Bang Bang You're Dead (2 page)

'Didn't you hear me, Jackson?' Kat enquires with a mock-friendly smile. 'I said, how's your mum?'

I long to keep quiet and defy her, but I'm not brave enough now she is standing right in front of me.

'She's fine,' I mumble. I hardly understand Mum's illness myself, and Jamie doesn't even try, so how can I expect a group of hatchet-faced, dead-eyed girls with all the sense and intelligence of an amoeba to have any kind of sympathy?

'Still raving mad?' Kat asks gleefully, and her minions standing around us chortle at her wit. Kat Randall and her friends are in the lowest sets for every subject, and they are not intelligent. But they're very skilled in the subtleties of mental torture.

I wonder what Kat would do if I lunged forward, grabbed each ridiculous curl and pulled very hard.

'She's not mad, she's ill,' I mutter, trying to edge my way past them. 'I told you.'

Kat thrusts her face very close to mine. She's been eating salt and vinegar crisps for breakfast.

'And I told
you,
she's
mad,
' she spits. With one quick movement, so quick I don't even have time to gasp, she grabs my school tie and tightens it, almost choking me. I stagger back, frantically pulling to loosen it, and Kat smiles with complete satisfaction as she hangs onto it so I'm like a dog on a lead.

'All alone again, I see?' she remarks, making an elaborate pantomime of looking over her shoulder. 'So, are you going to run and tell tales to Ms Kennedy? We all know how much you
luuurve
her, you lezzer.'

And Kat laughs and releases my tie and strolls away, glowing visibly with the knowledge of her power over me. Her cronies follow, twittering with admiration.

Shaking, I loosen my tie and take a gulp of air. I can't help feeling bitter. Jamie has kept well out of this situation with Kat Randall so far. At one time he would have rushed to defend me in some way, but not any longer.

So far it's only been the verbal stuff. I can put up with that. This is the first time Kat's ever actually touched me. That probably means we're escalating towards actual violence, and the thought leaves me strangely unmoved.

'You're so stupid, Mia. How long are you going to let them get away with this?'

I spin round. Jamie's come up silently behind me and he's staring at me with that same frightening, burning intensity. I guess he watched what was going on from a distance, but made no move to help me.

I shrug helplessly. 'What can I do?'

'Mia!'

Jamie's agonized cry of sheer frustration makes me squirm. I
know
I'm stupid and weak, but it just feels like I have no energy left any more, for
anything.
It seems like everything that was uniquely me, uniquely Mia, has drained away over the years of struggle and left me an empty shell.

'You could help—' I begin.

'You have to learn to stand up for
yourself
!' Jamie interrupts me. He sounds so fierce, almost evangelical. 'Do you really think you're worth so little, Mia? Christ, is this how you're going to live your life? Letting everyone walk all over you?'

I am silent. Sadly, that's exactly what I can see happening to me now and for ever.

'I've had enough.' Jamie's always restless, but today he can't stop tapping his feet, flexing his fingers, running his hands again and again through his long dark hair. His face is pure dead white. I get the fearful, maybe fanciful, notion that he has reached some sort of breaking point. That there is a line in the sand and he has crossed it and now there is no going back. 'I'm sick of it all.'

He looks not at me, but through me, something indefinable in his eyes. Recklessness? Whatever it is, it reminds me of Mum and I tremble.

'I'm going to make everyone sit up and take notice, including Mum,' he says softly. 'It's payback time.'

Before I can speak, Jamie marches away and there is a steely purpose in his manner. I run after him as he weaves his way through the groups of pupils in the playground, but he is quickly out of sight. I wonder if I should be worried. I think I know something about what Jamie is capable of from things that have happened in the past, but I push the fear away because I don't
want
to acknowledge it. That's my weakness again.

'Hey, Mia!'

My best friend Bree is waving at me from the other side of the playground. Cheerful, bouncy, blonde Bree with her smooth pink and white complexion. She should be in a TV ad for something healthy and wholesome like milk or Swiss cheese. We've been friends since primary school. Bree's always been prettier and more popular than me, but when we were in Year Four, her mother had severe depression and Bree latched onto me for support. Her mum recovered eventually, but Bree didn't drop me. She's loyal and funny and kind. She talks too much, but I let her conversation wash over me a lot of the time. It's very healing, like lying in a warm, scented bath, because it's so
normal.

