The Disappeared (29 page)

‘What time will he be here?’ I ask.

‘Nine o’clock.’

‘How are we going to get out of the classroom?’ We’re expected to be strapped into the grid by seven a.m. We could just not turn up in the morning. But then they’d be looking for us. Tomorrow, Rice is going to want everything to run smoothly. ‘Maybe it would be best if we go to the grid as usual and then somehow slip away,’ I say.

‘We need a thing for all people to look at so they don’t look at us.’

‘A diversion?’

Kay makes a noise like a contented cat. ‘Does that word say all those words?’ she says. ‘I love words. Di-ver-sion. We need a diversion. We should think of a diver—’

‘Okay, okay. Who’s going to do the talking in this diversion?’

Kay nudges me in the ribs. ‘No person is going to be diversioned by talking, Blake. We need a fight.’

Finally. Something it will be easy to organise in this place.

At the end of the afternoon session I grab Ilex. We go up to his dormitory and I explain to him what I want to do.

He goes quiet.

‘You don’t have to be involved,’ I say. ‘I mean, you don’t have to do anything. I don’t want to get you into trouble.’

Ilex’s face is creased in thought. ‘You do a lot of trouble things. Do you want trouble?’

‘I don’t like trouble. I have to do this. The Leader has done so many wrong things.’ I drop my voice so the other Specials in the room can’t hear me. ‘It’s his fault my mother and my best friend are dead. I’ve got to do something.’

‘Is stopping The Leader stopping Rice?’

‘I hope so. I hope we’ll get rid of Academies.’

‘I want to stop Rice hurting Ali.’

‘Does that mean that you want to help?’

‘Yes. What things do I do?’

I force some dinner down. I’ve got to keep my strength up. Then Kay and I go to the salon. Rex and a pack of Reds are sitting on the best chairs, surrounded by their followers. It’s so noisy that it feels safe to talk to Kay about tomorrow. I tell her the same thing that I told Ilex, that she doesn’t have to be involved, but she pretends that she hasn’t heard me and gets straight to planning.

‘If you want a fight diversion you need Rex,’ she says.

‘Rex isn’t the only person in this place who knows how to fight.’ I try to pull a tangle of metal-legged chairs apart.

Kay laughs. ‘Blake, you fight little-more-good now, but I don’t think—’

‘I’m not suggesting that I start the fight. I’m going to be doing the really difficult bit, in case you hadn’t noticed. But there are a large number of students capable of starting a fight other than your precious Rex.’

‘We need the goodest, I mean the best. We need the best brain, so we have you. We need the best fighter, so we should have Rex. I’ll talk to him.’

I pull the chair so hard that it comes free and I stagger backwards. ‘Fine. That’s fine. Just don’t use any of the new words you’ve learned when you’re talking to him.’

But she’s already gone.

I sit on the plastic chair and try not to look at Kay, who has joined the swarm of girls around Rex. I need to think about what I’m going to do. I’m imagining myself bursting in on the press conference and describing exactly what happens in an Academy in front of the cameras, but I don’t think that will work. What would be best is if I could get a camera into the Academy proper to let people see what it’s really like in here. I want to show how all this goes right back to The Leader. And the horrible way that he doesn’t just want to crush these students, he wants to control them too. It’s so underhand. Letting them think that they’ve got their own rules and their precious gangs, but all the time they’re being run by the Leadership. And those Latin names. It’s like an extra insult. I bet The Leader thinks it funny.

Which makes me think about Rex. Maybe The Leader’s influence goes as far as the Reds’ leader. Maybe he’s in their control too. Now that I think about it, it’s always seemed strange the way Rex never seems to be in trouble even though he claims to do as he pleases. And there was the time that Rice found out about the bowls, Rex was the one who actually provided some of the Specials with empty margarine tubs to use as bowls, but I was the one who got into trouble for it. How did Rice know? And how did Rex manage to get hold of all those tubs? I look up at Rex’s porcine face and a wave of revulsion washes through me. He grunts with laughter and I’m taken back to that night when Kay and I were trapped in the kitchen. I remember Tong telling someone to spy on the Specials and I remember her informer agreeing.

By grunting.

I spring out of my chair.

Rex is sprawled in the least beaten-up armchair, with a gaggle of girls surrounding him. Kay is sat opposite him. I imagine it’s taken her all this time to work her way to the front. He leans forward to say something and Kay laughs. I hate him. As I’m striding over, they get up and go out into the corridor. I follow. They get to the door of Rex’s room.

‘Hey, Kay!’ I say.

She turns and looks at me with her lips pressed together.

‘Hey, Blakey. Kay can’t talk you now,’ Rex says, strutting into the toilets.

‘I need to speak to you,’ I say to Kay.

‘Not now, Blake,’ she says and follows Rex.

‘This is important,’ I say, stepping in the tiled room.

‘This is ’portant,’ mimics Rex.

‘A childish repetition suggests that you’ve failed to understand what has been said,’ I say.

Rex’s smile fades. He steps so close to me that I’m forced to look up at his ugly face. ‘Don’t do that brainer stuff on me.’

‘Why? Does it scare you?’

He grabs me by the collar. ‘Shut up, you efwurding brainer.’

‘Well if you’ve finished demonstrating the full extent of your vocabulary I’ve got something important to say.’ I pull his hand off my shirt.

