The Secret Place

Chapter 16

By the time Julia and Finn get to the back of the grounds, the music seeping out of the dance is long gone behind them. The moon catches flashes of light and snippets of colour strewn through the bushes, like a crop of sweets in a witch’s garden. Finn pulls out the nearest one and holds it up to the light: a Lucozade bottle, full of something dark amber. He uncaps it and sniffs.

‘Rum. I think. That OK for you?’

There are always rumours about some guy who put some drug in some booze some year and raped some girl. Julia figures she’ll take the chance. ‘My favourite,’ she says.

‘Where’ll we go? There’s going to be a lot more people headed here, if they can get out.’

No way is Julia bringing him to the glade. There’s a little rise among cherry trees, tucked away at the side of the grounds; the cherry blossom is out, which turns the place more romantic than Julia had in mind, but it has plenty of cover and a perfect view of the back lawn. ‘This way,’ she says.

No one else has got there first. The rise is still. When a breeze flits through, cherry blossom falls like a shake of snow on the pale grass.

‘Ta-da,’ Julia says, sweeping a hand out. ‘Will this do?’

‘Works for me,’ Finn says. He looks around, the bottle swinging from one hand, the other tucked in the pocket of his navy hoodie – it’s cold, but there’s almost no wind, so it’s a mellow, clean cold that they can ignore. ‘I never even knew this was here. It’s beautiful.’

‘It’s probably covered in bird crap,’ Julia says, dampeningly. He doesn’t sound like he’s just playing Mr Sensitive to up his odds of getting into her bra, but you never know.

‘The element of risk. I like it.’ Finn points to a patch of clear grass among the cherry trees. ‘Over here?’

Julia lets him sit down first, so she can get the distance right. He uncaps the bottle and passes it to her. ‘Cheers,’ he says.

She takes a mouthful and discovers she hates rum as well as whiskey. She has no idea how the human race found out you could actually drink this stuff. She hopes she doesn’t just hate booze in general. Julia figures she’s ruled out enough vices already; this is one she was planning to enjoy.

‘Good stuff,’ she says, giving it back.

Finn takes a swig and manages to avoid making a face. ‘Better than the punch, anyway.’

‘True. Not saying much, but true.’

There’s a silence, question-marked, but not uncomfortable. The ringing in Julia’s ears is starting to fade. Bats are on the hunt overhead; far away, maybe in the grove, an owl calls.

Finn lies back on the grass, pulling up his hood so he won’t get dew or bird crap in his hair. ‘I heard the grounds are haunted,’ he says.

Julia is not about to snuggle up for protection. ‘Yeah? I heard your mum is haunted.’

He grins. ‘Seriously. You never heard that?’

‘Course I did,’ Julia says. ‘The ghost nun. Is that why you invited me out here? To look after you while you got your booze?’

‘I used to be petrified of her. The older guys made sure we all were, back in first year.’

‘Us too. Sadistic bitches.’

Finn hands her the bottle. ‘They’d come into our dorm last thing before lights-out, right, and tell us the stories? The idea was, if they scared us enough, some poor kid wouldn’t have the guts to go to the jacks and he’d end up wetting his bed.’

‘Ever get you?’

‘No!’ But he’s grinning too. ‘They got plenty, though.’

‘Seriously? What’d they tell you? She came after guys with garden shears?’

‘Nah. They said she…’ Finn glances sideways at Julia. ‘I mean, the way I heard it, she was kind of a slut.’

The word comes out practically radioactive with self-consciousness. Julia enquires, ‘Are you trying to see if I’ll get all shocked because you said “slut”?’

Finn’s eyebrows go up and he stares, half shocked himself. She watches him coolly, amused.

‘Well,’ he says, in the end. ‘I guess. Sort of.’

‘Were you hoping I would or I wouldn’t?’

He shakes his head. He’s starting to smile, at himself, snared. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Anything else you want to try shocking me with? You could go for “shit”. Or even “fuck”, if you’re feeling really crazy.’

‘I think I’m done. Thanks, though.’

