Читать книгу The Colour of Bee Larkham’s Murder - Sarah J. Harris - Страница 18

‘IT’S THIS WAY TO the science lab, thicko.’ A hand grabs my collar and hauls me back as I dash out of the dining hall. ‘Lucas said you might make a run for it after lunch. He needs a word.’

I’ll call this boy X.

His evil twin, Y, hovers in the background in case I’m a secret ninja who can kick-box his way out of any situation.

I’m not and I can’t.

They don’t touch me – that would be assault. I’m silently escorted down the corridor. X walks in front and Y behind. No one notices I’m being taken against my will because I’m not screaming. That would be pointless. I doubt anyone would help. Not even the girls who walk past. Especially them. They’d probably laugh buttercup yellow.

When we reach the science lab, Y opens the door and pushes me inside. A boy’s perched on the bench. His lip is cut and there’s a pale green bruise on his cheek and a long, red mark on his hand.

It could be Lucas Drury. Lucas Drury after a fight with a tornado, which has messed up his hair, split his lip and scratched his hand. I didn’t look at his face when we spoke in the corridor earlier, so I can’t know for sure this is the same boy. I don’t say anything. It’s safer that way.

‘Did anyone follow you here?’ His voice is quiet and low. A dark greenish blue colour. Lucas Drury’s colour.

‘Dunno,’ Y says. ‘Don’t think so.’

‘Then what the hell are you looking at? Get out!’ Blue teal.

It’s definitely him.

X and Y’s shoulders go up and down. They slam the door behind them.

I shudder, not only at the unpleasant squashed beetle colour of ‘hell’, but also at the worrying development. I had no idea spies were here at school and on our street – people like David Gilbert who could search for damaging evidence about Bee Larkham and me.

Now I’m certain of one thing: there are spies everywhere.

I gaze at Lucas Drury. He’s trembling with rage at what I’ve done, all the mistakes I’ve made. I rub Mum’s button in my pocket harder as he strides towards me. He’s going to pin me against the wall, like last time. Instinctively, I move backwards. My head is slap bang in the middle of the periodic table poster again. Thulium is on my left, rubidium on my right.

He stops in front of me. ‘Tell me everything.’

I can’t. I don’t want to think about that. I turn my head to look at the poster.

Mendelevium, Nobelium, Ytterbium, Thulium.

‘Hurry up, Jasper. Before someone finds us in here. We need to agree what we tell the police before they question us both again.’

‘Rusty Chrome Orange,’ I say, before I can stop myself.

‘What?’

‘He’s a detective like the famous actor, Richard Chamberlain,’ I blurt out.

‘Wait. You’re confusing me. Who have you spoken to?’

‘Richard Chamberlain wanted a First Account about Bee Larkham, whatever that means. He didn’t explain.’

‘What did he ask you? Did he mention me?’

I reel off the weird questions about Year Eleven boys and Bee Larkham and condoms.

‘What did you tell him?’

‘I told him about the death of my parakeets and my neighbour, David Gilbert, who’s a bird killer, but he wasn’t interested.’

‘Fuck the parakeets, Jasper.’

My scalp prickles at the sharp, ugly-coloured word.

‘Jasper! Open your eyes! You can’t pretend this isn’t happening. This is real. For both of us.’

I don’t want to open my eyes. I don’t want this to be real. I want to shut out the unpleasant colours.

‘I’m not interested in the parakeets and neither are the police. Lee got scared last week and coughed up to Dad about other letters he found in our bedroom. He told him you pass me stuff at school and spy on Bee with binoculars. That makes you a witness in all this.’

He’s lying. I wasn’t spying on Bee Larkham. I was watching her oak tree and making notes of who visited her house and the neighbours’ houses. I thought that would help me build a case against David Gilbert.

‘Please, Jasper. Concentrate. What did you tell the detective about Bee and me? Did you say you’d seen me visiting? Through your binoculars? That you’d seen us together, you know that time …’

Uncomfortable colours nudge around the corners of my brain. I daren’t let them in. Finally, I open my eyes and avoid looking at Lucas. He sounds like Dad. I hate him for that.

Concentrate. Act normal. Don’t flap your arms like a parakeet.

