by C. J. Harper
My mouth has fallen open.
‘This is important, darling, do you understand?’ she says.
‘And you’ll do the same thing?’ I ask.
She nods her head and smiles. ‘You take it. Put it somewhere safe.’ She leans back against the tree and breathes out heavily.
‘Mum, you really need help. I’ve got to—’
‘Don’t go, darling; I just need to catch my breath.’ She closes her eyes. ‘I’m sorry I’ve made such a mess for you.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘It was too dangerous a piece of information to give you.’
‘Even if you didn’t tell me The Leader was my father you could have told me what sort of man he was, you could have told me that the whole stupid system is corrupt.’
She opens her eyes. ‘And how would you have fitted in at the Learning Community then? Do you know what they do with promising young learners who start to question the system? They send them to Academies. Or worse.’
‘I’m in an Academy anyway and I can’t see how things can get any worse.’
‘I know, I know,’ she says and she stares hard into my eyes. ‘I should have told you the truth. I was just trying to keep you safe. I just want you to be safe.’
‘AHHHHHH!’ someone screams from the direction of the pool.
My mother’s eyes widen. ‘Run!’
I won’t leave her. I can see someone running through the trees; they’re almost on us. It’s one of those boys. One of those boys that stabbed my mother. I’m on my feet and I’m hurtling over fallen tree branches. We come face to face just outside the clearing – it’s Scarface. He hesitates for a moment, surprised that I am running towards him. But he’s too late to stop his momentum and he rushes to meet the knife as I stab it into his chest. He looks down at the hilt still sticking out. Then he staggers backwards and falls to the ground.
I’ve killed him.
The sunlight hurts my eyes. I lurch back through the trees towards my mother. I push back the branches and then stop like I’ve hit an invisible wall. She’s lying completely still.
‘Mum?’ I say.
Her eyes are staring blankly.
‘Mum?’
I can hear a bird singing in the distance.
‘Mummy?’
She’s dead.
I’m awake, but there is something wrong with my eyes. In the shadows I can see bodies. The trees are running with blood and in their branches hundreds of crows’ eyes stare down at me. A hand is reaching out of the ground. Its bony fingers grasp at my feet. I curl into a ball. The whole world is pulsing with death and dripping with blood. I smell someone’s fetid breath in my face. The Leader. My father. In front of me, Scarface rises up and pulls the knife from his chest. He points it at me. ‘Just like your father,’ he says. ‘Just like your father,’ join in the birds. And the leaves. And the dead bodies crawling towards me.
‘No.’ I say ‘NO!’
Then the heaving bodies blur into blackness and so do I.
In the morning everything is clear to me. I’ve seen all the evil that The Leader has brought. He has made everything bad. It’s his fault that my mother and Wilson are dead. It’s his fault that I am a murderer. His fault that no one sees how poor Kay and the rest of the Specials suffer. He is responsible for all of this.
And I must make him pay.
After some time staring into the leaves it dawns on me that I don’t even need to escape to get at The Leader. Soon he will be coming to the Academy to do his publicity stunt for the new Academies. What I’ll need to be able to move around the Academy freely is an enforcer’s ID card. I’ve never managed to get close enough to an enforcer to steal one, but now I realise that I don’t have to steal. There’s one right here in the forest.
I make my way back towards the clearing. I’m struck with a horrible thought and for a moment I freeze and then I break into a run. I should never have left my mother there. What if the rest of those boys came back for her and . . . ? My mouth goes dry. I burst through the trees. She’s still there. She hasn’t moved.
I move towards her as quietly as I can, as if I’m afraid of waking her. I crouch down at her side.
‘Mum, I need your ID card,’ I say. It feels like it would be rude to start fishing about in her pockets without saying anything. I try the pocket on the front of her shirt. It’s there.
‘Thank you,’ I say. I don’t want to just leave her in case those cannibal boys come back, or someone from the Wilderness. I need to bury her. I scan the clearing. There’s a natural dip beneath one of the trees. I carry her as gently as I can and lay her in it. I use my hands to scoop earth over her at first, until I find a flat piece of bark to use instead. I work hard at it for a long time. My face runs with tears and sweat. When I’m done, my mother is well covered and my arms are quivering with fatigue.
