Lying About Last Summer Page 11

  I look back at my phone and read through Mum’s texts from this morning. She’s not hopeless. She’s efficient and organized. But her need for everything to turn out well is exhausting. I send a perky text back – the sort she likes. All good. Paintballing this morning. The MessageHound dog’s tail wags and I open the message as fast as I can.

  LUISA: What d’you think of Moorly Hill?

  A super-quick answer to my question that I sent just minutes ago. The high-pitched noise I make in my throat embarrasses me, but Danielle doesn’t turn round. Did she have time in those seconds when she was replying to her dad’s text and searching on the internet for the song to bat back that answer? I lean across and look at her phone, and catch sight of a colourful animation that she and the others are laughing at.

  Unbuckling my seat belt, I semi-stand to look round the minibus. Joe’s at the front of the bus next to the instructor. I can’t see his hands but he’s looking straight ahead. On the back seat, Brandon is talking to Jack. Both Joe and Brandon would have had time to have sent a quick message and put their phones away.

  Morley is spelled wrong. Is that because the person was typing quickly or because they’re a bad speller? I can more or less strike Fay off the list of suspects. She’s a perfectionist, the type to reread a message before sending it. Certainly a message like this.

  We drive into a vast wooded area with no houses in sight. When the minibus stops, I’m half-expecting to be handed a bow and arrow and be injected with a tracker. I’m given black overalls, helmet, goggles and gloves from a guy called Dave, and told to put any valuables including phones into a locker, before queuing up for a gun and paintballs. I check my phone one last time before placing it in my locker. Another text from Mum. Oscar and I are baking a cake!

  The Blues arrived earlier on a coach. They’re inside the first part of the enclosure, so bored with waiting for us that they’re not even pretending to shoot each other and are sitting in the dirt, up against the fence. Dave makes everyone do a couple of minutes of warm-up exercises, splits us into random groups, and dishes out four sets of bibs for team colours.

  The first game is a simple eliminate-the-opposition game – as soon as a player’s hit, they have to leave the shooting area, and the team with the last person standing wins. I shoot two people in quick succession, and the surge of adrenaline it brings loosens my limbs and makes me feel strong and determined. My team doesn’t win but I’m one of the last few people to be shot.

  Dave shows us into a picnic area to wait for the next game while another group finish. It’s more inner-city wasteland than woodland picnic spot. There are several lopsided picnic tables that have initials carved into them, a few tufts of grass and masses of fag ends. Three white plastic chairs on their sides are dotted round the site, as if they blew over in the winter and have become part of the landscape.

  The Blues rush to the picnic tables but leave one for us, like priority seating on a bus. For the elderly, disabled, pregnant or Yellow.

  Danielle picks up a chair, hitches up the legs of her trousers and flops down. “That was tough. I’m ready to quit now.”

  “Winners never quit and quitters never win,” says Joe.

  “Yeah, yeah. Thanks for the pep talk,” says Danielle. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not even on your team.”

  Joe walks over to the remaining picnic table and sits on top of it, his feet on the bench part. Literally sitting himself above everyone else. “Anyone here want to discuss the best paintballing tactics?” he asks. “There’s quite a bit of interesting psychology to it.”

  “Discuss?” I say. “I thought you preferred telling people what to do.”

  Henry laughs. “Go on then, Joe. What’s the best strategy?”

  “Don’t rush in. Watch and wait. Then watch and wait some more.”

  “Very profound,” I say.

  Dave shouts, “Time to rehydrate, guys!” He explains the next game. Two teams play at a time and each has to capture their opponents’ flag, which flies from the top of their wooden fort.

  We follow Dave into the urban zone, which, as well as two forts, has all sorts of wrecked stuff as part of the scene, including a burned-out car. This game is less manic and more stealthy. My team work well together and make it to the next round.

  The final game starts slowly. I slither on the ground for the first few minutes, wriggling past the cars to reach a shack that’s been made out of an old bus shelter and some metal panels.

