Who Runs the World?

by Virginia Bergin

  At least you’re clean, I swipe across the steamed-up mirror to tell myself as I clean my teeth. Isn’t that better? I can’t even manage a smile.

  My Mumma has left the pointless kitchen conversation and is washing her armpits at the sink. She nudges me out of the way for a moment – and smiles tenderly at me. I love her love just as I love Kate’s love, but maybe in a slightly different way. Like most Mummas around – or rather, not around; they are always so busy – she has little time to express her love in the way that a Teen or a Littler One or even the gruffest Granmumma (like mine!) would . . . but I am very sure of it. The Mummas’ love is a hard-working love. A love that has re-built the world.

  ‘This will be OK, River,’ she says. ‘Be patient. This will be OK.’

  A smile from her is a jewel. A jewel that is so shiny and precious it makes me not even want to ask how this will be OK. My Mumma knows how things work. My Mumma knows about politics and disagreements and how to resolve problems . . . and even if this situation must be as strange and alarming for her as it is for me, my Mumma will sort it out. Because that’s what Mummas do.

  Knowing that, I smile back, basking in the intelligent brilliance of her love.

  I have to go into my room to get clean clothes with the creature lying in my bed. It is too alarming. It is too weird and horrible. My room smells wrong, chokingly wrong: disinfectant cannot quite mask the stink of the beast. The creature lies creepily quiet as I dig out my clothes. Every second of hunting for what I need, my eyes keep darting looks at it. Darting, because they refuse to outright STARE at it.

  Thing. Creature. Boy. Sweat flow reduced to a sheen. Breathing steady.

  It almost looks human. Really, I could even laugh when I think about it. Almost. Though I’ve told Mumma and Kate and Akesa in great detail how this thing behaved, it’s as though they haven’t really heard me. It’s as though they’re thinking this thing is going to wake up and sit calmly at the table having a polite chat over a cup of mint tea and a slice of cake. It’s madness. This whole thing is madness.

  I come out of my room with a pile of my clothes, and –

  ‘Jesus! River!’ Kate says.

  ‘What?!’

  Really: ‘WHAT?!’ From the way she says it, I think some new dreadful thing has happened

  ‘Oh my God!’ Kate says, as my Mumma comes out of the bathroom to see what’s going on. ‘Get back in the bathroom, both of you!’

  ‘Here!’ she says, shoving towels at me and Mumma. Us both baffled.

  ‘I’m all dry,’ I tell Kate.

  That’s how it works. Tread lightly – i.e. you don’t use any more of anything than you absolutely have to. I only ever use one – small – towel. It’s how I was brought up – it’s so the way of things, who’d even think about it? More towels = more laundry = more resources wasted . . . That’s how it goes – anyway, the specifics we none of us think about: you just don’t use anything unless you have to.

  I’m still thinking there’s something really wrong happening. Kate holding out the towel, me not getting why, her seeming . . . upset?

  ‘You need to cover yourselves,’ Kate says.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Just cover yourselves up!’

  ‘Kate?!’ says Mumma.

  ‘We’ll . . . we’ll talk about this later,’ Kate puffs at us, asthma attack threatening.

  I look at Mumma, and I can see, from the look in Mumma’s eye that she, also, has not the slightest notion of what this is all about . . . except that, presumably, it has something to do with the boy.

  CHAPTER 9

  POO

  ‘I don’t want to deal with the sewage on a Thursday,’ Hope is saying as I creep into the Community Studies room. Everyone turns and stares at me – but it’s only Plat I see. Her eyes shout ‘River!’, and mine shout ‘Plat!’ back – and then I remember, and it hits me all over again, how hard it’s going to be not to tell Plat about the boy. I plonk my despairing bottom down in the only free seat – next to Hope.

  ‘So, about the poo?’ Jade says – wanting to hurry Hope along.

  Poo. At last there’s a conversation happening I can understand. This is what I’m late for. It’s what we do after every school break: spend the afternoon sorting out who’s doing what, and when. It usually takes hours as the whole school is involved, us Teens and the Littler Ones, and everyone is bound to have some kind of gripe. We’re pretty much expected to; it’s supposed to be good preparation for the future, us learning how to discuss and Agree.

