Follow Me Down (7 page)

‘Like I’m the first person to do that.’

‘OK, Miss Okomma,’ he said with a slow smile.

We walked the rest of the way in silence and when we turned left out of Crofton towards the forest I relaxed. I’m very fond of Savernake Forest; I go running in it every morning. It’s been a relief to have somewhere to run where I know I’m not being watched, where I can just run and run without worrying about the sweat patches on my T-shirt and my messy hair; where I don’t have to think about Crofton’s sharp spires and green, green lawns and homework and what universities I’m applying to next year and why Jumoke hasn’t replied to my last two emails. I guess it’s kind of funny, how it takes running until my lungs feel like they’re going to burst until I can take a breath.

As we approached the stone pillars that mark the entrance, the light began to change. It went from grey to gold as we passed under the canopy of trees towards the road that runs through the middle of the forest, cutting through the beech trees, neat as the parting my mother used to comb into my hair when I was a kid. The four-mile-long road leads from the entrance to a pair of iron gates that are just known at Crofton as ‘the gates’, which is as far as Mrs Delaney permits me to run. I don’t know what’s behind them, they probably belong to one of the private houses, but there are several stories at Crofton: an old insane asylum, a mansion where the lady of the house was murdered and now haunts the forest in a white dress, and my personal favourite, an abandoned coaching house where the girls from Crofton used to go with bottles of gin and knitting needles if they found themselves ‘in trouble’.

The gates are usually locked, but someone at Crofton has a key, so that’s where the parties are usually held. Every Halloween, Scarlett says, the Upper Sixth host one there that’s invitation only. It’s a huge deal, apparently, especially as you only know if you’re invited on Halloween morning, when the chosen ones wake up to a white postcard with a black cat on it. Scarlett already knows what she’s going to wear. She showed me the dress with great glee the last time I was at her house and when she did, I thought of the one I’d bought in London our first exeat weekend, the black one with the lace that kind of looks like cobwebs. It wasn’t an accident that I’d picked it out, not after she’d said, ‘You’re new, so you shouldn’t be invited, but I go every year, so you’ll probably get a postcard.’ I was too distracted by the thought, so didn’t notice when Dominic started to veer off the road towards the trees.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked when I caught up.

‘It isn’t far.’ He looked down at my muddied ballet pumps. ‘Are you gonna be OK?’

‘I’ll be fine.’

‘If you say so, Miss Okomma,’ he said with a shrug, taking my trench coat and sweater from me and throwing them over his shoulder. ‘This way.’

He began walking through a break in the trees, towards a path. It wasn’t a proper path, it had just been worn into the ground by years of people walking over it, so it was narrow and uneven, and my shoes slipped on the wet leaves as I followed him. The trees were still heavy with water and dripped on us as we passed under them. The smell made me think of something I read in an article once about the smell of rain. Apparently, rain doesn’t smell of anything, it’s the moisture in the air that heightens the smell of everything around you so you smell what you couldn’t before. This afternoon, the forest smelt earthy, of wet soil and mushrooms and piles of raked-up leaves and it was a smell I knew, that I found comforting, even though I usually only smell it in those scented candles you buy in gift shops.

After a few minutes, the sunlight began to push through the trees, sieving through the browning leaves into white threads that illuminated the forest floor and the spider webs shivering in the breeze. He kept turning back to check I was OK as we stepped over the stray tree roots, twigs snapping, loud and sharp as bones beneath our feet. I could hear the birds too, chattering in the trees above us and making the leaves rustle as they darted from branch to branch. As we passed under one tree, we startled them because they flew away in such a rush that it showered us with leaves that fell around us like brown confetti.

Eventually he reached an oak tree that must have fallen over in the last storm and lay on its side, its pale, torn belly exposed. He slapped it with his hand as he went past, turning left and heading into a thicker, darker part of the forest. He turned back to make sure that I was following him, his forehead creased and his arm outstretched as it got darker. I didn’t want to take his hand, but common sense prevailed and I reached for it; his palm warm against mine as he led me towards a clearing. When we got to it, he let go, as the trees parted to expose the open, blue-grey sky above our heads, flooding everything beneath them with light.

‘This is it,’ he said, out of breath.

‘What is?’

‘A couple of kids from Crofton were running through here last night.’

