“They don’t,” he interrupted.
I clamped my mouth shut and glared at him. I was seeing a different Daniel tonight. There were so many sides to him: the Daniel who was never still, the talented artist, the tortured soul who had seen too much, the vulnerable orphan and now the Daniel who was involved in a dangerous rebel group. As he spoke about the Resistance he seemed to grow up. There was an authority about him that I had never noticed before.
“Do you actually want me to be part of the Resistance? Is this some way for you to get in and fight?” he said. “Because that would be ridiculous. It isn’t a joke, Mina. It’s serious.”
“My mum died because of the Resistance. Don’t patronise me,” I snapped. My face flushed and my fingers tingled. A glass on Angela’s bedside table wobbled.
Daniel’s eyes softened. “I’m sorry. It’s just you seem really keen on this whole idea, and… I don’t want to tell you what I know and then you end up getting hurt.”
“Isn’t that my decision?” I replied. I raised my eyebrows and held his eye contact, challenging him to respond. Daniel ran his fingers through his hair and looked away.
“If Daniel doesn’t want to tell us about it, then he shouldn’t have to,” said Angela. “We can’t bully him into this.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
He stared me down, making me feel like a child to be chastised. I didn’t look away and eventually he sighed. “There’s not much to tell. I can show you but it’s dangerous and I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I can handle it,” I insisted.
Daniel paused. He glanced at Angela and then focussed hard eyes on me. He said slowly, “If I take you with me, you have to do exactly what I say. All right?”
“All right,” I said.
“Okay,” he said. “But I warn you, I’m not an expert. I don’t know much. The only thing I do know is where they meet. There is this guy that I work with in the woodwork studio. I had an inkling that he was part of the Resistance––”
“How did you know?” I interrupted.
“Small things that he said.” Daniel paused. “It’s hard to pin-point, but I just got the feeling he wasn’t happy about the way things were.”
I nodded. Sometimes people say a lot without really saying anything.
“The thing is,” Daniel continued. “To get there we have to go right through the centre of the Ghettos,” he paused, “and into the Slums.”
I involuntarily shivered. The Enforcers patrolled there. Slum people lived outside normal society. The children did not go to school. They weren’t even official Blemished; they were just Outsiders who didn’t join in the Society at all. Crime was rife in the Slums, with the Outsiders stealing from each other and prostituting themselves. Rumour had it that the Enforcers hung around the Slums just waiting to hear a prostitute go into labour.
“The Slums?” Angela mumbled. She wrapped her arms around her body.
“You don’t have to go,” Daniel insisted. “You can ignore it and just keep going on with your lives. Or you can come with me and look. We can’t join them, just watch.”
Angela looked at me hesitantly, as though waiting for me to decide for her. I knew that I wanted to go, but I knew that I shouldn’t go. I thought about my dad and how angry he would be to see me tempted by the same things as my mum. But how could I go back to my life knowing that I could have witnessed something important? How could I go back to my life after seeing a young girl taken away for having a baby?
“I want to go,” I said.
“Me too,” Angela said.
Daniel’s face fell. “I must be crazy getting you into this.” He pulled at his hair and then sighed. “All right. The first thing we have to do is sneak out.”
~*~
“She’s fast asleep,” Angela said, creeping back into her bedroom.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Absolutely. When you and Daniel were in the lounge I crushed a sleeping pill and put it in her tea.”
For once I was shocked. “You do that a lot?”
Angela shrugged. “It makes it easier to deal with.”
I decided not to judge. Angela had a crappy time looking after her mum. Anything that helped her was a good thing.
“We need to go then,” said Daniel. “They meet every Friday night in the heart of the Slums, near a broth…” Daniel glanced over to Angela. “There’s some sort of disused warehouse next to… the place where…”
“Oh for goodness sake Daniel just say brothel or we’ll be here all night,” Angela snapped.
“What time do they meet?” I asked, trying to stop myself wondering how Daniel knew where brothels are in the Slums.
