The Secret Place полностью

‘You won’t have to,’ Becca says. ‘She’s scared of us now.’

‘For the next ten seconds, she is. Then she’ll turn the whole thing into some drama in her head, like she’s the heroine and we’re the evil witches who tried to burn her to death but she was just too special. And I’ll have to apologise for that, too. And convince her that the key just felt hot because Lenie’d been holding it and her hand was hot from running or whatever.’ Julia climbs into bed and throws herself hard onto her pillow. ‘Fun fun fun.’

Selena says, ‘At least this way we get to keep our key.’

‘We would’ve anyway. We’d have talked her out of it, or just robbed another one. You didn’t need to go all fucking poltergeist on her.’

Becca says, and her voice is tightening up, ‘Better than going all Yes Joanne no Joanne three bags full Joanne, letting that stupid cow be the boss of us-’

The bottle cap hops on the bedside locker and tumbles over. ‘Look!’ Becca yelps, and claps a hand over her mouth as the others hiss ‘Shhh!’ at her. ‘No, look! I did it!’

‘Awesomesauce,’ Holly says. ‘I’m gonna try in the morning.’

‘What are we doing?’ Julia demands, suddenly and vehemently. ‘All this shit; this, and the lights. What are we getting into here?’

The others look at her. In that light she’s the unreadable silhouette from the glade again, propped on her elbows, a tense arc.

‘I’m getting happy,’ Becca says. ‘That’s what I’m getting into.’

Holly says, ‘We’re not blowing stuff up. It’s not like it’s about to go all horrible.’

‘You don’t know. I’m not saying OMG we’re going to unleash demons; I’m just saying this is weird shit. If it only worked in the glade, then fine: it’s something separate, with its own separate place. But it’s here.’

Holly says, ‘So? If it gets too weird, we just stop doing it. What’s the big deal?’

‘Yeah? Just stop? Lenie, you didn’t even want the key to get hot: it just happened, because you were stressing. Same with Becs, the first time she turned the light off: that was because we were fighting. So if Sister Cornelius gives me hassle about something, do I just go ahead and zoom a book into her fat face, which yeah would be lots of fun but probably not the greatest idea ever? Or do I have to watch myself the whole time to make sure I’m totally zen, man, so I can live like a normal person?’

‘Speak for yourself,’ Holly says, through a yawn, as she wriggles down in her bed. ‘Me, I am normal.’

‘I’m not,’ Becca says. ‘I don’t want to be.’

Selena says gently, ‘It just takes getting used to. You didn’t like the lights thing at first, right? And then tonight you said that was fine.’

‘Yeah,’ Julia says, after a moment. The glade leaps in her mind like a flame; if it weren’t for Joanne, she’d get back into all her jumpers and get back out there, where everything feels clean and straightforward, nothing looks blur-edged and flashed with danger signs. ‘That’s probably it.’

‘We’ll go out again tomorrow night. You’ll see. It’ll be fine then.’

‘Oh, God,’ Julia says on a groan, flopping backwards. ‘If we want to do tomorrow, I’ll have to sort that bint Heffernan. I was trying to forget about her.’

‘If she gives you any hassle,’ Holly says, ‘just get her own hand and smack her in the face with it. What’s she going to do, tell on you?’ and they’re falling asleep before they finish laughing.

When the others are asleep, Becca reaches one arm out of bed into the cold air and eases her bedside locker open. She takes out, one by one, her phone, a little bottle of blue ink, an eraser with a pin stuck in it, and a tissue.

She stole the ink and the pin from the art room, the day after they made the vow. Under the covers, she pulls up her pyjama top and angles the phone to light the pale skin just below her ribs. She holds her breath – to make sure she doesn’t move, not to brace herself against the pain; pain doesn’t bother her – while she pricks the dot into the skin, just deep enough, and rubs in the ink. She’s getting better at it. There are six dots now, arcing downwards and inwards from the bottom right edge of her rib cage, too small to notice unless someone was closer than anyone’s going to get: one for each perfect moment. The vow; the first three escapes; the lights; and tonight.

What’s been coming to Becca, since all this began, is this: real isn’t what they try to tell you. Time isn’t. Grown-ups hammer down all these markers, bells schedules coffee-breaks, to stake down time so you’ll start believing it’s something small and mean, something that scrapes flake after flake off of everything you love till there’s nothing left; to stake you down so you won’t lift off and fly away, somersaulting through whirlpools of months, skimming through eddies of glittering seconds, pouring handfuls of hours over your upturned face.

She blots the extra ink from around the dot, spits on the tissue and dabs again. The dot throbs, a warm satisfying pain.