Vicky Angel (5 page)

“I just wanted to see you, Vic.”

“Well, you're seeing me now, aren't you? I'm here for your eyes only. But like I said, you've got to stop gawping. People will think you've gone off your head. Mind you, your best friend has just been tragically killed so maybe you're entitled to go a bit loopy. Come on, let's go to school. I want to see what everyone's saying about me.”

“Trust you, Vicky. You've always got to be the center of attention, even when you're dead.”

I give her a little poke in her tummy, my finger going straight through her and out the other side.

“Ouch!” Vicky shrieks, doubling up.

“Oh God, have I hurt you? I didn't mean … I thought … Oh, Vicky!”

She's shrieking with laughter now.

“Fooled you! Only quit poking me whether I can feel it or not. Come
on
.”

She starts running and I stumble after her, scared she might disappear again. She's an even faster runner without any gravity to weigh her down. She turns the corner into the school road
long before I do. I catch her up outside school. She's standing where the accident happened. She's not alone. There are crowds there, loads of adults as well as half the students from our school. Lots of them are crying or hugging each other or crouched down, looking. There's a carpet of flowers and cards and little cuddly toys right across the pavement and entwined all over the railings.

“Wow!” says Vicky. “It's just like I'm Princess Diana!”

People are turning, pointing, staring. For a moment I think they can see Vicky too. Then I realize they're all staring at me. There are murmurings, whisperings, and then sudden flashes. I blink, white lights flaring in front of my eyes.

“So you're Vicky's best friend, are you? Were you with her when she got run over? How did it happen? What does it feel like now, with Vicky gone?”

I stare at this reporter, hardly able to believe it.

“What a nerve!” says Vicky. “Tell him to clear off and mind his own business.” She tells him herself in much more colorful language. Someone else is swearing too. It's Fatboy Sam. He's only in Year Nine like me but he's tall as well as fat and he easily elbows the reporter out of the way.

“Leave her alone, you creep. She doesn't want to talk to you,” he says. He seizes me by the arm, pushing us both through the crowd. I peer round anxiously, scared of losing sight of Vicky, but she's right behind me, eyebrows raised.

“Hey, I didn't know Fatboy Sam had a thing
about me,” she giggles. “He looks really upset, doesn't he?”

He's still clinging to me, steering me inside the school.

“Well done, Sam,” says Mrs. Cambridge, rushing down the corridor. “Oh, Jade! I can't believe it.”

She puts her arm round me, she puts her arm round Sam, and hugs us both! Mrs. Cambridge, the fiercest teacher in the whole school, who was forever giving Vicky detentions for cheek! And now she's in tears.

“This is incredible!” says Vicky, dancing round us. “You and Fatboy Sam and Mrs. Cambridge having a love-in over me!”

Then Mr. Failsworth, the head, comes out of his study and even he looks watery-eyed behind his glasses. He mutters about Terrible Tragedies and Special Prayers in Assembly and asks if
I
want to say a word seeing as Vicky was my best friend?

“I think it might be too much of a strain for Jade,” Mrs. Cambridge says firmly. “I wonder if you should even be in school today? You look in such a state of shock still.”

It's partly because it's so weird seeing Vicky capering about, pulling silly faces and doing deadly imitations of Mr. Failsworth, hands together with a holy look on her face. I have to bite the inside of my mouth to stop myself bursting out laughing. Vicky hams it up even more and I give a little snort—but then instead of laughter it's tears. I'm crying in
front of Mr. Failsworth and Mrs. Cambridge and Fatboy Sam. This is just too totally bizarre.

Mrs. Cambridge takes me off to the staff cloakroom and holds me while I weep, and then she washes my face and holds a wodge of paper towels to my sore eyes and takes me back to the staff room for a cup of tea. This all takes so much time that I've missed Assembly altogether.

And I've missed Vicky. She's gone. Sometime while I was crying with Mrs. Cambridge she got bored and drifted off and left me on my own.

“I want Vicky back,” I whisper.

