The Territory

by Sarah Govett

  ‘Who shall we invite?’ Daisy asked, pen poised over a notebook she’d covered in malc doodles of flowers.

  ‘Please tell me you haven’t started a new book for the party?’ I said, rolling my eyes. Daisy likes ‘pretty things’ (think pretty tacky) and has to start some new flowery/generally grim notebook every time she begins a new project. If she put as much time into making flashcards she could sell them for massive amounts to younger students, and probably actually remember some stuff.

  As we started going through who we wanted to invite/would rather be thrown off a bridge than spend time with, a strange figure stumbled out of the bushes towards us. A boy, probably twelve or thirteen, with a shock of curly brown hair. His arms hung limply by his side and he walked with a weird, lurching gait. His eyes looked at us, but seemed blank, as if he wasn’t registering what he was seeing, and a thin spittle of saliva hung off his bottom lip like the beginnings of a spider’s web.

  I had a sudden, sick realisation.

  Daisy must have seen my face because she turned to me and whispered, ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘That’s Jimmy White.’ I whispered back and we both shrank into the bench a little. Everyone in our area knew the name. He had been a year below us at Hollets and had been a slightly below-average student. He was born a Norm as his parents hadn’t been rich enough to afford the procedure to make a Childe. Anyway, when Jimmy turned eleven, his dad unexpectedly made partner at the big accountancy firm he’d worked at forever. With the promotion came a fat bonus. His dad spent it all on a late upgrade for his son.

  Everyone knows the procedure has its risks. The surgeons have to cut between your second and third vertebrae to imbed the Node and wire and then drill through your skull to insert a chip into the important memory bit of your brain. It has a Latin name. I don’t know Latin. A miniscule error – a shake of the hand, the wrong-sized scalpel – can mean any number of massively important neurones are cut and hey presto, you’re a vegetable.

  You can see why some parents still do it though. Mistakes are really rare and successful late upgrades are just as likely as full-on Childes to pass the TAA. There’s a bit of a stigma attached to it and they’ll always be slight outsiders, but if you’re a Mum or Dad weighing that up against losing your child to near certain death as a Fish, you probably don’t care too much about the odd snobby look or withheld birthday invite.

  Unfortunately for Jimmy, the surgeon’s hand shook. He’ll now spend the next year and a bit wandering round aimlessly until he fails the TAA and is shipped off. I don’t know if they’ll even make him sit it. Or, if he’s judged enough of a vegetable, his parents will have the right to sell him for organ transplants. Want a new conservatory? Just sell Jimmy’s kidneys. Nice.

  Luckily, a late upgrade isn’t much of a risk for Jack, Daisy or me. My parents could have had a Childe pretty cheaply if they’d wanted to – it’s another Ministry perk for top scientists. But they were both against it on principle. They just didn’t like the idea of someone else being able to put information in my head.

  ‘If they can upload information, it’s only a matter of time before they can upload thoughts or emotions,’ Dad says. He can be slightly paranoid. Maybe they’d have thought differently if I hadn’t found school easy. I don’t know.

  Jack’s step-dad is only paying the massively high Hollets fees to please Jack’s mum. He’s not exactly going to shell out even more for someone else’s kid. I mean, I’m sure he cares about Jack and everything, but his life would actually be easier if Jack was shipped off in June and he had Jack’s mum and her inappropriate low-cut tops and droopy cleavage all to himself.

  As for Daisy, her parents probably would pay for it if they could afford it. But they can’t. So Daisy’s safe from that at least. She just needs to work harder. A lot harder.

  We abandoned party planning after Jimmy. Decided we’d invite the people already on our list and take it from there. I mean I’ll probably just talk to Daisy and Jack the whole night anyway.

  Genes are strange things. Amanda is about as horrific a person as you can get, but her mum’s actually really nice.