'So, Daniel calls me last night . . .' Bree begins as soon as I join her.

I listen as she recounts her conversation with her boyfriend Daniel in mind-numbingly minute detail. Daniel is trying to persuade Bree to sleep with him, and Bree isn't sure she wants to. I think how wonderful it would be if my only problem was trying to decide whether to sleep with a good-looking (if slightly arrogant) boy or not. I've never had a boyfriend, unless you count Callum Carter, who used to chase me around the playground at primary school and kiss me. But I suppose someone who's desperate might ask me out eventually. I can't imagine
ever
introducing a boyfriend to Mum, though. If she's in a manic phase, she'd probably flirt with him and try to sit on his lap. If she's depressed, she might easily burst into tears in front of him. It hardly seems worth the embarrassment.

'And then he said if I
really
loved him, I'd
want
to do it,' Bree goes on.

'That old line?' I say, raising my eyebrows. 'I would have thought Daniel could come up with something a bit more original than
that.
'

Bree giggles.

No, it's not the sex that would bother me, but I don't like the thought of sleeping with someone else. Someone who could watch me while I was sleeping. I can't imagine trusting anyone enough to let that happen.

Now I
know
you think I'm seriously strange.

The bell rings and we all shuffle reluctantly towards the school entrance.

From this point, things happen fast.

Bree and I go to our classroom on the second floor where the usual morning riot is taking place. Jamie is not there. I'm surprised, and also worried.

'Where's Jamie today, Mia?' someone calls across the classroom above the cacophony of gossip and giggles.

I ignore whoever it is, not even turning round. I know they're only being nasty, teasing me because they know how much my brother means to me now. But I can't talk about Jamie right at this moment. I don't know why, but a sense of doom, black and impenetrable, is sweeping over me, chilling my bones.

Bree glances at me and opens her mouth. I suspect she's going to ask me about Jamie too, and I don't want to hear it. Abruptly I turn away and pretend to be intent on searching for something in my bag.

'Sit down and get your books out and shut up, Nine A!' yells our form tutor, Ms Powell, arriving with the register.

Bree is now talking to Lee Hung, who sits on the other side of her. I rest my head against the window next to our table and wonder, with immense weariness, how long it will be before Kat Randall gets tired of tormenting me and searches for a fresh victim. I wish I could do something, anything, to get her off my back. But I can't because I'm a coward, pure and simple . . .

Then, as I stare into the playground below me, I see Jamie. His head is down and his shoulders are hunched, but there is a grim purpose in his walk. He's not coming towards our part of the school. He's heading over to the other side, in the direction of the annexe. Hollyfield is quite old, built in the seventies, and extra bits have been added onto the main building over the last twenty years or so. The two-storey annexe is connected to the school by a long glass corridor. The annexe is where Class 9D have their form room on the first floor. Kat Randall and her friends are in Class 9D.

Jamie, what are you doing?
I ask silently.
Speak to me.

Once my brother and I had a kind of telepathy between us, as twins often do. It was rather hit-and-miss, and as elusive, fleeting and fragile as a butterfly's wing. But since Grandpa died we seem to have lost this too, most of the time. Jamie has become skilled at shutting me out and now, unsurprisingly, he does not answer me.

Why is he going to the annexe?

Something terrible is about to happen.

I know it.

I stumble to my feet. People are still milling around the room, Bree is deep in conversation with Lee Hung, and Ms Powell is coping with lost dinner money and forgotten homework crises. I slip out of the classroom, unnoticed.

The corridors are deserted because no one is allowed out of their form rooms again until the bell for morning lessons.
I'm breaking a school rule.
The very thought of such a thing makes me feel sick. Mia Jackson doesn't break the rules. She's too much of a scaredy-cat. I'm shaking all over but it's not just because I'm doing something I'm not supposed to.

I am terrified, but I don't know why.

