The Magpie Effect - The Magpie Chronicles Book 1 (#Wattys2015)

Chapter 3.2

The tears peered over the brims of my eyelids for a few minutes afterwards, as though worried that they might get spotted. Once they were satisfied that I was alone, and that the rain was there to dowse them and disguise them, they flowed freely.

I seldom cried. I hadn't cried properly since Winnie died. She'd been a hardy woman with a wicked sense of humour, but she'd always told me that it took courage to cry, that to do so was noble and unabashed.

"All that water sloshing about inside you," she'd told me when I was young, "never coming out and never going anywhere. You know what happens when water sits still? It gets stagnant. It goes all green and mouldy. If you don't cry, all that dirty, rancid water will just be sitting around behind your eyes. Makes your face go cold and stony like a gargoyle."

Well, there must have been a lot of stagnant tears festering behind my eyeballs, because now they fled their former prison relentlessly. Sobs launched themselves up my throat, thick and glutinous. In just a couple of minutes the final bell would ring and the grounds would fill with students as they rushed for the buses. I needed to be as far away as possible before that happened.

I could feel my phone vibrating in my pocket as I pounded across the fields, my entire body wet with rain. I pictured Debbie as she dashed from the changing rooms, furiously trying to get hold of me before she hopped on the buses.

I ignored it. I didn't want to speak to anyone. I wanted to be left alone.

Cutting diagonally across the fields, I followed the road until it disappeared into a forested cave. The road twisted through the woodlands that surrounded Atlantic High like a belt until it reached the main road. A right-turn and a twenty-minute drive through the countryside would deliver you straight back to Magpie's Nest.

Under the cover of the trees, the rain subsided dramatically. The sound of the bell ringing drifted across the grounds and bounded into the mouth of the wooded cave, chasing me like a rabid dog. I lifted my head. I had only minutes until the buses roared passed on their way out of the grounds, full to the brim with students ogling out the windows.

And Carmen would stand out amongst them all, I thought. I was meant to be on her bus. When she noticed I wasn't aboard, she'd turn her attention to the windows. I'd see her snarling down at me from her seat. Everybody's phones would be vibrating. New File Received, their screens would read. Picture Message.

My heart felt as though it was inflating inside my throat, like one of the ventricles was blocked and now it was bulging out of control. The ground beneath my feet began to grumble. The buses were coming, roaring across the rain-spattered tarmac like an army of tanks. In just under a minute they'd enter the leafy cloister in which I'd secured my haven.

I glanced over my shoulder just as the first bus rounded the corner and dipped its snout under the trees. Its lights blared, bleaching the rain white.

I turned back to the road, desperately searching for somewhere that I could hide until they passed. I scrambled down the grassy bank and ducked into the woodlands that ran parallel to the road. I dressed myself in ferns, felt their blissfully wet fingers tickle my skin, and waited for the buses to pass.

They passed in an elongated blur, each of the faces at the windows stretched into a long, grinning pink line until they were carried up the road and out of sight.

I was alone again. Or, at least, that was what I thought.

She hadn't been there before the buses passed. But surely enough, there she was. Standing just on the margins of the forest on the other side of the road.

The phantom girl.

I froze mid-sob. It was as though the very sight of her had wiped my mind clear - no, not clear. Clear meant serenity. It was empty, suddenly a void in which only she existed.