She was the dead girl walking.
No, don’t be ridiculous. It wasn’t even on her drive, it was on a public street. This could have been left for anyone, by anyone. And why was she listening to her instincts anyway? They put blood on her hands and a gun in her heart and danger in shadows when there was nothing there. But part of her felt she shouldn’t dismiss it either, torn in two, between Stanley and Charlie, between having a stalker and inventing one herself. Pip struggled with the strap on her arm, releasing her phone. She straightened up to take a photo of the words, a sliver of her trainers at the bottom of the frame. Evidence, just in case. She didn’t have one of the chalk figures; they’d been gone by the time she finished her shower the other day, wiped away by the wheels of her dad’s car. But she had a photo now, another data point for the spreadsheet. Just in case. Data was clean and it didn’t take sides. And if this really were a message for her, this would be assigned a higher number, an eight maybe a nine; it could even be considered a direct threat.
And with that, Pip felt closer to this unknown person who might or might not exist, felt she understood them a little better. They agreed on something: disappear meant dead. At least they had cleared that up.
Ahead, she saw a car turning into her drive. Ravi. Her other cornerstone. Pip stepped over the chalk words and hurried along the pavement. Step after step towards home, and she couldn’t help being what the words wanted her to be, the dead girl walking. But if she sped up, she would be running instead.
‘Oh, hello!’ Ravi’s voice found her as she turned on to the drive, lowering her headphones to her neck. He climbed out of his car. ‘Look who it is: my sporty girlfriend!’ He smiled and flexed his arms, chanting sports, sports, sports until she reached him. ‘You OK?’ he asked, running his hand around her waist. ‘Good run?’
‘Um, well, I saw Max Hastings again. So… no.’
Ravi gritted his teeth. ‘Another run-in? He’s still alive, I presume,’ he said, trying to lighten the mood.
‘Only just,’ Pip shrugged, afraid that Ravi could see into her head, see all those violent things that swirled inside it. But he should be able to see in there; he was the person who knew her best. And if he loved her, then she couldn’t be all bad. Right?
‘Hey, what’s up?’ he said. Oh no, he could definitely tell. But that was good, she reminded herself, she shouldn’t keep secrets from him. He was her person. Except those secrets she was most ashamed of, the ones that lived in the second drawer down in her desk.
‘Er, this was on my route, just down the road.’ She pulled up the photo on her phone and held it out to Ravi. ‘Someone wrote that on the pavement in chalk.’
‘Dead Girl Walking,’ he muttered, and hearing it in someone else’s voice changed the meaning somehow. Made her see it differently. Proof that it did exist outside of her own head. ‘Do you think this was for you? Connected to the pigeons?’ he asked.
‘It was on my running route, right after the point where I normally start walking to cool down before home,’ she said. ‘If someone’s been watching me, they would know that.’
Why would someone be watching her, though? It sounded more ridiculous when she said it out loud.
Ravi shook his head. ‘OK, I really don’t like this.’
‘It’s fine, sorry, it’s probably nothing to do with me,’ Pip said. ‘Just being stupid.’
‘No, you’re not,’ he said, voice hardening. ‘OK, fine, we don’t know for sure if you have a stalker or not, but this tips it for me. I mean it now, and I know what you’re going to say, but I think you should go to the police.’
‘Wh—And they’ll do what, Ravi? Nothing, as usual.’ She could feel the anger spiking again. No, not with him, control yourself. She breathed and swallowed it down. ‘Especially when I don’t even know myself.’
‘If this is the same person emailing you, the same one who left the chalk and the pigeons, then this person is threatening you,’ he said, widening his eyes in the way that told her he was serious. ‘They might be dangerous.’ He paused. ‘It might be Max.’ Another pause. ‘Or Charlie Green.’
It wasn’t Charlie, could never be Charlie. But Pip had thought of Max, his face flashing into her mind when she’d first read the words. Who else would know her running route so well? And if Max hated her as much as she hated him, well then…
‘I know,’ she said. ‘But maybe they aren’t connected, and if they are it might just be someone messing with me.’ Her instincts told her that wasn’t true, even as she said it, she only wanted to take the worry out of his eyes, bring back the smile. And she didn’t want to go back to that police station; anything but that.