The Deviants (14 page)

He lifted his eyebrows briefly, switching from shoulder to back stretches. ‘Chances are, that person hates themselves far more deeply than they hate you.'

I didn't see it. Fallon had been wronged by the Shaws and we'd righted her. We'd made things better. Corey had been wronged and we were going to right him too. And I was hungry for it. Hungry for ideas on how we could get back
at Zane. I kept hearing that hideous sad sound coming out of Corey. Seeing his shaking hands. Watching him throwing those ornaments against that wall and come alive with the relief it gave him.

I kept seeing Mort, swinging from that tree. The creaking of the branch. His fur fluttering on the breeze. Then, in an instant, I got the idea. Just thinking about it made our training session go quicker, made the adrenaline pump harder through my body and soon I was overtaking Pete on the race back home. I was charged up again. I had power. And the ideas began to flow like a river.

‘So you had more revenge on your mind?'

12

Ella Thinks Up a Plan

A
t the start of the year, Dad was in hospital with an infection. He was in having IV antibiotics and sharing his room with a guy who had terminal bowel cancer; a gentle guy called Jim. Jim had four kids, seven grandchildren, had been married forty-five years, never smoked or drank, raised money for refugees and, judging by the amount of cards on the window sill, had hundreds of friends. As I sat there on the end of Dad's bed, watching him and his little bald roommate chatting about model boats, I thought, These are good people, so why is this happening to them? Why was Jim dying and my dad spending his forced retirement with needles in his veins and feeling tired all the time? Some days he didn't have the strength to press down the keys on his keyboard.

I asked Dad the same question. All he did was quote me some long spiel from this book he'd been reading.

‘“Life is a storm,”' he said. ‘“You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. Look into that storm and shout ‘Do your worst, for I will do mine.'”'

‘What's that?' I said.

‘It's from
The Count of Monte Cristo
. Alexandre Dumas. Wonderful story.'

He started telling me the plot with such fire in his eyes for this guy Dantes and his terrible betrayal and how he got his own back and all I remember is feeling annoyed. Annoyed that Dad didn't feel betrayed by life. Annoyed that he wasn't angry about the cards he'd been dealt. I was seething. I thought of Neil Rittman – the worst person in my world. Why wasn't he suffering? Why was he sitting up there at JoNeille in his golden bathtub, smoking cigars and laughing his head off with clear lungs and several thriving businesses while my poor dad was coughing up blood and sweating radiation? It should be the other way round. Bad people should be punished. Good people should have nice lives. I wanted to punish Neil like Dad and Jim were being punished. Only problem was I didn't know where to start.

For Zane Walker though, I did.

What we had done to the Shaws at Whitehouse Farm had been quite spur of the moment and childish; we'd got away with it because they were kids and, let's face it, stupid. We had to be cleverer with Zane, and I had an idea.

*

Fallon had a scan at the hospital a few mornings later at Brynstan General, just across the roundabout at the end of our road. Despite her baby-heavy state, she wanted us all to go on a picnic at the top of Brynstan Hill afterwards, like we used to. She said the exercise would do her good, and none of us had any argument ready. So Max picked her and Corey up from the hospital, and we drove to Church Lane where we could access the footpath through the churchyard.

‘Show them the scan,' said Corey, nudging Fallon's arm.
He'd bunked off work again and gone with her that morning. Apparently, they'd spent most of last night checking out baby names on his computer and making a list of things she needed for her hospital bag. He seemed to be really into the whole baby thing.

I switched the picnic blanket into the crook of my left arm and took the little piece of paper Fallon held out to me. The photo had her name at the top of it – Hayes, Fallon Magenta – and the name of the hospital – Brynstan General.

‘It's so clear, isn't it?' she said proudly as I stopped on the footpath to look at it properly. ‘See, there's a leg. And another leg…'

‘And another leg,' Max laughed.

‘No, silly, she's only got two legs!'

I felt my heart tighten up, quite without warning. ‘She?'

‘Yeah,' said Fallon. ‘There's no winky, so the doctor said it was most likely a girl.'

