Skin Deep by Laura Jarratt

those push-up bras on, the kind that leave you disappointed when they come off. Probably padded too. We went on up to the shops, her silent and showing off, me silent and appreciative.
    ‘What flavour?’ I asked as she slid into a table by the window at the burger bar.
    ‘Strawberry.’
    ‘Want anything else?’
    ‘No.’
    When I came back with the drinks, she watched me as she tore the top off the wrapper around the straw. Then she slid the paper slowly and deliberately down the length of the straw. She stuck the straw into the shake and sucked hard on the end. I wanted to laugh at how obvious she was being, but that would’ve wrecked my chances.
    ‘You doing anything tonight?’ she asked.
    I shrugged. ‘Not much.’
    ‘Nothing to do round here anyway.’ She stirred the shake with the straw. ‘It’s a dump.’
    I nodded. I’d been through some dumps and Whitmere wasn’t one of them. Quiet, yes, but she had no idea what a dump was. Wasn’t going to argue though.
    ‘It’s got even worse lately. We can’t even get in a car now without the police pulling us over and hassling us.’
    I said nothing, just let her keep talking.
    ‘All year it’s been this way. Since some dumb posh kid from one of the villages put his car into a field. He was off his face.’ She checked I was listening and I nodded so she went on, satisfied. ‘So were the others in the car. Two girls got killed and another got her face fried when the car caught fire . . .’
    Jenna?
    She’d said it was a car accident. And she’d said it was this year. It had to be the same accident. But off their faces? Jenna didn’t look the type. Too much of a little girl.
    ‘Which village?’
    ‘Strenton. Why?’
    So it was Jenna. But she was so quiet. It didn’t fit. Unless she’d been different before the accident. But even so . . . ‘No reason.’
    ‘I’ve got to go soon. You want to meet me later? Hang out?’
    ‘I don’t think your dad would like that.’
    She peeked up at me, sucking on her straw for a moment, before she said, ‘My dad doesn’t have to know.’
    ‘I can’t lose that job.’
    I didn’t want any trouble with Pete. I liked him and I liked the job. But Sadie wanted to get together with someone so it might as well be me. And she liked having to do a bit of work to get me now. She liked the challenge. But she’d turn the tables later and want me to be the one doing the running.
    My one talent – reading girls for stuff like that. If you watched people enough, you picked up things like that. Body language, little looks, the way things were said – people gave themselves away. And I’d seen Mum play those games over and over again.
    Sadie reached across and put her hand over mine. ‘Hey,’ she said, her hard edge hidden away, ‘we can go somewhere quiet if you like. Where we won’t get seen by anyone. Just you and me. Dad’ll never know.’
    I bit back a smile. ‘OK.’
    Home and a shower and dinner. Then I broke the news to Mum. ‘Going out now.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘Into Whitmere.’
    ‘Ryan, I’ve been on my own all day!’
    ‘Am I not allowed to have a life?’
    And I left, not waiting for an answer.
    Sadie was already at the bus stop on the edge of town when I got there. I was ten minutes late. Deliberately. She waved a bottle of vodka and a torch at me. ‘This way,’ she said, and led me down an overgrown path to a field at the back of the town Rugby Club. A large hut stood at the rear of the ground in overgrown grass. She reached up to the window in the wooden wall, standing on tiptoe, and prised it open. ‘It’s been broken ages,’ she said with a giggle. ‘I don’t think they know. They don’t use it any more. Give me a leg-up.’
    I stirruped my hands and she stepped up, opening the window wider and wriggling through with her mini-skirted bum in my face. She held the window while I vaulted up and squeezed in.
    The hut was dry and smelled of leather and dried mud. There was a pile of old kit bags