Hold Your Breath Read Free

huddle in the corridor. She accidentally caught the eye of Karis, who glared at her, but Tara had to fight back a smirk.
    Today was definitely looking up.
    Variations of the same conversation buzzed around her all day like static.
    ‘Have you heard? Melodie Stone has left.’
    ‘What, just like that?’
    ‘Yeah, just like that.’
    Their form tutor made an announcement at registration saying that Melodie had had a family issue to deal with and would be living with relatives in Brighton for the foreseeable future.
    This prompted more hysteria from Jada.
    Mrs Linley rolled her eyes in irritation. ‘Try and contain your grief a little, please, Jada,’ she said, prompting disgusted tuts from the rest of the Gossip Girls who snaked thin,
bangled arms around their quivering friend.
    The whole thing was a bit strange, Tara thought. People didn’t usually just up and disappear in the middle of term. Although . . . that was exactly what Tara had done at her old school.
But that was a unique circumstance.
    She wondered if the scene she’d witnessed with lover boy under the bridge had been him trying to persuade her not to go. But who cared, really? She couldn’t say she was going to be
missing Melodie Stone.
    As far as Tara was concerned, it was good riddance.
    The end of the day came around and Tara hung back in her English class, hoping to avoid the crush in the corridors as everyone shoved and jockeyed to get to their lockers. She
always hated that part of the day, when plans bounced like shuttlecocks around her head. ‘See you later at blah-blah,’ and ‘Everyone’s going, it’ll be
great!’
    Tara was never going and none of them ever saw her later.
    She felt someone’s gaze and looked up to see her English teacher, Mr Ford, watching her.
    ‘Everything all right, Tara?’ he said.
    ‘Um, fine thanks.’ She quickly gathered up the rest of her stuff and hurried out into the corridor. It was still heaving so she went to the girls’ loos and locked herself in
the least undesirable cubicle for a while to kill some more time. She played with her mobile and, despite herself, wished she hadn’t deleted all Jay’s messages.
    After a while she emerged into the corridor, which was surprisingly empty. She hunkered down to decant some books into her locker, wishing as always that it wasn’t so awkwardly placed.
Arriving late in the school year meant she had to put up with one of the rubbish lower lockers. Melodie’s had been head height – perfectly placed. Of course. She was that sort of girl,
the one who always managed to get the advantage. Her locker was just above Tara’s. Many times, Tara’d had to wait for Miss-Loves-Herself to finish up before she could get near her own.
She swore Melodie sometimes took ages on purpose.
    She glanced up at the locker now.
    A nervous feeling suddenly fluttered in her stomach for no reason at all, followed by a rapid drumbeat in her chest. That was weird. What was making her feel like this?
    Everything around Melodie’s locker seemed oddly in shadow, as though at the periphery of Tara’s vision. She was suddenly seized by an overwhelming urge to look in Melodie’s
locker, which was ridiculous. No, she didn’t
want
to at all. But she felt that she
needed
to somehow. It made absolutely no sense. But she had to do it all the same.
    Tara licked her lips. Her mouth had gone desert dry. She looked around the corridor. A cleaner was sloshing a mop about at the far end, headphones on, eyes cast down. No one was looking at her.
No one would know.
    She looked at the locker again. It wasn’t open, of course, but these lockers were the same kind as at her old school and, if there was no padlock, easy to open. A boy called Alexi had
showed her how to open them with a hairgrip in Year Seven when hers had got jammed. On autopilot, she fumbled in her pocket. Her long black hair was in a ponytail today and she had no hairgrips.
She remembered the compass in her pencil case.