I swallowed down the lump in my throat. This grainy, big-headed alien with teeny tiny fingers and little ski-slopey nose was Fallon's little girl. And though Fallon looked delighted, and Corey was smiling like the proud dad he should have been, I couldn't help what I was feeling.

Jealousy.

‘Corey's going to come to the birth with me, too.'

‘Is he?' said Max, as we reached the top of the graveyard where the little wooden gate was. ‘I can't even walk past the butcher's counter at Tesco. You're actually gonna go goal end while she's in labour?'

‘Yeah,' said Corey. ‘She needs someone there. In case her mum's not around.'

‘Fair play,' said Max, switching the picnic bag from his left hand to his right. ‘When are you due, Fal?'

‘They said 10 September.'

The pain thickened my throat until it felt like my whole neck was swollen. ‘That's not long.'

‘I know,' said Fallon. ‘I'm a bit scared about the pain, but Corey will be with me now, so it won't be so bad. I'm glad it's a girl, though, Ella. She'll have a foof, like us!'

I snorted with laughter at that, and my jealousy was gone in an instant, like she had pricked it with a pin.

We had to go super slowly for Fallon's sake. Halfway up the sloping churchyard that led to the turnstile and hill footpath, Max picked her up and carried her in his arms, and she giggled like a gurgling drain and he heaved like she was heavier than elephants but they went on ahead.

‘Show-off!' I called out, but I smiled anyway – Corey was smiling, expecting me to do the same.

‘I'm so glad we all hooked up again. All of us,' he said.

I nodded. ‘It's fun, isn't it? But, just be careful, OK? I mean, don't go saying you'll be there for her if you're not. She's already had Zane let her down.'

‘Oh, I'm not like him,' he said. ‘I wouldn't do that. I just want to help her, that's all.'

I believed him. That was always the boy Corey was. He was our problem solver. If we were lost Corey would work out how to get home. If we were cold, Corey would get the fire going. Fallon was lost – he was going to light her way.

‘Good,' I said. ‘No, that's really great, Corey.'

He beamed.

At the top of the churchyard, Max and Fallon had stopped, right beside the gravestone. We never walked by it without saying something or laying something there, even if it was just a buttercup.

‘Hi, Jess,' Max was saying as Corey and I joined them, staring down at the gold writing on the huge slab of black marble.

‘She'd have hated that headstone,' said Corey. Then he looked shocked by what he'd said. ‘God, Max, I'm so sorry.'

‘No, you're right,' said Max. ‘Dad chose it. It was the most expensive one they had.' He clocked the bunch of pink roses beside the stone. ‘Hey, who put them there?' He bent down to see if there was a card but there wasn't. We looked back at him blankly and shook our heads.

‘Maybe it was your mum?' I said.

He shook his head. ‘She wouldn't come up here.'

‘Do you think we'll ever know – what actually happened?' said Fallon.

A silence followed her question. The air around us became thick and hot.

‘As far my whole family's concerned, it was an unavoidable and tragic accident,' said Max. ‘End of.'

‘But what about you?' she persisted. ‘What do you think happened, Max?'

He shrugged. ‘Did you know they still use the same bus?'

‘You're joking,' said Corey.

‘No, I've seen it a few times. There's no dent in it any more, but I memorised the number plate. You've seen it, haven't you Ells?'

‘Yeah,' I said, looking down at the pink roses. ‘Come on. The Mini Magnums will be defrosting.'

Once we'd made the agonisingly slow, steep climb along the wildflower path, through the two gates and past clumps of bleating sheep, we reached the summit of Brynstan Hill at last. I always felt like it was the one place in the world
I could breathe to the bottom of my lungs. We could see all our houses from up there. The top was several football pitches' worth of uneven grass, and that day it was almost completely covered in buttercups. Out to the west ran the motorway and all the retails parks, where the cars glinted like little toys. To the east was the sea and sitting smack bang in the middle was the island, like a fat black rat in a bath. All I could hear was the wind.