  I bumped into her this evening, forehead smack literally, on the way to the refuse centre. Mum and Dad believe in sharing responsibility (or getting out of boring chores by dumping loads on me). I had all our different bags and was already pushing it to get there before the centre shut for the night. I was in a foul mood. One of our bags had burst when I bumped it down the steps at the front of our apartment building. Luckily Mr Patel was just getting home at that exact moment and he dashed in to his apartment and gave me a spare bag. Mr Patel’s really nice. I guess Sunaina is just a bit younger than me and a Norm too, so he probably feels a bit protective of me.

  Just when I thought my hassles were over, I was stopped by a policewoman at the corner. Officer Brown (‘call-me-Marcus’), who’s actually alright, must have been off-duty. The policewoman made me go through the different bags to check I wasn’t ‘concealing anything subversive’. My right hand now stinks of rotting potato peel and boiled mucor and the worst thing is I don’t think she even thought I looked remotely suspicious. I think she’s just a power hungry witch who likes to make people stick their hands into their own garbage. I’m sure she wouldn’t have stopped me if I’d been in my Hollets’ uniform.

  Anyway, I was stomping along, fed up and bursting with cutting comments I’d like to use to take that police witch down but knew I’d never be allowed to, when I heard the droning in the sky. I looked up. Two plumes of white smoke trailed behind a silver plane, cutting lines into the blue. I think everyone in the street stopped to stare. It was almost beautiful, but also seemed massively unnatural. I know, let’s get in a big steel contraption and chuck it up into the sky and hope it stays up. No thanks! Guess it can’t be that dangerous if the First Minister uses it. I think the last Bulletin said he was off to the States. No doubt to have his photo taken as they shoot the next batch of mirrors into space. They’ll definitely work this time! Yeah right.

  Amanda’s mum must have been walking the other way and staring up too; it was when the noise faded, we collided. She gave me a hug then wrinkled her nose at the smell, and then tried to pretend she hadn’t. She offered to give me some of Amanda’s old clothes, even though I’m about 10cm taller than her so there’s no way they’d fit. I think she thinks I must be really poor as I’m a Norm. Now she’s going to think I have terrible personal hygiene too. I can just imagine her at her next dinner party. ‘Do you know poor people smell like rotting potatoes?’

  Freakoids aren’t always that easy to spot.

  A new boy joined our class today: Raf Ferris. Ms Jones introduced him at registration. No one paid much attention at first. He seemed unremarkable. He was wearing scuffed blue jeans and a brown jumper with a small hole at the elbow. And a scarf. Even though it really wasn’t that cold. Jack thought he looked like a right poser. It was only when Raf looked up that everyone took notice. He has these really weird, intense eyes. The left one is bright green but the right one is bright blue. I never even knew a person could have eyes like that. I remember a neighbourhood cat when I was really small having one yellow and one green eye, but never a person.

  Hugo sniggered and then obviously Amanda, his lame shadow, started laughing too. They are so predictable. Laughing at anything that is not compleeeeetley perfect. I think his eyes are cool though. Better than perfect. When the freakoids started laughing, Raf just grinned and kept chewing the gum in his mouth. He has a really cool grin. I must have been grinning too ’cos Daisy poked me in the ribs and whispered in my ear, ‘You so luuurrrvve him’. Which I so don’t, obviously. I don’t even know him.

  Ms Jones told Raf to go and sit down and then told him to take off his scarf as it wasn’t ‘suitable attire’ for the classroom. She also told him that he needed to buy or borrow a school uniform by tomorrow morning.

  ‘I am not sure how they ran things at your last school, Rafael, but we do things properly at Hollet
s. A smart appearance is one step closer to a smart mind.’

  She is such a pain, Ms Jones. She says so many completely annoying things that I think she must have a book of annoying phrases somewhere at home and selects a new one every morning.

  ‘And dispose of your chewing gum this instant. We do not chew the cud. We are not cattle.’

  Some days it seems she selects two. And great joke, as there aren’t any cows anymore, except her of course.

  When Raf unwrapped his scarf I gasped. There, at the back of his neck, between the second and third vertebrae, was a Node – clear as anything. I prodded Daisy in the ribs and her mouth literally fell open too. At the same time I saw Hugo and Quentin just stop and stare and even Ms Jones flinched. I don’t know who was more shocked: me and Daisy to find out that the cool new boy was actually a freakoid Childe or the freakoids to find out that the mutant-eyed messy boy was actually one of them.