‘Running through
here
?’ I interrupted, looking back the way we came. ‘Why didn’t they stick to the road? You can’t run through here, it’s too uneven.’

‘OK, they were looking for somewhere to shag.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Stop being so judgmental, Adamma.’

‘I’m not being judgmental.’

‘Yes you are. You have Adamma face.’

He didn’t give me time to retaliate, he just ran ahead, and by the time I got to him, he was standing in the middle of the clearing, his lips parted.

‘Look, Adamma,’ he gasped, eyes big and black.

I looked around at the scene and it made my heart beat too fast. Stick figures hung from the trees, the twigs tied together with string so that they looked like people, and on the forest floor, there were piles of rocks. Each pile was spaced out across the clearing and as I watched him run between them, taking photos, I realised what was going on and let go of a breath.

‘Um, Dominic,’ I said, unsure whether to tell him, because he was so excited.

He wasn’t listening, he was taking photos of a pile of twigs that were tied together with a strip of plaid material. ‘Hannah will lose her shit when she sees this.’

‘Dominic,’ I said again, trying not to giggle. ‘I think you’ve been had.’

‘Had? What?’ he asked between snaps as I walked towards him.

‘I think this is a joke.’

He looked up at me, bewildered. ‘A joke?’

‘Yeah.’ I gestured at the pile of twigs at our feet. ‘The Blair Witch.’

‘What?’

‘The movie,
The Blair Witch Project
. Haven’t you seen it?’ He shook his head. ‘This is pretty much it. Someone’s obviously playing a prank. It’s Halloween this weekend, maybe they’re trying to scare some of the kids at Crofton.’

He looked around at the scene, eyes wide, then muttered, ‘Fucking Sam.’

‘This is actually pretty clever, for him,’ I conceded, but Dominic was livid and stomped around, kicking at the piles of rocks as I tried not to laugh. ‘What did you think this was? Some sort of pagan sacrifice?’

‘Fucking Sam,’ he hissed again, then marched back to where I was standing. As he did, my coat and sweater slipped off his shoulder and he tugged them back on with an angry huff. ‘I’m gonna kill him.’

‘OK.’ I crossed my arms. ‘But can we go now? I’m freezing.’

He looked a little despondent as we turned to walk back the way we had come, this time side by side. ‘Are you pissed that I made you come here for nothing?’

I wasn’t, actually. ‘You didn’t make me do anything. I was curious,’ I said as I watched him put the lens back on his camera. ‘Plus I got to see a different side of you.’

He looked up with a big smile. ‘A more doable side?’

‘A more annoying side.’ I retracted with a sneer.

‘Are you pissed about Scarlett?’

I stiffened. ‘I told you: I don’t care.’

‘I’d be pissed off if my best friend was keeping stuff from me, but you should get used to that.’

‘So it seems.’ I looked down at my shoes. They were ruined.

‘Welcome to Planet Scarlett. Population: everyone,’ he chuckled, then licked his lips. ‘She’s always been a brat, you know. When we were kids, we used to meet on the bridge over the canal between our houses, make paper ships and race them.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘I always made mine out of newspaper because she cheated.’

I thought of her again, in the observatory, looking up at the domed ceiling –
He was my first everything
– and felt the itch of something.

‘Is that why you’re doing this?’ I asked.

‘Doing what?’

‘Flirting with me. To make her jealous?’

‘No.’ He looked horrified. ‘Of course not.’

‘So what’s going on here, then?’

‘I don’t know.’ He shook his head and looked down at his camera again. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Are you two together?’

‘She doesn’t want to be in a relationship.’

It wasn’t a no.

‘But you do?’

‘It doesn’t matter what I want.’

‘Of course it does, Dominic.’

‘Not with Scarlett. You’ll see,’ he said with a bitter laugh, then thought better of it, his face softening. ‘But don’t be pissed at her, Adamma. It’s not her fault, it’s us.’ He sighed. ‘We’re a fucking train wreck. Don’t try and get in the middle of it.’

‘Why are you trying to put me in the middle of it, then?’

He
oofed
and missed a step as though I’d punched him in the chest. ‘You’re right. I am. Sorry.’ He shook his head then glanced sideways at me, his cheeks suddenly pink. ‘I used to think she was the one, you know?’