Julia decides to let him off the hook. She lies back on the grass beside him and spins the cap off the bottle. ‘The way we heard it,’ she says, ‘the nun was shagging like half the priests from Colm’s, and then some kid found out and ratted her out to the Father Superior. Him and the Mother Superior strangled the nun and hid her body somewhere in the grounds, nobody’s totally sure where, so she’s haunting both schools till she gets a proper burial. And if she catches anyone, she thinks it’s the kid who ratted her out, so she tries to strangle them and they go insane. Does that about cover what you heard?’

‘Well. Yeah. More or less.’

‘Saved you some trouble there,’ Julia says. ‘I think I’ve earned this.’ She has another sip. This one actually tastes OK. She decides, with relief, that she doesn’t hate rum after all.

Finn reaches for the bottle, and Julia holds it out. His fingers skim over hers, tentative, light. Over the back of her hand, up to her wrist.

‘Ah-ah,’ Julia says, shoving the bottle at him and ignoring the leap of something in her stomach.

Finn takes his hand back. ‘Why not?’ he asks, after a second. He’s not looking at Julia.

Julia says, ‘Got a smoke?’

Finn props himself up on an elbow and scans the back lawn; somewhere far off a high squeal falls into a giggle, but there’s nothing that sounds like nuns on the hunt. He fishes in his jeans pocket and pulls out a very battered packet of Marlboro Lights. Julia lights up – she’s pretty sure it looked expert – and hands the lighter back.

‘So…?’ Finn says, and waits.

‘Nothing personal,’ Julia says. ‘Believe me. Me and a Colm’s guy is never going to happen, is all. No matter what you’ve probably heard.’ Finn tries to stay blank, but the eyelid-flicker tells her he’s heard plenty. ‘Yeah. So if you want to go back inside and find someone who’ll spend the evening with your hand up her top, feel free. I promise not to get my ickle feelings hurt.’

She totally, no question, expects him to go. There are at least two dozen girls inside who would rugby-tackle the chance to have Finn Carroll’s tongue down their throats, and most of them are prettier than Julia to begin with. Instead Finn shrugs and pulls out a smoke of his own. ‘I’m here now.’

‘I’m not kidding.’

‘I know.’

‘Your loss,’ Julia says. She lies back on the grass, feeling the damp tickle of it on the back of her neck, and blows smoke up at the sky. The rum is kicking in, making her arms go happily floppy. She considers the possibility that she underestimated Finn Carroll.

Finn uncaps the bottle and has a swig. ‘So the ghost nun,’ he says. ‘Do you believe in stuff like that?’

‘Yeah, I do,’ Julia says. ‘Some of it. Maybe not the ghost nun – I bet the teachers just made her up to stop us doing this – but some stuff. How about you?’

Finn takes another swig. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I mean, no, because there’s no scientific evidence, but I actually think I’m probably wrong. You know?’

‘More rum,’ Julia says, holding out her free hand. ‘I think I need to catch up.’

Finn passes it over. ‘Like, OK: everyone in history’s thought they were the ones who finally knew everything. In the Renaissance, right, they were positive they knew exactly how the universe worked, till the next set of guys came along and proved that they were missing like a hundred important things. And then that set of guys were sure they had it all down, till another set came along and showed them parts they were missing.’

He glances at Julia, checking if she’s laughing at him, which she isn’t, and if she’s listening. Which she is, completely.

‘So,’ he says, ‘it’s pretty unlikely, just mathematically, that we’re living in the one single era that happens to finally have everything figured out. Which means there’s a decent possibility that the reason we can’t explain how ghosts and stuff could exist is because we haven’t figured it out yet, not because they don’t. And it’s pretty arrogant of us to think it definitely has to be the other way round.’

Finn takes a drag of his cigarette and squints at the blow of smoke like it’s turned fascinating. Even in the moonlight, Julia can see the deeper colour on his cheeks.

‘Well,’ he says. ‘Probably that all sounded totally stupid. You can tell me to shut up now.’

Julia notices something that she never had room to spot before, through the whirl of Does he fancy me do I fancy him is he going to try would I let him how much would I let him. She really likes Finn.

‘Actually,’ she says, ‘since you mentioned it, it’s one of the least stupid things I’ve heard in ages.’

He gives her a quick sideways glance. ‘Yeah?’

