The Boy I Am

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The Boy I Am Page 6

by K. L. Kettle


  “Every house has its duty, an oath,” Jai recites, looking up as he searches his desk for… “Aha!” he says, finding the rectangle of plastic.

  “We blind ourselves to beauty. Our speech is sacred. To love is illusion,” I mutter while he spits on and wipes the keycard, bestowing it on me solemnly. I need to know if Walker’s sent a message summoning me. He said he’d see me in the morning but he’s not come. He’s Head of House but he doesn’t normally visit unless there’s been a fight or something really bad. If he had sent a note, Jai would be all aflutter.

  Pinching the card with the tips of two fingers at the far edge, I smile your best thanks-but-no-thanks. The card is ancient, cracked, with centuries of dirt even a good lick-and-spit can’t budge. If we lose or damage the keycard, we’re thrown out of the house, into the mines, Jai reminds me, with the usual ominous, wide-eyed dread.

  No message. Why wouldn’t Walker try to contact me?

  “Aaand …” Jai encourages, circling a sausagey hand.

  What follows is not part of our official oath, just something Jai likes us to say. “I will make my house proud,” I add with a roll of my eyes.

  “Aaand …” Another encouragement, this time with a wobble of his chins and a quirk of his eyebrows.

  “Father, are there any messages for me?”

  “Aaaaand …” he presses, ignoring me.

  “And our guests –” I swallow, covering the churning in my stomach with a can-I-get-out-of-here-now? smile – “satisfied.”

  “Attaboy!” Jai grins with apple-cheeked glee. As I leave, he ushers in the next boy.

  Walker hasn’t reached out. I’m on my own.

  Next in line is Woody, Rod’s new bunk-brother. He joined J-dorm a month ago. At thirteen he came in from his prenticeship in the House of Air, so all the boys are after him for their Collections. Jimmy Wu, that’s his real name (it was Rod who dubbed him ‘Woody’) is the first airer to join the House of Boys since you. And you were only in vent maintenance for a year. Woody was in Air from the age of five.

  In the days leading up to this year’s Reserves, there were boys queuing outside J-dorm before breakfast, each clutching scraps of paper and sticks of graphite, to get their five minutes with Woody. Each one drawing, fast, on the sheets of paper they’d managed to earn or pilfer – the black market in paper is pretty impressive.

  Half the boys who crowded the dorms came just to watch. The House Fathers had to come out and get everyone in bed, even lock the dorms. The Collections were hidden in a scramble and stories about how the new kid had chocolate (not information) were dutifully spread. A few years ago, B-dorm had their Collection discovered and destroyed by Father Bull, every boy made to kneel in salt for a week. No one from B has got involved with the Collections since.

  It hasn’t stopped the rest of us, though. In fact, since food got cut, since boys started getting sick, since the demerit rules got stricter, since the blackouts started to happen every week, efforts have tripled to collect as much information about the worlds Above, Below, Beyond. Every fact questioned and analyzed and compared. Every rumour tested and challenged. Every bit of info from any boy, man or woman pressed into pages. Each dorm competing with the others. I wonder if the Collections could help me find something that will get Romali Vor to give herself up to the Chancellor? What else have I got?

  There are rumours T-dorm has a full chart of every madam’s bloodline – all the way back to the Saints. And M-dorm, their speciality is instruction manuals for all of the machines the Foundations left us. They also collect spare parts, broken bits, and will show them to any boy who can trade a good story. P-dorm, they like to collect secrets. They’re my best bet.

  Apart from B-dorm, the only boys that don’t play are V-dorm. They stopped when you left.

  But you didn’t leave, I remind myself.

  And you didn’t die.

  You were taken.

  Are you above me right now? Maybe you’re below? After you were arrested, did Madam Vor send you to the mines? Does Walker know you’re alive? Maybe he’ll come to my appointments. Yes, that’s what Walker’s waiting for; it has to be. Unless I’m no good to him any more – it’s not like I did what I was meant to. Maybe he doesn’t think he can trust me?

  As we head to our appointments, Rodders swings an arm over Woody’s shoulder. Rod looks after J-dorm’s Collection and has already quizzed Woody enough to make the kid cringe whenever he appears. He reminds Woody that any other boy from any other dorm has to pay for an interview now.

