Kiss of Death (11 page)

“How’re you feeling?” she asks, shaking her hair out of her eyes, sitting down on the table next to me.

“Better,” I say. “Well”— I find myself qualifying that immediately—“I’m not feeling dizzy anymore. But now I’m freaking out about what happened to me.”

“You should,” Taylor says seriously. She hands me a mug of tea. “I made this for you. Lots of sugar. The nurse said I should wake you up and give you some tea.”

“Is she coming back in?” I ask, taking the mug gingerly, as it’s steaming.

Taylor makes a face.

“I don’t think so. I heard her telling Jane she thought you were exaggerating to get attention.”

“
What?
” I nearly drop the mug, I’m so cross.

“Yeah, Jane told her she was sure you weren’t, but then the nurse said something snarky about teenage girls thinking periods are an excuse for lots of drama, and she and Jane got into an argument.”

“I can see why she’s working in an all-boys’ school,” I say, blowing on my tea to cool it down. “The nurse, I mean.”

“Totally. But she said your vital signs were all fine when you came in here,” Taylor adds reassuringly. “Apparently your pulse was a bit fast, but that’s it.”

“It wasn’t the period thing, Taylor,” I say, looking at her directly. “I only thought that because—”

“Because anything else would have been way worse, and you didn’t want to go into a major panic up on top of a mountain,” Taylor finishes. “I didn’t think it was your period either. I mean, you’re never like that. You haven’t even got cramps yet this time around, have you?”

I shake my head and start to sip the tea. It’s strong enough to stand a spoon in and sweet enough to rot my teeth. Exactly what I need. After just a few sips I’m already feeling better.

“This isn’t a coincidence,” Taylor continues. “Not after that whole fire thing, and someone pushing you. Plus the note. Someone’s definitely out to get you.” She looks around the room, then gets up, closes the door, and comes back, pulling up the nurse’s chair so she can sit opposite me. “I think whatever it was, they put it in your water,” she says in a lowered voice. “I’ve been thinking about this nonstop since we got back here. All the water bottles had names on them. Plum and Susan carried them to the coach, and Lizzie got the keys. One of them could easily have tampered with your water bottle then. And after that, who knows if they gave the keys back to your aunt, right? They probably just left them in the lock and wandered off to check their makeup. And there’d have been plenty of time after we finished breakfast, before we set off for Arthur’s Seat, for someone else to go out to the coach and find your bottle and put something in it.…”

“Like what?” I ask, drinking more tea. The sugar’s picking me up, but my brain’s still not working as fast as usual. I’m perfectly happy to sit here and let Taylor run through the entire theory she’s been formulating while I was unconscious.

“Well, I’ve got an idea about that, too,” Taylor says, leaning forward. “Have you ever taken antihistamines? You don’t have any allergies, so probably not.”

I think this over, already halfway through the mug of tea. Eventually, I shake my head again.

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, they can really knock you out,” Taylor says. “My brother took two of my mom’s Claritin once and he was zonked for hours. It was pretty funny, actually. He was like a zombie; he could barely keep his eyes open. Seth totally hates being out of control—he doesn’t drink or anything, so I’d never seen him like that before. I said I was going to shave his eyebrows and he ran away and locked himself in his bedroom ’cause he was scared he’d pass out and I’d prank him.” She grins in reminiscence. “I wouldn’t have. But it was really funny to watch him sweat for once.”

“So you think—”

“I think that someone emptied out some capsules of antihistamines and dumped them into your water bottle,” she says. “That would be much easier than crushing up tablets, and you probably wouldn’t taste it so much. There’s powder in the capsules and it would dissolve in the water if they shook it up a bit. Did your water taste funny at all?”

I pull a face. “I don’t think so. But Edinburgh tap water tastes really different to London water anyway. We’ve all been saying so. There’s more fluoride or something.”

