The Territory (7 page)

When Hugo left, I asked Raf how he managed to stay so calm. He said he was just used to it. He’d had it all his life. Freakoids didn’t like him and neither did Norms.

‘Can’t imagine why,’ Jack mumbled under his breath. He can be really rude sometimes.

Then Raf leaned in towards me, all mock serious and minty-fresh breath, and thanked me for ‘my concern’. And then he winked. Green and blue to just green and then green and blue again. It was ACE.

Studying with Jack can be quite hard work. It’s not that he’s stupid, far from it, it’s just that our brains work so completely differently. I don’t know exactly how I remember stuff. I just seem to read things a lot, make a few flashcards and then it’s there in my head. With Jack it’s all visual though. If he can picture the thing or link whatever we’ve got to learn to an image, then he’s fine. If not, he’s in BIG TROUBLE.

We were revising Chemistry for tomorrow’s test. Jack got all the tests for the different elements stuff, as they normally involved some colour change, but then we did equilibria and he was just so lost. I even tried an explanation based on saunas and plunge pools, but his expression turned even blanker. At one point, he got so frustrated he punched the wall again. No major damage this time, just a bit of blood on his knuckles and a slight dent to the right of the light switch. Jack’s step-dad must have heard as he yelled up at Jack to, ‘Cool it!’ which was embarrassingly try-hard. Jack’s step-dad thinks he’s ‘down with the kids’. He’s not. He also thinks Jack’s got anger issues. Which he does.

Normally Jack’s the nicest, kindest guy you could ever imagine, but when he gets massively annoyed or frustrated about something, he goes into caveman mode and punches something. Luckily so far it’s always been a wall. He’s got a poster above his bed of Florrie Fox and I know he’s not really that into her, even though she’s really hot, it’s just that the poster is the perfect size to cover a hole he punched in the wall there three months ago. It was plasterboard, but I still can’t believe his whole hand actually went through! It’d be impressive if it wasn’t so dense.

That happened after Jack overheard his step-dad try to convince his mum to send him to a therapist to deal with his issues. ‘After all it’s not my genes he’s inherited. You don’t want another Subversive in the family.’ Anyone slagging off Jack’s dad is like someone pressing a trigger button in Jack’s brain. The swelling on his hand took two weeks to go down and he could barely grip a paintbrush all that time.

At least tonight Jack looked really sheepish as soon as he’d punched the wall.

‘I just can’t do this,’ he said. ‘And it’s all malc anyway. I mean, why do I need to know about some guy called Le Chatelier and how best to make ammonia, but I hardly need to read any books anymore? Do we really want to live somewhere filled with ammonia-making scientists where no one can write a poem?’

I know what he means. They took poetry off the syllabus last year – no one could believe it. You can still do it if you’re going for a SAM in Literature but no one at Hollets is being put forward for one. And the few novels we study are SO limp. All about sacrifice and the importance of government.

Dad couldn’t believe it when he saw the reading list. He’s drawn up his own list of
‘classics’ for me, from books he’s got stashed away in the chest by the sofa.

‘At least you’ve still got Art,’ I said.

Jack nodded, nursing his now swelling hand.

‘So give your hand a break, OK? No more punching, not until after the exams anyway.’

Jack’s given me a sneak preview of his SAM portfolio and it properly rocks. The theme is evolution and he’s done charcoal drawings of different species morphing into each other: a bat into a crow, an ant into a rat. They’re dark and menacing but beautiful at the same time.

Each year they publish a list of the 500 students who’ve been awarded a SAM alongside the normal pass/fail lists. So far no one from Hollets has got one. But that’s all going to change this year. Jack’s going to get one – I know it.

The only other people I know, or rather know of, as I obviously don’t know them personally – I wish! – who got a SAM are Kaio and Frankie Lebore. Kaio’s like the poster boy for SAMs as they were introduced in his exam year and everyone, even lots of freakoids, thinks his music is ACE. I mean you have to be pretty cool to be so famous that you don’t even need a surname. Kaio always says he was a pretty average student but he could play about twelve instruments by the time he was ten. Whenever anyone criticises the TAA syllabus and its focus on science and facts, Kaio gets wheeled out and the Minister for Education does a big spiel about how SAMs protect creativity so it’s all OK. Hmmm.

Frankie Lebore’s a super-hot writer and poet and got his SAM two years later. He used to be paraded around too by the Ministry to recite some ‘uplifting’ poem or short story. But then one year his poem wasn’t exactly uplifting – it was supposedly about bullfrogs but everyone knew it was about the fat, corrupt officials at the top of the Ministry, so he’s been dropped. The programme was actually pulled from the air halfway through his poem. The look on the news anchor’s face was hilarious!

