The Happy Family by Jackie Kabler (electric book reader txt) 📕

my brain foggy, my thoughts confused, and my body stiff and aching, I hear the noise again, a sort of shuffling sound coming from outside. I stagger to my feet, expecting to see a fox or a hedgehog through the glass, a night-time creature on the hunt for food. But as my eyes focus on the wide expanse of glass, it’s not a fox I see, nor a hedgehog, nor any other four-legged animal. It’s a face. A human face, pale and round. And it’s staring straight at me.

Chapter 20

It was just whispers at first.

‘You’re so ugly.’

‘Those girls you think are your friends? They think you’re ugly too.’

‘Nobody likes you. You know that, don’t you?’

Vicious, cruel little whispers. Words I spat into Lucy Allen’s ear as we sat together in class, words that nobody but her could hear.

I wanted to hurt her; it was as simple as that. I wanted her to suffer. And why? Why did I want to inflict such pain on a girl I barely knew? At the time, I had no idea. It was simply a compulsion, something I had to do, something I couldn’t stop myself doing, day after day after day.

Now I know that trying to hurt Lucy in the terrible way I did was my way of coping with the pain I was in. It was almost as if I thought that by increasing her pain I could dilute mine. That somehow it would make me feel better.

It didn’t of course, but I carried on anyway. As I dripped my poison into her ear over weeks which turned into months, I could see her getting more and more withdrawn, becoming sadder, quieter. And instead of disturbing me, it was almost as if as she grew smaller and more diminished, I grew in stature. I began to rise above my pain, as she sank ever deeper into hers.

Then I discovered, quite by chance, that Lucy had a crush. She’d fallen in love with a boy in the year above us called Tony Fletcher. She’d confided in one of her swotty little friends, and they’d told someone else and, well, you remember what it was like at school. Soon everyone knew, even Tony.

And that was when I played my trump card.

I brought a Polaroid camera into school. This was, of course, in the early 90s, long before school kids had mobile phones, or mobile phones had cameras. I hid the camera in my gym bag, and after our Friday morning PE session I hid myself in a shower cubicle and I waited. I knew that Lucy, skinny and underdeveloped for her age was, like many teenaged girls, terribly self-conscious about her body – and even more so now that she had me whispering in her ear every day, telling her how hideous she was.

I knew she dreaded PE, and that afterwards she always waited until everyone else had gone before stripping off her gym gear and slipping her uniform back on. She rarely took a shower, muttering that she’d have one when she got home and saying that she didn’t sweat much anyway.

And so that Friday I hid and I waited. And when, through the gap in the shower curtain, I finally saw her pulling her T-shirt over her head, unclipping her (unnecessary) sports bra, wriggling out of her shorts, and standing there naked for a few brief moments as she searched her bag for her underwear, I slipped quietly out of the cubicle, called her name and, when she whirled around, a horror-stricken expression on her face, took the photo.

‘Beth … NO! PLEASE!’

I was laughing as I ran from the room, the still wet instant photograph dangling from my fingertips. I was still sniggering as the picture developed and I studied the detail of the image I’d captured.

It was perfect: it captured Lucy’s tiny breasts – little more than swollen nipples – the dark mound of her pubic hair, the curve of her bare buttocks, all there for all the world to see.

And I made sure they were seen. During the lunchbreak, before the halls and classrooms filled up again, I pinned that photo to the noticeboard right outside the door of the room in which Tony Fletcher was about to have his 2pm history lesson.

When the bell went to signal the start of the afternoon session, I waited again, my heart fluttering. It didn’t take long. Did I feel bad? Did I feel any sense of guilt at all when they began, the howls of laughter, the jeers, the screeches of ‘OH. MY. GOD’? Did I feel it when Lucy Allen walked down the corridor and realised what was going on, and started to run, tears rolling down her cheeks, the shrieks of her classmates ringing in her ears? I don’t think I did, not then. Not that day.

But that was when everything changed. Because that was the day I went too far.

So cruel. So stupid.

I never saw Lucy Allen again.

Chapter 21

When I wake up on Tuesday morning I know I’ve been dreaming about her again. As I lie in bed, kicking off the duvet to try to cool my hot, weary body, I remember the face at the patio window, that small white outline, wide eyes staring at me, and my stomach clenches. It had vanished, melted away into the darkness as I took a step towards it, giving me no time to work out who it was, and I’d stood there, confused, heart pounding. Mike again? But he was gone, wasn’t he? It didn’t look like him anyway – too short, not bulky enough. A would-be burglar then? Or a figment of my imagination, once more? I’d gone to bed telling myself that’s all it was, and now I’m not sure if I actually saw anything at all.

It felt real, but I’d been drinking and I was half asleep … or maybe I saw the face later, in my dreams, and it’s all got muddled up in