One of Us (29 page)

I
RUN ACROSS
the square in front of Central Station toward the crematorium, until weariness forces me to stop and walk. A skeleton leaf skitters across the drive. That's my life now. None of it is real. It's all nothing.

I make it into the Garden of Remembrance and find the wall where the
K CHILD
plaque should be. I know it was here because my dead white rose is still crumbling below it. But there's another name there now. I don't even exist in death. I'm all alone. I'm standing by the wall when the howl comes out, climbing and tearing up my throat. I stuff my fist over my mouth to muffle the noise, and I hang on to my scarf as if it's a rope to pull me out. Only it isn't.

Greg. Greg. My lovely Greg.

I fall to my knees and curl up in a ball against the wall. Another cry wells up through the scarf.

When at last I sit up, the day has darkened with rain clouds. Inside the enclosed garden, the grass glows green. Could I have stayed? Explained it all to him? Found a way to make it all right, together? Held him in my arms and never let go?

Of course not. I stand up and pick up my bag. I know I can't stay here in Gatesbrooke. Greg might find
me. I know if I see him again I won't be able to hold my resolve. I have to go. I sling the bag across my chest.

Still, when I see the spire of the Old City Meeting Hall across the square, I pause.

Then I remember Jeremiah and me framed in the Pelican doorway. I can't let that happen to Greg. I'll leave first and decide where I'm going later.

I turn my back on the Old City and walk across the square toward the station where I first met Greg and Oskar, where my whole world exploded. Other people are bustling toward it too: office workers, parents and children, police officers, chatty students, all going about their business. I don't look for the difference between us and them anymore.

CHAPTER 31

I'
LL GET THE
first train out of Gatesbrooke.

That's a plan, isn't it? I walk faster, my shoes slapping through puddles. But when I'm halfway across the square, I stop.

Light glows from the Town Hall windows. That's how dark today is. Its turrets and spires shine in the streetlamps. It's a pale twin of the Old City Meeting Hall. The wind lifts and claws inside my coat.

It's no kind of a plan, is it? But it's all I have. I cross the road, getting out my wallet, and as I do, a card falls out.

I pick it up. It's a plain white card with a phone number on it. I hear Ms. Cobana's voice in the Art room last spring.
“If you ever need help, I'll be there for you. I really mean it.”

So I go to a phone booth and pick up the receiver. Then I slam it back down again, because will I be putting Ms. Cobana in danger too? Surely not, if I'm calling from a payphone? I deposit the coins and key in her number. After four rings I hear her voice. “Hello?”

“Ms. Cobana?”

“Who is this?”

“It's Verity. Verity Nekton.”

“Verity!” Her voice lightens. “How are you?”

“I need your help,” I say. “Is it, could I, talk to you?”

“Of course.” There's a pause. “Where are you?”

“Gatesbrooke station.”

“OK.” I can hear her thinking. “Can you come to the station where you and Greg got stranded?”

“Yes. All right.” I wonder why she doesn't say “Limbourne station.” And because she doesn't, I don't either.

“I'll meet you there outside the station. The next train from Central Station. Is that all right?”

“Yes. Thanks.”

She did mean it.

L
IMBOURNE STATION LOOKS
different in the daytime. I hurry past the waiting room, so I don't have to think about my night there with Greg, then up the stairs and into the parking lot, where I see Ms. Cobana with her hair flying around her head in a wild black-and-gray tangle.

She pushes her glasses up her nose and smiles at me. “Come on,” she says. “This way.”

“Thanks . . .” I begin, but Ms. Cobana puts a finger to her lips.

We get in her car and drive out into the countryside. She pulls up suddenly alongside a hedgerow with spiky twigs that rattle against my window. She gets out, and beckons for me to follow. This is weird, because there's nothing here. But I do it. What have I got to lose?

Ms. Cobana takes a piece of paper out of her pocket and holds it up to show me.
Have you got any bugs on you?

I stare at her in surprise. She puts her finger to her lips again. Then she takes a small handset out of her bag and runs it over every bit of me. When it passes over my hat, it starts to beep. Ms. Cobana takes it off my head and rummages around inside the lining.

Is she mad? But now she holds something up—a small round metal thing like a watch battery. She has a funny sort of smile on her face, half-rueful, half-triumphant. She finishes running her detector over me and then she pops a stick of gum into her mouth, chews it up, spits it into her hand, and fixes the little metal lozenge into it. She places it carefully in the road and jerks her head back toward the car.

We sit and wait. It's not long before a van comes up the lane, and drives off with a flattened blob of chewing gum stuck to a tire.

“Good,” says Ms. Cobana, starting the engine.

“Ms. Cobana?” I begin. “I had no idea that was there.”

“I know.” She turns right onto a mud path, drives a
short distance, and then stops the car in front of a gate. She gives me a brief smile. “We have to walk the last bit.”

I look sideways at her as she closes the gate. She never seemed interested in security when she was my Art teacher at the Institute.

At the end of this overgrown lane, a small bungalow is almost hidden among the apple trees, which have sprouted right up to the walls. The grass is knee-high. Apples, mostly brown with rot, lie all over the path and in the grass, filling the air with the sour tang of cider.

Ms. Cobana turns her key in the lock. “I don't get much time for gardening,” she says. “Until summer I was living at the Institute, as you know.”