I head towards the nearest set of stairs, but I hear hurrying footsteps coming towards me. Panicking, I scurry out of sight behind a bookcase before whoever it is rounds the corner. Then I wait there for what seems like hours but is probably no more than five minutes. I hear more footsteps, then, a little later, muffled, urgent voices. More footsteps, running this time.

I am paralysed behind my bookcase with the fear of discovery. I don't even know why I came out of the classroom. Jamie may have had a perfectly acceptable reason for going to the annexe, nothing to do with Kat Randall at all. In fact, he might even be on his way back to our classroom right now . . .

Suddenly the fire alarm bursts into life right above my head, shrill, insistent and unnerving.

With a shocked gasp, I leap out from behind the bookcase with my hands over my ears. But it doesn't matter that I'm out in the open now because a second later doors are flung wide, and pupils and teachers pour out of the classrooms and head towards the emergency exits like rivers streaming towards the sea.

I melt anonymously into the crowd. I can hear screaming behind me, and some of the teachers look dead white and very frightened. A real fire, then? My heart skips a beat.
Jamie?

'Mia!' Someone grabs my arm as the stream of human beings flows past our classroom. I turn and look into Bree's petrified face.

'Where the
hell
have you been, Mia?' she shrieks hysterically, digging her nails painfully into my arm. 'We
have
to get out of here!'

'There's a fire, then?' I ask, dreading the answer, wondering if it has been started deliberately . . .

Bree shakes her head. 'Worse,' she gasps. She is almost hyperventilating and is trembling violently from head to toe. 'There's a rumour that someone is in school with a gun.'

Monday 10 March, 8.56 a.m.

Time seems to stand still.

'A
gun
?' I repeat.

I have to force my lips to form those two simple words.

Bree nods abruptly, wrapping her arms around herself and rocking to and fro. A group of Year Eight girls rush past us, white-faced, shrieking, and nearly bowl Bree over.

'Now can we
please
get out of here?' Bree screams.

She turns and makes to flee with everyone else towards the fire escape, but I catch her arm. I twist her round to face me, against the flow of the crowd.

'Who is it?' I yell. The sound of my heartbeat booms in my ears. 'Who's got a gun? Who is it, Bree?
Tell me!'

As I yell, I grip Bree by both arms. But it takes me a moment to realize I'm shaking her so hard that her eyes are rolling in her head.

'For God's sake, Mia!' Bree drags herself from my grasp. Tears are pouring down her cheeks. 'I just told you that there might be a
gunman
in here! Haven't you seen what happened in those schools in America? Get out of my way!'

She shoves me aside and runs, along with everyone else. I'm now so petrified myself, I can hardly breathe, but I chase after her, desperate for answers.

'Sorry,' I gasp as I run beside her. I can't bring myself to say anything about Jamie or even mention his name, but inside my head I see him striding towards the annexe, stern and purposeful. 'Bree, I'm
sorry
! But is it really true? It
can't
be!'

'Well, take a look around you,' Bree snaps, not glancing at me, her eyes fixed unblinkingly on the emergency exit directly ahead of us. The doors are open and outside, down in the playground, I can see teachers frantically urging hysterical, screaming pupils to run away from the school and across to the car park. 'Seems pretty convincing, wouldn't you say?'

'But
who
is it?' I am now trembling and shaking as violently as Bree herself.
'Who
? Is it . . . someone we know?'

What I think
can't
be possible.

There are
so many
reasons why it can't be possible.

And yet . . .

'Oh, hell, Mia,' Bree sobs as she jostles and pushes to get to the exit more quickly. 'I don't bloody know
anything,
all right? There are texts and phone calls flying around the whole school, and who knows how many of them are true? Someone said he's in the annexe. Someone else said he's wearing a mask. It might be a pupil but no one knows for
sure.
'

'Someone must know,' I scream. My face feels wet, so I must be crying too.

I can't bring myself to say any more. I am frantic with fear. And yet I'm really angry and full of pent-up frustration too. I want to know what's going on and no one's telling me anything. I am so
furious,
I feel like I could punch someone. If Kat Randall was in front of me now, I
would
punch her. But she isn't here. She's in the annexe.

