Show Stopper

by Hayley Barker

  I stare unflinchingly at the camera. I have to get this right.

  “It’s time. We have to fight for what is right. We have to resist. This is your problem; it’s all of our problem, and it’s all of our faults.”

  I hope Priya’s looking down on me. I hope I make her proud.

  “Use your head,” I put my hand to my temples, “and use your heart. Listen to them, head and heart, hear what they say.

  “It’s not just the Cirque I’m talking about. It’s everything. Our society is rotten; rotten to the core. Our government, our country, has forced thousands of people into poverty and slavery. Denied them an education, denied them food, denied them lives. We’ve let them convince us that they deserve it. But they don’t. They have hearts and souls and brains, just like us. Now, the responsibility is ours.

  “Each and every one of you who is watching; who gets that niggling feeling of doubt when you hear of another Dreg hanging, or another Dreg death in the Cirque; who sometimes wonders if this is really the right way of going about things; who’s too scared to think too much – I’m talking to you. The time has come to speak out. To defy. To question.

  “Yes, it’s dangerous. Yes, it’s frightening. But if we don’t, if we allow this oppression, this torture, to continue, then we are guilty too.

  “My mother…” My voice shakes a bit now, I can’t help it, although I try to stop it. “My mother, the Prime Minister, the police, all of them, they are wrong. What they do, it’s evil. They must be stopped. We must stop them. We must stand up for what is right. We cannot—”

  The screen goes fuzzy. My face disappears.

  “They’ve cut you off.” Jack’s grinning. “Doesn’t matter though, it’s out there. Well done, lad! You said what needed to be said, and more.”

  He claps me on the back. “You’ve done it, Benny-Boy! I reckon you’ve done more for the cause in five minutes than we’ve achieved in fifty years!”

  I shiver. I guess I should feel proud, but I don’t. I just feel frightened. Frightened and alone.

  HOSHIKO

  She throws herself into my arms. A moment ago, I thought she might already have ended up like Amina and now she’s here, in this room, with me.

  “Greta? What are you doing here?”

  “I’m rescuing you!” She beams at me. “You saved my life, yesterday, in the arena, now it’s my turn. I’m saving yours!” Her expression changes suddenly, and she gently strokes my throat with her delicate little fingers.

  “What’s happened to your neck? Why is all purple?”

  “Oh, nothing. It doesn’t hurt much, honestly.”

  “Who did that to you? Was it Silvio?”

  “Yes, it was Silvio. It’s OK though, it could have been worse.”

  She crosses her arms together and narrows her eyes. “I’m not letting him hurt you again. Not ever.”

  I love that she wants to save me and I love having her here with me, where I can actually see her little face; somehow it feels like she’s safer where I can protect her. The grim reality though, is that she’s not – she’s more likely to get hurt by coming in here, not less, and that, whatever she thinks, she can’t rescue me. No one can.

  “How did you get here? How did you do it?”

  “They locked me up. They told me that you’d been bad, that you’d got together with a Pure boy and turned your back on the Dregs. They said they were using me as bait, to make you talk.”

  We sit down, and she slips her little hand in mine. “I knew it wasn’t true; everyone knows you hate Pures.” She’s looking at me a little doubtfully. She wants me to tell her it’s all lies. Just one big mistake; that we can sort it out, and no one’s going to come to any harm.

  “Some of it’s true.”

  Her eyes widen.

  “I have got together with a Pure boy. It’s a long story but, Greta, I promise, you’d love him. He’s not like you’d think; he’s really nice.” She stares at me, open mouthed, for a second or two and then she giggles, infectiously.

  “Is he rich and handsome?”

  She thinks this is another fairy story, like she does the Silvio one. It’s nice to see someone being happy for a change; it makes me feels happy too and, for a moment or two, I’m just a girl, giddy with love.

  “He’s gorgeous, Greta!”

  “So are you!” she declares, proudly. “You’re the prettiest person I’ve ever seen! Have you kissed him?” Her cheeks have turned rosy with excitement. I take a deep breath and whisper in her ear.

