Noughts and Crosses (10 page)

‘I don’t know that either.’

‘Where does Harry live?’

‘Why, Miss Sephy?’

‘I’d like to send him a Good Luck card.’

‘If you give it to me, Miss, I’ll make sure he gets it.’

Karl’s eyes and mine met in the internal driver’s mirror. ‘OK,’ I said at last. What else could I say?

Harry wouldn’t go away and leave me, not without saying goodbye first. I knew he wouldn’t – just as surely as I knew my own name. Something horrible then occurred to me.

‘You . . . you r-really are my new driver, aren’t you?’

‘Of course, Miss Sephy. Your mother employed me this morning. I can show you my
ID
card if you’d like.’ Karl’s smile flitted fleetingly across his face.

‘No, that’s OK,’ I said. I sat back in my seat and clipped up my seat-belt.

We drove off. I saw some others, pointing to me and whispering or laughing or both as our car went past. My sitting at the noughts table had spread around the school like a bad dose of the flu. And I knew I hadn’t heard the end of it. Mr Corsa threatened that he was going to send a letter home to my mum and e-mail my dad. No doubt a protest to the Queen was in the offing too. And I wouldn’t have minded any of that if Callum hadn’t turned his back on me. But he had. And I was never going to forget it. He had looked away from me like . . . like he didn’t know me. Like I was nothing. Maybe Mother was right, after all. Maybe Crosses and noughts could never be friends. Maybe
there was too much difference between us.

Did I really believe that?

I didn’t know what I believed any more.

I don’t know how long I sat there, watching the sun burn into the sky as it set, watching the night grow steadily more secretive. Why had my life suddenly become so complicated? For the last year all I could think about, or even dream about, was going to school. Sephy’s school. I was so busy concentrating on getting into Heathcroft that I hadn’t given much thought to what I’d do when I actually got there. I hadn’t really thought about what it would be like to be so . . . unwanted. And what was the point anyway? It wasn’t as if I’d get a decent job after it. No Cross would ever employ me for more than the most mundane, menial job, so why bother? But I wanted to learn. A yawning hole deep inside me was begging to be filled up with words and thoughts and ideas and facts and fictions. But if I did that, what would I do with the rest of my life? What would I be? How could I ever be truly happy knowing that I could do so much more,
be
so much more, than I would ever be allowed?

I was trying so hard to understand how and why things were the way they were. The Crosses were meant to be
closer to God. The Good Book said so. The son of God was dark-skinned like them, had eyes like them, had hair like them. The Good Book said so. But the Good Book said a lot of things. Like ‘love thy neighbour’, and ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. If nothing else, wasn’t the whole message of the Good Book to live and let live? So how could the Crosses call themselves ‘God’s chosen’ and still treat us the way they did? OK, we weren’t their slaves any more, but Dad said the name had changed but nothing else. Dad didn’t believe in the Good Book. Neither did Mum. They said it’d been written and translated by Crosses, so it was bound to be biased in their favour. But the truth was the truth, wasn’t it? Noughts . . . Even the word was negative. Nothing. Nil. Zero. Nonentities. It wasn’t a name we’d chosen for ourselves. It was a name we’d been given. But why?

‘
I DON’T UNDERSTAND
. . .’ The words erupted from me in an angry rush, heading for the sky and beyond.

I sat there for I don’t know how long, furious thoughts darting around my head like bluebottles, my head aching, my chest hurting. Until I suddenly snapped out of it with a jolt. Someone was watching me. I turned sharply and a shock like static electricity zapped through my body. Sephy was further up the beach, standing perfectly still as the wind whipped around her, making her jacket and skirt billow out. We were about seven metres apart – or seven million light years, depending on how you looked at it. Then Sephy turned around and started to walk away.

‘Sephy, wait.’ I jumped to my feet and sprinted after her.

She carried on walking.

‘Sephy, please. Wait.’ I caught up with her and pulled her around to face me. She pulled away from my grasp like I was contaminated.

‘Yes?’

‘Don’t be like that?’ I pleaded.

‘Like what?’

I glared at her. ‘Aren’t you going to stay?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Why not?’

At first, I thought she wasn’t going to answer.

‘I don’t stay where I’m not wanted.’ Sephy turned around again. I ran to stand in front of her.

‘I did it for your own good.’

A strange expression flitted across her face. ‘Did you? Was it my good or your own you were thinking about?’

‘Maybe a bit of both,’ I admitted.

‘Maybe a lot of one and none of the other,’ Sephy contradicted.

‘I’m sorry – OK?’

‘So am I. I’ll see you, Callum.’ Sephy tried to walk around me again, but I moved directly into her path. Fear tore at my insides. If she left now, that would be the end. Funny how a few hours ago, that’d been exactly what I was wishing for.

‘Sephy, wait!’

‘For what?’

‘H-how about if you and I go up to Celebration Wood this Saturday? We could have a picnic.’

Sephy’s eyes lit up although she tried her best to hide it. I breathed an inward sigh of relief although I was careful not to show it.

‘Celebration Wood . .?’

‘Yeah. Just you and me.’

‘Are you sure you won’t be ashamed to be seen with me?’ Sephy asked.

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

Sephy regarded me. ‘What time shall I meet you?’ she said at last.

‘How about ten-thirty at the train station? I’ll meet you on the platform.’

‘OK.’ Sephy turned away.

‘Where’re you going?’ I asked.

‘Home.’

‘Why don’t you stay a while?’

‘I don’t want to disturb you.’

‘Sephy, get off it,’ I snapped.

‘Get off what? You’re a snob, Callum. And I never realized it until today,’ Sephy snapped back, just as angry. ‘I thought you were better than that, above all that nonsense. But you’re just like anyone else. “Crosses and noughts shouldn’t be seen together. Crosses and noughts shouldn’t be friends. Crosses and noughts shouldn’t even live on the same planet together”.’