  We all know why Hope doesn’t want to deal with the sewage. Over the past year, we’ve had a lot of new import food coming in; more food than there has been for YEARS. It’s delicious – it’s brilliant! – although Kate says it’s nothing compared to what you used to be able to just walk into a once-was supermarket and BUY. (I don’t pay much attention to the stuff Kate says about the once-was world, but hearing about supermarkets and takeaways? I love it! It’s AMAZING.) In any case, everyone knows what the ultimate result of the import food is: more poo. Import, excrete, Plat jokes, but it’s true. After the weekend, on a Thursday morning, we’ve all noticed it . . . more poo. I’ve been so stuffed full of food, I poo more. Everyone cleans the toilet after themselves – who would not? – but someone has to make sure the flow from the tanks into the reed beds is . . . flowing.

  ‘So what’s your solution, Hope?’ says Plat, trying to keep everyone on track.

  ‘We should randomise the rota,’ Tamara – one of the older Teens – jumps in.

  ‘Agreed?’ says her partner, Silver-Moon.

  The whole room nods.

  ‘I suppose that’s my job?’ grumbles Hope.

  No one answers, because everyone, Hope included, knows the answer. If you see a problem, you’re expected to at least try to think of a solution – and you’ll almost certainly need to be involved in implementing it.

  ‘So that’s everything pretty much sorted then?’ Jade announces to the room; then, before anyone can point out that that isn’t pretty much everything: ‘I mean, with everything else we could just run with last term’s arrangements, if everyone is happy to Agree with that?’ she says.

  In the middle of the enthusiastic round of nodding that follows, Sweet starts up with, ‘Well, I think – ’ An older Littler One nudges her and whispers something in her ear. ‘But I don’t want to talk about the boy again,’ Sweet ‘whispers’ back, loud as a shout. ‘It’s boring me now!’

  Plat’s eyes are on me: silently offering support. Both of us knowing this moment is unavoidable. Of course it is: a thing that has never happened in our lifetimes has happened – and if it hadn’t ‘happened’ to me, I’d also be itching to get the school business Agreed so we can talk about this extraordinary event.

  My head, hurting, hears people saying again what they’ll already have said to anyone and everyone: how they thought they saw the boy – in the woods (It was a deer!), in the estuary (It was a log!) – how they heard strange sounds in the night –

  ‘Did you speak to the XY?’ Jade cuts across the babble.

  My stomach flips. Uh. Here I am again. All eyes on me.

  ‘Y&Y said not to do this,’ Plat steps in. ‘They said to leave River alone. She’s had a shock. We all have, haven’t we?’

  I could melt with gratitude. Plat gets up, stands next to me and puts her arm around my shoulder.

  ‘We only want to know if the boy said anything,’ says Tamara.

  ‘And how dangerous it is,’ says Hope.

  ‘How can it be dangerous? It’s dead,’ says Plat.

  ‘No one found a body though, did they?’ says Jade.

  A shiver of possibility runs through the room.

  ‘And no one ever will,’ says Plat. ‘It went into the estuary.’

  ‘So did you,’ says Jade.

  It’s true – and the whole school knows it. Me and Plat, we are legend. Two summers ago, we swam out too far – when we just ‘happened’ to have a raft with us. We just ‘happened
’ to pick the tide right. We’d planned the whole thing, of course. We ended up in Gloucester. We got such a talking-to. It was worth it.

  ‘It could still be alive,’ says Hope. ‘Alive and dangerous . . .’

  The room stills. The mood swings from thrill to –

  ‘Did it seem like it could be dangerous?’ asks Silver-Moon.

  YES. He grabbed me, he hurt me, he threatened to kill me. I was scared out of my mind. Who knows what . . .

  MAN

  MEN

  KNIVES

  MURDER

  RAPE

  GUNS

  WAR

  KILL

  DEATH

  . . . he might be capable of.

  I cannot reply. Tears of a whole new kind well in my eyes. Tears so new I don’t know what they mean – and nor does anyone else. Through blurry eyes I see them all staring – not curiosity any more. Concern. Baffled concerned concern. That’s the only way to put it. Concern, of a new and unknown kind.

