by K. L. Kettle
“Aw, a love note from Mr Walker?” Aye-Aye laughs.
It’s not from Walker. It’s from you. I know. I watched you teach yourself to fold paper this way. My hands shake as I unfold it.
The other boys in red shorts laugh and make kissing noises as Aye-Aye barks and humps the air. “Maybe after the Chancellor’s done with you, Squinty, Mr Walker will give you a sympathy bone?”
No time to think. I crunch up the paper in my fist. Bite down hard and throw my knuckles firmly into Aye-Aye’s nose.
Tonight. Onstage, your note said. I didn’t have time to think. The Chancellor made you send the note. I had to get onstage.
But she wants Romali. How am I going to deliver what she wants?
Excitable squealing drills through the heavy curtains until the audience is hushed by the shadows of Walker and Madam Glassey, Chief of Merit, spinning their welcome speeches on the other side. Aye-Aye is in the wings, holding wads of paper to his bleeding nose.
The other red-shorts stare at me. Taking a boy’s place in Swims isn’t going to win me any points with my brothers. Rod, in the green group ahead of me, widens his eyes, mouths, What the fog? at me. I shake the ache from my swelling knuckles. I’m doing it for you, I remind myself. Maybe Romali is in the audience so that no one can tie her to the Hysterics when they get to the dorms. I’m suddenly cold and very aware of how little I’m wearing.
Distorted laughter from the audience. More applause.
The make-up Walker pasted over the bruises on my stomach smears when I drag my thumb over it. The chalk paint grinds between my fingers as it mixes muddily in the sweat of my palm. I can feel my heart pounding in my knuckles, in the bruises.
Onstage.
Did she make you send the note? Or does she just want me to think it’s from you? She plays with her food, Walker said. Is this a game to her? Maybe she already has Romali, without my help. Maybe she’ll never let you go.
The curtains fly apart. Shadows move slower than they should against the searing light. My brothers dancing. The music is wild and happy but it drags through my head like wet cloth.
You’re late, you say, as clear as if you’re in the front row. Shit!
The world speeds up as my brothers explode forwards in a flood of clapping and cheering and flesh.
My mind’s playing tricks. In the blue worklight of backstage, I think I see you in the wings. Tanned to the max, just like the last time I saw you, except you’re missing the scars on your face and sporting this big come-on-you-can-do-better smile, number twenty-three, rolling your eyes as if I’m making an idiot out of myself. I’m imagining it, I have to be.
Smile, said Walker. So I smile.
What beat is this?
Listen for the lyrics.
It all sounds a mess!
Watching the feet of the boy in front of me is all that saves me from complete failure. Slide to the left. Clap, clap. Slide to the right. Clap, clap. Bounce and turn. Up on toes. Turn.
Everything is clearer now. All I can think is you’re alive: that note had to be from you!
First the blue shorts take the front of the stage, then the yellow, the green, then it’s us. The boys walk round the circling catwalk as Walker and Madam Glassey read out their measurements.
What did the Chancellor do to you to get you to write that note?
The boys in my group are posing like crazy: lats, quads, glutes. They let the masked women in the audience reach out from the dark and touch their feet, grab their hands. There’s a bit more crotch-thrusting than in Walker’s choreography.
When my beat comes, I step up to do my turn at the front. Try not to fidget, scratch or mess with myself. Don’t think about what they’re looking at. It’s not me. Not really. It’s not me, only an idea of what they might make of me.
Did she hurt you?
We’re meant to move fast round the podium and only pause at the judges’ table. Maybe I could say something then, something to accuse Romali? I search the box above for the Chancellor.
I should be worried about you so why can’t I stop remembering the Gardener, her face swollen, her voice shouting.
You don’t have to do this, she begged.
My head is still swimming, bruised from the fight; everything seems slow. My brothers, dancing around, half dressed for the hungry crowd. Rod’s desperate for the discount, for their merits. Grinning and twisting and trying so hard. He’s right. I didn’t earn my place on the stage, not like him. I’ve seen how he earned the spot: eat, throw up, eat, throw up, pushing himself at the gym until he can’t move any more.