Julia would love with all her heart to show him. Lift her hand, send the Lucozade bottle slowly rising through the rich moonlight. Upend it, set the falling droplets of rum spiralling like a tiny amber galaxy against the star-thick sky. See the slow sheer joy lighting his face right through. The thought of what would happen to her makes the back of her neck twitch.

‘OK,’ she says. ‘Here’s something I’ve never told anyone.’

Finn turns his head to look at her properly.

‘Stuff like that, ghosts and ESP and stuff? I used to say it was all total bullshit. Like, I was fanatical about it. Once I went off on Selena, just because she was telling us about this thing in some magazine, about clairvoyance? I told her to prove it or shut up about it. When she couldn’t prove it, because obviously she couldn’t, I called her an idiot and told her she should try reading Just Seventeen because at least it’d be a step up from that crap.’

Finn’s eyebrows are up.

‘Yeah, I know. I was a bitch. I apologised. But it was because I wanted her to prove it was all true. I wanted it to be real, so badly. If I hadn’t cared, I’d’ve been like, “Yeah, whatever, maybe just possibly clairvoyance happens, probably not.” But I couldn’t stand the idea of actually believing in all this amazing mysterious stuff, and then finding out that duhhh I was a big thicko sucker and there was nothing there.’

It’s true: she’s never said this even to the others. With them she’s the one who’s always sure straight through – Julia figures Selena knows it’s more complicated than that, but they don’t talk about it. Something moves through her, unstoppable as the rum: tonight matters, after all.

‘Then what happened?’ Finn asks.

Wariness shoots up in Julia. ‘Huh?’

‘You said, a minute ago: now you do believe in some of this stuff. So what changed?’

Her fucking mouth, always open one sentence too long. ‘So,’ she says, lightly, rolling over onto her stomach to put out her smoke in the grass. ‘You don’t believe in the ghost nun, but you think she might be out here anyway. And I kind of believe in her, but I don’t actually think she’s here.’

Finn is smart enough not to push. ‘Between the two of us, we’re basically guaranteed to get haunted.’

‘Is that why you’re hanging on here? In case she goes boo and gives me a heart attack?’

‘You’re not scared?’

Julia arches an eyebrow. ‘What, because I’m a girl?’

‘No. Because you believe in it. Kind of.’

‘I’m out here every day. The ghost hasn’t got me yet.’

‘You’re out here in the daytime. Not at night.’

Finn is testing; finding new ways to work out what he thinks of her, now that the normal ones are useless. They’re in new territory. Julia realises she likes it here.

‘This isn’t night,’ she says. ‘It’s nine o-fucking-clock. Babies are still out playing. If it was summer, it’d be daylight.’

‘So if I got up right now and went inside, you’d be totally fine out here by yourself.’

It occurs to Julia that actually she probably should be scared, here on her own with a guy who’s already tried once. It occurs to her that a few months ago, after what happened with James Gillen, she would have been scared; she would have been the one leaving.

She says, ‘As long as you left me the rum.’

Finn pulls himself up off the grass with a sit-up and a jump. He brushes off his jeans and lifts an eyebrow at Julia.

She waves up at him, from her nest. ‘Off you go and find yourself some nice tit. Have fun.’

Finn pretends to start turning away. She laughs at him. After a minute he laughs back and drops down on the grass again.

‘Too scary?’ Julia asks. ‘All that way on your ownio, in the big bad dark?’

‘It’s nine o-fucking-clock. Like you said. If it actually was night, bet you’d be scared.’

‘I’m badass, baby. I can handle ghost nuns.’

Finn lies back and passes Julia the bottle. ‘Right. Let’s see you out here at midnight.’

‘Bring it on.’

‘Yeah. Right.’

That grin, like a dare. Julia’s never been any good at turning down a dare. Thin ice, she feels it, but the rum is dancing in her and what the hell, it’s not like she’s going to tell him anything. She says, ‘When’s the next social?’

‘What?’

‘Come on. March?’

‘Sometime in April. So?’

She points up at the fancy-hands clock on the back of the school. ‘So at the next social, I’ll have a photo of that clock showing midnight.’

‘So you’ve done Photoshop. Fair play.’