  Brandon and Kerry – who are also in my team – manage to scoot across open land to safety behind a wall of dustbins, a little bit closer to the opposition’s fort, and everything goes eerily quiet for a few seconds while no one else moves.

  Shouting and shooting erupt again and I peek out of the narrow gap in the metal panels to see that a Blue member of our team has come out of nowhere and eliminated the two people patrolling the fort. He scales the building in several quick movements while the other side frantically take aim. It’s a total fluke that he isn’t hit. He lifts the flag from its holder and waves it triumphantly.

  Game over. We’ve won.

  I walk out of the shelter and I’m grabbed from behind. An arm locks itself across my neck as my stomach drops. Prevented from being able to walk upright, I stagger backwards, lose my footing and am dragged.

  Panic surges upwards like vomit.

  “I’ve got a hostage,” shouts my assailant. It’s Joe. “I’ll swap her for the flag.”

  “Nice try,” says someone. I can’t see because my head has been yanked back. Why isn’t anyone stopping him?

  “Get off me,” I say, kicking backwards. My kicks don’t connect with anything, so I wriggle as hard as I can. The grip round my neck tightens and I’m gut-squeezed-scared that I won’t be able to breathe. That I’m seconds away from passing out.

  “OK. That’s enough. Let her go,” says Dave.

  “Say please.” It’s a whisper in my ear. I can visualize now how Joe’s standing. For a couple of seconds I stop resisting; then I swiftly elbow him as hard as I can in the area I hope is his groin.

  “Bitch.” He releases me, lurches away towards one of his team members.

  “You have a problem,” I shout. “Keep away from me.”

  He straightens up and strolls off, shaking his head. I sit down on a recycling bin. Shaky and hot.

  “Gather round, people,” shouts Dave. He waves me over.

  I wait until the last possible moment to walk up. Dave says, “I know losing can be tough. I know that some of you get pumped up when playing paintball, but let’s keep things cool, yeah? You –” he points to Joe “– you need to apologize to this girl for taking things too far back there.”

  “Really? I was only fooling about, but sure.” Joe holds his hand up in a wave. “Sorry if you took it the wrong way.”

  I don’t reply. I don’t even nod. Dave says, “Solid. I don’t want to see that sort of behaviour again. Now it’s time for lunch.”

  “What did Joe do?” asks Brandon, appearing next to me as we’re herded towards a mobile catering van that’s parked at the entrance to the centre. “Did he hurt you?”

  “Took me as a hostage. Wanted me to beg for my release.” I rub my neck where his arm was pressing against me. “I don’t know if he did it because I challenged him earlier.”

  “He’s a bad loser,” says Brandon.

  We’re each handed a vivid green drink and a polystyrene box filled with chips, battered fish and a few sachets of ketchup, which we have to eat in the picnic area. Most Yellows crush on to the picnic table, four a side. Joe’s among them. I hear him talk loudly about raw foods and how he usually tries to eat a macrobiotic diet, whatever that is. He doesn’t glance in my direction at all.

  Brandon joins Jack and Nate, who are sitting cross-legged on the ground, and I follow. After what’s happened, I don’t want to sit anywhere near Joe. The chips are pale and flabby, and the battered fish sits in a pool of oil. I close up the box again.

&nb
sp; “Food’s gross, isn’t it?” says Jack, as he shoves a giant-size chip into his mouth in one go. “Don’t blame you for not eating it.”

  It’s not just the grossness of the food. I’m still in shock. Humiliated. I hate to think what Joe would be like as a boyfriend. Outward charm and inner fury. Over-dominating. I shudder as I remember his insistent, creeping hands on my skin. His keenness to know everything about me. And I told him most of it, like a fool, on day one.

  “I’m going to the lockers to check my phone,” I say to the boys. “If Dave asks, tell him I’ve gone to the toilet.”

  “What’s up? You kept checking it on the minibus,” says Brandon.

  Why was he watching me on the minibus? And what’s it to him anyway?

