GLAZE

by Kim Curran

  She was given a free t-shirt, told to wait two hours before trying to access Glaze, and sent home.

  This place is absolutely nothing like that.

  It’s small and grey with a single window high up in the wall peeking out on to a slate-grey sky. An old cell given over for the purposes of chipping people, I guess.

  There’s a large chair in the middle of the room and a woman standing behind it. But she’s dressed in a policeman’s uniform rather than a WhiteInc shirt. And she’s not smiling.

  ‘Take a seat, Petri. This won’t take long,’ Lee says. My hearing has finally come back.

  I back away from the chair and into a corner of the cell, shaking my head. ‘You can’t,’ I say. ‘You can’t do this to me.’ I try to grip onto the walls with my fingers, but there’s nothing to hold on to but flaking grey paint.

  ‘It’s an easy choice, Petri. A couple of weeks in a young offenders institute waiting for your chance to see a judge, only to be chipped anyway? Your mother is only trying to protect you.’

  ‘She’s only trying to protect herself,’ I shout. ‘God forbid she had to deal with the drama of her daughter being in jail.’

  Lee tilts his head and looks at me, his face filled with patronising concern. ‘Come on, Petri. It’s only five years, after which…’

  ‘Only five years?’ I roar. ‘That’s practically a life sentence!’

  He steps towards me and I push myself further into the wall. There’s no escape.

  ‘You can’t…’ I keep saying, over and over.

  But he can.

  Lee takes hold of my wrist, gently, and pulls me towards the chair, where the woman is adjusting the equipment. He makes soothing noises, like someone trying to calm a spooked horse.

  There’s an inevitability to this. Me, this room, that chair, and the woman in the rubber gloves with the chipping gun in her hand. I wanted nothing more than to be chipped, and now I’m about to be. Only instead of giving me everything I wanted, it’s about to take it all away.

  Talk about being careful what you wish for. I laugh, and it comes out in a strangled croak.

  Five years till I can have the blank removed. Only five years, they say, like it’s no big deal. I’ll be nearly 21 by the time I’m actually able to get on Glaze. And what will be the point then? The hope of getting hooked up was the only thing keeping me going. Now I’ll never belong. I might as well stay in this cell for ever.

  I stagger towards the chair and it appears to loom, growing too big to fit in such a small space. In my mind, it’s become an electric chair and I’m walking towards my execution.

  I’m laughing, full out now, while tears pour down my cheeks. Lee and the executioner share a worried glance; they think I’m crazy. Unhinged. But what do they expect? For me to skip happily to my fate as they steal the most important years of my life?

  But I know it’s futile to resist. I’m powerless. I’m just a kid.

  I drag myself up on the chair and slide into it, feeling weird about placing my trainers on the clean seat covering.

  The woman with the gun walks around me and places a palm on my forehead. I feel the chalky softness of the rubber glove against my skin. She brushes the hair at the back of my neck away and I flinch at the heavy presence of metal pressed against the top of my spine.

  ‘Breathe in,’ the woman says.

  I obey.

  There’s a hiss of air and I pass out.

  6

  ‘SIX MONTHS BAN! Oh, Ryan, what are you going to do?’

  ‘Oh, it’ll be OK. I guess I’ll be watching a lot of TV.’ He laughs.

  I look up from the book I’m pretending to be buried in and over to where Ryan and Amy, and Pippa and Karl are sitting in the common room. The four of them have become the school’s latest power couples. They radiate smugness. I thought Karl and Kiara would get it together, after seeing them at the riot. But it appears Pippa had other plans.

  ‘So what happened?’ Karl asks. ‘We all had our names taken and that was it, they let us go. We didn’t see you after that.’

  ‘No, I got the hell out of there, you know? I didn’t know how it was going to go down.’

  ‘And they caught up with you and Petri later?’ Pippa asks. I’m surprised she even remembers I exist.

  ‘Yeah, that’s right.’

  Amy throws her arms around Ryan’s neck and sobs into his neck. Ryan brushes her hair away and catches my eye over her shoulder. We’ve not spoken since the day I got arrested and this is the first I’ve heard about him getting banned from Glaze. It’s the least he deserves after snitching on me.