He’s not the only one. I’ve counted three new noses among the dancers, two with freshly sculpted abs from the infirmary – paid for by women in the audience, probably excited to show off their prizes to their friends. Not a hair in sight either, except on their heads. Aye-Aye and some others popping the pills their favours feed them like sweets. Fighting so hard for their future. For a life Above. We tell stories of the mines and how terrifying they are but is it really worth this?
You wanted a future, that’s all. You wanted it so much. How did Walker get you to try to kill the Chancellor? Did he promise you freedom? Power? Did you try to say no? The next Chancellor could be worse. All I want to do is find Walker and ask him why. Why now, why her, what if? I never asked before. I had my reasons; they were enough. You were dead. But now…
You don’t have to do this!
I know. There’s got to be another way.
When I reach the judging table, my muscles are twitching with all those hours spent practising podium poses with the House Fathers.
You don’t have to! the voice yells.
So what the Saints am I meant to do? Give the Chancellor Romali, or another name? Stay and save you, or escape and … and what if she never lets you go anyway? Every part of me wants to collapse into a ball, but I can’t. I have to keep moving, surviving.
From the edge of the stage, I can see their masks. The Chancellor’s not here, her box is empty, but as I sway someone else is in the crowd. Green-faced, silent among the sea of empty mouths, eyes, making all the noise in the world behind porcelain. Her skin loose on her face. Madam Dunn, the Gardener, waits among the mass, cloudy-eyed and watching me, mouthing, gasping for life while her peers whoop and whistle and cheer. I blink and the swelling around my eyes throbs.
I’m not moving.
There’s that noise, that ache in my head, and it’s fused me to the spot.
I could give the Chancellor what she wants right now. But then what next? She’s messing with me, I know. She’s not even here. What if, instead, I show her I can play too. For one moment, even if it never happens again, maybe I could play by my own rules. Buy more time for us both?
Behind me, on the stage, the rest of the red-shorts stop dancing too; they stop clapping to the music. I’m still at the judges’ table, beneath the dust burning on the lights above. My stomach aches with bruises that I want them to see. I push my sweating palm through the paint and let the purple-blue-yellow-green blotches bleed through. Dragging my arm across to wipe my lips, show the split Vinnie made. Pulling at my hot, swollen eye. I straighten up with pride. My heart thuds in a slow, distant drum.
There’s confusion onstage behind me.
Rodders is whispering, “Jude! Jude!”
Madam Glassey, at the end of the row of judges, squirms in her chair until it squeaks. Her golden mask looks plastic in this light. The skinny one in the blue mask rifles through her notes. The oldest in the red mask blinks fast when I look her in the eye.
And everything else is quiet.
And no one is standing up to stop me.
Now I move. Now I walk. Let the theatre echo with the sound of my bare feet creaking on the stage as I return to my mark. Walker will be furious but I don’t care.
When the sweeping light stops, the music slows. Deep notes rumble in my stomach as Walker brings the results to the stage. He encourages the audience to cheer, thanks us for our performance and
catches every single eye but mine.
“Ladies and debutantes, with a resounding six point zero across the board…” Even I can tell he’s trying not to stutter through his speech. He coughs. “Jude Grant.”
I won?
How could I have actually won?
The flowers the masked judges bring me are yellow and green. They must’ve been pulled up from the garden. Is the Chancellor sending me a message? She wanted me onstage to win. Why?
Madam Glassey brings the crown from the wings on a plush cushion. A golden ring glinting in the stage lights. Walker rests his hand on my shoulder and for a single moment of terror I wonder if he’s going to hit me but there’s something else behind the mask of his face, a little tic in the corner of his right eye. He’s worried.
“A few words?” Madam Glassey offers, pushing a microphone towards me. I stutter. Tonight. Onstage, your note said. The Chancellor fixed the results; what does she want me to do? Do I tell them all Romali has been helping the Hysterics? But they won’t believe me, right? Maybe she’s changed her mind and I could just name someone else.