“10pm,” he answered.
“We have two hours,” I noted. “How long does it take to walk there?”
“Perhaps an hour. The problem is getting close enough without being stopped by an Enforcer. We don’t look like Slum children.” He pointed to the symbol of the Blemished on our tunics.
“We could go in jeans,” Angela suggested.
“Then, if you get caught, as well as being out after curfew you would be out after curfew without your uniform,” said Daniel.
“Two crimes instead of one,” I said to myself. “What if we disguised ourselves as Slum children? Angela, do you have any old clothes?”
“Not much,” she said. “But there may be some in my Mum’s room.”
“Could we rip them? Smear dirt on our faces? Remove the Symbol?” I suggested, looking at Daniel.
“It could work,” he said.
“We’d just have to be careful,” I said. “At least this way we would blend in.”
He smiled crookedly, his eyes shone just a little bit brighter and he held my eye contact for a little too long. “Okay. You know, you’re really quite clever.”
I grinned back, enjoying the impromptu compliment.
“I’ll go and get the clothes then, shall I?” Angela said. She pushed bumped my shoulder as she stomped towards the bedroom door, almost knocking me over.
I frowned. “Angela? You all right?”
“Fine,” she answered, standing in the doorway, one foot in the room and one out. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“No reason,” I mumbled.
She turned and shut the door behind her. I got the feeling that had we not been trying to sneak around the house that door would have been slammed at full force.
“I think we’re making her feel useless,” I said to Daniel.
He shook his head. “She shouldn’t be coming with us. But I’m worried that if we leave her she’ll just follow us anyway and get herself in trouble.”
He was right. There was no chance she would stay behind. I hadn’t realised until this point just how much we were making her feel left out. Daniel and I shared something personal, something that only we could relate to, that feeling of being different and special. We had these gifts that shouldn’t exist but somehow did. That created a bond between us that went above friendship. I’d seen the way Angela’s face lit up as Daniel walked into the room. I’d also seen the way Daniel looked at Angela protectively, like a big brother. I just didn’t know how to explain all this to her.
“I’ve got them,” Angela said as she walked back into the room. “Mum won’t notice these gone.” Her face fell. “I guess she doesn’t notice much these days. Anyway,” she forced a bright smile on her face, revealing sweet dimples, “let’s get ripping!”
14
“DO I LOOK like a Slum kid?” Angela asked.
The three of us had managed to sneak out of the house without waking Theresa. We stood in the garden wearing our newly ripped and dirtied clothes. Angela smeared another handful of mud on my skin. I stepped forward and mussed Angela’s hair.
“You do now!” I said with a quiet laugh.
Daniel glared at us through the dark, the full moon reflecting in his blue eyes. The sky was clear of clouds and stars twinkled above us.
I st
raightened my back. “Which way do we go?”
“Follow me,” Daniel replied.
Angela looked at me and I could tell by the way her eyes glistened and her mouth twitched that she wanted to laugh. I wondered if Angela had ever broken rules before. The exhilaration of doing something naughty made her giddy. I put my finger to my lips to try and calm her before moving after Daniel, I knew it was wrong but a bit of sneaking around was exactly what we needed to lighten the mood after the day we’d had at school.
The ghettos were quiet at night. Dad always said that after 9pm the world of the Blemished silenced. Of course he usually said that after a few glasses of whiskey so I’d never really paid much attention. It turned out that he was right. We walked past dark houses, only alive from the flicker from their television screens, the people inside glued to Ministry programming with drinks fixed in their stiff hands. As we walked we saw no one. Part of me thought we might bump into Sebastian out on a jog, but the only sound we heard was the drunken voice of a woman a few streets away. There was a crash and a thud followed by a curse as she fell over a gate or a bin. Then a neighbour yelled out of their window to shut up and she did.
“Poor woman,” Angela mused.
As we moved forward the houses around us became smaller and more bunched together. They formed lines of rickety, uneven terraces surrounded by concrete yards filled with junk. The pavement crumbled beneath our feet and weeds poked out between gate posts.