  He smiles, his usual, lopsided grin that in the past would make me go a bit wobbly. Now, I want to punch him.

  The projected clock over the doorway reads 12:44. Fourteen minutes of lunchtime left. I want it over.

  In the past, I’d watch that minute hand slice up the fragments between the me I was and the me I was going to be. The me who would suddenly become cool and popular and would have five thousand people hooked to her stream following her every word. My whole life revolved around counting down those seconds. Now, each tick is a reminder that that future will never come. That I’m going to be me for ever.

  Amy manages to calm herself and whispers something into Ryan’s ear. His cheeks flush. He holds his hands up to Amy and the others, asking for time, and points over at me. Amy scowls and flicks her hair as Ryan heads my way. I quickly look back down at my book and turn the page.

  ‘Hey,’ he says.

  I don’t look up.

  ‘Good book?’

  ‘Not really,’ I say, not taking my eyes off it.

  ‘Look, Petri, about the police. I only told them your name because I was so worried about what had happened to you. I asked them to check if you were all right. If I’d known the trouble it would have got you into, I’d have kept my stupid mouth shut.’

  I finally tear myself away from the book I’ve not been reading and look at him. He certainly looks sorry. With his big brown eyes and wrinkled forehead. The block of ice in my stomach melts the tiniest of bits.

  ‘Were you scared?’ He sits next to me and leans forward. ‘When the police pulled you in?’

  ‘I was petrified.’

  ‘Ha ha!’ he laughs. I scrunch up my face. I don’t know why he thinks my terror is so funny.

  ‘Petri-fied. Petri. You’re funny,’ he nudges me with his elbow. ‘And you don’t even realise it. It’s what I like about you.’

  I laugh weakly. The ice block is now a bubbling lump of lava.

  ‘I was scared, too. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but when the police caught me, I threw up. That’s how scared I was.’

  ‘You never?’ I gasp, despite myself.

  ‘Truth.’ He holds his hand up like he’s swearing an oath. ‘In the police car.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes. They weren’t best pleased.’

  ‘I bet. Putting the green in their black and white.’

  Ryan laughs. Properly throws his head back and laughs. And I find myself laughing along with him, ignoring the burning looks coming my way from Amy.

  ‘That’s funny. I might use that line. But don’t tell anyone, will you? I mean, it’s not going to be good for my cred if people find out.’

  ‘My lips are sealed,’ I say, glowing because he’s trusted me with his secret.

  ‘You’re the best, Petri,’ he says, punching me in the arm. ‘I knew I could count on you.’

  ‘Hey, I’m the human calculator after all.’

  ‘Ha ha, good one!’ He laughs and holds his hand up for a high five.

  I miss his palm. ‘Yeah, ha ha. Ha.’

  ‘Catch you later, calculator.’ He gives me a wink and a smile and goes back to sitting with Amy.

  The alarm buzzes for the end of break and I’m out of the door before anyone’s even picked up their bags.

  ‘Petri!’

  My name echoes around the hallway. I stop and turn around as Kiara launches her
self at me, grabbing me in a part-hug, part-rugby tackle. She smells of apples and cinnamon. The signature scent I helped her pick out at Selfridges. When she finally untangles herself, her eyebrows are drooped in pity.

  ‘I heard about the blank. Five years! Oh, Pet, I’m so sorry.’

  It’s been months since anyone’s called me Pet, and my lip starts to wobble at the kindness. I’m still annoyed at her for how she’s been ignoring me these last few weeks. But I could really do with a friend right now.

  ‘Come on, let’s bunk off. For old time’s. It’s only maths anyway and it’s not like you need Mr Adams sticking you in a corner because you keep correcting him.’

  If I speak, I’ll cry, so I nod and let Kiara guide me down the corridor. We stop when we get to the outside doors, to check if any of the teachers are coming, and then make a run for it.

  The playground’s in an even worse state of repair than last time I was here; the thick blue plastic has been peeled off the monkey bars and it looks like someone tried to set fire to one of the seats on the swings.

  NF has been sprayed in large letters on almost every surface.

