The Territory (19 page)

‘No, you’ll be just like him, Daisy. Normal, just like him.’ The lie almost stuck in my throat.

The only faintly OK thing was that Daisy was allowed out that evening. To come and study at mine. A bit like a last supper. I guess her mum thought that there was no need to keep her prisoner anymore, chained to her desk and a neek. Not now passing was in the bag. The worst that could happen is that her daughter would distract me, but Daisy’s mum was way too selfish to let that concern her.

And Daisy and I did have an amazing evening. Well, as amazing as an evening could be that also contained three hours of Maths revision. Daisy was massively strict with me and made sure I studied with little breaks to chat to her. But those breaks were ACE. I felt closer to her than I have for ages. Since Raf turned up. We got out all these photo albums from way back and laughed at how tragic and young we used to look. Me, Daisy and Jack. Our three faces peering out again and again and again. Grinning, grinning, grinning. Three grinning monkeys.

‘You know what?’ Daisy said as we closed the final album and sat, curled up on my bed. ‘I really thought you’d end up with Jack.’

‘I guess I kind of did too,’ I admitted. ‘I’m not sure how or when or anything, but then Raf turned up and, well, you know.’

‘Raf’s cool too,’ Daisy added.

‘Yeah. He really is.’

‘You so lurrrve him.’ And I’d never been so pleased to hear one hundred per cent pure Daisy.

Maybe the late upgrade is actually a good thing. I mean, maybe it doesn’t totally alter personality. Chloe could have been weird before, maybe Raf just didn’t notice and Barnaby and Hugo are so massively different that it can’t totally control behaviour. And Daisy was heading towards failing otherwise and then she could have ended up in the Laboratory down some horrific corridor being experimented on. Lying there like Neil and Rosie. A lab rat with a number. As soon as I’d conjured up the image I had to try and block it but it just kept on eating into my thoughts.

I couldn’t concentrate on anything today. Daisy’s operation was at 11 am. That was in the middle of double Chemistry so I obviously took in none of that. I couldn’t even talk to Raf at break. Raf’s a big fan of Daisy and everything but he’s not got the same connection, the same history, so the waiting just isn’t the same for him. Jack looked about as worried as me and so we sort of agreed without talking, not to talk about it. Neither of us could face it. Maybe that’s how telepathic powers develop.

I had lunch by myself. Surrounded by a sea of chattering voices, I had never felt more alone.

Hugo was out to provoke me. He’d made sure there was an empty stool next to him and he’d put a ‘Reserved for Daisy’ sign on it. I blinked back and breathed through the tears and managed to walk past him without the mask collapsing. Thankfully, Jack didn’t see it or there’d have been a proper fight. And I’m talking broken jaws and everything.

Daisy said the operation would only take a couple of hours and then there’d be recovery from the anaesthetic and then the tests. She reckoned she’d be done by early evening and home tomorrow.

Mum made me lasagne for dinner as special comfort food as she knew how difficult today was for me. It was comforting, although not quite the same as when we used to be able to put actual beef in it.

I tried to call the hospital after dinner and this was the weirdest. There was this really awkward pause and then they said Daisy had already been signed out. When I tried to ask how come she’d gone home so early, they just turned really cold and dismissive and said, ‘We do not discuss our patients.’

But if Daisy was home she’d have called me, wouldn’t she? I mean it’s slightly different, but when she had her appendix out three years ago, she called me literally as soon as she got through the door.

I tried calling Jack to see if he’d heard anything. He hadn’t. He’d tried the hospital too and got the same response.

‘Maybe she’s home but still a bit out of it from the operation,’ he suggested, but I could tell from his voice that he realised how lame this sounded.

‘If it was something like that, she’d still be in hospital. They don’t just send you home early when you’re still drugged up,’ I insisted. ‘Not when you’ve spent
that
amount of money. And, anyway, they can’t send you home till they’ve done all the tests to check it’s worked and they couldn’t do that if she was at all out of it.’

‘OK, Noa, OK.’ I guess I’d made my point a bit too clearly.

There was a long pause. I needed to search for strength to share my next thoughts. ‘It’s happened, hasn’t it, Jack? They’ve got to her. They’ve turned her into a proper freakoid like Logan and now she doesn’t want anything to do with us.’

Jack’s silent agreement was more than I could take and I hung up and threw the phone to the floor. It bounced up and down on its coiled cord before hanging, lifeless, from its socket in the corridor.

Mum started to get worried about the level of crying coming from my room. She knows there isn’t exactly time to have a night off revision.

‘Call her, Noa-bean. If you’re this worried, stop over-analysing it and just call her home. I’m sure everything will be OK. And at least you’ll know.’ But maybe I didn’t want to. Not if it was as bad as I thought.

