“That’s not supposed to be public knowledge. You know that, and you know why.”
I know it and know why too. The location of the Sanctuaries was kept secret to begin with because, globally, there were sky-high levels of fear and mistrust. It’s not really a secret anymore, at least not in most former countries. It couldn’t be: Sanctuaries must be serviced with food and supplies. The women who travel to them to give up boy babies in cesarean sections see where they are going if they choose to look, but the precise location of the Sanctuaries is still not shown on maps. They have no official addresses.
“I mean…Wales? Or Cornwall? They’d be the closest,” Kate persists, ignoring Mumma. “Because you’re not trying to tell me he ran all the way from—where else is there? Northumbria, Galloway, John o’Groats. Orkney! But wait. Maybe he came from Iceland? We’ve got boys there, too, haven’t we? Maybe he floated here on an iceberg.”
No one is going to figure out where this boy came from or how he got here. Unless he tells. That’s what’s apparent to me—very, very clearly. That circle is huge, but there is nowhere within it that he could have come from. Nowhere.
“Did he say anything else to you?” Kate asks me, shaking her head over that circle. “Anything you forgot to write down.”
“No.”
“Anything at all?”
“No!” I glance at the kitchen clock. Unlike my notebook, it’s not always right. It’s got a wind-up mechanism. Nevertheless, I am, approximately, five and three-quarter hours late for the start of school, and despite the prospect of facing yet more questions about the boy, I’d almost rather be there right now. Almost, but not quite…because at school I know I will be asked more questions. I won’t just have to speak in public—I will have to lie.
Kate looks at the clock too. “Better get a wiggle on,” she says.
“There’s only forty-five minutes left!”
“You need to go,” Mumma says.
Yes, that’s what she would say. That’s how it goes, isn’t it? A student has got to be screaming for the death pack before she has any excuse to miss even forty-five minutes of school. We ARE the future. We know that. But seriously?
I try one last pleading look at Kate—
“You just need to show your face,” she says. “And don’t worry. I’ve squared it with the brain boxes: no one’s going to be pestering you.”
Kate has never quite squared it in her own head that it’s not just Yaz and Yukiko who are “brain boxes”; this whole community is dedicated to fast-track study. We’re a tech village. Kate calls it Nerd City. She says there’s no one dumber than a smart person.
I shove my bowl of cold, disgusting breakfast away from me. Hormones would like to shove it harder—perhaps so hard it skitters clean off the table and shatters on the floor—but I am River. I don’t do that kind of thing.
“And take a shower!” Kate speaks to my back.
My back turns around, so my face can handle the situation.
“You’re gonna make me go to school for thirty minutes?”
“Yup.”
“I need clean clothes.”
“Obvs,” says Kate, back to studying the map. It’s teen slang from her day. It means “obviously.”
“Well, it’s in my room.”
“She’s unconscious,” says Akesa, tracing her finger over once-was towns.
“Him,” corrects Kate. “He’s unconscious. How many times do I have to tell you people? Now, what about Plymouth?” she says, jabbing at the map. “I’ve always had my suspicions about Plymouth. What if there was a secret Sanctuary—”
“There are no secret Sanctuaries,” my Mumma says. “There are no secrets!”
“Sure about that, are you, big shot?”
“This isn’t the past. This is now,” Mumma states, flustered and tired. She was up all night in her study. Researching, was what she told Kate. As long as it wasn’t snitching, Kate growled back.
“It had better be,” says Kate. “And it had better not be yesterday in a skirt.”
I don’t know what Kate means, but I don’t like the way she says it. I shut the door on them in disgust. Hormones would like to slam it.
I shower, gloomily watching a surprising amount of filth come off my body. So much filth, in fact, I decide I will wash my hair after all. More filth. And the odd twig.
At least you’re clean, I swipe across the steamed-up mirror to tell myself as I brush my teeth. Isn’t that better? I can’t even manage a smile.
My mumma has left the pointless kitchen conversation and is washing her armpits at the sink. She nudges me out of the way for a moment and smiles tenderly at me. I love her love just as I love Kate’s love, but maybe in a slightly different way. Like most mummas around—or rather, not around; they are always so busy—she has little time to express her love in the way that a teen or a littler one or even the gruffest granmumma (like mine!) would…but I am very sure of it. The mummas’ love is a hardworking love. A love that has rebuilt the world.
“This will be okay, River,” she says. “Be patient. This will be okay.”
A smile from her is a jewel. A jewel that is so shiny and precious it makes me not even want to ask how this will be okay. My mumma knows how things work. My mumma knows about politics and disagreements and how to resolve problems, and even if this situation must be as strange and alarming for her as it is for me, my mumma will sort it out. Because that’s what mummas do.
Knowing that, I smile back, basking in the intelligent brilliance of her love.
I have to go into my room to get clean clothes with the creature lying in my bed. It is too alarming. It is too weird and horrible. My room smells wrong, chokingly wrong—disinfectant cannot quite mask the stink of the beast. The creature lies creepily quiet as I dig out my clothes. Every second of hunting for what I need, my eyes keep darting looks at it. Darting, because they refuse to outright STARE at it.
Thing. Creature. Boy. Sweat flow reduced to a sheen. Breathing steady.
It almost looks human. Really, I could even laugh when I think about it. Almost. Though I’ve told Mumma and Kate and Akesa in great detail how this thing behaved, it’s as though they haven’t really heard me. It’s as though they’re thinking this thing is going to wake up and sit calmly at the table having a polite chat over a cup of mint tea and a slice of cake. It’s madness. This whole thing is madness.
I come out of my room with a pile of my clothes, and—
“Jesus! River!” Kate says.
“What?”
Really: “WHAT?!” From the way she says it, I think some new dreadful thing has happened.
“Oh my God!” Kate says, as my mumma comes out of the bathroom to see what’s going on. “Get back in the bathroom, both of you!”
“Here!” she says, shoving towels at me and Mumma. Us both baffled.
“I’m all dry,” I tell Kate.
That’s how it works. Tread lightly, i.e., you don’t use any more of anything than you absolutely have to. I only ever use one small towel. It’s how I was brought up—it’s so the way of things. Who’d even think about it? More towels = more laundry = more resources wasted. That’s how it goes. Anyway, the specifics none of us think about: you just don’t use anything unless you have to.
I’m still thinking there’s something really wrong happening. Kate holding out the towel, me not getting why, her seeming…upset?
“You need to cover yourselves,” Kate says.
“Huh?”
“Just cover yourselves up!”
“Kate?” says Mumma.
“We’ll…we’ll talk about this later,” Kate puffs at us, asthma attack threatening.
I look at Mumma, and I can see, from the look in Mumma’s eye that she also has not the slightest notion of what this is all about…except that, presumably, it has something to do with the boy
.
Chapter 9
Poo
“I don’t want to deal with the sewage on a Thursday,” Hope is saying as I creep into the community studies room. Everyone turns and stares at me, but it’s only Plat I see. Her eyes shout River! and mine shout Plat! back. And then I remember, and it hits me all over again how hard it’s going to be not to tell Plat about the boy. I plonk my despairing bottom down in the only free seat, next to Hope.
“So, about the poo?” Jade says, wanting to hurry Hope along.
Poo. At last there’s a conversation happening I can understand. This is what I’m late for. It’s what we do after every school break: spend the afternoon sorting out who’s doing what and when. It usually takes hours, as the whole school is involved, us teens and the littler ones, and everyone is bound to have some kind of gripe. We’re pretty much expected to; it’s supposed to be good preparation for the future, us learning how to discuss and agree.
