Say Her Name (4 page)

Chapter 5

Lots of things happened at once. Caitlin responded with an ‘ew’, pulling her legs onto the stone coffin. Conversely, Grace shot forward, unbothered by the blood and ready to help. Caine sprang to his feet. It took Bobbie a second to snap into action and reach for her friend.

‘Oh God,’ Naya gurgled.

‘Pipe down. Tip your head back and pinch your nose.’ Grace was surprisingly good in a crisis, it transpired.

‘Are you sure you’re meant to do that?’ Bobbie rummaged in her satchel for tissues.

Grace looked at her as if she’d only just realised she was present. ‘Of course I’m sure.’

‘It’s fine.’ Naya accidentally smeared lumpy red-purple blood across her cheek. ‘I used to get nosebleeds all the time when I was a kid.’

Charlie quietly disengaged from the group, looking pale and peaky at the sight of so much blood. Blood was now gushing from Naya’s nose, thick droplets splattering onto the path, the dots rapidly joining. Naya took a handful of tissues from Bobbie and held it to her face, tilting her head towards the sky.

Bobbie saw spots of blood on her scarf where Naya must have splashed her. A third spot landed on the grey wool. That was when she realised it was coming from her own nose.

‘What the … ?’ She turned to see Caine dabbing at his nose too. A channel of blood ran from his left nostril to his full top lip. Bobbie held her fingers to her nose, but warm, viscous liquid trickled through the gaps.

‘Oh my God.’ Grace’s face contorted. ‘Have you been sniffing something? What did you take?’

‘Nothing!’ Bobbie cried, raising her already ruined scarf to her nose. The blood seeped into the wool, a fast-growing crimson cloud.

‘Oh give over,’ Caine snapped, wiping the blood away with the back of his hand. His didn’t seem quite so bad.

‘This is a thing,’ Tom explained. ‘It’s to do with high pressure. A lot of people get nosebleeds when a storm’s on its way.’

Naya pulled her tissues away and examined the damage. Her face was covered in gore. ‘I think it’s stopping.’

Bobbie felt her nose and gave an experimental sniff. Hers too seemed to have run dry.

‘Do you get nosebleeds too?’ Naya asked.

‘Never,’ Bobbie said. ‘I never had one before.’

‘Me neither,’ added Caine. ‘Except one time I got hit with a basketball.’

‘Are you okay?’ Caitlin looked horrified, holding her knees to her chin and grimacing through mascara-laden lashes.

‘I think so,’ Naya replied. ‘Man. Pretty intense.’

Grace eyed them suspiciously. ‘That’s the freakiest thing I’ve ever seen. I’ve never heard of synchronised bleeding before.’

‘I’m telling you, man, it’s the weather.’

Mark laughed and gave a slow hand clap. ‘Oh I get it. Very funny.’

‘What?’ Caine looked to his friend.

‘It’s a wind-up, innit? Cos of last night. Mate … you properly had me. How did you do it? Did you squirt the blood up there, or have you got like pellets, like on TV?’

The penny dropped for Bobbie. The dare. ‘Bloody Mary.’ As she said it, blood ran into her mouth. Nothing else tastes like blood: coppery, oddly expensive-tasting.

‘Oh I see.’ Grace pouted. ‘Very funny. Psych.’ She didn’t sound impressed.

A frown furrowed Caine’s handsome face. ‘Mate, it’s not a joke, I promise.’

That half knocked the smile off Mark’s face, but his eyes said he was still expecting a raucous ‘GOT YA!’ any second now.

Bobbie had to admit, it was a pretty big coincidence. If it had been just her and Naya, she wouldn’t have been too concerned, but
three
of them? The same three who’d said that name in front of the mirror. Her eyes suddenly stung.

She chastised herself; that was what made coincidence a thing – you recognised them because they happened all the time. One time she’d run into her cousin outside Topshop on Oxford Street even though they’d had no idea that each were going to be in London that day. That had been pure coincidence and no one had blamed a ghostly curse.

Nonetheless, the same mixture of fear, disbelief and smeared blood read on each of their faces – even Grace looked a little spooked. ‘It must have been a sympathy nosebleed.’ Bobbie tried to laugh it off, adopting her chirpiest tone.

‘Aw, you’re such a good friend,’ Naya said, trying in vain to clean her face – she looked like one of the flesh-hungry zombies from the books she liked reading. ‘You couldn’t let me have the spotlight, even for a minute, could ya?’ Naya winked, acknowledging the irony.

