Storm (13 page)

I'm a freak.

I SEE MY HANDS ON LEAKING POTTERY.

I held a vase that had had space-bug water in it, but—

I SEE SAP OOZE.

I picked a flower to give to the fairies so as they'd not forget my dead mom, but—

I SEE THE CRAZY TERRIER LICK MY HAND.

I touched dogs…that had munched on dead people, had probably been out in the rain, had probably drunk from puddles, but—

I SEE GRASS STAINS ON NAKED FEET, SCRATCHES ON MY ARMS AND FACE.

I ran in flip-flops, through grass, getting cut by brambles, but—

I SEE A DAMP PATCH ON MY OWN BOTTOM.

I sat on Primrose Hill…on the stones, at night, at Stonehenge, but—

I SEE A SINGLE DROP OF WATER FALL.

Splip!
Into a bathtub, where I was lying.

I SEE A KISS.

I kissed Caspar when he'd been out in the rain, and I thought his lips were dry, but—

I am alive. I touch my lips. I feel my panicky breath, sucking and puffing in and out through them. I am alive.

I am a freak. I'm a freak. I'm a freak. I'm a freak. I'm a
FREAK
.

It goes on and on like that in my head; if it looks strange and nuts on paper, that's too bad. It was a lot worse in my head. It was like some nightmare thought-GIF that just looped over and over, getting faster and faster and… Nah, worse than that: it cut and recut itself as it looped, so it was just this high-speed jumbled mess that kind of looked the same as the last high-speed jumbled mess, but in a different order, and before any idea in it made sense, it'd start over.

That is what it is like inside my head.

To the outside world, I am an object of fear and wonder and dread. A medical miracle. That's what I tell myself. To make myself feel special. Because I do not feel special; I just feel like a thing.

I am a thing that is kept in a plastic tent. They feed me well. I am not hungry—or cold or thirsty. I even get to watch TV—through plastic. I'm just not allowed to leave, is all. It is worse than a cage. A cage only has bars. Through bars, air is free to pass. My plastic cage is completely sealed; it has its own artificial air. Even what comes in—food and drink—and what goes out—half-eaten plates of food and half-drunk cups of tea…and my poo and my pee…are exchanged through hatches. My poo and pee are treated especially carefully; they are vacuum-packed before being removed.

Somehow I don't suppose they just go and throw them in the trash.

They like removing things from me. They push their gloved hands into even bigger gloves that let them reach through the plastic to take stuff from me. They take my blood. Lots of times. And lots of it. They take my spit. They take samples of everything that comes out of my body. I obediently wipe cotton swabs around every nook and cranny of my poor freak body and they stash them—even the snot, but the snot supply is limited because I don't cry much anymore.

It's not like no one speaks to me. They come with plastic helmets and gowns and boots and gloves and all kinds of garb on, like I'm some kind of leper, but still they're like, “Hello, Ruby, and how are you today?” And I'm, like, “I'm fine, thank you.”

“I'm fine, thank you.”

Why wouldn't I be? Is there something they're not telling me? I'm not sick, am I? I'm just…different. I am a
FREAK
.

I am terrified of myself. I am terrified of what I am, of how come I am like this.

But, of course, I want them to be able to make some kind of cure. I am just worried about
how
they're going to make it and what that might involve doing to
me
.

Yes, having seen what these people are capable of doing, having seen that ward of kids, I am also terrified of them.

So I am being polite. I am polite and I am very cooperative.

If I understand what they are trying to do with their big blue rubber hands, I offer to do it for them. I have one of those gowns that shows your bottom to the world. In this case, it is a bottom clad in (BIG, BAGGY, FLOWERY) hospital-issue underwear—but really, there is no point in wearing either the gown or the underwear because there is no part of me these people have not seen.

Except my mind. Except my heart. Except…me.

But even that they…prod. They will not leave me alone.

After that, after “I'm fine, thank you,” there shouldn't exactly be much to say, should there? And there isn't, not with the regular nurses or doctors or scientists or whatever these people are. Except…there is this one woman, whom I suppose is a doctor, who comes and talks to me a lot. And I do mean a lot: day and night.

They got my medical records from Dartbridge—and my mom's and Simon's and even dear babiest brother-brat beloved Henry's—but it is mainly mine we talk about. We go over and over and over every illness, every injury I ever had: What do I remember about it? Not much. Sometimes nothing at all. This is not deliberate. I just can't remember.

What I can remember (but lie about) is who I've seen, who I've been with. I do not understand why she would be asking all this stuff, but I have such a bad feeling about it, I don't even ask
why
. There's a whole web of people I could drag into this. Everyone is best left out of it. No one else must be brought to this place where they chop bits off kids to find things out. They've got me. What more do they need. Period—no question mark.

With this stuff, I will not cooperate. I don't tell them anything…and I don't ask anything—and I don't ask about
anyone
. Not even Darius Spratt.

All I ever say to them is, “I don't know.”

It is very easy to lie when you're shut in a plastic prison. I discover that. They know I'm lying, but there's not a thing they can do about it.

