Follow Me Back (11 page)

O
N THE DAY
of the auditions for our Year 11 production, we waited in the drama studio’s back room. It’s all brown and beige, instead of the studio’s black – plain beige brick walls, prickly brown carpet. It serves as backstage a lot of the time, so there’s empty rails for costume changes, a couple of plastic chairs and not much else. The room was full of people; all of our drama class, the other
Year 11 drama class, the Year 10s and a couple of randoms who wanted to take part. Lizzie and I sat on the floor at the edge, our backs against the wall, feet stretched out in front of us.

It was good to sit with her, to be next to her. It was still February, cold and icy, and the second season of
Spoilt in the Suburbs
had just started. Cheska had found out at the end of the first series that
Thomas Jay had been cheating on her with various girls who’d made themselves known on Twitter. People had felt sorry for her, and the constant taunts that had followed Lizzie everywhere around Aggers had pretty much died down. In this season though, Cheska had decided to take Thomas Jay back, and now she wasn’t just a ‘homewrecker’ (despite the fact Aimee and TJ never lived together) or a ‘slut’,
she was also an idiot. Lizzie had got really quiet. Like she was trying to melt into the shadows whenever she was walking between lessons. The only times I really saw her animated were when she was performing in drama, or in English when we were reading aloud.

‘Eat the orange ones,’ she said to me then, holding out a pack of Jelly Tots. ‘I hate the orange ones.’

‘Oh, right, so I get landed
with them? Cheers!’

She leaned against me, just for a second, and smiled. ‘You have your uses.’

We went back to studying the page on our laps, a photocopied double-spread from the play, which had been handed out to everyone when they arrived.

‘Seems pretty straightforward,’ I said.

‘Yep, we got this.’ She leaned her head back against the wall. Her feet were small next to mine, just in
pale blue socks, her boots kicked off next to her. This was something she always did. She always performed without shoes if she could. Even in other lessons, you’d see her foot sliding out of a shoe, as if she hadn’t even noticed she was doing it. I turned to look at her, her face side-on to mine, eyes closed like she was running through the lines in her head, and I thought how easy it would be to
lean over and kiss her. I wondered why I hadn’t done it yet, why she hadn’t either. I almost leaned in, because suddenly it seemed like time, like the exact right time, like it couldn’t wait any longer.

And then Hussy came into the room and called Lizzie’s name.

‘Wish me luck.’ She stood up.

‘Go get ’em,’ I told her, and she smiled and picked up her boots.

‘See you on the other side,’
she said.

I
’M JUST ABOUT
to sit down to my dinner for one when the doorbell rings. I consider ignoring it, but seeing as my microwaved lasagne isn’t at all appealing, I leave it on the coffee table and head for the door.

Marnie is standing on the doorstep in just a t-shirt and jeans, even though the wind is howling round the houses and it’s starting to rain. She looks like she’s been crying.

‘Can I
come in?’ she asks.

I stand aside and let her pass. She kicks her shoes off – Kevin would like her – and then looks at me questioningly.

‘This way.’ I show her into the lounge. The weird white leather sofas are as uninviting as ever, but Marnie immediately flops down in one and curls her legs up under her as if she’s been waiting to sit down all day.

‘Is anyone else in?’ she asks.

‘Nope.
Just me.’ It’s as good as true, anyway. Kevin’s holed up in his office again on a conference call, which I’ve got strict instructions not to interrupt, and he’s arranged for Mum to have a fancy meal out with one of her old London friends. Sounds awful but I’m glad I don’t have to sit down to dinner with them right now. I don’t feel like answering questions about my day.

‘I looked for you today,’
I say. ‘You okay?’

‘I couldn’t face school,’ she says. ‘The clothes thing…’ Her eyes fill with tears.

I sink down beside her. ‘I know.’

‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ she says. ‘You know, her mum told me that they were folded. All neat. Left on a park bench. Why? Why would they be there? I mean if… If –’ She can’t bring herself to finish, but I know what she’s trying to say. If Lizzie was
attacked, or her clothes had been thrown away because they were evidence, you wouldn’t expect to find them left right out where anyone could find them.

‘You went to see her mum?’ I ask.

Marnie nods and looks down at her hands.

‘How is she?’ I ask, though I don’t think I want to know.

‘Not good.’ She starts fiddling with the skin around one nail. ‘She looked like she hadn’t slept in days.’

‘I saw Cheska again today,’ I say, and she looks up. ‘She asked me to be on
Spoilt in the Suburbs
.’ Saying it aloud I almost want to laugh. Almost.

Marnie’s face drops, and her voice instantly jumps up by about a million decibels. ‘Doesn’t she have any limits?! Just when you think she can’t go any lower!’

‘I know,’ I say, trying to be soothing. ‘I know. It’s twisted.’

Her cheeks flush.
‘That show! I
hate
that my dad’s involved in it. I hate that they’re making
money
out of this. I could hear him on the phone the other day, bragging about the advertising rates they can charge now.’

‘Here.’ I get up and go to Kevin’s booze cabinet in the corner, a tall, silverish thing that looks like a sculpture until you push just the right part of it – click – and a door swings open to reveal
bottles and bottles of expensive alcohol. I grab the first bottle I see and pour some into one of the fancy tumblers that are stacked into the circular rack at the top of the cabinet. After some thought, I pour one for myself, too.

I pass Marnie her drink. ‘Breathe,’ I say.

She lets out a long, puffing breath that blows her fringe off her face, and takes a big swig. She pulls a face at the
same time I do. ‘Bleurgh.’

‘Yeah.’ I put the rest of my glass down on the table.

Marnie drinks hers, and slides her empty glass next to mine.

‘She’s still out there,’ she says quietly. ‘I can feel it.’

‘I know,’ I say, and I mean it.

She glances sideways at me. ‘You know, she never really told me what happened with you guys.’

I fidget with the remote, even though the TV isn’t on.
‘I don’t know if there was much to say.’

‘But you liked each other, right?’

‘Yeah. No. I don’t know.’ I look away, trying not to think about the days when all I thought about was whether Lizzie liked me. ‘It just didn’t happen. With me training, and her at that drama school thing…’

She nods. ‘We drifted apart a bit too this summer.’

‘How come?’

‘I didn’t see much of her after prom. I
felt like she pushed me away, I don’t know. And then she’d always be online but sometimes she wouldn’t reply to me. And I’d see pictures of her at parties
I
wasn’t invited to.’

‘Parties?’ When Lizzie was still talking to me, she didn’t go to Aggers’ parties. She hated them. Boys getting drunk in back gardens, girls bitching in kitchens and bathrooms, everyone gossiping about who’d ended up with
who in the dark bedrooms.

‘Yeah. Every weekend. The kind of parties she used to hate.’

‘Who with?’

‘Some of the girls from school. Lauren Choosken and that lot.’

Lauren
. Once again, things lead back to Deacon.

‘She was hanging out with Lauren?’

Marnie shrugs. ‘They just started inviting her places.’

Yeah, I bet they did
.

‘I think she thought it was funny at first,’ Marnie says,
kind of thoughtful. ‘I mean, Lauren’s wanted to be on
SITS
since it started, everyone knows that. Lizzie just thought she wanted to get closer to Cheska.’

I don’t want to ask the next part. ‘And there were guys?’

She looks at me. ‘Well, yeah. I mean, there were rumours, I’m not sure –’

I don’t say anything.

‘Aiden, do you think it could be someone like that who set up the Hal profile?
Someone she met over summer?’

I look at her, the faint tapping of the pipes and the rain lashing against the window the only sounds in the room. ‘No,’ I say eventually. ‘Why would someone she’d already slept with –’ the words feel sticky and sickly in my mouth – ‘go to all that trouble? I don’t think the kind of people who hang out with Lauren and Deacon would think of something like that.’

