The Girl Who . . . by Andreina Cordani

Author:Andreina Cordani
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little Brown Book Group

Chapter 16

Leah, present day

I’m looking at the knife again, tilting the blade, seeing my eyes reflected in it and trying to focus, to remember who I am and what I want to do. I need to be tough – to build on it every day. I suppose that’s why psychopaths practise on animals before the big event, but unfortunately I’m not a psychopath. This would be a whole lot easier if I was. Instead I feel jelly-like, feeble and confused. I’m losing my focus and this new family is making it worse.

Dylan is bad enough – the way he accepts me and all my weirdness without question. He honestly doesn’t care what I do or how I look provided I share his interests. I even let slip about my MMA skills the other day and he forced me to show him a bunch of moves he could use against the school bullies.

I don’t want to be a sister again. I can’t face it.

As for Ellie, she’s a mystery. One day she acts like she wants to be friends, but then the next she’s jumping at my shadow and snooping through my things. She’s loud, dramatic and so full on that sometimes, after half an hour in the same room with her, I realise my jaw aches from grinding my teeth. But then she comes out with something so ridiculously funny I have to grind them harder to stop myself laughing.

The thing is, I think she’s got some kind of secret, too. Sneakiness comes about as naturally to Ellie as transcendental meditation. She is one of life’s sharers and yet over the past few weeks she’s spent more and more time shut up in that room of hers. Yesterday I bumped into her as she scuttled along the hallway in her fluffy pink dressing gown, phone in hand gazing at whatever riveting Insta-tube-TikTok-snapcrappery was going on that day. She looked up at me and jumped so much her phone slithered out of her grasp, landing with a hard clatter on the thin rug. She dived for it quickly, cradling it like a puppy and shielding it against her chest while she looked up at me with an expression in her eyes . . . I think it might have been guilt.

It can’t still be about that boy – he was clearly completely uninterested in her and her ego won’t let her dwell on heartbreak for that long. It might be useful to find out what it is, but am I just distracting myself, procrastinating? The truth is, I’ve been drifting away from the Plan for a long while, and it all started with Thorpe Park.

Back then I was still hoping that the thing with Claire would pass, but even then part of me knew I was ignoring the signs. Mum’s photograph, the faded one in the silver frame, had moved from Dad’s bedside to the dresser in the hallway. Not gone, but no longer the last face he saw before he went to sleep at night.

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