The Furies

Chapter 3

All weekend, I couldn’t sleep. I paced the halls, watched reruns of Murder, She Wrote with Mum at 3am, the news at six, seven, eight. I scraped the mould off the crusts with a knife and made toast for us both, while I mimed conversations I might have with the girls (assuming they invited me back). I worked the theoretical common ground at which our personalities might intersect, making lists of topics I could raise that might somehow make me seem interesting, or witty, or both. I scrawled opening lines and points of conversation in my diary, before tearing them out, ashamed to see my desperation on the page.

I found a stack of mouldering catalogues by the door, and made a list of clothes I thought might make me more like them, make-up they might wear, so wholly unlike my own. I mimed my mum’s voice on the phone while she slept, nervously peeling strips from the wallpaper by the stairs. She didn’t notice.

On the Monday, however, there was no sign of the girls at school. I wandered from one class to the next, imagining them around every corner, among the faceless crowds. I walked by the sports fields, hoping to catch sight of Alex, whose name I had seen on the team rosters for both netball and lacrosse; wandered the cavernous halls of the library, looking for Grace; and by the art studios, imagining I might find Robin there. Not, that is, that I would have admitted this, to either myself or the girls I was balefully stalking. I told myself I was exploring, finding my way around.

As I waited outside the English classroom, I saw the quote from Chaucer written in arched letters on the blackboard. I still remember it now: ‘How potent is a strong emotion! Sometimes an impression can cut so deep / That people can die of mere imagination.’

‘Hey, new girl,’ a sing-song voice rang behind me, startling in the silence.

I spun around to find myself watched, warily, by a short – petite, I suppose, is the word – blonde girl, dressed head-to-toe in the school’s sports colours. She fingered the tape wrapped around her fingers. She was pretty, in a sleepy way, eyes heavy-lidded, like a doll’s. The kind you want to close with your thumb.

‘What are you doing?’ She looked at me with a half-smile, a mixture of sweetness and suspicion.

‘Just … Getting my bearings,’ I said, twisting my fingers, palms tight and sweating.

‘I saw you last week with the weird girls. Not that it’s any of my business, but … Well, you seem nice. If you want to make friends around here, you might want to avoid getting stuck with them.’

‘Why?’ I was less surprised at her opinion of the girls – though naturally, I was curious – than the very fact of having been noticed at all. I’d imagined myself invisible, disappearing into the crowd.

‘You really want to know?’

I nodded. A soprano began singing halfway down the hall, a little off-key. The girl winced.

‘Okay, well,’ she said, shifting her backpack from one shoulder to the other. ‘You remember Emily Frost?’

I wound the name around, picked at the threads. It had a familiar ring to it, but where I’d heard it, I couldn’t say. I shrugged.

‘Where’d you go to school again?’

‘Kirkwood.’

‘So you’re from round here. You must’ve seen it on the news. The one that did a Richey.’

‘A what?’

‘Richey. Manics Richey. Disappeared. Never seen again. Jesus, do you even read?’ Her tone was oddly sweet, gently chiding; I nodded. ‘Emily was all over the news last year. She looked like you, except …’ She trailed off. The image came back, and I knew what she was going to say. ‘Pretty. Prettier.’

‘Oh yeah. I remember. But—’

‘Right, good.’ She grew more animated, stepped towards me. I heard the rustle of tissue paper, smelled the chemical scent of Clearasil and body spray, a chemical musk. ‘So she was best friends with Robin, and the four of them did everything together. And then they had some kind of fight one day, didn’t speak for like a week, and then poof! Gone. Everyone says she killed herself, but they never found the body.

‘I mean, clearly there was more to it,’ she went on. ‘If you even mention her name near them, they just get up and leave.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I mean, if something like that happened to my best friend, I don’t think I’d be quite so cool about it, you know?’

I tried to muster a half-smile, a non-committal response. ‘Why are you telling me this?’ I said, finally.

She shrugged. ‘Care in the community, I guess. Do you want to get some lunch? I’m Nicky, by the way.’

In the grim heat of the canteen, I found myself in a cloud of strange associations and artificial smells – coconut, lavender, lemon, all wrong – while girls with avian limbs and immaculate teeth giggled and clucked. The girl beside me had a laugh like a pony’s whinny, the dead eyes of a beetle.

They talked quickly, the conversation bouncing easily from one topic to another in long, breathless sentences, all featuring people whose names I didn’t know, though I nodded along, trying to keep up. A girl opposite painted her nails, brush dripping slow rolls of indigo blue; another doodled incomprehensible lists in a sticker-covered notebook, and for a moment, I wondered if I might fit in.