  “What with?” asks Woody, shrinking away. He’s only about as tall as my shoulder.

  “Info, tips, whatever,” Rod answers. “Just don’t give ’em anything for free, kid! Everything has a price.” He tidies his hair, adjusts his glasses and winks, sticking to Woody like a rash until we get to the top of the stairs and Woody’s appointment room. Escaping Rod’s grip, the kid swipes his key against the panel on the wall and the door clicks open.

  On the way to his appointment, Rod tells us about his latest addition to J-dorm’s Collection. A map of the elevator system. He says there’s a secret maintenance elevator that goes all the way up to the garden. His description makes my neck cold. I saw it. The Chancellor had me move the Gardener’s body…

  Don’t think about that. I can’t help her but I can help you even though there’s nothing in J-dorm’s Collection of any use. J-dorm collect stories – except Rodders, he’s a map man, addicted to knowing what houses occupy each floor, where the chiefs live, which floors are no longer occupied, which elevators get you where. He’s certain he’ll prove the stories of Outside are lies, that the Last War that trapped us all in the Tower was made up by the Hysterics to drive us mad.

  Idiot, you call him.

  I try not to laugh.

  Maybe all the hair oil he uses has seeped into his brain.

  You’re one to talk, Slick Vik. That’s what your dorm mates called you.

  Still, Rod’s Collection of notes is impressive. There are even drawings of High House Tower, its eight-pointed, star-shaped footprint a great compass in the desert, Father Jai claims. The first building visible from the moon.

  “Space!” Rod laughed after Jai tried to explain, one history lesson. “A big rock floating in nothingness? That’s what they want you to believe!”

  Should I tell him I’ve seen it? The vast night sky. The glow of the moon.

  He probably wouldn’t believe me. I try to remember it but can’t. All I remember is the weight of the Gardener. Dead.

  After the gunshot, my memories are a blur. Tell anyone you want but no one will believe you, the Chancellor said. She left me in the dark, her dog staring at me, sizing me up.

  It seemed like hours but can’t have been long before someone came to collect me. A dark shape, spidery, dressed from the after-party. Masked like the rest. She kept her hand on my shoulder, her long fingers holding me tight. I couldn’t stop thinking about the body, staring at the blood on my hands as the spidery woman bundled me from elevator to elevator until we reached the dorms.

  “Jude.” Stink nudges me. “You OK?”

  Swallowing the bitter burn in my throat, I push away the memory. “Yeah, fine.”

  “Don’t get sick now,” Stink jokes. “You get sent to the infirmary and miss auction, and Jai has to cover your reserve,” he reminds me.

  “One merit?” I roll my eyes. “How will he cope?”

  Unlike most of the boys here, I do not want to go to the infirmary. You want your teeth fixed, your chin a better shape, hair implants or a nose job? If you’re lucky, the ladies in your appointments will pay for a treatment. Sure, they can heal you up fast these days but a trip there will waste time.

  The Chancellor keeps a room up there for Walker, so he always looks his best. Maybe he’s there now, getting something tweaked or trimmed in time for the ball, his big performance. Not like it’s important to come and check on me or anything, not like we’ve been working together all year!

 
Rod reaches his appointment room, swipes his card with care as if the thing was made of ricepaper and might crumble if held too hard. Then suddenly he’s swearing, waving his schedule board. “Four hours foot massage with Old Crusty-bunions!” There’s the wafting smell of incense from his room. Crusty is what we all call Madam Swann, who heads up the House of Construction. Her callouses are notoriously tough. “You have to be foggin’ kidding me!” Rod yells so loud his door shakes. Half the boys are still laughing as I get to my room and duck inside.

  Room forty-two. The plinking-plonking music they pipe through the speakers starts up on cue. The usual ache in my head is gone, for now, but it’ll return. Once I might have danced when I heard music like that, but not any more. It’s meant to be relaxing. It isn’t. It always skips in the same damn place.

  The same damn place.

  Gulping down the sickening incense smell, I get busy.