‘Come on.’ Bobbie took her friend’s hand. ‘Let’s go to the tea shop to clean up.’ As they walked away, Bobbie saw the look in Caine’s eyes. His expression was grim – the local boy unable to laugh it off. Saying nothing, he watched them go and Bobbie felt his eyes on her all the way down the path.

On a Sunday evening, the girls of Piper’s Hall were expected to dress smartly for Sunday roast in the great dining hall, which was also attended by the school priest. Each week he led prayers, which everybody lip-synched or ignored altogether. He sat with Dr Price, Mrs Craddock and Grace on the head table. Dr Price politely smiled and nodded as he moaned about the lack of faith in today’s society.

Bobbie, as usual, sat with Naya and a few of the more pleasant girls from Brontë House. She wore a dotty vintage dress with her favourite cardigan – a huge woolly beast that had once belonged to her dead grandfather. ‘I’m telling you,’ Naya recounted her graveyard ordeal, ‘it was really scary. I totally thought I was gonna croak it.’

‘Did you see a bright white tunnel?’ Bobbie grinned. ‘You are such a drama llama. It was only a nosebleed.’ Bobbie refilled her water glass from a battered metal jug. By the time they’d convinced the old lady who ran the tea shop that they hadn’t been in a gang fight (or wanted to eat her brains) and cleaned off the blood, they’d had to head back to Piper’s Hall to spruce themselves up for the roast dinner.

‘Still. It really freaked me out. I like actually feel nauseous.’ Naya turned directly to Bobbie, abandoning her sticky toffee pudding and custard. She looked at her with big chocolate-button eyes. ‘Bobbie, if I die, will you make sure loads of people come to my funeral?’

Bobbie chuckled. ‘Of course I will. What are friends for?’

‘That’s like my greatest fear. That no one would care if I died.’

There was a glimmer of genuine sadness in Naya’s eyes. Every once in a while the bluster cleared and Bobbie got glimpses of how skeletal Naya’s esteem really was. ‘Whatever happens, I’ll be there, okay? And I’ll make sure they play all your favourite songs, even the embarrassing ones.’

‘You’re the best.’

Bobbie was distracted by Kellie Huang, who wore the shortest, most buttock-skimming skirt ever, approaching the top table. That was a bit of a no-no while people were still eating. The skirt was a no-no at any time.

‘What’s up with Kellie?’ Naya asked.

‘Shh, I’m earwigging. I imagine she has a cold bottom.’

While Naya giggled, Bobbie tuned in to what they were saying. Kellie spoke to Mrs Craddock and Dr Price at the same time. ‘ … I think she might really be ill.’

‘What’s wrong with her?’ Mrs Craddock asked. Bobbie guessed they were talking about Sadie, who roomed with Kellie.

‘I don’t know. She was kinda freaking out though.’

‘Kind of
freaking out
?’ Dr Price half smiled. ‘Could you be more specific?’

Bobbie
knew
Sadie hadn’t been well when they’d seen her at breakfast. Kellie went on. ‘I dunno. She wouldn’t leave the dorm though.’

Dr Price looked to the housemistress. ‘I’ll check on her after dinner,’ said Mrs Craddock.

The problem with having a writer’s brain, Bobbie thought, is that you start seeing patterns and relationships where there are only boring facts. Sadie was ill, they’d had nosebleeds. They’d
all
been in that bathroom at midnight last night. Suddenly her stomach shrivelled up like a raisin and she couldn’t face her pudding.

Coincidences. More coincidences. When it’s icy, people slip over. This doesn’t make ice evil. The fact they’d all been sneaking around in the middle of the night probably explained why they were all feeling off colour today. Bobbie cursed her overactive imagination for arriving at ‘haunted mirror’ before ‘logical explanation’. There was
always
a logical explanation.

After dinner, Bobbie changed into her pyjamas and fished her writing pad out from under her bed. It was a camel-colour suede notebook that her mum had brought back after filming an episode of some BBC drama in Norway, and even the touch of the thing made her want to write in it.

Naya was trying to gain access to Sadie, so Bobbie had the dorm room to herself. She wrote best to Danny Elfman’s melancholy choral scores, which now played in the background. The suites were brooding and dramatic, a lot like her prose.

Where I once felt warm, spongy contentment inside, there was now only a hollow absence. An abyss of sorts. Yes, that was it – a void like a black hole in the coldest corner of space,
she wrote.
It was as if one night, as I slept, some unseen hand had pulled a plug within and all the joy seeped away, leaving me empty. Eternally drained.

Bobbie chewed her pen. She always wrote by hand first, only typing up the sections she was happy with. She’d once uploaded a short story to an online writing colony and it’d had like six thousand views. As soon as she got out of Piper’s Hall and didn’t have so much needless school writing to do, she’d start working on a novel – the only problem being she had more ideas in her notebook than she could ever hope to feasibly turn into novels.

