It was just the sudden release of tension, I suppose. All the worry and stuff that had been building up inside us. The fear, too. The irony is, even as I was laughing, I kept thinking to myself, what if somebody sees us? Laughing like that, when Sadie was . . . when she was still missing. Like, how would that look?
To be fair I was thinking mainly about Mason’s dad. I kept checking behind to see if he was following us. But we kept laughing all the way to the footbridge. We’d try to stop, one of us would, and it would quieten down for a sec, but then someone would snort and get us all going again.
Which is what I mean about it being ironic. Because when we got to the footbridge, guess who was sat there waiting? With this smile that said, Well, well, well. You know? As though, by laughing the way we were, we’d just proved everything people had been saying about us all along.
CORA
LARA FUCKING SWEENEY, that’s who. Arse on the railing, arms propping up her tits, and hair so dry from the peroxide, I was surprised it didn’t catch fire in the sun.
We were laughing until we saw her, I can’t even remember why, and then, just like that, we stopped. Lara kind of has that effect on people. She could suck the atmosphere from a rain forest.
“Hey, gang,” she said, loud enough that anyone within a hundred meters would have heard. “Off to bury another body?”
She was standing in the middle of the bridge, these two sixth formers beside her. Sam Powrie and Ian Nolan. I didn’t know them, but I knew their names. Lara’s always got some horny sixth former in tow, rarely ever the same one twice. They don’t give a shit about her, just like she never gives a shit about them. All Lara cares about is looking popular, and the sixth formers only hang around with her on the off chance she’ll let one of them cop a feel. Or both of them at the same time, knowing her.
“You’re not doing it right, Lara,” I said to her. “Trolls are supposed to wait under the bridge.”
“For the fat little piggies to come traipsing across, you mean?” she said, running her eyes top to toe over me and Abi.
“Goats, you mean,” chipped in Abi, looking all superior until it dawned on her what she’d just called herself.
That smirk of Lara’s widened. “Whatever you say, Scabby.”
That’s what Lara calls Abi, on account of the fact Abi had eczema literally about a decade ago, when the lot of us were all in primary school together. Lara was a bitchy little cow even then.
The boys just watched on mutely, gauging their chances if it turned into a fight, I expect. It was three against five, not that Lara would have got her hands dirty, but it still didn’t look good. Mason’s handy enough, obviously, but Luke would have tried making peace even as he choked to death on his broken teeth, and Fash . . . Fash is just Fash. He’s been in more scrapes than any of us, probably even more than Mason, but only because of the color of his skin, and with Fash there’s never any need to ask about the other guy.
“Seriously,” said Lara. “What’s with the Sherpa look? If I didn’t know better I’d say you were heading out of town. Running away, even.” Her sharp little eyes had taken in our rucksacks. Abi’s in particular was stuffed to bursting.
Sam and Ian had moved either side of Lara in the middle of the bridge. They were both a head taller than her, so they looked like bodyguards. The three of them were blocking our way.
We walked onto the bridge ourselves, stopping a couple of meters away from them. You could see the river through the cracks between the boards. I didn’t like that. It’s like when you’re standing on the pier down on the seafront. It always feels as though you’re going to slip through. And even though the river wasn’t flowing particularly fast, on account of the fact it had been so dry, I guess, everyone knows how dangerous it is. If you grow up in this town, it’s basically the first thing anyone tells you. Stay away from the river—the currents will carry you out to sea.
“You don’t know any better, Lara,” said Mason. “But don’t be too hard on yourself. Personally, I blame the parents. Maybe one of them dropped you when you were a baby.”
Lara’s parents are almost as bad as Sadie’s are. You know, just in terms of the whole my little princess thing. That’s probably where the rivalry came from. Between Lara and Sadie. Not so much about grades and stuff, and not that Sadie ever bought into it, but at some point someone had told Lara that life was basically a popularity contest, and that if you weren’t winning, you were losing.
I laughed at what Mason had said. “It would explain the snout,” I said, pushing up the tip of my nose.
Lara’s got this thing about her nostrils. I heard from Poppy, this girl in my class, who heard from Hanna, Hanna Crawley, who heard from one of Lara’s mates that Lara’s been saving up for a nose job. Which doesn’t surprise me at all. Talk about vain. She’s worse than Abi. And the difference is, Lara likes looking in the mirror because she’s convinced she’s beautiful. Abi only spends so much time fussing about her appearance because she’s paranoid she’s ugly.
Plus, the thing about Lara’s nose is, and for God’s sake don’t tell her I said this, but it’s not even that bad. She only looks like a pig now and then because she spends so much of her time looking down at people.
For once, though, Lara didn’t react. Normally if you talk about her nose, you can pretty much rely on her to turn the color