I kneel down and press my lips to the mound of earth. ‘I’m going to get him, Mum,’ I say out loud. ‘I’m going to put an end to all this blood and fear and cruelty. I promise.’
Then I walk back into the shade of the trees.
I spend the night hiding in the rubbish tip, clutching a sharpened piece of metal in case another one of those boys or anyone else from the Wilderness comes near me.
When Rice and two impeccables arrive at the gate in the fence, I’m sat waiting. Enforcer Rice seems surprised to see me, but he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t even give me a lecture about my behaviour. He rips a bit of skin near his thumbnail off with his teeth. When we get inside one of the impeccables accidently brushes against him as we walk along the corridor.
‘Watch it, you idiot!’ says Rice. ‘I haven’t got time for this.’ And he rushes off.
‘Why are all the enforcers all . . . ?’ The taller impeccable makes claws out of his hands and bares his teeth.
‘They’re scared of a thing,’ says the other one.
‘What thing?’ I ask. What on earth would scare an enforcer?
The impeccable shrugs. ‘I don’t know. They’re scared, so they’re bigger mean.’
The impeccable takes me to the grid. I stumble to my seat and the rest of the day passes in a haze. Kay tries to talk to me, but I can only shake my head and turn away. After dinner she takes me upstairs and puts me to bed like a baby. I’m shaking with tiredness, but I can’t sleep. Images of my mother and Wilson dance in my mind.
Ilex and Ali come and talk in whispers to Kay. The light fades. I stay where I am. Staring. Thinking. Other students come in chatting and arguing. Then it’s late and the lights are switched off and everyone is asleep and I’m still staring.
‘Blake?’ whispers Kay.
I want to answer but somehow I can’t break my stillness. I wonder if I’ll just lie like this till I die.
I hear Kay getting out of bed. Then she climbs on my bed and lies down behind me, wrapping her arm around me.
And everything still hurts, but she is here with me.
When I wake up, Kay is still lying behind me. Her arm is around my waist. It feels nice. Warm. I’d like to just stay here and go back to sleep, but I start thinking about The Leader. My father. He’ll be here soon. I don’t have to go out and get him; he’s coming to the Academy. I struggle to remember what day it is. The last few have run together. I try to recall exactly when Tong told us he was coming. If Rice is twitchy it must be soon.
Kay stirs. I freeze, willing her to drift back to sleep and hold me for a bit longer. She stiffens. She’s definitely awake. She lifts her arm gently and rolls away, so that I can no longer feel her warm softness pressed against my back.
‘Blake?’ she whispers.
I turn over so that we’re lying side by side.
‘Mmm,’ I say.
‘What happened?’
The woods. My mother. The boy. The knife. A horrible wave of redness washes through me bringing back that crazy blood-dripping night and I’m afraid I’m going to be sick. I breathe in slowly. ‘She’s dead,’ I say.
And
then I tell her. How my brave mother came to find me, how she worked out what happened to me and how she finally told me the truth about who my father is. I don’t tell Kay about Scarface. I don’t think I could bear her knowing what I did to him. When I get to the end, Kay slips her hand in mine.
‘Kay, everything awful that has happened: my mother, Wilson, those crazy boys – this whole efwurding system – it’s all The Leader’s fault. And he won’t get away with it.’
Kay doesn’t say anything.
‘All I need to know is when he’s coming and where he’s going to be.’
‘Rex will know.’ She looks at me questioningly. I don’t care about Rex any more. ‘Ask him.’ I say. In five minutes she’s back. ‘Tomorrow,’ she says. ‘He’s coming tomorrow.’
At lunchtime Kay takes me to the empty dormitory bathroom.
‘What are you going to do?’ she asks.
‘I’ve been thinking about this; do you know what would hurt him most?’
Kay shrugs.
‘If I ruin everything he’s worked for – his career and his reputation. We’re going to do what I said we would. We’re going to expose the Academy system and make sure that everyone knows that he’s responsible.’
