The Secret Under My Skin

by Janet Mcnaughton

  After the second year, I’d read every script on the prescribed reading list. I didn’t even know until I popped a lastbook into the biblio-tech and hit the “prescribed reading” pad on the wall. It flashed a message I’d never seen before: “Congratulations! Your prescribed reading program is complete. Take this message to your edu-warder and receive a certificate!” That hit me like a blast of cold water. I didn’t want a certificate. I wanted more scripts. Those stories were barely interesting enough to read once. I couldn’t read them over and over. I panicked, hit the topic pad, and held it down. A list of names I’d never seen before popped up. Shakespeare, Shelley, Yeats. That’s how I found poetry.

  There aren’t a lot of poetry scripts. They all come from long ago. It only took a few months to finish every one in the biblio-tech, but that doesn’t matter. Poetry isn’t like stories that you only want to read once. Poetry reminds me of a jetty in St. Pearl. Every day, something new would float up on it. Sometimes things you’d want to find and sometimes not, but always something new. I read the poems again and again. Not where anyone can see me though. It isn’t good to show you’re different, so I usually take a lastbook into a hydroponic room where I can hide. At first I was afraid the warders would stop me from reading when I finished the prescribed program. They may not service the biblio-tech but they do monitor it. After a while, I realized they weren’t going to bother. Readers don’t make trouble. But the week before Memory Day, I can’t hide and read, so I don’t read at all.

  It’s important to keep what happens on Memory Day a secret from the new kids. If you told, and the other kids found out, they would beat you senseless. We have quite a few new kids this year, maybe fifty, and about half of those are little. Most have been here long enough to shift over to daytime and start working. The really new ones live nighttime in separate rooms while they switch over, but they will come for Memory Day, too, even if they’ve never been with us before. The little ones don’t stay for the bonfire, though, only the story.

  It isn’t an easy week. New kids get hints that something scary is going to happen and there are fights and tears. Just being cooped up night after night is hard. It seems like the week will last forever but, finally, Memory Day is here. We work in the sorting sheds as usual, but the air feels thicker, like it does before a thunderstorm. Kids run around all day waving their guys in everyone’s faces. Finally, when it’s dark, the warders herd us into the Rotunda.

  The Rotunda still looks like it must have been when the Grand Hotel was new. The room is large and there’s a fireplace, so it’s perfect for Memory Day. The high, domed ceiling is covered with three huge pictures made from pieces of colored stone. But tonight the light stays at the bottom of the room, and those pictures are as dark as the sky outside. There is never electricity at Memory Day. Torches flicker in brackets on the walls. As we file into the room, everyone looks to the huge fireplace at the far end of the hall where a bonfire has been made from scraps we saved all year. A single chair sits in front of the fireplace. The storyteller’s chair.

  The littlest kids are led into the Rotunda now, their faces decorated with orange and black paint. They carry orange lights instead of guys. They are very quiet, looking around with wide, staring eyes. They don’t understand. Being scared isn’t usually fun. I remember what that felt like. I would like to take one of those little kids into my arms to keep her from being afraid but, of course, I can’t. We make a big circle on the floor in front of the fire. Normally, the warders would have trouble getting everyone to sit down and be quiet. Tonight, we do everything without being told.

  Then the chief warder takes the chair. Her name is November. That means she came off the streets like most of us. When you come to a place like this without a name, they name you for the month you arrive. She is much younger than the last chief warder. The old one sounded like she was just saying the things she had to say, but Chief Warder November seems to believe everything she says. Her white-blonde hair is closely cropped. Tonight, her eyes shine in a way I have seen before and learned to fear. “The story of the technocaust is something we must all understand,” she begins, “so you know why technology is dangerous and belongs in the hands of the Commission. Once upon a time, the sun did not burn our eyes, blind us with cataracts, blight us with cancers . . .” After four years, I know the story by heart. It seems hard to believe there was ever such a world, before the degradation of the environment filled the water and the soil and the air with toxins. My thoughts drift away.

  “. . . and then the techies decided they could get rich by selling their secrets to the evil Monopoly, and the worst of all was Lem Howell.” When she says this, all the older kids hold up their guys and shake them. The warders show the younger kids how to flash their orange lights. “Lem Howell and his wife lived up on Ski Slope in a house filled with advanced technology, just right for destroying the environment. They thought they could get rich, but the Monopoly agents tricked them. They took the secrets, but instead of scrip, they gave them poison. Lem Howell’s wife died when she took the poison, but it didn’t work with Lem Howell. No, he didn’t die at all. When he drank the poison, he began to glow with an orange light.” Suddenly, an eerie orange light glows up into Warder November’s face, making it horrible. Little kids scream. Now I know there are diodes implanted in her clothes, but I still feel a shiver of terror. “Lem Howell went mad, but he didn’t go away. He’s out there, waiting for you. If you go out at night alone . . . HE’LL GET YOU!” she shouts these last words and kids scream again. The older ones raise their guys and roar. Before the noise dies down, the littlest kids, the ones with the orange lights, are herded from the room. For them, Memory Day is over.