‘That’s rubbish!’ I fumed. ‘I don’t believe any of that, you know I don’t.’

‘Do I?’ Sephy tilted her head to one side as she continued to scrutinize me. ‘Well, if you’re not a snob, you’re a hypocrite, which is even worse. I’m OK to talk to as long as no-one can see us, as long as no-one knows.’

‘Don’t talk to me like that . . .’

‘Why? Does the truth hurt?’ asked Sephy. ‘Which one is it, Callum? Are you a snob or a hypocrite?’

‘Get lost, Sephy.’

‘With pleasure.’

And this time, when Sephy walked away I didn’t try to stop her. I just watched her leave.

There’s a proverb which says, ‘Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it!’ I never really knew what that meant – until now. All those months helping Callum with his work so he’d pass the Heathcroft entrance exam. All those nights wishing on every blazing star that Callum would pass so we could go to the same school together, be in the same class together even. And now it’d all come true.

And it was horrible. Everything was going wrong.

I sighed, then sighed again. I couldn’t hide in this toilet cubicle for ever. And who was I hiding from anyway? I was hiding from all those people who’d been pointing and whispering as I walked past them in the school corridor – but mainly from Callum. After what had happened the previous evening, I was afraid to face him. I was so afraid he wouldn’t be my friend any more. So if I didn’t see him, I could pretend that nothing between us had changed. But I couldn’t sit on the toilet lid for ever. The bell rang for the end of break-time. I stood up and took a deep breath.

‘OK . . . Here goes . . .’ I muttered to myself.

I drew back the bolt and opened the cubicle door. I was just stepping out of the cubicle when it happened. Lola, Joanne and Dionne from Mrs Watson’s class in the year above mine, pushed me back into the cubicle and crowded in after me.

‘We want to have a word with you,’ Lola began.

‘And it has to be in here, does it?’ I asked.

Joanne shoved me so hard, I had to put out my hand to stop myself from toppling over.

‘We heard about what you did yesterday . . .’ Joanne said.

‘I did a lot of things yesterday.’ My heart began to thump in my chest, but I wasn’t about to give these three the satisfaction of knowing I was scared.

‘In the food hall,’ Joanne continued. ‘You sat on the blankers table.’

‘What’s it to you?’ I asked.

Lola slapped my face. Shocked, my hand flew to my stinging cheek. It wasn’t that she’d slapped me particularly hard, it was just that no-one had ever hit me before. Not even Minerva, my sister.

‘I don’t care if your dad is God Almighty himself,’ Lola told me. ‘Stick to your own kind. If you sit with the blankers again, everyone in this school will treat you like one of them.’

‘You need to wake up and check which side you’re on,’ added Joanne.

‘Why d’you want to be around them anyway?’ Dionne piped up. ‘They smell funny and they eat peculiar foods and everyone knows that none of them are keen to make friends with soap and water.’

‘What a load of rubbish!’ The words tumbled out of my mouth before I could stop them. ‘Callum has a wash every day and he doesn’t smell. None of them do.’

Dionne, Jo and Lola all looked at each other.

Lola pushed me down so I ended up sitting down on the toilet lid looking up at them.

Any second now the door will open and someone will come in . . . Callum will come in and stop them. He’ll pull them off me and sort them out. Any second now . . .

I tried to get to my feet but Lola pushed me down again and kept her hand on my shoulder, her fingers biting into my skin.

‘We’re only going to say this once,’ Lola told me icily. ‘Choose who your friends are very carefully. If you don’t stay away from those blankers, you’ll find you don’t have a single friend left in this school.’

‘Why d’you hate them so much?’ I asked, bewildered. ‘I bet none of you has even spoken to a nought before.’

‘Of course we have,’ Joanne piped up. ‘I’ve spoken to blankers lots of times – when they serve us in shops and restaurants . . .’

‘And there are some working in our own food hall . . .’

‘Yeah, that’s right. And besides we don’t need to speak to them. We see them on the news practically every other day. Everyone knows they all belong to the Liberation Militia and all they do is cause trouble and commit crimes and stuff like that . . .’

I stared at them, astounded. They can’t really be serious, I thought. But they could obviously read what I was thinking all over my face.

‘The news doesn’t lie,’ Lola told me huffily.

‘The news lies all the time. They tell us what they think we want to hear,’ I said. Callum had told me that and at the time I didn’t fully understand what he meant. But I did now.

‘Who told you that?’ Joanne’s eyes narrowed. ‘Your dad?’

‘I bet it was one of her blanker friends,’ Lola said with scorn. ‘They’re blank by name and blank by nature.’

‘What d’you mean?’ I asked.

‘Blank, white faces with not a hint of colour in them. Blank minds which can’t hold a single original thought. Blank, blank, blank,’ Lola recited. ‘That’s why they serve us and not the other way around.’

‘You ought to sell that horse manure worldwide. It’s quality stuff. You’d make a fortune!’ I sprung up. ‘Noughts are people, just like us. You’re the ones who are stupid and ignorant and . . .’

Lola gave me another slap around my face for that, but this time I was ready for it. Win or lose they weren’t going to get away with it. I made a fist, drew it back and punched Lola in the stomach. She doubled over with an ‘Oof!’ I struck out with my elbows and my fists and my feet all at the same time, trying to make as many of my blows count before they could react. I had the element of surprise on my side, but not for long. Joanne and Lola each grabbed a flailing arm whilst Dionne straightened up to glare down at me. Dionne was the best fighter in her year and everyone knew it. But if she was expecting me to beg or cry, she’d have a long wait. She gave me a slow smile of satisfaction.