Monster (8 page)

Her face darkened. ‘Don’t remind me. Yeah, he’s in prison okay, but I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Okay. What’s his name?’

‘Uh …’ She took ages to say it. I wondered if she was making it up. ‘Leon.’

‘That’s a nice name.’

‘He doesn’t deserve it.’

‘How come you two don’t get on?’

She looked at me. ‘Let’s just say he’s the black sheep.’

Just then footsteps clattered along the corridor and Matron appeared, leading Tabby, Clarice, Regan and Maggie towards the Refectory for Prep. As they passed, I noticed Clarice was walking closely behind Tabby, holding the belt of her tunic. Every time Tabby walked too far ahead, Clarice pulled her sharply back, like a pony, and the front of her shoes scuffed Tabby’s heels. Tabby didn’t look like she was enjoying herself.

‘Are you okay, Tabs?’ She looked up at me with the sort of face a puppy might make if its tail were being pulled. I yanked Clarice’s hand away.

‘Get off me.’

‘Get off
her.
’

‘Oh come on, we’re only playing Horsey. You like it, don’t you Tabby?’

‘No,’ Tabby mumbled.

I looked at Clarice. ‘Get. Off. Her. I’m watching you. Remember that.’

Clarice swung her thick red ponytail over her shoulder and laughed.

I thought perhaps I’d got through to her. Perhaps she would get the message now.

I was wrong.

* * *

The next morning, I was tidying the prefects’ common room, finding the cases for the three DVDs that were always on the shelf: a science video on photosynthesis,
Mrs Doubtfire
and
Schindler’s List.
Prefect boarders could bring their own pre-approved DVDs for common use, but largely these were only ever the ones around to watch. I’d had a terrible night’s sleep, dreaming dreams about Seb that didn’t have happy endings. There’d been a lot of screaming. Then, out of nowhere, I heard a real scream. Through the bay window, I saw the red blob of Clarice’s hair. She was standing on the grass verge, underneath the cobnut tree, and she seemed to be talking to herself. Then she put up her arm. I saw a leg dangling from the branches, kicking it away.

I dropped my duster and ran for the front door.

‘Clarice, what are you doing?’ I slowed to a jog as I reached her.

She turned to me and sighed. ‘She won’t come down,’ she said to me, hands on her hips and smiling, like they were playing a game. ‘She’s being very silly indeed. I may have to inform Matron.’ Her voice had a threatening edge.

I looked up into the tree and saw Tabby, bundled up on a thick bough just above our heads. She was shaking.

‘What’s wrong with you? Why do you get your kicks from tormenting the Pups?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ she said through her thickly pink lips. ‘I was trying to apologise to her
actually
.’

‘You heard me. Leave. Her. Alone.’

‘I think you ought to watch who you’re talking to.’

‘I know
exactly
who I’m talking to.’

‘Why can’t you just mind your business, Nash? You
already lost out on Head Girl because you attacked me. Wouldn’t want to get expelled as well, would you?’

‘Go away, Clarice.’

‘Go away,
Natasha.
Don’t you have a brother to go and bury?’

Her comment had pierced my nerves like a dentist’s sickle. My heart thundered in my chest, but I stayed firm. I stared her out. I heard Seb’s voice in my head, or was it Maggie’s?
Girls here can be evil. You’ve got to give as good as you get, or it’ll sink you.
I looked her dead in the eye. ‘You hurt that little girl again, I will hurt you back tenfold.’

She made a
pffft
noise and laughed like a piglet being tortured. ‘Whatever,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you later, Tabby, silly billy.’ She smiled and walked past me, whispering ‘virgin’ in my ear, and headed back towards the school. I waited until she was far away, beneath the portico arch, before I moved closer to the little girl above me.

‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘You can come down now. She’s gone.’

Tabby sniffed and climbed down, bough by bough, her knees scraped and her navy blue tights torn. When she reached me, she put her arms out and I lifted her down, intending to put her on the log. But she clung on to me like a wet shower curtain.

‘Hey what’s wrong? What’s the matter?’ She settled on my lap as I sat down on the fallen log. ‘It’s okay, Tabby, it’s all right.’

‘I want my mummy.’

‘I know you do. I know. She’ll be here on Christmas Eve, won’t she? And Daddy.’

A fresh drip of tears. ‘I packed my case ready.’

‘That’s good,’ I said. She began to cry again. ‘Tabs, come
on, it’s okay.’ I pulled some tiny twigs and furry leaf things out of her hair.

‘I fell over,’ she whimpered.

‘I can see by your knees. We’d better go and clean them up, hadn’t we?’

‘And I saw the monster.’

‘Well, you just try to stay away from her—what did you say?’

