The Disappeared (19 page)

‘This will be the last time before we get out of here. I have an appraisal scheduled for two weeks on Friday, after that I’ll get my security clearance and ID card, which means access to the exits. We’ll leave on the Saturday night. Meet me here at two a.m. Wear both your uniforms, it’ll be cold out.’

I nod. ‘I’ll tell Ilex, Ali and Kay.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ she says slowly.

‘What do you mean?’

She bites her lip. ‘I hear from Enforcer Baxter that Ali is a sweet little girl and I know that Ilex has been a friend to you, but I just don’t know if we can help them. It’s going to be hard enough to look after ourselves.’

‘What about Kay?’

She sighs. ‘I can see that you’re . . . fond of Kay, but we’ve got to be careful. The more people who know about us leaving, the more likely we are to be found out.’

I can’t believe she’s saying this. ‘You don’t trust her, do you?’

‘I’m not judging her; I know that her life has been hard and that she’s grown up with different values. I understand—’

‘No you don’t,’ I snap.

‘I can imagine—’

‘No you can’t.’ I’m raising my voice. I try to get control of myself and bring it back down to a whisper. ‘I’ve been living here for months now and there were times when I thought you weren’t ever going to come for me. There were times when I thought that I was going to end up in a factory and that I would spend the rest of my life as a Special. But even I can’t, for one minute, claim to understand what it’s like to be Kay. I know that you’re a good person and that you want to be able to empathise and that you try to understand her motives, but until you have lived the life of a Special, a life that’s devoid of hope or joy or comfort, you will never know what it feels like.’

My mother is quiet. There are tears in her eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says.

‘You have to go,’ I say. ‘I don’t want to fight with you.’

‘I just want to get you out of here,’ she says.

‘I know.’

‘Promise you’ll be here on the night after my appraisal?’ She pauses and looks at me, before adding, ‘You
and
Ilex and Ali and Kay.’

I smile at her.

She does her best to hug me through the bars and then she’s gone.

A few nights later it’s Saturday again and Kay and I sneak into ‘Rex’s Room’ – namely, the toilets next to the salon – for some privacy. Only Reds are allowed in here but they’ll all be heading for Making Hour in a minute. Kay is writing words using pieces of string to shape the letters, this way if anyone comes in we just bunch up the string and there’s no evidence. She shapes ‘Academies suck’ and looks at me with a smile. This would be a good time to talk to her about the escape plan, but I’ve found myself putting that off. Even before I had a definite date, every time I tried to talk about leaving Kay kept changing the subject. It’s like she doesn’t believe it’s going to happen.

The six o’clock buzzer sounds, which makes me think of something else I’ve been meaning to say. ‘I wanted to ask you about Making Hour again.’ The words tumble out of my mouth.

Kay raises her eyebrows. ‘Do you want to Make with me?’

‘No! I mean, it’s not that I . . . I just wanted to know what it’s all about.’ King Hell. Why can’t I have a conversation with Kay about this without turning into a babbling idiot?

‘Blake, I told you they—’

‘I know what they do, I wanted to know why . . . I mean, I know
why
, but why is the Academy encouraging them?’ Once again my face is purple.

‘Come with me,’ she says and leads me out of the toilets. ‘The Leadership says we need factory workers. To make the workers they need Academy Specials.’

I nod. Everybody knows that the factory workers are vital to our economy.

‘They need lots of Specials. So they get Specials Making more Specials in the Making Hour. They say, “Do it for your country” and all like that.’

That bit, I didn’t know. Even if factory workers are important, I can’t believe that they encourage teenage girls to get pregnant. At the Learning Community they taught us that sex and relationships must wait until we’d completed our education. At the Academy they’re telling them they can serve their country by having sex. It seems like another way that everyone is being pushed into believing something without questioning it. ‘Are you sure you’ve got this right? Are you sure that the Leadership even knows about Making Hour?’ I ask her.

Kay shrugs.

‘Does the Making Hour happen in all Academies?’ I ask when we get on to the main corridor.

Kay frowns. ‘I don’t get you, Blake. You’re a brainer, yes?’

‘Don’t call me that. I’m smart, okay?’ But actually I’m not even sure about that any more. ‘Well, at some things anyway.’

‘So why don’t you know all-things? You know about old things like Long War, didn’t they teach you about things that are . . . now?’

We did learn Topical Issues at the Learning Community. It’s only now that I realise that what we covered was pretty narrow and, again, we were never taught to question what we were told. It’s hard to explain to Kay that no one at the Learning Community has any interest in what happens at Academies or factories. We’re completely focused on our future roles.

At the bottom of the stairs, instead of walking straight down the corridor where the second lot of grids are, she turns left down a smaller corridor.

‘You’re missing the point of a Learning Community,’ I say. ‘It’s about ideas and theories.’

‘What’s “missing the point”?’

‘It’s when you don’t understand, you don’t get the most important thing. “Important” means the biggest thing, the special thing.’

‘People are the most ’portant thing. People are the point,’ she says.

I open my mouth to answer her, but I can’t explain. Kay is staring at me. Why did I never ask myself the questions that Kay asks?

I stop and shake my head. ‘I know I don’t know lots of things,’ I say. ‘But I do want to know. Has the Making Hour . . . er . . . worked well here?’

‘Yeah,’ she sighs. ‘Lots of babies to put in Academies and then into the factories.’

‘Babies?’ I sound like an idiot, but it’s out of my mouth before I can stop myself. ‘I haven’t seen any babies.’

