Vicky Angel (14 page)

“Did you remember to bring the photo?”

“I didn't know which one to choose.” I spread a selection over the library table. Mrs. Wainwright knows not to touch. She watches as I lay them out in age order like a pack of cards. She doesn't comment on Vicky's cuteness as a baby, her lovely little outfits, her gorgeous good looks in the last photo.

It
is
the last photo. I took it with one of those throwaway cameras on a school trip to London. It was Vicky who bought the camera, and she took most of the photos, a few stupid ones of me and heaps of all the boys larking around. When she was almost at the end of the roll I snatched the camera and took one snap of her. She's saying something to me, tossing her hair back, laughing, with some of the boys in the background. There's Sam! I didn't even notice he was in the photo before. He's really Fatboy Sam there. He
has
lost weight now. He looks the real comic Fatboy there, hamming it up, sticking his belly out, no one taking him seriously.

Who's he smiling at? He's looking straight at the camera. It's me!

“This isn't about you, it's about
me
!” Vicky screeches.

“Jade? Are you OK? I know it's painful. But keep looking at Vicky. Look and look at her.”

I stare so hard Vicky wavers and blurs.

“Is she exactly the way you remember?”

I blink. What does she mean? Vicky's only been dead a few weeks. Does she think I've forgotten what she looks like?

“As if!” says Vicky. “You know me better than you know you.”

But when I look at the photo of Vicky and then up at the ghost girl I see she isn't exactly the same. The Vicky in the photo is somehow more ordinary. She's very pretty, she looks very cheeky, she's the girl you'd pick out first in a crowd—but she's still an ordinary schoolgirl. Ghost Vicky is white and weird and wild. I try to scale her down and see what she'd look like in the photo but she won't fit.

“Of course not!” Vicky protests. “I've been through one hell of a lot, idiot! Dying isn't exactly good for the health, you know. It's bound to take a toll on my looks. But hey, maybe we can manage an instant occult makeover.” She snaps her fingers. Her face is suddenly masked with new makeup. Another snap and her hair is styled. One last snap and she's wearing the same jeans and jacket she's wearing in the photo.

“There!”

But she's not there. She's still not like Vicky in the photo.

“She's—she's changed a little bit,” I whisper.

Mrs. Wainwright nods as if she understands.

“I don't want her to be different!”

“I know. But it's what happens. You fix this idea of her in your head but it's hard to carry an exact
image of anyone, even the one you love most. And it's not just the way they look. It's the way they
were
. Now, tell me about Vicky.”

“Well. You
know
about her. She was my best friend.”

“
Is
your best friend. Don't tweak your tenses like that,” says Vicky. “Go on then. Tell old Flowery Bum all about me.”

I start telling Mrs. Wainwright that Vicky was the most popular girl in the whole school, the girl everyone wanted as their friend, while Vicky preens in the background.

“Why was Vicky so popular?”

“She was pretty and funny and made everyone laugh. She's got this amazing way of winding you round her little finger.”

“So she had a very strong personality?”

“Oh yes. She could kind of take you over.”

“You didn't mind?”

“Of course not.”

“Did you ever stand up to her?”

I don't like the way this conversation is going.

“I like to do what Vicky wants,” I say firmly.

“Jade. Vicky isn't here anymore.”

“Yes she is!”

“You feel she's here? Right this minute?”

I glance at Vicky. Mrs. Wainwright watches my eyes flickering.

“Does Vicky still tell you what to do, Jade?”

I shut my eyes to blot her out. I nod. Maybe she won't notice.

“And you feel you can't get away from her?”

Another nod.

“OK,” says Mrs. Wainwright calmly, as if we're discussing what we've had for breakfast. “Then we'll go and take a little walk in the playground. And we'll leave Vicky here, in the library.”

“She'll come too.”

“Don't let her. You can take charge, Jade. Leave Vicky here with her photos, just for five minutes.”

“She won't like it.”

“I don't suppose she will.”

“She won't do what I want.”

“She will if you want it badly enough.”

“But she's the one who tells me what to do.”

“You're the one who's still alive, Jade. Try.”

So I sit Vicky down and I won't let her get up. She struggles but I push her back on the chair. I keep her sitting there, I think it over and over again, while Mrs. Wainwright takes my hand and leads me out of the library. I have to keep thinking it all along the corridor and down the stairs and out into the playground.

“There!” says Mrs. Wainwright. “She's still in the library. You can go back to her in a little while. But now she's there and you're here, right?”

“I—I think so.”

“OK. I know there must be thousands of things you miss terribly now that Vicky is dead. But are there any things you
don't
miss about her?”

I squint at her in the sunlight, not sure what she means. I don't always understand what people say
now. It might just be because I don't listen properly. Vicky says it's because I can't think without her. She says I'm thick.

“I don't miss Vicky teasing me,” I say suddenly. “She had this way of raising her eyebrows and sighing whenever I said stuff she didn't like. She always wanted to put me down.”

Mrs. Wainwright is nodding at me.

“And I don't miss Vicky winning every single argument. They didn't even get to
be
proper arguments. Vicky decided stuff and I had to go along with things whether I wanted to or not. Always. The only time—”

My heart starts thumping. The playground spins.

“It's OK, Jade, I've got you,” says Mrs. Wainwright, supporting me. “You're doing splendidly. Don't look so scared. It's all right. I promise you it's all right.”

But it isn't, it isn't, it isn't.

I
can't keep Vicky locked in the library forever. She hurls herself through walls and windows and starts attacking me in a rage. I put my hands over my head and start running. I run right out of school and find myself ankle deep in flowers. I trip on teddies, skid on photos.

“That's great! Trample all over me!”