‘The monster. I saw it when I was running, over there.’ I followed her arm towards the tennis courts and surrounding fields. There was nothing there.

‘Was it Chief Brody? He’s not a monster, Tabs, he’s just a dog. He’s really cuddly.’

‘Not Chief Brody. It was the monster.’

I frowned. ‘That’s just a story.’

‘Clarice said it’s real. She said it’ll come and get me. She said it’ll hide under my bed and bite my foot when I’m getting in. She said he’ll scratch me and eat me.’

If I’d had fire inside me, I’d have blown smoke out my nostrils. ‘No, Tabby, it’s not real. Clarice was just being … stupid.’

Tabby put her hand just above my head. ‘He was big. As big as you.’

I sighed. ‘Was he?’

‘And he was black and he had big teeth. I’m not lying, I promise.’

‘No, I know you’re not lying, Tabs,’ I said, hugging her closer. ‘I believe you.’

T
he following day was a Thursday. Just after lunch, Matron presented Dianna with a shopping list of odds and ends to pick up from Bathory Basics in the village, permitting her to choose two people to accompany her. As Clarice was in the doghouse over her continued bullying of Tabby, Matron had banned her from leaving the grounds and was now watching over Tabby like a very fierce eagle. So me and Regan were to accompany Dianna on the jaunt and the others gave us their lists.

I still hadn’t found Babbitt, Tabby’s toy rabbit that had gone missing.

‘Give my love to young Charles, won’t you?’ Maggie winked as I put my coat on.

I smiled. ‘Yeah yeah.’

‘And see if you can get anything out of Princess Di about the whole white bag thing. She’ll tell you, I bet.’

‘Yeah right. Listen, will you look after Tabby for me while I’m gone?’

‘What d’you mean? I thought Matron was keeping a closer eye now?’

‘She is but Matron’s busy making dinner and cleaning and doing paperwork and stuff and I just don’t want her left by herself. And don’t mention beasts or anything. Clarice has taken her cuddly rabbit thing away and put it somewhere too. See if you can find it, will you?’

‘God, that girl is one Insane Jane, I tell you.’

‘Just make sure she doesn’t go near her. I don’t know why she’s zoned in on Tabby.’

‘I told you, she’s a dick. That’s what dicks do. But yeah, I’ll watch the little squirt. She can help me do the washing-up and vacuum the dorms. In fact, she can just do it all. Let’s get me out of the equation right and quick.’

‘Just don’t let her out of your sight, okay? She’s on bathroom duty.’

‘Got it. Leave her with me. I’ll do the business, find the bunny thing and all. I’ll be like Cameron Poe at the end of
Con Air,
coming through the flames with the toy bunny for his little kid. Actually, they sell DVDs in the shop, don’t they?’

‘Yeah—not many though. And they won’t be new ones.’

‘See if they’ve got
Con Air
though. I fancy watching that. Plane full of desperate convicts. Nicolas Cage with a mullet. What’s not to love?’

I sighed. ‘Uh, the plot?’

‘So insignificant when you have a plane blowing up in
Vegas
and
the awesomeness of The Cage and his Nickelback hair.’

I sighed. ‘Okay, I’ll see if they’ve got it. Just try not to blow up the school while I’m gone.’

‘Killjoy.’

Bathory village was our Hogsmeade, except we didn’t have a joke shop or a Shrieking Shack or Butterbeer. What we did have was a small park with swings, a phone box and a surprisingly well-stocked general store called Bathory Basics. Together, they provided the four things any Bathory girl wanted more than anything—freedom, a link to the outside world, decent tampons and chocolate. In Sickbay, Matron only ever stocked the very cheapest sanitary towels that felt like surfboards and made you walk like you’d been riding a horse all your life, so boarders had to make sure they returned from every holiday or exeat with enough period-ware to see them through the term. It was never enough though. There had once been a post office in the village too at some stage, but that had long gone, along with the garage, pub, paper mill and cake shop. There wasn’t much in Bathory village, but it was our sanctuary, and we took every opportunity to walk the three miles to reach it. The only downside was that we felt every inch of that walk.

‘God, I’m freezing,’ said Dianna, burrowing her face further into her scarf.

‘So am I,’ I lied. I was actually pretty snug in my coat, thick woollen scarf and Mum’s cashmere gloves, and the anticipation of seeing Charlie again was keeping me warm. ‘I think it’s going to snow soon.’

‘And my shoe’s rubbing.’

‘So’s mine, right on my heel,’ Regan added.

The road was an endless grey stretch, sided by fenced-off fields. In the distance were the moors, already iced with a light fall of snow. The temperature and distance were very unforgiving on our thin regulation navy pea coats and Mary Janes. I walked beside Dianna and Regan stayed behind us. Every so often, a car would thunder past and we would bunch up together and smoosh ourselves into a hedge.

