The Boy I Am

by K. L. Kettle

  Romali steps back, her expression switching to concern as she sees my panic. “Jude, the nurses got you changed.”

  My chest is actually on fire; I rub at it to cool it down. “Nurses?” I croak.

  “Guys like you. I guess you’d call them prentice? Anyway, the Chancellor keeps this room for Walker.” Romali shrugs. My heart is still drumming in my ears. “It was the best option. Look, we tried to get you out, but…” When she steps away, that fug of disinfectant and cleaning fluid swells between us. “We had to bring you to the House of Beauty,” Romali says. “You almost died.”

  Everyone Below calls it the infirmary as a joke. Above, they use its proper name, I guess: the House of Beauty.

  “We?” I try to say.

  Romali crosses the wide floor; she puts her hand on my arm and my throat tightens. From the neck down, she’s dressed in a Lice’s uniform. She never told me which house she got into back when she was fourteen. Of course Romali Vor would get into the House of Peace with her mother. I picture her laughing with Officer Aspiner and pull my arm away.

  “Look, there’s something I need you to…” She clutches her throat and rubs it. “I just need something from you then we can get you out. Somehow…”

  She’s never wanted anything from me before.

  A cold wave hits me. I start trying to explain that I have to see the Chancellor but it comes out as a crackle. Madam Vor is about to burst in with Aspiner and a swarm of Lice. She’ll arrest me, pull out my tongue for speaking without permission.

  Romali frowns. “It’s safe here. We can talk,” she says, leaning forwards. “You don’t have to pretend.”

  How do I tell her that I’m not pretending, that I need to see the Chancellor, that I made a deal for your life?

  “Maybe you should rest that apple of yours.” Her eyes are on my neck like I’m a delicate thing that might break.

  I put my hand to my throat, feel the heat, remember taking that step.

  “I’m making it worse, aren’t I? Sorry. Changing the subject now.” She laughs. “So do you like the view?” In this light, she doesn’t seem as sharp as she did at Reserves, or as open as in our appointments. Something in between, more real. “The fog always closes in after the rain.” She’s right beside me now. She knocks on the glass. A dull, deep clonk-clonk. “The glass is thicker than you think. Clever people, the Saints, low-emissivity, self-cleaning solar glass with enhanced thermal insulation.”

  Now it’s my turn to raise my eyebrows. “Sm-ar-t –” I croak out, one syllable at a time – “ass.”

  “You should count yourself lucky they don’t force you boys to learn this stuff.” She’s blushing too, I think. Maybe I’d like the chance to learn, maybe I’d like to tell my brothers, fill up our Collections with all their big words and facts. But I won’t tell her that today.

  “Mum said it’s lasted half a century.” She puts on an epic voice, puffing out her chest. “Architectural triumph, the beauty of the ancient desert, the comfort of the future!” She sniffs. “Not that they lived to see it. You ever wonder if they knew?” My blank face tells all. “Knew what’d happen after they abandoned it, I mean,” she says. “After the Foundations moved in and the Last War…”

  Squinting at the crumbling tops of buildings peeking through the fog cloud below, I can almost make out the city around the Tower. G-dorm’s Collection said it was abandoned years before the war. Beyond that I even think I can see the ancient city, the one from long before, the Melts, thousands of years old. The rain Outside melted the salt stone. Romali watches me trace the world in the glass.

  “The fog clears up for a few hours most nights, you’ll see. That’s when the view gets good. Guess even now it’s sort of beautiful.” She screws up her face. “I’m talking too much, sorry.”

  “No,” I croak. “It is.”

  “The edge of the city’s over there.” She presses herself against the glass. “See the old hospital the Saints built? That’s the edge – after that, it’s desert for hundreds of miles.”

  “Hysterics?” I manage to ask. They’re out there somewhere.

  “They move around. You know, some think there are tribes out there too, descendants of the Saints that survived the centuries, but if they do exist no one’s ever come here. Nice idea, right? We could go and find them, what do you say?”

  Trying to make out shapes beyond the glass hurts. I’m not used to this much light. I close my eyes. The brightness of the sun leaves dots and lines of blue and yellow dancing in the warming red of my lids. Here I am, with a girl, standing in front of the whole world.