“Right.” Taylor nods slowly. “Makes sense. Anyway, it was a perfect opportunity. Antihistamines hit you pretty fast. Whoever did it would be hoping that you’d start feeling pretty woozy before long, and then if you took a fall, they’d be far away when it happened, and not be remotely blamed for it. Like, someone who was coming uphill really slowly, miles behind you.” She tilts her chair back a bit. “Or even someone in the St. Tabby’s group. Not on Arthur’s Seat at all.”

“So does that rule out Alison and Luce?” I say, thinking aloud. “Alison actually caught me when I was about to split my skull open.…”

“It could have been Luce,” Taylor says unhelpfully. “Or maybe Alison put the stuff in your water to give you a bad time, but freaked out when she saw that you might actually get killed.”

“No one who was worried about me actually getting killed would have pushed me over the staircase rail,” I point out.

“True,” Taylor agrees. “Scarlett, I’m really sorry I wasn’t there when you fell this morning, okay?” Nontactile, noncuddly Taylor actually tilts forward and puts a hand awkwardly on my knee for emphasis. “But I thought you’d stay sitting down till I came back for you,” she says, grimacing. “How was I supposed to know you’d be dumb and stubborn enough to try to walk down a cliff on your own?”

“Um, it’s not really an apology when you finish by blaming the victim,” I say sarcastically, finishing the tea. “But what if I didn’t react to the antihistamines? Not everyone gets knocked out like that by them.”

Taylor shrugs.

“They’d just have tried again some other way,” she says grimly.

I put the mug down next to me on the table and look at her.

“
She’d
just have tried again some other way,” I correct her. “I mean, one thing we can be sure about is that it’s a girl. Or a woman.”

Taylor nods. I sit for a moment, absorbing everything she’s said.

“I’m going to our room,” I say slowly. “I need to be by myself for a bit. You should go back with Jane and join everyone else for the afternoon. I know you wanted to do the tour of Edinburgh Castle.”

“I should stay with you,” Taylor says, but she looks torn. She really does want to see the castle. Lots of battles happened there. And sieges. Taylor loves both battles and sieges with a passion.

“Whoever tried to hurt me,” I point out, “has to be in that group. So if you go, I’ll still be fine, because all the suspects will be somewhere else, and you’ll be able to keep an eye on them.”

“Worst-case scenario, if someone sneaks out, I can make an excuse and follow them,” Taylor agrees. She stands up. “I’ll see you up to our room,” she says.

“It’s okay, Taylor,” I say, standing too. “I can get there myself. Go and find Jane. If she needs to see me before she takes you off, that’s where I’ll be.”

I pick up my mug and follow her out of the infirmary. We pause outside for a moment, looking at each other; Taylor’s expression is weird, unreadable. It’s as if she’s deliberately masking her feelings from me.

“Stay in our room till we all get back,” she says.

I nod. “I’m just going to read my book.”

Her lips part; she looks as if she’s about to say something else. And then she shakes her head, frowning, turns, and heads off down the corridor in the direction of the staff room.

Something’s definitely up with Taylor. I know her well enough to be aware that there’s something she’s not telling me.

Well, Taylor isn’t the only person in my life I can lean on. My fingers are already closing around the phone in my pocket as if it were a tiny life preserver; I’m pulling it out as I climb the main stairs up to the dormitories.

His number is 2 on my speed dial. He’d have been 1 if that weren’t tied to voice mail. (And no, Taylor doesn’t know that she isn’t number 2.)

I haven’t rung him since he left; or, to be precise, I haven’t initiated ringing him, though I’ve returned his calls if he’s missed me and left a message. This is the first time since Jase rode away from Wakefield Hall that I’ve called him out of the blue.

But if there was ever a time I need to talk to my boyfriend, now is it.

