The Disappeared (17 page)

I wouldn’t describe any of the enforcers as decent. Some of them like Rice and Tong seem to enjoy hurting Specials. Some of them don’t seem to care about anything and the best of them try to be fair and to avoid using the EMDs.

‘How many of the enforcers are here as a punishment?’ I ask. I’m struck again by the rough deal that Specials get. How can they learn when they’re given dishonest rejects for teachers?

‘Quite a lot. There are a few volunteers, but I get the impression that volunteers are usually here because they want to escape something on the outside. And occasionally they use ex-Academy students.’

‘They take ex-Specials?’

‘I met one today. Enforcer Baxter. She had an exemplary record as a Special and she was glad to be taken on here. It meant she didn’t have to go to a factory.’

I’m reeling. The idea that anyone would be grateful to be taken on as an enforcer is pretty grim. Even more worryingly, it suggests that Enforcer Baxter knows something about factories that most Specials don’t. I’ve heard Dom talking about leaving to go to the factory and the way she describes it you’d think she’d been invited to a party. If Enforcer Baxter would rather be here, it means there’s something pretty awful in store for the Specials when they leave the Academy.

‘How did you know where I was?’ I ask.

‘I didn’t know what to do when I couldn’t get in touch with you at the Learning Community, but eventually I managed to track down a policeman who remembered taking a boy to this Academy the day after you disappeared. He took a lot of persuading to talk to me.’

Barnes, I think – he seemed to know something wasn’t right the day he left me here. I’m so glad that my mum managed to find him. The relief at knowing she’s OK and that I have a chance to get out of here is overwhelming.

My mother glances at the clock. ‘I need to go soon. Listen carefully. Firstly, I know that you’ve already realised that we mustn’t acknowledge each other, but I want you to remember to be very careful about it. Don’t be afraid to blank me or to be rude about me or to behave however you behave towards other enforcers. People mustn’t notice anything different about us.’

I nod my head.

‘The next thing is to stay out of trouble while I make plans to get out of here. I’m on probation at the moment. I won’t get full security clearance until I’ve been here for a month. That’s when I’ll be able to access the exits.’ She’s talking so fast that it’s making her breathless. ‘Is that okay? Can you hang on till then?’

‘Yes, of course. But . . . when we go, we have to take my friends with us; Ilex and Ali and Kay.’

She creases up her face and rubs the spot between her eyebrows. For a moment I think that she’s going to say no, but then she says, ‘We’ll see. I’ll have to think about it.’ She squeezes my hand and lets it go. ‘I love you sweetheart. Everything will be all right. We just have to wait until we can get out quietly. We can’t meet often, so—’ Her eyes dart to the main door. Someone is moving about in the corridor outside.

‘Go,’ I whisper.

‘But you—’

‘I’ll hide.’ I stretch my eyes wide to emphasise the danger we’re in. She must realise that it won’t help for both us to be caught.

There are voices out in the corridor.

She gives my hand one last squeeze and slips out of the door.

I scan the room. There’s nowhere in here that can’t be seen from the doorway. Unless . . . I speed across the room, climb the four steps to the exit and position myself behind the door. The voices are closer. It must be the impeccable patrol. They won’t come in, I tell myself. There’s no reason for them to think that anyone would be in a classroom at night.

There’s the click of a catch. The door hisses open.

I press myself against the wall. If they push the door all the way open, they’ll feel me behind it.

‘It was noise,’ one of the impeccables says. ‘It was a talking noise.’

‘I’m the top. I say how we do this patrol. There’s no people here.’

They start arguing.
Make them leave, oh please, make them leave
. One of them swings a torch around the room.

‘See? No thing and no people. You nozzle crust.’

‘Don’t bad word me. I tell Rex on you.’

‘Shut up.’

There’s the sound of scuffling feet and the smack of fist on face. They must barge into the door because it swings back even further, crushing me against the wall. I can’t help but expel air in a puff when it hits my chest.