  When Warder November speaks again, she sounds normal. “Now you understand what caused the technocaust,” she says, “and why the techies had to die. Because of them, the earth was sadly degraded. Terra Nova Prefecture is lucky. We are far from the desert zones. We did not disappear beneath the sea when the polar icecaps melted. The industrial zones are far away, so we can breathe the air.” She smiles, a thin, hard smile as she moves away from the fire. “Always remember technology is dangerous and must be controlled by the Commission. Now,” she says, her voice rising, “show us how the techies died.”

  Kids rush forward to throw their guys into the fire. The warders make sure they don’t get too close, but every year, I’m amazed no one gets pushed in. To me, this is the really scary part of Memory Day. I hang back, waiting for the rush to end. My guy is just a scrap of paper, made at the last minute. Some of the newer kids are startled and confused. I see Poppy with her beautiful guy, the one she spent days sewing. She clutches it to her heart now, her eyes filling with tears. An older kid grabs her and drags her to the fire. “Come on,” she says. “It’s either the guy or you.” It’s a joke but Poppy doesn’t know that. She screams as other kids wrench the guy from her. It lands on the fire with a shower of sparks. Kids cheer. The look on Poppy’s face makes me turn away. It happens every year. The first year I was here, it happened to me.

  When the guys are all thrown into the fire, the warders bring us to the other end of the room where they’ve set out a hot drink called cider. It has the flavor of a fruit called apple. We never see real apples, but I’d like to taste one some day. Poppy is still upset, her face swollen from crying, her breathing shaky. A warder comes over to her with a cup. “Drink this, dear,” she says. “It will make you feel better.” Poppy shakes her head. The warder puts the cup into Poppy’s hands. “I must insist,” she says. There is a threat under her friendly tone. Poppy must hear it, too, because she gulps the drink without another word. “Good girl,” the warder says.

  After we stack our dirty cups we go to our sleeping rooms, all except the kids who do food service. The new kids think Memory Day is over but they are wrong. When the lights go out, we all lie awake. This isn’t the ordinary, end-of-day wakefulness, though. It’s different. I feel like something is wound up tight inside of me. We all do. Of course, w
e’re keyed up from the bonfire and the story, but now I wonder if the cider has something to do with it. No one ever refused to drink it before. I think that warder would have forced Poppy if she had to.

  I lie watching the windows, knowing what comes next.

  Still, the hairs on the back of my neck prickle when I see the orange light lazily swooping closer and closer until everyone notices, even the new kids who weren’t expecting it. A cry goes up from the room, as if we were a single creature. The light passes. “That’s why you have to keep away from Ski Slope,” one of the older kids whispers. “Lem Howell is out there, and he’ll eat you!” We hear the kids in the next room and know they have seen the light as well.

  Some of the newer kids, the younger ones and the ones who are easily frightened, are crying. I am fairly sure now that the orange light is carried by warders or maybe the kids who do food service. It’s just another part of Memory Day, but maybe the useful part. Because it isn’t always possible to make sure everyone stays in at night. And it isn’t always safe out there. Maybe Lem Howell is a real person who catches kids. Maybe not. But there are people who trade in kids, healthy kids with organs sick people need, kids to do work I don’t like to think about. We were as careful as we could be when I lived on the streets, but kids still disappeared. So maybe scaring us into staying in our beds at night is not so bad.

  Chosen

  After Memory Day, we settle into the winter routine. The kids who are gardeners start the propagation trays. As long as the seedlings are germinating, the rest of us just clean trays and cut mats-easy work. It’s the best time of year. We have classes every morning. I already know everything they teach, but I make sure no one finds out.

  Hilary taught me how to read. She sat me in her lap, working with papers she had scrounged or stolen. I can still see her grubby, gentle fingers, patiently tracing the letters. “Every kid should know how to read,” she said. She never told me who taught her. Almost since the first day, I slipped into a page of print like a fish in a stream. As if words were the water that carried me, that I drew my breath from.

  Afternoons, this time of year, it isn’t hard to hurry through my work and slip away with a lastbook. The hydroponic rooms are filled with empty tables waiting for the seedlings that are still crowded together in warm propagation trays, so it’s easy to find a place to read. I sit with the lastbook in my lap, my back against the wall beneath the window, hidden by a forest of table legs. I am trying to read a poem by a man named Shakespeare. Somehow, he makes words do things I’ve never seen them do before, as if they were alive. This makes the poems difficult, but it draws me back again and again. Today I read:

  Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

  Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

  Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

  And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.

  Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines

  And often is his gold complexion dimmed . . .

  I’m about to call up the hypertext to unravel the metaphors when suddenly I’m looking at a pair of warder’s boots. I think I must be in trouble for skipping off early, but she consults a list and says, “Are you Lobelia September?” I hate the name they gave me when I came here, but I nod. “You’re wanted in the Rotunda tonight after supper. Seven. Don’t be late.” I expect that will be all, but she doesn’t leave. “Don’t you want to know why?” she asks. I look at her for the first time. She’s new, hardly older than the oldest girls. She doesn’t look unkind, so I nod.