  ‘I heard things in the night,’ Hope is saying quietly.

  ‘Shut up now,’ Silver-Moon is telling her, Granmumma-style.

  ‘Did the boy HURT River?’ Sweet speaks up.

  Small, brilliant, troublesome Sweet. Five words speak what the concern cannot.

  ‘Whoa,’ says Jade, super-slowly . . . and just as super-slowly she turns to look at me, her concern burning brighter than even her pushy curiosity.

  I feel Plat’s hand massage my shoulder: I am here. Are you still here? she is saying. I also feel the doubt in it: I am here. Did you get hurt?

  But . . . it’s as though I see, not my school friends, but Mumma and Akesa and Kate – and the rest of the Granmummas – sitting in front of me. And the boy – his phantom version – slumped in a chair at the back – so sick. The secret I have been asked to keep is here. It is right here in this room.

  ‘Look, I’m fine,’ I hear myself telling everyone. ‘I’m just really, really tired.’

  The concern grabs hold of that statement and hugs it tight.

  ‘The boy is dead,’ says Plat – solemnly, and to the Littler Ones. ‘It’s very sad, but the boy is dead and swept away to sea.’

  One of the littlest of the Littler Ones snuffles sadly in the silence.

  ‘Perhaps we should just all go home now? I mean, it’s about that time anyway,’ says Tamara. Tamara: Queen of Solutions.

  ‘Agreed,’ says Plat – Queen of my Heart, and – sometimes annoyingly – Queen of Sensible. OK, mini-Mumma! I joke with her sometimes. She’s that sensible. That diplomatic – an old word, but a good one to describe Plat. She’s Courtesy with brains.

  I feel Plat’s hands grip my shoulders and practically lift me out of that chair.

  ‘Let’s talk,’ she whispers in my ear as we walk down the corridor.

  I want to talk to her so much, but . . . I mustn’t.

  ‘I’ll miss English Lit.,’ she offers.

  We don’t miss classes. No one checks up on us, as Kate says happened in her day. Now that we’re both fourteen we’re free to study what we’re best at, or what we need to study in order to do best at what we’re best at. In my case, that’s Maths, Physics – and Chemistry, my need-to-study subject (I find it quite difficult). Those are mainly daytime subjects, but I get up at all hours for online seminars in Aeronautical Engineering. That’s my direction; that’s my love. Plat? She’s Justice, Economics, History – and Literature, her she-doesn’t-really-need-to-study-it subject; it’s not exactly relevant, is it? She studies global literature because she says stories can tell us more about ourselves than history does, although even she sometimes struggles to understand them. She is going to make a brilliant Representative, and everyone knows it . . . though Plat herself says Representatives, like my Mumma, are just that. You can’t represent anyone unless you listen to them – and unless they vote for you. People will vote for Plat, because Plat thinks, and Plat listens.

  ‘I’ve got Tess of the d’Urbervilles at five,’ she says.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘My thoughts exactly. Come on – let’s talk.’

  We take a walk. I know I cannot talk to her, but my need to be with her is so great right now I go anyway. Without either of us saying a thing about it, we take our walk. Our walk is up, up, up through the woods, criss-crossing. Everyone has their own route through the woods, everyone thinks their own route is the best. No route is so well-trodden it seems like the ‘right’ way, though certain paths are preferred. So we part, meet, part and meet again. It makes us smile; even in the pitch-dark of a winter night, when we cannot even see each other, and only hear the crack of a branch or the squelch of a muddy hollow. On this autumn afternoon, we can see each other under the canopy of trees that are only just thinking it’s time to let go of their leaves, making a big show of amazing colours.

  ‘You’re not going to tell me, are you?’ she says, as we lie on the smooth, sun-warmed rocks at the top of the hill. The woods thin out here, turning to scrub, then moor. The view is huge and inspiring.

  ‘There’s nothing to tell,’ I say, reaching for her hand.

  ‘I know that’s not true.’

  I find her hand. I hold her hand. I feel our lives pulsing.

  ‘What does “yesterday in a skirt” mean?’ I ask her.

  ‘Ha! River! Since when did you start taking an interest in history?’