We began to set out our picnic, Max wasting no time in doling out the Mini Magnums and the huge bag of candy we'd reclaimed from the Shaws.

‘So, come on then,' he said, crunching down on his ice cream and slurping it up. ‘What's this big plan?'

‘Oh yeah, I still haven't told you, have I?' I said, peeling back the lid on my Tupperware box of mixed salad and low fat cheese. ‘Well, I remembered this story Jess told us once, about a cat…'

I looked at all their faces in turn. They were all blank.

Then Fallon's eyes lit up. ‘Oh, I know the one! We were having a midnight feast and we made a cave out of our sleeping bags, and the chairs in your dining room, Max.'

‘Yeah,' I said, ‘and we played on your Wii and your mum told us off for getting Ribena on the new cushion covers. Anyway, Jessica told us this horror story, about this alcoholic bloke who bullied his cat.'

‘I don't remember it at all.' Max yawned, leaning back on his elbows and moving his aviators from his head to his eyes.

I started telling the story again. Pretty soon, Corey caught my drift.

‘… then his house catches fire and he and his wife have to leg it. But when the man returns to the house the next day, what does he find? The charred image of a cat on one
of the walls – a cat with a rope around its neck. Because that's how he killed it.'

Corey looked at me with a scared sort of wonder. ‘I think I know where this is going.'

‘I don't,' said Max. ‘What happened then?'

‘He starts seeing this new cat, another black one, large as life, hanging around his house. It's almost identical to his old cat, except this one has a white patch of fur on its chest – a patch in the shape of a gallows.'

‘Ha, yeah, I remember it now,' said Max, blindly reaching for a Drumstick from the bag of sweets and lying back down. ‘Not one of her best, but still cool.'

Corey grabbed another cheese and onion sandwich and started removing the onion. ‘I think I've read the graphic novel. Who wrote the original story – was it Lovecraft? Or Poe?'

‘Oh, I don't know; some old dead dude,' I said. ‘It doesn't matter. The point is, there's this bit in the story when the man kills his wife in a fit of rage because he's so freaked out, and he buries her and the new cat behind the cellar wall. But then all these eerie, echoey meowing noises start in the walls, and everywhere he goes, he can hear it. It's the black cat, alerting everyone to the man's awful crimes.'

‘OK, I get it,' said Max, levering himself up again onto his elbows with the Drumstick hanging limply over his bottom lip. ‘Guy kills cat, guy gets plagued with guilt about killing cat. Zane killed cat, we plague Zane with cat stuff. Yeah?'

‘Yeah,' I said. ‘We keep reminding him of his terrible deed until he begs us for mercy.'

‘Bit of a long shot, innit?' said Max. ‘I mean, what did you have in mind? Setting his house on fire and shoving a cat behind his wardrobe?'

‘Something along those lines,' I said, pulling at tufts of
dry grass at the side of the picnic blanket. Everyone was quiet for a bit.

‘You're serious, aren't you?'

‘Deadly,' I replied. ‘Aren't you? Don't you want to get back at him? For what he's done to Corey and Fallon?'

‘He hasn't hurt
me
, Ella,' Fallon jumped in.

‘He's abandoned you. He used you and then dumped you and never called. He hasn't even asked about how
his
baby's doing, has he?'

‘Well, no…'

‘So that's asshole behaviour, isn't it?'

‘Well… yeah.'

‘Even assholes have a purpose,' said Corey. I looked at him. ‘I'm just saying.'

‘Well don't “just say”. You want to get back at him too, I know you do.'

‘Well yeah but Zane's a hard nut to crack. If we start chalking pictures of cats on the walls of his house, he's just gonna think it's stupid.'

‘No, he won't,' I said. ‘Because there's something about the night Jessica told us the story that you've all overlooked.'

Max was the first one to smile. ‘The night Jess told this story… wasn't the night Zane wet himself, was it?'

‘Exactly,' I said. ‘He's terrified of horror stories. He always had to have the light on after she told one. He only listened to that one cos he was too scared to go in another room by himself.'