Soul Beach

the girls gasp, but Demi just pouts. ‘Eh? You’re nuts.’
    ‘You know what, I might well be,’ he says, with a smile that suggests unpredictable mood swings. ‘But that doesn’t mean you’re not responsible for a girl’s death.’
    Demi’s sulky pout wavers. ‘Come on,’ she says to the others, and she begins to walk back towards school.
    Lewis walks alongside her. ‘Don’t mind if we tag along, do you? Actually, we’d quite like to have a chat with the teachers, too, because surely after Triti’s death they want to avoid future scandals, am I right?’
    Demi stops. ‘Who the hell are you?’
    ‘Friends of Triti and her family,’ he says.
    ‘What did she ever do to you?’ I ask.
    Demi takes a sharp left, into an alleyway, then begins to run. Lewis chases and corners her, before I’ve even gone a few metres.
    He doesn’t need to touch her. He just stands in front of her, and the message is clear. ‘All yours, I think,’ he says to me.
    ‘There’s definitely no mistake?’ I ask.
    ‘No. A girl in the other café told me they all thought they knew who it was, but no one could prove it. Well, so they reckoned.’ He takes his iPhone out of his pocket. ‘Actually, took me about four seconds to match her mobile IP address with the imaginary Salli’s.’
    Demi scowls at the name. I stand close to her and she turns her face away from me. Behind me, I sense the other girls getting closer.
    ‘Boo!’ Lewis shouts in her other ear, and Demi jumps and turns back. Her face has lost its bravado.
    ‘Triti is . . . was my friend,’ I say. ‘She was a good person. What made you do it?’
    ‘I don’t know what you’re on about,’ she says, but she no longer sounds so cocky.
    ‘Fine,’ Lewis says. ‘I’ve got enough now to take to the school, or maybe the police. I don’t know what the going sentence is for bullying someone to death. What do you think, Alice? A year? Two? Having been to boarding school, I bet Demi will fit in just fine in a young offenders’ institution. Full of girls like you, eh, Demi? Though I bet they could still teach you a thing or two about bullying.’
    I’m not sure if what he’s saying is true, but I don’t think Demi is either.
    ‘What do you want?’ she demands, and there’s a choking sound in her throat, as though she’s trying not to cry.
    ‘Tell us what you did and why you did it,’ I reply.
    There’s a sound behind me. Two of her friends are still here: Grumpy, and Dopey. The scared looking one has gone already. I wait for them to lash out or defend her, but instead they just stand there, watching.
    ‘Do they know about you?’ I ask Demi, gesturing towards her friends. ‘Do they know what you did? Did they join in?’
    They keep gawping. And then it occurs to me. Perhaps she bullies them too . . .
    ‘I’m not known for my patience,’ says Lewis, cracking his knuckles. He seems to be enjoying his new role as a well-spoken psychopath a little too much, though to me he seems about as scary as a pantomime dame.
    Lewis turns on his iPhone and begins to read: ‘ You’re going to look so gorgeous in your bikini on the beach this summer, aren’t you? And then those bitches will know, the ones who called you fat . Sound familiar?’
    Demi stares straight ahead.
    Dopey takes a step forward. ‘Can I see?’
    Lewis looks slightly nervous at the idea of handing over his precious phone, but I nod. The girl reads. After a while, she hands the phone to the second girl, who reads very slowly, her finger against the text.
    ‘You never said you were sending actual personal messages,’ Dopey says to Demi. ‘You said it was just a laugh. Jokes. A way of making her less smug.’
    ‘It’s a hoax,’ says Demi. ‘They’ve typed the messages themselves.’
    Grumpy is shaking her head. ‘No. Because you were Salli. We all knew that. And we all said you’d gone too far with the stuff on the wall. But this . . .’
    ‘Why her, Demi?’ I ask. ‘Why pick on Triti?’
    Demi says nothing. Maybe she was pretty once, before hate made her eyes go sour and her lips tight.
    Grumpy hands the phone back to Lewis, then slaps her hands together as though she’s trying to remove invisible dirt. ‘It was you.’ She looks at Demi, and I think I see the moment when she realises that she has the power to decide what happens next. Her expression changes to something like triumph. She knows she’s top dog for the first time in her twisted little life.
    She steps right up