Naya entered the room – her pyjama shorts revealing miles of gorgeous olive leg. Her endless black hair was twisted into a knot on top of her head where she’d washed her face. ‘What ya doin?’

‘Writing … ’

‘Is it the one you were talking about?’

‘The suicide one? Yeah.’

‘Get your Plath on, girl.’

Bobbie laughed. ‘Oh I intend to. How’s Sadie?’ She rested her pen inside the notebook and closed it up – she’d rather die than show someone her writing at draft stage. What’s more, she couldn’t deny a ping of nosiness about their classmate.

‘Between you and me it looks like worst case of PMS I’ve seen in a while – she’s howling and sobbing and saying she wants to go home. Girlfriend needs a hot-water bottle and a Nurofen, stat.’

Bobbie rolled off her bed. ‘The sympathy spring has truly run dry for you, hasn’t it? I’m gonna go brush my teeth.’ She dragged her wash-bag off the dresser and sloped out of the dorm, the floor tiles freezing cold on her bare feet.

The hallway was deserted. Mrs Craddock had already turned the hall lights out so only a pale glow filtered through from the dorms. On Sundays it was standard for girls to retire to their rooms after supper. Last scraps of homework were hurriedly completed ready for the next day and the dreaded Sunday night/Monday morning malaise fell over the dorms. As Bobbie padded down the hall, her warm feet stuck to the floor, making a tiny suction noise as she went.

The bathroom was empty but smelled of fresh mint toothpaste and perfumy floral shower gel. As ever, the room was humid, never entirely drying out. Someone must have just finished. The shower head made a steady, echoing drip into the cubicle. Hating to see water wasted, Bobbie reached into the stall and squeezed the lever tighter. She frowned. The drip continued. It must be inside the pipes somewhere, out of her control.

Drip, drip, drip.

Bobbie brushed her teeth for the recommended three minutes, before filling the sink to wash her face.

Drip, drip, drip
. God, that was annoying.

She took off her glasses and rested them next to her wash-bag. Earlier, at the chemist in Oxsley, she’d bought some new foaming-cleanser-miracle-spot-defence and was keen to give it a try. After all, it promised ‘results’ after ‘just one wash’. Who knew; it might just transform her into a supermodel. Her eyes tightly shut, she scrubbed her T-zone as directed before rinsing her skin. With a blind hand she felt around for her towel. She patted her face dry, making sure she’d cleared all the soap from her eyes.

When she reached for her glasses, they’d gone. ‘Where are –’

The bathroom door slammed shut. Bobbie jumped, knocking her toiletry bag onto the tiles. Her conditioner rolled under the sink. ‘What the … ?’ They’d been right there a second ago. She checked the floor, but they weren’t amongst her toiletries.

Stepping over her spilled things, she tugged the door open and looked out into the corridor. Without her glasses, her vision was pitifully weak, like someone had rubbed grease over her field of sight. Squinting through the gloom, she saw a figure at the furthest end of the corridor, heading towards the staircase. ‘Hey! Did you pick up my glasses?’ she called after what she assumed was another student.

The girl didn’t stop. She headed further into the shadows. Her head was down, her stance hunched. She moved almost like she was sleepwalking.

‘Excuse me! Those were my glasses!’

If this was some lame joke, Bobbie really didn’t have the patience. She was an Upper now; she was meant to torment the Lowers, not the other way around. ‘Can you come back please? It’s not funny.’ Bobbie took off down the corridor after the girl. Her feet slapped against the freezing floor.

The girl seemed to be heading into Austen House at the far end of the corridor. Bobbie stopped and frowned. Instead of heading right across the landing, the other girl pivoted and headed down the stairs. Perhaps this wasn’t just Austen versus Brontë rivalry. Nonetheless, Bobbie wanted her glasses back. Without them, everything was a disorienting blur, as if a dense fog had crept into the school halls. She followed the girl.

Bobbie reached the top of the stairs just in time to see a head of dark hair, almost ebony in this light, slip around the bend at the foot of the staircase. ‘Oh, come off it!’ Bobbie hurried after her, taking the steps two at a time. This was the ‘Accy Area’: a break-out space with some sofas, a TV and a table tennis set. The girl was nowhere to be seen. It was way too late for hide and seek. What’s more, with no other pupils milling about like ants and all the lights off, it didn’t look like her familiar old school any more. With long, strange shadows stretching across the floor, it almost felt like the walls were leaning in towards her. Bobbie dug her nails into her palms. When she swallowed, her throat was tight.