  ‘What’s that all about?’ I ask Kiara, pointing at the tag on the slide.

  ‘Oh, it stands for “No Future”. It’s what those anarchists spray everywhere.’

  ‘Vandals.’

  ‘Vandals who are causing all the blackouts.’

  ‘That’s them?’ I say. ‘I thought it was power cuts.’

  There have been more and more blackouts lately. The last I heard it was because of the whole running-out-of-oil thing, or at least that’s what they said when they made all the street lights solar and everyone started complaining because they hardly work in winter.

  ‘Nah, they’ve hacked the electricity board. Mum says they’re making some demands over something that government won’t give them. More schools. Or is it fewer schools? I can’t remember.’ She pulls out a pen and starts adding to a tag on one of the poles. When she pulls her hand away it now reads INFINITE in beautiful, swirling letters.

  ‘Oh, right. The detective who arrested me wanted to know if I was with them.’

  ‘You?’ Kiara says, incredulous, and then laughs. ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘That’s what I told him.’

  I sit on the least damaged of the seats and start to swing. The rusting chains are damp from the morning’s rain but the seat is dry, which means someone has been here before me. Kiara climbs up on the warped, burnt-out seat and pushes back and forth, her long, dark hair splaying out behind her, then catching her up on the upswing.

  We swing in silence for a while.

  ‘What’s it like?’ she says.

  ‘What’s what like?’

  ‘The blank chip. Can you feel it?’

  ‘Not really. At first, I could see the company logo, floating in my eyes. You know, like when you stare at the sun too long. Three faint triangles drifting around. But I don’t even notice them now.’ I look down. I was hoping that I’d feel something with the chip. Get some kind of feed. The time and date. My location. Something. Anything. But after the logo faded, there was nothing.

  ‘You know, you’re lucky.’

  ‘What?’ I look back up at Kiara flying back and forth.

  ‘Glaze. It’s not all that. I’m thinking of having the chip removed.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  She leaps off mid swing and lands badly. I jump down and try to help her back to her feet. She sits in the mud and laughs.

  ‘Are you OK?’ I ask, meaning the ankle she’s cradling.

  ‘No, not really.’ Her smile fades. ‘I mean, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’

  I know she’s not talking about her ankle.

  ‘You remember when I was off school last month?’

  ‘With glandular fever?’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, only it wasn’t glandular fever. Unless you can get that from a stomach pump.’

  ‘What are you on about?’

  ‘I tried to kill myself.’

  She says it like it’s perfectly normal. Like she’d just tried a new nail varnish. Or she has a crush on someone. I find I can’t breathe and slump to the damp ground next to her.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ she says, leaning back on her hands and looking up at the clouds. ‘I did a really crappy job of it. Apparently it’s really hard to OD on ibuprofen. Who knew?’

  ‘Kiara, I... I... Why?’

  She closes her eyes and tilts her head back further, as if she were sunbathing. Only there’s no sun out today. ‘The doctors say I’m depressed.’

  ‘Well, duh!’ I say. ‘Award for stating the obvious goes to the doctors.’

  ‘I guess. But I always thought being depressed meant feeling sad all the time and not being able to get out of bed. But I don’t feel sad. I just don’t... feel. Anything.’ She sits up again and rubs her muddy hands on her skirt. ‘I used to care about things so much, you know? My art. Music. But now, it’s all noise. And without it I feel empty. And I didn’t want to go on feeling empty.’

  ‘I wish I knew what to say.’

  ‘Don’t worry. No one knows really. Mum says I’ll get better soon. That it’s a phase. Dad’s ignoring it, pretty much, trying to carry on as normal. He can’t cope with the fact I’m not his happy little Kiki any more. My doctor wants me to take some pills. “Happy pills”. He actually called them that. Literally. Happy pills. Can you believe that?’

  ‘And you don’t want to take them?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t really know anything any more.’

  ‘Has this got anything to do with Pippa?’

  Kiara laughs. ‘No. Poor Pippa. Can you imagine her dealing with this?’

  I laugh too. But it comes out as more of a groan. ‘Yeah, she’d make a right drama out of it.’

