Читать книгу I Am Not a Number - Lisa Heathfield - Страница 9

‘You told us that you’d had enough and we listened. Enough of broken families. Enough of soaring crime rates blighting our country. Enough of our people hungering for jobs.’ – John Andrews, leader of the Traditional Party

I’m awake before my alarm clock and watch the sun start as a square of light in the corner of my ceiling, until it spreads across my room. I hold out my hands and stretch my fingers as far as they can go and then count them, slowly, feeling the sound of each number on my tongue.

I breathe in until I can’t any more. Hold my breath. Hold it. Hold it. And imagine what it’d be like to not be able to let it out. My lungs would be crushed until I close my eyes and drift away.

The door opens and I gasp for air.

‘Darren doesn’t want us to go to school,’ Lilli says. She walks across my room, lifts the corner of the duvet and gets into bed. I shuffle closer to the wall, but still her feet are cold against my legs. She sleeps with them outside her duvet. She likes to face the bogeyman straight on. ‘But Mum says we have to go.’

I lean over her to turn on my phone.

‘What do you want to do?’ I ask her.

‘Stay here. But Mum says we can’t.’

On cue, the door opens and Mum comes in, the purple band clear on her arm.

‘Up you get,’ she says, opening the curtains so roughly I’m surprised she doesn’t pull them down. ‘You can’t be late.’ As though everything is normal. That life hasn’t just spun away into a black hole.

‘Lilli doesn’t want to go,’ I say.

‘There are a lot of things none of us want to do,’ Mum says. ‘But we have to.’ She’s sorting through the pile of clothes on my chair, finding my school clothes. ‘This could’ve done with a wash.’ She holds up my sweatshirt.

‘Are you going to work?’ I ask. Lilli and I don’t move from the comfort of my bed.

‘Of course. It’s an ordinary day, Ruby.’

‘How can it be?’

‘It has to be,’ she tells me.

My phone beeps, but Mum grabs it before I have a chance.

‘I’ll take this downstairs. You can have it when you’re dressed,’ she says and she’s out of the room before I can challenge her.

‘Just for the record,’ Darren says. ‘I don’t think any of you should go.’ He’s standing next to the fridge, both hands round his mug of coffee.

‘You’re not helping,’ Mum says, as she grabs her car keys from the side.

‘And you’re not thinking straight, Kelly,’ Darren tells her. Mum stops and stares at him.

‘The only people not thinking straight are those bloody Trads, Darren. If you want to take out your frustration on anyone, take it out on them.’

‘And get a bullet through my head for my trouble?’ Darren’s words snap out of him and make everything go still.

‘So we just crawl into our holes like they want us to?’ Mum says. ‘Don’t go to work, don’t go to school, just stay in our homes and wither away until they completely destroy our country? Is that what we should do?’

‘I don’t know any more,’ Darren says.

‘Well, I do,’ Mum says, wrapping her scarf round her neck. ‘School is the safest place for them.’

‘How do you figure that out?’ I haven’t seen Darren look this furious in ages.

‘The Trads are going to be on their best behaviour after last night,’ Mum says. ‘They may have managed to twist the truth about the protest, but they’ll be hard pushed to keep people on their side if they hurt kids in a school.’

Darren visibly winces.

‘What do you want to do, Ruby?’ he asks me.

I look at them both standing there and memories of the protest whittle dread into me. But I know I’ll be frightened anywhere.

‘I want to go,’ I say. Maybe Mum’s right and we’ll be safer there. Or perhaps I’ve just conditioned myself to say the opposite to Darren.

‘That’s sorted then,’ Mum says, as she storms out of the room and I follow her. Darren comes into the hallway.

‘At least let me drive you and Lilli there,’ he says to me.

‘If you have to,’ I say.

Mum grabs her bag from the hall table before she opens the front door. Something makes her stop still.

‘What is it?’ Darren pulls the door wide open. Someone has painted a giant C across the wood, going from the top all the way to the bottom.

‘Who’s done that?’ Lilli asks.

Mum shakes her head in that way she does when she’s trying to be strong.

‘I’d hazard a guess it’ll be the Traditionals,’ she says.

‘Why on our door?’

‘I bet it’ll be on the door of every Core household,’ Darren says.

‘I don’t want to go to school,’ Lilli says quietly.

‘You don’t have to,’ Darren says before Mum can speak. ‘I’ll stay here with you.’

