The Secret Place полностью

Alison scurries back into the sleep-smelling cave of their room. Someone heaves herself over in bed and asks a drowsy question; Alison lets out a wild shush. She comes back carrying Joanne’s phone, which she hands over like an altar boy at the offertory. Part of Holly’s head is already hamming up the story for the others, snorting into her palm with laughter. The other part has a bad feeling.

Joanne takes her time pressing buttons. Then she hands the phone to Holly – the curl of her mouth is a warning, but Holly takes it anyway. The video is already playing.

It hits her in separate punches, with no room to get her breath in between. The girl is Selena. The guy is Chris Harper. That’s the glade. It’s turned into something Holly has never seen it be; something gathered and dangerous.

Joanne feels closer, licking up anything Holly lets out. Holly makes herself start breathing again and says, with no blink and her dad’s amused half-grin, ‘OMG, some blond chick is snogging some guy. Call Perez Hilton quick.’

‘Oh, please, don’t act stupider than you can help. You know who they are.’

Holly shrugs. ‘It could be Selena and Chris Whatshisname from Colm’s. Sorry to ruin your big moment here, but so?’

‘So oopsie,’ Joanne says, pursed-up and cute. ‘I guess you’re not bessie blood sisters after all.’

Bite fast and hard. Not one I had to steal- ‘What do you even care?’ Holly says, lifting an eyebrow. ‘You were never with Chris Harper. Just fancying him doesn’t make him your property.’

Alison says, ‘She was too.’

‘Shut up,’ Joanne hisses, whirling around on her. Alison gasps and vanishes into the shadows. To Holly, icy again: ‘That’s none of your business.’

If Chris actually dumped Joanne for Selena, Joanne is going to take Selena’s throat out. ‘If Chris cheated on you,’ Holly says, carefully, ‘he’s a prick. But why be pissed off with Selena? She didn’t even know.’

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ Joanne says, ‘we’ll get him.’ Her voice calls up a sudden cold gleam, away in the thick dark corners of the corridor; Holly almost steps back. ‘And I’m not pissed off with your friend. It’s over between them, and anyway I don’t get pissed off with people like her. I get rid of them.’

And with that video, she can do that any time she wants. ‘Clichés give me a rash,’ Holly says. She hits the Delete button, but Joanne is watching for that: she grabs the phone back before Holly can confirm. Her nails scrape down Holly’s wrist.

‘Excuse me, don’t even think about it?’

‘You need a manicure,’ Holly says, shaking her wrist. ‘With, like, garden shears.’

Joanne slaps her phone back into Alison’s hand, and Alison scuttles off to put it away. ‘You know what you and your pals need?’ Joanne says, like it’s an order. ‘You need to stop acting like you’re such super-special amazing bessie friends. If you were, that manatee wouldn’t be lying to you about shagging Chris Harper; and even if she did, you’d like know telepathically, which you so didn’t. You’re exactly the same as everyone else.’

Holly has no comeback to that. It’s over between them. That scraped-out look to Selena, ice wind ripping right through her: this is why. This, the most obvious typical clichéd reason in the world, so typical she never even thought of it. Joanne Heffernan got there first.

Holly can’t take one more second of her face, swollen fat with all the delicious gotcha she was after. The corridor lights flicker, make a noise like paint spattering and pop out. Through the surge of chicken-coop noises from Joanne’s room, Holly feels her way back to bed.

She says nothing. Not to Becca who would freak out, not to Julia who would tell her she was talking bullshit, not to Selena; especially not to Selena. When Holly can’t sleep a few nights later, when she opens her eyes to Selena’s whole body one curve of concentration over something cupped glowing in her palms, she doesn’t sit up and say softly Lenie tell me. When a long wait later Selena takes a shivery breath and shoves the phone down the side of her mattress, Holly doesn’t start making up excuses to be on her own in the bedroom. She lets the phone stay where it is and hopes she never sees it again.

She acts like Selena is totally fine and everything’s totally fine and the biggest problem in the world is Junior Cert Irish which OMG is going to destroy her brain and turn her whole life into a total failure. This makes Becca chill out and cheer up, at least. Julia is still a bitch, but Holly decides to think this is because of exam stress. She spends a lot of time with Becca. They laugh a lot. Afterwards Holly can’t remember about what.