Julia shrugs. ‘Trust me or don’t. Yeah, I want to own you, but not that badly. I’ll get the photo straight up.’

Finn turns his head, on the grass. Their faces are inches apart, and Julia thinks Oh God no because him trying to kiss her now would be more kick-in-the-teeth depressing than she wants to admit, but Finn is grinning, a wide-open wicked grin like a kid’s. ‘Bet you a tenner you don’t,’ he says.

Julia grins back, the way she grins at Holly when an idea’s hit them both. ‘Bet you a tenner I do,’ she says.

Their hands come up at the same time, slap together, and they shake. Finn’s hand feels good, strong, an even match to hers.

She picks up the bottle and holds it up above her face, to the stars. ‘Here’s to my tenner,’ she says. ‘I’ll put it towards ghost-hunting equipment.’

In the entrance hall the huge chandelier is off, but the sconce lights on the walls turn the air a warm old-fashioned gold. Above their reach, floors of darkness stretch upwards, untouched, echoing with Chris and Selena’s footsteps.

Selena sits on the staircase. The steps are white stone, veined with grey; once upon a time they were polished – there are still traces between the banisters – but thousands of feet have worn them down till they’re velvety-rough, with dips in the middle.

Chris sits down next to her. Selena has never been this close to him before, close enough to see the scattering of freckles along the tops of his cheekbones, the faintest shading of stubble on his chin; to smell him, spices and a thread of something wild and musky that makes her think of outside at night. He feels different from anyone she’s ever met: charged up fuller, electric and sparking with three people’s worth of life packed into his skin.

Selena wants to touch him again. She slides her hands under her thighs to stop herself reaching out and pressing her palm against his neck. With a sudden leap of warning, she wonders if she fancies him; but she’s fancied guys, back Before, even snogged a few of them. This isn’t the same thing.

She shouldn’t have let him touch her even that once, back in the hall. She understands that.

She wants the world to be that real again.

Chris says, ‘Are your friends going to wonder where you are?’

They will. Selena feels another nudge of unease: she never even thought of telling them. ‘I’ll text them,’ she says, feeling for the pocket in the unfamiliar dress. ‘What about yours?’

‘Nah.’ Chris’s half-smile says his friends expected him to go missing tonight.

To Holly: Am just outside, wanted to get out for a few mins, back soon. ‘There,’ Selena says, sending it.

The hall door opens, letting out a rush of thumping bass and squeals and hot air, and Miss Long sticks her head out. When she sees Chris and Selena, she nods and points a threatening finger: Stay. Someone shrieks behind her, she whips round and the door slams shut.

Chris says, ‘Back in there. I wasn’t trying to tell you what you guys should wear.’

‘Yeah, you were,’ Selena says. ‘It’s OK, though. I’m not mad.’

‘I was just saying. If you wear jeans to a dance and do your hair like that, people are going to laugh at you, end of. Your friend Becca – I mean, I know she has to be the same age as us, but she’s like a kid. She doesn’t get it. You can’t just let her walk out there to get eaten alive by Joanne Heffernan.’

‘Joanne would say stuff anyway,’ Selena points out. ‘No matter what Becca was wearing.’

‘Yeah, because she’s a total raving bitch. So don’t give her extra excuses.’

Selena says, ‘I thought you liked Joanne.’

‘I was with her a few times. That’s not the same thing.’

Selena thinks about that for a while. Chris bends over his shoelace, untying and retying it. His cheek glows. Selena can feel the heat of it, deep in her palm.

She says, ‘I think maybe Becca doesn’t want to be that.’

‘So? It’s not like those are the only two options. Be some bitch or be some freak. You can just be normal.’

‘I don’t think she wants to be that either.’

Chris’s eyebrows pull together. ‘What, like she thinks she can’t because she’s not…? I mean, with the braces, and the…’ He nods downwards. ‘You know. She’s flat. She’s worried because of that? Jesus, that’s no big deal. It’s not like she’s some total ditch-pig. She just has to make, like, this much effort and she’d be fine.’

He was telling the truth about not being into Becca. He doesn’t want anything from her. He’s doing it all wrong, but all he wants is to build a castle around her and keep her safe.

‘Your sister,’ Selena says. ‘Who you were talking about. What’s her name?’

