Authors: Cathy MacPhail
I imagined one jumping on my head, and tried to stop from screaming. ‘Wizzie …’ I said it through gritted teeth. Too afraid to open my mouth in case one of them leapt inside.
No! Don’t think like that!
Please, God
, I prayed,
let them move on. Please …
‘Hey, what about here?’ Nasal voice was heading for the shed.
One of the others laughed. ‘Bet we’ve got them. Bet that’s where they are.’
She tugged at the door. It sprung open.
Streetlight flooded in. Rats erupted from the bins, looking for a way out – not one rat, not two, but loads of them, legions of them.
The Black Widows screamed.
‘Rats!’
‘Rats!’
And they ran, with an army of rats at their heels.
It was over in a moment. One minute they were there, the next they were gone, their screams echoing through the night air – and we were forgotten, by the rats and by the Black Widows.
Wizzie and I ran from the shed, still holding hands.
Out in the open air – in the clear moonlight, I went crazy brushing myself down, expecting any minute for a rat to creep from my pocket, land on my hair.
Wizzie was the same, slapping herself frantically as if the rats were climbing all over her.
‘I hate this place!’ she screamed. ‘I hate it.’
Was Wizzie crying? I was almost sure she was.
We ran, hardly knowing where we were running.
Anywhere to get away from the rats. Finally, we stopped at a bus shelter.
‘I never thought I’d be grateful for rats,’ Wizzie said.
I was still shaking, didn’t want to think about that. ‘They started the fire, didn’t they? The Black Widows. I heard them tell you.’
‘I was angry at you. It was my fault, Hannah, bragging about how you didn’t know how to get revenge. I was always trying to show off to them. They said, “We’ll show you how to get revenge, honey.” That’s what they called me, “honey”, as if they were fond of me.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I didn’t expect them to do that. They even bragged to me about it. I tried to tell them, I couldn’t let my mates take the blame. But you heard them. If I opened my mouth I’d be for it.’ Wizzie was breathless, stopped for a moment. ‘I thought they were my mates as well. I thought I wanted to be like them. But I couldn’t have done anything like that, Hannah.’
‘You could never be like them, Wizzie. They
are
scum of the earth, and you’re decent.’
Wizzie let out a long sigh. In the streetlight I saw her scars. ‘Did they do that?’ I asked. I was suddenly sure I knew where Wizzie’s scars had come from.
I had always imagined her standing with the Black Widows, fighting alongside them. Now I remembered the knife, pictured that girl slashing it against Wizzie’s skin.
She turned away from me, as if she didn’t want to look at me. All I could see was the side of her face. How tiny she seemed to be. Tough and tiny, that was Wizzie.
‘You can tell me, Wizzie. Did she do that to you?’
When she looked back at me, I thought I saw her eyes well up with tears, but she sniffed and they were gone. Might have just been a trick of the light. She shook her head.
‘Then who did?’
‘You won’t tell anybody?’ She smiled. ‘Don’t answer that. No more secrets. I trust you. You won’t tell anybody.’
‘On my life,’ I said. ‘So, Wizzie, who did it?’
I thought at first she wasn’t going to answer.
‘Me,’ she said.
I couldn’t understand at first what she meant. ‘You did it …? To yourself? But … I don’t understand. Why would you do that to yourself?’
She shrugged. ‘Don’t know really. Thought it made me look tough. Did it first because I wanted to brag about being in a fight. I was going up to high school. I wanted everybody to see I was tough as well. People got scared of me, and I liked that. You’ve got be a bit scary to live here, Hannah. So I did it again. And they thought I was in more fights, thought I carried a knife. Tough wee Wizzie.’ She turned to face me. ‘Look at the size of me, Hannah.’
She was so tiny and thin, yet, tiny as she was, she had managed to make people afraid of her. The scars were a big part of that. Wizzie’s secret. I knew it at last.
‘I’m this size and people are scared of me. I like it.’ She sighed. ‘Or I did. I thought I wanted to be one of them.’ She nodded somewhere into the estate, where
the Black Widows were maybe still being chased by the rats. Hopefully being eaten by them. ‘I always thought I wanted to be a Black Widow.’ She said it almost to herself. ‘Some ambition, eh?’
‘Are you going to tell on them, Wizzie?’
She looked shocked. ‘Grass? You’ve got to be joking. I’ve got to live here. Everybody hates a grass.’ Her face changed. The bright and cheeky look disappeared. She looked suddenly vulnerable. ‘I’d never grass on them, and they know it.’
I never thought I’d see Wizzie scared of anybody. But she was scared now. I didn’t blame her. I thought of that girl’s knife and I was scared too.
‘But if you don’t everybody’ll go on thinking it was you.’
‘Doesn’t matter. It was my fault anyway. I should take the blame,’ Wizzie said softly. ‘I told them about Erin.’ She looked at me. ‘But I swear I didn’t know they would do this, Hannah. Nothing like this.’
