I Am Margaret (8 page)

I went back to my bunk, trying not to smile as there was another wail of dismay from behind me.

“
What’s everyone so worried about?” said Jane scathingly. “Like ugly exercise kit counts for
anything
on the scale of problems facing us!”

“People are just trying to make the best of things,” I told her. “Would you rather we drew up a chart of how many days we have left and ceremonially marked one off every day, with accompanying sighing, weeping and general hysteria?”

“Don’t be stupid! That wouldn’t help!”

“No, it wouldn’t,” I said pointedly.

“Exercise, girls. Follow,” said a guard, looking in.

We trooped after him down to the gym, where we were each weighed on a fat measuring machine and allocated a code. We typed this into each machine when we moved to it, and it calibrated itself accordingly. We were all hot and sweaty when we’d finished, but no one was exhausted to the point of tears. I was looking forward to the yard time later. Exercise machines, ugh. Outside, there’d be fresh air.

Fifteen minutes access was allowed to the washrooms for us to wash the worst of the sweat off, then I changed back into my own clothes so I could start examining the despised jumpsuit. Like Jane, I wasn’t too bothered—we really
did
have more important things to worry about!—but Polly’s fate had left everyone unhappy and improving the fit of these ugly suits would lift people’s spirits.

It took me all of fifteen minutes to fit a simple drawstring to mine, but it was surely going to take the dorm as a whole considerably longer, so I held my tongue. I’d explain how to do it after afternoon exercise.

Stretching out on my bunk, my thoughts drifted inexorably to Bane. What was he doing? Was he in trouble about the fire alarm? Had he been caught? How
had
he done it? He’d probably just lit something flammable under his chair and chucked it somewhere out of the way.

So did any of the teachers see him do it? If not, did anyone tell on him? Hopefully not, for despite his unconventional looks he was popular, though admittedly more so with the girls than the boys. His hot temper was a frequent cause of friction—read fights—with his own sex. Bane would’ve been all right in the boys’ block, but how glad I was he wasn’t in there.

Bane, Bane
… my heart ached to see him, but,
don’t do anything stupid, my love
, said my head.
Think things through.

And suddenly it was time for lunch. Then back into the gray jumpsuits and out into the yard. This was simply the area between the building and the wall, which had been invisible from the parking area. No possibility of seeing into the boys’ yard on the other side of the compound.

They ran us around on the sandy ground for a while, then made us do ‘jumping jacks’ and stuff, and finally allowed us to walk about and amuse ourselves for ten minutes. Then it was back up to the dorm and another fifteen minutes of washroom access. Naturally we’d only be allowed showers once a week, with the environmental cost of clean water what it was.

And then the guard was locking our dorm again. Why did I have the feeling variety wasn’t going to feature highly in our schedule?

“
All right,” I told Bane, “Enlighten me. How do I come into it?”

“
You go up to the fence—it’s fairly near the hut at one point—and persuade the guards to go over and speak to you. While they’re at that safe distance, I’ll sneak up and set the fireworks off. I thought right in the middle of all the speeches would be the most embarrassing for them. It’ll be live bloc-wide!”

His tone of delight drew a smile from me.

“
How’ll you get in? It’s bound to be locked.”

“
I’ve got that all figured out. What do you think?”

“
Well...” I hesitated, caution fighting a brief but vicious battle with attractive action. “All right.” After all, if I said no he’d probably try it anyway. On his own. And then someone really would get hurt. Probably him. “We’d better get back over there and make sure you’re seen around. So no one wonders where you were all evening. You came through the gates, right?”

“
Yeah. Figured that would be the best alibi. Let’s go join the picnic for a minute, then the dancing, then each lot will think we’re with the other when we slip off.”

“
That’s the idea.”

Bane chucked me back over the fence and we began to hunt for my parents. Just my parents, this year. Kyle’s absence was like a raw scrape—it hadn’t cut all the way through the skin, but it still hurt.
Let him be all right, Lord
... Would I ever know his fate?

Bane grabbed me suddenly, trying to avoid a certain picnic blanket, but he was too late.

“
Bane, there you are. We’re about to start,” snapped Mrs. Marsden, then her tone changed. “Oh, Margaret, dear, you’re here. Would you like to join us?”

“
No, thank you, Mrs. Marsden,” I said politely. Being polite was always an effort, with her. “My parents are expecting us.”

“
Aren’t you eating with us, Bane?”

“
The Verralls are expecting me.” Bane’s civility was rather teeth-clenched, but he was trying.

“
You should have told me, the food will be wasted...”

“
And heaven forbid the food should be wasted!”

“
Don’t use such silly, superstitious words,” cut in Mr. Marsden.

“
Like it
will
be wasted...”

“
You should’ve told our mother you wouldn’t be eating with us...” put in Eliot primly.

“
I always picnic with the Verralls,” said Bane tightly. Then, almost hesitantly, he added, “I... suppose I
could
sit down and eat with you. If you’d prefer...”