“I know, I know,” Mrs. Cambridge murmurs, though she doesn't know at all.

Mr. Lorrimer comes in in his tracksuit and squats down beside me. “I'm so terribly sorry, Jade,” he says softly. He takes my hand and gives it a little squeeze. Half the girls would die of envy because Mr. Lorrimer is a real dreamboat, thick dark hair, big brown eyes, a real six-pack stomach—no wonder Vicky wanted to join his Fun Run Club.

“Vicky was going to join your Friday club, the Fun Run,” I mumble.

“I saw both your names on the list, though they were crossed out. Well, you could always come on your own, Jade.”

“Me? I can't run for toffee.”

“It's not serious running. And—and sometimes when you're feeling really sad it's good to go for a run, work it out of your system. Sorry, that's a daft
thing to say. There's no way you're going to get through this in a hurry, you poor kid.”

It's so weird. They're all being so kind, as if they're my friends. And in class and at break everyone treats me like I'm really really special, even the toughest girls like Rita and Yvonne, even the boys. Vicky's old boyfriend Ryan Harper, the only halfway decent boy in Year Nine, comes up to me at break, warning me to stay away from the fences because the photographers are still there, gawping and flashing. “If they start hassling you, Jade, just give me and my mates the word and we'll soon sort them out,” he says. Old Fatboy Sam doesn't get a look in now.

He tries to save me a seat next to him at lunchtime but Jenny and Madeleine and Vicky Two whisk me off to their table. I've always liked them but Jenny annoyed my Vicky because she went out with Ryan Harper too. Jenny's a bit boy-mad. Vicky Two is like a boy herself, cheeky and bouncy, but she's in floods of tears now. Vicky Two has always known she comes second to
my
Vicky. Jenny gives her a big hug, and Madeleine gives
me
a big hug, even though we've hardly said two words to each other before today. She's a big soft plump pink-and-white girl. It feels like I'm being hugged by a giant marshmallow.

I'm smothered by sweetness. It feels like people are wrapping me in duvets, more and more and more. I can't move. I can't breathe. I can't
be
. Not without Vicky.

I
try going to school again on Tuesday but when I get near and see all the flowers on the Vicky spot, more and more of them, acarpet of roses and lilies and freesias, flickering candles, and a children's zoo of cuddly toys, it's all too much. I have to make a break for it. I run.

“I thought you hated running!”

Vicky jogs along beside me, little blue butterflies in her hair to match her tiny blue T-shirt. She's wearing snowy white jeans and sneakers and when she streaks ahead of me I see small white painted wings on the back of her T-shirt.

“Cute, eh? And dead appropriate. Just call me Vicky Angel.”

We saw someone else wearing one of those T-shirts last week and Vicky liked it then.

“And now I can wear anything I want,” she says, jogging on the spot. “While
you're
stuck in that stupid school uniform! Why don't you go
home and get changed if we're bunking off school?”

“Dad might hear me. He doesn't always get to sleep till later.”

“Well, what if he does? He's not going to get mad at you
now
.”

Vicky's never understood what it's like with my dad. He can always get mad. I don't know if it's because he works nights. He usually leaves me alone but sometimes he can get really niggly, picking on me for the slightest thing. He can go crazy, yelling all sorts of stuff, waving his arms around, his fists clenched. He's never hit Mum or me but sometimes he hits the cushions or the sofa. One time he hit the kitchen wall and made the plaster flake. His knuckles bled but he didn't seem to notice.

Sometimes Mum says it's a shame and he never used to be like that in the old days before his other factory closed down. Other times she just says he's a pig and she can't stick him and she'd clear off tomorrow if she could.

I'd always much sooner be round at Vicky's than my home. Her dad never gets cross. He thinks the world of Vicky. She's always been his baby, his special girl. He's always fussing round her, laughing at all her jokes, ruffling her hair, whistling when she wears a new outfit, putting his arm round her and calling her his little Vicky Sunshine—

Only that's all stopped now.

“My dad,” Vicky mumbles, her face screwed up.