She picks up my fork and begins idly twirling it between her fingers. ‘I just don’t understand – last year she was all about school and studying and her acting. And then, in the space of a summer, she starts drinking, partying, talking to strange guys on the internet. How can someone just change like that?’

I look away. ‘I don’t know.’

Marnie gets up and goes to the window. She looks out
at the neighbourhood I’ve got used to looking at but I don’t think will ever feel like home; at the perfect, polished houses, and their empty, dark windows staring out at the street.

‘Something happened to her this summer,’ she says. ‘I know it.’

A
FTER
M
ARNIE LEAVES
, I log into Facebook. The lasagne’s gone cold and cement-like, and I’m not hungry any more. I scan through the updates, but there’s nothing interesting. For once, it seems like Cheska isn’t clogging up everyone’s newsfeeds, but when I get past about an hour ago, I see why.

Urgh. I scroll back up through all the updates about people’s weekend plans and people’s homework and people’s best or worst days ever.

I’ve got a new message from Farid, asking if I’m going to the match on Sunday and want to meet up with a group of them. I’m relieved he doesn’t seem offended after I brushed him off at training the other day, and I should be excited about Sunday,
our derby against Ipswich, so I write straight back and say yes.

My computer bleeps and another conversation window pops up. I’m glad to see Autumn’s name at the top of it. We spent this morning’s lessons chatting, my phone hidden under my desk, and after my run-in with Cheska I could’ve used the distraction this afternoon, too. I feel stupid for being suspicious of her before; all we talk about
is normal stuff – our days, our teachers, funny videos that are doing the rounds online. Normal stuff is what I want right now, what I need. And Autumn’s funny, too. It feels like forever since the last time I laughed.

I
click back onto my other conversation. Farid says we’re all meeting at a pub outside the ground at twelve-thirty on Saturday, and suggests that me and Jody, a defender who lives in Kings Lyme, get a lift together. Then he logs off.

Farid and Jody both left school at sixteen and are already getting some games with the reserve team. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be with them. What
it would be like if I’d never gone back to Aggers after this summer.

It almost happened that way, actually. But not out of choice.

Autumn’s window blinks again.

A feeling of inevitable dread seeps through me.

The sensible me knows I shouldn’t. But, like I’ve said, the sensible me is not very persuasive.
I reach over and turn on the TV.

The camera’s on Cheska, up close so we can see the tears filling her eyes. Her mascara is leaving sticky little rings underneath her eyelashes, but her hair’s down and done now, not in the serious ponytail she’s been trying out for the last couple of episodes.

‘We’ve just got to be strong,’ she’s saying. ‘We’ve got to carry on as normal, and hope that she’ll
come home. She knows we love her. She knows we’re waiting, doesn’t she? We’ll be here when she gets back.’

The show shoots a couple of days before each episode airs, so I reckon this was before Lizzie’s clothes were found. I can at least give Cheska the benefit of the doubt on that one, although as I look at her fake-worried face, I remember the status update I’ve just seen her post. Then the
camera swivels round to show who she’s talking to and I almost spit out the mouthful of drink I’ve taken.

Lauren Choosken, orange tan glowing, tiny white see-through t-shirt showing her pink bra. She’s leaning across the table to hold Cheska’s hand, and she’s nodding.

‘You’re right,’ she says. To the left of her face a caption says ‘Lauren’ and underneath that ‘Lizzie’s best friend’.

I look at the screen. Cheska is giving Lauren a hug. ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘Let’s go and get a real drink.’

I’ve just flicked the TV over to the news instead of turning it all the way off, and I lean back in my chair to watch the sports headlines. The presenters on all the sports shows are so familiar to me that hearing them is kind of soothing. They remind me of Saturday afternoons on the sofa with my
dad, listening to
Final Score
and feeling sleepy, usually full of junk food because he always liked treating me.

Autumn’s window blinks again.

Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie. Why does it always come back to you?

Suddenly I don’t feel much like talking any more.