Follow Me Back (5 page)

‘
Y
O
,
K
EN
DICK
!’

Great. Honeycutt. I haven’t even made it out of the car park yet; what a lovely way to start a day. I ignore him and keep walking.

‘Talking to you, Rapeface.’

I spin round. ‘What’s your problem, Deacon?’

He spreads his palms out in a fake gesture of innocence, grinning. ‘Haven’t got a problem. Just saying hi.’

‘Yeah, well I
do
have a problem with being called a rapist.’

He pokes out his bottom lip, like an
Aww, baby
face. ‘Just a bit of banter,
mate
.’

I turn back round and keep walking.
Don’t lose your temper. Do. Not. Lose. Your. Temper
. I can’t do that again. I can’t.

‘Oi –’ he yells after me, but then someone calls him from the basketball court and his attention is instantly and totally diverted. I climb up the concrete steps towards the Keep and my
heart starts to slow and I can loosen my hands out of the fists they seem to have formed.

I can’t remember the first time I met Deacon Honeycutt, but I do remember the first time I heard he didn’t like me and that definitely happened
before
we met. It was just something someone said in passing, in the corridor outside assembly – Ollie Birchall, now I think about it: ‘Honeycutt’s got it in for
you, mate.’ I was sure it was a mistake, just mistaken identity. But no. A week later, I happened to pass the famous Deacon Honeycutt on my way across the playground between lessons, and I heard him cough ‘
Twat
’ in a stagey way to the two guys with him.

Later, when I asked Scobie about it, he looked a bit shell-shocked and just muttered, ‘Honeycutt hates everyone.’ But it was more than that.
I’d hear rumours about myself – I’d been caught cheating at my old school, my dad was in prison, I’d had sex with my sister (I don’t have a sister) – and whenever I dug a bit, they always led back to Deacon.

I’d heard plenty about him, obviously – he was the captain of the St Agnes’s football team, as well as Abbots Grey’s Under 16’s. He was tipped for big things, always bragging about this
team or that team who were on the verge of signing him. I’d already been to camps at Norwich, knew their scouts were keeping an eye on me, but I didn’t tell anyone at Aggers that, not even Scobie.

So I guess it was the bad part of me, the part I was supposed to leave in London, that made me try out for the Aggers team when I could’ve just kept my head down and hoped Deacon Honeycutt would forget
about me and move on to the next new kid to come along.

I made the team and became the new favourite of the coach, Mr Connolly, and, inevitably, official enemy number one of Deacon Honeycutt. The rumours started getting more creative – I was a drug addict, I was having an affair with Connolly – and often, when I was walking through the car park on my way home, a football or an empty drinks
bottle would hit me on the head or in the back.

We didn’t have our first real run-in, though, until the Year 11 prom – two years after I’d started at Aggers, six months after people had started finding out about me training with the Norwich Youth Squad, and one week before Lizzie and I stopped talking.

That fight, and the fall-out from it, almost meant the end of Aggers for me, and now, with
Lizzie gone, thinking of it is even worse; it gives me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I try to squash it back down; try to stop remembering. I push open the door to the Keep, and find myself face to face with a policewoman. Mahama.

‘Aiden,’ she says, and the fact she remembers my name does not make me feel good.

‘Detective,’ I say, and I feel like I’m playing a role. One that I
haven’t read the script for.

‘I’d say it’s nice to see you,’ she says, ‘but, given the circumstances –’ She spreads her palms wide, as if it’s the whole world she finds unfortunate, not just the fact that a classmate of mine has disappeared.

‘Is there any news?’ I ask, but before she can answer Mahama’s phone starts ringing in her pocket, shrill in the otherwise silent hallway. She frowns
at me, answers it and then, putting one finger up to me in a
Hold that thought
kind of gesture, she walks away.

I’m ten minutes early for registration, so I take a seat in the almost empty common room and get out my phone. I’ve got Facebook on there, sports news, games, but something makes me open AskMe.com, and something makes me type in Lizzie’s name.

Her profile loads, and my stomach flips
when I see the most recent question is still ‘Do you love me?’ from aiden k. Why would someone write that?
Who
would write that? I wonder what Lizzie thought, reading it. I wonder how she felt.

I scroll down the page, reading the questions and answers more carefully this time.

Why’s your sister such a slag?
someone asks about two weeks ago, and Lizzie replies:

How many people have you slept with?
asks another. Lizzie’s reply is part of a poem:

It’s Sylvia Plath – I remember reading it in English last year. I Google it and find the title of the poem: ‘Lady Lazarus’. It takes
me a minute to remember the story we learnt in RE about Lazarus, and when I do, I feel sick. Lazarus who came back from the dead.

Who u finks fit?
another one asks, and to this, she just puts a winking face.

You so pretty babe.
That’s the only properly nice one I see, and it’s the only one that’s not a question. Lizzie answers anyway.

Soon after, they go back to
being abusive.
you think you’re well fit don’t you?
someone asks, and I think again how childish this is, how horrible. Lizzie’s reply only makes me feel worse.

They’re
words I know well. Words I’ve heard her say aloud.

Nearer the top, more recently, someone says
haha how can your sister call herself a reality star when she’s the fakest bitch on tv?

Lizzie’s answer is long, and another one I recognise.

That, and the one before it, are from
A Streetcar Named Desire
. And that play will always, always make me think of Lizzie.

r all the Summersall women sluts? bitches be cray
someone else puts, and Lizzie puts another long quote, and this one I recognise too.

Her Ophelia speech. It seems like so long ago that I saw her say it. That I first
saw
her. So much has happened since then.