We all know why Hope doesn’t want to deal with the sewage. Over the past year, we’ve had a lot of new import food coming in; more food than there has been for YEARS. It’s delicious—it’s brilliant!—although Kate says it’s nothing compared to what you used to be able to just walk into a once-was supermarket and BUY. (I don’t pay much attention to the stuff Kate says about the once-was world, but hearing about supermarkets and takeout? I love it! It’s AMAZING.) In any case, everyone knows what the ultimate result of the import food is: more poo. Import, excrete, Plat jokes, but it’s true. After the weekend, on a Thursday morning, we’ve all noticed it—more poo. I’ve been so stuffed full of food I poo more. Everyone cleans the toilet after themselves—who would not?—but someone has to make sure the flow from the tanks into the reed beds is…flowing.
“So what’s your solution, Hope?” says Plat, trying to keep everyone on track.
“We should randomize the rotation,” Tamara, one of the older teens, jumps in.
“Agreed?” says her partner, Silver-Moon.
The whole room nods.
“I suppose that’s my job?” grumbles Hope.
No one answers because everyone, Hope included, knows the answer. If you see a problem, you’re expected to at least try to think of a solution, and you’ll almost certainly need to be involved in implementing it.
“So that’s everything pretty much sorted out then?” Jade asks the room, then, before anyone can point out that that isn’t pretty much everything, “I mean, with everything else, we could just run with last term’s arrangements, if everyone is happy to Agree with that?” she says.
In the middle of the enthusiastic round of nodding that follows, Sweet starts up with, “Well, I think—” An older littler one nudges her and whispers something in her ear. “But I don’t want to talk about the boy again,” Sweet “whispers” back, loud as a shout. “It’s boring me now!”
Plat’s eyes are on me, silently offering support. Both of us knowing this moment is unavoidable. Of course it is. A thing that has never happened in our lifetimes has happened—and if it hadn’t happened to me, I’d also be itching to get the school business Agreed so we can talk about this extraordinary event.
My head, hurting, hears people saying again what they’ll already have said to anyone and everyone: how they thought they saw the boy in the woods (It was a deer!), in the estuary (It was a log!), how they heard strange sounds in the night.
“Did you speak to the XY?” Jade cuts across the babble.
My stomach flips. Uh. Here I am again. All eyes on me.
“Y&Y said not to do this,” Plat steps in. “They said to leave River alone. She’s had a shock. We all have, haven’t we?”
I could melt with gratitude. Plat gets up, stands next to me, and puts her arm around my shoulder.
“We only want to know if the boy said anything,” says Tamara.
“And how dangerous it is,” says Hope.
“How can it be dangerous? It’s dead,” says Plat.
“No one found a body though, did they?” says Jade.
A shiver of possibility runs through the room.
“And no one ever will,” says Plat. “It went into the estuary.”
“So did you,” says Jade.
It’s true, and the whole school knows it. Me and Plat, we are legends. Two summers ago, we swam out too far—when we just “happened” to have a raft with us. We just “happened” to pick the tide right. We’d planned the whole thing, of course. We ended up in Gloucester. We got such a talking-to. It was worth it.
“It could still be alive,” says Hope. “Alive and dangerous…”
The room stills. The mood swings from thrill to—
“Did it seem like it could be dangerous?” asks Silver-Moon.
YES. He grabbed me; he hurt me; he threatened to kill me. I was scared out of my mind. Who knows what…
MAN
MEN
KNIVES
MURDER
RAPE
GUNS
WAR
KILL
DEATH
…he might be capable of.
I cannot reply. Tears of a whole new kind well in my eyes. Tears so new I don’t know what they mean—and nor does anyone else. Through blurry eyes, I see them all staring—not curious anymore. Concerned. Baffled concerned concerned. That’s the only way to put it. Concerned in a new and unknown way.
“I heard things in the night,” Hope is saying quietly.
“Shut up now,” Silver-Moon is telling her, granmumma-style.
“Did the boy HURT River?” Sweet speaks up.
Small, brilliant, troublesome Sweet. Five words speak what the concern cannot.
