Chapter 10 #3
I nod, though I’ve never seen either film. Maybe I should watch them sometime.
“Enough of your cheek,” says Sinclair.
“Hey, I’m just telling it like it is.” Tori leans back again.
“All right, your turn.” Sinclair points at Henry with his wine bottle. He seems already to have decided on his question, because he asks it without hesitation. “Big spoon or little spoon?”
There’s an expectant silence as Henry gives him a withering glare. Suddenly, I’m pretty certain we’re not talking about cutlery.
“And you have to tell the truth even if you’re stone-cold sober?” Henry asks, but it’s a feeble attempt.
“Especially then,” declares Sinclair.
“Fine.” He sighs. “Little spoon . . .”
The others sigh too and laugh quietly.
“Shame Grace isn’t still here,” says Sinclair. “I’d love to check this with her.”
I’ve never found it so hard to keep smiling.
“Hasn’t anyone still got those photos from the Norway trip?” Olive asks. “They definitely fell asleep like that back then.”
Henry seems pretty uncomfortable with this whole thing because he ignores her and just asks the next question.
I’m hearing the words, but I’m not really paying attention.
Tori asks me if I’d rather be able to eat anything, no matter how spicy, or never burn my tongue on hot food again, so I pick the second choice, obviously.
I feel Henry’s eyes on me as more questions are asked.
He’s gently biting his bottom lip as he gazes at me, and I force myself not to keep thinking about it.
And not to look at his mouth. He breaks off eye contact as soon as he notices I’m watching him too.
I don’t know how much later it is when the greenhouse eventually empties.
Sinclair’s sitting between Tori’s knees on the floor next to one of the armchairs, and she’s massaging his shoulders while deep in a heated discussion with Olive and a few others about the unannounced maths tests that Mr. Ward apparently likes to dump on people.
When I look at the time, it’s later than I’d thought. My head is pounding a bit, my eyes are burning, and I’m finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with everyone’s rapid English.
It may be a coincidence, or it may not, but at this exact moment, Henry looks at me. He eyes me, then nods questioningly at me.
I shrug, and even if I don’t quite understand what this nonverbal communication really means, it seems to work.
Sinclair cranes his neck to blink upward to Henry as he stands.
“I think I need to get some sleep,” Henry says. He glances at me, and I get up too.
“Me too.” I’m expecting some comment, someone to boo or say, Party poopers, like Noah or Isi would definitely have done, but nothing happens.
“Sleep well,” says Sinclair, leaning his head back against Tori’s knees again.
The others say goodbye to us too, and I avoid looking in Olive’s direction as I walk out of the door ahead of Henry.
Suddenly, this feels out of bounds. Because we’re alone out here, and I’d forgotten how dark it was.
Maybe it’s just because I’m very tired, but it seems colder to me now.
I shiver and dig my hands into my jacket pockets as we walk over the meadow.
Damp grass tickles my ankles, the voices from the greenhouse growing quieter with every meter.
By the time we’ve reached the path, I can’t hear them at all.
This is all there is. The chirping crickets, Henry’s footsteps and mine on the gravel. And my heart, which is thumping loudly. Why aren’t we speaking? Do we have to keep quiet so that no one hears us?
“How tired are you?”
An owl hoots, cold air fills my lungs, and Henry really did just ask that.
“Why?” I can’t see more than his silhouette beside me as I turn my head toward him.
“I was just wondering . . . If you’re really tired, I’ll walk you right back to your wing. But if you’re not, we could take a little detour. There are some secret passages through the cellars under the school.” His eyes burn into me. “It’s really spooky though.”
I hardly dare breathe. “I like spooky.”
My eyes have gradually got used to the darkness, and I can see his smile now. “OK,” he says.
“OK,” I repeat. Then, “Or are you too tired? You’re really tired, right?”
“I’m not that tired. Besides, you’re at a Scottish boarding school. We have to go on secret nighttime wanders—it’s part of the authentic experience.”
“Are you sure? We don’t have to . . .”
“I’m sure,” he says, and I fall silent. “It’s through here.”
Henry takes my wrist and pulls me into an archway to our left. His touch is like a mini electric shock running through my whole body. I don’t want him ever to let go—seriously, I mean it—but I’m afraid he doesn’t realize that.
This doorway is so inconspicuous that I’d probably have walked right past it.
I follow Henry down the steps. It’s pitch black in here.
Henry lets go and pulls out his phone. The places where his skin touched mine are prickling in a way that feels like both regret and desperately wanting more.
