The Boy I Am

by K. L. Kettle

  Before that she’d come a few times, three or four, and not said a word. And then she just turned up and cried.

  I thought my only friend was dead and I couldn’t tell anyone, didn’t want to be accused of being ‘emotional’ on top of everything else even when the grief ate at me. But here was a stranger who could do everything I wanted to do. She could show her emotions, come and go as she pleased. I had to stand there, be good and quiet and hold it all inside. Something, maybe the passions the House Fathers always warn us about, made me reach out, take her hand, hold it. Her fingers felt rough and hot, her fingernails short. Jagged and torn.

  I knew she could have told the stewards. The list of punishments tore through my mind: demeriting wasn’t enough. I’d probably lose my hand. Bad thoughts pushed into my mind: the urge to lean into her, find her lips, kiss them. Even if every bone of me knew she wanted the same, or even just wanted to ask, boys can’t do that. The Lice don’t even send us to the mines if we’re caught, just a one-way trip from a high balcony to a hard floor.

  The next visit I asked if she was OK and that’s when she started talking. It was hard to stop her then. Every other woman that booked an appointment ignored me, or wanted something from me, except her. She just wanted to talk.

  She’d tell me about the girls she knew, and how they’d talk about her behind her back, how they thought she didn’t know. She’d complain about one of her mothers, and how they’d fight, and how she wanted to move in with her aunt. Then the next day she’d want to listen to the radio, or read. She’d tell jokes, dirty ones. Sometimes I’d ask questions, like what she did all day. School, she said, in the mornings, at the House of Knowledge, then working as a junior. “Is that like a prentice?” I’d ask. Same thing, she guessed, but they got to choose. Anyway, it was dull. She’d wanted to join the House of Exploration, but the Chancellor shut it down. Then she’d go quiet.

  Sometimes she’d talk about helping at the House of Amalgam, where they keep all the old stuff – books from the Saints’ times and machines, thousands of them, and huge stuffed animals! It’s amazing, she’d say, and draw pictures on my hand with kohl. When she’d gone, I’d pore over the scrawls in the minutes between appointments, try to remember them, try to imagine a world where these things were real. But then I had to wash them off before anyone saw.

  The next week she’d talk about which girls liked which boys, which wards too, and which girls liked which girls, the last party she’d been to and who was caught flirting when they shouldn’t. There were stories about the top-floor girls meeting the older prentice, even though it was illegal. Stories of prank orders to the kitchens; girls who’d had their wards’ noses fixed at the infirmary and hated the result.

  She’d talk about the Outside. The sun. Vik, she’d talk about the sun! The heat on her skin, the colour of the desert beyond, how it changed in the light. And the storms! Great electrical bolts of white light, the fog, the stars. I should’ve told the boys in the dorm, put what she told me in our Collection. But I wanted to keep it for myself.

  Is that bad?

  She’d bring piles of records and play them loudly, and she’d nag me to dance, but I’d said I couldn’t. All those knots inside and the ache in my head. I’d say no and she’d dance round me, laughing like an idiot. I never saw her. OK, maybe once I peeked, just at her feet, moving and jumping until she fell over, out of breath.

  Sometimes we’d move the furniture out of the way and lie on the floor and she’d read aloud. Long books about great adventures and stories of warrior women rescuing handsome princes, of other planets, ancient cities made of glass, of monsters and magic. And I’d curl up and listen, and sometimes I’d fall sleep, not because I was bored but because it was safe. She wasn’t a girl really. She was like a brother… A kind of crazy, really talkative, better-smelling brother.

  So you thought you were friends?

  Well, she wasn’t like you, of course, because even the times she and I were just quiet you were always there, in a corner of my head, to remind me.

  She just wants one thing.

  It’s not like she wanted to buy me; she said she didn’t want a ward. She never tried to touch me, not like that.

  Maybe you wanted her to?

  It wasn’t like that.

  Girls like that don’t need a ward; they just want some fun.

  Maybe.

  She tried to get you arrested.