  I really don’t get sport. We have to do loads of it, even with the TAA looming, as some Ministry idiot seems to think it’ll help the formation of some new strong, healthy, intelligent master race that’ll lead us out of our current problems. There’s even an exceptionally lame poster in the changing rooms showing a group of guys, supposedly fifteen but even more built than Jack, with the slogan, ‘Team building builds the Territory’. I mean, what crap! As if these teen sporting heroes are going to use their over-developed biceps to somehow pump the Wetlands dry, Superman-style. Methinks not. More likely they’re going to be moaning about torn hamstrings and knee injuries while sitting at their boring desk jobs or dying in the Wetlands as one too many tackle knocked out one too many brain cell.

  All lessons were cancelled this afternoon so the whole school could watch our Rugby First Team play in the Schools’ Final against Higgins High, our main rival. Everyone was absurdly excited about the game. Loads of students were wearing or waving the Hollets scarf (super lame and super grim tan and black stripes) and Amanda and some other freakoid girls had painted glittery ‘H’s on their cheeks, lost in the ecstasy of getting to watch Hugo and Quentin run around in short shorts.

  Daisy whispered in my ear, ‘Do you think we should tell them Higgins High also starts with an H?’ and I cracked up. Amanda glared at us, not knowing what the joke was, but knowing it was at her expense.

  Normally Daisy and I would have skived something like this at all costs, but this time Jack was playing and, knowing this was pretty important to him, we thought we really should support him. He’d been included last minute as Felix, the normal winger, had hurt his shoulder. So when the bell rang, we dutifully filed onto the spectator benches with everyone else and began edging along the row to an empty space. I was looking at the pitch rather than where I was going, so I didn’t stop when the guy in front of me did and ended up embarrassingly tumbling into his lap like a full-on denser. I heard a bump as something fell to the ground.

  Looking up, blushing furiously, I saw that I’d landed on Raf, the new freakoid. I stood up, cringing and expecting him to have a massive go at me, trashing me and Norms in general in the usual freakoid way. Fish, Fish, Fish.

  Instead, he flashed me an incredible grin and I got to see those magical eyes close up.

  ‘Um, sorry about that,’ I mumbled. Possibly not my greatest verbal effort, but it was the best I could manage as I stood and straightened myself up. And then I remembered the ‘bump’. ‘Oh God, I think I knocked something onto the ground. I hope it’s not broken.’

  ‘No problem, really. Please don’t worry,’ Raf insisted a little too much. Like an idiot, I ignored him and dived down again (realising when on the ground that I was far too close to his crotch) returning with a battered paperback book.

  ‘Thanks,’ Raf said quietly, and tucked the book into his coat pocket before too many prying eyes took notice. Reading’s pretty unusual and reading actual books, rather than the official books supplied on your Scribe, is seen as BAD. Dad only lets me read the books he gives me at home. I guess different rules apply to freakoids. The chances of them growing up and joining the Opposition are a big fat zero so they don’t have the same police attention.

  I’d seen the title: Great Expectations.

  ‘It’s good. The book, I mean,’ I said, wanting for some reason to continue the conversation.

  Surprise registered on his face. ‘You’ve read it? I thought no one else read this stuff anymore. Yeah, it’s brilliant, so far,’ Raf replied. ‘Thought I might get some reading done while everyone was watching the match.’ He gestured at the field and the crowd. ‘This isn’t really my thing.’ Pause. ‘I’m Raf by the way.’

  His breath smelt of spearmint gum. ‘I’m Noa.’

  And then the whistle blew and the talking stopped.

  I know basically nothing about rugby. Jack’s tried to teach me the fundamentals but my brain just switches off. Even so, I could tell that Jack was on fire this afternoon. He seemed to be everywhere at once and moved massively fast for someone so big. Whenever some guy from Higgins had the ball and starting sprinting towards their white line, Jack was there and tackled them down. Huge cheers rang out round the pitch and even freakoids joined in the cheers of, ‘Jack, Jack, Jack.’ Hugo and Quentin and the others were probably all playing fine, but no one cared. This was Jack’s match, and they knew it. I could see the anger on Hugo and Quentin’s faces, even though from where I was sitting they were not much more than fork-sized.