Closing the door behind me, I flop down on my bed, hold down the 2 key, and wait, heart pounding, to hear if he’ll pick up.

ten
FALLING DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

I swore I wouldn’t cry. I don’t like crying at the best of times, and I particularly hate it when I cry in front of Jase; it makes me feel like some pathetically weak girlie girl in a film, weeping in her boyfriend’s strong, manly arms. Which is very much not the image I have of myself. I like to feel I’m tough enough to take care not only of myself, but also of the people around me, if necessary. And my own arms are strong enough to pull me up a rope or to the top of a wall, if necessary.

So it’s especially annoying that when Jase picks up and says: “Scarlett!” I promptly burst into hysterical sobs. Obviously I’m much more wound up by recent events than I realized. Just the sound of his voice, so wonderfully familiar and comforting, has opened the floodgates. I howl like a banshee for a solid minute or so, Jase’s voice in my ear getting increasingly concerned. There aren’t any tissues in the room, but there’s a dispenser of nasty cheap paper hand towels above the sink (which I’m sorry to say does have suspicious yellow stains running down the inside. Boys are foul). I grab a fistful of the towels and start to blot my face with them. They’re so dry and corrugated it’s like I’m exfoliating with sandpaper.

“What’s
happened
?” Jase is bellowing down the line at me by now. “Scarlett, stop crying and tell me! I’m freaking out!”

I try to speak but by now I’m so congested I can’t breathe. So I do the most enormous nose blow in history, trumpeting and bubbling out pints of snot, and take a long breath, crumpling up the sodden towels.

“That’s nice,” Jase observes, his voice full of laughter. “Really pretty.”

I realize that I haven’t said a word to him yet; all I’ve done is ring him up, burst into tears, and then blow my nose at him. Very attractive. I start to giggle, weakly, but enough to make me feel better.

“Sorry,” I say feebly. “It’s just been a really awful couple of days.”

“Yeah, I sort of worked that out,” Jase says. “What’s been going on? Is it your aunt again?”

“She’s being a total cow,” I say, “but that’s not it.”

I heave a sigh and launch into a description of everything that’s happened since we arrived in Scotland. I try to relate it all as flatly as I can: just the facts, as little emotion as possible, so it doesn’t sound too crazy.

One of the weird things about my and Jase’s relationship is that there’s always been drama swirling around us. His dad hated us being together, and so did my aunt Gwen, who banned me from seeing him. We’ve always had to sneak around behind their backs, which, I can assure you, isn’t half as romantic as it is when you read about it or see it on TV. And then something truly terrible happened: Jase found out that his dad was driving the van that killed my parents when I was four years old. He ran into them deliberately; he even stopped long enough to snatch my mother’s necklace from her body.

It’s as bleak as it could be. But at least it means that what I’m telling Jase now isn’t the most shocking thing he’s ever heard in his life.

And it also means that he knows I’m not the kind of girl who makes up psycho-sounding stories just to grab her boyfriend’s attention.

“Scarlett,”
he says eventually, sounding shell-shocked. And though he’s clearly really worried about me, every time Jase says my name, it melts me a little with pure pleasure. “I don’t know what to say. This is really, really bad.”

He takes a long breath.

“I hate that this is happening to you and I’m not there,” he says hopelessly. “I feel like the worst boyfriend in the world.”

“I wish you were here,” I say sadly. “I wish I could hug you right now.”

“Oh, baby—I wish I could hug you right now too,” he says in a small, miserable voice.

“Where are you?” I ask, even though it feels as if I’m breaching a taboo, because Jase hasn’t really wanted to talk about his travels. It’s as if now that he’s not with me, he’s simply Away, with a capital
A,
and he doesn’t want to specify exactly where that place is.

I’m not imagining it; there’s a pause before he answers:

“Nottingham. Crashing on a friend’s sofa. I’ve been doing a lot of couch surfing.” He laughs dryly. “Well, sofas and floors. Sometimes I’m a bit tall for the sofas, so I pull the pillows off and sleep on them on the living room floor. I’ve got really good at sleeping anywhere.”