  Checking the appointment bookings, a card with bumps of dark-text: those small raised dots the House Fathers teach us to read with the pads of our fingers. No names or details yet, just notes to say there are five bookings, each an hour long.

  There’s a card with the details of my first appointment: name, type of service, how to arrange the room. Appointment one is Madam Cramp from the House of Expression: a suit fitting, so moving the furniture around is my first job. The room is medium-sized, with space for no more than four guests. I wrestle the old table to one side.

  How do I give the Chancellor Romali Vor? It’s impossible but I have to give her something. What the fog did I agree to?

  Maybe Madam Cramp won’t come. Maybe it’ll be Walker. He always books appointments under a different name.

  Dragging the golden floor pillows and chaise longue far enough apart, I stand, stretch and imagine all those floors above, the star of the Tower meeting in the point of the garden.

  I have to stop. Close my eyes to stop the room from spinning. It’s the exertion of moving things. My dorm clothes are sticking to me so I pull off my shirt. I’ll need to change soon anyway.

  Keep going, you say.

  My hands shaking, I collect the ugly trinkets from the surfaces and hide them inside the drawers of a dresser so I don’t have to worry about knocking them over. The demerit fines for any damage have gone up again this year.

  If I stop moving even for a second, there it is, under the surface, the dog, the blood, the shot, the promise. It shakes through me, trying to burst out. All I want to do is scream into a pillow, throw things and tear at the walls with my hands. It’s like I’m a kid again, in the Surrogacy, shut in that dark box, no way out.

  Keep going.

  A bell rings. In the dumb waiter is my work outfit. A grey jacket buttoned over a white T-shirt. It’s high-necked, long-sleeved (Saints forbid we show even an inch of flesh). Hot, itchy, bland. The black trousers aren’t much better. Too tight for a start. The high waist comes up to my last rib, with braces clipped under the jacket to lock them in place. I don’t like how the trousers cling, I’m always pulling at them, but they’re designed to show us off, Walker says.

  The women get to wear colours. Bright, swirling, all shapes, all shades. Light, loose cloth. Everything about them moves. We have rigour and rules and restraint. Elastic that holds everything in place. Madam Cramp complained about it to me once. She longs to give us something with shape, with brightness. Not the usual grey, black and white.

  And I think of the Gardener in all her colours. How the bright fabric darkened with her blood.

  And then Romali, at Reserves.

  From my trouser pocket, I dig out a fat strip of thick white ribbon. A blindfold. I’d get more merits docked if I’m reported for breaking my oath – or worse. Being sent to the mines used to be a last resort. Before we’re disappeared, there’s a menu of punishments they use first in the cells to show penance for oath breaking. Boys are blinded for catching a glimpse of a woman’s face before being warded.

  Even with the Chancellor’s protection, I’m not going to risk another peek so tie the cloth round my eyes tight enough so there’s only darkness. Humming to hear how the pitch changes as I turn my head, bouncing the sound off the same old walls, I find the familiar rough path of worn carpet around the room. It’s more recognizable in the dark. Safer too somehow.

  “The eyes are the windows to our souls,” I mutter to myself, doing my best impression of Father Jai. “And no one can sell a house with dirty windows,” I say as my shin bumps into the table and I swear. For the first time in a year, I think I can hear you laugh and I smile. A proper smile, not a practised one. I’ll call it number thirty-five. The kind that puffs out my chest, makes me stand taller. Makes me hope.

  You’re alive! ALIVE! And I’m going to find you, whateverit takes.

  *

  Bzzzz

  The blindfold makes the sound of the buzzer stab as it blares above the other door, the one they don’t give us a keycard for. The guest entrance clicks open and locks behind the new arrival. The clock on the wall ticks loudly.

  Appointment one: Madam Cramp, not Walker, arrives on cue. She smells of glue and fresh linen when she takes my arm, leads me to the chaise longue. The skin of her hand is old, papery. Today she’s brought the suits Walker ordered for me for the shows, one for the ball, one for the auction. Just in case, he said. Never pass up a chance to order a good suit. Unlike the outfits from Reserves, they feel good.

  The scrape of her pen means she’s making notes. The rattle of her tape measure means she’s taking measurements. The scratch of her pins, the softness of her apologies when she nicks me.

