by C. J. Harper
I slip into the shadow and take a deep breath to try to steady my breathing. What will they do to me if they catch me? My heart is galloping.
The hum of the lift slows. There’s a ping and the doors slide open. I press back into the shadow. An enforcer comes out of the lift and takes the few steps back along the corridor towards the enforcers’ door. I can see only the back of his head, so I don’t know who it is. He flicks his fingers over the keypad and the door clicks open. He pushes the door and steps inside and I am about to wilt with relief when I do something without thinking. I whip over to the door and catch it before it clicks back into place. I stand there, supporting the door with my flat hands so that it remains a few centimetres open. I wince, expecting the door to be yanked open again at any moment, or for an alarm to go off, but nothing happens.
I breathe in through my nose and slowly push the door open. I’m looking down a dimly lit passageway. Everything is quiet. The enforcer has already disappeared and no one else is about. I feel in my pockets, but there’s nothing there. I can’t let the door close behind me because I don’t know the code to get back out, so I take off one of my socks and wedge the door with it.
On tiptoes I make my way down the corridor. I bet they don’t make the enforcers sleep in dormitories. I’m sure they’ve got showers that work too. I peer into the first room. It’s some sort of social area with comfortable chairs and a coffee machine. No exit in there. I turn to leave, but I catch sight of something that puts all thought of outside doors from my head.
It’s a communicator.
Checking the corridor again, I creep into the room and softly close the door behind me. The communicator is in a booth, like they have in shopping centres. I step inside and click the privacy button. The door seals and now I’m in a soundproof bubble. I lift my hand to type in my access code. No. That’s Jackson’s unique code. If P.C. Barnes was right and someone is after me, maybe I shouldn’t be activating my account. You can trace these things. Instead I type in the code of an unregistered account that I set up when Wilson and I were trying to purchase some A.I. components that nobody wanted to sell to teenagers.
The home screen pops up, showing three layers. At the top a message marked Urgent is flashing red. A still of my mother’s face is next to it. I didn’t know she knew about this account. I tap it with my forefinger. A projection of my mother appears in the centre of the booth.
‘J—’ she starts, then closes her mouth again. ‘Sweetheart,’ she says, ‘listen to me carefully. Everything is going to be okay. I found out where you are and I’m coming to get you. Don’t tell anyone who you are. Just –’ she takes a deep breath ‘– just don’t move. This is really important. For now you should be safe where you are. Whatever happens, wait at, er, that place and I will come.’ She brings a hand up to her forehead and rubs her eyebrow. ‘I should have told you . . .’ There’s a knock on the door behind her. She drops her voice. ‘Just wait there for me.’
It cuts to static.
‘Mum?’ I say out loud. What the hell happened there?
I check the date on the message. Yesterday. I touch Reply on the screen and, as I do so, I realise that this is not my mother’s official communication account, nor was she using a registered communicator. What the efwurd is going on? Why wouldn’t my mother use her normal account? And why is she talking about ‘safe’ places? Does she know something about what’s happened to me? The connection hums, but no one picks up. Usually accounts have a message service. It just buzzes on and on. I turn round so I can watch the door. I’m sweating. I wait and wait for an answer. Nothing.
I cut the connection and buzz her official communication account. There’s an instant pick up. Thank goodness. A projection flicks into life. But something is wrong.
It’s not my mother.
It’s a recording. A tight-lipped woman wearing a uniform.
‘Do not retry this connection,’ she says.
A wave of cold washes through my body. She’s staring right at me.
‘This account has been terminated.’
My mind is spinning. They don’t just cut off people’s accounts.
Terminated.
I have a horrible feeling that something has happened to Mother. Like she’s somehow tied up in all this craziness too. Suddenly I can’t breathe. I’m sweating, but shivering at the same time. I fumble to get out of the booth and crouch down, panting for breath. A door slams out in the corridor. I spring up, looking for a place to hide. I duck behind a sofa. I peer over the top and strain my ears for sounds of movement. The door opens and I drop back.
