Chapter 31

Lin Qiaoqiao was red in the face and furious. She threw her bag on the desk and told them to search it, and said that if they found nothing they could apologise to her.

Ning Shu noticed Xu Qingying and her deskmate look at each other, and there was something in it.

Something in her said this was wrong, and as the form teacher came over to do the search Ning Shu put a hand flat on the bag. "Sir, I don't think we should. It's an invasion of her privacy."

Teachers at a country middle school do not think much about a pupil's privacy. Somebody loses something, you search bags and you search pockets, and there is nothing unusual about it.

If Ning Shu had been inside that world all along she might not have minded it much. But she had come back from another life, and she could not stand that kind of insult to a person. Not to herself, and not to a friend of hers.

But Ning Shu stepping in front of it only made Lin Qiaoqiao look guiltier to the teacher and the class.

Lin Qiaoqiao was proud and could not bear being treated as a thief. She pushed Ning Shu's hand away, opened her own bag and pushed it across to the teacher. "Go on, sir. Search it."

The form teacher put his hand in, and what he brought out was not a watch. It was a fistful of little white paper figures.

The class crowded round.

Ning Shu's brows drew in. The figures were no bigger than a finger and thin as nothing.

How had that many paper figures got into her bag?

"What are these?" The teacher turned them out everywhere, and somebody picked one up and shouted, "There's a name on it. Xu Qingying."

"Not just Xu Qingying. Here's Wang Han. And Zhang Ying."

Sure enough, every one of them had a classmate's name written on it.

The teacher must have thought it strange too. He laid them out one by one, and there were more than twenty, all with the names of girls in the class, and every one of those girls lived in the town and came from money, and every one of them was a friend of Xu Qingying's.

The teacher asked Lin Qiaoqiao, seriously, "What are these things?"

Lin Qiaoqiao was staring at them as well, and she shook her head and went on shaking it. "I don't know. I don't know what they are. I've never seen them before."

A girl said shrilly, "I know what that is. That's witchcraft. Paper figures. It's a curse."

The whole class drew breath at once.

And sure enough, every figure had red crosses drawn on it in different places. Some had a cross on the knee, some on the shoulder, some on the head.

The girl went on. "Wherever the cross is, that's where the person it's cursing will hurt. It's witchcraft."

A girl stepped out and pointed at Lin Qiaoqiao. "What did I ever do to you? Why would you curse me?"

Xu Qingying made a cold sound. "Have you forgotten? She said it herself that day. She said we all look down on her."

"So she's paying us back."

"That's wicked. How could anyone do that? It's horrible."

Lin Qiaoqiao looked at the paper figures and could not take any of it in. "I don't know. These aren't mine. I haven't cursed anybody."

"I don't know. I really don't know."

The form teacher gathered all the figures up and said to Lin Qiaoqiao, "Have your parents come to the school tomorrow."

Lin Qiaoqiao went scarlet with the tears standing in her eyes, and she caught hold of Ning Shu's hand. "You believe me. I didn't do this."

Of course Ning Shu believed her. Lin Qiaoqiao was simple by nature and could never have thought up anything that low.

Xu Qingying, meanwhile, went back to her seat smiling, and Ning Shu said, "Xu Qingying. Aren't you going to look for your watch?"

Only then did Xu Qingying seem to remember the watch at all. She turned round and smacked her own head. "Oh, that's right. Was my watch in her bag?"

Lin Qiaoqiao snatched her bag up and shouted at her, "This is all you. You put this rubbish in my bag and then said you'd lost a watch so you could pin it on me."

"That's a very elaborate theory." Xu Qingying smiled coldly. "Everything needs proof. What proof have you got that I framed you? It looks to me as though you're the one biting back."

"You've gone too far." Lin Qiaoqiao's eyes went red and she started forward to get at her, and Ning Shu caught hold of her. If it came to hands, Xu Qingying would find some other trick, and Lin Qiaoqiao would be the one who came off worst.

That evening on the way home from school Lin Qiaoqiao cried the whole way. Ning Shu said what she could, and none of it did any good.

With Xu Qingying and a pack of friends who liked nothing better than trouble spreading it about, the whole year knew within days.

The class began shutting Lin Qiaoqiao out, the girls especially. Apart from Ning Shu, nobody would speak to her.

Several times, walking with Lin Qiaoqiao, Ning Shu saw Zhou Pingyang coming the other way with a basketball under his arm, looking as though he wanted to say something to her. Every time, one of the boys beside him would say, "Don't. Haven't you heard she cut paper figures to curse people in her class? You'd still talk to her?"

Zhou Pingyang said quietly, "You didn't see it either. Don't make things up."

He walked past the pair of them all the same, and said nothing.