And then I saw them. Robin, Grace, and Alex, walking slowly across the grass, just as they had on that first day, the three of them smiling with quiet satisfaction, careless and somehow wild. I saw Robin’s hair burning fiery in the light, the moth-bitten chic of her coat; I saw Grace, preternaturally pale, large sunglasses covering the dark circles that seemed always to haunt her eyes; the crisp white of Alex’s pressed shirt, the sophisticated, sidelong glance across the Quad.

‘Ugh,’ Nicky said, her shoulder pressed against mine. ‘They’re so weird.’

I made a vague murmur of agreement, felt a pang of envy, a bitter ache in my teeth. As I stood to leave – making my excuses, the girls nodding and smiling blankly before resuming their chatter – I felt Nicky squeeze my wrist between bony fingers.

‘We’re going to the pier later – want to come?’

‘I … I’ve got homework.’

Nicky groaned. ‘We’ve all got homework. Come on. It’ll be fun.’

I felt the sharp edge of her thumbnail in the soft swell of my wrist; a brief flash of irritation, first at her, then at the other girls, for leaving me here.

‘Okay, yeah. Maybe. I’ll meet you there?’ I said, striving for the non-committal. I felt a thud of guilt as she smiled; it dissipated as the girls rounded the corner, and disappeared from sight.

Freed from Nicky’s vice-like grip, I did my best to slip away, squeezing between groups of girls who didn’t move as I passed (though on purpose, or simply because I’d so quickly disappeared into the invisible mass of average students, I couldn’t tell). In the cool air outside, there was no sign of them, the Quad empty but for a few pockets of girls in pairs, sharing secrets. Starlings hopped along the architraves above the open doors, swooping down to tug twitching worms from the dirt.

Two hands pawed at my face from behind, clumsy fingers poking at eyes and cheeks, and I screamed; a cackle echoed across the Quad. As I turned, Robin grinned her lop-sided smile, eyes puppet-wide and gleaming. ‘Come with me,’ she said, turning on her heels and walking away.

I stood, transfixed. ‘I still have classes,’ I called after her. She looked back, and I blushed, furiously, catching the eye of two girls, who’d turned to stare at the crack of nerves in my voice. My heart thudded with such force that I wondered if they could hear that, too; I smiled at them, willing them to look away.

‘Robin,’ I called again, as she loped away, headed towards the long school driveway. She didn’t look back; didn’t seem to care whether I followed, or not.

And so, without thought – without question, or doubt, or even the briefest flicker of pride – I followed her, down the hill and through the school gates, the Campanile bell sounding a warning behind.

‘Come on, just take one. One.’ Robin’s shoulder pressed against mine, in the town’s only real fashion store, where pop music hissed through invisible speakers, and girls tripped giggling between changing rooms, making catwalks of the aisles.

‘I can’t,’ I whispered back, looking down at the candied rows of nail polish, names underneath seeming all wrong, the inverse of themselves: Buttercup for a grassy green, Seashell for baby-blue, Moonlight for black.

‘It’s not difficult,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll show you.’ I watched her hands glide above, like a magician practising a sleight-of-hand. She paused, hovering briefly for a moment, plucked a neon yellow from the rack. In a single, swift motion, it disappeared. Even watching, I couldn’t tell whether it was in her pocket, or up her sleeve.

‘See?’ She moved to admire a case of lipsticks, their black cases shining like beetles. I stood, stunned, waiting for a looming security guard to swoop in and drag us away.

Nothing happened. No one came.

I followed Robin to the counter, where she hovered, thoughtfully chewing her lip. ‘It’s my birthday next week,’ she said, pointedly. Her eyes fixed on a red lipstick. ‘That’d go so well with my hair, don’t you think?’

‘I’ll buy it for you,’ I said. ‘I don’t mind.’ I had twenty pounds in my purse, my weekly allowance – though I also knew Mum’s bank details, and that the settlement sat there, largely untouched. It rarely occurred to either of us, it seemed – that we could have things, live differently, somehow. So we went on as we always had, with off-brand canned foods and frozen microwave dinners. For Mum, it was enough.

Robin rolled her eyes. ‘Whatever. If you’re too scared, then don’t.’

‘I’m not scared,’ I said, uselessly.

‘Well then,’ she said, turning to examine a baby-pink t-shirt she’d never, ever wear, eyes lowered, watchful.

