In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her.
I love imagining the two of them in his little cottage in the forest: him pressing her soaked crimson dress and ample tits against his shirt as the storm lashes at the windows, possessing her with his mouth as he twists her hair into that long, wet rope.
Anyway, it wasn’t The Poems of Robert Browning in the window. When they walked on down the High Street, I stopped in the same place they’d stood and looked at the books. There was some crappy-looking vampire trilogy, a book with a shiny black cover called The Doll and, up on a plinth, Alice in Wonderland – a big hard-back. Probably a new edition or something, seeing as it was in the window.
I thought Alice’d probably been telling them something about that one – like that maybe when she was little, her parents told her that she was the Alice in the story. She did look a bit like her. The Alice on the cover was kneeling and looking down into the rabbit hole at me, as if I was down the hole already and would be going into Wonderland with her. She had a funny expression on her face, though, like she might decide to bury me there instead.
I kept a good distance behind when I carried on down the High Street, and I made sure there were always people between us so that I’d only catch a glimpse of one of them every few seconds. Then I thought I’d lost them till I passed the cinema and saw them inside. They were queuing to get tickets.
I didn’t go in: I wouldn’t know what they’d all be going to see and anyway, I didn’t have enough money. I hung around outside, finishing my drink and thinking I should go home. Then I saw them disappearing into the gloom of the foyer and went up the steps. I watched them hand their tickets to a girl and go into Screen 4.
I was so hungry the smell of popcorn nearly made me faint, so I counted the change I had and got an extra large box – sweet, because the Odeon hasn’t caught onto sweet ’n salty yet. I asked the boy serving if he could do half ’n half, but he looked at me like I was out of my mind, so I left it.
I went to the loos. I was still in one of the cubicles (thinking it would’ve been cleverer to go for a pee before getting the popcorn) when some girls came crashing in, laughing and screeching and going, ‘Quick, we’ll miss the beginning’, and that kind of thing. I hate it when girls get all lairy, so to avoid them, I went back out to the foyer without washing my hands. Just as I was heading for the steps to the street again, though, they suddenly burst out behind me, all cackling idiotically, one of them saying she couldn’t remember which screen they’d come out of. Then her friend pushed her sideways, saying ‘4 you idiot’ and holding four fingers up in her face.
And I went with them. Just like that.
I turned round and stuck close behind. The girl taking tickets looked at me like she didn’t remember me from before, but then she looked at the popcorn in my arms and didn’t say a thing.
It was dark inside. The film had started.
I headed up near the back and shuffled in past a few people to a seat in the side block. It took me a while to find where Alice was because it was pretty full in there. When I did (they were in the centre block in front of those VIP seats), it was Katy I saw, only she wasn’t looking at the screen, she was twisted round and looking at me. Then the boy that was sitting the other side of Alice – the black one – turned and looked at me too.
I concentrated on the shapes moving on the screen. I ate my popcorn. I told myself it wasn’t a crime to be watching a film just because it happened to be the same one they were watching. When I dared to glance at them again, though, they were still looking. Not Alice; the other two.
Then the boy got up. He jigged sideways along the row, his hands held in fists like a boxer, hood bouncing. I thought he was probably going for a slash, but when he got to the aisle, he clocked me again and started up the steps.
I felt my skin burn and prickle, my heart start to thump.
‘Hey, Yasmin!’ he called when he got close enough for me to hear.
I put more popcorn in my mouth. I told myself I had no idea who he was, that he must want someone else because my name’s not Yasmin. It’s Doner. Doner, Fatso, Blubber-butt . . .
He kept coming, though, the whites of his eyes shining in the changing light.
The people sitting around me looked at him. Someone shushed. A woman on the row behind said, ‘’Scuse us, d’you mind?’
But he didn’t. He didn’t mind at all. He just stood there, staring at me. Then he said, ‘Come out’, like I’d better do it quick.
There was another angry shush.
He said, ‘I’ve got a message from Alice.’
I thought, why would Alice have a message for me? But I stood up anyway. I squeezed past the people, spilling my popcorn, saying sorry, thinking maybe she wants me to sit with them; would she want me to sit with them?
Then suddenly, before I was even properly out in the aisle, he grabbed my arm up near the top and pulled me so my ear was right up against his mouth. ‘Leave her alone, yeah?’ he breathed. The words were hot. They filled my ear and spilled down my neck. Flecks of his spit hit my cheek. ‘You’re really creepin’ her out.’ Then he tightened his grip even more, making me cry out, and hissed, ‘Got it?’
I nodded quickly, just wanting him to let go, then as soon as he did, I stumbled away up the steps towards the exit door at the back. My throat and chest felt like they were being squashed. I turned, afraid he was following me, but he was gone, jogging back down to the others.
I put the popcorn on the floor, whispering to help myself think which pocket my inhaler was in, and reached out to steady myself on the back of an empty seat. And there you were, on the far side near the wall, your face pale like milk in the darkness, your eyes staring blankly ahead at the screen.
Strawberry Tarts
‘Lesbo,’ Dan said when I walked into Maths on Monday.
Robert put his arms up high, his eyes wide like a ghoul and said, ‘Oh no, it’s the Lesbian Psycho-Stalker!’
I ignored them (obviously) as well as the death-rays Katy kept firing at me from across the classroom. Aren’t bullies meant to get bored and leave you alone if you ignore them? That’s what adults tell you, but it’s a lie. I’ve been ignoring them all my life. They only go away if they go to a different school.
The morning went on like that, with looks and insults. I went to the gym in first break. I knew no one would look for me there. I sat on one of the low wooden benches along the wall eating Maryland Chocolate Chip Cookies because the corner shop was out of Hobnobs, and for some reason Marcy Edwards popped into my head.
Marcy was a girl in my year who got anorexia. She got so thin she had to go into hospital. I know it’s a stupid thing to say, and that I don’t know what I’m talking about, but when she collapsed in PE and the ambulance came and she was carried into it on a stretcher, I wished, wished, wished it was me. It’s not fair that you can get too thin to go to school but not too fat.
I wondered what she was doing now, like if she was lying in a hospice bed somewhere, looking out through a big window onto lawns with bushes and trees, with chocolates and flowers on her bedside table, or if she was in Paris twirling round one of those fancy lamp posts with a million-dollar modelling contract. Or maybe she was dead. Maybe they couldn’t make her eat, like Dr Bhatt can’t make me stop eating, and she died. I thought any of those things would be better than being me.
I couldn’t avoid Katy at lunch, though. She was eyeballing me the whole time, then the second I got up with my tray, she got up too – then Sophie, Beth and Alice. I glanced over at Mr Holland who was on duty, but he was looking the other way.
They followed me down the corridor, through the changing room and out