‘Caroline. Carly.’ That brings up a smile on Chris’s face, but it gets jammed with worry and breaks apart.

‘How old is she?’

‘She’s ten. In a couple of years she’s going to be coming here; Kilda’s. If I was at home I could talk to her, you know? Prepare her or whatever. But I only see her for, like, a few hours every couple of weeks. It’s not enough.’

Selena says, ‘Are you worried she’s not going to like it here?’

Chris sighs and rubs a hand up the side of his jaw. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I worry about that a lot. She won’t… aah. She does stuff like Becca: like she’s actually trying to be weird. Wearing jeans to the Valentine’s dance, that’s totally something she’d do. Like, last year everyone in her class was wearing those stupid bracelets, right? The ones with the different-coloured links and you all wear each other’s colours to show you’re friends, I don’t know. And Carly’s all pissed off because some girls slagged her for not having one. So I’m like, “Get one, I’ll buy you one if you’ve run out of pocket money,” right? And Carly turns around and tells me she’d cut off her arm before she’d wear one of those bracelets, because those girls aren’t her boss and she’s not their slave and she doesn’t have to do anything just because they want her to.’

Selena is smiling. ‘Yeah, that’s like Becca. That’s sort of why she’s wearing jeans.’

‘Well, what the fuck?’ Chris’s hands fly up, frustrated. ‘I’m not asking her to cut her arm off. I’m like, who cares if you actually want a dumb bracelet? You definitely don’t want to be that girl who no one will go near her and everyone’s texting around stories about how she eats her snot and pees herself in class. So just do this one tiny thing that everyone else is doing.’

‘Did she?’

‘No. I bought her the fucking bracelet, and she binned it. And if she pulls something like that in Kilda’s? People like Joanne, if Carly swans in here like it doesn’t matter what any of them think, they’re going to… Jesus.’ He rakes a hand through his hair. ‘And I’ll be in college by then; I won’t even be around to do anything about it. I just want her to be happy. That’s all.’

Selena says, ‘Has she got friends?’

‘Yeah. She’s not super-popular or whatever, obviously, but she’s got these two girls who’ve been her best friends since they were all in Junior Infants. They’re coming to Kilda’s too. Thank God.’

‘Then she’ll be OK.’

‘You think? They’re two people. What about everyone else? What about all them?’ Chris jerks his chin at the hall doors, the muffled jumble of beats and screams. ‘Carly can’t just ignore them and hope they leave her alone. It’s not going to happen.’

He sounds like they’re one great bristle-backed creature, laser-eyed and dribbling for throats to rip out, never sated. Selena realises that Chris is afraid. For his sister, for Becca, but bigger than that. Just afraid.

There are things stronger than that creature. There are things that could rip it limb from limb if they felt like it, spike its head a hundred feet high on a cypress tree and use its sinews to string their bows. For a second Selena sees the white arc of a hunting call flash across the sky.

‘Not ignore them,’ she says. ‘Just… not let them matter.’

Chris shakes his head. ‘It doesn’t work that way,’ he says. For a second the full curves of his lips harden; he looks older.

Selena says, ‘Becca’s happy in there, right? In her jeans.’

‘She can’t exactly be happy about those geebags bitching about her.’

‘She’s not. It just… like I said. It doesn’t matter.’

Chris stares. ‘If that was you. If they were bitching about your dress. That’d be fine with you?’

‘I bet they are,’ Selena says. ‘I don’t care.’

He’s turned towards her on the steps. His eyes are hazel, a cool hazel speckled with gold. Selena knows if she could just touch him she could draw out the fear like snake venom, roll it into a glistening black ball and throw it away.

He demands – like he’s really asking, like he needs to know – ‘How? How can you not care?’

People talk to Selena. They always have. She doesn’t talk to them, except Julia and Holly and Becca. She almost never even tries.

She says, slowly, ‘You have to have something else you care about more. Something so you know that some geebags bitching aren’t the most important thing; you’re not the most important thing, even. Something enormous.’

It’s just words, sounds, it doesn’t come near what she means. This isn’t something you can tell.

Chris says, ‘What? Like God?’

Selena considers that. ‘Probably that would work. Yeah.’