Unless they start torturing me, I suppose. That'd be tricky, maybe, through the plastic. They'd be like, “So, Ruby, could you just beat yourself up a little?” And I'd say, “No?”

But if they found a way, I wonder if I'd even care. I'd be, like, “Ow.”

I am just kidding. I'd scream the place down, of course I would. But I wouldn't blab. I'd try not to.

I tell the doctor who may not be a doctor I have been alone since the rain fell. I know she knows this is almost certainly a
colossal
fib, but she doesn't push it.

What she does push is… She asks, again and again and again, about my dad. She asks it in a whole load of different ways, but really it might as well be:

“Where's your dad?”

“I don't know.”

Every single time.

And every single time, it hurts.

And then a thing happens.

All that time I am being poked and prodded and injected and sampled, I don't pay much attention to whatever they're going on about. What they go on about is science-y stuff, so you can imagine how well I can follow that, but after about a week of this poking and prodding and injecting and sampling—and I tell you IT'S A LONG WEEK, it goes on for about SIX MONTHS (or equivalent: one double math lesson)—I notice that they're getting a bit testy. Not with me—I am a model patient—but with each other. They start having little science scraps between themselves.

Sometimes the scraps turn into full-blown science hissy fits, and I am forced to turn up the TV (mercifully, I have been allowed the remote) to block them out, and it's on one such morning when I am thinking I might actually need to be not quite such a model patient and tell them to put a sock in it because I really am trying to concentrate very hard on watching an ancient episode of
Scooby-Doo
, when—the nerve of it!—they tell me to put a sock in it first.

“Ruby!” one of them practically shouts. (See? Testy!) “Could you please turn that down?”

“Trying to work here,” one of them has the gall to snarl.

Trying to exist here
, I think. For one tiny second, I turn the volume up instead of down, but then I remember that I am a model patient, and so I do turn it down with my spare hand. My other arm is about to be involved in one of their experiments.

“Thank you so much,” one of them mutters.

“You're welcome,” the old me would have said in a voice dripping with sarcasm, but model patient me just goes back to trying to concentrate even harder on what Velma is saying to Shaggy. They do not make it easy for me, but I don't listen to a word of it, of what they're going on about, until I hear the one word that makes me listen.

“…mother.”

“Yes, but—”

“I told you. I did tell you.”

“No, you didn't. You said it was unlikely.”

“Only after the sequencing on the brother.”

“Half brother.
Half
brother, that's my point. HALF.”

“Half, schmalf. It isn't genetic.”

“You
can-not poss-ib-ly
KNOW that.”

“We need a paternal sample. Simple as.”

“We're not going to
get
a paternal sample.”

“Yeah. Well. This is still a COMPLETE waste of time.”

“It ISN'T genetic.”

“Look, shut up and let's just do this.”

“Waste of time,” growls the snarler. “We need Daddy's DNA.”

They are, I realize, talking about my family. I mute Velma.

“Excuse me?” I ask.

“Yeah, can you just hold still a moment?”

“Please,” sighs the mutterer—but not to me. Not really. None of them are even looking at me. They are all totally focused on whatever thing it is they are doing now.

My arm is outstretched. There are three of them messing about with it. They really must be getting desperate because it looks like the least science-y thing they've done so far: one is poised over my arm with a syringe full of something clear; one holds a dish under my arm; one has an empty syringe at the ready.

“This is so stupid,” goes the snarler, through gritted teeth.

“But what—” I start.

“In a sec!” says shouter.

I withdraw my arm from this particular experiment.

“
,” swears the snarly one. The snarly one has the full syringe. Nervous, isn't she?

“No…look. I'm sorry, but what is it you're saying?” I ask them.

“It's just water,” says the shouter, who's holding the container under my arm. “We're just going to run some water over your arm, and then collect it.”

“Which won't hurt you,” growls the snarler. “And also won't show A THING,” she adds—but for the benefit of the other two. “Because it's genetic,” she sings at them and reaches out and gets hold of my arm.

“No, it's not,” the mutterer sings back quietly.

“What are you saying about—” I start again but am silenced as the snarly one counts in:

“Three…two…one…”

I flinch as cold water runs over my arm. I can't help it. I know what kind of water this will be. I might have sat with it pouring down on me, but I swear I still don't want it anywhere near me.

“What…um were you saying about genetics and that? About my family and stuff?”

I watch the water running off my arm into the container. Drip, drip, drop.

“We got a negative result on that,” says the shouter.

Like me, they are all just watching: drip, drip, drop.

“A negative result on…?” I ask. I hated biology in school. I know nothing about biology, but still—drip, drip, drop—there is some information somewhere in my head. Like why would they know about my mother's genes? Why would they know…

“DNA samples,” mutters the mutterer.

Drip, drip, drop.

“Yeah, how would you get those?” I ask.

“I'm a go on this,” mutters the mutterer.

“It's a go,” agrees the shouter, and the mutterer draws up a syringe full of what has run off my arm.

