Free Fragile Lives by Jane A. Adams

puzzle into place while everyone else was just scrabbling about trying to see what the picture on the box was. What if she’d heard the staff talking just like he had on his first night? And, unlike the other kids in Hill House, Ursula actually watched the news when she got the chance and read the papers. Even more damning, there was no way she could have missed out on all the gossip going round the school.
    â€˜Don’t worry. She’s all right,’ George told him. ‘Look, I’ll see you tomorrow.’
    He stood and watched as Paul got on the bus, half wishing he could join him.
    â€˜Better get moving,’ Ursula said. ‘Just in case they’re on time for once.’
    â€˜That ever happen?’
    She shrugged. ‘Sometimes. Brandon was talking about you today. I told him to piss off.’
    George sighed. ‘What was he saying?’
    â€˜That you fancied me.’ Ursula was derisive. ‘And that … that it wasn’t right we were sharing a place with someone like you.’
    George’s heart skipped. ‘Like me? What’s like me?’
    Ursula gnawed at her lower lip, momentarily indecisive. ‘He said you had something to do with killing some old lady.’
    â€˜Well, I never!’ George was furious. ‘We broke in the place, we were stupid and … and wrong but we never.’
    Ursula stopped and laid a hand on George’s arm. ‘I know you didn’t,’ she said. ‘Like I said, I told him to piss off.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘I don’t like to finish a sentence with a preposition, but sometimes you just have to.’
    â€˜A what?’ She moved on again and George followed a little reluctantly. ‘He won’t take no notice of you.’
    â€˜Course he won’t but your friend the policeman could tell him the same thing and he’d take no notice. He wants to believe you did it, they all do.’
    George was mystified. ‘Why?’
    â€˜Because,’ Ursula said, and it was obvious to George she had given this a lot of thought, ‘because every single one of them has screwed up some way or another and thinking you might have done something like that, it makes them feel better about what it is they’ve done or what they are.’
    â€˜What? I don’t get it?’
    Ursula shrugged.
    â€˜What’s Brandon done, anyway?’
    She shrugged again. ‘You want to know about someone you have to ask
them
,’ she said. ‘I don’t tell.’
    â€˜So, what have
you
done then? What do you need to feel better about?’ He regretted the questions as soon as they were out.
    She glared at him. ‘If I needed
you
to be guilty for
me
to feel better, you think I’d have decided to look out for you?’
    George was furious. ‘I don’t need no looking after.’
    They had reached the place where they met the minibus. Brandon was already there, Jill and Caroline stood close by, discussing shoes they were looking at in a shop window. Grace trundled up a moment later, Richard being the only missing one. George’s raised voice had them all staring in his direction.
    He stopped dead a few yards from the others and stared down at his feet, wishing himself anywhere but where he was.
    â€˜Had an ickle tiff, have we?’ Brandon said.
    Grace giggled, the high-pitched laugh very much at odds with the heavy frame it issued from. The other girls turned pointedly away, focusing in on themselves as they always did and Ursula dropped her bag down at her feet and said nothing, standing beside George whether he wanted her to or not. George was torn between fury that she should think he needed a girl to look after him, never mind say it out loud, and profound gratitude that her presence meant that they were still friends.
    He wanted so badly to go home; if only he could figure out where home was.

Six
    â€˜Y oung George phoned to thank me for the binoculars,’ Rina