She made sure I’d win so I’d have this moment. Why? Just so I could look like an idiot? Maybe she’s just playing with me.
“I…” I look around, at my stunned brothers, at Rod cheering. I thought he’d be upset but he seems happy for me.
I can take control of this moment. I could do anything right now.
“I … I want to thank Ms Vor for her special support at Reserves.” The audience laughs, a second before catching themselves. “And the Chancellor, of course, for her faith that I will live up to my potential.” Will it be enough? Will she understand, wait for me to find a way? If I’m going to give anything to the Chancellor, it’ll be on my terms. “And I … I want to pass the discount to my … my brother Rod … er, Jarod Katz,” I garble into the mic. Applause rings in my ears; red-coloured paper flutters from the rafters. If you were here, you’d be stuffing handfuls of it into your socks. You’ll be safe, right? She wants Romali badly enough to keep you alive until I deliver. She has to.
Wrapped in warm dressing gowns, Rod helps me push through the doors to the dorm. At first I think I’m imagining my brothers singing my name, arm in arm, belting out a song loud and proud. But this is real. If it was a dream, they’d be in tune. It hurts when they crowd round me. If their cheers didn’t feel so good, I’d have told them to shut up.
I spend my life smiling. Right now I actually want to.
Stink leads the cheers. “You’re Swimwear King! Be thee forever crowned, he of the spectacular package! All hail!”
“Hail!” they cry and drum their feet. Bang their cups against the metal of our bunks.
Rodders bows in a huge and over-the-top way, and the others copy. Some keep a straight face for longer than I’d expect, before the circle of bowing boys collapses into snorts and guffaws and whispers.
“Jai says we can stay up past lights out, to celebrate,” Stink announces.
“Who knew? Jai has a heart!” I scratch at my bruises as I stumble through my brothers towards the comfort of my bunk. Some of the boys from my dorm have left me things to celebrate my win. Even boys from the other dorms have dropped stuff off, real prizes, the best tradables. Things from Outside – stones and little bottles of brown dust called ‘sand’, strange oils. Things from Above – soaps and perfume, fabric and make-up. I check my old stuff is safe before taking the folded note out from the belt of my shorts and tucking it away. Romali never came, but I’ve bought some time, I hope, and even if the Chancellor is trying to drive me mad at least I know you’re alive. For now.
I can’t get Stink to shut up. As I tidy my bunk, change into my dorm clothes and start to wipe away Walker’s make-up, he’s on a roll, telling stories about how he worked as a prentice in Madam Bocharov’s Agro tunnels, pulling potatoes. Apparently it’s an art. “That was till they started burning the crops,” he says.
“Who? The farmers?” I ask, trying not to remember my own failed reserve with Madam Bocharov last year.
“No, the mad ones, the Hysterics. They sent their hordes.”
I wondered how long it would be until the stories about the Hysterics would start. To some boys the Hysterics are heroes and will save us all. They’re sent to calm and soothe them when they cry. To others they are witches, or creatures who eat boys whole. To the Lice they’re terrorists. To me? I’m not sure anything could really be all of those things.
“The Hysterics broke into the tunnels, set the lot on fire—”
“You actually saw it?” I interrupt.
“Well, I’d left by then, but that’s why there were shortages, they say. Bocharov had every boy in the tunnels sent to the mines after the fires, on account of how the Hysterics used the tunnels. She said the Head Prentice, Eli—”
“Eli Han? Isn’t he one of the rebels on the mines deadlist from last month?” The next Eli is going to have it tough – they’ll have upped his debt for that.”
“He was in league with the Hysterics before that. Madam Bocharov had him…”
“Don’t tell me!” I cringe, imagining the things Bocharov might have done to me last year had she not been stinking drunk.
“She scarecrowed him, they say – took one of his legs! I’d earned enough new merits to interview for the House of Boys, seemed safest to get out of there.”
The hum of the lights dies. The whole dorm groans as everything goes red. “Another blackout,” grumbles John.
“Won’t last long,” I tell him.
