’

Finn is testing; finding new ways to work out what he thinks of her, now that the normal ones are useless. They’re in new territory. Julia realises she likes it here.

‘This isn’t night,’ she says. ‘It’s nine o-fucking-clock.
Babies
are still out playing. If it was summer, it’d be daylight.’

‘So if I got up right now and went inside, you’d be totally fine out here by yourself.’

It occurs to Julia that actually she probably should be scared, here on her own with a guy who’s already tried once. It occurs to her that a few months ago, after what happened with James Gillen, she would have been scared; she would have been the one leaving.

She says, ‘As long as you left me the rum.’

Finn pulls himself up off the grass with a sit-up and a jump. He brushes off his jeans and lifts an eyebrow at Julia.

She waves up at him, from her nest. ‘Off you go and find yourself some nice tit. Have fun.’

Finn pretends to start turning away. She laughs at him. After a minute he laughs back and drops down on the grass again.

‘Too scary?’ Julia asks. ‘All that way on your ownio, in the big bad dark?’

‘It’s nine o-fucking-clock. Like you said. If it actually was night, bet you’d be scared.’

‘I’m badass, baby. I can handle ghost nuns.’

Finn lies back and passes Julia the bottle. ‘Right. Let’s see you out here at midnight.’

‘Bring it on.’

‘Yeah. Right.’

That grin, like a dare. Julia’s never been any good at turning down a dare. Thin ice, she feels it, but the rum is dancing in her and what the hell, it’s not like she’s going to tell him anything. She says, ‘When’s the next social?’

‘What?’

‘Come on. March?’

‘Sometime in April. So?’

She points up at the fancy-hands clock on the back of the school. ‘So at the next social, I’ll have a photo of that clock showing midnight.’

‘So you’ve done Photoshop. Fair play.’

Julia shrugs. ‘Trust me or don’t. Yeah, I want to own you, but not that badly. I’ll get the photo straight up.’

Finn turns his head, on the grass. Their faces are inches apart, and Julia thinks
Oh God no
because him trying to kiss her now would be more kick-in-the-teeth depressing than she wants to admit, but Finn is grinning, a wide-open wicked grin like a kid’s. ‘Bet you a tenner you don’t,’ he says.

Julia grins back, the way she grins at Holly when an idea’s hit them both. ‘Bet you a tenner I do,’ she says.

Their hands come up at the same time, slap together, and they shake. Finn’s hand feels good, strong, an even match to hers.

She picks up the bottle and holds it up above her face, to the stars. ‘Here’s to my tenner,’ she says. ‘I’ll put it towards ghost-hunting equipment.’

In the entrance hall the huge chandelier is off, but the sconce lights on the walls turn the air a warm old-fashioned gold. Above their reach, floors of darkness stretch upwards, untouched, echoing with Chris and Selena’s footsteps.

Selena sits on the staircase. The steps are white stone, veined with grey; once upon a time they were polished – there are still traces between the banisters – but thousands of feet have worn them down till they’re velvety-rough, with dips in the middle.

Chris sits down next to her. Selena has never been this close to him before, close enough to see the scattering of freckles along the tops of his cheekbones, the faintest shading of stubble on his chin; to smell him, spices and a thread of something wild and musky that makes her think of outside at night. He feels different from anyone she’s ever met: charged up fuller, electric and sparking with three people’s worth of life packed into his skin.

Selena wants to touch him again. She slides her hands under her thighs to stop herself reaching out and pressing her palm against his neck. With a sudden leap of warning, she wonders if she fancies him; but she’s fancied guys, back Before, even snogged a few of them. This isn’t the same thing.

She shouldn’t have let him touch her even that once, back in the hall. She understands that.

She wants the world to be that real again.

Chris says, ‘Are your friends going to wonder where you are?’

They will. Selena feels another nudge of unease: she never even thought of telling them. ‘I’ll text them,’ she says, feeling for the pocket in the unfamiliar dress. ‘What about yours?’

‘Nah.’ Chris’s half-smile says his friends expected him to go missing tonight.

To Holly:
Am just outside, wanted to get out for a few mins, back soon.
‘There,’ Selena says, sending it.

The hall door opens, letting out a rush of thumping bass and squeals and hot air, and Miss Long sticks her head out. When she sees Chris and Selena, she nods and points a threatening finger:
Stay.
Someone shrieks behind her, she whips round and the door slams shut.

Chris says, ‘Back in there. I wasn’t trying to tell you what you guys should wear.’

‘Yeah, you were,’ Selena says. ‘It’s OK, though. I’m not mad.’

‘I was just saying. If you wear jeans to a dance and do your hair like that, people are going to laugh at you, end of. Your friend Becca – I mean, I know she has to be the same age as us, but she’s like a kid. She doesn’t get it. You can’t just let her walk out there to get eaten alive by Joanne Heffernan.’

‘Joanne would say stuff anyway,’ Selena points out. ‘No matter what Becca was wearing.’