Mum nods. ‘Okay,’ she says, less determined now.

‘Ruby?’ Darren looks at me. Part of me wants to stay here with Lilli, to stay safe behind the walls of our home where no one can touch us, where I don’t have to wear this stupid purple band for everyone to see. But Mum is going to work. And I want to see Luke.

‘I’m still going to school.’ I need something to distract me from the nightmare our country seems to have stumbled into.

‘Could we clean the paint away later?’ Lilli asks Darren.

‘I doubt they’ve made it that easy for us,’ Mum says as she steps outside.

I’ve never known our school to feel like this, as though even the walls are watching and judging. And there’s a strange link between all of us wearing Core bands. People I’ve never spoken to before smile and nod at me in the corridor. And people who I thought were vague friends look away.

Never before in my life has it been awkward between Sara and me. But now a strange, invisible wall has been stacked up between us.

‘Hey,’ I say.

‘Hey.’

And that’s it. The scariest thing in my life happened to me yesterday, but I can’t even talk to her about it. She should be the first person I want to tell about the protest. She’d be able to put it right somehow, find a way to even laugh today, but she seems distant. I can’t tell if it’s because she doesn’t want to know, or is scared to ask if I was there.

‘Did your parents tell you not to talk to me?’ I ask, attempting a smile.

‘No.’ She shakes her head.

Mr Hart comes in late, his purple band strapped to the outside of his jacket. He doesn’t have to tell us to be quiet. We already are. He’s halfway through the register when James puts up his arm, a green band clear to see.

‘Sir,’ he says. ‘Doesn’t what happened last night prove something?’

‘And what exactly is that, James?’ Mr Hart’s expression is cold. If he wasn’t a teacher I think he might thump him.

‘That the Cores are out of control and violent. That if they came into power it’d be a joke.’

Violent? It was a peaceful protest until the Trad soldiers waded in.

‘I don’t find anything to laugh about,’ Mr Hart says, ‘when people have ended up seriously injured.’

‘All through faults of their own,’ James says.

We weren’t at fault. We were only there protesting – doing nothing else.

‘So you believe everything you read on the internet, do you?’ Mr Hart says.

‘Those riots were real. There’s no way they were staged by the Trads.’

‘From what I understand, they doctored the footage,’ Mr Hart says.

‘Doctored?’ Ashwar asks.

‘Edited it,’ Mr Hart tells her. ‘The news only showed a half truth. Probably not even that.’

‘They’re not going to broadcast a blatant lie,’ Ashwar says.

‘Aren’t they?’ Mr Hart glares at her. ‘You’ve all heard enough about fake news.’

‘I know what happened,’ I say. ‘Because I was there.’ I feel every single person in the classroom turn to look at me. My skin blazes red.

‘The Cores faked those images,’ someone shouts from the back.

‘They didn’t.’ My voice is shaking. I don’t want to remember, I don’t want to ever be there again, but I have to let them know the truth. ‘Everyone was calm, but then the soldiers started attacking us.’

‘You provoked them,’ James says.

‘We didn’t,’ I say, feeling stronger now. ‘There wasn’t a riot or anything. The Trads started it and we were crushed.’

James claps his hands slowly. ‘Nice one, Westy. You’re pretty good at twisting real events.’

‘That’s enough,’ Mr Hart says.

‘Oh, so now you’re trying to silence the truth?’ James says. ‘I’m simply pointing out the lies, but you won’t let me have my say?’

‘What I won’t let,’ Mr Hart says, anger spinning around him, ‘is a bully stay in my class.’

‘Are you sending me out for voicing an opinion?’ James smirks. ‘An opinion that is, in fact, the truth?’

‘I’m simply giving you a warning.’

‘I wonder what the Trads would think if they found out a teacher was calling them liars, sir,’ James continues. ‘That you’re accusing them of editing footage of the protests. I reckon they’d be quite interested to know.’

‘This conversation is ending right now,’ Mr Hart tells him. ‘I’ve a register to finish.’ He’s trying to stay calm, but his jaw is tense. I think his hands are shaking too. ‘Jermain,’ he says, glancing up.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Lucy.’

‘Yes.’

Sara nudges my arm. ‘Were you really there?’ she whispers.

‘Yes.’

‘Was it frightening?’

‘Yes.’ I can see the real Sara in her eyes. The worry for me, the confusion. ‘Can we hang out at break?’ I ask. ‘We could go to the oak tree?’