‘When they’re borned they go to a place. There have been lots. That Lou I beat had one a bit before you came here. Dom is having one. And Carma in our dormitory, she doesn’t all times fat-walk like that you know.’

‘Have you ever . . . ?’

Kay laughs. ‘You know lots of words, but sometimes . . .’ She nods at me to show she has remembered this word from when I explained it to her a couple of days ago. ‘Sometimes you can’t talk the right words, can you?’ She tugs at my arm to make me walk down the corridor. ‘No, I’ve not-one-time had a baby,’ she says. ‘Carma’s had two before this.’

‘Two?’

‘She had two same-time babies.’

‘You mean twins?’

She nods. ‘Same-time babies.’

‘So how old do they . . . er . . . start?’

Kay looks amused. ‘Making is only for the biggest Specials. You can Make when you’re fifteen. Carma says baby-ing is crimson, but you can’t fight with a baby-belly. It’s hard for Carma because she likes to be fighting with her long nails all the times.’

‘Why does she do it then?’ I say.

‘Baby-belly girls get more food and more rest and the enforcers are all no-hitting, no-shouting. Carma says the more babies you have the littler you work at the factory.’ She rolls her eyes.

‘Don’t you believe that?’ I ask.

‘Believe?’

‘Do you think it’s true? Not a lie?’

‘I don’t know. It’s nice to have some believes.’

We’ve reached a different corridor; this one is white. Leading off it are white doors with
Vacant/Engaged
signs on them.

‘Is this where they . . . ?’ I look at the door nearest us. The sign says
Engaged
.

‘Yes, Blake, there is where they have sex.’ She crosses to the nearest vacant room and pushes the door open, then she turns back and looks over her shoulder at me. My stomach turns over. Does she want me to go in there? With her? I try to walk towards her, but I seem unable to control my legs; my feet feel massive. I’m surprised I manage to get through the door. The room is tiny. Kay is sat on a white bed. Should I close the door? I try not to think about Kay. Other than the bed, which I am not looking at, there’s only a wash basin in the corner. Under the sink are two great big rolls of tissue. I feel myself blushing.

Kay is leaning back on the pillow. My hands are sweaty.

‘Close the door,’ she says.

I wonder if I should kiss her. I don’t think I know how to kiss, let alone how to do anything else. I tell my brain to move my legs towards the bed.

‘One day I’ll be here Making with Rex,’ Kay says to me.

I tell my brain not to move my legs, but the message is all confused and I stumble and crash down on to the bed.

Smooth.

I hate Rex.

‘So,’ I say. ‘Do you come here a lot?’ I hate myself.

‘Sometimes I come to have a nice quiet lying down on a not-dirty bed.’ She cuddles a pillow to her and draws up her knees.

Oh. I edge as far away from her as possible. I’ve got to stop thinking about kissing Kay. She’s not interested. She thinks I’m an idiot. I look around the room again. She’s right, it’s much cleaner than the dorm.

Kay stops talking and after a while her eyelids start to droop. Soon she’s asleep. I’m mesmerised by her breathing. She turns her head, exposing her collar bone. I want to kiss her there. Imagine if I did and she woke up and gave that breathy sigh like she does sometimes and then kissed me, put her tongue in my mouth and took my hand and—

The buzzer sounds.

Kay opens her eyes and stretches. I cross my legs.

On the way back upstairs I say, ‘Why Rex? You don’t even like him.’

‘I think you’re missing the point of sex,’ Kay says.

When I finally get up the nerve to talk to Kay about escaping she reacts with almost the same words as my mother.

‘I don’t know,’ she says.

‘What do you mean, you don’t know? We can get out of here. We’ll be free. No more enforcers. No more EMDs.’

She looks at me for a long time and finally her lips curve into a half-smile. ‘Okay, Blake. I’ll come when you go to meet your mother.’

I wish that she would just use the word ‘escape’, but I don’t want to push my luck so I leave it at that. When I tell Ilex and Ali the plan they agree solemnly to wait for me to come and pick them up from their dormitories. I think it’s best not to have too many people roaming about in the night until we know that my mother has sorted everything.

Even though we’re leaving soon, Kay’s enthusiasm about the reading lessons remains undiminished and I find myself looking forward to them. For some reason this small defiance against the enforcers makes me feel better. And I’m not the only one. About a quarter of all the Specials are learning to read now. We have to work in small groups because I’m afraid that a big congregation of kids will draw attention. Kay teaches the little ones. I feel ridiculously proud of her.

I go to meet her after a lesson in one of the junior bathrooms. I’m trying to decide if she looks pleased to see me when a little boy called Marn stumbles up to us. He stands with his hands behind his back and looks at the floor.

‘You did good reading, Marn,’ Kay says.

He looks up at her. ‘I want to say a good thing for learning me reading. Can you tell me a good thing word?’

Kay smiles at him. ‘When you are happy that someone did a thing for you and you want to tell them, you say, “thank you”.’

‘Fank you, Kay, fank you, Blake,’ he says. He wriggles on the spot. ‘I want to give you a thing.’ He holds out his hand. In the middle of his palm is something small and black like a button. It’s his shrap. The little ones rarely manage to get hold of metal, so they make do with bits of plastic.

Kay pats his shoulder. I take another look at the button.

‘Thank you, Marn,’ Kay says. ‘But we like to show you reading. You can have your shrap. We don’t—’

I reach over and pick up the button that isn’t a button. ‘Actually, Kay, I’d really like this.’

‘Blake! Don’t take his—’

I hold the piece of plastic up to the light. ‘Kay, do you know what this is?’