The Glimpse

by Claire Merle

  Undernourished men and women stared as she twisted and ducked between them. Some reached out to touch the silk of her dress. Others cursed and spat in her direction.

  Reaching the Academy’s arched double doors, she pressed her ID stick into the sensor pad. As the doors clicked open, she shot inside and closed them firmly behind her.

  The noise of the street crowds grew muffled. Far off, notes of a single violin cut the stil air. Ana leaned against notes of a single violin cut the stil air. Ana leaned against the doors breathing heavily. The familiar entrance hal, with its initial impression of grandeur and the usual signs of dilapidation and neglect slowly rising to one’s awareness, calmed her. She took in the paint flaking from the cherub wal fresco; the ceiling that hadn’t been painted in thirty-two years; the glass in the lamps over the unmanned reception desks which were cracked and missing.

  Professor Eidleman usualy taught in the Barbiroli room.

  Ana headed through the grand arch and up the main stairs. As she reached the third floor she heard a dreamy, lyrical refrain from Schumann’s A Minor Piano Concerto.

  She knocked on the Barbiroli door, and then, imagin-ing her father and Jasper and the Board gathering in the 376

  entrance three floors below, decided there was no time to waste on formalities and burst into the room.

  The piano playing halted immediately. A pretty Chinese-looking girl with hair down to her waist looked up from the keys, frightened.

  ‘Ana?’ Professor Eidleman said, turning towards the door.

  ‘I’m sorry!’ She rushed over to him. His warm familiarity made her want to sit down and sob.

  ‘Are you OK? I’ve been terribly concerned about you.’

  ‘I can’t explain. I need help,’ she said. Her words tumbled over each other. ‘Do you know Cole Winter?

  He’s a visiting professor, teaches composition part-time.

  I desperately need to get hold of him before they come I desperately need to get hold of him before they come and get me. I’m desperate. I have to speak to him.’

  ‘Sarah, please go on as you were,’ the professor instructed. Schumann’s melody floated from the piano.

  Professor Eidleman waved a hand across his interface to power it up. He took the transparent plastic tag around his neck and held it in front of his chest. The interface began projecting digital information on to the card: A list of departmental professors.

  ‘Composition you said?’

  Ana nodded. The professor scanned down to Cole’s name and selected contact details. Ana’s chest hurt.

  Each heartbeat made her throb with anticipation.

  Professor Eidleman selected the number and hand-gestured dialing.

  Ana heard ringing; then Cole’s voice.

  ‘Helo?’

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  ‘This is Scott Eidleman from the Academy. I have a student here who needs to talk to you.’

  ‘Cole?’ she squeaked. Her voice sounded so weak and pathetic even the pianist girl’s playing froze over. ‘Cole?’

  There was a pause. An aching, endless, smothering pause, which ended when the line went dead.

  Shock flared inside Ana. Cole refused to speak to her.

  He thought she’d chosen the Community, the Pures, He thought she’d chosen the Community, the Pures, Jasper . . .

  ‘I’m sorry, Ana,’ the professor said, guiding her to the door. ‘I’l be finished in fifteen minutes. Why don’t you wait out here and we’l talk then?’

  Ana floundered into the hal, barely seeing the staircase, the arched windows, the dirt-streaked wals. The door rattled closed. How could Cole think she’d chosen Jasper?

  She drifted down the stairs. Voices stirred in the back of her mind. She reached the first floor, barely aware that she was moving. But now the voices were loud and intrusive. She snapped awake, leaned over the banister.

  There was a commotion in the halway below. A wal of Wardens blocked the large central arch leading up the stairs. Jasper was standing behind them, along with his parents and Ana’s father. Twenty or thirty people were gathered in the main entry, many of them filming with their interfaces. On the left, a professional camera crew with a reporter and boom operator thrust forward. The reporter was addressing the camera, then she turned and caled across the crowds to get Jasper’s attention.

  Ana sank back into the corridor. Her thoughts felt as though they were spiling al over the place. She struggled to colect them together. She’d joined with Jasper to make 378

  a stand against the Board. Had she made the stand?