I believed her. Wizzie could never think up something so evil. And I couldn’t blame Wizzie. It was all my fault. I’d gone straight from one gang right into another – for revenge. All I’d thought about, talked about, was revenge.
‘Come on,’ Wizzie said. ‘Don’t want to miss your train. You might have to stay here for the night!’
‘Heaven forbid!’ I laughed.
‘I’ll walk you back to the station.’
We stood on the platform as the train pulled in. ‘Will they come after you again?’
The cheeky look was back, the ‘I’m afraid of nothing’ look I couldn’t help but admire. ‘My family’s pretty tough. I’ll be OK,’ Wizzie said. ‘They know I won’t grass on them. That’s all they care about.’ She grinned at me. ‘What made you come looking for me anyway?’
I had almost forgotten. I told her about Heather and how her confession had made me feel. ‘I kept thinking, if one person had believed me it would have made all the difference. It made me realise maybe that was all you needed as well. Somebody to believe you.’
Then she gave me the best compliment ever Wizzie could give. ‘You, Hannah Driscoll,’ she said, poking at me with her finger, ‘are the best mate anybody could want.’
I was smiling as I stepped on to the train. ‘How are you going to get home?’
Wizzie nodded to the Chinese takeaway outside the station. ‘My brother works there. I’ll let him walk me
home. He’s a penny short of a pound, but nobody messes with my bro.’ She said it with pride. ‘He’ll look after me.’
The train doors were about to close. ‘We can’t let them get away with it, Wizzie,’ I said.
Wizzie shook her head. ‘I can’t grass on them. I won’t. I’ll take the blame before I do that.’
And she would too. She would risk all the trouble in the world. And she would take all the blame on herself so the rest of the Hell Cats wouldn’t be involved. She’d do all this, rather than grass on the Black Widows.
It was up to me, I decided. ‘You can’t grass, Wizzie,’ I said. ‘But I can.’
I’m going to be watching over my shoulder for a long time to come. The Black Widows don’t give up easily. They say they’re going to get me. But after I told the police what I knew, it was easy for them to prove the Black Widows were the ones who set fire to Erin’s flat. Seems they’d done the same thing before to girls who had got on the wrong side of them. Added to that, they had another grudge against the Brodies. It turned out that Erin’s brother, Calum, had ditched one of them. She was the one who broke down and told the police the whole story. In fact it was a double confession. They’d mugged the old woman too.
So, with any luck, I won’t have to be involved in any trial.
They’re out on bail at the moment, and me and Mum don’t take any chances. We check our flat every night just in case, and always make sure our smoke
alarms are in full working order. Better safe than sorry.
I just try not to be alone too much.
And I’m never alone really. I’m at rehearsals a lot with Lauren. I’ve actually got a part in the show. It’s not much of a part. But I do get to thump Zak Riley in it, and that can’t be bad.
‘I think you fancy Zak Riley,’ Lauren said to me one day.
What a stupid idea! How can you fancy someone when all you do is argue with them? Rose is in the musical too, playing Rizzo, the leader of the Pink Ladies, of all things! And I have to admit, she’s pretty good.
Erin actually apologised to me, can you believe it? She even admitted to me that since it all happened she’s never wet the bed again. She smiled when she said it. ‘So, you really did me a favour.’ Then she added, ‘Or Heather did.’
For a while I think people thought she and I would be friends again, but that would never happen. We talk to each other, but we could never be the kind of friends we were before. I’d never want to be.
Lauren’s my best friend now. And we don’t bother with any gangs. There are no more Hell Cats or Lip
Gloss Girls. No fights, no leaders. I can’t understand sometimes how I ever got caught up with all that. We’re still friends with Grace and Sonya, and we can actually have a friendly conversation with Rose and Erin too. Now, we simply have fun. And that’s so much better.
And Wizzie? She’s still our mate. She says me and Lauren were born to be best friends. I worry about Wizzie. She spends a lot of time away from us, up on that dark estate where she lives. And her secret? I’ll never tell anyone where her scars really came from. I just hope there aren’t any more.
Lauren’s mum and mine get on really well. They’re going to the school show together. I get on so much better with my mum now too. A lot of that is thanks to Lauren. She really is the best friend you could ever want. How could anybody not like her?
And between us, I think big Anil really does fancy her.
Run, Zan, Run
Missing
Bad Company
Dark Waters
Fighting Back
Another Me
Underworld
Roxy’s Baby
Also:
Nemesis 1: Into the Shadows
Nemesis 2: The Beast Within
Nemesis 3: Sinister Intent
Nemesis 4: Ride of Death
Bloomsbury Publishing, London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney
First published in Great Britain in 2007 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square,
London, WC1B 3DP
This electronic edition published in October 2012 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © Catherine MacPhail 2007
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved
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make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means
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may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
eISBN 978-1-4088-1661-5
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