Ravensborough (11 page)

The drive home to Chesterfield was kind of awkward. Rupert and Mum didn’t seem to be speaking. At one set of traffic lights Rupert put his hand out to cover her, but she moved it away.

‘I thought you said that it was safe here,’ she said quietly.

‘It is safe, mostly,’ Rupert argued. ‘She was knocked over in the middle of a crime, that could happen in any city in the world. Unless she gets wrapped up in the conflict, she’s just as safe in Ravensborough as she was back home in Dublin.’

When we got home tensions were still strong. I’d been through enough drama for one night – I wasn’t in the mood of witnessing anymore. I went upstairs and had a shower instead. The warm water soothed my aching muscles. I got out of the shower and groaned when I saw my reflection in the mirror. A reddish purple bruise was settling on my right cheek where I’d hit it off the pavement. I’d have to wear my hair down tomorrow. No doubt it would only get worse overnight.

I was right. The next day not only was my face a funky purple yellow colour, but my cheek had swollen up, distorting the shape of my face slightly. It seemed like everyone was staring at me, laughing at me because of my injuries. It looked like my new girl sheen had worn off and I was finally accepted. Now I was just one of the fray, and able for the taunts and cruel whispers that I’d gotten back home. Great, just great.

I crept into political studies, picking a seat as near to the back as possible so I could just disappear into the background. Unfortunately, the bad luck that seemed to be around lately refused to dissipate.

‘Scarlett, what happened to your face?’ asked Ms. Jeffries. Any chance I had of remaining under the radar disappeared as everyone swivelled in their chairs to gawk at me.

Mei rolled her eyes at me. She knew how much I hated any kind of attention, let alone this kind.

‘I bumped into someone last night and fell,’ I said simply. There was no was that I was going to get into more detail than that. There were a few snickers around the class at my clumsiness. I’d hoped that I would be more popular here than I’d been back in Dublin, but it seemed like a case of same shit different school.

Cat looked around, obviously irritated by the way our classmates were amused by this. She flicked her hair over one shoulder.

‘You know, she didn’t just
fall over
. Did you guys hear about that stabbing last night? The Pagan guy who went all
loco
on a law-abiding Rationalist? Well, they knocked Scarlett flying when they were fleeing the scene.’

The snickering stopped, but now the stares held something closer to respect and curiosity. To be honest I wasn’t sure which one I hated more.

Ms. Jeffries pressed more details, which I gave reluctantly. I knew Cat had thought that she was helping, but I wished sometimes that she could keep her big mouth shut.

Ms. Jeffries was thrilled, however, and used my story as a springboard to discuss the threat that all Pagans represented in Avalonia. Knowing Aradia and Gethan – nice friendly people who to the best of my knowledge had no interest in stabbing random people or wresting control of the government by force and persecuting all Rationalists– I found it hard to believe that every Pagan was as bad as they were often presented. Maybe Aradia and Gethan weren’t the only ones in Avalonia who were deluded.

While Ms. Jeffries was still in mid tangent, Mei sent me a paper aeroplane across the classroom. I was worried Ms. Jeffries would have seen it, but she was as blind as a bat. I unfolded it and saw that Mei had written a message.

I heard on the radio that the guy who was stabbed died from his injuries
.

It took a few seconds for the message to sink in. The man had died, and I’d touched his killer. The thought made me feel nauseous.

I thought school would never end. The events of the night before kept playing over and over in my head, and I just wanted to go home and blare music so hard that I wouldn’t be able to think about anything else except the beat.

But that wasn’t possible. I’d already left it a ridiculously long time to get a registration card, so I needed to head into the centre of the city to get that sorted. I was glad that I’d gotten some passport photos taken for that very purpose the week beforehand: there was no way I could get an identification card printed up looking like I did now.

It took an hour of queuing and a ridiculous amount of forms, but I finally got my card proclaiming me a non-national resident of Avalonia, along with an ID number. Well, at least I’d get less hassle at the checkpoints now. Mum’s company had sorted out her card for her, so she hadn’t needed to go through the whole palaver herself.

