Page 30 of Save Me
I flick through the school events (so boring), skim articles (so unoriginal), and look at the photos, searching for Ruby’s face. Her name is at the top of a lot of posts, and she’s mentioned in relation to all the events, but there isn’t a single picture of her. I googled Ruby not long after Lydia told me Ruby had caught her with Sutton, tried to find out as much about her as I could. But there was nothing. She has no social media—no Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram—or not under her real name, anyway.
Ruby Bell is a phantom.
I keep scrolling. I’ve now searched the whole of last year and still haven’t found what I’m looking for. Whatever that may be. The longer I look, the crosser I feel. Why the hell can’t I find anything on her?
“Are you looking at theschoolblog?” Alistair asks suddenly.
I look up, caught in the act. Alistair’s looking grossed out. Butwhen he glimpses the word in the little search box on my browser, his face lights up. “Oh, like that, is it?”
“What?”
His grin widens. “Wait till I tell the others.”
I slam the laptop shut. “There’s nothing to tell.”
Alistair’s answer is cut off by a knock from Mary, our housekeeper. She steers a little trolley into the room with our dinner, and I stand up, swaying slightly, to refill my glass. Now as well as my dad’s voice, I’ve got Ruby’s smug face to wipe out of my brain.
10
Ruby
Even my pink pen is mocking me. According to my planner, I have toAsk Beaufort about Victorian clothes—pretty much the last thing I want to do.
I’ve had an overdose of James Beaufort this week, and I’m ready for the weekend. Since we agreed on the Halloween party theme, he’s been acting like a total dick in our meetings. He either makes one snarky comment after another or ignores us completely. I wouldn’t care if we hadn’t decided yesterday that the advertising poster for the party ought to feature a couple in authentic Victorian dress. And the simplest, quickest way to get our hands on that kind of costume—for free!—is via the Beauforts and their company archive.
After the meeting, Lin and I drew lots for who’d have to ask James for the favor, and, of course, I lost. Since then, I’ve been pondering the best way to go about it. Maybe I’ll just email him. Then I wouldn’t have to speak to him in front of anyone else, which would most probably just earn me some snide remark.
I slam my journal shut and put it in my backpack.
“We can swap,” Lin suggests, swinging her own bag onto her shoulder. She picks up her plate, stacks it on top of mine, and takes them both back to the tray station.
I briefly weigh up whether the alternative—an hour listening to Lexie drone on about fire regulations—would be better.
“No, wait,” Lin says as we head from the canteen to the study center. “I take that back. I don’t want to swap.”
“Your loss. I’d have gone for it.”
The school is bathed in reddish-gold autumn light, and the first leaves on the oak trees are starting to turn from deep green to delicate yellow or dark red.
“Come on. It’s not that bad.”
“Says she who yelled ‘jackpot!’ when she won the talk on fire regulations,” I reply dryly.
She gives a sheepish grin. “He’s just so arrogant. I mean, he’s a full member of the team for the rest of term. So he can bloody well contribute for a change. Especially seeing that the whole thing was his idea.”
“Yeah. Shame it was such a good one.” I hold my student card to the study center door and wait for the little light in the door handle to turn green. Then I open it and hold it for Lin.
The study center is a small building reserved for the sixth form. You can come here if you want somewhere quiet to write an essay or do some revision. Today, we have the first meeting of a small group for people applying to Oxford.
“Uh-oh,” Lin breathes as we enter the tutor room, and I stiffen.
Speak of the devil.
You could fit twenty people in here, but the only occupants besides two girls and a guy I only know by sight are Keshav, Lydia, Alistair, Wren, Cyril, and…James. There’s also a youngwoman who is presumably our tutor. She’s the only one to say hello.
I take one of the chairs as far as possible from Beaufort’s clique. Lin comes to sit next to me. Mechanically, I take out my planner, pens, and the new notebook I bought specially for this group. I arrange everything on the table in front of me—it has to be parallel to the edge—trying hard to act like the rest of them aren’t here. I don’t want anything to do with James, and certainly not with his friends. The mere thought that the application process means measuring up to people like them—from filthy-rich families who’ve studied at Oxbridge colleges for generations—makes me feel sick.
I don’t know how Lin feels about it all. She was never part of that gang, but she was friends with Elaine Ellington and a couple of other girls in the year above us, so they moved in similar circles. But then her father left her mother for another woman—who soon turned out to be a con artist. She tricked him into marriage, and within a year, he’d lost his entire fortune to her. It was a massive scandal, and as a result, nobody wanted anything to do with the Wangs anymore. Neither in business, nor socially, nor at this school.
