The Disappeared (12 page)

I roll my eyes. This is the ‘salon’?

Ilex goes back upstairs to see Ali and I find Kay in the furthest corner of the room.

‘Well, Lady McKayington,’ I say to her. ‘I do hope the maid will bring the tea soon,’ I say, putting on my poshest accent.

‘What?’ she says.

‘The salon is so nice that I feel like The Leader. Soon they’ll bring us piles of food and lovely drinks and maybe rub our feet.’

Kay shakes her head, but I can see that she’s smiling too.

We sit in battered chairs. The Info is on the big screen with the sound turned down.

‘I’m surprised they let you watch TV,’ I say.

‘What’s “surprised”?’ Kay says. ‘What’s TV?’

‘This is “surprised” . . .’ I widen my eyes and suck in my breath.

Kay nods. It’s a lot easier to explain words to Kay than to Ilex. With Kay it’s like she already knows the idea of the word and you’re just labelling it for her. I think Ilex would rather I just used the words he knows.

‘And that’s TV.’ I point at the screen.

‘That’s the Info,’ she corrects me.

‘Yes, but as well as the Info you get—’

Kay shakes her head.

‘Just the Info?’

She nods. ‘Just one little Info, all the days.’

Weird. I’m amazed that in a place like this, the one thing they let them watch is the news. And it’s odd that the Specials haven’t picked up more vocabulary from it. I look at the screen. There are images of The Leader visiting a factory. He shakes hands with the smiling workers. I move towards the screen and slide the volume icon up with my finger.

‘. . .
factory workers are working hard
,’ the voiceover says. ‘
The Leader is pleased. “We must all work hard,” he says. The workers who do the most work meet The Leader. They are happy
. . .’

‘What the hell is this?’ I say. This isn’t what the Info is usually like.

‘The Info,’ says Kay, looking confused.

I don’t need her to tell me that this dumbed-down pap is what they listen to every day. I feel ill. Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised that the Specials haven’t developed speech properly when they’ve only got this junk and the barking of an enforcer to learn from. And then a second wave of revulsion undulates through me. These voiceovers must be specially prepared. I realise that I’d been holding on to a tiny hope that maybe this place was just a really bad example of an Academy. That it was because of Rice and his staff that the conditions are so poor and the Specials are treated so badly, and that maybe other Academies were a bit better. But if they’re specially preparing these ‘news’ reports then I guess that they’re shown in every Academy. Does that mean
all
Academies are like this one? My head is spinning. I know that Specials’ education is designed to equip them for their lives in the factories, but I can’t help thinking that surely they deserve to be taught to talk properly.

‘What’s bad?’ Kay says, seeing the look on my face.

‘You do know that that is not how people speak?’ I say, jabbing towards the screen. ‘You do realise that when the rest of the world watch the Info, the newsreader uses more than ten words – they talk like me, Kay. Most people talk like me.’ My shoulders sag. ‘I just don’t understand why it has to be so nasty in here and I don’t understand why they want to keep you down by taking away your language as well.’

Kay looks at me. She shakes her head sorrowfully. ‘I don’t know your words,’ she says.

And it’s all so horrible that I want to punch something.

‘The Academies . . .’ she says, and she looks at me to try to tell me something that she can’t with words. She holds my gaze and her huge eyes are both sorry and angry. I think she does understand.

‘I don’t . . . I don’t think Academies should be like this,’ I say. Even as the words escape I’m looking around to make sure no one has heard me.

Kay touches my arm. ‘When I am Dom, I will make things more good. I will help the little ones. I will make the Specials be . . .’ She draws her hands together. She breaks into a smile. It’s not something she does often, it’s nice.

‘Closer? Together?’ I say, smiling back.

She looks at me. ‘Are you laughing?’ she asks.

‘No! No, I just, I thought you wanted to be Dom so you could be adored and showered with bits of shrap.’

‘Yes, and that.’

We sit down on some ripped-up chairs and I try to get my head straight while Kay talks about when she first started at the Academy and how every day she would ask a Red girl called Ama if she could make Kay’s hair red.

‘I had the think—’

‘Thought,’ I say.

‘I had the thought that if I was big good she would make my hair red.’ She smiles at her foolishness. Then she shows me her best trick fight move. I know that she is trying to distract me and I let her.

Later on, in the dormitory, I look at Kay sleeping and consider how she has completely changed the way she thinks since she was a little girl. I realise that I’ve been thinking the same things, in the same way, all my life. All because of what I was told. I just assumed that anyone who thought differently to me was wrong. And now I keep finding that things aren’t exactly as I thought. It’s not so easy to be certain that I know the right answers.

Sometimes I wonder if I even know the right questions.

The next day is Friday. In the afternoon we have P.E. At the front of the drum-shaped room Enforcer Tong has got an impeccable demonstrating some dreadful routine of punches, jumps and kicks. I manage to position myself near the back, next to Ilex. The two of us are not really built for sport.

‘Why do we have to do this all the time?’ I ask him in a pant.

Ilex’s mop of hair has wilted and a drop of sweat is running down his nose. He bounces a little closer to me so he can whisper without Tong hearing. ‘The Leader says, “Good bodies is good workers”.’

I suppose at the Learning Community we were pushed to exercise our minds instead. Funny how no one there ever bothered about our physical fitness, though.

I catch sight of Kay’s white-blonde ponytail whipping about near the front. When she kicks her leg she can touch her own ear.

‘How was the salon with Kay?’ Ilex asks me.