I really didn’t feel like going to school today. I had a really malc headache, one that felt like I had a stone lodged behind my left eye. Mum wouldn’t let me stay at home though. She said I didn’t have a temperature so even if we miraculously got a doctor’s appointment, they’d still probably not give me an Approved Absence Certificate and she didn’t want to risk losing our food rations for the week. Fair enough, I guess.

My headache seemed to be cured by our Physics test results. I got 85 per cent, which was really cool as I was up there with the freakoids. Jack got 71 per cent, which was a miracle. I mean, 71 per cent in PHYSICS! If he does that in June he’ll be safe – and dry! He reached over and dug a pen in my ribs so I’d turn round and he mouthed, ‘Thank you!’ I gave a mock bow back and then we just grinned stupidly at each other for a while. Daisy got 53 per cent and started fiddling furiously with her hair, which is never a good sign and showed that she was properly upset. I tried to smile at her but she wouldn’t look up from her desk. I wish she’d revise more with me and Jack. I think it’d really help her focus, but she says that’s not the way she works and she’s massively stubborn so she’s not about to change her mind now.

The only other result I registered was Raf’s. He got 82 per cent, which is obviously good, but not great for a freakoid. I mean, most of the test was just recall so he must have bombed on any ‘apply your knowledge’ question.

I felt a bit disappointed, to be honest. In my head Raf had become a sort of mini-God: super hot and super clever. But maybe he’s just a super-hot, pretty averagely intelligent, less-freakoidy-than-normal freakoid.

But then I walked out of the Physics lab at the same time as him and we did this awkward little dance on the spot as we each tried to let the other one go first. His arm brushed mine and he gave me one of his megawatt smiles and an incredible wink and I thought that maybe being super clever isn’t that important after all.

The rest of the day went by in a bit of a blur. Daisy grabbed me and Jack in lunch break, wanting to finalise details for the party. This is Daisy’s method of coping, I guess. To manically channel energy into something else.

‘So that’s everything apart from drink taken care of,’ Daisy pronounced.

Jack and I looked at each other doubtfully. Two years ago the Ministry had lowered the age for buying alcohol to fourteen, I guess to let us get drunk in our probable final year on dry land to console ourselves about the rubbish future that loomed for us. You wouldn’t see that many freakoids buying it – their world didn’t need escaping from in the same way. Loads of parties now involved Norm kids getting massively wasted and puking everywhere. This wasn’t quite what I’d had in mind. Also the one time I got drunk, at Jack’s last birthday, I had a terrible hangover and I can’t exactly afford to lose any study days at the moment.

Daisy never really thinks about consequences or the future or anything like that, so she was up for buying loads of booze. Luckily however, Jack agreed with me, so Daisy was overruled and stormed off in a bit of a huff. She can be pretty melodramatic sometimes.

Right and wrong should be simple but it’s not.

Instead of Assembly this morning, we all had to sit in the Hall and watch the latest Bulletin. Clearly something big had happened. We were all expecting news of some great triumph like the new mirrors already reducing global temperatures by 0.0001 degrees or some scientist (Ministry sponsored of course) finding a way to refreeze the poles. We weren’t expecting the images we saw. Mr Daniels informed us that we might find the Bulletin ‘distressing’.

‘Not as distressing as your hair,’ Daisy mumbled, which had Jack and me shaking, and then we took it to the next level with an unstoppable mini Mexican wave of eyebrow raising.

‘Shhhh,’ came the command from the front and we froze before we could be identified.

The screen flickered to life. The familiar countdown 3 – 2 – 1 and then Daniel Steven appeared, the supposedly friendly face of the Ministry. He’s awful and clearly has no friends. This morning he was playing serious. You could tell by the calculated furrow in his forehead and the way he had adjusted his eyes to a ‘concerned but determined’ expression.

‘Fellow citizens of the Territory,’ he began. What a faker. ‘In the early hours of this morning, a heinous act was committed. A bomb was detonated at a WombPod Facility in the Third City destroying ninety-three Childe foetuses and killing three technicians.’
Images of a blown-up building appeared on the screen followed by image after image of fragmented Wombpod, the floor a carpet of blood. Bile rose in my throat and little gasping cries went up throughout the hall. All I could think was, they killed all those babies. I can’t believe they actually killed all those babies. Someone fainted at the back of the room and another teacher ran out, the door slamming behind her. ‘The attack was orchestrated by the Opposition. The perpetrators have all been apprehended by our tireless police force and are now in custody awaiting trial.’ Images of about ten men and three women were paraded across the screen. They were all quite old. Their faces were dirty. Most had black eyes or cuts to their faces. One had a weird nervous tic. I felt this hatred rise up in me and I wanted to hurt them too. Erase them to erase what they’d done. I didn’t know I had these feelings in me. I mean, I hate Mr Daniels and most of the teachers at Hollets. Oh, and Hugo and Quentin while I’m at it, but this hatred felt deeper. More instinctive. And it was accompanied with a real desire to inflict pain.

The Bulletin was over and Mr Daniels dismissed us.