With Jamie?

It seems utterly unbelievable that the gunman is Jamie. But on the other hand, I remember things that have happened in the past. Dark, mysterious things with Jamie at the heart of them.

Bree does not say anything more either. She puts on a final, magnificent burst of speed and hurtles out through the open doors onto the fire escape.

She probably assumes I'll follow her, but I don't. Instead, I flatten myself against the wall to avoid the relentless flow of bodies and begin to edge away from the open doors and back down the corridor.

No one notices me, not even the teachers. The entire corridor is crammed with heaving, pushing, shoving, screaming bodies. One single mass of pure blind fear, everyone alike, teachers and pupils. No one cares about looking cool when they might be staring death in the face.

As I inch my way along the corridor wall past our open classroom door, my mind spins so much that I actually feel seasick. Jamie's voice sings in my ears above the screams.

I've had enough.

I'm going to make everyone sit up and take notice, including Mum.

It's payback time.

What did he mean? I
have
to find out exactly what is happening. My life and maybe the lives of others too depend on it.

The waves of bodies seem endless and suddenly I am tired of fighting my way against the tide. My back bumps against the handle of a cupboard door. Fumbling behind me, I turn the handle and manage to open the door a little way so that I can slip inside.

I close the door softly, with relief. The hysterical screams and pounding footsteps are now muffled, and in the relative quiet I can at least attempt to collect my shattered thoughts. But surely someone in that huge crowd noticed me, saw me slip away? I wait with pounding heartbeat for the inevitable shout, the wrenching open of the cupboard door. But nothing happens.

My legs shaking uncontrollably, I edge my way over to the tiny window on the other side of the cupboard. I stare outside, over the window ledge.

High up, I have a very good view of the playground and car park. I can see my class, including Bree, huddled together in a state of shock, screaming and crying. Even the loudest, the most arrogant and the most badly behaved boys have their arms around each other.

Jamie is not there.

I glance to my left, at the annexe. Pupils are still pushing and shoving their way out of the side doors where teachers stand, directing them to join their year groups in the car park. I strain my eyes and squint through the bright winter sunshine, trying to catch a glimpse of Jamie.

He is not there either. Nor can I see a single pupil from Kat Randall's class, 9D, or their form tutor, Mrs Lucas.

I wait and watch until the flood of students from the annexe becomes a trickle. There is still no sign of Jamie or Kat Randall and the rest of Class 9D, including Mrs Lucas. As I watch, willing all of them to appear, I hear the wailing sirens of police cars heading towards the school.

Exhausted and trembling, I sit down on a stack of copies of
Macbeth.
I have no idea why I'm here or what I'm going to do. I don't know where Jamie is, or even if he is the person with the gun.

I must be mad to even think of it,
I tell myself.
It can't be him.

And yet, if not, why am I here? Why didn't I flee the school along with Bree and everyone else?

I bury my face in my hands as I acknowledge the earth-shattering truth: I'm here because I suspect that it
is
Jamie. His words this morning, the way he looked, the misery burning in his eyes, the tension within him that screamed he was on the edge – despite everything that common sense tells me, all of these things mean I
have
to believe it's him. And there is
no way
I can leave my twin brother to face this on his own.

I know with sickening certainty that Class 9D will still be in the annexe with him. Some of them may never even come out alive. I
cannot
have that on my conscience, even if he's gone after Kat Randall and her gang for my sake.

But I know that only a small part of this is about me and Kat Randall. This is all about Mum, and the fragmented, unbearable disorder of our life together. It must be, because this is what Jamie promised me would happen. He told me that he would force Mum, by whatever means possible, to realize what her illness and her stubborn refusal to deal with it is doing to us.

This is Jamie's final, desperate gesture to get an uncaring world to wake up and take notice. Maybe it is his last gift to me before he 'leaves' me.

Or, even more terrifying, has Jamie cracked and gone under, disappearing inside himself, so that he no longer knows exactly what he's doing?

Is it possible that Jamie has a gun?

Yes, it is perfectly possible.

You see, I know where the gun came from.