Louder Than Words (18 page)

I looked around and saw the banners, hundreds of words all shouting for the same thing – for fair treatment of workers in the Third World, for no more exploitation, for no more obscene profits at the expense of the poor.

The government had the power to stop this, right?

They had to listen to this, didn’t they?

The noise, the pulse sounding in my ears like the banging of the drum a guy was playing across the street, the smell of diesel fumes mixed with hope . . . I can still feel it all now. I looked down at Lara and knew she felt the same. I got it. I totally and utterly got it. There was nothing like this feeling. No wonder it was such a big deal for her. A professional difference-maker, that’s what Lara is. And it felt like a good thing to be right then.

The march set off again, down past the Cenotaph and on into the heart of the London shopping area. The masked people were beginning to move around along the sides of the march. Then Lara got a text.

‘OK, we’re on.’ I could hear her now the noise had dropped as the crowd thinned out.

She pulled a soft black mask out of her pocket and slipped it over her face, then handed one to me.

‘Hurry up, before the CCTV picks us up!’

I dragged the mask on hurriedly.

‘Ready?’

‘Yes.’

‘Follow me.’

She jogged up the side of the crowd. People began to glance at us as we passed and Lara called out to them, ‘Stand up against injustice and show this government how you really feel. Direct action!’

I saw someone on the other side of the crowd beginning to do the same thing, and another further up the street.

‘Come on – join us!’ Lara yelled as she ran.

A wave of noise followed us. There were some jeers about stupid kids from some of the protesters, but I also heard some yelling encouragement. As we got further up the street, I even saw a couple of people begin to follow us, pulling scarves up over their faces.

I still didn’t have any idea what I was getting into. I knew there’d be trouble, but nothing like the scale of what was to come.

CHAPTER 32

Mum dropped us off at the zoo and told me to call an hour before I wanted picking up. I held my hand up to say thanks as she drove off.

When we looked at the map, we realised how enormous the zoo was so we had to prioritise what we really wanted to see in case we didn’t get round all of it.

‘Elephants, obviously.’

Of course. That was a given.

‘And the lions.’

Oh yes.

But first we walked through the grassy areas looking at the animals they had roaming loose, funny things that looked like big rabbits – maras, the map said they were called. And then on past the bison and moose. After that was a large, mainly grassed enclosure. We peered in through the netting, scanning around until Josie pointed in excitement.

‘There!’

And there they were. Six ghostly grey-white shapes flitting up and down on the far side of the enclosure: the wolves.

We watched them in silence as they stalked round each other in circles, a stiff-legged dance showing how aware they were of us. I could feel how they didn’t want us there. We had invaded their privacy. The desire for isolation, to run free and unseen in immense open spaces, was almost tangible.

I understood them perfectly; that terrified me.

My bubble of elation burst and I grabbed Josie’s sleeve to pull her away. She was taken aback at my sudden urgency to move on, but she didn’t object.

‘What freaked you out about them?’ she said once we’d moved on to look at the much safer option of reindeer.

She thought about teasing me, I could see it in her face, but then she changed her mind.

‘I think you may be the most sensitive person I’ve ever met,’ she said quietly as we leaned on the fence and looked at the reindeer serenely eating grass. ‘As in you practically absorb other people’s feelings into yourself and translate them before that person even knows what they are themselves.’

I thought about it and shrugged.

‘I think that’s what makes it so hard for you to deal with people. You see what they don’t even know they’re showing. You see things they never intended you to see. If we could all do that, Raf, I think we’d go crazy.’

Did she mean I was crazy then?

‘Seriously, with all that going on in your head, not talking is like the mildest reaction. I’d be in bits.’

Lucky me.

‘I can’t take it when people think badly of me.’ Josie sniffed. ‘I’ll correct that – I didn’t
used
to be able to until I got a crash course in coping, courtesy of Lloyd.’

We left the reindeer pen and walked slowly up the path to where the white rhinos were also busy chomping grass. Josie scuffed the ground with her toe as she walked.

‘It was horrible,’ she said. ‘I’ve never felt so awful in my whole entire life. And it just hit out of nowhere. At first I didn’t even know what Lloyd had done. I knew he was mad at me, but I walked into school that day and people in the corridors were pointing at me and laughing. You know, I thought I had something on my hair, like a bird had pooped on me or something like that, so I went into the toilets. And no, there was nothing on me, but this girl I sort of knew just looked at me and said, “Tramp!” and walked out.’

I could feel my nerves tingling in sympathy for her, scared for what would happen next.

‘I knew then it was something bad, from the look on that girl’s face and from how everyone was acting. When I got to form it was worse. My friends all stopped talking when I came in. I said “Hi” and went over, but they just
looked
at me. Then Alice sniggered and after that they all started. I asked them what was going on, but Alice just said, “Oh come on, Josie. We all know.” And I honestly didn’t have a clue. So I ignored them and sat down at my desk because the teacher was coming in.’

We stopped by the rhinos and sat on a bench. Josie paused to ‘aww’ at a cute little baby rhino and then she went on.

‘And it went on like that all through registration. My so-called friends just kept looking at me with these shocked and disgusted expressions. I worked out it must be something to do with Lloyd because he’d been so mad at me when I told him we were over. It was too coincidental for this to be nothing to do with him. Eventually, when the bell went, I managed to get Chrissie on her own in the toilets and she told me what he’d done. I could see she believed his lies. After all, he had photos so why wouldn’t she?’

Josie’s face crumpled and she buried her head in her hands. I stroked her hair. It seemed like a good thing to do for an upset person.

‘It was so awful, Rafi. I went from being a normal person with friends to someone who no one would speak to, except to say mean stuff. And Chrissie said some
really
mean stuff about how she didn’t want to hang out with a slapper like me. I have never felt so alone as I did then. I don’t know how I would have coped if it had gone on any longer. Boys started yelling stuff at me in the corridors and everywhere I went people were –’

She stopped and sat herself upright, making herself back into the Josie I knew.

