Lying About Last Summer by Sue Wallman

Author:Sue Wallman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic UK
Published: 2016-01-10T05:00:00+00:00

twenty

SKYE: Why would I take any notice of you?

I schedule it to be sent at three a.m. for the hell of it, and when I wake at seven a.m. there’s no reply yet.

It’s unsettling to wake up in a place where you’re not sure who to trust. The list of suspects has been circulating in my head all night: Joe, Danielle, Brandon, Fay, Alice, Kerry. Plus the rest of the Yellows, and all the Reds and Blues, except these messages seem personal. But anybody here could be aware of Luisa’s death, or connected to her in some way without me knowing.

When Fay comes out of the bathroom and asks why I haven’t got up for breakfast, I tell her I’m too tired, and pull the duvet halfway over my head. I’m not lying about the tiredness, but I’m not ready to face the day and my stalker yet either.

Fay doesn’t bother to ask Danielle, who’s either still asleep or pretending to be. “Are you sure, Skye?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Irony in action – you going for breakfast, me staying in bed.”

“Joe says I should eat breakfast.”

“Good for Joe,” I say, and jerk the duvet closed at the top, over my head, for a few moments until she goes.

Later, when Danielle goes into the bathroom, I see her phone peeking out from under her pillow. It makes a vibrate noise and I listen to check that she’s in the shower before I leap across and lift the pillow to see what’s on the screen.

There’s an image of an album cover I don’t recognize, probably because I haven’t reached the required level of cool, and overlaying that is a text from someone called Chazza:

How are the wacko room-mates?

I’m not sure what I was hoping to find on Danielle’s phone, but it wasn’t that. No doubt Danielle’s providing a running commentary about Fay and me to her mates. Nice.

I dart back into my duvet nest. Is Danielle playing with me on MessageHound because she thinks I’m a wacko? Easily wound up? I shouldn’t have told her about Luisa and our chat group the night she gave me the sleeping pill.

“Paintballing today,” says Danielle when she comes out of the bathroom. “Excellent. I like a fight.”

After breakfast, Fay returns to the room and says she’s not doing paintballing because she did it once and was hit by a load of paintballs.

“Isn’t that the whole point of paintball?” I ask.

“I was bruised for months,” she says. “I spoke to Pippa at breakfast and she says it’s fine for me to stay here and sit on the patio outside the games room.” She takes an enormous book out of her suitcase. A chemistry textbook.

All of us Yellows except Fay wait in the reception building with an instructor for the minibus to take us to the paintball centre. I study a wildlife poster and reflect on the fact that the photo of the jaunty fox looks nothing like the mangy animals that cruise the residential streets where I now live.

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