“I try to rearrange everything but the flowers areslimy to the touch and the toys are starting to smell as rank as dishrags. I suddenly chuck a whole armful into the gutter—but by Monday I feel so bad about it I spend all the week's dinner money and the tenner Mum gave me toward a new CD on flowers for Vicky. White lilies, pure and perfect. I lay them reverently on the pavement … and Vicky stands quietly beside me, touched by the gesture. She slips her hand in mine and we walk home together and whisper in my room all evening and spend the night clasped in each other's arms.

But she's in a different mood at school the next day, talking nonstop throughout each lesson, making endless sneering remarks about Madeleine and Jenny and Vicky Two.

She says Jenny's a slag because she's got another new boyfriend. She says Vicky Two's new short hairstyle is hideous, especially with her sticking-out ears. She says Madeleine needs a decent bra instead of those twin pillows stuck up her school blouse.

She makes me walk to the other side of the hall when we're supposed to pair up in drama so it looks as if I'm deliberately avoiding poor Madeleine. She's worse when Sam bounces up beside me suggesting we join up, though girls and boys never pair for drama. The boys jeer, the girls giggle.

“Don't take any notice of the rabble,” says Sam, though he's gone pink.

I don't want to take any notice of Vicky.

“Tell the fat creep to get
lost
!”

I've said it before I can stop myself.

Sam shrugs and saunters off. He starts hamming it up, miming heartbreak and rejection so it looks as if he doesn't really care. Everyone grins, thinking good old Fatboy, what a clown, what an idiot, always good for a laugh.

Sam isn't laughing. He was serious. He was being sweet to me. And I've been hateful again.

I feel so mean. Whenever Vicky crushes anyone
she never seems to care. She says I'm just weak and stupid.

“And
crazy,
getting in a state about Fatboy, of all people. Well, he hardly qualifies for people status. One cell sharper than a pig, perhaps.”

“Stop it, Vicky. Don't be so spiteful.”

I remember a fairy story we used to read together about two enchanted sisters, one so good that honey dripped off her tongue, one so bad that toads jumped out of her mouth every time she talked.

Vicky remembers too. She roars with laughter, her mouth so wide I can see the little dangly bit at the back of her throat, and then suddenly little shiny black toads are sliding down her long pink tongue, slithering over her lips and down her chin. I scream. I don't make a sound. My mouth is full of thick sweetness, my nose stoppered with it, I can't breathe, I'm drowning in honey….

Vicky snaps her fingers and the honey is gone in one lick and the toads hop off into the ether.

“Watch it, Jade. Occult tricks are my specialty now! That's just a taster.”

I smile at her, but right inside my head where I hope she still can't see I remember
I
can do a little occult magic myself. I kept her in the library against her will. It's not much of a trick compared with toads and honey (and vampire teeth and transformations and wingless flight) but I did do it all the same. If I did it once I can do it again.

I try it next time I go for a run.

“I want you to stay here,” I say to Vicky, and I leave her in the changing rooms.

She tries to follow but I push her down and bend her legs so she has to sit, the way I forced my dolls into obedience when I was little. Vicky's no doll, my hands scythe straight through her, but if I concentrate, concentrate,
will
her still, I can make it down the corridor and out into the playground without her. Now I've got to make it to the playing fields sharpish….

“Hey, Jade! You don't have to start running till you reach the track!” Mr. Lorrimer calls.

I slow down, feeling foolish.

“It's OK, don't stop. I was just teasing,” he says, jogging along beside me. “I'm impressed. You couldn't run like that to save your life before.”

“She couldn't run like that to save
my
life!” Vicky yells from the changing rooms.

I won't argue. I won't listen. She's going to stay there.

“You're getting really fit now, though you're still much too skinny. Still, you're the right build for a distance runner. We'll maybe try you for the mini-marathon next term.”

“I'm not good enough to go in for any race! I'm useless!”

“You're not quite Olympic standard, I grant you, but you've done brilliantly. I mean it about the mini-marathon. You still might not be as
speedy as the others but you've got stamina. You stick it out. You've got grit.”

“I
act
like grit,” I say, looking over my shoulder. Sam is lumbering along in the distance. “I keep hurting people deliberately.”

“Poor Sam,” says Mr. Lorrimer. “It's a shame you have to hurt
him
. He's my special pal. A smashing lad.”

“I know he is,” I say. “I keep meaning to make friends, but then something—”
someone!
“—makes me hateful to him.”

But now I've shut my someone in the changing rooms and she can't dictate what I do. When we get to the playing field I pretend I've got a problem with my trainers. I let Mr. Lorrimer run ahead—and Sam catch up.

“I'm sorry I was such a cow, Sam,” I say quickly, scared to look at him.

There's a little pause. Maybe he's not speaking to me now.

“Sam? Are you in a huff with me?”

“Just … getting my … breath back,” he says. “No huff. No
puff
!”

“You shouldn't be speaking to me. You were great to me in drama and I was horrible.”

“No. Well. As if you'd want to be my partner!”

“I would. I'll be your partner next time, Sam.”

“Yeah, right,” he says, like he doesn't believe it. I'll show him.

I'll show myself.

I wait till the next drama lesson and then just
before the start I go to the girls' cloakrooms and lock Vicky in one of the loos.

“You can't keep me in here!” she screams.

But I can, I can, I can.

I whisper it all the way into the hall where we have drama.

Miss Gilmore claps her hands. “Right, pair up, everyone.”

There's a little rush. Madeleine asks if she can go in a threesome with Jenny and Vicky Two. Some of the boys stand in little gangs, not wanting to look too keen to pair with each other. I want Sam to stand on his own to make it easy but he's right in the middle of a little gang, mucking about as usual, taking no notice whatsoever of me.

So I don't need to do it.

I do.