His & Hers

Watching things unfold and people unravel afterwards was delicious. Better than anything I’ve read or seen on TV, because it was real. And I was the author of it all. I made use of that opportunity – seeing the fruits of my labour with my own eyes, enjoying the reactions of my hand-picked cast. It left a bittersweet feeling.

I think I’ve always been very resourceful, perhaps because I had to be. Good at finding a use for things. Take the voice-changer, for example, left to gather dust in a box of confiscated items in the school office. It was surprisingly simple and fun to use, so much so that I kept it. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, as my mum used to say.

I also took the school’s drama trophy from the headmistress’s office, and used that to smash the car window. It seemed appropriate somehow. Nobody saw me; the car park was empty and it didn’t take long. Afterwards, when I experienced the pure rush of adrenaline that always accompanies the feeling of getting away with something, I felt invincible and invisible all at once. I kept the trophy too. My acting skills deserve some kind of award.

I have spent a lifetime trying on new skins like new clothes, seeing which version of myself suited me best, shedding the ones that didn’t. Not everyone seems to know that personalities can be altered, until a person finds the perfect fit. I didn’t know who I was when I was younger or, if I did, I pretended not to. People often see what they want, rather than what is really there.

I only took the bag because of how I needed things to look.

We all try to buy a little more time, but it’s priceless. We get what we’re given, not what we can afford. Time is a trapdoor we all tumble down at some point in our lives, often completely unaware of how far we have fallen. Captivated by an audience of our own worst fears, that demand an encore whenever we dare to stop feeling afraid.

The emotional walls we build are there to keep the real us inside, as well as to keep others out. I’m making mine stronger, one brick of revenge at a time.

We all hide behind the version of ourselves we let the rest of the world see.

Her

Wednesday 08:15

I can see it even if he can’t.

The pretty junior detective clearly has some sort of crush on Jack, and although we are no longer married, it still feels very strange to watch. Uncomfortable and mildly distressing, to be honest. I’m not naïve. I’m fully aware that he must have moved on with his life in more ways than one since we stopped living together, but seeing another woman looking at him like that still makes me want to scratch her eyes out. While nobody is watching, I slip away into the woods. I head towards the exact same spot where Rachel and I would sometimes bunk off lessons to hang out.

I was aware that the other girls in our little gang – Helen Wang and Zoe Harper – were becoming increasingly jealous of the amount of time Rachel and I were spending together. They didn’t do a very good job of hiding it, not that I cared. I’d never even been kissed by a boy let alone a girl before, and for the first time in my life, I felt pretty.

After a couple of months, I was already falling behind with my studies. We’d been spending too many nights staying at each other’s houses, or going shopping – for clothes only Rachel could afford to buy – or hiding in the woods at the back of the school together, when we should have been in class. I was willing to do whatever I could to make her like me, always afraid she might stop. Then my mother found out that I’d got an F in English, because of failing to hand in an essay on time.

I’d always been a straight-A student before that. Mum was more upset than I had ever seen her and grounded me for two weeks. She had promised I could have a party for my sixteenth birthday – just a few of the girls round to our house – and this meant I would have to cancel. I did not take the news well.

Rachel insisted that she could fix things and that Helen would help. She marched right up to her the following morning before registration.

‘We need you to write our English essays for Monday, as well as your own. You always get A grades and we both need one, otherwise Anna won’t be allowed to have her birthday party next weekend.’

She brushed a stray wisp of Helen’s shiny black hair behind her ear as she said it, and I felt strangely jealous.

‘Can’t. I’m busy,’ Helen replied, looking back down at her maths textbook, cramming for our latest test.

Rachel folded her arms and tilted her head to one side, the way she always did on the rare occasions when she didn’t get her own way. Then she closed Helen’s book for her.

‘So, change your plans.’

‘I said no.’

Helen had become increasingly cranky since I started at St Hilary’s. She spent more time studying or writing for the school newspaper than ever before, and had lost a dramatic amount of weight. I guessed the diet pills really did work, plus I hardly ever saw her eat.

‘Why don’t you have a think about it?’ Rachel said, wearing one of her best smiles.

To my surprise, on Monday morning Helen gave us two essays that were bound to have been better than anything we could have come up with ourselves. They were written in two different sets of handwriting, each of which looked remarkably like our own.

‘Are you sure this is OK?’ I asked Helen.

‘I’m sure you’ll get the grade you deserve,’ she said, then walked away, disappearing down the corridor without another word.

I had always done my own homework before, and this was all new to me.

‘Should we check them?’ I asked Rachel, but she just smiled.

‘Why bother? Helen is so good at knowing what teachers want, I expect she’ll be one herself when she’s older. “Miss Wang.” I can already picture her sitting in the headmistress’s chair during school assembly! Can’t you?’

It was true. Helen was always exceptionally clever, but she was a liar too.

We handed in our essays to Mr Richardson at the end of our English class. He was a bespectacled spindle of a man, short on hair and patience. The whole school knew that he had aspirations of becoming a writer of literature one day, rather than a teacher of it. He was known for collecting first editions of books, dandruff, and teenage enemies. All the girls hated him, and often flicked ink from their fountain pens onto the back of his shirt when he wrote on the blackboard. The way he looked at Rachel when she gave him her essay made me feel strange. It was like seeing an elderly lame dog drooling over a leg of lamb in a butcher’s window.

The bell rang for lunch, but while everyone else headed for the dining room, Rachel dragged me in the other direction.

‘Come on, I’ve got you a little present, but you have to open it in private.’

She took me by the hand, her fingers entwining themselves with my own. It was something lots of girls did at school, but when Rachel held mine it always felt special, as though I had been chosen.

She led me to the toilets where we walked right into Catherine Kelly. Her long white blonde hair was a turbulent mess of tangled knots. Her skin was even paler than usual, with a cluster of angry-looking red pimples on her chin. Her patchy eyebrows were almost completely bald – she was literally pulling out tiny pieces of herself and throwing them away. I could see why someone like Rachel wouldn’t like her very much, they were complete opposites.