  “You’ve really never seen it before, have you?” she says after a while.

  I shake my head.

  “I forgot they don’t let you.”

  “Because it’s beautiful,” I explain. She knows our oath – that we’re not allowed to see beautiful things.

  “Yeah, like a view is going to turn you into some sort of sex-crazed death machine.” Romali swears. “I mean seriously, the things they teach us about you. By the House of Minds’ reckoning, your average guy should be humping the window by now.”

  Planting my hands on the window, I lean into the view like I’m about to lick the glass.

  She punches me on the arm. “Stop it!”

  I look at the deep black roots of her blood-red hair. The curls of sleep in the corner of her eyes. How her whole body laughs when she does. She said she needed something from me. I try to ask what, but it comes out as a scratch.

  “Look, I could get you some paper. It’ll save your voice. They teach you to write down below?”

  Dark-text yes, her letters, no. But she’s out of the door before I can stop her.

  I sink into the bouncing hold of the bed. This must be a dream. With the sheets to my face, I inhale, even though it burns. Reality doesn’t smell this good. It doesn’t have fresh fruit and clean floors and that twist of hope in my chest, sharp like lime.

  I can hear you laughing at me.

  But no. I know this is real. Like the memories from last night of red lights, shouting, the smell of elevator grease and lips on mine and pressure on my chest, the taste of bile. Did she bring me up in the elevator? Was it Romali in the dining hall? It couldn’t have been. Romali Vor’s certainly strong and she’s fast. The idea of her chasing away a pack of Roids makes me smile. I don’t think I’ll give this one a number. It’s too big a feeling. I’ll call it my I’m-alive smile.

  I’m still grinning when a streak of striped, smart suit appears in the doorway. Walker.

  He looks older. His hair greyer, his skin shining with sweat, eyes red-rimmed. He strides over to me in three paces and pulls me to my feet. Holds me tight against his chest like he’ll never let go.

  “Don’t you ever do that to me again,” he says.

  “I can come back later,” says Romali, returning with a glass of water instead of the paper she went for.

  “No, stay,” Walker says. “Jude, you remember Romali?” I try to croak out a yes, but it comes out bitter, deep. “My lady is playing games, pulling you into Swims like that, forcing a win. Until I know why I needed you out of the dorms. Couldn’t have got you out on my own, see. Not without this little firecracker and—”

  Romali interrupts. “Hey, I’m not so little any more and only Vor calls me by my full name,” she tells me. “Call me Ro. When you can talk, of course.” She winks as if we’ve never met before, and my stomach flips as I wonder when she and Walker started working together. “I … I put some aspirin in,” she says as I stare into the bubbling glass she hands me. “It’ll help.”

  The water is warm and fizzes, and tastes of the bottom of a cooking pan.

  “Drink it slow, kid, it’ll hurt,” Walker says. I glug it down in one go, to show him I can. But he’s right – it hurts, so now I’m coughing, and he’s laughing and ruffling my hair like I’m a child.

  “Told you,” Walker says to Ro. “Stubborn. It’ll take more than a few jealous jocks to take out our Jude. Rig
ht?” He throws a few fake air punches.

  “Wally, this is serious.” Ro sighs, sitting on the bed. She’s so familiar with him, not following protocol, not ladylike. She pulls up her feet and tucks them under her body. She explains fast that she came to get me out of the dorms but the Hysterics wouldn’t come, wouldn’t risk helping, not now. So Walker knows she’s working with the Hysterics? He doesn’t even blink. She kicks off her heavy police boots. “Since I’d had my peace training and I’ve still got the uniform.”

  “You’re not—”

  “In the House of Peace? Quit last year. Anyway, I thought maybe I could get you Outside but I couldn’t. Not after you—”

  “Stop,” I interrupt. I don’t want Walker to know I jumped.

  She pauses, realizing. “Yeah, so.” She shrugs. “Like I said. You needed a doctor, I knew Walker’s room would be free so … that’s that.”