“I know,” I whisper.

“And my mum.”

“Yes. But
we
can still be together, Vicky.”

“OK, I'll haunt you permanently,” says Vicky. “Come on, let's go and have fun. I can't stand all this saddo stuff all the time. Let's—let's go up to London, eh?”

Vicky and I go to school together and down the park and we go round the local shops on Saturdays or go to the pictures or hang out down at McDonald's—but we're not allowed to go on a proper day out together. Especially not up to London.

“We can't!”

“Yes, we can,” says Vicky. “Go on. Please. If anyone finds out you can say it's all my idea.”

“Oh yes, like they'd believe me! They'd think I'd gone crazy.”

I think I have. I walk purposefully through the town to the station. I've got ten pounds in my school purse for some stupid school trip. I'd much sooner have a day trip with Vicky.

I buy a child's return fare, cheap rate.

“Even cheaper for me,” says Vicky. She jumps right over the ticket barrier and swoops down the stairs, just grazing the tips of her trainers on the steps. I rush after her and collide with a large lady on the platform reading a local paper.

“Careful, careful! Look where you're going. You kids!” she grumbles.

“Sorry. We were just—”

“Not ‘we’, loony,” Vicky whispers. She blows out her cheeks and struts about in a rude imitation of the large lady. I can't help giggling. The woman frowns at me. Then she looks at me again, shocked.

“Here! You're the girl in the paper!” she says, tapping a black-and-white photo.

For a moment I think she must be talking to Vicky. Then I see a blurry picture of me, my eyes squinting from the camera flash, and the caption underneath:
JANE MARSHALL, VICKY'S BEST FRIEND, TOO DISTRAUGHT TO TALK
.

“Jane!” Vicky snorts. “Trust them to get it wrong. It's a wonder they got
my
name right.”

“It's you, isn't it?” says the woman, flapping her paper. She sniffs. “You don't look distraught.”

“It's not me,” I say quickly.

“Yes it is! Look, you're wearing the same uniform.”

“I go to the same school but I'm in a different grade. I didn't know Vicky, honestly.”

She doesn't look like she believes me.

“Never mind that nosy old bag,” says Vicky, linking her transparent arm through mine. “Come on, walk up the platform. Forget her. We're going to have
fun
.”

So we walk away from the woman and the train comes soon. I take off my school tie and roll my sleeves up in the train to try to make my uniform less obvious. I'm scared, now we're speeding
off to London. I don't really know my way round anywhere. Mum's always going on about these creepy guys who hang out round London railway stations and lure runaway teenage schoolgirls into a life of prostitution.

“Well, at least we'd make some money,” says Vicky. “It's obvious what we're going to do. Go shopping, right? Though you won't be able to buy much. I'll be fine, though. I can have my pick of anything. Hey, I can go seriously upmarket now. Where shall we go? Covent Garden? They've got designer clothes shops there, haven't they?”

“Don't ask me. Vic, do you know the way?”

“Easy peasy for me. Straight up in the sky, then swoop,” she giggles. “I can go anywhere, any speed. Hey, watch!”

She dives right through the train window, kicking out as if she's swimming; then she flies along beside the train, her hair streaming.

“See!” she yells, speeding along. She whirls around and around, even turning a cartwheel in midair.

“Get back in! You'll hurt yourself!”

Vicky laughs so much she bobs up and down.

“I can't hurt myself, you nutcase,” she shouts. “I'll show you.” She hurtles sideways at a rooftop, aiming at the chimneys and sharp television aerials. She doesn't impale herself, she simply glides through and out the other side.

I stare after her in awe. She waves and then shoots upward like a rocket, up and up until she's
out of sight. I open the train window and crane my head out, desperate for a glimpse of her. She's higher than the tallest poplar tree, higher than the church steeple, higher than the flock of birds. I'm terrified she'll carry on upward through the clouds and into another afterlife.

“Vicky! Vicky, come back!”

She darts through the open window in a rush, her hair in a wild tangle and her cheeks bright red.