“Blame the parents,” she said, all sweetly. “Now that’s an idea.” She looked at Luke.
I stopped smiling then. Mason did, too.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Luke said.
“Haven’t you heard what people are saying?” Lara answered.
I was just about to reply, but Abi piped up from across my shoulder.
“No one here’s interested in what people are saying. Especially when all the rumors that are flying around were started by you.”
She was talking about all the stuff online. The stuff about Sadie before she went missing. The stuff about Mason and us lot afterward. And obviously the shit about Sadie’s parents.
Lara gives us this who me? look, which to be fair she’s world champion at. It’s like, she never gets in trouble at school. She always manages to blame someone else, or casts just enough doubt that the teachers believe her. Or choose to, anyway. It helps that Lara’s mum is chair of the school governors.
“You’d have to be pretty sick to make that stuff up,” she said. “Right, Luke?”
I caught Luke’s eye and gave him this little shake of my head. But I guess he couldn’t help himself.
“What are you talking about, Lara?”
Lara feigned surprise. “You haven’t heard? Did your friends not think they ought to fill you in?”
Luke looked at me and I sort of shrugged. It was supposed to be an I have no idea what she’s going on about shrug, but I winced at the same time, and Luke could tell right away what it meant. Because I did know. Of course I did. Luke had messaged us to say he was deleting his accounts—Facebook, Instagram, all that—because he realized none of it was helping, that it was all just making things worse, but I’d sort of kept an eye on things. Not like Abi, nothing like Abi, who can’t go to the cinema without ducking underneath her coat every twenty minutes to check her phone, but I wanted to know what people were saying. Just . . . just because. So obviously I knew exactly what Lara was referring to. I mean, you lot must monitor all that as well, right? So you must have seen the stuff about Sadie’s parents, too.
But Luke—he obviously hadn’t.
“What’s she talking about, Cora?”
“It’s nothing, Luke. It’s bullshit, that’s all. Just more of the same twisted bullshit they’ve been saying about the rest of us. That they were saying about Sadie before she disappeared. And Abi’s right. It probably all came from Lara in the first place.”
“Twisted is right,” said Lara. “Poor Sadie,” she added, shaking her head.
“For the last time, Cora,” said Luke, “what’s she talking about? Tell me what people are saying!”
Lara answered before I could. “The theory is, your dad loved Sadie a bit more . . . intimately than was strictly legal. And, well. That your mum helped.”
“Shut the fuck up, Lara!” I shouted.
She took a step back, raising her hands in the air. I looked at Luke, who was basically frozen in place, like a computer when you give it too much to think about.
“I’m not saying I believe it,” said Lara, all innocent. “Although you have to say it makes a certain amount of sense. You know, in terms of motive. And opportunity. And the fact that your little brother is so . . . well, weird.” She shook her head. “The things he must have seen . . .”
Luke came out of his trance. His jaw snapped shut, and his fingers curled into fists.
“But no,” Lara went on. “Personally, I don’t quite buy it. I’m not saying it didn’t happen. But I’ve got my own theory about who killed Sadie.”
This time she looked directly at Mason, then slowly at the rest of us, one by one.
“You know what, Lara?” I said. “Maybe you killed her. You could never stand the fact that Sadie was more popular than you. That she chose to hang out with the likes of us.”
“Yeah,” said Abi. “And unlike you, Sadie didn’t have to go shagging her way round the entire school just to make a few friends.”
Lara laughed. “You see?” she said. “You are out of touch. Because again, that’s not what I heard.”
Mason went red.
“Guys,” said Fash. “Everyone! Let’s just go. OK? Why are we even standing here listening to this?”
“You’re not going anywhere, Paki,” came a voice, and Ian Nolan stepped up and gave him a shove. And I didn’t know this until afterward, but apparently Ian was one of the kids who always gave Fash a hard time at school. Or after school mostly, in fact. Whenever him and his mates could catch Fash on his own.
But fair play to Fash. He didn’t back away. Instead he turned around and shoved Ian right back. I guess he must have been more angry than I realized. “I’m not a Paki, dickhead,” he said. “I’m English, and my parents were born in fucking Qatar.”
Ian made to retaliate, but Mason stepped into his path.
“Back off,” he said. Not loud, just sort of quiet. But if you know Mason, and you’ve seen him lose his shit, you would have known to do what he said.
But Ian didn’t. Instead, he said, “What are you gonna do about it, murderer?”
And that’s when Mason finally flipped. Seriously, he just . . . he lost it. And I don’t know if he’d made some sort of mental connection—if he’d decided it must have been Ian who’d graffitied his house—or whether it was just what Lara had said before, but he grabbed Ian by his T-shirt and he smashed his fist right into his nose.
It was just . . . it was horrible. I mean, I’ve seen boys fight loads of times, but usually it’s like watching some stupid dance. Lots of shoving, and name-calling, and then maybe someone gets someone else in a headlock, and everyone ends up on the floor. But this . . . it was like Mason didn’t care. Like all the things that would have usually held him back just . . . just didn’t count anymore. And after he hit him, he