It is NOT a go. I grab his wrist. It is immediately very, very obvious to me that these people are terrified. I have been a problem to be solved—suddenly I am a very scary and real problem. I am an
interactive
problem.

“How,” I ask them, “did you get D-N-A?”

I say each letter very, very slowly in the hope that I will make it clear to them that I get what they are going on about, even though I don't. I just know DNA is the stuff inside every living being, the stuff that makes you you and me me.

The shouter is easing her hands out of the plastic cage, slow as a scared thing.

“How?” I ask the mutterer. He's the one I have ahold of, the one with the syringe full of arm water.

“Ask her,” he mutters—meaning the snarler, whose hands are escaping too.

I guess the shouter has hit some kind of panic button or something, because a whole bunch of other people come storming in, including the one who asks me the questions, notebook in hand.

“Ruby, what seems to be going on here?” she says, super-calmly but with an edge of parenty-type irritation. The sound of her voice throws me a little because I've talked to her more than I've talked to any of these other people—because up until just now, what did we have to say to each other, me and the people with the needles and swabs?

“I just… I'm asking a question, that's all.”

“Well, Ruby, if you can just let Professor Beardsall go, we'll be happy to answer that question.”

That sounds so reasonable, doesn't it? And I feel kind of cruel, but you know what? “Well, I'll be happy to let Professor…”

The stress of the thing makes my brain cut out—either that or I've got so used to saying I can't remember names that I've actually damaged the part of my brain that's supposed to remember stuff like that.

“Beardsall,” mutters the mutterer. “The name's Beardsall.”

“He's the best microbiologist we've got…” says Dr. Questions.

“Tchuh!” scoffs the snarler, loud enough for everyone to hear.

“…and he's very, very important to us. As are you, Ruby.”

“As is this sample,” mutters Professor Beardy.

That gets me back on track. “So all I'm asking,” I say, directing my attention to him, “is where did you get the
other
samples? Where did you get the D-N-A?”

“The thing is, Ruby,” says Dr. Questions, coming closer—which is bothersome, because she's blocking out my view of what the rest of them are up to—and they are up to something; there's someone creeping around the back of my plastic cage. “What you are doing here, helping us, it's a really wonderful thing. And what you've got to think is that, really, you're helping people just like your mom…”

Oh, don't you do that.

“And your stepdad…”

I hate her so much for having to glance down at my notes to check his name.

“Simon,” I tell her, before she can read it out loud.

“Or your brother, Henry,” she says.

“HALF brother,” I say.

Babiest brother-brat beloved, forgive me. This never meant a thing to me, dearest. Not a thing. It's just that I cannot stand to have this creature act like she knows things she really knows nothing about. All she knows is bits of paper. I knew a little baby boy.

“You touched them?”

“We needed samples.”

“Did you cut them? Did you cut…
Henry
?”

“We took tissue samples.”

I lose it.
Yee-haa
would not go even close to covering this. I lose it, and I charge at her, at Dr. Questions, at Dr. The-Very-Sight-Of-You-Makes-Me-Sick. That's what I am going to call her. Sick to the very core of my being. Dr. TVSOYMMSTTVCOMB.

Only I can't charge anywhere, can I? There is a wall of plastic in my way. About a million hands dive into every available glove space, grabbing at me, grabbing at needles, grabbing—and, oh, but someone screams. The muttering professor screams.

“Sharp! Sharp! Sharp!” he shouts, pulling his hands out of my plastic cage so the syringe that's stuck in his hand falls onto my bed.

“Sharp injury!” that's what everyone is saying—but no one goes to help. No one will go anywhere near him.

The professor stops shouting. He wrenches off the anti-Ruby biosuit helmet on his head. He backs away from everyone, backs into the corner of the room. The man is crying, clutching his own wrist, holding his gloved hand in the air.

“Someone get Thurley,” shouts the shouter.

“He's in surgery,” someone shouts back.

But this isn't regular angry shouting; it's stress shouting. I know it very well. I do it a lot.

“There is no point,” says the weeping professor, but someone goes to get Thurley anyway.

“We need the rest of that sample,” he keeps saying, louder and louder, over and over—the stress shouting of a weeping man.

The snarler, I note, says nothing. I do note that. So this awful thing has just happened and I can't be sure about anything, it all happened so fast, but didn't I see—did I see?—did the snarler stab the needle into that guy? It wasn't me. I know that. It wasn't me.

Dr. TVSOYMMSTTVCOMB comes back toward my cage.

“Ruby, can you please give us that syringe?”

“It wasn't my fault!” I gibber, dumping the syringe into one of the sliding boxes they use to get stuff out of my plastic cage.

“This is a
disaster,” spits the shouter, taking the syringe and examining it. “Two mil left.”

As she leaves, there's nearly another
sharp injury
because the one I'm guessing is Thurley, the surgeon (bloodstains down the front of his bio-garb), comes in with a SAW in his hand (I feel like I'm going to faint)—and the two of them collide at the door.

“
,” says Thurley, and they edge around each other. “How much?” Thurley asks.