  ‘No, it’s not her. I can’t even remember why we were friends in the first place. No, it’s just… life, I guess. My life. It really does suck.’

  I turn away and sigh. ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘I’m sorry I’ve been such a bitch to you lately, Pet. I wanted to tell you, I really did. But…’

  ‘It’s fine. I get it.’ I hate to admit it, but I’m kind of relived.

  We both sit and watch the clouds float past overhead.

  ‘So, what’s that got to do with having your chip out. I mean, can you even do that?’

  ‘Apparently there’s a clinic you can go to. It’s not as easy as having it put in. But nothing ever is, right?

  ‘And you’re going to?’

  ‘Maybe. It’s weird. Since I got chipped I’ve felt shrunk, somehow. Lost among all those voices. I don’t know what I really think, about anything. You know, what my opinions are.’ She presses her hand to her chest. ‘I’m stretched out in all directions spread too thin. Like a pancake person.’ She laughs again, and this time, it sounds a little more like her real laugh. ‘But it could just be me. Mum did always say I was contrary.’

  ‘Why don’t you turn it off? Then when you feel better you can go back.’ I can’t get my head around the idea of someone choosing not to be on Glaze. Especially when I know I can’t. Like Ethan.

  ‘Yeah, but I’d only turn it back on again. I have no willpower.’ She shivers and wraps her arms around herself.

  ‘You want to come back to mine?’ I say, standing up. ‘Zizi will be there, though. She’s working on some big project.’

  ‘Won’t she go totally Metro for you bunking off?’

  ‘Nah, I’ll tell her I’m taking a stand against patriarchal institutions or something.’

  ‘Your mum’s cool.’

  ‘Hmm. Too cool.’

  ‘I have to be home normal time or Mum will call the police.’

  ‘We still have a couple of hours. And I’ve had enough of the police for a lifetime.’

  She takes my hand to get to her feet then tucks it under her arm, linking us together. ‘What was it like? Being arrested?’ Her eyes light up and I realise now it’s the first
time I’ve seen them like that in too long.

  We walk home and I regale her with the story of my near escape and capture. I exaggerate it all for effect. But she knows I do that, so it’s not really lying.

  ‘Ethan sounds lush.’

  ‘I don’t know. He was a bit weird.’

  ‘And you’re not?’ She digs me in the side with her pointy elbow.

  ‘Hey, I’m not weird.’

  ‘True. In fact, you could do with a little weird in your life.’

  ‘Well, he’s not weird the way, say Barbra Jenkins is weird.’

  ‘God, no one is a weird as her. You know she eats soap? Anyway, go on.’

  ‘He’s so...’ I struggle to find the word.

  ‘Mysterious,’ Kiara says, wiggling her fingers.

  ‘No. Still. That’s it. He’s so still. And calm. He makes me feel like I’m all over the place.’

  Kiara stops, takes my shoulders in her hands and spins me around to face her. ‘Petri, my dear friend, you are all over the place. Sounds to me like this guy is perfect for you. So tell me, was he cute?’

  We carry on walking. ‘Well, I guess.’

  ‘Cuter than Ryan McManus?’

  I look up at her shocked. ‘You know?’

  ‘Everyone knows you fancy him. It’s OK, almost half of our class fancies him. And that includes the boys.’

  ‘Well, I don’t.’

  ‘No? Why not?’

  I think about telling her about how he gave my name up. But then I remember the look of concern on his face. He was really worried about me and I can’t help but think that’s kind of cute.

  I shake my head. Time to stop kidding yourself, Petri. It was your stupid crush on him that got you in trouble in the first place. ‘I got over him I guess.’

  ‘Even more reason for you to go after this Ethan guy then.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ll ever see him again.’ The truth of that makes my heart feel too big for my chest. I have absolutely no way of getting in touch with him. I don’t even know what his surname is.

  I buzz us into the compound and we head up the street. Kiara used to live here as well, when her mum worked for the company. She was made redundant six months ago so they had to move out. I watch Kiara as we pass her old house. Was the move partially responsible for her depression? She gazes up at her old bedroom window.