‘What was that?’ They stop fighting.

My heart freezes.

‘Down there. An enforcer coming. Look good, you no-ranker.’

I hear footsteps approaching. The enforcer is going to find me. I try to think of an excuse for being in the grid in the middle of the night.

‘Enforcer, there was talking in this grid—’

‘There’s no Specials – Enforcer, he says there are noises all the times.’

The footsteps stop outside the door. ‘Quiet, boys.’

Oh my efwurding hell, it’s my mother. She must have run all the way through the enforcers’ quarters and come out of the entrance by the lift.

‘There’s trouble in one of the dormitories. You must go upstairs and check each one now,’ my mum says.

‘But the grid—’

The door opens a little. ‘No one in there,’ she says. ‘Come with me.’

The door closes and their muffled voices soon fade to nothing.

I steady myself on the door handle. She shouldn’t have done that. What will happen if those impeccables speak to Rice about this so called ‘trouble’? What if she’s caught going back to bed? There’s no sense in my waiting. I open the door and creep out. At the top of the stairs I wait until I hear the impeccables talking on the floor above. I sprint along the landing. I only hope they don’t hear the door.

Back in my bed, I ease the knot of worry in my stomach by listening to Kay’s gentle breathing until I fall asleep.

The next day my mother is in the grid and we continue with our sessions as usual so I assume that she isn’t in trouble about last night. At least, not yet. In the days that follow I try not to think about when I’ll get to meet her again. It’s hard work remembering not to stare at her and trying to act naturally in the grid, so I make myself focus on other things.

Our reading groups continue to increase in size. Kay is an excellent recruiter. She knows who will be interested in going against the enforcers and she’s persuasive too. Keeping busy takes my mind off worrying that my mother will be discovered and, amazingly, teaching reading improves my life in the Academy. I’d just about resigned myself to the fact that my low-ranker status meant that I was always going to be ridiculed or ignored, but now that I’ve made friends with a lot of Specials at the reading classes I find that instead of getting pushed around on the corridor I have people saying hello to me. I’d forgotten what it’s like to feel popular. It doesn’t change the way that Rex feels about me though. He continues to treat me with contempt and, once he notices that some of the other Specials seem to like me, I get the impression that he’s just waiting for an opportunity to remind me that he’s the boss.

After a reading session the following Saturday, Kay is sitting on her bed singing the alphabet under her breath. She’s pulled her hair into a ponytail and I keep finding myself staring at the nape of her neck. I don’t know how or when it happened, but I can’t stop thinking about her. I close my eyes. We’re alone again in the dormitory while the others are downstairs for Making Hour.

‘What do they do in Making Hour?’ I ask Kay without opening my eyes.

‘Why are you all the time asking things?’ she says.

‘Asking questions is the way to learn things.’

‘Or it gets you a fight,’ she says.

‘Maybe you’re right.’ I open my eyes.

Kay frowns and turns to look at me. ‘Maybe?’

‘Maybe means perhaps, or possibly, or . . .’

Kay is still frowning.

I screw up my mouth. I can’t believe how hard it is to explain even simple words. You can’t explain words without words. ‘I could say,
maybe
we will go downstairs later or
maybe
we will stay here,’ I say.

Kay nods.

I sit up. ‘And I could say, maybe you should answer my question. What do they do in Making Hour?’

‘Make things,’ she says.

‘Make what?’

‘Babies.’

Babies?
She can’t mean what I think she means. I drop my eyes to the floor; I feel blood rushing to my cheeks. Kay has got to be winding me up. I risk looking up at her through my hair. She’s watching me with a straight face.

‘No Making Hour at the Learning Community?’ she says.

‘No!’

A smile spreads across Kay’s face.

In our spare time at the Learning Community we were rebuilding an antique computer. I mean, obviously I did think about sex. Quite a lot, actually, and Wilson and I talked about it a lot too, but it was only talk. We were taught that sex is for after you finish your education, establish your career and get married. If they’d caught anyone at the Learning Community having sex, they would have been kicked out. I never heard of anyone getting pregnant. If that had happened I imagine you’d have been sent straight to the Wilderness. I mean, it’s wrong, isn’t it? I rub my eyebrow. ‘Do the enforcers know?’