‘Yeah, because she’s a total raving bitch. So don’t give her extra excuses.’

Selena says, ‘I thought you liked Joanne.’

‘I was with her a few times. That’s not the same thing.’

Selena thinks about that for a while. Chris bends over his shoelace, untying and retying it. His cheek glows. Selena can feel the heat of it, deep in her palm.

She says, ‘I think maybe Becca doesn’t want to be that.’

‘So? It’s not like those are the only two options. Be some bitch or be some freak. You can just be
normal
.’

‘I don’t think she wants to be that either.’

Chris’s eyebrows pull together. ‘What, like she thinks she can’t because she’s not
.
.
. ? I mean, with the braces, and the
.
.
.’ He nods downwards. ‘You know. She’s flat. She’s worried because of that? Jesus, that’s no big deal. It’s not like she’s some total ditch-pig. She just has to make, like,
this
much effort and she’d be fine.’

He was telling the truth about not being into Becca. He doesn’t want anything from her. He’s doing it all wrong, but all he wants is to build a castle around her and keep her safe.

‘Your sister,’ Selena says. ‘Who you were talking about. What’s her name?’

‘Caroline. Carly.’ That brings up a smile on Chris’s face, but it gets jammed with worry and breaks apart.

‘How old is she?’

‘She’s ten. In a couple of years she’s going to be coming here; Kilda’s. If I was at home I could talk to her, you know? Prepare her or whatever. But I only see her for, like, a few hours every couple of weeks. It’s not enough.’

Selena says, ‘Are you worried she’s not going to like it here?’

Chris sighs and rubs a hand up the side of his jaw. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I worry about that a lot. She won’t
.
.
. aah. She does stuff like Becca: like she’s actually
trying
to be weird. Wearing jeans to the Valentine’s dance, that’s totally something she’d do. Like, last year everyone in her class was wearing those stupid bracelets, right? The ones with the different-coloured links and you all wear each other’s colours to show you’re friends, I don’t know. And Carly’s all pissed off because some girls slagged her for not having one. So I’m like, “Get one, I’ll buy you one if you’ve run out of pocket money,” right? And Carly turns around and tells me she’d cut off her arm before she’d wear one of those bracelets, because those girls aren’t her boss and she’s not their slave and she doesn’t have to do anything just because they want her to.’

Selena is smiling. ‘Yeah, that’s like Becca. That’s sort of why she’s wearing jeans.’

‘Well, what the fuck?’ Chris’s hands fly up, frustrated. ‘I’m not
asking
her to cut her arm off. I’m like, who cares if you actually want a dumb bracelet? You
definitely
don’t want to be that girl who no one will go near her and everyone’s texting around stories about how she eats her snot and pees herself in class. So just do this one tiny thing that everyone else is doing.’

‘Did she?’

‘No. I bought her the fucking bracelet, and she binned it. And if she pulls something like that in Kilda’s? People like Joanne, if Carly swans in here like it doesn’t matter what any of them think, they’re going to
.
.
. Jesus.’ He rakes a hand through his hair. ‘And I’ll be in college by then; I won’t even be around to do anything about it. I just want her to be happy. That’s all.’

Selena says, ‘Has she got friends?’

‘Yeah. She’s not super-popular or whatever, obviously, but she’s got these two girls who’ve been her best friends since they were all in Junior Infants. They’re coming to Kilda’s too. Thank God.’

‘Then she’ll be OK.’

‘You think? They’re two people. What about everyone else? What about all them?’ Chris jerks his chin at the hall doors, the muffled jumble of beats and screams. ‘Carly can’t just ignore them and hope they leave her alone. It’s not going to happen.’

He sounds like they’re one great bristle-backed creature, laser-eyed and dribbling for throats to rip out, never sated. Selena realises that Chris is afraid. For his sister, for Becca, but bigger than that. Just afraid.

There are things stronger than that creature. There are things that could rip it limb from limb if they felt like it, spike its head a hundred feet high on a cypress tree and use its sinews to string their bows. For a second Selena sees the white arc of a hunting call flash across the sky.

‘Not ignore them,’ she says. ‘Just
.
.
. not let them matter.’

Chris shakes his head. ‘It doesn’t work that way,’ he says. For a second the full curves of his lips harden; he looks older.

Selena says, ‘Becca’s happy in there, right? In her jeans.’

‘She can’t exactly be happy about those geebags bitching about her.’

‘She’s not. It just
.
.
. like I said. It doesn’t matter.’

Chris stares. ‘If that was you. If they were bitching about your dress. That’d be fine with you?’

‘I bet they are,’ Selena says. ‘I don’t care.’

He’s turned towards her on the steps. His eyes are hazel, a cool hazel speckled with gold. Selena knows if she could just touch him she could draw out the fear like snake venom, roll it into a glistening black ball and throw it away.

He demands – like he’s really asking, like he needs to know – ‘How? How can you not care?’

People talk to Selena. They always have. She doesn’t talk to them, except Julia and Holly and Becca. She almost never even tries.