  Could she go now? Or had she done it to protect herself against the Psych Watch? And what would it do to Jasper if she ran out on him now, on the very day of their joining?

  But she had to find Cole. She had to explain to him why she’d done it, even if he wouldn’t understand – now that she’d seen him, she barely understood herself. She didn’t know what could have made her think joining with Jasper was a good idea.

  She fled into the dark theatre on the first floor, past a row of blue seats and out through a fire exit. A set of stairs led down to the side of the Academy’s grand entrance. She skipped down them, stepping into the main hal a mere two feet from the nearest Warden. But the Wardens’ efforts were fuly employed in keeping the onlookers from passing through the archway. No one glanced in Ana’s direction.

  Another camera crew arrived. Jasper’s father unsuccessfuly attempted to quieten the bombardment of questions and make an announcement. Ana’s father was talking to the two Board members that had been at the joining. She couldn’t imagine what he would say to justify her behaviour. If she was caught now, they’d probably drag her off for an immediate evaluation.

  Ana pushed open the doors leading into the percussion studio corridor. As they swung closed behind her, the opening chords of ‘Second Sight’ rang out. She tripped and slapped her hands against the wal to steady herself.

  Cole’s music. The melody began to reach for the heavens and simultaneously delve into the earth, as though capable of 379

  drawing them together, making them one. It was coming from a rehearsal studio. Like a sign. A miracle.

  The shimmering light and air in the notes filed her, knitting over the hole of loneliness, puling her back knitting over the hole of loneliness, puling her back together the way they had done the first time Cole played them. Amazed, warmed from the inside out, she shook off her heels and sprinted down the corridor towards a back flight of stairs.

  The stairs led to the basement and the student common room. Professor Eidleman had shown Ana around it when she’d first started at the Academy. Though she’d never had the time or inclination to use the common room, she remembered it led to the David Josefowitz recital hal – an arched, semi-underground building that sat between the Academy’s main block and the York Gate addition. She only needed to get into the York Gate basement and she’d be able to leave through the museum.

  A string quartet was practising in the recital hal. Ana entered from the opposite end. The exit she needed was al the way down the front, by the stage. She coiled the tail of her skirt in her hands and crept across the oak floor, hoping they’d be so engrossed in the music they wouldn’t notice her. She was halfway there, when the door by the stage opened. Her stomach roled over. The open-plan hal offered no refuge. If it was a Warden, she was done for.

  A six-foot, athletic frame stepped through the exit, chest heaving. Ana’s eyes met Cole’s. A rush of energy spiraled up her body. The quartet stopped playing.

  ‘It’s not what you think!’ she blurted.

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  ‘You’re not trying to find me?’ Cole asked, doubling over to catch his breath.

  over to catch his breath.

  ‘Yes, yes I am! It is what you think.’ Ana’s body took over, legs running without instruction, until she was close enough to fling her arms around his neck. Sniffling and laughing, crying out in pain when he squeezed her ribs, she held on to him tightly.

  ‘What’s
wrong?’

  ‘I broke my rib. It’s fine now, realy, it’s fine.’

  Cole’s firm hands combed through her hair.

  ‘I thought I’d lost you,’ he whispered, his breath stil raspy and uneven.

  ‘I don’t love Jasper,’ she said. She was sobbing and making an idiot of herself, but she didn’t care.

  ‘But why didn’t you meet me? Why did you go back home?’

  ‘Excuse me—’ the girl with the celo said. ‘We’re trying to rehearse.’

  Cole’s fingers threaded through Ana’s. ‘We should get out of here.’ She nodded. They left by the exit where he’d come in. Hand-in-hand, they wound through the York Gate basement, up a flight of stairs and on to a side street.

  Fast-food huts and bric-a-brac stals toppled off the pavement into the broad street. Six rows of rickshaws, bicycles and e-trikes traveled to and fro, many coming and going to the vast camp in Regent’s Park.