  I wonder what would’ve happened if I’d been a prentice at the House of Expression. There’s peace there, they say. She lets boys create. I could make clothes for the rich, the famous. Top-floor ladies. I could’ve had my own room. I could earn enough merits to be happy, healthy. That would be a kind of freedom, right?

  There’s a bag of sweets on the table as a tip after. I can almost taste the sugar but I’ll save them to trade with Stink. In the darkness, when Cramp’s gone, I don’t feel alone any more.

  You should give the Chancellor Madam Cramp’s name, you say.

  Cramp’s one of the good ones. Someone else.

  You have to give her something.

  Walker will come soon, I tell myself.

  *

  Bzzzz

  Appointment two: still no Walker. A brunch. I count four guests, two older voices, two young. The three-course meal I smell, coming up the dumb waiter from the kitchens below: hot chilli jams, sweet lamb, pastry, warm jasmine tea. There’s a menu delivered in dark-text. I dance the tips of my fingers over it and announce the courses, my mouth still watering.

  They talk about the latest ‘mercies’: the men who sacrificed their lives in the atrium yesterday. If the mines are full, then there has to be a better way proposed soon to vote on, the ladies say. The mercies are, of course, a kindness, but it’s getting too gruesome. Funny, on that last point we agree. Soon there won’t be any men left, they say, and who’ll do all the men’s work then? They change the subject to Reserves and one of the older ones says something about how she thought I’d be thinner.

  Don’t flinch, you say. Spit in their tea when it arrives.

  I feel my way across the room, open up the rattling hatch, lean into the dumb waiter. I wait to feel the steam of her tea on my cheeks, before I let out a good glob. Listen to it plop before turning and serving with an anything-I-can-do-for-you? grin.

  Nice work, you say, laughing in the faces of the women as they slurp.

  Small victories. That’s what gets me through the day.

  *

  Bzzzz

  Appointment three: a work lunch plus coffee. Two women, one from the House of Maintenance and another from the House of Air, discussing the impact of blackouts on the upper-floor filtration systems. Worries about top-floor women breathing lower-floor air. Improving vent resilience.

  I doze off at one point but manage not to fall over,
or snore. Then I’m alerted by whispers, quiet breath, crying so quiet that if my ears weren’t sharp I wouldn’t notice it.

  The woman from the House of Air’s ward has been arrested, but no one will tell her what he did. They were together fifteen years – now what? Her friend comforts her, shushes her. Not in front of the boy. Not here. Swallow it down. Don’t let anyone know it hurts.

  “But he looked so… The cleaners left him all day in the atrium. All twisted. All mess. People just walked past. Like rubbish. He … he was my friend. My best friend. He would never hurt anyone. What am I going to do?”

  You’ll get another at auction, says the maintenance woman, comforting her tears and snuffles. But the first woman hasn’t the merits. If she had, maybe she could’ve stopped—The second woman tells me to go and get something to eat, give them the room to themselves. I don’t argue.

  When I get back, they’ve gone. But I can’t get their conversation from my head. It bounces around. Are there women up there who feel like we do about the mercies, about the Chancellor? What if it’s not just those two? What if there are more of them?

  I push the furniture aside and try to distract myself by practising the steps they taught us for the ball. They feel stiff, uncomfortable, so I stop, kick the couch until my toes hurt.

  Where the hell is Walker? I can’t do this on my own. This is all his fault!

  *

  Bzzzz

  Shit!

  Appointment four.

  “Once moment, please!” I cry, moving the furniture.

  Bzzzz

  The appointment card delivered under the door doesn’t have a name I know but, as I set up the room, the layout is familiar. Like a code to tell me it’s her. Rain Girl. Like Walker, she never booked under the same name, maybe bribing the stewards to keep her appointments secret. I never asked her name, and eventually it felt weird to try, but I remembered her voice, the hours of listening to it.

  Maybe I imagined it; maybe Romali Vor just sounded like her?

  Bzzzz

  One time, a few months after she started booking appointments, she just cried. Girls don’t cry. The daughter of the Chief of Peace wouldn’t cry. So Rain Girl probably isn’t Romali Vor.

 

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