‘Alice, this is Mum; I’m just popping home for a couple of hours to see Nathan. Gran’s coming in again to sit with you and I’ll be back in at teatime with your dad, OK? Maybe you’ll be awake by then; I hope so. Come back to us, Alice … please?’
The mist swirls around me like wisps of smoke, and I tread carefully, softly; afraid in case the Queen of Hearts or the playing-card soldiers reappear. Propped against one of the trees is a huge, heavy mirror with an ornate gold frame and, as I watch, the Hatter appears from behind it.
‘Have you remembered yet?’ he asks. ‘Have you remembered how to get home?’
He smiles, takes off his hat and sweeps into a low bow, before turning and stepping right through the mirror.
‘Hatter?’ I call. ‘Remembered what, Hatter? Come back, please!’
I push my hands against the mirror glass, but it’s cold and hard and impenetrable, and the Hatter has vanished without trace.
My fists hammered harder and harder against the wooden door – so hard that my knuckles bled. I couldn’t see the blood, but when I brought a hand up to my mouth to stifle the sobs, I tasted salt and iron.
‘Lainey!’ I yelled, so loudly I thought my lungs would burst. ‘Lainey! Savvy! Erin! Yaz! Somebody help me, please!’
I shouted and yelled until my voice was hoarse, and then I sank to my knees on the clammy stone floor and sobbed. They wouldn’t come; they wouldn’t help. It was crazy to think that they might. They were the ones who had done this to me.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Savvy had set a trap and I’d walked right into it, because I was too lonely and too desperate to notice it was there. Why on earth had I come to the sleepover at all?
I guess you can’t get closer to rock bottom than cowering on your knees in a musty cellar, crying because you’re scared of the dark and sick with shame because the people you thought could be your friends have turned out to be your worst enemies. Worse still was realizing that I should have known that all along. These were the people who’d been bullying me all year. Nothing had changed; they’d just stepped up the bullying a notch or two.
I had wanted to believe that Savvy liked me, that Lainey and Yaz could be my friends again. I’d wanted to believe that things could be different, that I didn’t have to be a victim any more; instead I felt humiliated, tricked, traumatized. I was here to be teased, wound up and laughed at; I was part of the entertainment.
Was the power cut even real, or had Lainey fed me a pack of lies and then gone through to the utility room to flip the trip switches? I didn’t know, but suddenly the whole concept of a game of hide and seek seemed sinister, pre-planned. Taking me to the cellar, locking me in – was Lainey carrying out more instructions from on high?
Shame at my own stupidity flooded through me, quickly followed by anger.
I’d almost convinced myself tonight that Savvy was beautiful and cool and misunderstood; but behind the smiling face and Bambi eyes, she was coldly cruel, calculating; the kind of girl who might pull the wings off a butterfly for fun. I was the butterfly, clearly.
I gritted my teeth and wiped away the tears, determined to find a way out of the cellar, not to let my tormentors win. Slowly I made my way across the cellar again, hauling myself up on to the cupboard counter that ran beneath the window. I stretched up to the grille that shielded the window, tugging at the metal bars, but they were solid and no matter how hard I shook and pulled them, they didn’t budge at all.
Maybe if I could find something to poke through the bars and smash the glass, I could shout and yell until someone came to my rescue? I was groping around in the dark for something to use when the first few shreds of logic began to surface in my panicked mind.
My mobile, uselessly, was upstairs in my coat pocket; no help there.
I sat back on my heels. How long would they leave me locked in here? It wouldn’t be forever; I wasn’t in real danger. Logically, I knew that. Savvy and her crew may have been bullies, but they weren’t idiots. This was a sleepover, not some elaborate murder plot; sooner or later someone would let me out, perhaps pretend it had all been an accident, a mistake, a muddle. Savvy would smooth things over, switch on the charm and turn it all round so that if I complained I’d just look like a wuss, a troublemaker or a victim.
I was probably all those things, but I didn’t want to be, not any more. I was sick of being invisible, sick of slinking along in the shadows like a beaten dog, grateful for any scraps of attention. My shame was slowly turning to anger.
By morning, this ordeal would be over, and I’d be able to walk away with my head held high. In school I would ignore Savvy and the others, and I would tell the teachers the next time they began messing up my school books or hiding my shoes after PE lessons. I would speak out, stand up to them and fight back.
And if I had to do all that alone, then so what? I’d manage.
I felt calmer now, stronger. The panic had ebbed away and reason was returning.
That’s when I heard the soft click of a door, the shuffle of feet on stone steps and the turn of a key in the lock.
I jumped down from the counter and picked my way across the cellar again, found the door and turned the handle. It opened, and I stumbled out into the little hallway, right into the old bicycles which were stacked against the wall.
‘Lainey?’ I called, untangling myself from the bicycles. ‘Savvy?’
There was nothing but silence.