‘Blake, don’t be stupid. We need Rex,’ Kay says.

‘You don’t need Rex! I mean,
we
don’t need Rex,’ I hiss.

Kay takes a step towards me and says right into my ear, ‘Stop this little-boying. I’m doing this for you.’

‘I’ve got to tell you something,’ I say.

‘Tell me later,’ she says.

Rex puts his hand on Kay’s shoulder. I clench my fists.

‘She doesn’t want to hear you,’ Rex says. ‘You think you’re so crimson with your words. Words don’t mean nothing here.’

‘Yeah? Okay, maybe this is a case of actions speaking louder than words,’ I say.

Rex scrunches his face in disgust. Kay looks away.

‘You tell me, Kay,’ I say. ‘What does this
say
to you?’ I grab Rex by the right hand and yank up his shirt sleeve. On his wrist is a livid purple scar. It’s the sort of mark a butter knife might leave if it was plunged into your arm in the middle of the night that you betrayed everyone who looked up to you.

‘I got that in a fight,’ says Rex. But he knows we don’t believe him.

Kay’s mouth is open. Her eyes are boring into Rex. He spreads his hands, palms up.

‘What?’ he says.

Kay takes a step towards him.

He pulls back. ‘What?’ he says. ‘Stop looking at me like that.’

‘
Urrargh!
’ Kay screams. She pulls back her fist and it’s like she sucks all her anger into a blistering point and then powers it into Rex’s face. The punch sends him sprawling against the sinks. He ends up sitting on the tiled floor.

‘You efwurding bastard!’ Kay shouts. She kicks him in the stomach. Rex just stares at her. ‘You’re supposed to help Specials,’ Kay says. ‘You’re supposed to be our leader.’

Rex gets to his feet and shrugs his shirt back into place. ‘It got us stuff. It was just little talk to Enforcer Tong. She’s gone. I didn’t tell her all things.’

‘You told her the bowls were my idea and she told Rice,’ I say. ‘I bet you’ve told her a load of other stuff too. And now she’s gone, you’re probably telling it all to someone else. Did you tell someone that my m— that Enforcer Williams gave Ali food?’

‘No.’

I don’t believe him. ‘You’re scum,’ I say and I throw a punch, but Rex blocks it and pushes me away. He pulls his cuff back down over the purple mark.

‘It’s not for you to talk about,’ he says to me. ‘It’s not for you to say I’m good or bad. You can’t do that. I’m Rex. I’m in charge.’

Kay shakes her head. ‘You’re not. You’re not in charge.
They
are. It’s all them. Just like Blake said. There’s nothing for us.’ She raises her fist to strike him again, but this time he catches her hand. Kay tries to shake herself free. ‘How could you do this?’ she says to him. ‘How could you do this to all the Specials? How could you do this to me?’ She stops struggling and fixes Rex with a glare. ‘You are a . . . a coward and you’re stupid and cruel and . . . ugly and bad and bad.’

‘I don’t know your stupid words. Stop your stupid words. It’s about Reds and I’m the big Red,’ says Rex.

‘Words aren’t stupid. Words can do things. You used words to hurt everybody.’ She wrenches herself out of his grasp. ‘And I can use them to say to the Specials what you did.’

‘No!’ says Rex and he slams out both his arms and pushes me and Kay back against a cubicle door. ‘You don’t tell!’ he shouts.

‘Don’t you touch her,’ I say and punch him in the stomach. While he’s bent over Kay leaps on to his back and smacks him around the head. He twists around, trying to pull her off. Just as I knee him in the face, the door to the corridor slams open.

It’s Enforcer Rice and three impeccables. He’s holding a taser.

‘LER room. NOW!’ he says, glaring down his nose at us. ‘And you can stay in there tomorrow too.’

This is terrible. This is awful. The Leader will be here in less than twelve hours and Kay and I are both locked in a high-security padded room with a stunned Rex in the isolation space next door. Worse than that, Kay is crying and I don’t know what to do. She’s huddled in a corner with tears running silently down her face.

‘All the time from when I was a little girl . . .’ she says.

‘I know,’ I say. Poor Kay. She’s been holding on to this dream about Reds and being Dom for her whole life.

‘I worked so hard,’ she cries.

‘I know.’

‘All that fighting, all that getting in with the Reds, and getting shrap, and saying things that are not the things I think.’

‘You’ve done really well.’

‘Do you know a thing, Blake? I didn’t like the fighting.
Ha!
’ She throws her hands up. ‘I don’t like hitting people just for people to see. Some of the times . . .’ She drops her voice. ‘Sometimes I was scared.’

‘I was scared all of the times,’ I say.

She gives a hiccup of laughter. ‘But I did it,’ she says. ‘Do you know why I did it?’

I nod my head. I do know. I know exactly how poor, brave Kay has worked all her life to try to feel special. Truly special, not Specials special.

‘I wanted to be the best. I wanted to know how it feels to be someone.’

She is the most amazing someone in the world. I want to say,
You are the best
. I want to say,
You are incredible and the other Specials, the enforcers, all the students at the Learning Community – none of them will ever be as brave and as strong as you are.
But I can’t. Instead I say, ‘You are someone to me.’

Then somehow I’ve wrapped my arms around her and she leans against my chest and all I can think is:
I won’t let anyone hurt you again.