‘Gross!’ Regan shrieked, as we all dived into the hedge for the fourth time in as many minutes. She had unwittingly discovered a fresh roadkill badger by treading in it.

‘Oh my God, that’s disgusting. What did you do that for?’ said Dianna helpfully.

‘I didn’t see it,’ cried Regan, standing stock-still and looking like she was going to be sick, modelling the dead badger like a grotesque new shoe. I wrapped my hand in Matron’s Bag-for-Life and plucked it off her foot by its ear, swinging it bodily through a gap in the hedge. The dead weight made it very heavy.

‘There, gone,’ I said, peeling the Bag-for-Life from my hand and balling it up. Regan smiled at me in thanks, and examined her gunk-covered heel. ‘Wipe it on the grass, maybe?’

‘That was vile,’ said Dianna, carrying on walking.

‘She couldn’t help it. How come you chose us two to come anyway?’

‘Why?’ she said, as we stopped yet again to allow a Land Rover to pass. ‘Because Maggie can’t stand me, Clarice is weird and Tabitha’s a liability.’

‘You’d like Maggie if you got to know her.’

‘She hates me.’

‘She doesn’t. She just doesn’t like being bossed around, that’s all. If you tried …’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know, being a bit less bossy with her maybe …’

‘I’m supposed to be bossy. I am her boss, technically.’

‘You’re not, Dianna,’ I laughed.

‘I kind of am. I’m Head Girl after all.’

‘Don’t remind me,’ I muttered, waiting for Regan to catch up.

‘Do you hate me?’

‘What?’ I said, readjusting my scarf.

‘For getting made Head Girl. I know you were first choice.’

‘I don’t care, Dianna. No, seriously, I don’t.’

Dianna stood still too. ‘You did mind though, at the time. I saw your reaction when it was announced in Prayers.’

‘I smashed Clarice’s face in, Dianna. No way was Saul-Hudson going to make me Head Girl after that, was she?’

‘I’m not doing a good job, though. I’ve just got so much on my plate at the moment, I’m not thinking straight. And the other girls hate me.’

‘They don’t. Do they, Regan?’

‘Yes,’ said Regan. ‘Everyone hates her.’

Dianna exhaled. ‘I knew that. They all like you, Nash. I don’t know why they made me Head Girl. You’d have been a much safer choice.’

The phrase
because bullshit always beats brains
was dancing around my head, but I mentally flicked it away. ‘No, listen: they don’t hate you. They don’t like your tone sometimes, maybe. How you go running to Saul-Hudson about every single little thing.’

‘But that’s what being Head Girl means, isn’t it? I’m supposed to be the eyes and ears of the Headmistress among the student body.’

‘Yes, but sometimes you could just turn a blind eye. Like when Maggie wore her indoor shoes outside the other week. I always just looked past stuff like that.’

Dianna seemed fragile. Broken. Was now a good time?

‘Dianna, is something going on with you?’

She looked back at me briefly, but didn’t slow her pace. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You seem a bit guarded. And when you asked me to swap chores …’

‘I told you, I wanted some more fresh air.’

‘Yeah, I know, but you get plenty of fresh air, we all do. Is there something else? If you want to talk about anything …’

‘No, I don’t,’ she snapped, as a beer lorry thundered past, scaring us all half to the grave and cutting my line of questioning dead in the process. She deliberately increased her pace, pulling away from us.

We arrived at the sign for the village. Another two hundred metres and we’d be at the shop.

As we rounded the bend and saw the swinging ice cream sign outside Bathory Basics, Regan asked, ‘Nash, do you think the Beast killed that badger?’

‘No, I don’t,’ I replied. ‘It was roadkill. The End.’

‘All right, I only asked.’

‘Well, I’m sick of hearing about this Beast of Bathory. It doesn’t exist, Regan. I was mistaken. You were mistaken. You have to stop thinking about it.’

‘Tabitha said she saw it yesterday. She told me at breakfast.’

I stopped and faced her. ‘Have you been talking to her about it?’

‘Yeah. She believes me.’

‘So that’s why she thought it was the Beast. Look, stop
filling her head with stuff. It’ll give her nightmares. It was Chief Brody that she saw. Remember him? Big black dog?’

‘No, it wasn’t.’

‘It was. Just stop with the Beast stuff. It’s getting really boring, okay?’

School was a scary enough place to be stranded during the Christmas holidays without some starey-eyed imp like Regan banging on about man-eaters and things that go
rawr
in the woods.

She said nothing more, but she gave me that look again. That lingering look, like she was peeling back the layers of my lies, silently telling me she knew I’d seen it.