  *

  When did the buzzing stop? My heart thumping. After everything, after Reserves, I didn’t think she’d risk coming.

  The door closes. I can’t hear any other people, only her breath, her footsteps.

  Say something!

  I want to ask her about last night.

  Go on, you say. Coward. You can’t even break one rule.

  “It’s you, isn’t it?” I ask, not waiting for permission. “Romali?”

  “Just … give me a minute,” she says, still pacing.

  I was right. That brittle, bristling voice. Full of energy.

  I reach behind my head to take off my blindfold, struggling with the knot, like she did with her mask at Reserves. I need to see her again, to look her in the eye.

  “Don’t,” she says. She won’t stop pacing. The perfume of rainwater makes me shiver; my brain rattles with it.

  “But I’ve already seen—”

  “I don’t want you to see me like … like this,” she interrupts, sniffing.

  “Like what?”

  “I just … I need a fogging moment, Jude, OK?” she snaps. There’s the slap of a thick wad of paper landing on the table. “I … I needed somewhere safe.”

  Safe.

  She feels safe with me? Like I did with her – before. Before I knew who she was. Before Reserves. Before the garden.

  “Don’t freak out,” her voice shaking like she’s cold.

  “What about?” I ask as something flies against the wall and smashes.

  Romali Vor really likes to break things. Here she is again, doing everything I want to do.

  I duck, covering my head as something breaks opposite me, then to my left, my right.

  “What the fog?” I shout. “Are you trying to kill me?”

  She stops. “What do you think?”

  The hairs at the nape of my neck stand up. I can feel her looking at me.

  “You … you tried to get me arrested!” I remind her.

  “No, you idiot. Of course I’m not trying to kill you. I’m trying to save your ass!”

  “Don’t call me an idiot,” I say. “Please.” Always that need to be nice.

  “They could’ve got you out!”

  “Who?”

  There’s the scratching sound of a drawer opening. She’s found the trinkets I hid in the cupboard.

  My teeth press together so hard my head pounds as things crash and smash all around me. I have to stop her. I’m the one who’ll be punished for this. Maybe the House Fathers will lock me in the store cupboard for days like the last boy who damaged his appointment room, a freshman N-dormer who came out mop-thin, stinking and dry-retching. He was never the same.

  The sounds get closer to me, like walls closing in. That boy inside, the one who danced until they squashed it out of him, starts kicking at my bones. I let him kick. They trained me well.

  When everything breakable is in pieces, the soft sound of thuds follows as she punches and yells into the pillows.

  My hands are shaking with anger, nerves. The room feels too small and too big at the same time.

  “The Hysterics!” She throws something again. “They’ve been breaking people out of the cells for years.” So the Chancellor was right: she is working with the Hysterics. Is that all I need to get you out? No. I have to get her to admit it publicly. “All you had to do was play along!” Air puffs as she flops down on the nearest couch.

  “Maybe if you’d warned me,” I say.

  “There wasn’t time. And I didn’t know you’d be up there … not till I saw the docket. I had to ac
t fast.”

  I ask if I can sit.

  “Of course, do what you want,” she says, like she’s surprised I even asked. She doesn’t get what it’s like to need permission to do everything, even going to the bathroom.

  Feeling my way to the couch, careful as my slippered feet crunch through broken shards, I try to slow my breath, before pulling down the blindfold ribbon until it hangs around my neck. Can I trust her?

  “You’ll get in trouble,” Romali says, rolling her puffy, mascara-smeared eyes. She’s slumped in the cushions. She’s real. Really real. Her green eyes lock on to mine.

  “You going to tell?”

  I think she laughs, even though she doesn’t want me to see. “I could have you arrested,” she jokes.

  “Not funny,” I say.

  “Sorry.”

  I rub at my eyes where they burn with the salt that’s built up under my lids. It’s hard to blink after a day of wearing a blindfold. Takes an hour or two to see straight. Her face is a little blurry but I don’t care.