Someone walks across the room. I lean to the side and see the legs of an enforcer. There’s a sigh. It’s a woman. The legs move towards me and bend at the knees. I’m dead. They must have seen me. I freeze. A hand stretches out and picks up an old-style paperback book not more than thirty centimetres from my head. The hand pulls back, the legs straighten. I don’t breathe. The enforcer moves back across the room and the door clicks behind her. I have to get out of here.
I gently open the door, check both ways and run on bent knees. Thank goodness the door back to the main part of the Academy is still being held ajar by my sock. I scoop it up and ease the door shut behind me.
Then I run. I don’t even think about the noise, I just run all the way back to the dormitory and bury myself under the covers. The word ‘terminated’ blows up like a mushroom cloud in my head.
‘I told you not to go to the kitchen all lots,’ Kay says quietly from the next bed.
I lower my covers and glare at her.
‘Don’t you have a thing to say?’ she asks. ‘When I say a thing, most times you like to say a thing back. You think it’s a laughing thing but I—’
‘I think my mother is dead,’ I say.
She stops. The smile falls from her face and she looks right at me. ‘That’s bad,’ she says. And I know she means it. ‘How do you think it?’ she asks.
I wonder how much I should tell her. I keep it simple. ‘I called her on a communicator and her account has been terminated.’
The girl looks down in concentration. ‘A communicator? Like on the Info and you’re all talking to the person that is not here?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘So don’t you think—?’
‘What’s terminated?’ she says.
‘Finished. Ended.’ My voice cracks.
‘How does that give you the think that she’s dead?’
I shake my head. ‘You don’t understand. Accounts aren’t just terminated. Everyone has an account. Everyone.’
‘I don’t,’ she says.
‘What?’
‘I don’t have a ’count. No Specials do.’
She’s got a point.
‘She might not be dead. She might be locked up.’
I stare at the girl. She’s right. The woman in the message was wearing a security uniform. My mother’s not dead, she’s just . . . caught up with the police somehow. Which doesn’t make any sense either. I can’t shake the feeling that this is all connected to what’s happened to me. But she’ll sort it out. My mother is really good at fixing stuff.
‘You’re right,’ I say. ‘She’s not dead.’
The girl nods.
‘And you know what? She’s coming to get me out of here. All I’ve got to do is wait.’
‘No mothers in the Academy,’ she says, lying back down.
‘Mine will come,’ I say.
The next day I feel better. More positive. All I have to do is keep up my false identity, try to avoid getting into any more fights, and manage to eat enough to keep healthy until my mother comes to get me. Simple.
Kay asks me to meet her in the Specials’ recreation room – the salon. Ilex shows me the way.
As we’re going downstairs, a herd of Reds come pushing past us. One of them deliberately trips me up. Ilex helps me to my feet.
‘Where are they going in such a hurry?’ I ask.
‘I think it’s a more-food time,’ he sa
ys.
‘Food? I’d like some food.’
‘It’s not for us. It’s for Reds and Hon Reds.’
I’m sick of all this Reds stuff. It’s so unfair that they get extras.
‘Where does the extra food for the Reds come from?’ I say. The whole time I’ve been here we’ve only ever had three meals a day. If you can call the slop from the feeding pod a meal.
‘It’s Academy food. On sometimes the kitchen workers get all the food things that aren’t big good and say “You can eat this” to the Reds.’
So the kitchen periodically has a clear out, but the Reds don’t let everyone else have a fair share. It makes me so angry that this group of jumped-up gingers control everything.
‘Why don’t we just go too?’ I say to Ilex.
He just looks at me, not wasting his breath to tell me what a stupid idea it is. He’s right, it would be stupid. I’d get beaten up. But I can’t just let it go.
At the bottom of the stairs I see an enforcer coming out of a classroom and heading down the corridor towards the teachers’ quarters.