  Ana and Cole joined the bustle, keeping their heads Ana and Cole joined the bustle, keeping their heads down, squeezing each other’s hands, Ana stil half laughing, half crying.

  ‘My dress,’ she said.

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  Cole nodded, puled her across the road to a rickshaw.

  He helped her up and got in behind her. They sank back beneath the curved roof, shoulders and legs and arms squeezed against each other.

  ‘Where to?’ the boy asked.

  ‘The old tennis centre,’ Cole said. ‘A hundred metres beyond the bridge.’

  ‘Minimum fare is three pounds.’

  Cole nodded in agreement. The boy smiled, pleased he’d got a good deal, and began pedaling. Streaks of colour flickered through the plastic roof, like a kaleidoscope.

  They whizzed past a group of women lumbering with huge wash baskets on their backs, past a man talking to his shadow, a girl sitting on the roadside singing mournfuly.

  ‘Why did you hang up?’ Ana asked.

  ‘I thought the Wardens were probably listening to my cals,’ Cole said. ‘I didn’t want them to know you were phoning me.’

  ‘I thought after seeing me with Jasper . . . I thought you hated me.’

  ‘Hardly. I almost got an aneurysm trying to get from St Johns Wood to the Academy so fast.’ He winced, looked down, suddenly unsure of himself. ‘When you didn’t go back to the flat . . .’ He swalowed. ‘You have to be sure about your decision, Ana. You have to understand that if you come with me there might not be a way back if you change your mind. With me you’re always going to be running from something. Even if your father stops looking for you, I can’t give you any kind of security. I can’t promise you’l be safe.’

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  Ana thought of her father’s endless efforts to keep her safe and how miserable it had made her. She lifted his fingers to her lips and kissed them. He stil didn’t know why she hadn’t made it to the flat. He thought she’d got scared at Three Mils and chosen to return home.

  ‘They didn’t give me the test,’ she said. His eyes shifted.

  He looked at her oddly. ‘I didn’t come to the flat in Forest Hil the night I was supposed to because I didn’t get out of Three Mils,’ she explained.

  ‘But the news . . .’

  She shook her head. ‘It wasn’t me.’

  ‘How long were you in there?’ he asked, the happiness in his eyes shrinking.

  ‘Four days.’

  Cole’s shoulders tightened. His hand grew icy. But surely it had to be her imagination. A silence fel over them. The it had to be her imagination. A silence fel over them. The rickshaw clattered across a bridge. Dense trees on either side stretched over them, leaves blocking the daylight.

  ‘I can’t let you come with me,’ he said finaly.

  Confusion pooled in her heart. She dropped her hand from his frigid grip. Suppressing the desire to cry, she summoned up her self-control. Then she twisted her arm behind her back and unzipped her dress.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

  She shimmied her arms from the dress sleeves.

  He puled the sleeves back up around her shoulders.

  ‘What are you going to do, run away in your underwear?’

  ‘If I have to.’

  ‘Apart from freezing, you’l be attacked by every weirdo out here.’

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  ‘So give me your coat.’

  ‘Ana, please.’ Cole reached out to cup her cheek in his hand. She slapped him away. He tried a second time and as the tips of his fingers touched her skin, it was like he completed a circuit – the love and pain and confusion ripped through her again. She stared at him, unable to hide her roiling emotions.

  ‘I thought you wanted us to be together,’ she said.

  ‘I do. But the thought of something happening to you again, because of me—’

  ‘You tried to stop me from going to Three Mils, remember? Besides, I wouldn’t change anything that’s happened to me because of you.’

  Hand stil holding the back of her dress closed, he leant forward hesitantly and kissed the side of her mouth. She tilted her head so that their lips met. She kissed him gently, desire burning through her.

  So this is what it feels like, she thought.

  A cough sounded from somewhere beyond the cover of the rickshaw.

  Ana whipped around, realising the vehicle had stopped.

  ‘The old tennis courts,’ the boy announced.

  A head popped around the side of the curved roof.

  ‘Haven’t been wasting any time then,’ Lila said.

