Good Girl, Bad Girl(67)

“I guessed. Why did Jodie want to quit skating?”

Alice looks over her shoulder and back again, whispering, “The headaches. She had three concussions in a row.”

“From falling?”

Alice nods. “She was trying to learn to triple axel.”

“Did Mr. Whitaker force her to keep trying?”

“Jodie didn’t want to disappoint him.”

“What about her boyfriend?”

“That was supposed to be a lie,” says Alice. “I couldn’t think of one.”

“It’s hard to think of a lie when you need one,” I tell her. “Do you know his name?”

“No.”

“Why was he a secret?”

“I think he was older.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I mean, she wouldn’t talk about him, so I thought . . .” Alice’s phone is beeping. She glances at the screen. “I have to go.”

She puts her skates away, forcing them into a crammed locker.

“Did Jodie have one of those?” I ask.

Alice nods and leads me around the corner, where she points to a locker with blue-and-white police tape crisscrossed on the diagonals.

“They searched that one,” says Alice, “but missed the other one.”

“What other one?”

“Jodie managed to get two. Natascha quit during the summer and she gave her key to Jodie, who never gave it back.”

Alice takes me along the row and points to an unlabeled metal door.

Her phone beeps again. She’s late. Slipping her arms through the straps of a small backpack, she raises her fingers in a wave. “If you really want to learn to skate you should come back when the rink is open to the public.”

“I will,” I say, still looking at the locker.

I’m alone in the changing rooms. The muffled sound of classical music permeates from the rink. Leaning my back against the metal door, I pull at the handle, testing the strength of the padlock. Reaching into my hair, I slide a bobby pin free from against my scalp. Bending it back and forth until it breaks, I bite off the plastic tips, exposing the metal ends. Sliding the sharpest point into the barrel of the padlock, I feel it bumping over the internal mechanism, forcing down the sequence of pins.

A kid called Forager taught me how to open locks. We called him Forager because he used to break into the kitchens at Langford Hall and steal packets of biscuits, juice boxes, and the chef’s private supply of chocolate. Forager could open almost anything. He began teaching me, but I gave up after mastering padlocks because I kept getting caught and punished.

This one is easy. I hear a telltale click and the shackle releases, falling open in my hands. Inside the locker I find ballet shoes, leggings, socks, and a fleece-lined jacket with a badge saying: “British Junior Figure Skating Team.” I check the jacket pockets and upend the shoes. On the lowest shelf, pushed to the back, I find a padded yellow envelope with a torn flap. Inside is Jodie’s passport and a handful of SIM cards, still in their packaging, as well as a cheap mobile phone. Tipping the envelope upside down, I discover a pen-shaped object with writing on one side and a small circular window with two pink vertical lines. I know what this is—a pregnancy test.

A door opens somewhere out of sight and I feel the slight change in the air temperature. I close the locker and lean against it, slipping my hand behind my back and securing the padlock. The envelope is tucked under my right arm, beneath Cyrus’s loose-fitting denim shirt.

“What are you doing in here?” asks a woman. She’s one of the coaches I saw on the rink.

“I needed the bathroom.”

“This is for academy students only.”

“I was busting.”

The woman eyes me skeptically but I try to match her stare, opening my palms, as if to say, “nothing to see here.”

“I think you should leave.”

“Don’t get all shitty on me.”

“What did you say?”

“I said don’t get shirty. I made a mistake. I’m sorry.”

I flounce confidently between the benches, turning right through the door, cradling the envelope under my arm. Along the tunnel, up the stairs, through the exit doors, I don’t look back until I reach Cyrus, who is waiting in the foyer.

“Where have you been?” he asks, sounding relieved.

“Loo.”

“You shouldn’t just wander off.”

“Why? Am I a prisoner? Did you want to follow me to the ladies’? You could watch me. Some men get a kick out of that.”

He doesn’t answer.

Side by side, we cross Bolero Square. I have to lengthen my stride to keep up with him.

“Jodie Sheehan wanted to quit skating,” I say, making it sound like a revelation.

“Who told you that?”

“Alice. She’s one of the other skaters.”

Cyrus stops and turns. “How do you know Alice?”

“I talked to her when she came off the rink. Alice said Jodie had a boyfriend. He was older, she said, but didn’t know his name.”

Cyrus is staring at me, unsure how to react.

I pull the envelope from inside my shirt. “You didn’t tell me that Jodie was pregnant.”

“How could you possibly know that?”