  ‘Since never. What does it mean?’

  ‘It was one of the last things the American president said on social media before he died. “We are now facing a new tomorrow. It looks like yesterday – in a skirt.”’

  Plat’s so good at doing historic voices. She gets picked, time and time again, for lead roles in our plays for the Granmummas because she is so excellent at making voices that are supposed to be XY come to life – even now her rendition makes me grin, but –

  ‘What does that mean?’ I ask her. It doesn’t make any sense to me at all. I know what skirts are, of course, though people – even Granmummas – tend not to wear them much, unless we’re dressing up for fun. They’re not practical for most of the year. I’ve worn them in summer – loose things are great when the weather is hot.

  ‘I think,’ Plat says, ‘he was trying to be nasty.’

  ‘A president would do that?’

  ‘This one did. Although he didn’t often make that much sense. I think he was probably trying to say that he thought the world was going to take a step backwards.’

  ‘You’re kidding!’

  ‘No, really . . . I think he just wasn’t capable of imagining what the world would be like – you know, without men.’

  ‘I can’t imagine what the world would be like with them.’

  ‘We don’t have to, do we?’ says Plat, gently squeezing my hand. ‘It’s just a dream, isn’t it? A Granmummas’ dream.’

  I squeeze her hand back tight. ‘Let’s move into one of the empty cottages!’

  It’s our favourite dream together. It would be a realistic plan – Tamara and Silver-Moon have already got their own place, and last summer some of the oldest of the Littler Ones tried out living in a tumble-down cottage for a whole impressive month before Sweet tried to move in too and gave them all an excuse to go back home . . . but what keeps it in the land of day-dreams is Kate. She doesn’t want to move into the Granmummas’ house (it is mutual), and with Mumma away so much . . . I just couldn’t leave her – even though next year I’ll have to, at least during the week, because I’ll be fifteen and on an apprenticeship at the training airport. I’ll have to leave Kate, and the village . . . and Plat.

  ‘This is hurting my feelings, River,’ Plat says, abruptly, then kisses my hand. ‘You’re not telling me something – something important – and I don’t understand why.’

  It’s hurting my feelings too, I want to say – but I don’t. I feel all crunched up inside looking at her. I thought it would comfort me, just being with her, but it’s all so wrong. She lets go of my hand and gets up. I look up at her, from where I lie o
n our rocks. I look up at her with a plea in my eyes, hoping she’ll guess, so I won’t have to say.

  She doesn’t guess. How could she? How could anyone even think this thing could be possible?

  ‘I suppose you’ll tell me when you’re ready,’ she says – her face crinkling with pain . . . because we don’t do this. We don’t not tell each other things. We have all kinds of disagreements about things – we always have done, we always will do. Some of our disagreements have rumbled on for years: Plat thinks I should care more about our Community, about local and national politics. I think Plat should concentrate on international issues – and specifically the undeniable fact that we need a new satellite. Don’t sweat the small stuff, Kate always tells me. Plat says the local is the international – about which we then disagree . . . when we can be bothered to. We are too close to let such stuff come between us.

  She leaves. Plat leaves me. Without her, the rocks themselves feel miserable to me: hard and cold and lonely.

  And so it comes to be that the first official casualty of the boy-keeping situation is my sanity. Although I have felt as though either the world around me had gone mad or I had from Day One, it is the loss of Plat that truly threatens my mental health. Plat is my true sanity. I knew it before, when the world was normal, and now that the world is not normal at all, I really, really, really know it. It is a whole new agony in my life not to be able to tell her about the boy.

  I walk back down through the woods – alone, on my own path.

  Kate is in the kitchen, still poring over the map.

  ‘Is it dead yet?’ I ask her, optimistically.

  She looks up. ‘He. Nope.’ She goes back to the map. ‘The old gals have set up a care rota; Casey and Willow will be here at nine.’

  ‘Where’s Mumma?’

  ‘Taking Akesa home. She should be back any minute, then we can have a chat over supper.’

  ‘I don’t really want any supper.’

  ‘You mean you don’t want to have a chat.’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘Too bad.’

  ‘Well, can I at least get stuff from my room?’