‘I never thought someone like me could be bullied, never imagined it would happen. Not that I was Miss Uber-Popular Prom Queen, but I had plenty of friends. Or so I thought. I know how wrong I was now. I’m OK at lessons. I’m not clever like your brother, but if I work really hard I could get to uni. There was nothing about me for anyone to pick on. But in one day I went from average to hated. That’s all it took and that’s kind of terrifying. One mistake and . . .’ She shook her head.

‘Every day after that, until your brother stopped it, my life was completely miserable. And I thought it was never going to end. Every day it seemed to get worse. That day we first met, a girl I didn’t even know walked up to me in the corridor and slapped me round the face. All her friends stood there and laughed. These were girls I’d never done anything to in my life. And it was OK to hit me and yell names because Lloyd posted those pictures. I mean, even if I had done what he said, why did that make it OK to bully me?’

Josie gave a huge sniff and hugged me. ‘I love you, you know that? Because you would never treat anyone that way. I wish you would stop thinking you should be something more than you are because what you are is great. So what if all your family are like some mega-brains? You don’t have to be like them. You don’t have to be like anyone other than you.’

By the time we got to the lion enclosure, we’d both cheered up. In fact we were helpless with laughter because on a hillock next to the fence, a group of very discontented lions were sitting watching a herd of antelope skipping about in the next enclosure. Their expressions clearly said ‘prospective DINNER!’ The antelope on the other hand were practically taunting them in a ‘can’t get me’ way as they pranced up and down by the wire, perfectly safe and they knew it.

‘Whoever decided to put those lions there is just evil,’ Josie gasped, her eyes beginning to cry with laughter. ‘Look at their faces.’

As if to emphasise her point, one of the lionesses got up and began to stalk towards the fence. The antelope, completely unconcerned, presented its bum to her and started to eat grass. The lioness sat down in a huff.

When I could stop laughing again, I checked my phone. Nothing from Silas. I’d texted him earlier with a friendly because he’d left the house that morning before I’d been up. Which was odd.

‘You know, if he’s with Lara, he’s not going to want to lose face texting his little sis to say where he is,’ Josie said, watching me.

Silas wouldn’t have cared about that once.

‘Has he ever brought her home?’

Actually, no, he hadn’t.

‘Hmm.’

What did that mean? I drew a question mark in the air.

‘Do you think Rachel and Clare are right? Is he really seeing her? And if so, why does she never come round yours? I saw her getting on a bus to go out of town a couple of days ago, and it was late. Dad was driving me back home from swimming practice because it was raining so hard he came to get me, and there she was getting on a bus heading for London. At that time of night, on her own, in the rain. That’s odd, isn’t it?’

OK, that was kind of weird.

‘I get why she’d like your brother. He’s a good guy and he’s not been beaten with the ugly stick in any way.’

So Josie liked my brother and thought he was cute – hmm.

‘And I know she’s mega pretty, but . . .’ Josie frowned. ‘She’s . . . oh, I don’t know . . . it’s probably nothing. We don’t know they’re even together, so it doesn’t matter. Come on, where next?’

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

(Martin Luther King, Jr)

CHAPTER 33

By the time we reached Oxford Street, we’d broken off from the main body of the demonstration. The police tried to close us down as soon as they realised what was happening. I saw the TV footage streaming on to Lara’s phone – from above you could see the real picture, not just a splinter group from the centre of the demo where we were, but others from the top end, and the rear, all heading into Oxford Street down different routes. And from other points in the city, small huddles of masked demonstrators suddenly springing into visibility and making their way to the same points. From the helicopter in the sky, it looked like a starburst collapsing inwards on itself.

It was the number of people that shocked me as we ran through the ranks of protesters. From a few people breaking off here and there in the march, and others following them to join in, they’d grown to a huge crowd. For the first time I understood how planned and co-ordinated this thing was. The police looked hopelessly outnumbered, the majority of them still left on the main route with the thousands of passive protesters.

A small group of police in riot gear had got separated from the main body trying to stem the flow of demonstrators further down the street. They were surrounded by black-clad figures waving metal bars. One of them went down in the scuffle and, for a sickening moment, I thought I was going to witness the man being battered bloody. But Katrin’s team were too well disciplined for that, and it
was
them – I could see the X logos on their shoulders. Instead they grabbed for the riot shields and batons of the officer who went down and the ones trying to help him. Once they had what they wanted they let the officers go and the men ran full pelt back to their colleagues, stripped of all their protection.

Katrin’s crew wielded their trophies in the air and the crowd around them roared. I was still catching my breath with relief that they hadn’t attacked the policeman, but I cheered too, my head spinning with the noise and the just-too-much-to-bear-energy that had enveloped us as soon as we’d arrived.

And then there was a sharp, acrid stench that made my nostrils wrinkle up. From further down the street came more cheering, and I could see strange flashes of light through the cloud.

‘What is it?’ I asked Lara.

‘They’re petrol-bombing the shops.’

That tiny middle-class pocket within me gave a shudder of horror.
This is wrong
, it said.

I told it to shut up. I drowned out its voice by gazing into her eyes as anarchy unfolded around us. This was what the girl I love lives for. If anyone had ever doubted that, one look at her face now would show them the truth of it.

If she was ever to love me, I had to learn to love this too. There’s no compromise with Lara. She’s the most implacable person I’ve ever met. As I watched her pick up a pole from the ground and charge at a window to smash it through, as I heard the CRAASSHHH of breaking glass, I felt prouder of her than I’d ever felt of anyone in my whole life. She was so totally and utterly herself and it was the most beautiful, rare thing.