When I got outside rain was falling thick and fast. I took out my copy of a free newspaper I’d been handed on the way to school that morning and opened it over my head. It would be soaked through within minutes and fall apart, so I had to find somewhere to shelter fast. Running across Anderson Plaza, I collided head on into another person. I seemed to be making quite a habit of this. As I tried to apologise to the person in question I realised I knew the build from somewhere. It was Gethan. He initially seemed pleased to see me, but he recoiled slightly when he saw my cheek.

‘Scarlett, what happened to your face?!’

‘I’d tell you but my newspaper is about to dissolve any minute now’, I replied.

‘Quick, over here.’ Gethan grabbed my hand and pulled me over to the side of the road where his battered jeep was parked. The raindrops landed on the metal and glass with a melodious thudding sound. Gethan’s black hair was slicked to his head with the rain. His jacket wasn’t waterproof and he took it off before throwing it on the back seat. I badly wished that I didn’t have a swollen cheek like a gerbil and wet hair.

‘So?’ Gethan asked, looking at me with concern. ‘What happened to your face?’

‘I was in Bessborough yesterday with a friend,’ I began. I didn’t have the same qualms about telling him about what happened as I had about the kids at school. I knew that he was concerned about me. ‘A group of thugs attacked this guy with a flick-knife on the street I was on. The police arrived, the gang ran and one of them ran straight into me and sent me flying. I had the good luck to bang my cheek on the pavement.’

‘Is it fractured?’ he asked.

I shook my head. ‘No, luckily. It’s just a lot of bruising and swelling. It looks like the guy they stabbed might die though. That’s the really upsetting thing.’

He nodded sympathetically. ‘I can imagine.’

I changed the subject, trying to push my memories of the night before to the back of my mind. ‘What are you doing in town?’

‘Just hanging round with some friends.’

‘With Aradia?’

‘No,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘Believe it or not, I do have other friends. So what are you doing here?’

I held up my shiny new identification card. ‘I was getting this.’ I tucked it into my wallet and shoved it deep into my shoulder bag.

‘It must have been frightening, witnessing a stabbing’, Gethan said looking at me with a soft expression in his eyes.

‘It was,’ I admitted. ‘I had a nightmare last night where I was the one they attacked. I’ve never witnessed anything that nasty and cruel before before.’

Gethan reached out a hand slowly, and began to trace the outline of my swollen cheek with his fingertips. I recoiled slightly, sure that it was going to hurt but it just tickled slightly. It was such an innocent gesture, yet it felt so intimate. Butterflies fluttered in my stomach, and I found myself leaning into his touch. For the first time I forgot all about the sinister events of the night before, and got lost in the moment. There was just the two of us in our own little world. The water streaming down the windows blocked off the outside word, it was literally just the two of us.

I leaned in towards him and he leaned towards me. All of the reservations I’d had – Sam, Aradia, the fact he was a Pagan – seemed inconsequential. His eyes searched my face, as if he was searching for something. We moved closer to another, our faces now mere centimetres apart. We were so close that I could feel the heat of his breath against my skin. He reached up his hand to lift a lock of hair away from my face.

As he did so, the sleeve of his jumper moved back to reveal a black mark on the inside of his arm. As I looked down I noticed that it was black ink, in a whorl pattern interspersed with pale blue threads. With a sickening feeling, I realised that it was a tattoo like the one I’d noticed on that thug’s arm the night before. Fainter, but it was undeniably the same mark as the one on the inside the attacker's forearm. A sense of dread came over me as I remembered what Mei had called it. A gang mark. Gethan was involved in this.

I pulled away from him as if I’d been burnt, picked up my schoolbag and opened the door.

‘Where are you going, it’s still raining,’ said Gethan. ‘Let me give you a lift home.’

‘No thanks,’ I replied as I jumped out and slammed the door shut. I didn’t know if he’d follow me, so I decided to run. I wasn’t the most athletic person in the world, and the rain made getting a grip on the ground was difficult. The rain was still torrential and I was soaked by the time I got to the bus stop, but I knew that I had done the right thing. Mei had said last night that all members of the FPL had the same tattoo, that they were dangerous. And there was Gethan with the exact same mark on his arm. Was he dangerous? I didn’t know. Maybe Ms. Jeffries was right. That was the problem with moving somewhere new – you just didn’t know the rules.