  “Anyway, I wouldn’t. Not now. Try to get you arrested, I mean. They can’t get you out now you’re under her protection. The police wouldn’t lock you up without her consent.”

  “So you knew the Chancellor would reserve me?” Does she know I was meant to kill the Chancellor?

  She laughs with a snort, sits up and looks at me like I’m fresh out of the Surrogacy. “Do you even look in the mirror?”

  We have one mirror in our dorm so it’s a fight to get to it. I’m not sure what she’s trying to say. I did my best this morning to get smart for my appointments.

  “The hair, the dimples. Those eyes?” Her eyebrows shoot up as she waves her hands up and down.

  Maybe if the couch cushions would swallow me up I wouldn’t be so aware of my body, and how gangly and weird it is compared to hers. “What’s wrong with them?”

  She laughs. “Saints, Jude, there’s being coy and then there’s being obtuse. Don’t pretend you don’t know how cute you are. It’s not … cute.” She rolls her eyes. “Anyway, yes, everyone knew. And maybe it’s not even about how you look. She’s been looking to replace Walker and you’re the most expensive boy on the docket. She likes rare things.”

  “Expensive? But no one had reserved me yet.”

  “‘Expensive’ as in you have the highest debt. Nearly a million demerits, right? That’s what the docket said. Super rare. Most boys are between five and three hundred thousand.”

  Last year you were the only boy onstage with a debt higher than mine. I’ve never met any boy with a higher debt than you. Is that all Walker needed to get the Chancellor to bite?

  Me, you, my brothers, the boys before us, we spend our whole lives trying to erase the debts we inherit, to give ourselves, or the boys that take our name after we’re dead, even a distant chance of freedom. It’s drilled into us that it’s our duty to erase our forefathers’ sins. When you have nothing, it’s something to hold on to, that hope. That maybe, one day, one of us might do it.

  “So are you going to tell me?” Romali asks, not looking at me.

  “Tell you what?”

  “How you’re still here.” She sits up straight. “You know what happened to the boy she reserved last year?”

  That boy has a name, I want to say.

  “If she knew we were friends…” She reaches out, puts her hand on mine. I pull it back. “I couldn’t let that happen to you.”

  We’re friends?

  “I guess she liked me,” I say, tugging at my ears as if they’re on fire. Maybe Romali can tell I’m lying but how can I explain what really happened? If she doesn’t know I was meant to kill the Chancellor, I’m not going to tell her. I’m still not sure if I can trust her.

  “You know I shouldn’t be here. She’s crazy, thinks I want to be Chancellor, has people watching me, makes up stories in the news. I wish I’d been able to put my name on our appointments but … whatever she learns about me she spins and manipulates, turns against me. She’s obsessed and getting worse. You have to know, coming to see you today, I’m taking a risk. You’re hers now.”

  “I’m not her property,” I say.

  “Not yet.”

  True.

  “But … I had to come,” she says, tensing. “We promised we wouldn’t lie to each other, right?” She can tell I’m hiding something.

  “Why didn’t you tell me Walker was training you?” she asks.

  So she does know. And she knows about Walker too? Months ago she told me there was no one she could trust; she told me not to trust anyone either. Was she warning me about Walker? This place twists everything good, she said. If she was right, can I even trust her?

  My words trip over themselves. “It was a secret, not a lie. Like how you didn’t tell me who you were all year. You didn’t need to book under a name, you still could’ve told me,” I say. “I wouldn’t have said anything.”

  “Don’t change the subject,” she groans, before taking a deep breath. “Saints, what did you expect me to do? Sit down and give you the whole saga? Like, ‘Hi, I’m Romali Dunn Vor. You know, last of the Dunn bloodline; they ran the Tower for centuries. My grandmother did go crazy but don’t worry, I’m a totally normal girl really.’ Yeah, that wouldn’t have been weird and we’d totally have been able to keep seeing each other.”

  “You’re trying to be funny again,” I say.