“We’re getting closer to the Slums,” Daniel said. “You need to be on the lookout for Enforcers now, okay?”
We all mumbled hushed agreements and instinctively moved closer to each other. Daniel walked next to me on my right, his arm brushing against mine. I swallowed dryly as we approached the Slums, the realisation hitting that we were doing something illegal. The same giddiness that overtook Angela at the beginning of our journey had infected me and I bit my lip to stop myself from laughing. But as I was distracted by my own overexcitement I didn’t see the shadow of the Enforcer approaching. Daniel grabbed me by the arm and pulled me back into a narrow alleyway between two rows of terraced houses, moving Angela with his other hand. I shrank into the darkness, leaning hard against the cold bricks.
I heard the heavy footsteps of the Enforcer’s boots on the crumbling pavement, crunching with each movement. His black leather uniform creaked in the darkness and there was a chink-chink noise as his baton hit the metal clasp of his belt. All Enforcers wore large plastic helmets, making their shadows look even more enormous, like a bubble-headed alien.
I held my breath, no longer wanting to giggle, almost certain that the noise of my heart pounding against my chest could be heard streets away. Finally the Enforcer came into view as he walked past the entrance of the alleyway, just as I felt as though my heart would beat right through my rib cage. A droplet of sweat dribbled down my forehead and Daniel reached over in the dark and took my hand in his.
The Enforcer paused right at the mouth of the alley-way, looked at the floor and bent at the knees to retrieve an item from the ground. I flattened myself against the cold, hard bricks, gripping hold of Daniel’s hand. Daniel turned to look at me, his eyes inscrutable in the darkness. The Enforcer held up the object, examining it, and then tossed it to the floor. I could see in the moonlight that it was a button from Angela’s jacket. Almost nonchalantly, the Enforcer moved on, leaving us alone in the darkness. We waited until the crunching footsteps faded away before slipping back out onto the pavement.
“That was close,” Daniel said with a grim smile. I realised now why he had been so unimpressed with our foolishness. This wasn’t a joke, it was bad for Blemished girls to be out this late without an adult chaperone and we could get into serious trouble.
“I’m so scared!” Angela whispered. She didn’t look amused any more, only afraid. “Maybe we should go back?”
“Yeah, you’re right, this is––”
“Shhh!” Daniel pulled us both back into the alley way just in time.
Further down the street I heard the noise of more footsteps and then a cough. These footsteps were different to those of the Enforcer, less measured and succinct. They were more hurried and sloppy and belonged to a person, a civilian. As the person approached I became curious and peeked over Daniel’s shoulder to see who crossed the mouth of the alley way. There was enough moonlight to be able to make out their build and the features, and when they walked past, it was unmistakable that this man was my dad.
I smothered a gasp into the sleeve of my top and hid back behind Daniel. Dad didn’t notice anything; he walked on in a hurry, without turning his head. For a moment I thought I’d imagined it. What would my dad be doing near the Slums? I felt sick.
“Mina, was that your dad?” Daniel whispered.
“You thought so too?” I replied. “I hoped it was just the moonlight playing tricks.”
“It looked an awful lot like him,” Daniel said, his voice thick with pity.
“Why would he be here?” I said.
Angela took my hand and squeezed it. “Maybe he’s lonely, Mina.”
I couldn’t stand the sympathy on their faces. I couldn’t stomach what they were saying. “No.” I shook my head vehemently. “He wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t do anything that disgusting!” I wrenched my hand free from Angela’s and stepped out of the alley.
“Where are you going?” Daniel called after me. “I thought we’d agreed to go back?”
“I’m following him,” I said. “I have to. You two go back if you like, I’ll be fine.”
I stopped and looked at my friends and in that moment I didn’t want to be like them. I didn’t want to have parents who disappeared or needed me to crush pills into their tea. I just wanted my dad, my reliable history Professor Dad who made spaghetti and dusted the kitchen cupboards.