Kay nods.
‘And then I’m going to kill him.’
I stare at the hinge of a cubicle door. I’m angry at myself for not having planned this out better. When I first knew that The Leader was coming I suppose I imagined the sort of school visit we used to have at the Learning Community. I thought there would be an opportunity for Specials to talk to him. I thought he’d want to talk to me and hear about everything that has happened and that he’d be able to help. I was such an idiot. Of course now I realise that they’ll be keeping him as far away from us as possible. In fact, Kay says that Rex says that the press conference will take place in the older part of the Academy, where Specials rarely go.
‘What time will he be here?’ I ask.
‘Nine o’clock.’
‘How are we going to get out of the classroom?’ We’re expected to be strapped into the grid by seven a.m. We could just not turn up in the morning. But then they’d be looking for us. Tomorrow, Rice is going to want everything to run smoothly. ‘Maybe it would be best if we go to the grid as usual and then somehow slip away,’ I say.
‘We need a thing for all people to look at so they don’t look at us.’
‘A diversion?’
Kay makes a noise like a contented cat. ‘Does that word say all those words?’ she says. ‘I love words. Di-ver-sion. We need a diversion. We should think of a diver—’
‘Okay, okay. Who’s going to do the talking in this diversion?’
Kay nudges me in the ribs. ‘No person is going to be diversioned by talking, Blake. We need a fight.’
Finally. Something it will be easy to organise in this place.
At the end of the afternoon session I grab Ilex. We go up to his dormitory and I explain to him what I want to do.
He goes quiet.
‘You don’t have to be involved,’ I say. ‘I mean, you don’t have to do anything. I don’t want to get you into trouble.’
Ilex’s face is creased in thought. ‘You do a lot of trouble things. Do you want trouble?’
‘I don’t like trouble. I have to do this. The Leader has done so many wrong things.’ I drop my voice so the other Specials in the room can’t hear me. ‘It’s his fault my mother and my best friend are dead. I’ve got to do something.’
‘Is stopping The Leader stopping Rice?’
‘I hope so. I hope we’ll get rid of Academies.’
‘I want to stop Rice hurting Ali.’
‘Does that mean that you want to help?’
‘Yes. What things do I do?’
I force some dinner down. I’ve got to keep my strength up. Then Kay and I go to the salon. Rex and a pack of Reds are sitting on the best chairs, surrounded by their followers. It’s so noisy that it feels safe to talk to Kay about tomorrow. I tell her the same thing that I told Ilex, that she doesn’t have to be involved, but she pretends that she hasn’t heard me and gets straight to planning.
‘If you want a fight diversion you need Rex,’ she says.
‘Rex isn’t the only person in this place who knows how to fight.’ I try to pull a tangle of metal-legged chairs apart.
Kay laughs. ‘Blake, you fight little-more-good now, but I don’t think—’
‘I’m not suggesting that I start the fight. I’m going to be doing the really difficult bit, in case you hadn’t noticed. But there are a large number of students capable of starting a fight other than your precious Rex.’
‘We need the goodest, I mean the best. We need the best brain, so we have you. We need the best fighter, so we should have Rex. I’ll talk to him.’
I pull the chair so hard that it comes free and I stagger backwards. ‘Fine. That’s fine. Just don’t use any of the new words you’ve learned when you’re talking to him.’
But she’s already gone.
I sit on the plastic chair and try not to look at Kay, who has joined the swarm of girls around Rex. I need to think about what I’m going to do. I’m imagining myself bursting in on the press conference and describing exactly what happens in an Academy in front of the cameras, but I don’t think that will work. What would be best is if I could get a camera into the Academy proper to let people see what it’s really like in here. I want to show how all this goes right back to The Leader. And the horrible way that he doesn’t just want to crush these students, he wants to control them too. It’s so underhand. Letting them think that they’ve got their own rules and their precious gangs, but all the time they’re being run by the Leadership. And those Latin names. It’s like an extra insult. I bet The Leader thinks it funny.
