Free Close Your Pretty Eyes by Sally Nicholls

Normally it was other people’s job to look after me, and normally they were rubbish at it. I was great at looking after Harriet. I don’t think she was always very happy. She was happy at home, but I don’t think she liked school very much. She had these two best friends, who were sort of best friends with each other really and let her tag along when it suited them, and then told her to get lost when it didn’t. Whenever they had to pick partners or someone to sit next to, they picked each other, and they had all these secrets and jokes they didn’t let Harriet in on.
    â€œWhy d’you hang around with those losers?” I said, and she looked sort of unhappy and mumbled, They’re my friends . Huh.
    One day, when I’d been living with Jim for about two months, I was playing football at lunchtime, and I saw Harriet and these two girls. They had one of Harriet’s shoes, and they were playing Piggy-in-the-middle with it, chucking it to each other while Harriet ran between them going, “That’s mine! Give it back!”
    The girls were laughing like it was a game, but Harriet was almost crying. The tarmac was all cold and wet and covered in mud. Piggy-in-the-middle is a pretty rubbish game for piggy, and Harriet was hopping about on one foot, trying not to get her sock wet, so you could see she was probably never going to get the shoe back anyway.
    No one else seemed to care. Not the teachers, not anyone. I marched over to the biggest kid, and yanked the shoe out of her hands.
    â€œThat’s Harriet’s!” I said. “Why didn’t you give it back when she asked you to?”
    â€œIt’s only a game!” the kid said, all innocent. “We’re just having some fun!”
    â€œIt wasn’t fun for Harriet ,” I said. I gave Harriet her shoe. “She’s supposed to be your friend!”
    The girl looked kind of embarrassed and defensive at the same time. If someone had told me off like that, I’d have told them to butt out, but this kid was only about eight.
    â€œIt’s only a game. . .” she said again, but she sounded a bit doubtful.
    â€œYou were being horrible,” I told her. “Be nice to Harriet. Or else!”
    After that, I used to keep an eye out for Harriet at school. If the other girls were being mean to her, I’d go over and make sure they stopped. Sometimes Harriet would run and find me at breaktime.
    â€œOlivia! Come and play!” she’d say, and sometimes I would and sometimes I wouldn’t. It all depended how I felt.
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    It was Harriet who told me about Amelia Dyer’s ghost. I still didn’t like the picture of Amelia on the staircase . I thought about breaking her, or hiding her, but the wall looked even creepier when I took the picture down. Likeshe was still there somehow, only now I didn’t know where she was. I worried she was maybe wandering around the house, like that time I heard footsteps on the stairs with no one in them, and maybe that was her, haunting me. I put it back, quick.
    â€œShe’s one creepy lady,” I told Daniel and Harriet.
    â€œShe haunts the house,” said Harriet. “She kills people.”
    â€œShe doesn’t kill people,” said Daniel uneasily. “Not . . . exactly.”
    â€œHow could a ghost kill someone?” I said. “Ghosts just walk through stuff. They couldn’t even pick a knife up.”
    â€œStupid! She doesn’t kill people,” said Harriet. “She scares them so hard they just die . And then she possesses them and makes them do what she wants. They go on rampages .”
    Harriet said “rampages” in the same voice other little kids use to say “ice cream” or “Disneyland”. Violet used to go on rampages. She never killed anyone, at least not while I lived with her, but it wasn’t much like Disneyland.
    â€œHow can she possess you after