She shrugs. ‘Yes.’

‘But don’t they . . . ?’ I splutter to a halt. I knew that Dom was pregnant. I thought that maybe some of the other Reds were having sex too, but I assumed that it was a big secret and that Dom had been allowed to get away with being pregnant because the enforcers always seem to let the Reds get off lightly. I can’t believe that all the senior Specials are at it. Every Saturday night.

Kay is looking at me.

‘Do you mean the enforcers just let them do it?’ I say. ‘But they’re not married! They’re not even grown up.’

She tips her head on one side. ‘I’m thinking sex is not the same in your Learning Community.’

‘There wasn’t any sex in the Learning Community.’ I press my hand to my cheek. My face is hot. ‘But what do they do?’ I say. I study the last button on my shirt.

Kay leans towards me across the gap between our beds. I can smell her hair. It’s like warm grass. Her knees are almost touching mine. I keep looking at my button.

‘Don’t you know how they do sex?’ she asks.

Without meaning to I find myself jumping to my feet and moving to the end of the bed. There’s nothing there but my locker so I open it and pretend to be looking for something. ‘Yes,’ I say too loudly. ‘Yes, obviously.’ I’m nodding my head. I keep nodding my head. I’m nodding too much so I stop and fold my arms.

Kay lets out a peal of laughter. ‘You’re all red-face-looking-down!’

I stop looking at the floor and shake my head. I unfold my arms, but my hands seem to be dangling about so I put them in my pockets, but then my arms are stuck out like a chicken so I fold them again.

‘No I’m not,’ I say.

Kay giggles. ‘All those big nice words you know and you’re too red-face to talk about s-e-x.’

I look away towards the bathroom.

‘Blake’s a tight-legger.’

I’ve heard the boys calling girls that name, but it’s only now that I realise what it means. ‘Don’t call me that. Anyway, that doesn’t even make sense. It’s a derogatory term for a girl.’

‘It’s what?’

‘A bad name for a girl, not a boy.’

‘That’s stupid. Why are all bad names for girls?’ She breaks into a smile again. ‘There needs be a word for you. You’re all little boy-y about shagging . . .’

Kay falls back on the bed laughing and kicks her legs in the air in delight. In a terrible rush of blood and heat I imagine throwing myself over her and pressing myself against her body.

‘Humping and . . .’

‘Stop it!’ I say. I walk off to the bathroom.

In a cubicle I press my hot head against the cold tiles. I count the cracks in the grout so that I don’t think about Kay lying on the bed again. This is crazy. I can’t get her out of my head. I think about the Making Hour. It’s mind-blowing that the Specials are allowed to have sex. I shouldn’t be so shocked, Kay obviously thinks I’m overreacting, but she doesn’t realise that Learning Communities are not like Academies. Specials are not treated like brainers. I used to think that that was a good thing. Now I wonder how they could insist that what they taught us at the Learning Community was right when they teach Specials something completely different.

When I’ve decided that now probably isn’t the best time for me to re-evaluate my attitude towards sex and I’ve stopped feeling like a pulsing ball of heat, I walk back into the dormitory.

Kay keeps her lips pressed together, but her eyes are sparkling.

‘What’s the word you said to me for when you’ve done a bad thing?’ she says.

‘Sorry.’

‘I sorry you.’

‘For a girl with a limited vocabulary you know a lot of words for sexual intercourse.’

Kay smiles. ‘Words for sex? All Specials know words for sex. And fighting. But I want to know more words for all other things. Tell me “maybe” again.’

I try not to look at Kay’s mouth. ‘Maybe I’ll win my next fight,’ I say.

Kay snorts.

‘Okay, maybe you’ll win your fight on Friday,’ I say.