“Remember when we pulled the mattress off my bed and we slept on the floor?” I ask.

“Of course I do,” he says softly. “It was the best night of my life.”

I gulp. I can hardly swallow, it hurts so much.

“If it was the best night of your life,” I say in a tiny thread of voice, “why don’t you want to see me anymore? I’m so scared right now.… I feel really alone, I don’t know who I can trust.…”

“Baby”—Jase’s voice is ragged now—“you
know
that’s not true! You
know
I want to see you more than anything! I just can’t get my head round everything that’s happened—I feel like I’ve got demons chasing me. Every time I get on the bike it’s like I’m trying to outrun them—”

“But maybe you can’t run away from them!” I say passionately. “Maybe that’s what you’re doing wrong! It’s been months now, Jase, and if you’re not feeling any better, then maybe running away isn’t going to work!” I’m almost gasping now in my effort to convince him. “I don’t mean ‘running away’ like you’re a coward,” I add swiftly.

“I know,” he says. “I know you don’t mean it like that. I said it myself, didn’t I? It’s just—it’s so hard, Scarlett. My dad—what he did. And it’s not just my dad—look at my grandma! It’s like my family’s cursed or something—”

“But that’s only one side of your family,” I insist, because there’s not a single positive thing to be said for the Barnes half of Jase’s bloodline. “Your mum’s very nice.”

“She’s just so …” Jase tries to find something positive to say about poor Dawn, his mum, who means well but has less backbone than an earthworm. “She’s just so
wet,
” he finishes gloomily.

Dawn is totally wet; it’s true. I contemplate Jase’s situation. On one side, the Barneses, who are all pretty sociopathic; on the other, Dawn, who couldn’t say boo to a goose without apologizing immediately afterward.

“It’s not about your family,” I say firmly, deciding that this is the best line to take if I’m to have any success convincing him to put the past behind him. “It’s about you and me, making something new.”

“I wish it were that easy,” Jase says sadly.

“It should be,” I insist, but with less conviction, and when he agrees:

“Yeah. It should be,” he sounds as if he’s in mourning.

“This is so hard,” I echo him, lying down on my bed. “I miss you so much. It’s so unfair.”

“It is,” he says very quietly. “It is unfair.”

And we go silent for a while, nothing left to say, listening to each other breathe.

“I’m worried about you, though,” Jase says eventually. “All this stuff that’s been going on. Do you think it’s that Plum girl?”

“It might be,” I say. “She definitely doesn’t like me.”

I haven’t told Jase that I have something incriminating on Plum, which I’m holding as insurance for her behaving well with me and Taylor. Instinct tells me that boys don’t want to hear that their girlfriends are involved—even for the best of reasons—in a complicated bargaining system that on some level could be described as blackmail. I don’t have much experience with boys, but I have the strong feeling that they like to see us as nicer than we actually are, and I’m not about to start testing that theory by telling Jase that I have a near-naked, slightly pornograhic Polaroid of Plum that I have no intention of giving back to her anytime soon.

“I can’t see her running round setting off smoke bombs in the middle of the night, though,” Jase says. “This is …” He pauses.
“Bollocks,”
he finally says, in a really heartfelt voice. “I
hate
to think of someone doing this kind of stuff to you.”

“I’ve got Taylor,” I say dully. “I’ll be okay.”

“But all this is going on while Taylor’s right there sharing a room with you!” Jase points out. “That’s not exactly reassuring me!”

“What do you want me to say?” My temper flares, finally. “You’re not here! You won’t come and see me, even though I miss you so much.…” I sit up, my anger building. “I’m sorry I rang you, I’m sorry I worried you, okay?” I snap. “I should have known that there wasn’t any point, because even though I’m really
upset
and
scared
and
lonely
and I really miss you, you
still
won’t come to see me!”