‘Enforcer?’ I call.
She jumps. ‘What is it?’ she says, but keeps moving down the corridor.
I jog after her. Ilex stays at the bottom of the stairs.
‘Enforcer . . .’
She looks back over her shoulder as she walks.
‘The kitchen is giving out leftover food,’ I say. ‘Everybody is hungry. We’d all like some food . . .’
She’s reached the enforcers’ door and taps in the code.
‘Wait! Some of the students won’t let the others eat.’
She pulls open the door. I can’t believe she’s just ignoring me.
‘But it’s not fair!’ I say.
She looks me up and down. ‘We don’t interfere with the Reds,’ she says and the door closes behind her.
Ilex was right.
You can’t fight the Reds.
I slink back to Ilex, who laughs at me and shakes his head, but thankfully doesn’t say anything. He takes me to the salon, which turns out to be down the extra corridor on his map. Surprise, surprise – it’s a barn of a room. There are a lot of cheap padded chairs with the stuffing ripped out and a massive screen on one wall. As we walk in, there are a bunch of boys having a spitting competition.
I roll my eyes. This is the ‘salon’?
Ilex goes back upstairs to see Ali and I find Kay in the furthest corner of the room.
‘Well, Lady McKayington,’ I say to her. ‘I do hope the maid will bring the tea soon,’ I say, putting on my poshest accent.
‘What?’ she says.
‘The salon is so nice that I feel like The Leader. Soon they’ll bring us piles of food and lovely drinks and maybe rub our feet.’
Kay shakes her head, but I can see that she’s smiling too.
We sit in battered chairs. The Info is on the big screen with the sound turned down.
‘I’m surprised they let you watch TV,’ I say.
‘What’s “surprised”?’ Kay says. ‘What’s TV?’
‘This is “surprised” . . .’ I widen my eyes and suck in my breath.
Kay nods. It’s a lot easier to explain words to Kay than to Ilex. With Kay it’s like she already knows the idea of the word and you’re just labelling it for her. I think Ilex would rather I just used the words he knows.
‘And that’s TV.’ I point at the screen.
‘That’s the Info,’ she corrects me.
‘Yes, but as well as the Info you get—’
Kay shakes her head.
‘Just the Info?’
She nods. ‘Just one little Info, all the days.’
Weird. I’m amazed that in a place like this, the one thing they let them watch is the news. And it’s odd that the Specials haven’t picked up more vocabulary from it. I look at the screen. There are images of The Leader visiting a factory. He shakes hands with the smiling workers. I move towards the screen and slide the volume icon up with my finger.
‘. . . factory workers are working hard,’ the voiceover says. ‘The Leader is pleased. “We must all work hard,” he says. The workers who do the most work meet The Leader. They are happy . . .’
‘What the hell is this?’ I say. This isn’t what the Info is usually like.
‘The Info,’ says Kay, looking confused.
I don’t need her to tell me that this dumbed-down pap is what they listen to every day. I feel ill. Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised that the Specials haven’t developed speech properly when they’ve only got this junk and the barking of an enforcer to learn from. And then a second wave of revulsion undulates through me. These voiceovers must be specially prepared. I realise that I’d been holding on to a tiny hope that maybe this place was just a really bad example of an Academy. That it was because of Rice and his staff that the conditions are so poor and the Specials are treated so badly, and that maybe other Academies were a bit better. But if they’re specially preparing these ‘news’ reports then I guess that they’re shown in every Academy. Does that mean all Academies are like this one? My head is spinning. I know that Specials’ education is designed to equip them for their lives in the factories, but I can’t help thinking that surely they deserve to be taught to talk properly.
‘What’s bad?’ Kay says, seeing the look on my face.
‘You do know that that is not how people speak?’ I say, jabbing towards the screen. ‘You do realise that when the rest of the world watch the Info, the newsreader uses more than ten words – they talk like me, Kay. Most people talk like me.’ My shoulders sag. ‘I just don’t understand why it has to be so nasty in here and I don’t understand why they want to keep you down by taking away your language as well.’