At last the warm glow of the Bathory Basics window, with its tantalising display of home-made jams and chutneys and sign promising ‘Freshly baked bread and cakes’, filled our vision. It was the only shop within five miles and there were lots more than just the basics inside. It was like a Tardis—a lot bigger inside than it looked and there were different little nooks and rooms depending on what you wanted. There was a cooked meat counter, a cheese counter, magazines, cold drinks, milk and yoghurt, a pharmacy area for medicines and dressings, an ice-cream freezer in the back of the shop, sweets and a small room to the side which offered toys, books and jigsaws. There was the odd Beast of Bathory souvenir in there too, for the tourists. It was a trove of precious jewels; a little chunk of paradise to us all.

And Charlie Gossard was the paradise pin-up. Him and Maggie had a long-running spat going. She started it last June by pulling down his shorts and running out of the shop screaming. In return, he posted her a dead mouse. She posted
him
a live cockroach. The next time she went to the
shop, he glued her hand to a Lion bar. She spread a rumour there was dog crap in their doughnuts. If memory served, it was Charlie’s turn.

He was crouched on the floor, rearranging the display of charity Christmas cards when we walked in. His shoulder blades looked amazing.

‘Oh hi, Nash.’ He smiled, looking up at me.

‘Hi,’ I said, taking the briefest look at him before looking everywhere else
but.
I consulted the lists Tabby and Maggie had given me and began putting items in my basket.

‘Do you need any help? Anything from the counters on either of those?’ He jumped to his feet and craned his neck over my shoulder so he could see them more closely.

‘Uh yeah, actually,’ I said, feeling hot. ‘I think Matron wanted cheese and some slices of ham, didn’t she, Dianna?’

Dianna was reading a paper. She snapped her head up. ‘Pardon?’

‘Cheese and ham? Matron? You’ve got her list, haven’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Dianna. ‘Uh, somewhere.’ The list was dangling from two fingers beneath the crease so I grabbed it and handed it to Charlie. Dianna seemed jittery. I hoped she didn’t fancy Charlie too. She did have a smaller waist than me.

He took Matron’s list. ‘No probs. I’ll sort that all out for you. We’re out of mince pies though. They didn’t come in with the delivery this morning for some reason. I can drop those down to you when we get the next one, if that’s all right?’

‘Yeah fine,’ I said, secretly watching every movement he made as he strode towards the counter. He looked almost as gorgeous from the back as he did at the front. He’d had
a haircut recently too. There was a slightly-too-long tuft of blond hair on his neck that had been missed. I had a barely controllable urge to kiss it.

‘Does that say two pounds or ten pounds of Cheddar?’ he said, squinting at the piece of paper he’d placed on the top.

I joined him to look, moving my face closer to his. I wasn’t taking the blindest bit of notice of the list but I knew the answer anyway. ‘Uh, two, I think.’

He started slicing Cheddar behind the counter as I put the rest of the stuff on Maggie’s list (big bar of milk chocolate, tampons, chewing gum and
Con Air
on DVD) and Tabitha’s (Smarties, iced gems, pink hair bands and a pony comic) in my basket. His dad came in from the back of the shop with a stack of bread crates and set them down before him.

‘Put that lot away when you’ve finished,’ he said, not looking at Charlie. Charlie didn’t look at him either.

‘Maggie not come today then?’ Charlie asked as Regan passed by, her basket already full of items from Clarice’s list (hair serum, hair dye, shampoo, condoms and painkillers).

‘No, not today,’ I laughed, even though it wasn’t funny. ‘You’re quite safe.’

‘That thing with the doughnuts really hurt us, you know. We chucked out over a hundred quid’s worth of stock.’

‘Did you? I’m sorry.’

‘You didn’t have anything to do with it.’ He cling-filmed the cheese and labelled it, then started on slicing the ham. His eyes were Pacific in their blueness. The word ‘gooey’ was created for these exact moments.

His dad sidled past him, straightening up the wall clock as he went. ‘Three o’clock we have to be there, isn’t it, Charlie?’ he said.

‘Yeah,’ said Charlie, continuing to slice the ham. I loved
watching the movements of his forearms as he sliced things. I could spend more time looking at his forearms than I could at a priceless statue. Looking at how tanned they were. At the tiny blond hairs. At his cluster of friendship bands.

‘You sure you’re all right down here then, son?’ said Charlie’s dad

‘Yes, fine.’

‘I’ll get on with some paperwork then, all right?’

‘Yes, again,’ said Charlie, and his dad patted his shoulder and left through the curtain at the back of the shop.

‘Have you got to go somewhere?’ I asked him, as he bagged up the ham and weighed it out.

‘Yeah, the doctors,’ he said, rolling his eyes. ‘I’ve got to have this check-up thing about my asthma.’ He removed a small pill bottle from his jeans and rattled it to show me.