I nodded, but I didn’t. I thought of my ex-boyfriend Nathan with a sting of shame. As nice as he was – as
perfect
– he was hardly the love of my life, even if I had thought he was a month ago. I used to get so mad when my mother referred to it as ‘puppy love’, but she was right. I didn’t realise until then how little I’d thought about him since I had got to Crofton. I’d missed brunch at Sarabeth’s more than him.

‘What about you?’ he asked, reading my mind.

‘Me?’ I stalled, walking around a cluster of toadstools.

‘Yeah. Who’s your Scarlett?’

I shrugged. ‘I had a boyfriend in New York, but we weren’t a train wreck.’

‘Had?’ he asked with a cheeky grin.

‘Yeah, we broke up before I moved here.’

‘What was his name?’

‘Nathan.’

‘
Nathan
,’ he said, as if he was tasting it. ‘How long were you together?’

‘Not long. A few months.’

‘So you’re single, then?’ nudged me with his hip. ‘Duly noted.’

‘I thought you weren’t going to put me in the middle, Dominic?’

‘I know.’ He smiled slowly. ‘But you’re already there.’

We walked the rest of the way in silence and when we got back to the road, he apologised again. I thought he meant for flirting with me, but when he looked back the way we had come, I realised that he meant for dragging me out there.

‘It’s cool,’ I said, with a shrug. ‘I’m sure Sam will have fun with that at the Halloween party this weekend.’

‘It’s been called off.’

‘What? Why?’

‘After what happened at the Alphabet Party last weekend.’

‘I thought that was called off when the housemaster at Abbott found out?’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Scarlett.’

He chuckled, the skin around his eyes creasing. ‘She was there, Adamma.’

‘She can’t have been. We went to the theatre that night.’

‘She came late, about midnight, I think. But she was definitely there.’

He wouldn’t look at me and I realised that was when the photo on his camera had been taken.

‘You mean to tell me,’ I stopped and pointed at him, ‘that I ripped my leather jacket climbing out of a goddamn window so that I could go to Bath with Scarlett to see a stupid play, then she drops me back at Crofton and goes to a party without me?’

He shrugged and I might be mad, but I’m sure there was a hint of,
Of course
.

‘Why would she do that, Dominic?’

‘I don’t know what to tell you. Scarlett has two modes: lying and asleep.’

‘I don’t understand. Did she want to go without me?’

‘When I asked after you, she said that
you
didn’t want to come.’

‘It was the first Crofton party of the year, why wouldn’t I want to go?’

‘She said it wasn’t your thing.
As if Princess Adamma would come to a party in a forest
,’ he said, mimicking Scarlett perfectly. ‘
She might get her shoes dirty
.’

He laughed and when I didn’t, just crossed my arms and tried not to look down at my ruined pumps, the corners of his mouth fell.

‘Look,’ he said with a sigh, and I hoped he couldn’t see the tears in my eyes. I tried to blink them away, but that seemed to make them worse. ‘I’m sorry, Adamma. I’m not trying to upset you, but if you and Scarlett are going to be, like, totes BFFs, you need to get used to this.’

‘To what?’

‘To her secrets. I’ve known her for ever and I still have no idea why she does the things she does. It’s part of her charm, I guess.’

That didn’t make me feel better, but I didn’t want to talk about it any more because I could feel my throat getting tighter and tighter.

‘So what did I miss?’ I turned and carried on walking up the road towards the stone pillars. When he followed, he looked confused, so I added, ‘At the party?’

‘Oh. Nothing. Much drunkenness.’

‘So why has the Halloween party this weekend been called off, then?’

He went quiet, the skin between his eyebrows pinched as he looked down at the road, kicking at the tear in the tarmac before he walked over it. When he started fiddling with his camera, idly flicking through the shots he’d taken, I felt something in me tense.

‘Are you OK, Dominic?’

He nodded, but didn’t look at me.

‘You don’t seem OK. You haven’t said anything that’s made me want to punch you in at least ten minutes. Do you need medical attention?’

He didn’t laugh, but he did smile. ‘It’s nothing. It’s stupid.’

‘Probably, but tell me anyway.’

He didn’t and when he started fiddling with his camera again it was suddenly so quiet that I could hear the
bat bat bat
of the birds in the trees, fluttering from branch to branch. I tried to look at him, but when he avoided my gaze, playing with the strap on his camera and wrapping it around his wrist, my nerves began to twitch.