Clutching the phone in a now-sweaty hand, I wait to see what he’ll say. Holding my breath, praying that if my pleas haven’t worked, maybe my all-too-genuine resentment will. The longer the silence continues, the more I dare to hope.
He’s thinking about it. My words are sinking in. He’s going to say he’ll come up to Edinburgh—

“I can’t,” he says in a voice so low it’s almost a whisper.

“Then I can’t be with you,” I hear myself say, and I sound surprisingly clear, surprisingly sure of myself. Which is exactly the opposite to the way I feel. “I can’t be with someone who isn’t there when I need him.”

I give him a few seconds to protest.
One, two, three,
I count in my head. And when he hasn’t flared up in that time to say no, he loves me, he can’t be without me, he won’t let me break up with him, he’ll come to see me … then I click the button with the red handset icon on it, ending the call.

My phone is hot to the touch. I sit still as a statue as it begins to cool down. And still Jase isn’t ringing me back. Eventually, I fumble my thumb on the button that turns off the phone. I can’t bear to sit here waiting every moment for it to ring, listening desperately for a sound that doesn’t come.

I feel even trippier than I did that morning, as if I’m floating above my body, which is sitting there like a lump of wood on the narrow mattress. Strangely, I don’t feel any real, physical pain; I’m bizarrely detached from everything.

Did I do the right thing? I want to be with Jase so badly. When he said we were boyfriend and girlfriend it was one of the best moments I’ve ever had in my life. Maybe even
the
best. And only a couple of months ago I told him that I loved him, and he said he loved me too
.…

And I just broke up with him in a phone call.

I close my eyes. I’m completely and utterly overloaded. The image whirling in the darkness is the turning rainbow-colored circle my computer throws up when it’s clogged up with stuff to process, a sign that says it’s too busy to do what I want then and there. That’s exactly how my brain feels: too busy, too stressed, to be able to spit out an answer to a single question I’m asking.

The circle keeps turning, fuchsia-blue-green-yellow-orange whirling back into fuchsia again, on and on and on, round and round and round. And I slump back down on the bed and let myself fall into it.

I’m Alice in Wonderland falling down the rabbit hole. Tumbling head over heels down a long, dark well, amazed at how endless it is, completely disoriented. I reach out my hands to try to touch the sides, but unlike Alice’s rabbit hole, there are no sides, just cold black air. And then I’m clutching onto someone; he’s below me, which shouldn’t be possible.

It’s Callum. He’s looking up at me with that expression I remember all too well, desperate and pleading, shocked to the core at what’s just happened to him. But before, when I was clinging to him, I had a gymnastics grip on him, my hands digging into his forearms, his into mine. It’s like you’re holding on four times, and it makes the lock really strong. This time, our hands are clasped, and it’s too weak to last. My fingers are numb, as if I’m still drugged from this morning. I can’t connect properly, I can’t wrap them around his as tightly as I need to.

He’s slipping away from me, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Slowly, his fingers trail down mine, his face slips farther and farther away. I remember how I saw green and gold flashes in his gray eyes before. We were so close in those moments; we thought each other’s face would be the last thing we’d ever see.

But now all I’m touching of Callum is his fingertips, a last final brush of skin on skin as he falls away into the dark. Turning, spinning, gone. And I keep tumbling down the well. It’s not a terrifying, headlong fall, more like a feather spiraling over and over itself as it slowly comes down to earth. I close my eyes, dizzy with the constant revolving motion, and something big and solid bumps into me. I think I’ve landed, and then the next second I realize I haven’t; I’m holding on to Jase, and we’re falling together, arms wrapped round one another, my head resting in the hollow of his neck.

He’s wearing his leather motorcycle jacket. The zip digs into me, but I don’t care. I can smell the worn old leather, the apple aftershave he loves, and him, underneath the other scents—his skin, warm and musky and so instantly familiar that tears of happiness and relief spring to my eyes. My whole body feels as if it’s dissolving with the sheer bliss of being close to Jase again, hugging him as I’ve been craving to do.