He’s open-mouthed. ‘Are you guys going to be, like, nuns?’

Selena laughs out loud. ‘No! Can you see Julia being a nun?’

‘Then what…?’

The more she tries, the more she’s going to get it wrong. She says, ‘I just mean: maybe, depending, Carly could be fine just the way she is. Better than fine.’

Chris is looking at her, very close and very intent, and his eyes have warmed. He says, ‘You’re a once-off. You know that?’

Selena wants to say nothing at all. The thing finding its shape in the space between them is so new, so precious, the wrong touch could burst it like a bubble. ‘I’m not anything special,’ she says. ‘It just worked out this way.’

‘Yeah, you are. I never talk to people about stuff like this. But this, talking to you, this is… I’m glad we came out here. I’m really glad.’

Selena knows, like he’s reached out and dropped the knowledge into her lap, that he’s going to try to take her hand. The handprint on her arm burns, a painless gold fire. She wraps her fingers hard around the cold stone edge of the step.

The hall door flies open, and Miss Long points at them. ‘Your time’s up. Back inside. Don’t make me come out there and get you.’ And she slams the door.

Chris says, ‘I want to do this again.’

Selena is still working to breathe. She can’t tell if she’s grateful or something else to whatever sent Miss Long. She says, ‘Me too.’

‘When?’

‘Next week, after school? We can meet outside the Court and go for a walk.’

Chris shifts on the step, like the stone hurts him. He presses his thumbnail into the wood of the banister. ‘Everyone’d see us.’

‘That’s OK.’

‘They’d… you know. Like, they’d slag us. Both of us. They’d think we were going to…’

Selena says, ‘I don’t care.’

‘I know,’ Chris says, and there’s a wry laugh in his voice, like the joke’s on him. ‘I know you don’t. I do, though. I don’t want people thinking that.’ He hears himself. ‘No, I mean– Shit. I don’t mean I don’t want people thinking we’re together. I’d be totally fine with that, it’s not like I’m embarrassed or – I mean, not just fine, it would be better than just–’

He’s knotting himself up. Selena says, laughing at him, ‘It’s OK. I know what you mean.’

Chris takes a breath. He says simply, ‘I don’t want it to be like that. Like me and Joanne going into the Field to… whatever. I want it to be like this.’

His hand going up. The hall, smoky gold. The small flutters of air in the darkness, far above their heads.

‘If we meet outside the Court after school, I’m going to make a balls of it. I’ll say something stupid to make the guys laugh, or else we’ll go somewhere to talk and everyone’ll watch us go and I’ll have, like, not one single thing to say. Or else the guys’ll slag me, afterwards, and I’ll say something… you know. Dirty. I wish I wouldn’t, but I will.’

Selena says, ‘Can you get out of school at night?’

She hears the hiss of caught breath in the air all around her. She wants to say back, It’s OK, I know what I’m doing, but she knows it wouldn’t be true.

Chris’s eyebrows go up. ‘At night? No way. You can? Seriously?’

Selena says, ‘I’ll give you my number. If you find a way, text me.’

‘No,’ he says, instantly. ‘Maybe it’s different here, but the guys go through each other’s phones all the time, looking for… well. Stuff. The Brothers do it too. I’ll find a way to get in touch. Just not like that. OK?’

Selena nods. ‘About getting out,’ Chris says. ‘One of my mates. He might be able to figure something out.’

‘Ask him.’

Chris says, ‘I’ll make him.’

Selena says, ‘Don’t tell him why. And till then, don’t talk to me. If we see each other around the Court or something, we’ll act like we don’t even know each other; like before. Otherwise it’ll all get ruined.’

Chris nods. He says, obscurely and out to the hall but Selena understands, ‘Thanks.’

Miss Long bangs the door open. ‘Selena! You, whatsyourname! Inside. Now.’ This time she stays there, staring.

Chris jumps up and holds out a hand to Selena. She doesn’t take it. She stands up, feeling the movement spin little eddies up into the high darkness. She smiles at Chris and says, ‘See you soon.’ Then she moves around him, carefully so not even the hem of her dress brushes up against him, and goes back into the gym. The handprint, wrapped around her arm, is still glowing.