“You're meaner,” I mutter.
“I could get a lot, lot meaner. I've been very, very sweet to you so far. I haven't gone on about what happened. Shall I start, Jade? Remember when we were coming out of school and—”
“No,” I interrupt Vicky, and I put my hands over my ears.
“What is it, Jade?” says Mrs. Wainwright, putting her arm round me.
“I feel so bad about Vicky dying because …”
“Because?”
“I can't.”
“OK, pet. You don't have to talk about it now. Maybe you'll want to talk about it some other time. But you mustn't worry about feeling bad or guilty as if it's all somehow your fault. Everyone feels that, even when it isn't true at all.”
It is true. And Vicky is pointing at me, going, “Guilty, guilty, guilty!”
“Jade?” Mrs. Wainwright is gently pulling me to my feet, the session over. “Have you got a photo of Vicky? I'd like you to bring one to our next session.”
I spend hours sifting through all these little paper wallets of photos, trying to select one. I've even got photos of Vicky before I knew her, a little gummy one of her as a baby with nothing on and another of her with tiny plaits wearing a swimming costume. I filched both of them from her mum's photo box because Vicky looked so sweet. Then there are heaps from primary school days and outings up to London and Legoland and one magic trip to Disneyland, Paris, Vicky looking seriously cute with Mickey Mouse ears. It's harder sifting through the recent photos. It's so sad sorting out all these smiling Vickys.
“Don't get the photos all wet, idiot,” Vicky says. “How many more times? It's me that should be crying. You can fill a whacking great album with your future photos. There won't ever be another snap of me. Hey, why didn't anyone take a photo of me in my coffin? I bet I looked drop-dead gorgeous. Ha!”
She lies down on the floor in a parody of her own death, hands crossed on her chest, eyes closed, face still and saintly.
“Cut it out, Vicky,” I say, snuffling.
She takes no notice.
“Stop it! I hate seeing you like that. Please get up.”
I try to shake her shoulder but my fingers poke right through her in an unnerving way.
“Vicky, you're scaring me.”
Vicky suddenly sits bolt upright. She opens her eyes—she opens her mouth too, wider than wide, showing two new great incisors. She lunges at me.
“Now you're scared!” she squeals. “Oh God, these fangs! I'm drooling, I'm thirsty, I want blood!” She pulls a pint mug out of thin air. It's brimming with scarlet liquid. “That's the ticket! Cheers!” She raises the mug and slurps noisily, her vampire teeth clinking on the glass.
“Yuck! ”
“No, yummy!” says Vicky, wiping red smears from her lips with the back of her hand. “But it's cold. I like it warm. And fresh.” She throws back her head and then bites down hard on my neck.
I scream. Though her teeth aren't real and my skin stays unpierced.
“Jade? Are you all right?”
Oh God, I've woken Dad.
“Yeah, I'm fine,” I shout.
“You were screaming.”
“No, I was just … I nearly dropped something, that's all.”
“Dropped what?” Dad comes right into my room and stares at all the photos spread out around me. “Oh, Jade,” he says, shaking his head.
“I wish you wouldn't come barging into my bedroom without knocking.”
“I'm sorry. I was worried about you.”
“Well, I'm fine.”
“No you're not,” says Dad, and he squats down beside me. He peers at all the celluloid Vickys, picking one up, then another. “She was such a lovely kid,” he says, his voice thick.
I can't stand him drooling all over her. I whisk them up out of his reach, crumpling them in my haste.
“Hey, hey! OK, I won't touch,” he says, his hands raised as if I'm pointing a gun at him. He's playing the fool, but his eyes are still watering. “Jade? What is it? Why do I always seem to rub you up the wrong way, lovie?”
I stare at my lap. “No you don't, Dad.” But he does, he does. Just the whiny way he says that silly word “lovie” sets my teeth on edge.
“It's not just you. It's your mum,” says Dad. “I don't know. The way she's acting nowadays …”
Oh God. Please. Don't ask me.
“Do you know what's up with her, Jade?”
I shrug, still looking down.
“She acts like I'm not here half the time, or else she skirts right round me like I'm a heap of rubbish. If I ever try to get close to her she winces away. It's not like I've ever done anything bad. I've tried my best to be a good husband, a good dad.” He shakes his head, sighing with self-pity.
I should feel sorry for him. He's so unhappy. I don't suppose it is his fault. He is my dad.
I reach out to give him a quick pat on the shoulder but he thinks I'm trying to hug him. He pulls me closer than I want.
“Oh, Jade, you still love your old dad, don't you?”
I can't get the words out.
“Dad!” I mumbled, wriggling away from him.
“You're a cold little fish, just like your mum,” Dad says, turning on me. “Weird little kid.” He picks up one of the photos on the floor. It's a seaside snap, Vicky smiling saucily, her hair blowing in the wind, skirt whipping up in the breeze.
“Little Vicky. She was always so full of life,” he says.
He lifts the photo to his face as if he's going to kiss her but then thinks better of it. He lets it fall from his fingers and then he walks out of the room without a backward glance at me.
I take a tissue and wipe and wipe at her photo. There's nothing to see but I feel as if his moist fingerprints are all over it. Vicky is wiping herself down too, pulling a face.
“I'm sorry.”
“I never liked your dad much.”
“Neither do I. What am I going to do if Mum clears off with this guy at her work?” I whisper.
If only I could still go to Vicky's house every day and be their sort-of second daughter. I knew her mum didn't like me but she still made me special teas and included me in all the family treats. And Vicky's dad was always lovely. He used to act daft and play at being a big bear and he'd spin us around and around in the garden when we were little. Then once we got to secondary school he'd pretend we were really grown up and fuss round us like we were film stars. I want to be part of Vicky's family again. I want Vicky to be there….
“I am here,” says Vicky when I go to bed. She kneels down beside me and puts her arm round me as best she can. She rocks me and tells me that we can be together forever this way.
The night goes on forever, even though Vicky still has her arms round me.
When I see Mrs. Wainwright the following lunchtime she puts her arm round me too. “Bad day, Jade?”
Vicky hates it when anyone else touches me. I pull away from Mrs. Wainwright. What I'd really like to do is put my arms up like a little kid and have her pick me up and hug me close.
“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 sm
iling 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 laught
er, 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.”