Read Online The Secret Place by Tana French - Free Book Online Page A

sobbing, huge disgusting gulps, not caring who heard, begging to come home. Her mother would sigh and tell her how much fun she’d be having any day now, once she made friends to chat with about boys and pop stars and fashion, and Becca would get off the phone stunned all over again by how much worse she felt. So the Court sounded like the one thing to look forward to in the whole horrible world.
    And then she finally got there and it was a crap shopping centre. All the other first-years were practically drooling, and Becca looked up at this windowless nineties lump of grey concrete and wondered whether, if she just curled up on the ground right here and refused to move, they would send her home for being crazy.
    Then the blond girl next to her, Serena or something – Becca had been too busy being wretched for much to stick in her mind – Selena took a long thoughtful look up at the top of the Court and said, ‘There actually is a window, see? I bet if you could find it, you could see half of Dublin.’
    Which it turned out you could. And there it was, spread out below them: the magic world they’d been promised, neat and cosy as storybooks. There was washing billowing on lines and little kids playing swingball in a garden, there was a green park with the brightest red and yellow flowerbeds ever; an old man and an old lady had stopped to chat under a curly wrought-iron lamppost, while their perky-eared dogs wound their leads into a knot. The window was in between a parking pay-station and a huge bin, and adults paying their parking tickets kept giving Becca and Selena suspicious looks and in the end a security guard showed up and threw them out of the Court even though he didn’t seem sure exactly why, but it was a million kinds of worth it.
    Two years on, though, Becca still hates the Court. She hates the way you’re watched every second from every angle, eyes swarming over you like bugs, digging and gnawing, always a clutch of girls checking out your top or a huddle of guys checking out your whatever. No one ever stays still, at the Court, everyone’s constantly twisting and head-flicking, watching for the watchers, trying for the coolest pose. No one ever stays quiet: you have to keep talking or you’ll look like losers, but you can’t have an actual conversation because everyone’s thinking about other stuff. Fifteen minutes at the Court and Becca feels like anyone who touched her would get electrocuted.
    And at least back when they were twelve they just put on their coats and went. This year, everyone gets ready for the Court like they’re getting ready for the Oscars. The Court is where you bring your bewildering new curves and walk and self so people can tell you what they’re worth, and you can’t risk the answer being Nothing zero nothing. You like so totally have to have your hair either straightened to death or else brushed into a careful tangle, and fake tan all over and an inch of foundation on your face and half a pack of smoky eyeshadow around each eye, and supersoft superskinny jeans and Uggs or Converse, because otherwise someone might actually be able to tell you apart from everyone else and obviously that would make you a total loser. Lenie and Jules and Holly are nowhere near that bad, but they still redo their blusher four times and check the mirror from twenty angles, while Becca fidgets springy-footed in the doorway, before they can actually leave. Becca doesn’t wear makeup to the Court because she hates makeup and because the idea of spending half an hour getting ready to sit on a wall in front of a doughnut shop makes her brain short out with stupid.
    She goes because the others do. Why they want to is a total mystery to Becca. They always act like they’re having an amazing time, they’re louder and high-pitched, shoving each other and screaming with laughter at nothing. But Becca knows what they’re like when they’re happy, and that’s not it. Their faces on the way home