  “Yes!”

  She claps her hands, squealing in delight.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Ben.”

  “Ben what?”

  “Ben Baines.”

  “Ooh, Hoshiko Baines! That sounds nice! Do you love him? Does he love you?”

  Suddenly I feel as high as a kite. I know I’ve got to get back to reality in a minute, but it feels so good to tell her about him.

  “Yes! I love him, and I think he loves me too!”

  I let myself indulge in this warm, cosy pretence that’s nothing’s wrong for a few seconds more before I pull myself back down to earth. This really isn’t the time and the place for childish fantasies and, somehow, I don’t think we’re heading towards a happy ending.

  “Greta. I need you to tell me exactly what happened. Quickly. Any minute now, someone’s coming for me, and they won’t like finding you here.”

  “OK.” She takes a deep breath, and all her words come out in a jumbled tumble. “These policemen came, they were really horrid. They took me and Amina out of the dorms. They took Amina away and I haven’t seen her since. They put me in this tiny room, said they needed to get you to talk and I could help them. They took my doll away and then they left me there for hours and hours and hours.

  “Then, Silvio came in – he was really, really mad. He said the time for being nice was over and that you’d run out of chances. He said Amina and I were ‘necessary sacrifices’. I didn’t know what he meant, but it sounded really scary. I asked where you were and if he was going to hurt you and then he said that you were locked away, for now, and the one thing he could promise was that I definitely, definitely wouldn’t see you again, ever. He was so horrible, Hoshi.”

  “Carry on,” I tell her. “I know it’s hard.”

  “Then, this big, creepy guy came in. He said, ‘it’s done, she’s swinging,’ and Silvio left. Once he’d gone, I knew I had to get out of there and save you. The doors were locked though, and the windows, so the only thing was to crawl up into the tunnels. It was easy enough to get up there, and I knew you must be here somewhere so I kept moving along and pulling up the hatches until I found you.”

  Oh my God. She may be only six but she’s far smarter and braver than me. I never even thought of looking at the ceiling, or escaping through the tunnels, but she says it so matter of factly, as if it’s obvious.

  “Greta.” I try to let her down gently. “You’re amazing. What you’ve done is amazing, but you haven’t rescued me.”

  “Why not?” She looks confused.

  “Because I’m injured, and even if I could get back up there with you, I can’t stay up there for ever. As soon as I appear anywhere in this building, they’re going to see me. See me and lock me back up. Silvio’s probably noticed you’ve gone by now too; he’s soon going to work out where.”

  She grins again, bouncing back quickly from her tears, as only little kids can.

  “Don’t worry! I promise it will all be OK.” It’s as if she’s the grown-up and I’m the frightened child, and it makes me love her even more. “Wait there,” she says. “I’ve got something to show you.”

  She drags a chair over to the space in the ceiling, grabs on to the gap, and pulls herself up so that she’s sitting in the opening. I can just see her little legs with their scuffed, dusty knees swinging down.

  I hear her rooting around and then she wriggles back down. She keeps her back to me, turning to look at me, slyly. There’s somethi
ng in her hands.

  “Close your eyes,” she instructs me, as if it’s my birthday and she’s about to give me a present.

  “Greta, stop messing around. I’m trying to work out what to do!”

  “Just close your eyes. Please!”

  She’s so desperate for me to join in her little game that I decide it will probably be easier to indulge her.

  “OK,” I close my eyes and hold out my hands.

  Gently, she rests something in them. It takes up both hands. It’s heavy and cold: metal. I know what it is straight away, even though I’ve never held one before. I open my eyes. It’s a gun.

  BEN

  I stare at the ground. I can’t believe what I’ve just done. What will they do to me now when they find me? What will my mother say?

  Thankfully, I guess, there’s no time to dwell on these things, as Jack’s voice shakes me back to the present.

  “Ben, they’re going to be able to trace you now, I’m sure of it; they must have ways of tracking the computer you used. We need to get of here.”