  Ro starts to take off the police jacket, revealing a light top underneath, shoulders, freckles, so little effort or care for her skin. I try not to stare as she gets up and moves round me to speak to Walker, her arms folded. “I did my part. You said you’d ask him – that it’d be better coming from you.”

  Walker shakes his head. “He can barely talk.”

  “Well, that’s no use. I’ll get that paper,” she says, disappearing at speed.

  Walker is staring at me.

  “What?” I croak and try to stand up straight.

  “I knew she’d like you.” He smiles, his best proud smile. It makes me angry. What’s he got to be proud of me for?

  “Ask me then,” I tell him and his grin drops. It feels good, somehow, to know I did that.

  Walker looks away. “They still teach you about families down there, right?”

  Of course, I want to tell him. We get lessons, not a lot, only what’s safe to teach us. And one word they spend a lot of time explaining is family. The House Fathers show us drawings of happy women and their good wards working hard to support the perfect family. The men are always smiling, holding plates of food, dusters, or looking with smouldering, half-closed eyes at their guardians.

  Walker tries to explain. “You know Ro is the last daughter of the Dunn family?” he says. I nod.

  Walker takes a deep breath. “Lorraine Dunn – everyone calls her the Gardener. She was last seen before Reserves, heading up to see the Chancellor.”

  “I know the Gardener was Ro’s aunt,” I interrupt, wanting him to get to the point, every part of me cold as I remember the Gardener’s body, how her blood bloomed.

  “Was?” Ro says, appearing in the doorway, paper and pencil in her hand. She’s staring at me, her mouth open, green eyes blazing with horror. “What do you mean ‘was’?”

  I need air. “The Chanc—” I choke on the word, lean on my thighs to help suck air down my swollen throat.

  “Aunt Lorri went up to confront the Chancellor about the vote,” she says. “When I read the news, I hoped she’d left, that she got out herself with the Hysterics, but she never did.”

  I can’t breathe. I’m on that dining-room chair again, the air tight round my throat.

  “Romali, give him space. Let him rest,” Walker says.

  “He owes me,” Ro snaps. “She was there, wasn’t she, at the Chancellor’s, my aunt?”

  “I’m not… I—”

  “You must have seen her. You don’t have to protect the Chancellor.”

  “No one’d believe me—”

  “Believe what?”

  Concentrate on my breathing. “It’d be a mercy, she said.”

  Ro looks at Walker then at me. Searching my face for a moment. She shakes her head. “No, not—”

  I interrupt. “The Chancellor. She…”

  Tell her, you say.

  “She shot…” Every breath is like swallowing stone.

  Ro’s green eyes grow wide.

  “She shot her.”

  Ro freezes. Her body goes tense and her green eyes widen.

  “I couldn’t help.”

  Liar.

  “In front of you?” Walker asks.

  “Tried. I…” I just have to explain. “I tried to help, I…”

  No, you didn’t.

  Walker takes my shoulders. “She killed her in front of you?”

  I nod. Ro is silent.

  Walker starts talking to himself about what he could have done to prevent it; maybe he could have sent a message, warned Lorri, something. He wouldn’t have let me go up there if he’d known.

  All I know is that he believes me.

  “Fog it. She has to go,” Ro says, jaw set.

  Walker reaches out to her. “Please. I can fix this.”

  Ro pushes his hands away. “You said that last year!” she snarls. “You promised!”

  “Please, Romali,” Walker begs.

  “She wants to get rid of my whole family, Walker! Sending Mum into the desert, now Lorri, murdered? My family kept High House going for hundreds of years and she’s almost wiped us out.” She slams her fist against the wall. “Almost every woman in this place will vote her way. The ones who don’t like her are afraid, and the ones who aren’t afraid are in her pocket, and the rest don’t even think their vote counts!”

  There’s a look in her eye like she’s going to go and strangle the Chancellor right now. And I’m certain she’ll do it too.

  “Ro, you need to keep your nose clean. Once she’s gone, you could be Chancellor. Let someone else risk it.”

  “You think I want to be Chancellor? Why, because of my family?” Ro is shorter than Walker but when she stands up to him he recoils. “There’s a reason Mum left when the Chancellor asked. There’s a whole world out there!” Her palm hits the glass and I swear it shakes.