  “Nothing…” I stand up. “My mum’s being stressy, that’s all.”

  My phone is warm as a pebble from being inside the locker in the heat. I walk away from the stinking toilet block and sit on a pile of discarded wood. No one’s in sight, yet I constantly look round as I switch on my phone and check that last misspelled message again. What d’you think of Moorly Hill?

  The wood, or the damp area around it, smells rotten and unpleasant, but it’s a marginal improvement on the toilets and I have a signal on my phone, which is what I need to find out more about Joe. A Google search isn’t going to tell me if he’s the person sending the messages, but it might explain his unhinged behaviour.

  He’s a member of a climbing club, and he’s won a surfing competition in Cornwall. He has tight privacy settings on his social media. Everything else I find turns out to be about other Joes with the same surname.

  I squeeze my eyes together. Think. Think. What was the name of Joe’s ex-girlfriend? Something beginning with K… Kate, Kylie. Kyra. I don’t remember the town she came from or anything else about her. I search under her first name, suicide and bullying. The phone takes a while to load the page of top results. I scan it and don’t see anything that jumps out as being anything to do with Joe’s ex-girlfriend. I go to the next page, and the next. Has he fabricated it? Changed the details? Everyone on this holiday has been referred by school or a counsellor or some professional. He can’t have made the whole thing up.

  Local Girl Took Own Life Because of Bullies.

  When I click on the link and see the photo, I recognize Joe’s Kyra. She’s wearing school uniform and her hair’s tied up. Smiling one of those self-conscious no-teeth smiles for the school photographer.

  I don’t know what I’m hoping to find. I read through the article. Kyra lived with her mum and older brother. She took an overdose of her grandad’s painkillers… It emerged after her death that she’d taken a photo of herself naked and sent it to a boy at school, who’d forwarded it on, and it had gone viral in the area.

  If Kyra was going out with Joe at the time, why did she send that boy a naked photo of herself?

  There’s a quote from her mum. “The family’s devastated. Kyra left a note telling us how ashamed she was, but she had nothing to be ashamed of.”

  Kyra’s headmaster is also quoted saying she was a hardworking, well-liked student, and he sends the family his deepest sympathy.

  The article ends with information about the funeral, a “small family ceremony” followed by a memorial service two months later on October twenty-fourth “on what would have been Kyra’s sixteenth birthday.”

  I reread the sentence. Joe said Kyra’s sixteenth birthday would have been yesterday. I think back to his tearless performance at breakfast. What was all that about? Did the idea of a birthday come to him because it had been Brandon’s the day before?

  I search for other articles, trying other keywords from details I’ve got from the first one. There’s a much shorter one, printed the day after the memorial service. I enlarge the accompanying photo as much as I can. The caption reads Kyra’s family and friends celebrate her life. It shows a group of people going into a church, heads slightly down, in dark coats and scarves. I spot Joe straight away. He’s being helped along by a girl either side who have linked their arms through his.

  Attention. He likes the attention. And he’s a good liar.

  twenty-one

  As soon as I’m back in our room at Morley Hill, I grab first shower. Danielle is furious but I ignore her swearing, and drown out the loud repetitive dance tracks that she plays on her portable speakers with the sound of running water. I’ve left my phone on the side of the sink, so I can glance at it every so often to see if the screen’s lit up from receiving a message because I know I won’t hear the alert.

  Fay comes back to the room after I’ve changed into shorts and T-shirt, while I’m rootling through my suitcase for a disco outfit for tonight. I find the one dress I packed. It’s black, sleeveless and plain. It probably doesn’t look as good on me as it used to. When I was slimmer, fitter, different. I drape it over the top of my suitcase so it doesn’t become any more creased than it already is.

  “How was paintballing?” asks Fay as she drops her textbook on her bed.

  “OK until Joe took me hostage, allegedly as a joke.”

  “Really? He wouldn’t be doing it to be mean. He’s anti-violence of any sort.”