‘It was . . . good. Do you know Kay well? I mean, do you know a lot about her?’ I ask.

Ilex shrugs. ‘Not big lots.’

‘What’s she like? She seems to be into all this Reds stuff.’

‘Work harder!’ Tong shouts. For several minutes we can’t talk because all our breath is going into squat thrusts.

Eventually Ilex says. ‘She wants to be an Hon Red but . . . she’s not like Red girls. She doesn’t do all that . . .’ He breaks off from a star jump to an impression of a pouting girl flicking her hair and wiggling her hips.

I snort.

‘No talking at the back,’ Tong says.

‘Do you mean she’s nicer?’

‘Not nicer. Harder.’

Tong relocates to just behind us and we can’t talk any more, but on the way back to the grid Ilex says, ‘Are you all liking for Kay?’

‘No! No way. I just thought she could be helpful.’

Ilex smacks his lips together in a kissing noise and, for a moment, he reminds me of Wilson.

Actually, I have been thinking about asking Kay to come down to the salon again. Last night was the first time since I’ve been here that I’ve enjoyed a conversation. But for some reason I feel shy about suggesting it.

Finally, after dinner I follow Kay up to the dormitory. As she walks through the door she spins round and says, ‘Why are you all little-space to me?’

‘I, ah, um, well . . .’

‘What’s eyearumwell?’ she says.

King Hell. Why is conversation suddenly difficult?

‘Do you want to come down to the salon?’ I say in a rush.

‘No,’ she says.

That went well.

‘It’s Friday,’ says Kay.

Is that supposed to soften the rejection?

‘You know that Friday is Fight Night for big Specials,’ she says.

‘Not you then?’ I say. Kay is a good eight inches shorter than me.

She grabs hold of my wrist and twists it up behind my back. ‘Ha ha,’ she says. ‘Do you want to be my next win?’

‘After my big win last time, I hope I won’t have to fight again,’ I say. I’m acutely aware of how close behind me she is.

Kay laughs. ‘You didn’t do fighting last time. You did running.’ She drops my arm.

‘I don’t see why Specials should fight other Specials,’ I say.

‘You have to fight to get a ranking.’

I sniff. ‘I don’t need a ranking. What does some silly number prove?’

Kay looks at me sideways.

‘What?’ I say. ‘Inyway—’

‘It’s anyway,’ I correct her.

‘
Any
way, you have got a ranking. You’re a one-one-er.’

‘Well that’s a relief,’ I say.

‘It means you have fighted one fight and winned one fight.’

‘That’s a good ratio. What’s your rank?’

‘I’m a seventeen-seventeener.’

I blink. ‘Like I said, doesn’t mean a thing, does it?’

‘It means things to Specials,’ she says and walks off.

Looks like an evening in for me.

On Mondays and Wednesdays the little ones fight, but it’s the Friday night seniors’ fights that’s best attended. Ilex says it’s not compulsory to go to any of the fights, unless you’re one of the fighters. But it seems that everyone else must enjoy watching Specials pulling each other to pieces because the dormitory is deserted. Everybody else is at the fight. Of course I could go down there myself, but I’ve had enough violence in the last couple of weeks to last me a lifetime. Anyway, I feel a bit slighted by Kay. Not that it matters. I flop on to my bed. I can feel myself sinking into a depression. It’s all pointless. I’m trapped in this terrible place and even if I could get back to my old life . . . well, I’m not sure that things are the same any more.

I give myself a shake. What I need to do is take action. Do something. In fact, I have been waiting for some time alone because there’s something I really want to look for. It’s only a small thing, but having a goal for the evening is making me feel brighter already.

There aren’t many places to look for things in the Academy. One of the most depressing things about this place is how bare it is. There are no
things
. I miss the clutter of studies and workrooms full of books and papers.

There’s nowhere to look in the dormitory so I go into the bathroom. It’s big. Everything here is big. Sometimes I wish there was a closed-off room somewhere for me to hide in.

There’s a great long sink all the way down one wall. There are lots of metal cubicles; showers down the long side and toilets across the short wall. Spaced out down the length of the sink are two types of dispenser, one with soap and one with disposable teeth-cleaning kits. Sometimes they’re full, although more often they’re empty. But the refills have to come from somewhere. I scan the room. I notice one of the metal panels behind the door I’ve just come through isn’t quite aligned with the others. It’s a cupboard. I’m sure of it.

I feel around the edge of the panel and something clicks. The whole metal section swings open. Inside, there are stacks of cardboard boxes. I run my hand across the cardboard and start to open them systematically and carefully. It’s probably best that no one knows I’ve been in here. In the first box are rolls of loo paper. In the second there’s a plastic container with a foil seal. I tear it off. Inside are replacement sachets of soap. I get rid of them by filling up the nearest dispenser. Then I take a look at the container. It’s roundish and fairly sturdy. Just what I look for in a bowl. I feel a rush of triumph, which is ridiculous when I think about my position. That’s okay. Even small victories are good ones. I just have to keep inching my way forward through this mess until I work it out. There’s got to be some sort of solution.

Before I click the panel back into place I fetch Wilson’s poetry book from where I’ve been hiding it under my mattress. I’m pretty sure that if an enforcer saw it they’d confiscate it. I stack two boxes together and climb on top of them. As I suspected, the lightweight tiles that form the ceiling of the cupboard can be pushed upwards out of place. I slide the book into the airspace above and drop the tile back down. I put the boxes straight and click the cupboard door closed. I’ve got a hiding place. That’s another small victory.