The Girl Who Wasn't There by Karen McCombie

Author:Karen McCombie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic UK
Published: 2014-06-08T16:00:00+00:00

There IS a ghost.

No, there isn’t.

There IS a ghost.

No, there isn’t.

I’m in the dilapidated summerhouse, in our dilapidated garden. It’s the first time I’ve properly ventured out here, rather than just peering at it from the house, but Clem’s been doing my head in ever since she got home from college. She’s been playing her horrible drum and bass music so loud I couldn’t stand it.

I couldn’t stand hearing it booming in my room-next-door-to-hers.

I couldn’t stand it thumping and thundering everywhere I went in the cottage.

I couldn’t stand it that she kept saying “Sorry, what? You want me to turn it up?” every time I tried to ask her to please turn it down.

So until Dad finishes up at school, I’m planning on hiding out here, and it’s turned out to be pretty nice so far, if you just ignore the nettles on the way in and the scuttling bugs once you’ve made it inside.

There IS a ghost.

No, there isn’t.

There IS a ghost.

No, there isn’t.

The reason those words are wafting through my head is ’cause I don’t trust my instincts one bit, which might disappoint Mum – if she was in a position to know what was going on with my life, that is.

But who could blame me? I thought I’d always be able to rely on Lilah and Jasneet, and look how wrong I got that. I thought Saffy seemed like fun, and it turned out she was the opposite of fun.

So when it comes to figuring out if a ghost haunts Nightingale School, or if there’s a reasonable, rational explanation for what I’ve seen, I think I’ve got a better chance of getting the right answer by sitting here in the tatty summerhouse plucking petals off this flower in my hand than trusting my useless instincts.

And maybe my current edge-of-grouchy mood is down to the fact that I’m slightly disillusioned after Miss Carrera laughed off the idea of any unusual, out-of-the-ordinary schoolgirls materializing in her art room when I spoke to her an hour or so ago. (My instincts were pretty off-kilter when I decided to talk to her too, I guess…)

“Oi, Maisie! Visitor!” Clem suddenly barks from the back door of our house before instantly walking straight inside again.

Wow, my big sister is quite the hostess. (Not.)

Then when I see who she’s left standing marooned on the small, mossy patio, I quickly stand up from my daydreaming and petal-plucking.

“Hi!” says Kat, giving me one of her funny little-kid waves. “Should I come over to you?”

“Sure,” I say, scrunching up the half-bald rose I’ve been idly fooling around with and chucking it out of the window of the summerhouse (easy – there’s no glass in it).

Hey, Kat’s in her school uniform … which I guess wouldn’t be so surprising if she’d actually made it into school today. Or did she, and I just didn’t see her? Unless she was avoiding me for some reason. That happened a lot at my old school.

My sudden paranoia makes me bumbling and shy.

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