  He looks me up and down.

  “Wait there. I’ll be back in five. I swear.” And then he’s gone, locking the door behind him.

  The silence in the room when he leaves is unbearable. How many times over the last three days have I sat in a room, waiting for someone to come?

  The clock ticks, ticks, ticks. It reminds me of waiting for those lions, in the show the other day. It’s driving me insane. I pull it off the wall and tear the battery out. That’s better.

  Where’s Hoshiko? What are they doing to her?

  The questions echo in my head, replacing the ticking of the clock. I think I’m going crazy.

  Thankfully, I hear the key in the lock. Then, I panic. What if it’s not him? I drop down, under the desk. The door opens and shuts.

  “Ben?”

  I stand up. He looks very pleased with himself. He’s a really nice guy and he’s saved my life, but I’m sure he’s a bit mad. He definitely finds this all quite amusing.

  “Here,” he grins. “Try these on for size.” He throws over two folded and sealed packages. Under the clear cellophane, a uniform, a police uniform.

  HOSHIKO

  I stare down at the gun in my hands.

  “Greta, where did you get this?”

  “It’s Silvio’s.” She grins, cheekily. “He left the room in such a hurry he forgot to lock the desk.”

  I look at her, this young child I’ve always tried to protect. She’s stolen a gun and escaped from a locked office to rescue me. Silvio underestimated her, I underestimated her. She’s so brave, braver than me. It makes me proud, but also kind of sad: that we live in a world where she has to deal with cruelty and weapons, imprisonment and torture, and death. Always, waiting round every corner, death.

  Greta doesn’t seem to know it, thankfully, but I’m sure she was less than a day away from being killed. She probably still is, especially now; we probably both are.

  If they’d have got here before her and started interrogating me, maybe I could have saved her, if I’d betrayed Ben. Would I have? I shudder.

  “What next?” I ask her, helplessly; there’s definitely a role reversal going on here. “Silvio wants me dead, Greta, whether I talk about Ben or not.”

  “I don’t know. But you can’t sit here and wait for him to kill you. At least if we get out of here, we might be able to find Amina, she’ll know what to do.”

  Amina. I can’t face telling her. I know I’m a coward, but I just can’t, not now. The wound’s too raw for me to say the words. If I try, I’ll lose control again. I won’t be able to comfort her: I’ll be a mess.

  I know what Amina would want me to do, though. It’s like I can still hear her voice, in my ear, so clearly, telling me what to do. Perhaps I can; that’s what she believed; that’s what she told me, just two days ago, as she stood next to me and wrapped her arm around me. We never lose our loved ones; they stay here, deep inside us. They make us who we are.

  When I asked her if things would ever change, she was so certain, so determined, so resolute. If we keep on believing. If we don’t give up hope. If we stay united. Yes, it will change.

  She’d say I have to keep fighting. She’d say I can’t give up.

  If I let Silvio destroy me, then what’s it all been for? Nothing. Amina will have died for nothing.

  I have to make her life count. I have to make all of our lives count.

  Amina hasn’t gone. She’s here, even now, guiding me through everything like she always did. I cling on to that thought.

  I don’t have any clear plan, but the first step is to get out of this room, get past all the guards, all the police. Maybe, if we can make it out of here, we can find Ben, get him out.

  It’s more than a long shot, I know, but it’s the best I can do.

  I look again at Greta. She’s covered in dust where she’s been creeping along the tunnels.

  “Right, let’s get back up there then, shall we?”

  She looks at me, her brow furrowed. “Hoshi, your feet, they hurt bad, don’t they?”

  Now she says it, I register again that they really do hurt, a lot. They’re throbbing so much that each beat of my pulse seems to reverberate through my body. It’s not a passive pain; it’s destructive, angry, biting. It feels as if I’m still being burnt, like the hungry flames are still feasting on my toes.

  I look at the bandages, and look away quickly. Not quickly enough not to have seen the red blood seeping, and something else too: something green and sticky, something rotten.