Which makes me think about Rex. Maybe The Leader’s influence goes as far as the Reds’ leader. Maybe he’s in their control too. Now that I think about it, it’s always seemed strange the way Rex never seems to be in trouble even though he claims to do as he pleases. And there was the time that Rice found out about the bowls, Rex was the one who actually provided some of the Specials with empty margarine tubs to use as bowls, but I was the one who got into trouble for it. How did Rice know? And how did Rex manage to get hold of all those tubs? I look up at Rex’s porcine face and a wave of revulsion washes through me. He grunts with laughter and I’m taken back to that night when Kay and I were trapped in the kitchen. I remember Tong telling someone to spy on the Specials and I remember her informer agreeing.
By grunting.
I spring out of my chair.
Rex is sprawled in the least beaten-up armchair, with a gaggle of girls surrounding him. Kay is sat opposite him. I imagine it’s taken her all this time to work her way to the front. He leans forward to say something and Kay laughs. I hate him. As I’m striding over, they get up and go out into the corridor. I follow. They get to the door of Rex’s room.
‘Hey, Kay!’ I say.
She turns and looks at me with her lips pressed together.
‘Hey, Blakey. Kay can’t talk you now,’ Rex says, strutting into the toilets.
‘I need to speak to you,’ I say to Kay.
‘Not now, Blake,’ she says and follows Rex.
‘This is important,’ I say, stepping in the tiled room.
‘This is ’portant,’ mimics Rex.
‘A childish repetition suggests that you’ve failed to understand what has been said,’ I say.
Rex’s smile fades. He steps so close to me that I’m forced to look up at his ugly face. ‘Don’t do that brainer stuff on me.’
‘Why? Does it scare you?’
He grabs me by the collar. ‘Shut up, you efwurding brainer.’
‘Well if you’ve finished demonstrating the full extent of your vocabulary I’ve got something important to say.’ I pull his hand off my shirt.
‘Blake, don’t be stupid. We need Rex,’ Kay says.
‘You don’t need Rex! I mean, w
e don’t need Rex,’ I hiss.
Kay takes a step towards me and says right into my ear, ‘Stop this little-boying. I’m doing this for you.’
‘I’ve got to tell you something,’ I say.
‘Tell me later,’ she says.
Rex puts his hand on Kay’s shoulder. I clench my fists.
‘She doesn’t want to hear you,’ Rex says. ‘You think you’re so crimson with your words. Words don’t mean nothing here.’
‘Yeah? Okay, maybe this is a case of actions speaking louder than words,’ I say.
Rex scrunches his face in disgust. Kay looks away.
‘You tell me, Kay,’ I say. ‘What does this say to you?’ I grab Rex by the right hand and yank up his shirt sleeve. On his wrist is a livid purple scar. It’s the sort of mark a butter knife might leave if it was plunged into your arm in the middle of the night that you betrayed everyone who looked up to you.
‘I got that in a fight,’ says Rex. But he knows we don’t believe him.
Kay’s mouth is open. Her eyes are boring into Rex. He spreads his hands, palms up.
‘What?’ he says.
Kay takes a step towards him.
He pulls back. ‘What?’ he says. ‘Stop looking at me like that.’
‘Urrargh!’ Kay screams. She pulls back her fist and it’s like she sucks all her anger into a blistering point and then powers it into Rex’s face. The punch sends him sprawling against the sinks. He ends up sitting on the tiled floor.
‘You efwurding bastard!’ Kay shouts. She kicks him in the stomach. Rex just stares at her. ‘You’re supposed to help Specials,’ Kay says. ‘You’re supposed to be our leader.’
Rex gets to his feet and shrugs his shirt back into place. ‘It got us stuff. It was just little talk to Enforcer Tong. She’s gone. I didn’t tell her all things.’
‘You told her the bowls were my idea and she told Rice,’ I say. ‘I bet you’ve told her a load of other stuff too. And now she’s gone, you’re probably telling it all to someone else. Did you tell someone that my m— that Enforcer Williams gave Ali food?’
‘No.’