  “I looked up his girlfriend online.” I want Fay to see what Joe’s really like. “There was a local newspaper article. It said Kyra’s birthday was in October. Not July.”

  Fay frowns. “They must have got it wrong. You can’t trust newspapers to get their facts right.”

  “But it said the family chose the date of the memorial service especially because it would have been her sixteenth birthday. That would be hard to get wrong, wouldn’t it?”

  “There’ll be an explanation.” Fay’s blinking goes into overtime. “I’ll ask him. He’ll tell me straight. I know he will.”

  That wasn’t what I was after. I was going to tackle him myself, but if she wants to do it, that’s fine. There’s an alert from my phone, the one that means I have a text. I double-check the screen. Mum.

  Fay sits cross-legged on her bed, then draws her knees up. It looks like a yoga position, or one of those challenges to see how small you can make your body. I spot her revolting toy rabbit in the bend of one elbow. Is she … she can’t be … sniffing her rabbit?

  If she was Oscar’s age, I’d sit beside her and tell her that I’m sorry I upset her by hating on Joe when I know how much she likes him. But I did it to warn her, because despite her being so annoying there are aspects of her that I like, traits I understand. She thinks about stuff more deeply than most people, but I see how guilt exhausts her and sets her apart. How eating and achievements are no longer simple things for her.

  “How was the chemistry?” I ask from my bed, on the other side of the room. The sides of the textbook are grey from being handled so often and there are neon Post-it markers sticking out in three directions.

  “Couldn’t concentrate. I was thinking about my dad and the crash. Sometimes I feel so ashamed I can’t concentrate on anything else.”

  “That must be horrible.” I’m too much of a coward to say “I know how it feels.” I lie back against the pillow, clutching my phone.

  “What if I hadn’t had the argument? What if I’d never got in the car? Said I’d skip my flute lesson, or that I’d get the bus?” If her blinking gets any faster she’ll have some sort of strobe-effect-induced fit. “I was angry because he wouldn’t leave when I wanted him to. He wouldn’t finish his phone call to his colleague.” She clutches her head, the rabbit dropping into her lap.

  She isn’t aware how much I identify with what she’s saying. How deeply the what ifs, the if onlys and why didn’t Is haunt me too, but I can’t be as open with her as she is with me.

  The bathroom door swings open so wide that it bangs against the wall. Danielle stands with her hand on her hips in her kimono-style dressing gown. “Skye, did you use my conditioner?”

  “Er, yes. Sorry. I used mine up.”

  “You should have asked.” Danielle does a double-take at Fay. “Wha
t’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing,” says Fay. She lifts her head. “Thinking about things.”

  “Don’t think too hard. It’s bad for you.” Danielle reaches for her hairbrush on her chest of drawers. “God, I dread to think how much of a fail this disco tonight’s going to be. But the upside is I might get some classic awkward moments on camera.” She holds up her phone. I wish she’d stop with the filming, but if anyone complains Pippa might impose a phone ban and I couldn’t handle that.

  I ignore her and inspect the scab on my knee. “By the way,” says Fay. “Pippa asked me to remind you about the talk on developing resilience in half an hour.”

  Resilience sounds like a disease.

  “Not my thing,” I say.

  Danielle’s music suddenly blares out through her speakers.

  “I’ve got a headache,” says Fay. “Please could you put your earphones in.”

  When Danielle has reluctantly redirected her music through her earphones and Fay has rolled over towards the window to read more of her textbook, I turn my attention to my phone.

  There are photos all over social media of people’s holidays. Swimming pools. Barbecues. Crazy ice creams. Boats. Smiling faces. Annika is in Cyprus with her family. She’s posted a photo of her dad’s epic belly flop into the pool. It’s a proper-size pool. It has to be. Annika’s training out there. Keeping up with her swim schedule. Most of the outfits she’s wearing in the photos are clothes I’ve never seen her in before. They represent all the shopping trips that I wasn’t there for.