I knew Mum was right though and I picked up the phone again, a slight tremor in my right hand. It rang eleven times. Then there was Daisy’s mum’s clipped voice as the answerphone message kicked in.

‘The best that money can buy’ is a malc phrase that means nothing.

The surgeon’s hand slipped.

He’d been drinking the night before and still had alcohol in his system. Ten times the Medical Council limit. Which doesn’t actually make sense if you think about it, as surely the limit if you’re putting a massively sharp scalpel next to someone’s massively important spinal cord should be a big fat zero and ten times zero is still zero.

It’s an ‘open and shut case of medical negligence’ according to Dad. Daisy’s family will get compensation: the cost of the upgrade refunded plus twenty thousand Golds in damages. And that’s what most people seem concerned with. How much money her family will get. As if it’s something good. A lottery win. Not the fact that Daisy’s been turned into a vegetable. Not that she was completely and totally brain-damaged. Not that Daisy’s parents decided there and then to switch off life support so I didn’t even get to say goodbye.

And the worst thing is that I bet Daisy’s mum is probably actually quite pleased. Not that she’d admit it. But in private, if she was sure no one was looking, she’d probably allow herself as much of a smile as her overly botoxed face would allow. More money, less responsibility. One pure freakoid child with impeccable credentials. No slightly embarrassing lesser model late upgrade. Logan too wouldn’t care less as he’s incapable of any human emotion. Daisy’s dad would be upset for a millisecond, but then he’d just go back to working twenty hours a day and forget she even existed. No one would really miss her. No one but me and Jack. And this thought pushed my despair to anger. And anger’s better. I can hold onto in. Burn with it.

I went to Raf’s after school. I needed to be held, to be kissed, to forget, if just for a second. Raf probably thinks I’m seriously weird and psycho now, as in the middle of kissing him, I slapped his face, then grabbed him close, then bit his lip and then grabbed him again and then broke down into tears, rocking on the floor and moaning quietly.

He picked me up and held me tight, rocking me and singing to me while stroking my hair. Mid sobs I tried to tell him that I loved him.

He just put his finger over my lips and kept singing.

When I got home, Mum said Jack had called about ten times. I know I should be there for him. Shouldn’t leave him all alone with his grief. He hasn’t got a Raf equivalent to cry on. But I can’t reopen the wound. My body just can’t handle more crying. I’m numb. Empty. I crawled into bed, my Geography notes on the Arable Lands untouched on my desk. For the first time I’m behind on my revision schedule.

And the thing is I really don’t care.

I hadn’t been to church since a school trip in Year Three.

Mum and Dad are massive atheists and for some weird reason, spires used to creep me out. I think they reminded me of pointy witches’ fingers clawing at the sky. I used to have a real phobia about witches. Witches and big fish.

Anyway, I couldn’t study however much I stared at the page. Words were just like pointless symbols my brain couldn’t deal with. I needed to say goodbye to Daisy, to go somewhere to mourn her. There wasn’t even going to be a proper funeral and I was starting to feel claustrophobic in my room.

I waited until the 11am main service had finished and then crept in through the church’s side entrance, feeling like an intruder. The chill coming off the stone pillars was somehow comforting and the massively high ceiling seemed to give space to think. There was a row of candles down one end, with a lighter, a knife to trim the wax and a donations box. I put half a Gold in the box and reached for the lighter. The flame looked so gentle above the white candle. Graceful and beautiful. Like Daisy? No, Daisy was more than that. She was cool and fun and sparky and loyal. She kicked beautiful and graceful’s ass.

I didn’t know how to pray. How to even start to go about it. So I just sat the candle in the rack and gazed at it while thinking back through my favourite memories of Daisy. I thought of the moment we first claimed best friends status when we were ten. We’d spent the day at the Park learning to hula hoop and blow bubble gum. Daisy was obviously way better than me at hula-ing but my bubbles aced hers. That is until I blew one so big that it burst and went all over my face and fringe. It wouldn’t come out of my fringe and so Daisy decided we’d have to cut out the gum. She produced this pair of scissors from her bag and hacked a big chunk out of my fringe. I started going mental, knowing that I now looked like a complete denser, but Daisy just laughed and hacked a matching chunk out of her own fringe, saying, ‘We’ll look ridiculous together, best friends forever.’

I don’t know why I thought this would be a good idea, but something made me reach out for the knife by the candles. Trembling slightly, I used it to cut off a lock of my hair, sawing as the blade was so blunt. I held my hair in the flame and watched it burn from golden to charred black, tears streaming down my face.

I know I should have gone to Jack’s then. Or at least include him in my improvised memorial service. I even started walking to his house when I left the church. But then my feet almost automatically took a right instead of a left and I ended up back at Raf’s. In his arms.