My heart was still pounding in my chest at how close I’d been to danger. Gethan had seemed nice enough. He certainly didn’t seem like the type of guy who would go out and attack someone. But then, what did I know? I’d lead a very sheltered life up until now, and I didn’t feel equipped to deal with the complex situation I now found myself in.

And who could I tell about this? ‘Mum, I think I may have been hanging out with a member of a violent gang’ wasn’t exactly going to go down well, was it? Mei was Rationalist, as were all my other friends. Aradia was the only person I could go to who wouldn’t immediately condemn me for hanging out with Pagans, and she wasn’t going to be able to see my point of view either. It was obvious that her and Gethan were really close. I mean, it wasn’t like I knew that much about either of them really. For all I knew Aradia herself was involved in that gang. After all Rupert had said that she was dangerous.

Rupert, I felt a dart of shame. He was the person that I should have trusted, and I’d done the exact opposite of everything that he suggested that I should do. Smart, Scarlett. Real smart.

After a few minutes a bus pulled up. It was packed and the stuffy heat of the bodies inside combined with the precipitation outside made the windows steam up. It was uncomfortable, but I managed to get a seat beside a large woman carrying a large array of shopping bags. Every time we rounded a corner sharp objects in the bags stuck into my arm. My phone kept vibrating, and glances at its screen confirmed that it was Gethan calling me. I didn’t answer. After eight calls he stopped. Around ten minutes later the phone started to vibrate again. This time it was Aradia.

Great
, I thought.
He’s told on me.

By the time I got home I had about six missed calls on my mobile from Aradia. I continued to ignore her calls. I just didn’t know what I could say to her. The thought that Gethan might have something to do with a violent gang made me sick to my stomach. But getting my identification card had taken longer than I’d thought, and my friends from school were going to be calling round in less than half an hour. I really didn’t have time to think about this right now. I pushed all thoughts of Gethan to the back of my mind and concentrated on getting ready instead. I dried my hair and stuck my dinner in the microwave. Mum filled me in on her day in work, and didn’t seem to notice how preoccupied I was. Although maybe she put it down to the events of the night before.

Right on time the doorbell rang. Mei, Cat, Ben and Will had arrived, and I could tell that they were overwhelmed by the size of Rupert’s house. I still hadn’t gotten my head around the idea that this was now also my home. I introduced Mum and Rupert to Will and Ben, they’d met Mei and Cat before.

I could tell Mum didn’t like Cat. Her need to dominate any conversation irritated her. Mum started addressing all her questions by name to Ben, Will and Mei in an effort to stop her talking. Not that Cat took the hint.

Rupert had said we could use one of the reception rooms downstairs to hang out in, but I was terrified that one of my friends would spill something on his expensive rugs or knock over some priceless antique. Instead I herded them upstairs to my bedroom. I sensed that I had done the right thing, because they were much more relaxed in my shabby chic bedroom than they’d been downstairs.

‘Wow, look at that view’, Will walked over to the window. It was dark now and the Starling-Bird Bridge was lit up in the distance.

Ben was examining my music collection on my laptop. Mei sat down on my bed while Cat sat beside Ben, flicking her hair, talking a lot about the type of music that she liked, and generally trying way too hard.

I sat down on the bed beside Mei. She reached out a hand and picked up a photo frame on the nearby shelf.

The picture was one of me and Sam. It had been taken last Christmas at Funderland, a travelling carnival that came regularly to Dublin. We had only been going out a couple of months at that stage. I was holding a giant teddy bear that he’d won for me at a stall. Sam was hugging me from behind and was resting his chin on my shoulder. We were both grinning. It wasn’t a great picture of me – the camera flash had made me look unnaturally pale – but Sam looked great in it. His blonde hair was spiked and his skin was beautiful and tanned. I tried to remember who had taken the photograph. Probably Lindsay. I suddenly felt a pang of loss that hurt so much it took my breath away.

‘Is that Sam?’ Mei asked.

I nodded.

Mei looked at the photo again. ‘He’s really cute’, she said admiringly.