The Secret Place полностью

The phone is dusted with sugar and it’s empty: nothing in the contacts folder, nothing in the photo album, even the time and date haven’t been set. The only thing on it is one text, from a number she doesn’t recognise. It says Hi.

Selena sits on the toilet lid, smelling cold and disinfectant and powdered sugar. Rain blows softly against the windowpane, shifts away again; footsteps slap down the corridor and someone runs into the bathroom, grabs a handful of toilet paper, blows her nose wetly and runs out again, slamming the cubicle door behind her. Upstairs, where the fifth-years and sixth-years are allowed to study in their own rooms if they want to, someone is playing some song with a fast sweet riff that catches in your heartbeat and tugs it speeding along: Never saw you looking but I found what you were looking for, never saw you coming but I see you coming back for more… After a long time Selena texts back, Hi.

By the first night they meet, the rain has stopped. No wind rattles the bedroom window to wake the others when Selena eases her way out of bed and slips the key, millimetre by millimetre, out of Julia’s phone case. No cloud blocks the moonlight as she pushes up the sash window and slides out onto the grass.

She’s barely taken two steps when she starts to realise: outside is a different place tonight. The shadowy spots are seething with things she can almost hear, scuttles and slow-rising snarls; the patches of moonlight stake her down for the night watchman, for Joanne’s gang, for anyone or anything who happens to be on the prowl. It reaches her vividly that the usual protections aren’t in place tonight, that anyone who wants her could walk up and grab her. It’s been so long since she felt this, it takes her a moment to understand what it is: fear.

She starts to run. As she dives off the lawn into the trees it sinks into her that she’s different tonight, too. She’s not weightless now, not skimming over the grass and jack-knifing between trees deft as a shadow; her feet snap great clusters of twigs, her arms snag branches that bounce back wildly through rustling bushes, every time she moves she’s screaming invitations to every predator out there and tonight she’s prey. Things pad and sniff behind her and are gone when she leaps around. By the time she reaches the back gate her blood is made out of white terror.

The back gate is old wrought iron, backed with ugly sheet metal to stop anyone getting ideas about climbing, but the stone wall is rough with age, handholds and footholds everywhere. Back in first year Selena and Becca used to climb up and balance along the top, so high that sometimes passers-by on the lane outside walked right under them without ever realising they were there. Becca fell off and broke her wrist, but that didn’t stop them.

Chris isn’t there.

Selena presses into the shadow of the wall and waits, trying to muffle her breathing to nothing. A fresh kind of fear is rising inside her, whirling and horrible: What if none of those texts were him at all, what if he was setting me up with some friend of his and that’s who shows up – what if the whole thing was one huge big joke and they’re all waiting to jump out from somewhere and howl laughing, I’ll never live it down ever – serve me right- The sounds in the dark are still circling, the moon overhead is sharp-edged enough to slice your hands to separate bones if you dared lift them. Selena wants to run. She can’t move.

When the shape rises over the top of the wall, black against the stars, pulling itself up to hunch above her, she can’t scream. She can’t even try to understand what it is; she only knows something has turned solid and come for her at last.

Then it whispers, ‘Hey,’ in Chris’s voice. The sound zaps white lightning across her eyes. Then she remembers why she’s there.

‘Hey,’ she whispers back, shaking and hoping. The black shape rears up on top of the wall, miles high, stands tall and straight for a second and then soars.

He lands with a thud. ‘Jesus, I’m glad it’s you! I couldn’t see you properly, I was thinking it was a watchman or a nun or-’