Good Me Bad Me(72)

The image is a picture of you.

The title: ‘Ding dong the Wicked Witch who SHOULD be dead.’

Underneath, two thumb icons. One facing up, one facing down. Vote whether you agree. Seventeen votes so far. One thumb, redundant.

I slam the lid of my laptop down, stand up, my chair tips over, crashes on to the ground. Move. Can’t. Walk. Can’t.

MK stands ups, says, ‘Milly, what is it?’

Wicked witch. SHOULD be dead. Ding dong. You. You should be dead, that’s what they’re voting on and I know who’ll be next.

The librarian comes over and asks if everything’s okay.

‘I’m not sure. Milly? Is everything okay?’

‘I need to go.’

‘Go where? What’s happened?’

‘I can’t talk about it, I’m sorry,’ I say, gather up my things and walk away.

‘Sorry about what? Where are you going? I haven’t told you about the art prize yet.’

I go straight to the sick bay, a hidden typewriter in my head punching out the words as I walk: Phoebe knows. Phoebe knows.

And soon everybody will, if they don’t already.

‘I don’t feel very well, Miss Jones, please can I go home?’

‘You certainly look a bit peaky. Any idea what it is?’

‘I think it’s a migraine.’

‘Yes, I remember reading on your medical form you suffered from them. I’ll need to call the Newmonts, they’re your guardians, aren’t they?’

‘Yes.’

The clock on the wall has a gentle tick, a trance-like rhythm like the one in my bedroom the night the police came. I have the same feeling I had then, the waiting, the wishing it was over. Only this time I don’t know what the ‘it’ is.

‘That’s fine, I spoke to Mr Newmont. Either he or his wife will be home in an hour or two, the housekeeper’s there at the moment. Will you manage the walk back?’

I nod.

‘Good, well feel better, get some rest and lots of fluids.’

Sevita’s waiting for me when I get there.

‘Hello, Miss Milly, you like some lunch?’

‘No thank you, I’m going straight to bed, I don’t feel very well.’

‘Okay, I’m in the laundry.’

I see her hand cross her chest as she walks away from me, a Hail Mary. A prayer for me, or her. Home alone. With me.

I pace in my room for a bit, need to think clearly. Does Phoebe know? Was the post on the forum directed at me or just a sick game in response to the trial verdict? Cornered. Me. No way out. Fight, flight. Where would I go if I ran? There’s nowhere for someone like me to go.

I have to find out what Phoebe knows and if anyone else does. Who would she have told? Clondine? Izzy? All of the girls in my year maybe but I saw some of them on my way out of school and nothing happened. They’d have said something if they knew. I sit down on my bed, try to still my mind, all the while feeling sand in the timer slipping away. I stand up, pace back and forth again. Think, damn it, think. A golden nugget of memory lands when I see the top corner of my laptop poking out of my school bag.

The door I open I shouldn’t, it’s not mine. One of the house rules, bedrooms are private, it’s forbidden to go into each other’s without permission. Mike. His idea of domestic utopia but there’s nobody here to ask so I give myself permission. Her room is a cliché, I’ve been in before over half-term. Posters and pink, a sweet smell in the air. Candyfloss. Caramel. Sugar and spice. Polaroid strips of her and her friends sit Blu-Tacked on the wall above her desk. Fairy lights the shape of hearts hang over the foot of her bed. A grotto. A sleigh for a princess, a queen made of ice. Sticky tubs of lip gloss stand tall like stones from Stonehenge on her bedside table, you never know who you’ll meet in your dreams. I do.

I find what I’m looking for in the middle drawer of the desk. I’m lucky, it could’ve been at school with her but I know she hardly takes it, prefers her phone, that’s where most of the action happens. I slide the laptop out, power it up, her email account open on the screen, one new message. I can’t risk reading it – she’d know if it had been opened – but I read the most recent ones between her and Sam, where she tells him she’s lonely, hates her life, wishes she could live in Italy with him. The last email she sent was late last night, mentions some notes she saw in Mike’s study about me. She goes on to say she thinks I might have something to do with the Peter Pan Killer, that it’s fucking freaky because I look just like her.

The unread message is his reply. What did he say? What will she do?

I put the laptop back where I found it, leave and close the door, go along the corridor to my room. I lie down on my bed until it gets dark outside. Until the migraine subsides and no longer bears down on the back of my neck or pinches the top of my spine. I turn on my side, open my eyes, head hurts less now but when I look around my room, my heart hurts more. What will Phoebe do? What will happen to me? Where will I go?

I can’t lie still any more so I go downstairs. Both Saskia and Mike are talking to Phoebe in the snug. I look for clues she’s told them what she thinks she knows but nothing seems untoward.

‘See, Mike, she’s fine, there’s no reason to stress about going out,’ Saskia says.

Phoebe won’t make eye contact with me, leaves the snug shortly after I arrive.