The Territory

by Sarah Govett

  You’d have thought that basically winning the big match single-handedly for Hollets would be seen as a good thing, but the rumour is that someone’s going to be bumped from the first team to make a permanent position for Jack, and the freakoids aren’t happy about it.

  Jack said it didn’t bother him. That it just shows what losers the freakoid jocks are. And how much time they have on their hands. Free this weekend? Yes, but after I’ve walked to the river and put on some rubber gloves and fished out some dead diseased fish.

  But no one wants their locker to stink of dead fish. And no one wants to be constantly reminded of what’s going to happen if it all goes wrong in June.

  I randomly bumped into Raf as I left school. We were walking out down the corridor at the exact same time, at the exact same speed, so we kind of had to talk. I asked him about Mr Daniels and said I hoped he hadn’t got into too much trouble. I don’t know why, but as soon as I started speaking I could feel this malc blush rise up my face.

  Raf clearly noticed as a grin spread over his face and his eyes sort of narrowed at the corners so they looked sly but pretty damn sexy at the same time.

  ‘I got let off with a warning. First time offender.’ Raf smiled. ‘God he’s horrific though. A real idiot. And what does he expect if he does that to his hair anyway?’

  I couldn’t believe a freakoid would speak that way about a teacher, let alone a headmaster.

  Raf misinterpreted my shocked face. ‘Sorry if you like him and everything.’

  ‘Oh God no,’ I said, and then an image of Mr Daniels with his hair wafting came back to me and I started giggling. ‘We’re calling him Aslan now.’

  ‘Aslan, I like it.’ His eyes narrowed further to blue/green slits.

  And then we were at the exit and I saw Daisy and Jack calling me over and so I had to go as there was no proper reason to stay. And it took everything in me not to look back as I did.

  I might be imagining it, but I think Raf might actually like me a bit. You know when you catch someone looking at you and then they look away but it’s intentionally a fraction of a second too late so they know you’re going to notice them looking anyway.

  I first noticed it in double Chemistry. I was sitting at the window end of the front bench. I wasn’t being lamely keen; I’m a middle-bench girl by choice but my right contact lens had fallen out in morning break so I couldn’t see the board otherwise. Even then I had to squint like a bit of a denser to see the writing clearly. I guess I could have worn my glasses but there was more chance of Hugo declaring undying love for me than that happening. Mum says I look really nice and sophisticated in my glasses and that they’re ‘fashion glasses’, but I know that’s code for right geek and ