The Beneath

by S. C. Ransom

  “What?” she asked. “Water, of course.”

  “OK, wait here and I’ll get it.”

  I left her at the table, still clutching the top as if her life depended on it. Soon I was back with one plain coffee, one double-choc muffin and a glass of tap water, which left me with about fifteen pence. She gasped as I put the muffin down on the table and her hand darted out towards it – then stopped. I pushed it towards her.

  “Go on, you have it. I’m not really hungry.”

  She shot me a glance that seemed pathetically grateful and, holding the muffin almost reverently, started picking at the top with her long, thin fingers.

  I sipped my coffee and watched, almost embarrassed, as she ate. Her skinny frame was hunched over the table, the long dark hair falling forward, but not enough to cover her high cheekbones and perfectly straight nose. The dark eyes that continued to dart around the room were completely free of make-up. There was no doubt that she could be beautiful with a decent haircut and some proper clothes.

  She devoured every last speck of the muffin. I’d never seen anyone eat with so much obvious enjoyment; every single chocolate chip was savoured, no crumb overlooked. I thought at one moment she was about to eat the paper case as well, but in the end she just scraped all the bits off it. There didn’t seem much point in trying to get her to talk while she was eating, so I nursed my cooling coffee and waited. Every few minutes I felt the phone in my pocket vibrate, but for once I felt strong enough to ignore it. Today I had better things to do than to read Jenny’s snarky comments.

  Finally every particle of the muffin was gone, the only evidence remaining being a small smear of chocolate on Aria’s chin. She sat back, eyes half closed, and breathed deeply.

  “Thank you,” she murmured.

  “No problem. You, um, looked as if you enjoyed that. Have you not eaten for a while?”

  She lifted her eyes and looked directly at me for a few moments. Twice she looked as if she was about to speak, before thinking better of it.

  I couldn’t stand waiting any longer. “Look, it’s obvious that something is going on. What were you doing in the tunnel? What on earth were the things that were chasing us?”

  “I can’t tell you exactly. I just know that they are really dangerous.”

  “In what way?”

  “They’ll kill you if they catch you.”

  “Sounds as if we were pretty lucky then,” I said, more and more convinced that I had picked up someone with a severe personality disorder.

  Aria slumped back in her chair, her hands falling into her lap.

  “He’ll kill me anyway,” she said, playing with a button on her shirt.

  “Who? Who would do that?”

  “The Farmer. He obviously knows that I’m up here, and that’s not allowed.”

  “I don’t get it. What’s a farmer got to do with anything?”

  Her dark eyebrows knitted together. “I don’t understand you. There’s so much up here I don’t recognise. I didn’t think it would be this difficult.”

  She was beginning to wind me up with her non-answers, but I didn’t want to give her a hard time, not if she was in need of some sort of professional help.

  “OK, Aria, let’s do this one question at a time. Where do you live?”

  “With the Community.”

  “And where exactly is that?”

  She lifted her dark eyes, and the intensity of her gaze startled me.

  “Underground. We live underground, below your tunnels, below your world.”

  I tried to keep the surprise from my face, and wondered if she was actually living with the homeless people who shelter in the Tube.

  “So,” I said, choosing my words carefully, “have you been down there long?”

  “No one knows. There are stories, but we don’t know exactly how long. It must be hundreds of years.”

  I nearly spat my coffee across the table. “Hundreds of years?”

  “If not longer. We have stories that go a long way back, but only the Elders are allowed to hear most of them. I’ll never hear them all now.”

  From the wistful tone to her reply it was clear that she believed everything she was saying. But could I?

  “So, you are part of a community that lives underground, right?” She nodded. “How many of you are there?”

  “Not so many now, not after all the troubles. Maybe a few hundred.”

  Every answer she gave me raised more and more questions, so I went back to the one that was most obvious to ask.

  “And why are you here? Are you running away?”

  I can still taste the sweetness of the cake on my tongue. I’ve never seen so much cake – more than enough for everybody, and she didn’t even bother to have one. Maybe they are as greedy and wasteful as the Elders say. I look around. No one is tucking into the huge platefuls of food, even though it is all just sitting there on the side. About half of them look pretty miserable. Most are drinking cups of a bitter-smelling brown liquid, including Lily. The room is so brightly lit that it hurts my eyes.

  Lily is still looking at me. Shall I tell her the truth? I take a deep breath.

  “I’ve just been told how I was going to be Assigned, and I don’t want to be what they want me to be.”

  “What does that mean – ‘Assigned’?” she asks.

  She doesn’t understand – why should she? She has even less knowledge of our world than I do of hers.

  “In the Community, when you reach fifteen you find out the role you will take for the rest of your life.”

  “What, like a doctor or a teacher, that sort of thing?”

  She is leaning forward with her arms on the table and a frown on her forehead, struggling to make sense of it all. I nod, not wanting to say too much, but enough to convince her that this is the real reason I’m here.

  “And when do you start doing that?”

  “On your sixteenth birthday.”

  “And you do that forever? That is way too harsh. I’m not surprised that you’ve run away.”

  She leans even further over the table and drops her voice. “So what was it that you didn’t want to be? What was so awful that you had to run away from your entire life?” she asks.

  I am surprised as the tears come, tears that I’ve not shed since Carita was Assigned years before. I agreed to join Dane’s mission when it was clear I was heading for the same fate. Whatever happens now, there is no way they will keep even that Assignment. I am a lost cause.

  I feel a touch on my arm, and flinch before I realise that it’s gentle – a touch of kindness. Her voice is gentle too.

  “Please don’t cry, Aria. Whatever it is you don’t have to tell me. I was just curious, that’s all.”

  I hear her leave the table for a moment and return a second later. She presses something soft and papery against my fingers.

  “Here, wipe your eyes with these.”

  She is kind and brave, this stranger whose life I have invaded. What would she think if she knew the whole truth?

  I sat back and looked at the weeping girl opposite me. She seemed at a loss with what to do with the napkins, so I took one and dabbed at her cheeks, mopping up some of the tears that were making tracks down her face. The waitress, who had been about to come over and clear our table, did a swift about-turn and tried to look busy somewhere else.

  It wasn’t going to be possible to stay in the café all evening, so I had to work out what to do with her. I couldn’t make up my mind if I believed her or not. After all, living underground seemed pretty unlikely. But I couldn’t abandon her either – I had to make sure she was OK. I glanced surreptitiously at my watch; the café would be open for another couple of hours, but I had no more money. She didn’t look as if she had anything on her, so we were going to get thrown out soon enough. And in half an hour or so I was going to be expected home for tea.

  “So where are you heading to now? I’m going to be off soon.”

  “I … I don’t really know,” she sai
d, finally taking the napkins and wiping her face before sniffing loudly. “Can I come with you? I have nowhere to go…”

  What on earth was I going to do? I could hardly turn up at home with a complete stranger. Leaving her here was my only choice. I might have saved her from the track but that didn’t make her my responsibility. Anyway, I had more than enough problems in my life without inviting another one in, especially one who seemed so utterly clueless about what was going on around her.

  I was about to get up to go when my phone vibrated again, and Aria jumped. I hesitated before fishing it out of my pocket, feeling my stomach clench. Would it be a mundane one from Nan asking me to pick something up for tea, or another vile anonymous one? It still made me feel sick every time I turned the phone over. I took a deep breath and glanced at the screen.

  It was from Nan, and I felt my shoulders sag with relief. She was popping out so we weren’t going to be having tea for a while. I was just about to reply when the phone buzzed again. Without thinking, I glanced at the little screen.

  The spiteful message hit me like a punch, making me cry out loud. Aria jumped up, knocking the table and rattling the empty cup and saucer. She tensed as if ready for a fight, looking around her wildly.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, leaning over to put a calming hand on her wrist.

  “You saw danger. I heard you. I just don’t know what the danger is…”

  Her eyes continued to dart about, searching for something that wasn’t there.

  “Sit down,” I said in a low voice, glancing at the café manager, who was staring over at us. He clearly thought we were up to no good. “Now!”

  Aria sat back down with a thump, looking even more confused. “But you shouted. Why did you do that?”

  “It was just a text.”

  That made it sound harmless, but every day Jenny found another way to hurt me, to dig in the knife so expertly.

  Aria stared at me blankly, and I knew I had to explain a bit more. “The text is a horrible message that I’m pretty sure is from one of the girls in my class, although she’s far too smart to send it from her own number.”

  That was the problem. The teachers at school said bullying was unacceptable but unless you had actual proof there was no point in telling them. All it would do was land you in more trouble. I just had to put up with the hate mail. It could only be from Jenny, and I was the easy target to pick on now. She seemed to know everything about me and my dull life with no family, few friends and no hope of a boyfriend. It gave her plenty of ammunition for her texts.

  Aria was still looking bemused. “What message?”

  “On my phone,” I said, trying and failing to keep the incredulity out of my voice. “You know – a text message. See?”

  I turned the phone round to show her, but it didn’t change the confused frown on her face. She took the handset and ran her fingers over the surface.

  “That’s the sort of stuff she’s been saying.” I pointed to the screen where Jenny’s latest thoughts, this time about my weight, were still partially visible.

  “I don’t understand,” she said in a small voice.

  “Read it from the beginning,” I sighed, leaning over to scroll back up to the top of the message. Aria let out a small squeal as the characters moved, and dropped the phone.

  “How does it do that?” she whispered, whipping her hands under the table as if she was expecting the phone to bite her.

  “Do what?”

  “How do you make the picture move? I mean, I’ve heard about moving pictures from the Listeners, and I saw the funny ones on the moving stairs, but I don’t understand what they’re for.”

  “What picture? And what’s a Listener?”

  “The squiggles on there – the picture,” she said, bringing one hand up to point at the screen.

  “But that’s just a text. It’s not a picture.” At that moment the screen saver kicked in, showing a photo of Beanie looking cute in her little collar. “That’s a picture…”

  Aria looked as if I had electrified her. Her hand whipped away from the phone again, and she actually hissed.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s my cat, actually, or she was, until a little while ago.”