“Whoa,” says Jade, super-slowly, and just as super-slowly, she turns to look at me, her concern burning brighter than even her pushy curiosity.
I feel Plat’s hand massage my shoulder: I am here. Are you still here? she is saying. I also feel the doubt in it: I am here. Did you get hurt?
But it’s as though I see, not my school friends, but Mumma and Akesa and Kate and the rest of the granmummas sitting in front of me. And the boy—his phantom version—slumped in a chair at the back, so sick. The secret I have been asked to keep is here. It is right here in this room.
“Look, I’m fine,” I hear myself telling everyone. “I’m just really, really tired.”
The concern grabs hold of that statement and hugs it tight.
“The boy is dead,” says Plat solemnly, to the littler ones. “It’s very sad, but the boy is dead and swept away to sea.”
One of the littlest of the littler ones snuffles sadly in the silence.
“Perhaps we should just all go home now? I mean, it’s about that time anyway,” says Tamara. Tamara: Queen of Solutions.
“Agreed,” says Plat, Queen of my Heart and, sometimes annoyingly, Queen of Sensible. Okay, mini-mumma! I joke with her sometimes. She’s that sensible. That diplomatic—an old word, but a good one to describe Plat. She’s courtesy with brains.
I feel Plat’s hands grip my shoulders and practically lift me out of that chair.
“Let’s talk,” she whispers in my ear as we walk down the corridor.
I want to talk to her so much, but…I mustn’t.
“I’ll miss English lit,” she offers.
We don’t miss classes. No one checks up on us, as Kate says happened in her day. Now that we’re teenagers, we’re free to study what we’re best at or what we need to study in order to do best at what we’re best at. In my case, that’s math, physics, and chemistry (my need-to-study subject—I find it quite difficult). Those are mainly daytime subjects, but I get up at all hours for online seminars in aeronautical engineering. That’s my direction; that’s my love. Plat? She’s justice, economics, history, and literature (her she-doesn’t-really-need-to-study-it subject; it’s not exactly relevant, is it?). She studies global
literature because she says stories can tell us more about ourselves than history does, although even she sometimes struggles to understand them. She is going to make a brilliant representative, and everyone knows it. Though Plat herself says representatives, like my mumma, are just that. You can’t represent anyone unless you listen to them and unless they vote for you. People will vote for Plat because Plat thinks and Plat listens.
“I’ve got Tess of the d’Urbervilles at five,” she says.
“Huh?”
“My thoughts exactly. Come on. Let’s talk.”
We take a walk. I know I cannot talk to her, but my need to be with her is so great right now I go anyway. Without either of us saying a thing about it, we take our walk. Our walk is up, up, up through the woods, crisscrossing. Everyone has their own route through the woods, everyone thinks their own route is the best. No route is so well trodden it seems like the “right” way, though certain paths are preferred. So we part, meet, part, and meet again. It makes us smile; even in the pitch-dark of a winter night, when we cannot even see each other and only hear the crack of a branch or the squelch of a muddy hollow. On this autumn afternoon, we can see each other under the canopy of trees that are only just thinking it’s time to let go of their leaves, making a big show of amazing colors.
“You’re not going to tell me, are you?” she says, as we lie on the smooth, sun-warmed rocks at the top of the hill. The woods thin out here, turning to scrub, then moor. The view is huge and inspiring.
“There’s nothing to tell,” I say, reaching for her hand.
“I know that’s not true.”
I find her hand. I hold her hand. I feel our lives pulsing.
“What does ‘yesterday in a skirt’ mean?” I ask her.
“Ha! River! Since when did you start taking an interest in history?”
“Since never. What does it mean?”
“It was one of the last things the American president said on social media before he died. ‘We are now facing a new tomorrow. It looks like yesterday—in a skirt.’”
Plat’s so good at doing historic voices. She gets picked time and time again for lead roles in our plays for the granmummas because she is so excellent at making voices that are supposed to be XY come to life—even now her rendition makes me grin, but—
The XY Page 8