She doesn’t smile, but at least she nods.

‘I think what James has forgotten to point out, sir,’ Ashwar says, as soon as the register is finished. ‘Is that the Core supporters started riots this morning too and they got completely out of control.’

‘They were a direct response,’ Mr Hart says, ‘to the unprovoked attack of citizens last night.’

‘It was self protection,’ Ashwar says.

‘The Trads weren’t under any threat,’ I say. But it’s barely loud enough for anyone to hear.

‘What I don’t understand, Ashwar,’ Conor says. ‘Is how come your family vote for them?’ He’s swinging back on his chair, but Mr Hart doesn’t pick him up on it. ‘You’re Muslim, right?’

‘None of this is about religion.’ Ashwar’s eyes are steel on him.

‘No. But some of it’s about race,’ Conor says. ‘By tightening the borders, they’re basically saying they only want Brits living here. If they’d done that before your parents or grandparents or whoever arrived here you wouldn’t have been allowed in.’ Conor lands the front legs of his chair heavily on the ground. ‘How can that be okay?’

‘I don’t have to agree with everything they stand for,’ Ashwar says.

‘But it’s a pretty major thing,’ Conor carries on. Mr Hart watches from the front of the classroom. His arms are crossed, but his Core band is still showing.

‘It’s worth it for the other policies,’ Ashwar says. ‘Did you know that that seventy per cent of A and E departments are taken up with drunk people at weekends? Seventy per cent, Conor. How can that be a good use of public money?’

‘There are other ways to deal with it than banning drinking in public and increasing the legal age,’ Conor says.

‘Are there?’ Ashwar looks around. ‘No other government has wanted to tackle it and see where it’s got our country. Nothing is getting better. It’s getting worse. We need a change and we might not like all of the Trad’s policies, but it’s a small price to pay if the rest of it is working.’

‘Is it?’ Mr Hart asks. ‘As Conor brought up the subject of immigration, let’s talk about that.’

Cameron yawns loudly from the back.

‘Am I boring you, Cameron?’ Mr Hart asks him.

‘Just a bit,’ Cameron says and people around him laugh.

‘I can see nothing boring in people being forced from their homes.’ Anger is beginning to tick through Mr Hart. ‘They’ve lost everything: their communities, their families, their way of life. They don’t want to leave everything they love. They don’t want to trek hundreds of miles carrying everything they own on their backs. They don’t want to put their children in blow-up dinghies and set out across an ocean that might drown them all. They do it because they have to.’

‘But what about our country?’ James challenges him. ‘If the Core Party had it their way we’d let them come here and wreck our way of lives and our homes. That’s not exactly right, is it?’

‘These people don’t wreck our homes, James. They actually boost our economy, but that never really gets reported, does it?’

‘Perhaps because they don’t boost it enough,’ James says.

‘So what would your solution be?’ I ask James.

‘We should just send them back.’

Send them back? As if they’re objects, not people.

‘I would hope,’ Mr Hart says, ‘that if the roles were reversed and it was our homes and families blown apart, that we would find compassion somewhere. That people would help us and let us in.’

The bell cuts him off. There’s a longer pause than normal before we all get up.

I get a message on my phone as I walk out of the classroom. People are believing the lies, Luke texts.

I know, I reply. I’m scared.

Don’t be.

Meet at oak at break? Sara coming too.

Okay.

Someone smacks the back of my head. It’s hard enough not to be a joke, but there are too many people pushing in front and behind me to know who it was. Shoulders, elbows squeeze down the corridor to first lesson. It’s the same as always but everything has changed. The crush of it unwinds memories of last night and although I can breathe now my lungs remember. The splinters still thread through them and I have to push past people, get out of the way, to reach a space where I feel safe.

It’s starting to rain a bit as I walk to the oak tree. The sky feels tight, dripping down headaches the way it does before a storm. I think Sara might use it as an excuse not to turn up, until I see her legs sticking out from where she’s leaning against the trunk the other side.

‘You’re here,’ I say when I get to her.

‘I said I would be.’ She doesn’t look angry, but there’s an edge to her words.

‘How are things?’ I sit opposite her, cross-legged. The leaves above us are umbrella enough for now.

‘A bit odd,’ she says. She picks a blade of grass and its roots come up too.

‘I used to think those were a fairy’s legs,’ I say, pointing to them.