I can’t ever tell him that while he broke a grown-up woman’s heart into millions of tiny, sharp silver pieces, I did something far, far worse to her on Friday night.

Something unforgivable.

‘I didn’t tell Richard Chamberlain, like the actor, anything about you and Bee Larkham.’ That’s the truth. ‘I warned him about the death threats to my parakeets, but my notebooks were out of order. He told me to stop making 999 calls. They waste police time. I screamed and threw up all over his sofa.’

‘Great. Well done. Whatever you’re talking about. Weirdo.’

He punches my arm, not hard. It doesn’t make me cry. Not like when the bigger boys do it after school.

‘Listen, Jasper. I’m denying absolutely everything. The police have nothing, just what Lee thinks he knows and Dad’s suspicions after he found some messages and pics from Bee on Facebook. That’s all. I’m sticking to my story that the note you delivered last week was a prank. It was a dumb girl at school having a laugh.’

‘A prank,’ I repeat.

‘Yes, a prank. Bee didn’t sign the letter with her name. She used initials as usual. They’ve got no proof unless you tell them she gave it to you. You haven’t done that, have you, Jasper?’

‘I didn’t tell the detective anything.’

‘You see. No proof. Dad says the police haven’t been able to get hold of Bee yet and they won’t be able to analyse her handwriting because I ate the letter.’

‘You. Ate. The Letter.’

‘Yup. I tried to make a joke of it when Dad waved it in my face. I grabbed it off him, chewed it up and washed it down with a glass of water before he could pull it out of my mouth. Dad didn’t laugh.’ He touches his split lip. ‘He didn’t find it funny when I refused to tell the police anything about Bee at the weekend.’

‘What did it taste like? The letter, I mean?’

‘You’re missing the point, Jasper. I ate it because I needed to get rid of the evidence. I had to protect Bee. Without that note, Dad has nothing concrete. Nothing that proves we were ever together.’

‘I’m glad you ate it.’ I’m still curious what it tasted like, but Lucas isn’t interested in sharing the details.

‘You have to deny everything too, if they speak to you again,’ he continues. ‘Say the note was from some random girl at school. You don’t know her name. You found it stuffed in your bag or dropped on the pavement outside your house. Or talk gobbledegook about parakeets again to throw them off the scent. Just don’t tell the police the truth about the letters or the time you …’ He stops.

I can’t look at him.

I don’t want to think about that.

I want to be absorbed into the periodic table and create a chemical explosion that annihilates me, Lucas Drury and Bee Larkham and all the putrid colours we created together.

Bang!

Bright flashing lights, splintering acrid yellows and oranges.

I rub Mum’s button harder in my pocket.

‘Look at me, Jasper,’ Lucas says. ‘You have to do this for me. You have to fix this mess because it’s your fault. My dad’s threatening Bee with all kinds of things. She could lose her job and go to prison, all because you cocked up. It’s over between us, but she needs cash from her music lessons more than ever right now.’

He curls up his fist. I close my eyes and wait for him to punch me. I deserve to be hit because I’ve hurt Bee Larkham far worse than his dad ever could. I deserve to go to prison. Maybe this is a trick and Lucas has already guessed what I’ve done.

Maybe her death is written all over my face.

Nothing happens.

I look up. Lucas has walked over to the window.

‘Life sucks,’ he says, wiping a tear from his face. ‘I wish I could go back in time. I’d change everything.’

I agree about time travelling. My life totally and utterly sucks too. I want him to stop crying. Then I’ll pretend I never saw anything; he’ll pretend he never did anything. We’ll both pretend we haven’t seen anything or done anything or know anything about each other.

Most importantly, we’ll both pretend we don’t know anything about Bee Larkham or what went horribly wrong last week.

‘What am I going to do?’ Lucas asks, running his hands over his face. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

I have absolutely no idea. If we were both in a swimming pool, I couldn’t throw Lucas a life buoy because I’m drowning too. I can’t help myself, let alone him.

Lucas doesn’t wait for my non-existent advice.

‘I’m only fifteen. I can’t do it. We were careful – we used protection.’ He looks back at me. ‘Do you think the baby’s even mine?’