Kay looks at me. She shakes her head sorrowfully. ‘I don’t know your words,’ she says.
And it’s all so horrible that I want to punch something.
‘The Academies . . .’ she says, and she looks at me to try to tell me something that she can’t with words. She holds my gaze and her huge eyes are both sorry and angry. I think she does understand.
‘I don’t . . . I don’t think Academies should be like this,’ I say. Even as the words escape I’m looking around to make sure no one has heard me.
Kay touches my arm. ‘When I am Dom, I will make things more good. I will help the little ones. I will make the Specials be . . .’ She draws her hands together. She breaks into a smile. It’s not something she does often, it’s nice.
‘Closer? Together?’ I say, smiling back.
She looks at me. ‘Are you laughing?’ she asks.
‘No! No, I just, I thought you wanted to be Dom so you could be adored and showered with bits of shrap.’
‘Yes, and that.’
We sit down on some ripped-up chairs and I try to get my head straight while Kay talks about when she first started at the Academy and how every day she would ask a Red girl called Ama if she could make Kay’s hair red.
‘I had the think—’
‘Thought,’ I say.
‘I had the thought that if I was big good she would make my hair red.’ She smiles at her foolishness. Then she shows me her best trick fight move. I know that she is trying to distract me and I let her.
Later on, in the dormitory, I look at Kay sleeping and consider how she has completely changed the way she thinks since she was a little girl. I realise that I’ve been thinking the same things, in the same way, all my life. All because of what I was told. I just assumed that anyone who thought differently to me was wrong. And now I keep finding that things aren’t exactly as I thought. It’s not so easy to be certain that I know the right answers.
Sometimes I wonder if I even know the right questions.
The next day is Friday. In the afternoon we have P.E. At the front of the drum-shaped room Enforcer Tong has got an impeccable demonstrating some dreadful routine of punches, jumps and kicks. I manage to position myself near the back, next to Ilex. The two of us are not really built fo
r sport.
‘Why do we have to do this all the time?’ I ask him in a pant.
Ilex’s mop of hair has wilted and a drop of sweat is running down his nose. He bounces a little closer to me so he can whisper without Tong hearing. ‘The Leader says, “Good bodies is good workers”.’
I suppose at the Learning Community we were pushed to exercise our minds instead. Funny how no one there ever bothered about our physical fitness, though.
I catch sight of Kay’s white-blonde ponytail whipping about near the front. When she kicks her leg she can touch her own ear.
‘How was the salon with Kay?’ Ilex asks me.
‘It was . . . good. Do you know Kay well? I mean, do you know a lot about her?’ I ask.
Ilex shrugs. ‘Not big lots.’
‘What’s she like? She seems to be into all this Reds stuff.’
‘Work harder!’ Tong shouts. For several minutes we can’t talk because all our breath is going into squat thrusts.
Eventually Ilex says. ‘She wants to be an Hon Red but . . . she’s not like Red girls. She doesn’t do all that . . .’ He breaks off from a star jump to an impression of a pouting girl flicking her hair and wiggling her hips.
I snort.
‘No talking at the back,’ Tong says.
‘Do you mean she’s nicer?’
‘Not nicer. Harder.’
Tong relocates to just behind us and we can’t talk any more, but on the way back to the grid Ilex says, ‘Are you all liking for Kay?’
‘No! No way. I just thought she could be helpful.’
Ilex smacks his lips together in a kissing noise and, for a moment, he reminds me of Wilson.
Actually, I have been thinking about asking Kay to come down to the salon again. Last night was the first time since I’ve been here that I’ve enjoyed a conversation. But for some reason I feel shy about suggesting it.
Finally, after dinner I follow Kay up to the dormitory. As she walks through the door she spins round and says, ‘Why are you all little-space to me?’