  I looked at her soft little face, tiny paws and friendly eyes. Who was looking after her now, I wondered for the thousandth time, and were they making her happy? For a moment I could almost feel her soft fur under my hand, and I had to fight a sudden choking feeling in my throat. It wasn’t helpful to think like that.

  I turned the phone face down and sat back. Aria was looking at me with horror.

  “You like that thing?” she asked, pointing at the phone.

  “Do you mean Beanie? Of course I like her. She was my cat. Well, kitten really, but she’s … she’s gone now.” I paused for a second, gathering myself. “I’m guessing that you’re not a cat person then?”

  “Of course not! No one likes animals. Why would they?”

  “Well, don’t sit on the fence then!” I said.

  Every time I thought of Beanie my eyes still filled with tears. Luckily Jenny didn’t know about that or it would have become yet another thing to ridicule me about. I had last seen my little cat when she was about eight months old – bigger than a kitten but not a proper cat, and still happy to play all the kittenish games. Her favourite was chasing a torch beam across the floor, and we had played that so often that I emptied half the batteries in the house. Dad had been especially cross about that, but then he had been annoyed about a lot of things, and I still felt guilty that I missed my cat more than I missed him. For a moment into my mind flashed the twins, my little brothers. I missed them more than anything, but couldn’t afford to let myself think about them.

  I blinked hard to keep the tears back, not daring to look up. Maybe I didn’t want anything to do with this girl, not if she was an animal-hater. The thought that I might be with someone like Jenny stiffened my resolve. I sat back and stared at her, but was instantly taken aback. Rather than the scorn or disgust I was expecting to see on her face, there was only puzzlement.

  “I’m sorry,” she faltered. “Have I upset you? It’s just that where I’m from, well, we don’t like animals. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  There was no doubting the sincerity in her voice.

  “It’s OK,” I said. “If you don’t like cats, you don’t like cats. It’s not as if she’s around any more.”

  “So much up here is strange. I didn’t realise … I always imagined that I would know enough to get by…”

  “Get by? What are you doing here, Aria?”

  As I asked the question the phone vibrated against the table and I looked down.

  My fist clenched around the phone as I read Jenny’s latest message. It was a new low, even for her.

  “What is it, Lily? What’s the matter? Are you cross?” Aria asked.

  I looked up at the stranger sitting opposite me, a stranger who needed help, and who wanted to be my friend. My decision was suddenly easy.

  “Come on, Aria, let’s go. I’m taking you home with me.”

  We are leaving the place with all the food and walking now, walking along the edge of the walls. I try not to look up, because nothing is there and it feels so wrong. The light is bright in my eyes and I have to screw them up tightly so that I’m not blinded. Everything is so big and so loud. Huge machines are roaring past, and their smell is terrible. There are hundreds and hundreds of people and all of them seem to be in a hurry. They come in all shapes and sizes and in different skin colours as well, and a few have pale-yellow hair. The smell of the people is terrible too, but Lily doesn’t seem to notice. We are leaving behind the stairs that lead back to my life. Turning round I can see people pouring through the entrance, only pausing to pick up the folded papers from the big racks. As we turn a corner I wonder if I can find my way back. And if I can, what will be waiting for me?

  It was a slow walk home: Aria kept stopping dead to stare at people, wh
ich was a bit embarrassing. I couldn’t understand her. She was certainly behaving as if she had been underground for her entire life, but I really didn’t see how that was possible. Surely whole communities of people couldn’t be living under the city?

  I kept close to her as we walked down the street, calming her when a siren made her jump and when the cars on the street stopped in a queue next to us, engines racing. We were nearly home when Foggy bounced round the corner, dragging Will behind him. Foggy was a lively dog, mostly golden retriever but with a fair few other things thrown in. He immediately leapt up to say hello.

  “Hi, Lily, how are you?” asked Will, smiling. “Get down, Foggy!”

  He wrestled with the huge, hairy dog but quickly gave up. Foggy continued to slobber over me.

  “Oh, hi, Will. Um, great, thank you. Hi, Foggy.”

  I rubbed Foggy’s ears before pushing him away with as much force as I could muster, and he finally dropped back to the floor. I brushed the dirt from my sleeve and tried to think of something interesting to say.

  I’d known Will forever, from the time when we were both young and I came to visit Nan, but since I’d moved in with her I’d realised how gorgeous he had become. He was very friendly but I worried that he just thought of me as a kid. He was only a year ahead of me at school though, so I was doing my best to get him to see me as potential girlfriend material. Finally my plans seemed to going in the right direction, and he smiled at me again as he hauled in Foggy’s lead. I smiled back and turned to introduce Aria.

  She was pressed back against the window of the launderette, her face a picture of terror. Foggy, sensing fun, dived for her. Aria let out a blood-curdling scream and he froze. She was scrabbling to get away, hands reaching behind her across the smooth glass. Her eyes stayed fixed on the dog, and he bolted as she screamed again. Will was yanked across the pavement on the end of the lead.

  “Easy,” he said, calming down the dog, who was now shaking with fear behind his knees. He glared at Aria. “You’ve frightened him.”