Zoe Markham - White Lies

“—earth to Abigail?”

I swivelled my head around, and cringed as I realised I’d been openly staring in Scarlett’s direction. Lilly was trying to talk to me, and as I turned back to her I spotted the clock on the far wall, which reminded me that I needed to call Mum. The thought made me suddenly, achingly homesick, momentarily yanking me out of the strange new world I’d encountered and maybe even begun to enjoy.

I told Lilly that I needed to make a call, and left her to strip the last bones of gossip bare as I headed back through to the common room. It was hot inside, the air greasy with pizza fumes and the unmistakable scent of teenagers massing. I started to feel a bit queasy – and then a lot queasy as pepperoni began to roil on a sea of warm fizzy Coke inside me. I gagged, and bolted down through reception and out into the courtyard, in need of some fresh air and maybe a forgiving tree to throw up behind. I didn’t know the code for the door yet, to let myself back in, so I wedged it open with a handy brick that looked to have been left there for exactly that reason. I scurried over towards the gate, far away from the heat and the smells, and took a few deep breaths of the cool night air.

Once I was pretty sure I wasn’t about to let fly, I turned and rested my back against the gate, looking up at my home for the next fourteen weeks. It already looked more familiar, less imposing than it had a few hours ago. The junk food, Ty’s slightly stalkery weirdness and the chaos of break-ups and sibling rivalries had stripped away the Sunday-night drama veneer of the building to leave the essence of plain old ‘school’ sitting starkly in its place.

I picked out my dorm – looking up to find the window I’d looked through earlier – when the magpie had scared me half to death. The bright pink curtains billowed out of the open window in the breeze. As I watched them dance, I caught a glimpse of a dim figure moving in the shadows inside, before the window hurtled down and slammed shut. The movement and the noise made me flinch, sending ice cubes rattling down into my stomach. I looked nervously around the courtyard, half expecting to see the bird again as the hairs on the back of my neck prickled. The trees rustled quietly, and the courtyard was still.

I pulled my phone from my pocket, before my mind could veer off down any fresh, dark pathways, and made the call.

“Heya, Mum, it’s me.”

I heard the familiar creak of the sofa, and imagined her folding her legs under her, the way she always did.

“Hello, me. How’s it all going? Are you settling in all right?”

“Yeah, fine,” I told her. “Everyone seems dead nice. We had pizza for tea.”

“Pizza? Really?” she huffed. “With all that waffle on their website about the school being committed to ‘creative, healthy nutrition’?”

Wrong thing to say, Doofus! You know what she’s like.

“No, I mean yeah, but it’s all right. There’s no dinner ladies back yet, that’s all. It was nice. It meant we got to chat, kind of mix, you know? You probably can’t do that so well over a…I dunno…bowl of lentil soup or whatever,” I explained.

“Well,” she sniffed, then relented. “That’s great, love, that you’re mixing. But don’t forget how many calories there are in a slice of pizza. Not to mention the fat.”

I’d been on enough diets to know this one. “Two hundred and twenty-seven calories in a slice of Pepperoni Passion. And 11 grams of fat. But you only need to really worry about the five grams of saturated fat, as a rule.”

She sighed down the phone, but I could hear her smile.

Of course, I’d also quit enough diets to know this means bugger all as pizza tastes so good you stop caring after the first slice.

“You know I only worry because I care. I’m so glad you’re settling,” she said. “Didn’t we tell you you’d be fine?”

“Yeah, but you always say that.”

“Well, sometimes we’re right then, aren’t we?”

Silence stretched out for a few seconds, as I childishly refused to concede the point. One out of five wasn’t exactly conclusive.

“Your exams are just around the corner, love. I know it’s difficult, what with your dad and me being sent all over the place, but that’s why we’ve gone with boarding, isn’t it? So you can stay put for once, put down some roots, make some friends you’ll be with for more than six months. We’ve—”

“Yeah, Mum, I know,” I interrupted.

“Well…Good.” She sighed again. “Because it’s not easy for us either, you know.”

The silence stretched out longer this time. I couldn’t say what I was thinking. That if I ever had kids, I wouldn’t join the army. Or that if I was in the army, I wouldn’t have kids. Because it just wasn’t fair on them.

“Abby?”

“Yeah. I’m here. I know. It’s fine.”

“All right then, love,” she said, in her I-don’t-really-believe-you-but-I’m-too-tired-to-argue voice. “Good luck for your first day tomorrow. My plane leaves at five in the morning. I don’t know when we’ll be able to talk next, but I’ll text you as soon as we land. Don’t forget to email your dad. You know he worries too.”

I promised her I would, wished her a safe flight, and fought back the fear that started to crowd in on me the second I ended the call. I wouldn’t see her again until Christmas at the earliest. More likely Easter. Dad’d probably be home long before she was.

I crammed my phone back into my pocket. I should call Beth too, but I’d end up telling her about how I’d lied about Jase, and she’d be mad. I could see the whole sorry conversation we’d have unfolding in my head, and it was too much. I never knew why, but I always told her everything, even when I didn’t want to. I’d text her before bed, to let her know I was OK. She’d understand.

I was heading back across the courtyard when I saw him – just standing there – bold as brass by the open door.

“You again?” I murmured. “You are one freaky bird, Grey, you know that?”

I edged closer to see if he’d fly off, but he held his ground. “You like Grey, right? Way better than Malthus.”

He yawed when I said the second name. I was right – it was rubbish. Sounded too much like Malfoy, and no one likes a Slytherin.

“So what are you, some kind of school pet? Or did you just smell the pizza and fancy your chances?”

I was talking to a bird. Get a grip, Abs .

He cocked his head to the side, eyes dark and shadowed, no hint of the fierce red from before. I took another hesitant step towards him and he launched into the air with a long, loud cry that tore into the hazy quiet of the evening. And I watched as the brick holding the door open started to slip backwards slightly, almost in slow motion, and I knew I should run for it and grab it before it was too late but I couldn’t seem to move. The door gained momentum where I couldn’t, standing rooted to the spot as I watched it slam shut.

What just happened?

I stared at the door, and tried to think.

Grey’s dramatic exit, complete with frenzied flappage, must have caused enough of a draft to shift the brick slightly, and then the weight of the door must have done the rest. Nothing sinister. Nothing weird. Just physics.

Maybe what the boarding house really needed was a big, hungry cat.

When I was finally able to move my feet, I trudged towards the door and hit the buzzer with a sigh. “Sorry, Mr S,” I muttered, as his voice boomed out into the night. “I came out to ring Mum and locked myself out.”

I had to politely endure a friendly but serious lecture on the dangers of wedging communal doors open, which covered everything from fast-moving fires to dangerous paedos and axe-wielding maniacs – Mr S apparently not being one to mince words when the occasion arose. I had to promise not to leave the building after dinner when no one knew where I was, even though I’d been within sight of the front door the whole time and I was fifteen years old for God’s sake, before he let me make my way back up towards the dorm, and my bed. “It’s a big day tomorrow, after all!” he happily reminded me, adding that I’d “Need a good night’s sleep” behind me.