  I can be strong, though, I can. If I forgot about the pain once, I can do it again.

  “They aren’t so bad. I’ll be fine. Did you pass other rooms, other hatches?”

  She nods. “At least four.”

  “OK, this is what we’re going to do. We get back up there. We find a room. We drop down. We pray to God it’s not locked and that there’s no one in there. We escape.” Sounds almost easy.

  She looks at me doubtfully. “What if there is someone there? A guard or a Pure? What do we do then?”

  I consider the gun in my hands, caress the trigger with my finger, hold it up, aim it at the wall. Could I do it, if I had to?

  I think of Ben, hiding somewhere. I think of Amina’s body, swinging up high; think of all the other Dregs, all the deaths I’ve seen; think of that room, of all the horrors inside it; think of Amina again.

  “I don’t want to use this thing. It’s dangerous, Greta. But if we have to – we shoot them.”

  BEN

  I feel like a child wearing fancy dress.

  I used to have a pirate costume when I was younger. As soon as I put it on, I remember, I’d feel braver, more swashbuckling. In my head, I wasn’t me any more; I was Captain Hook, ready to sail the seven seas in search of treasure, ready to take on the Tick-Tock Croc.

  I wore it all the time, to the shops, to the park, to bed. Father was always saying I should be wearing normal clothes, but Mother just used to laugh.

  “Let him wear what he likes!” she’d say. “There’ll be plenty of time for conforming!” She bought me a big wooden treasure chest to go with the outfit, and a telescope and a parrot. I was so happy. They were the best presents I’d ever been given. They’re still there now, at home, stuffed at the top of my wardrobe. I could never quite bring myself to get rid of them alongside all the other toys I’d outgrown.

  It was because of the memories it carried, I think. Not just of how much I used to play with it, but of the feeling I had when she gave it to me: my mother. She’d gone shopping, bought a gift, chosen it especially for me, because she knew I’d love it, and because she loved me and she wanted to make me happy.

  She’s not all bad. She used to be thoughtful, and kind; she used to be soft, and gentle.

  She’s the Dreg Control Minister, I remind myself. She’s a mass murderer.

  HOSHIKO

  After a bit of trial and error, we establish that the easiest way to do th
is is for Greta to get up into the tunnels first, and then me.

  I need to ease my poor feet through the ventilation hatch, but the only way it’s possible is if she steadies me from above.

  If we weren’t tightrope walkers, weren’t acrobats, we’d never be able to do this. Greta has more strength than someone twice her age, and we’re both used to contorting into tight balls, to stretching in ways other people can’t.

  It’s really hard work and we’re both sweating by the end of it, but we do it; we make it up there.

  The space opens out briefly above us but then narrows right back down as it forms a crawl space, connecting the rooms up. It stretches across the whole building, and it’s tiny.

  It’s a really tight squeeze for me to even fit in the gap, and I have to crouch right down with my weight on my feet, so it hurts like you wouldn’t believe. I can do it though; I’ve got to.

  It’s pretty hard to see up here already, even with the light from the room below, and it’s about to get much darker. As soon as they see the opening, anyone who comes into the room will work out where I’ve disappeared to straight away. Sliding the ventilation hatch back into place might buy us a few precious seconds.

  It’s really fiddly and tricky, especially as we have to do it as quietly as possible. We’re nearly there, we’ve nearly done it, just the final edge to seal, when we hear keys jangling in the lock from the other side.

  We both shoot back, instinctively. Damn, there’s still a few centimetres gap left. We were so close. I crane forward, peeping through the gap.

  The door opens and a policeman enters, staring incredulously round him at the empty room.

  BEN

  I feel so daft, standing there in that uniform, but Jack looks me up and down approvingly.

  “That’s good. It fits a treat.” He hands me something else. “Put these glasses on. I couldn’t get hold of a wig, so they’ll have to do.”

  I put them on. I feel like I’m getting ready for a school play.