  Her eyes light with excitement. “Well, this is really something. The Master up the hill and the bio-indicator are coming tonight to choose someone to help her with her work.” She waves the list. “It took us all morning to go through the biblio-tech records and pick the most likely girls.”

  I can’t believe this. “How many are there on the list?” I ask. “Fifteen, and that was stretching it. So you have a one in fifteen chance of being chosen. Good luck,” she says and she’s gone. I wonder how someone like that became a warder, but then the importance of what’s happening hits me. Helping the bio-indicator might be a way out of here. But why would a bio-indicator pick one of us?

  The Master and the bio-indicator are here for the townspeople, not street kids like us, so even though the Master’s cabin is just up the hill, we never see him. I don’t know much about the Way, but bio-indicators are people with special sensitivities. When they react to toxins in the environment, there’s an eco-warning. Living on the streets in St. Pearl, I thought eco-warnings were just a nuisance that made it hard to get around without being noticed. I wonder now why more of us didn’t die. It’s a long time before I go back to my Shakespeare.

  I’m almost too excited to eat dinner. When we are called into the Rotunda, I fall in line, curious to see the Master and the bio-indicator, to see who will be chosen. I barely know the other kids who use the lastbooks. It’s bad enough to be different. Grouping together would make us too easy to target. But I’m sure the bio-indicator will want someone who is strong and pretty. I am small and ugly. No one would ever pick me.

  The Rotunda is fully lit tonight. You would not guess it was the same room we came to on Memory Day. No one even glances at the empty fireplace now. I look at the pictures made from inlaid stone that cover the domed ceiling high above us, so high I have to steady myself when I look up. One picture is of Western Bay Pond, one of Gros Morne Mountain, and one of the Tablelands. Places people visited when they came to stay in the Grand Hotel. I’ve never seen any of them.

  Warder November seems unusually nervous as other warders line us up. “Listen now,” she says, “there isn’t much time. All of you are wards of the Commission. Do you understand? The Commission rescued you, feeds and clothes you, educates you. Never forget that you owe everything to . . .” She stops abruptly and colors, looking past us to the other side of the room. Without meaning to, we turn and follow her gaze. A man stands in the doorway. Beside him is a young woman dressed in white robes. “But you are early,” Warder November cries. “Seven-thirty was the time we agreed upon.”

  The man is tall and powerful and not young. He crosses the room before he speaks. He seems perfectly calm. “Then I must have been mistaken. I apologize. But the children are assembled. Is there any reason why we cannot begin?”

  “No,” Warder November says, but she turns to us again looking very unhappy. “As you know,” she says, “bio-indicators protect us from the toxins that surround us. They are very important. This is why, when the Master asked for our help, we could not refuse.”

  The man smiles at us. Not just with his mouth the way most visitors do. “My name,” he says, “is William Morgan. I am a Master of the Way, but I grew up just down the road, in Kildevil.” He surprises me. The few people who visit here rarely really look at us. They keep their distance as if we are unclean. This man talks to us like we’re real people. “I would like to introduce our new bio-indicator. Her name is Marrella.”

  The girl in long white robes steps forward. Wisps of pale hair escape from a cloud of some fine material that wraps her head. She flows when she walks. When I look at her face, my breath catches in my throat. Her eyes are sea-blue, like Hilary’s. She’s beautiful.

  The Master speaks again. “Soon, Marrella will undergo her initiation ceremony, her investiture as a bio-indicator. We find she needs someone to tutor her.” She scowls slightly when the Master says this, but he doesn’t appear to notice. “You have all been asked here because you use the biblio-tech and read. Tonight, she will choose one of you. The person she selects will come to live with us.”

  An excited murmur goes through the group. This is more than any of us expected. And I know I would give my life to help this girl who looks like Hilary, to escape this terrible place, but I shove those thoughts aside. In my life, to hope is to be disappointed. I must protect myself from hope.

  Warder November steps forward. “Maybe the girl you choose should sleep here, after a
ll . . .” she begins.

  The Master looks mildly surprised. “But Warder November, you agreed. The training will be intensive.” He is polite but even I can see he’s determined to have his way. Warder November backs down reluctantly and he nods to the bio-indicator, who steps forward to have a better look at us. A little space opens around her wherever she walks, as if we know we are not good enough to touch her. I cannot bear to think she will look at me. I only stare at my feet, waiting for this moment to be over so I can go downstairs, wait for everyone else to go to sleep, and cry because she didn’t choose me.

  Then I hear her say, “This one.” And it is over. But no one moves. She says, “Is there something wrong with her? Doesn’t she hear me?” When I look up, everyone is staring at me.

  “There is nothing wrong with her,” the chief warder says.

  “She must be shy.”

  The bio-indicator speaks to me. “What is your name, girl?” Her voice is impatient.

  The first time I try, nothing comes out. I try again. “Blay Raytee,” I croak. Such a funny sound that some kids laugh.

  “Is that some kind of made-up name?” she asks. She isn’t talking to me now.

  There is some shuffling while the warders confer. “Yes,” one says after a moment. “We named her Lobelia September. She claims that’s her real name, but it’s just something she picked up on the street.” I say nothing. We’ve had this conversation many times. I never win.