Soul Beach

and you’re out at Redview School for Girls.
    ‘I mean,’ she says, twisting a strand of newly-dyed blue-black hair around her finger, ‘what kind of psycho does this kind of thing?’
    ‘You’d be surprised how many weirdoes there were on forums talking about Meggie after she died.’
    ‘You Googled her?’
    I blush. ‘Yeah. Does that make me weird too?’
    She chews it over; the gum keeps reappearing, grey as a headstone next to her newly whitened teeth. ‘Nah. I’d have done the same if it had been my sister.’
    Cara’s an only child. We used to say that we were soul sisters, until Meggie died and I realised too late that there’s nothing like the real thing.
    ‘The Facebook stuff was pretty normal, if sending tonnes of virtual bouquets to someone you’ve never met counts as normal. But then there were whole forums about her voice, her face, even made-up stories about her life. And everyone posting had some unique theory about who’d killed her, and why.’
    Cara gives me a sympathetic look. ‘Like it’s not obvious.’
    I frown. ‘He hasn’t been charged. If it’s that obvious, he’d be in prison, Cara, you know that, whatever the papers say.’
    Tim isn’t the murderer. I’m not sure about anything else in the world any more, but I know that a guy who used to rescue spiders from the communal kitchen in the student flats, can’t be a killer.
    But if it’s not him, then who?
    She gives me that look, the one that says well, we all know you fancied Tim right from the first time Meggie brought him home with her from college so you can’t be expected to see sense.
    It’s not even true. I liked him because he was the first one of Meggie’s boyfriends to treat me as an interesting person in my own right, but Cara couldn’t believe it was that simple, and she used to tease me about him all the time – though she has cut me more slack since my sister died.
    She reads the email again. ‘So, what’s it like?’
    ‘Eh?’
    ‘The site, dummy. What’s Soul Beach like? Is every day really as beautiful as the last? ’
    It’s my turn to give her a look. ‘I didn’t click on the actual link. It was probably a trap. Anyway, I Googled Soul Beach and it doesn’t even exist.’
    Cara stares at me, as if she doesn’t understand me at all, and then the bell goes and I head off to English and she goes to Law and I don’t listen to a word the teacher says because I’m too busy writing my reply to the Soul Beach psycho in my head.

6
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Date: September 23 2009
Subject: Re: Meggie Forster wants to see you on the Beach
Dear saddest person who ever lived,
How did you get to be so sick?
Well, I really hope you’re proud of yourself. Cos it’s such a great achievement, isn’t it, taking the piss out of someone whose only crime is to miss their sister?
I hope one day someone hurts you like you’re trying to hurt me and you realise what a scumbag you are.
Alice Forster
    I feel better for about twenty seconds after I press send . Then I start to shake, and I hear that rushing in my ears again.
    What if the person emailing isn’t some random stalker, but someone I know? I don’t have many enemies. At school, a few of the girls dislike me because I hang round with Cara and they hate her for her big mouth and her big boobs. But if someone wanted to upset her, they wouldn’t do it through me, would they?
    Messenger flashes up.
ROB’S WORLD: still on for later, Ali?
    Later? I’d forgotten all about it, even though Robbie is the least forgettable boyfriend in the world. All the girls like him because he has a broad smile like Zac Efron’s, and thick golden hair that’s too good to be true. We met in Year Ten, when Cara was dating his friend, and though she dumped the friend after a month, Robbie and I have been together ever since. A year and a half. Makes us pretty much married, according to our friends.
    Then the news came, and when Robbie turned up at my house, crying almost as much as me, it was like a switch had been turned off inside me. I felt nothing. And I still don’t.
    Maybe I should finish with him, but I won’t feel like this forever, will I?
ROB’S WORLD: U there?
ALICEINWONDERLAND: Sorry, distracted. Can’t wait 2 see u later.
ROB’S WORLD: What time shall I get u?
    I shiver. I don’t like being alone with him any more.
ALICEINWONDERLAND: I’ll make my own way. Got homework.
    I log off Messenger. There’s the