But the lights are still burning red after mid-dark. By then, half the dorm are snoring in their bunks, while the rest are still up, telling tales about the mythical swimming pool somewhere high above us.
My eyes are tiring but I have a plan. When the boys are asleep, I’m going to sneak out of J-dorm. I’m going to walk straight up to the Lice that guard the elevator doors and tell them the Chancellor wants to see me. Can hardly keep awake, but I need to get to the Chancellor before she gets to me.
“Your turn for a story, Swimmer King,” says Rodders, propelling a pair of pants at me via the elastic. He’s still made up that I gave him the discount.
“How about the one about the boy who was really tired and wanted to go to sleep but was ambushed by a crowd of mad prats who tortured him all dark-hours with terrible stories? So he cursed them to Hysteria and they all woke up the next morning turned into goats,” I joke.
“Heard it,” Stink laughs and everyone joins in.
“Come on!” Someone chucks a sock. “You know the one we want.”
“Fine. OK.” I stretch out my fingers, crick my aching neck. They lean forwards and I begin.
“The kitchen tunnels are stinking, damp and steamy, a dozen floors beneath the dorms. They spread under the Tower in rat runs. One year the cooks brought in a glut of piglets from the House of Life. They took two kitchen boys to the dog pens to help ‘make room’ for the new meat. We kept dogs to eat the trash, you see? Pigs eat rubbish too, the cooks told us, and taste better to eat when they’re grown. A necessity. Dogs were an affectionate luxury, Cook said. They’d been sent their orders, no room in the Tower for luxuries and they needed two boys to help dispose of the dogs since they were too busy. So who did they send? Well, we’d been on pen-cleaning duty for weeks so it was yours truly and my best friend, with two large hammers.
“We took the darkest stairs down to the darkest room. And there were the dogs, half blind without light but they knew our smell, and wagged their tails when we arrived. Smacked their fat black gums. Bouncing on their hind legs for us to give them a good rub behind the ears. Now I won’t lie, we argued. See, Cook said one of us should hold the dogs still and the other, whoever was stronger, should … you know.”
Too right, we argued, you say.
“Finally it was settled. I’d hold. He’d… Well, so we coax the smallest out of the pen and he’s my favourite, see, always happy to see me. We called him Switch because he had different coloured eyes, right?
And I won’t lie, I don’t think I’ve ever felt the way I did that day. I said my goodbyes, I held him tight, let him nuzzle me half to death and I rubbed his belly and said, like we’d trained them, ‘Stay!’
“Brothers, there never was a more obedient animal, I swear it. He looked at me with such trust, such hope for a treat. I held his gaze, braced myself, looked up to give my friend the nod and…
“He’d gone. Gone out of the door, left it open. Next thing I hear his voice saying…” I point into the darkness.
“Open the pen!” Stink hollers from halfway down the dorm where he had snuck during the telling of the tale. I’ve told this story a few times; it’s well rehearsed now.
“Then…”
Stink’s sharp whistle pierces the dorm so loudly every boy jolts upright.
We all laugh.
“And OUT they follow, every dog! Switch and Bluey and Shag and, well, you don’t need all their names, but there were twenty of them. Barking and chomping and running with glee, out into the kitchens, out into the halls, out into the tunnels and out, out until no one ever heard from a dog in the Tower again. Some say, to this day, if you put your ears to the walls, you can hear them Outside, howling at the moon.”
The applause for that story is always my favourite. It rings in my ears as my brothers crawl into their bunks, as I fake sleep and wait, wait for the snores so I can save you. You’ll be safe by auction. You’ll see.
That’s not what happened, you say. The story is still going round in my head. The truth of it. You folded, creased up in the corner and cried. And then when the dogs turned on you…
I know.
So I had to…
I know.
All of them.
I know.
You took my face.
The cooks came before the attack finished and there’s not much I remember after you killed the first animal, but your scars were deep from the dogs that tried to stop you. The cooks stitched you up but what handsomeness you had was gone. You’d have to work hard to get a buyer if you ever got into the House of Boys.