  Just before the end of the match, it really kicked off. Jack was tripped. And I don’t mean tackled. I’m talking deliberately tripped, mid-sprint, by a member of his own team: Quentin. Jack literally somersaulted mid-air and came down with a crunch. Daisy and I were left gasping and pointing and there was a general rumble of concern along the Hollets benches. Even Raf got that something was wrong and looked up from his book in confusion. The referee looked a bit shocked, but there really wasn’t anything he could do. It’s not like it was a normal team on team foul or anything. I couldn’t take my eyes of Jack, willing him to get to his feet, hoping that he and, most importantly, his hands, weren’t badly injured.

  He eventually got up, winced slightly as he flexed various muscles, and then he slowly and determinedly walked over to Quentin. There was a fixed look on his face and his fists were clenched. I don’t know what would have happened next if the end-of-match whistle hadn’t blown and the Hollets coach hadn’t dragged Jack away and back to the lockers.

  Hollets had won and Jack got ‘Best Player’.

  But victory seemed pretty empty.

  I never thought I could actually enjoy an Assembly, but today’s was something else. First-class Ace-McSpace. Mr Daniels has had a hair transplant. Yes, I’m talking about a full-on removal of the grey squirrel’s tail and all over plugs of golden brown. I think the rumours about him and Ms Forester must be true. She’s at least fifteen years’ younger than him so this must be his attempt to look thirties rather than fifties. But what a result! He looks RIDICULOUS! We’re calling him Aslan from now on, even Daisy, who wouldn’t read anything if she could get away with it and is normally allergic to book references.

  We were all made to read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in Year 6. Maybe the Ministry thought that books about ‘plucky’ kids fending for themselves would somehow make the idea of being shipped off to the Wetlands less terrifying. Yeah right. Shame there’s no magic door to escape back through.

  Anyway, Mr Daniels has got balls though. He walked up onto the stage and began droning on about God’s Love (yeah – not sure his God loves Norms very much) as if nothing whatsoever had happened to his scalp. And then halfway through his limp speech, he actually shook his neck a little to make his hair waft out, like he was a hot sixteen-year-old girl. Jack, Daisy and my shoulders all began to shake like washing machines. I couldn’t look at their faces as I knew the laughter would explode out and TAA points would be haemorrhaged. As it was, Mr Daniels seemed to be able to detect the silent shaking as he stopped, mid-sentence, and did search-beam eyes over th
e Assembly floor.

  I stopped breathing as his eyes swept over the three of us. ‘Please, please, please don’t notice us,’ I said in silent prayer to the God I’m not sure I even believe in.

  Miraculously, his eyes kept moving and the next thing I knew, some other poor kid was being yelled at.

  ‘You. Yes you there. Stand up. What’s your name?’

  ‘Raf.’

  I couldn’t believe it. The new freakoid boy. He must have been laughing too.

  ‘Raaaaffff.’ Mr Daniels drew out his name like he was stretching a rubber band between his teeth. ‘You’re clearly finding something very amusing. Is there a joke you’d like to share with us?’

  ‘No, sir. Sorry, sir.’

  ‘See me in my office after Assembly.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Raf bent his head as he sat down again. He looked a bit scared, but he didn’t look properly sorry. He looked like someone acting sorry who’s a bit of a bad actor. I hope he doesn’t get into too much trouble though. He seems pretty cool for a freakoid. And I swear he was still chewing gum, which is almost a criminal offence at Hollets.

  Oh, and Jack got Fished again today. This time it was his locker, which I guess is at least better than his desk. He went to open it at lunch to get out his kit for rugby practice and a super-large, super-grim brown trout plopped out onto the floor. Slime trail down Jack’s clothes, dead eye staring back up. A note ‘Hello Fish Face’ was tied round its neck.