Sara laughs. ‘You always were a bit strange.’

I want to tell her that there’s a part of me that still believes it, but she’s shredding them apart already.

I hate this awkward feeling that’s sitting between us now.

‘Luke’s going to be late,’ I say. ‘Aldridge is having a go at him about homework.’

‘Okay,’ Sara says. And the wall goes up again. Somehow I have nothing to say to a friend who I can usually talk with all day and night.

I watch the rain falling.

‘You don’t have to support the Trads you know,’ I say, ‘just because your parents do.’

‘Same back to you,’ she says.

‘But I believe in what the Core Party says.’

‘All of it?’

‘Most of it.’

‘So why can’t people believe in most of what the Trads say?’

‘Because they’re wrong.’

‘So says you.’

‘And so says you up until recently.’

‘Can’t I change my mind?’

‘I don’t think you have,’ I say. ‘I think you’re supporting the Trads because you’re scared.’

‘Scared?’ Sara does a laugh that isn’t really one.

‘Yes. Like we all are. Since the soldiers came with the guns.’

She pulls up a clump of grass this time. Too many fairy legs to count.

‘You know they now say they’re going to really limit our internet.’

‘Mum says that’s good. We can actually chat like in the olden days.’

‘I’m serious, Sara.’

‘Well, what would the Core Party do? Make us use it until our brains explode?’

‘They don’t think banning the internet is the solution to cutting depression. They want to do active things, like put more money into mental health.’

‘Can we talk about something else?’ Sara asks. I know she feels the fracture that’s opening up between us.

‘But what about the Trads putting up the age of consent?’

‘It’s to cut teenage pregnancies,’ Sara says, but I know her heart isn’t in it.

‘More like it’s to cut all the fun from our life.’

Sara breathes out as though she’s fed up with me, fed up with it all. ‘Can’t you tell me something I want to hear about?’

‘Like what?’

‘Like why is grass green?’ she says. ‘If the bottom bit in the earth is white, how come the top bit is a different colour?’ Sara crosses her legs and we sit opposite each other with our knees almost touching. She’s like my mirror. ‘Because surely, if they’re exposed to the sun all the time, they should be bleached-white. Or at least a bit sucked-dry yellow from the wind and everything.’

‘I do actually know the answer,’ I say. Sara’s laugh is genuine this time. It makes me want to hug her tight and tell her that we’re going to be okay.

‘I thought you might, mega-plant-brain.’

‘It’s not really green,’ I tell her. ‘It’s the chlorophyll in them. It absorbs all the other colours and has no use for the green so sort of chucks it out again.’

‘Of course it does.’

I hold Sara’s hands, one and then the other. ‘I’m not going to let all this Trad and Core stuff make us fall out,’ I say.

‘Nor am I,’ Sara replies. She puts up her pinky finger and hooks it through mine as we used to do at primary school.

The thunder is so sudden that we scream. We’re laughing as we jump up and grab our bags. And I don’t care that the rain really starts on us as we run back to school, because I’ve got my best friend by my side, our fingers still linked.

‘Love you, Starry,’ I shout.

‘Love you right back, Rudey,’ Sara laughs, wiping under her eyes so that the rain can’t paint mascara down her cheeks.

‘Do you want a lift, Luke?’ Darren asks him.

‘I’m all right, thanks.’

‘You’ll get soaked,’ Darren tells him.

‘I like the rain,’ Luke smiles. There’s a soldier close by so I know he won’t want to kiss me, but he squeezes my hand. ‘See you tomorrow.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Get in, Ruby,’ Darren says through the window. ‘I’m blocking the traffic.’

But it feels wrong to just leave Luke like this. Since we’ve started going out, I don’t think we’ve ever said goodbye without at least a hug. So I lean in to kiss him, just quickly, but enough to feel his lips on mine.

A car horn behind us ruins it.

‘Ruby,’ Darren shouts.

I don’t bother to check if a soldier has noticed us before I get into the car.

‘Not your wisest move,’ Darren says as he starts the engine.

‘They can’t lock me up for kissing my boyfriend.’

‘You might just have to play along with them for a bit,’ Darren says, as he starts to drive. ‘Until things settle down.’

In the mirror I can see Luke walking away, his bag on his back.

‘What if I don’t want to?’ I ask.

‘They’ve got guns, Ruby,’ Darren says. And it’s enough, that one small word, to pull me right back into reality.