  “Jude, I’m sorry,” Walker apologizes. “A gentleman shouldn’t have to listen to scandal and—”

  Ro laughs. “He can deal with it! He can deal with anything! After last night – you didn’t see. He… Oh, screw the both of you. I’m going to do it my way! She can’t hide up in the Pent House forever.”

  Ro turns, whipping her red ropes of hair as she heads for the door. “If you can’t kill her, see if I don’t!”

  “You’re not going to the ball,” Walker insists, after getting me into bed.

  I’ve heard the stories about boys not allowed to go to the ball. Our fairy godfathers fix it. I tell Walker he’s doing a terrible job living up to the fairy tales.

  I reckon the only time Romali will be able to get to the Chancellor is at the ball and that maybe we should help her. Walker disagrees. “We’re done. I made a mistake. I can keep you safe here. Let Ro get herself killed. Stupid, headstrong girl.”

  “What about Vik?”

  “What about him?” Walker’s eyes move from mine. “You need to forget about him. He’s gone. It’s not safe—”

  “I’m not made of glass!” I shout, wheezing out every drop of anger. The words are coming easier now, if deeper and scratchier than before. Anger boiling over, hot and ungentlemanly, and I don’t care, because it feels good. It all comes out: what happened the night of Reserves, the deal, the garden, what the Chancellor wanted me to do.

  He puts his head in his hands. “Jude, my boy. She’s playing with you.” He pours a sour-smelling sort of drink from the flask in his pocket as I catch my breath. “You have to believe me. Do you think I would have risked sending anyone to kill her if I knew another way? You have such promise… I had no choice.”

  “No.” I won’t let him take you away again.

  “The Chancellor must have seen how Romali reacted to you onstage. Exposing herself like that, how she’d risk her honour and your safety to keep you from her. You think she doesn’t know Romali’s been visiting you all year?”

  “You knew?”

  “I arranged it. You needed something to hope for. Something good. Besides, there was nothing better to get the Chancellor interested in you than making it seem as if Romali Vor wanted you too.”

  He sits down on the edge
of the bed, rubbing at the nape of his neck. Everything about him is tired.

  “All I know is Vik’s alive,” I say. “And you gave up on him.”

  Walker sighs and massages the muscles of his neck. “I never said he was dead, kid.”

  “No, I remember you said…” Do I? “You said you couldn’t help! After the Lice took him, you said you couldn’t help. That … that … that he was gone.”

  “Gone,” Walker says. “Not dead.”

  “What the fog does that mean?”

  “Language! I’ve told you about that temper.”

  “You wanted to USE my temper. She’ll kill him like she killed the Gardener. Don’t you care?”

  Walker locks his blue eyes firmly on mine. “There are worse things than death,” he says. “Death really is a mercy.”

  The Chancellor said that too. I bite my cheeks; take a deep breath; slow my heart.

  “Right now you need to get well,” Walker says, and for the first time his face relaxes into something unpractised, honest. “Trust me, if Vik’s alive, I’ll find him, and then you’ll understand.”

  The cooks’ bullying hadn’t let up since your birthday. No matter how good you tried to be, they had you doing all the worst jobs. Scratches up your arms from the rats they made you catch. They always picked on you the most. I tried to help, get myself on the same duties as you. My hands were sore from a day bleaching plates, red from the chemicals, but it didn’t stop me chewing the dead, soap-tasting skin around my nails as we waited for our auditions.

  Punishments wouldn’t stop you trying to get into the House of Boys. We were outside the head cook’s office for hours waiting to audition. Scowling prentice pushed by, the clatter of plates and shouts around us, swearing at us to shift out of the way.

  There were four of us who’d put ourselves up to audition: you, me, Berna and Sal. For Berna, it was his third try for the House of Boys and he was turning pale as if he was going to heave. Sal had been moved to the kitchens not that long ago from maintenance. He wanted a day off and was enjoying the opportunity to sleep, spread out on the bench. You had your head in your hands and shrank into the corner, pulling your collar up over your nose to avoid stares from the passing prentice who’d not yet seen your scars.