I glance at the clock in the corner of the screen and realise I’ve missed the start of registration. I shove my phone in my bag and head
for my form room.

Dr Radclyffe is my form tutor as well as my history teacher, and he’s just the same in both lessons; soft-spoken, quiet, but alert – his eyes always darting around, always watching, always listening, like really listening, when you’re speaking to him. He’s a nice guy, and funny, too, although a lot of his jokes are obscure history ones we don’t get.

He looks up as I walk
in and makes a mark against my name on the register without saying anything about me being late. He waits for me to sit, adjusting his little wire glasses on his long nose before he starts speaking again.

‘The police are setting up an interview room in Mr Maclaren’s office, and they’ll be calling some of you from your lessons throughout the day. They’ve been given a comprehensive list of your
timetables by Mr Selby and they’ll try to schedule interviews during your free periods. So please do not leave school grounds during those times.’

He taps his pencil against his desk, long fingers crooked around it. ‘It’s really nothing to worry about. They’re just trying to get a wider picture about Lizzie Summersall’s life here, and anything that might shed light on her disappearance.’

Scobie catches my eye from across the room where he’s perched on the windowsill. Radclyffe has a pretty slack policy on us sitting at our desks in form room.

There’s a couple of groans from people who aren’t too happy about being kept on site when such glamorous places as the Rec or the chippy downtown await.

‘It’s like she’s a little kid,’ Darnell Hudson, the goalie on our Aggers team, says.
‘Get
over
it.’

‘Errr, sensitive much?’ Jorgie Mitchell, a pretty blonde girl from my English class, says, turning to glare at Darnell. ‘Her poor family.’

‘Oh what, cos she wanted to get away from her moron sister? No wonder she ditched them,’ Darnell says, folding his arms and leaning back against the wall.

I ignore the fact that Scobie is still trying very hard to catch my eye.

‘You’re
such a dick, Darnell,’ Jorgie says, and the girls around her tut in agreement.

‘Just to be clear,’ Radclyffe says, in his usual level, diplomatic voice. ‘Lizzie’s disappearance is being treated as suspicious. I don’t know what the police know, but if they’re asking for our help, that’s because they want to make sure she’s safe. And I’m sure that’s something you’ll all be more than happy to help
with.’

Scobie’s eyes are practically boring holes in me by this point. Everyone gets up to head to lessons and I push my way out, not wanting to hang around and listen to all the muttered conversations about Lizzie. I walk slowly so that Scobie can catch up with me as I leave the Keep.

‘We have to tell them, Aiden.’ He takes off his glasses and polishes them on the bottom of his jumper as
we walk, something he always does when he’s distracted.

‘I know,’ I say, the thought of being interviewed about Lizzie again making my stomach turn.

‘I mean, you’d hope they’d be able to figure it out for themselves,’ he says, pushing his glasses back up his nose. ‘It’s hardly advanced stuff.’

We push through the double doors of the Keep and onto the playground. We’re in maths together
first, which is in a draughty old classroom on the top floor of the main building. We head across the pristine black tarmac towards it, its spires dark against the grey sky.

‘I’m worried, Aiden,’ Scobie says. ‘I’ve got a really bad feeling about this.’

He isn’t the only one.

I’m not called for interview but all day long I hear stories from people who are, hear that the police are asking
everything from what Lizzie liked to eat for lunch to whether she talked about the people she slept with. I can’t get my head around any of it.

As for the Hal Paterson account, the latest news comes from Scobie at break.

‘It’s gone,’ he tells me, polishing his glasses for the fiftieth time. ‘Deleted.’

I double-check. I check several times. It
is
gone. Hal Paterson does not exist, and there’s
no internet evidence to suggest he ever did.

I’m glad when it’s the end of the day and I can get away from Aggers’s whisper-filled classrooms, away from the buzzing phones and the knowing looks. Until I remember I’ve got a date. With the very worst kind of human.

Cheska Summersall has told me to meet her at her salon in town, but what she’s neglected to mention is that she’s in the middle
of shooting a scene there. As I head down one of the cutesy little mews off the high street, I can see a group of teenagers outside, trying to take photos through the windows. They’re being occasionally shooed off by a harassed looking member of the production crew, but each time they just regroup a few seconds later.

I push past them and in through the doorway of the salon, Ginger’s, which
has shiny white counters and floors and walls, and those little potted trees pruned into balls everywhere. It’s not actually Cheska’s salon, but they kind of make it seem that way on the show. I can’t imagine the real owner loves that, although judging by the way the salon is heaving with preening customers, all of them orange-skinned and glossy-nailed, it’s good for business.

There’s a camera
crew huddled around one station – a sound guy with his big fluffy mic, two cameramen and a tall woman with a shiny black bob and headset, a clipboard in her hand, staring intently at a monitor. At the centre of it all, a girl is having her nails examined by Cheska in her pale pink uniform. I stand and watch as she frowns at the girl’s hand.

‘How are things with you and Thomas Jay?’ the customer
asks, sounding about as natural as her nails. I glance over at the woman with the clipboard and see she has a list of questions, including that exact one, on a sheet in front of her. As I watch, she checks it off with a pencil.
Her
nails are long and sharp and red, like cartoon claws.

Cheska sighs, a really fake-sounding sigh, and picks up a nail file. ‘It’s tough,’ she says, ‘because I keep
hearing all these rumours. And it’s like it’s happening again. But I trust him, you know. I know,
here
,’ and she thumps on her chest, roughly where, assuming she has one somewhere in there, her heart would be, ‘that he means it. He’s changed, you know?’