“
Of course we wouldn’t
prefer
it,” sniffed Mrs. Marsden. “But you know we can’t afford to waste food.”

“
Well, you’re going to make me eat it up anyway for the next
week
while you have something else,” snarled Bane, “so I might as well have some decent cooking—and company!—tonight, mightn’t I?”

He stormed off across the grass and I had to hurry to catch up.

“
I hate them!” he snapped, when I caught his arm to slow him down.
“Of course we wouldn’t
prefer
it,”
he imitated his mother’s voice. “Like I’d have stayed anyway... They’re more worried about the effing food than
me
! And she
knows
I always eat with you! Why would I speak to her unnecessarily to tell her something she already bloody knows!”

“
Calm down, Bane. She is...”

“
Don’t say she is my mum! She’s only my mum due to... due to... a freak of bloody genes, you understand?”

He stopped suddenly, his fingers knotting in his jet black hair. “Yeah, that’s me exactly, isn’t it? A
freak
of bloody
genes
!”

“
Bane...” I eased his fingers from his hair and smoothed it down gently. “I like your hair. I think it’s lovely. And I thought you liked it too.”

Bane let out a long breath and looked at me.

“
I do,” he admitted. “At least, when
that lot
aren’t looking at me like a slug threatening to crawl onto their picnic rug...” He broke off.

Our faces were very close. Close enough to kiss.

I turned my face away, resting my cheek on his shoulder. Not because I didn’t want him to kiss me, oh no no no. Because I did, far too much. And until we could do this properly, until we could finish what we started, until I knew if a future was mine at all, I didn’t want to muddle everything.

He slipped an arm around me and squeezed and I slid an arm around him and squeezed, and we headed on.

“
Look, there’s your mum and dad...”

My parents, making the best of it as always, had put together a nice little picnic that’d been pretty much the only part of the evening I was looking forward to. But as soon as I saw them, Bane’s horrible family dropped from my mind, and I remembered what we were planning to do later.

Suddenly I wasn’t very hungry after all.

***+***

5

MATH PROBLEMS

Variety turned out not to feature
at all
. By the end of three days, I could still remember one day from the other because of meeting new people and seeing the different guards for the first time, but the days were going to blend into each other rapidly enough. Depressing fact, considering how few we had left.

Jane, who didn’t share my math problems, had worked it out at between 604 and 730 days, depending on how soon we were taken once we’d all reached Prime Condition.
No
, a maximum of
727
days, now, somewhat less than two years. Apparently a normal person our age—i.e. someone who’d just passed their Sorting—could look forward to 37,230 more days of this life. So not much difference there.
Not
.

On the plus side, everyone’d settled down in the dorm well enough. Some people had bookReaders or board games, and looking at each other’s things and clothes was a popular pastime—and chatting, of course.

I glanced down at the empty bottom bunk, where Harriet, Annie, Caroline and Sarah were busy laying out my long skirts for inspection. Polly’s chest was empty now. The morning after she’d been taken, some guards had come for her things. Her poor parents. Polly’d obviously been a preKnown, but still. To open the door the very day after their daughter had been taken away and be presented with her effects and her brain’s ashes… I offered up a prayer for them and tried to put it from my mind.

“I love your skirts, Margo,” said Annie. “Where do you find them?”

“She makes most of them,” put in Caroline. “Just how she wants them.”

“
They’re
so
impractical,” snorted Jane, from a few bunks along.

“
I do
have
other clothes,” I said, as patiently as I could.
Now, Margo, if you’d been waiting for that ring on the doorbell your whole life, you might be rather prickly too, hmm?

“I was always surprised you didn’t show off your legs a bit, though,” said Harriet. “If I had Bane Marsden following me around, I’d have made sure to show my legs off! Don’t you think he’d have liked to see them?”

“
I’m sure he would, but I don’t think whether
he’d
like to see them matters a monkey’s tail”

“But…” protested Harriet, wide-eyed, “the way Sue always showed off her legs—and the legs she’s got!”

“The legs she’s got!” sighed Caroline enviously.

“…weren’t you worried she might steal Bane away from you?”

I couldn’t contain a snort myself at that.

“Trust me, if I thought the only reason Bane spent time with me was because he thought my legs were better than Sue’s, I’d have helped him on his way to her with a boot up his behind a long time ago!”

Harriet giggled.

“You’re funny, Margo.”

“She doesn’t mean funny ha ha, I bet,” put in Jane acidly, but I ignored her without a great deal of effort.

I’d finished helping the last stragglers adjust their exercise sacks, as we termed them, and now found myself dwelling on Bane at all hours of the day and night. Such introspection left me feeling far more unhappy than when I began, so regretfully I’d begun to ration my ‘Bane-time’.

But the talk of Bane sent my thoughts drifting back to our first kiss, in the schoolyard. Our only kiss, alas. I’d waited so long for that one and would wait as long again for another, except I didn’t have that long available. That kiss… I wouldn’t swap it for another six months of life, yet… it made things so much harder. It made me want him so much, his lips, his presence, all of him… I wanted to see him again, desperately…