Daniel moved towards me slowly and put a tentative hand on my shoulder. I wanted to shrug it off. I didn’t need their pity. There would be a perfectly reasonable explanation for everything. “We’re not leaving you on your own. We’ll all go, but we’ll be extra careful. Okay?”
I nodded, trying to ignore my own gratitude.
“Now, come on, before we lose him.” Daniel lead the way again and I followed with Angela feeling a little numb and very terrified.
~*~
From the alleyway onwards our surroundings degraded even further. We passed smashed glass, boarded windows, crude murals, even cruder graffiti, burnt out cars and feral cats. Constant noise drifted from the distance: music, shouting and chatter. If I hadn’t known better I would have thought we were heading to a busy town. I saw the faraway glow of fire and lanterns.
“They sit around bonfires,” Daniel explained.
“The music?” I asked.
“Musicians and singers play around the fires. There aren’t any houses in the slums, just huts and squats. There are a few warehouses filled with people and a few old pubs that are now brothels,” he explained. “One of the abandoned warehouses is the place where most of the Resistance meet. Many of them live there too.”
“If the Enforcers patrol the area, why don’t they stop all the crime? And why don’t they arrest the Resistance?” I said.
“They don’t know about the Resistance. At least I don’t think they do. As for the other stuff… well they turn a blind eye. That way they get… freebies.”
“How do you know all this stuff, Daniel?” Angela asked in a quiet voice. It was obvious that despite Daniel growing up in her house he had never told her any of this or even hinted that he knew about the underground world of Area 14.
“Some of the men I work with,” he said with a grimace, “are not the kind of men you would want to meet.”
Daniel stopped walking and we followed suit. We had come to the top of a hill overlooking the Slums. Down the street I saw what Daniel had described; huts built in a haphazard manner, leaning on one another for support and made of corrugated iron; bonfires everywhere with people cooking food or dancing around them
. The smell wafted up, a combination of alcohol, burning rubber and dirt. Narrow paths weaved between the huts and run-down pubs and old warehouses. On these paths roamed the Enforcers, walking with relaxed gaits with their weapons at their sides. As I strained to see through the dim light, I saw that in the middle of all this was my dad.
15
“I CAN SEE him!” I said. I moved to walk down the hill but Daniel stopped me with a hand on my elbow.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked. “You might find out about things that you don’t really want to know.” He squeezed my arm gently. “It’s not too late to turn back.”
I hesitated. Following my dad would be the stupid thing to do. Turning back was safe. But then I thought about how little I knew about my mum before she died, and how much I had always wanted to know about her. I didn’t want secrets between me and my dad any more. I wanted to know everything. I met Daniel’s eyes. “Yes. I’m sure.”
“Okay, then we have to do things exactly as I say. Firstly, we walk down this hill sticking to the shadows, and once we get to the Slums we have to blend in. Avoid eye contact with any Enforcers. Above all – keep up with me. Okay?”
Angela and I nodded in unison. I felt a gulp in my throat but ignored it and the three of us set off down the hill.
“What are you going to say to your dad?” Angela said quietly in the dark.
“What do you mean?” I replied.
“Well, when you find out why he’s come to the Slums, what are you going to say to him? Are you going to confront him?”
“I… um… I guess I haven’t thought that far ahead.” I paused. “What would you do if it was your mum?”
“Mina,” she said with a sigh, “you’ve seen how I am with my Mum. I give her pills to help her sleep and I tell her lies all the time, like: ‘sure Dad’s coming home soon’ or ‘it doesn’t matter if you forgot to make me my tea.’ I’m hardly the expert when it comes to confronting parents. But, I dunno.” She shrugged. “I guess if it was me… Well, I think of it this way. How long do you really get with your parents? Soon we’ll have the Operation and things will change. What’s the point in rocking the boat – making things worse? Maybe you should just enjoy the time you have together.”
Riot Girls: Seven Books With Girls Who Don't Need A Hero Page 42