Lin Qiaoqiao's eyes went red, and she turned and ran back to the classroom to wipe them where nobody could see. In the row in front, Xu Qingying watched her and enjoyed it, with a cold curl at the corner of her mouth.

Looking at her, Ning Shu was fairly sure of it. This was Xu Qingying's doing, and she had set Lin Qiaoqiao up on purpose.

And several times Ning Shu saw Xu Qingying walking home with Zhou Pingyang. Lin Qiaoqiao saw it too, and acted as though she had not. Nothing showed in her face, but Ning Shu knew that being branded like that out of nowhere could not sit easily with her.

That night Ning Shu called Yuanzi over and handed her a voice recorder. "Yuanzi, I need you to do something for me."

"Mm, tell me."

"Take this and follow somebody, and record everything she says."

"No trouble!"

Ning Yuanzi took the recorder and went. There are advantages to being a little ghost. They come and go and nobody ordinary can see them, and there is a great deal you can send them to do. That is why so many people keep them.

In the last life, in the entertainment industry, Ning Shu had known plenty of stars who kept little ghosts to work for them.

Yuanzi was her daughter, and Ning Shu did not usually send her on errands. This time she had run out of patience.

Ning Yuanzi might be vague most of the time, but she was neat enough about a job, and in under two days she had what Ning Shu wanted.

The recorder had a whole day of Xu Qingying's talk on it. Ning Shu ran it fast and found her on the phone to her closest friend.

"It doesn't matter what she says now. Nobody's going to believe her."

"Exactly. I only meant to pin a theft on her at first, but thinking about it, that would have let her off lightly. Now everybody's frightened of her and nobody will go near her. Let's see how she gets through school after this. With any luck they'll throw her out of Pingshui Middle School altogether."

"What are you worrying about? Nobody's going to suspect anything. There wasn't a soul in the classroom when I put the paper figures in. Only a ghost could know how it happened."

That stretch alone was enough to clear Lin Qiaoqiao.

Ning Shu went to school the next day, cut out a section of the recording and gave it to the form teacher. He listened to it and his face went very unpleasant.

"Ning Shu. Where did you get this?"

Ning Shu said, "I have my ways. Sir needn't worry about that. The voice on it is Xu Qingying's and there's no getting round it, and you have to give Lin Qiaoqiao her name back."

"I understand. I'll deal with it." The form teacher took the recorder. "I'll have Xu Qingying in and get to the bottom of it."

That afternoon Xu Qingying was called into the office, and her parents were sent for as well. Ning Shu told Lin Qiaoqiao she could sit and wait for them to come and apologise.

Lin Qiaoqiao did not follow, and Ning Shu did not explain.

But days went by, and then a week, and Xu Qingying came to school as usual, and stood about with the other girls at break as usual, laughing at people and showing off her new clothes. Everything as it had been. Nothing in her life had changed at all.

When she looked at Ning Shu there was the faintest trace of mockery at the corner of her eye.

Ning Shu could not sit still for it. She went back to the form teacher's office to ask how the matter stood, and found his manner had changed.

"Ning Shu, instead of finding time to suspect your classmates, you'd do better to put your mind on your work. The end-of-term exams are nearly here."

Ning Shu was close to going off, and she kept her temper. "My work and my friend being framed are two different things. I hope sir won't run them together."

"Now you're lecturing me?" The form teacher's voice went up. "This happened a long time ago and I don't want it dragged up again. It will affect how the class do in their exams."

Ning Shu looked at him and guessed that when Xu Qingying's parents came to the school that afternoon, they had come to some sort of understanding with him, and that was why it had been buried.

The Xu family counted as well off in Pingshui town, and both parents were known people in the local companies. Lin Qiaoqiao's parents farmed, and had nothing behind them.

Ning Shu sat on her anger and put it to him. "Sir says it was a long time ago and going after it now would only hurt the pupils. So is a girl who was framed supposed to carry that name for the rest of her life? Does that sit easily with you?"

"You." The form teacher sat back down in his chair, breathing hard. "I'm telling you this is finished, and finished is finished."

Ning Shu held his eyes and said it one word at a time. "It isn't finished."

The form teacher's breath came heavily. "And what else do you want? What do you imagine you can do?"

"Sir, do you think that because you've taken my recorder I can't prove Xu Qingying did it?"

"This is a country of laws. I haven't even asked you how the contents of that recorder were come by. That's an invasion of privacy in itself, wouldn't you say?"

Ning Shu looked at his face. He had made up his mind to stand behind Xu Qingying.

Ning Shu nodded. "Fine. In that case we'll see about it."

If the open road was shut to her, she would settle it her own way.

And as Ning Shu was leaving, a pupil burst into the office and shouted at the form teacher, "She's jumped! Lin Qiaoqiao's jumped!"