  “I guess. Anyway, maybe I enjoyed being anonymous; maybe I wanted you to like me for who I am not who you assumed I might be.” She raises both her eyebrows up high. “You think we don’t know you guys have lists – the best girls to get bids from?”

  There are lists, bets, but I never—

  “Now your turn. Walker?”

  “Why do you assume I’m working with Walker?” I ask.

  “I have my sources,” she says. “There’s something else you’re not telling me.”

  The words are building in my chest like a boulder I have to choke out. I’ll tell her about the Chancellor, about the Gardener and Walker’s plan, and how you’re alive and I’m going to find you. Maybe Romali will help if Walker won’t. Maybe she’ll give herself up and no one else will have to get hurt.

  But then I see what Romali’s left on the table: a news pamphlet from the House of Information. I search for words I understand. Boy. Dignity. I get those. Grace and auction too. I’m getting better but it’s still full of hundreds of words I don’t understand. I screw up my eyes to try to read the three at the top.

  “Madam Dunn missing,” Romali reads aloud, then goes quiet.

  I think about what she said about her family. Romali Vor is a Dunn. And then I remember the Collections from T-dorm. Those family trees.

  Not missing, dead. The Gardener was Romali’s aunt.

  “I told you everything,” Romali says. “I’ve risked everything.”

  “I know.” That stone still sits in my throat. I could tell her about what happened – she’ll go after the Chancellor, expose herself, and then I can save you.

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  I shake my head, try to smile. That butter-wouldn’t-melt smile. I can’t – I’m a coward. Why aren’t you screaming at me? Help me. Why can’t I just tell her?

  She stands, snatches up the paper and looks down at me. Maybe the stories we hear of Romali Vor aren’t true, maybe they come from the Chancellor’s lies. But for a moment there’s the Romali Vor we hear tales about, in the way she stands, the strength, the certainty. She tries to clean up the mess she’s made, kicking stuff under the couches. I want to tell her it won’t be enough; the cleaning prentice will find it, report it and I’ll be the one that’s punished for it.

  “Are you in the talent show tomorrow?” she asks.

  I shake my head. Walker never planned for me to get that far.

  “Look, the Hysterics can maybe still get you out during the show.” Romali heads for the door. “Unless you’d prefer to be the Chancellor’s new ward.”

  “Tomorrow?” I
say. Of course I want to get out: it was our dream. But I can’t leave the Tower yet, not without you. And the Hysterics, aren’t they dangerous? And if I leave without giving Romali to the Chancellor then you’re a dead man. Maybe we could all escape. I want to ask if she’s going to leave too…

  But Romali Vor has already gone.

  Another dark-hours without sleep and the Chancellor expects Romali to give herself up today! I thought maybe Walker would send for me after my appointments, but still nothing. If the Chancellor had had him arrested, everyone would be talking about it. There’s only one conclusion: I’m on my own. I need to stop hoping he’ll come.

  This year’s talent event is swimwear, so it’s the prime topic of conversation in the line to get our appointment keys. Shaving vs trimming. Oiling vs tanning. Sticking vs spraying. Starving vs sweating.

  Prep started early this year: half the boys in J-dorm fasting months ago even though only over-sixteens compete. Doesn’t stop everyone being caught up in it, though.

  Only the boys with the right measurements get to take part. The list went up on the board before Reserves. Rodders is in – after spending every free second in the gym this year, that’s no surprise. As soon as he wakes up, he’s preening in front of the dorm mirror, practising his routine for the show. He has to do it exactly right, doesn’t want to get marked down by the judges for non-regulation footwork. Two other boys in J had the measurements to make the cut too, but neither of them got through Reserves. Walker never planned for me to make it into Swims. As far as he was concerned, the whole auction process would be cancelled after the Chancellor turned up dead, so I never even tried to get on the list.

  *

  Bzzzz

  “I really can’t do this right if you move, Jude,” she sighs.

  Appointment one today: posing for a painting with Madam Strand, who heads the House of Media. Another regular. She tips with a kohl pencil every time. Normally I slip it under my mattress with Stink’s sweets.