A moment later, he’s using the torch mode to light our way.
We come to a door in dark wood with solid metal fittings. It looks locked. Henry starts to rattle at the latch. Very loudly, to be honest. Automatically, I hold my breath and glance back over my shoulder. A moment later, I hear a squeak, and Henry pushes the door open.
“Are you sure this isn’t against the rules?” I whisper before I follow him. It smells kind of musty down here, but not exactly unpleasant.
“Oh, it’s obviously way out of bounds,” says Henry, “but who’s going to know?”
He shuts the door behind me, and I wonder what we’re doing here. Sandy gravel crunches under our feet. I raise my head as Henry shines the light over the walls and ceiling. We’re in some kind of passage.
“There are tunnels under the whole school, but most of them never get used.” He beckons me to follow him. “They say that thirteen pupils went missing down here once.”
“Ha-ha,” I murmur.
“Fine, there were only eleven of them. There’s even a dungeon under the church.” He glances at me. “I bet your old school never had anything like this.”
“You’re right, it didn’t,” I admit. “Do you have a school ghost too?”
“Yeah, his name’s Simon.”
“No, can’t be, I’d have heard about it,” I say.
“Is that right?”
“My mum would have mentioned it for sure.”
“He’s new,” he explains. “My parents never met him either, and they went to school here too.”
I prick up my ears. His parents were at Dunbridge Academy?
At once, my head is full of questions. How old are they?
Do they know my dad? Might Henry even know my dad?
I’m just wondering about the subtlest way of finding that out when Henry points to our left, where the passage branches out into tunnels in several directions.
“So what’s the story?” he begins, and my stomach ties itself in knots. Don’t ask. Don’t ask about that. Please, just let it go. “Were both your parents here at the school, or just your mum?”
Of course. But I can’t really hold it against him—I’d be interested too if it were me.
So I nod. “They met here.” I just keep staring ahead down the dark passage and don’t look at Henry’s attentive face. It’s a bit easier to explain things if I don’t have to make eye contact with him. “My mum came here from Germany in the second form, and my dad’s from Glasgow.”
“And you all live in Germany now?”
I gulp. “Just Mum and me.”
Henry doesn’t ask any more questions. But suddenly I’m telling him. “He walked out when I was eleven, and I never heard from him again.”
I’m psyching myself up for some platitude. Something like, “Oh, I’m sorry,” or “Whoa, that’s tough,” but Henry doesn’t say anything. Small stones scrunch under the soles of our shoes, and then there’s his voice again.
“Do you often think about him?”
“No, not really.” Well, that’s a flat-out lie. Yes, every day. Way too often to be healthy. That’s what I ought to say. I swallow. “Only sometimes.”
“It must be weird, being here,” says Henry. “Where he used to be too.”
“It is weird.”
“Do you want to get in touch with him?” Henry asks, and that’s the whole problem.
Part of me wants to say, “Yes.” Loud and clear.
It’s the part that can’t watch those sappy dramas—the “I’m going to find my dad, and he’s going to love me even though we barely know each other” kind without crying hot, angry tears.
The other, bigger part of me knows that it doesn’t work like that in real life.
That I’m way too let down and hurt. That I don’t want to find him just so he can act like he actually has any interest in me.
Because he can’t, or he wouldn’t have left.
I only want to find him so I can ask him questions.
Fucked-up, uncomfortable questions. Why was everything else more important than Mum and me?
Why did he choose to do it, and why doesn’t he care about me?
“I want to find him,” I say, without considering whether or not it’s wise to tell Henry that.
Dark tunnels, echoing footsteps. And me wanting Henry to know everything.
“I can’t ask my mum about him. She wants to make sure he can’t let me down again.
And I thought that here I might find out who he was. And where he is.”
These are things I’ve never told anybody.
Not Noah, not Isi. Nobody. But I’ve told Henry, and in the end, I’m only doing this because I know that he’s a stranger.
Someone I’ll be spending a year in supertiny classes with, ducking out early from secret midnight parties to go on nighttime walks in spooky tunnels with, and telling the truth to. And then I’ll never see him again.
“My parents were at Dunbridge too,” says Henry. “I could ask them. They might know him.”
“What are their first names?” I ask.
“Catherine and Tom,” says Henry, and the tiny spark of hope inside me is blown out again. Their names mean nothing to me, and if my dad knew them, Mum would too. And she’d definitely have mentioned them to me.