Hold Your Breath Read Free Page A

Hurriedly getting it out, she pushed the sharp tip into the keyhole and jiggled it a little, feeling something give.
    She looked around again. A couple of Sixth Formers who were laughing at something on a mobile phone walked towards her. She waited until they passed, pretending to adjust her earring. Then, when
she was sure no one was watching, she gently pushed the door open with a cautious finger. She didn’t know why she was doing this. It was definitely weird behaviour. And ‘weird’
was a place that she, Tara Murray, was trying to leave behind. But still she looked.
    There was nothing much to see though. The inside of the door held a poster of an actor from a gruesome vampire show on telly, all shirtless and glistening with oil. A body spray lay on its side
and its musky aroma clung to the space. It reminded Tara instantly of Melodie and, for a second, the sensation that she was close by was so strong that Tara swung round to look behind her. But no
one was there. She turned back to the locker. A single pink sweet had melted against the metal wall. Some sort of paper was wedged at the back, all bunched up. Tara tentatively poked her hand
inside and reached for it, giving it a pull to free it from where it was trapped by the metal casing.
    A strip of photo booth pictures showed Melodie, her hair piled on top of her head, messy but attractively arranged. She was with an older boy with a small dark beard and a wolfish expression.
The first three pictures showed Melodie laughing and sticking her head close to the camera or making faces, the boy in the background smiling indulgently. The final picture showed him with his face
buried in Melodie’s neck, kissing her while she looked at the camera with a cat-got-the-cream expression.
    Suddenly feeling stalkerish and pervy, Tara dropped the photo. There was something else in the locker . . . a tiny silver earring shaped like a treble clef. She picked it up and ran her thumb
over the smooth metal. The spicy body spray aroma became stronger now and then something else took over: the artificial strawberry smell of the melted sweet clung to the insides of her nostrils,
cloying, choking. The interior of the locker went dark and then Tara was all nerve endings. Smells, colour, tastes all battered her and intricate patterns swam before her eyes. Staggering
backwards, she barely felt the sharp corner of the locker door scraping the soft flesh of her inner arm. She stumbled until she felt the wall and she sat heavily on a bench, hands over her eyes.
The jumbled pictures and white noise started to clear into an image in her mind. And then it was blindingly detailed, like a screen where Tara could see every individual pixel.
    A gloomy room. A single lightbulb swaying above her. A rotten, dank smell. Hard to . . . breathe . . . I’m scared . . .
    ‘Tara?’
    A blinding white light seared across her vision and then cleared to reveal the craggy, concerned face of Mr Ford, peering down at her.
    ‘What’s wrong? Are you ill?’
    ‘No!’ Tara’s voice came out thin and small as she struggled to her feet. ‘I’m all right . . . Oh.’ Something warm hit the skin of her upper foot. She looked
down. Blood plopped from her arm and trickled down her foot in a crimson rivulet.
    ‘You’re evidently not all right, young lady! You’re bleeding!’ Mr Ford took her gently by the other arm and passed her a large cotton handkerchief, which she pressed
against the cut. ‘Now come with me to the medical room.’
    ‘But —’
    ‘No buts!’
    Tara let herself be led down the corridor, through the fire doors at the end, and up two floors to the medical room. The nurse/secretary had gone for the day, so Mr Ford busied himself with
antiseptic wipes and plasters on a roll while Tara meekly waited, wishing she didn’t feel so sick and that the throbbing in her head would stop.
    He expertly cleaned and bandaged her arm. She managed to avoid meeting his eye throughout the whole