I'm expecting a damp smell, but it's fresh inside. I follow her into the kitchen. She fills the kettle and switches it on. She ladles sugar into my mug before I can tell her I take my tea without it. But that's OK, because I haven't had any food today.

“We'll eat in a while,” says Ms. Cobana, like a mind reader.

I follow her into the living room, which has colored concrete tiles on the floor and a rag rug in front of the fire. This is the first television I've seen in a Brotherhood building.

Ms. Cobana notices my surprise. “I need to keep in touch with the world,” she says.

She puts the tray down on the coffee table. She's made a huge pot of tea with a woolly hat tea cozy on top of it. “One cup's never enough, is it?” She doesn't seem bothered that I'm just nodding or shaking my head.

“You drink your tea. I'll be back in a minute.”

I can hear her, going around the house with her bleeper gadget, checking for bugs. I'm starting to wonder again if she's a bit mad. But she found one in my hat, didn't she? The hat that Ril gave me. How did Ms. Cobana know?

Then I realize: because it's not the first time. What else have Ril and Oskar given me? My boots. My bag, with the wooden fastener that disappeared after Greg picked it up on the bus.

Finally Ms. Cobana comes back in and sits down.

“So,” she says. “Verity. What's on your mind?”

“Ms. Cobana,” I begin. “I'm not—”

“Call me Tina,” she cuts in. “Short for Constantina.” She makes a face.

“I'm not Verity Nekton,” I start again. “My name is K Child.”

CHAPTER 32

M
S. COBANA LOOKS
at me, waiting.

So I tell her everything, and now that I'm finally telling the truth, the words spill out. I stop and watch when she hears that I've never been a real Brotherhood girl. But she doesn't look shocked. She doesn't seem at all like a teacher now.

“Ms. Cobana?”

“Tina.”

“Tina . . . Was I bugged at the Institute? From the beginning?”
Eyes and ears.

She smiles at me. “The Institute has quite sophisticated security,” she says. “Even before the visitors'
book disappeared. I thought maybe you'd worked it out when Brer Magnus took your boots.”

“I just thought he had some kind of boot fetish.” The corner of Tina's mouth twitches. “Did Greg know?”

“What do you think?”

Then I tell her about Greg. But it's hard to talk about Greg, and about visiting his family. I dash tears away with the backs of my hands. Tina doesn't say anything.

And now I can't stop talking, but it all comes out in a jumble. I tell her about Verity Nekton's terrorist parents, and about the Brotherhood Student Fellowship, and how only Jeremiah went there, and how now he's been sent to Tranquility Sound, because of me. I tell her about the girl who Oskar and Ril pretended was me, who drowned and whose ashes were scattered in Gatesbrooke crematorium, and how I saw my name on a plaque there. And how since then I haven't told Oskar anything at all, ever, about anyone.

“But it's too late.” I can't stop the tears from spilling out. “For Jeremiah,” I go on. “I thought he was very militant at first, but still, he's not a terrorist. He wouldn't hurt anyone.”

“Hmm,” says Ms. Cobana. Tina.

“I don't know whether I should talk to Oskar about him.”

“I strongly advise you not to do that,” says Tina. She leans forward. “Why did you decide to become Verity Nekton?”

She must think I'm so stupid. Or that I'm lying. So I try hard to give her a true answer. “After the
bomb,” I say. “I wanted to fight it. I thought I could do something to stop it happening again. And Oskar believed in me.” I pause. “I
thought
Oskar believed in me. I wanted to study Art. I didn't think past that . . .” I stop. “I never thought I'd be stuck as Verity. I didn't think it would matter. It didn't feel real until it was too late.”

“Well,” says Tina. “I think you're going to have to go on being Verity Nekton for the time being.”

“I could do that,” I say. “But I think Jeremiah was arrested because of me. So I'm scared for the others.”

Tina doesn't speak. She picks up the teapot and pours us both more tea.

“I don't know what to do,” I say eventually. “I can't go back. Everything's gone.”

“Have you said anything about anyone other than Jeremiah to Oskar?”

“No.”

“Do you feel you are in actual danger from Oskar?”

I shake my head. “Not me. But Greg.” The tears spill again. “I split up with him this morning. Because I don't want Oskar to tell anyone about him, or the others.” Greg's face looking at me through the bus window comes back into my mind, and I have to stop.

Tina puts her fingertips against her bottom lip. She pushes a big box of tissues across the coffee table toward me. “I need to think about what you've told me.”

I make myself stop crying.

Eventually she says, “I think you've done the right thing in splitting up with Greg.”

I nod.

“Did you tell him why?”

I shake my head.

“That's good,” she says. “I did try to warn you how close he is to Brer Magnus.”

Of course this is what Greg didn't want to have to tell me—that he kept watch on me for Brer Magnus. But I can't think about it. I know I can't trust Oskar anymore but I want to remember Greg as somebody I did trust. So I stop listening to what she's saying.

“Verity?” she says. “I think you should go back to the Institute. Carry on as normal.”

I shake my head. “How can I do that?”

“It'll be all right,” she says. “But keep away from Greg. And now I think we should eat something.” She goes into the kitchen and shouts through, “What do you want—pizza, hamburger, sweet-and-sour chicken, or battered fish?” She appears in the doorway waving a frozen dinner in a cardboard box. “I'm having this,” she says. “But you can have whatever you want.”