by Rebecca Ward
Reed raises his head and grunts. ‘Ev.’
Bodi looks between them, confused. Boys’ behaviour is still so alien to her. Only minutes ago they had been laying into each other.
‘Nice speech Boo. Really got me here.’ Evan sniggers and pounds his chest. Reed quietly joins in the laughter.
‘It’s like dealing with children. Honestly, little children,’ she says and storms into the flat leaving them outside.
Balt’s ‘war room’ is trashed. The sound she had heard outside is an old printer churning out pages steadily in the corner. Bodi wades through the ripped maps and piles of papers to see what is being printed. She picks up the pale yellow paper to read:
“NO to Chancellor. President’s granddaughter leads the fight.” Above the text is a grainy black and white image of Bodi standing on the top of the sound system. It is almost a replica of the image of her mum on the Boudicca monument.
Bodi stares out of the window considering the impact of this one piece of paper. The boys both come in behind her.
‘What’s happened here? Did someone break in?’ Reed asks Evan.
‘Nah. Dad wanted it to look like that so the Sick Boys wouldn’t find all his research. He sent me back to get rid of loads of stuff. It’d do damage in the wrong hands,’ Evan says.
He lifts the box to indicate that’s what is inside. Some of the yellow photocopies fall off the top and flutter to the floor. Reed bends down to pick one up. His jaw drops.
‘What the hell…?’ Reed says.
Bodi turns to them, her eyes sadly accepting the inevitability of it. ‘It’s what Balt wanted all along. And I walked right into it. A new face for his new revolution.’
‘But you obviously really believe in it or you wouldn’t have fronted out the crowd like you did,’ Evan says.
‘But this.’ She sweeps her arm across the view where the streets are on fire and people are hurt if not dying. ‘Who wants to be the face of this?’
‘It’s just change Boo. It’s all happening for a reason.’ Evan recites his father’s doctrine, not altogether convincingly.
Reed baits Evan. ‘Ev, you’ve got to get your own thoughts mate. You’ve seen what’s going on down there. It’s not exactly a birthday party, is it?’
Leaving them debating the situation, Bodi opens the door out onto the balcony. The flyers follow her out on a gust of wind, some floating down to the street below. Has she ever been in a position to stop the violence? She thinks that she has been in control of her own life because she was off the grid, but she wasn’t, her mum wasn’t. Who is free? Who can say genuinely that they hold their destiny in their own hands?
Reed and Evan join her on the balcony and look around them as the city they love is engulfed in flames. Not one of them knows where their parents or guardians are, or if they are even alive. Each of the boys takes one of Bodi’s hands. From now on they have to forge their own futures.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to my wonderful parents John and Vivien who have shown me that women can and must achieve great things. And to my family for always being hilarious and outrageous and kind.
Thanks to The Birds, Malcolm, Jack and Andrew for their help with this project and insistence that I persevere.
Thanks to Anne Heasell for her glorious cover design.
And, if I may be so bold, to London, for always stepping up and surviving everything that is thrown at it.
About The Author
Rebecca Ward
Rebecca lives in London where she has worked in fashion and the arts for the past 25 years. As well as writing, she enjoys singing, performing as part of an amateur drama company and designing and making costumes.
Rebecca has an MA in English and Contemporary Cultural Theory from Goldsmiths.