  The tips of Ana’s ears burnt. Cole smiled, zipped up the back of her dress, then helped her down. He gave the boy three pounds and they folowed Lila through a smal gap in the bush, battering back branches until they came to a tumbledown hut.

  ‘Here.’ Lila chucked a drawstring bag in Ana’s direction.

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  Disorientated, stil warm from the feel of Cole’s lips on hers, his hands wrapped in her hair, she picked up the hers, his hands wrapped in her hair, she picked up the bag.

  A bundle of clothes lay folded inside. A grey hooded sweater, a pair of jeans, socks and trainers.

  ‘But, how did you know?’

  ‘Al part of the plan,’ Lila said. ‘It’s why I’ve been waiting here getting cramp al afternoon. Though even I was a bit worried when I heard you’d joined with Jasper.’

  Ana’s eyes flashed guiltily towards Cole. She puled the jeans up underneath her dress then stepped out of it and put Lila’s grey sweater over her silk vest. Her fingers brushed the smooth wood of Jasper’s star pendant. She puled out the rusted chain and ran her forefinger across the engraving. She recaled the look in Jasper’s eyes as he’d given it to her. His struggle to understand the truth that now lay buried beneath what they’d done to him.

  She thought of her best friend Tamsin and the girl, Helen, who’d been in the tanks with her. She thought of Cusher, Dannard and the orderly McCavern. She thought of al the girls and boys lost in the hel that was Three Mils.

  Their moans and sobs and crazy mutterings played in the corners of her mind.

  ‘Ana,’ Cole said. ‘What’s the matter?’

  Her breath felt as though it was congealing in her throat.

  It’s not up to me to save anyone, she thought. Jasper didn’t even remember about the disc, so she hardly owed him to try and get it. No one expected her to risk going home.

  And yet she knew if there was a chance and she didn’t take it, she would never be worthy of Cole. Or Tamsin.

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  Or Jasper. Each of her friends had risked their freedom to stand against the injustices of the Pure tests.

  Her eyes stung. She tried to massage the ache in her throat.

  ‘I—’ Al she’d wanted was for Cole to rescue her, to be with him again. She should leave with him now while she stil had the chance. ‘I . . . I can’t go with you,’ she said.

  The light in Cole’s eyes died. His shoulders sagged. He nodded once, gaze flitting away from the pendant, as tho
ugh he knew who’d given it to her. He thought she was changing her mind.

  ‘It’s a lot to ask,’ he said.

  She circled her arms around his neck and stood on tiptoes. As she spoke her skin brushed his stubble.

  ‘My father has the research disc. Jasper doesn’t remember what it is, but he remembers giving it to him.’

  Cole tried to pul away, but she held on, pressing their cheeks together. She couldn’t look at him or the hurt in his eyes would dissuade her. The thought of leaving him again, of jeopardising the one thing she truly desired was already hard enough.

  ‘My father must have taken it before admitting Jasper to Three Mils. He must stil have it.’

  She didn’t mention the disc might be useless or empty, even if she did manage to find it.

  Cole broke free. He shook his head.

  Lila’s eyes gleamed. ‘You have to listen to her, Cole.’

  ‘My father keeps his office at home locked,’ Ana said.

  ‘I’m going to break into it.’

  ‘Half the Wardens in London are looking for you right 386

  now,’ Cole said, jaw clenched tight. ‘Do you know how many were in the Academy? Within five minutes the place was totaly swarming. And Wardens folow orders.

  If your father realises what you’re up to and orders them to stop you, that’s what they’l do. I saw a government minister get run over in the street near a security checkpoint and it was done without the slightest hesitation.’

  Ana met his glower. Anger she could deal with.

  ‘Cole,’ Lila said. ‘This is it. This is what you saw.’

  ‘No.’

  Ana’s heart soared. This wasn’t about some Glimpse for Cole. He wasn’t here for information or because he needed her to do something. She approached him and cupped her hand around his cheek, mirroring the touch that had brought her around moments before. She had not been raised in a world where people spoke of their emotions. She didn’t know how to lower the barriers, how to make him understand.

  how to make him understand.