I put a trembling hand over the counter, picking one, then another, examining each with what I hoped was casual disinterest. The harried sales assistant explained a refund policy to the mother of a screaming nine-year-old; as the assistant turned away, I slipped the lipstick into my palm, and down my sleeve.

A hand at my shoulder, a heavy slap. I flinched.

‘Good girl,’ Robin said. ‘Let’s go.’

The air in the street outside was a thrilling relief. I gulped, realizing I’d been holding my breath since I’d tucked the lipstick into my jacket. As we walked, she slid the nail polish out and held it between finger and thumb, close to my face. ‘Got something for you, too.’ I felt a rush of warmth, a sweet thrill at the gift.

I slid the lipstick from my sleeve, and did the same. She took it, clicking open a mirror she pulled from her pocket – an item even I hadn’t seen her take – and applied a dark slick to her lips as we walked, shoppers forced to dodge her, tutting as they passed.

‘How do I look?’ she said, turning to me, pouting.

‘Gorgeous,’ I laughed. It was true. To me, at least, she did.

She grabbed me by the shoulder and planted an exaggerated, ridiculous kiss on my cheek. ‘Now you’re gorgeous too,’ she said, grinning, the lipstick smudged with the impact, flecks of red on her teeth. I felt I ought to laugh, but couldn’t; I was too stunned. I stumbled along beside her, speechless and blind, as she chattered on about classes, homework she refused to do (‘on principle,’ she said, not explaining what, exactly, the principle was) and girls she hated, their crimes seeming to me like instructions, things I would no longer say or do.

As I look back, it seems ridiculous. And yet, though I have loved, and been loved, in the decades since we met, no infatuation could compare to the outrageous intensity of those first weeks with Robin.

I wanted to know every part of her, and she craved my secrets just the same. We each felt the raw crush of the other’s nerve-endings; we shared experiences great and small, sitting under trees dropping red leaves around us, glowing in the autumn sun. Occasionally, I would think of Emily Frost, as we passed the faded posters stuck to lampposts and trees, and the question would gather in my throat – Is she the reason you like me? But I’d brush the thought away, press it wilfully into forgetting, and take her interest in me as my own; raise some new topic of conversation, a new intimacy shared.

It seems impossible, now, to imagine an intensity so feverish, such delirium. Perhaps that’s a symptom of getting older. One’s feelings wear down, no longer sparking so keenly. Still, when I think of Robin, of those early days when our friendship was new and unfamiliar, I feel a swell deep within my chest, an echo of those heady days, when we ducked into a rain-battered chip shop and shared a single cone as we walked along the promenade, laughing at the withered old women and screaming kids, who seemed so stupid, so beneath us, so deserving of our contempt. When we smoked rolled-up cigarettes and stubbed them out in the sand, the detritus of summer – cans, fools’ emeralds made from broken bottles – shifting beneath our feet. When we drank sickly-sweet alcopops from glass bottles, breaking the caps on the metal backs of graffitied bus seats. Every breath, every moment, possessed with an illusion of glamour, of filthy decadence, purely because it was ours, we two our own radical world, a star collapsing inwards and bursting, gorgeous, in the dark.

Not, of course, that I was able to imagine this then, still chattering shyly as we walked along the pier, the setting sun turning the sea blood-red. I heard a familiar voice, and turned to see Nicky bounding towards the two of us. Robin let out a groan, and I swatted her arm. ‘Shhh,’ I hissed, feeling my cheeks redden as Nicky approached, caught in a lie. I’d mentioned her invitation to Robin earlier – this, admittedly, an attempt at making Robin jealous, though it seemed only to have the opposite effect: she had told me I was lucky, blessed to have been rescued, her hatred of Nicky vicious and clear.

And yet, I realized, as Nicky approached, it was Robin’s idea to come here, now.

‘How are you doing?’ Nicky said, as she strolled towards us, clutching an enormous stuffed bear (or cat – it was cheaply made, and hard to tell). She saw me staring at it. ‘Ben—’ she turned and pointed to a tall, tanned boy in a football shirt, lurking several paces behind ‘—he won it for me. Isn’t it cute?’

‘If you’re into that kind of thing,’ Robin muttered.

Nicky ignored her, and turned to me. ‘Are you coming to the party on Friday?’

She looked at Robin, who scowled back. ‘What party?’ I said, at the same time as Robin said ‘Yeah, she’s coming,’ the two of us laughing, awkwardly.

‘Awesome,’ Nicky said, pretending not to see, though a half-smile passed on her lips, a whisper of a smirk. ‘Also,’ she said, expression instantly serious, tone conspiratorial, ‘I wanted to ask … Is Grace okay?’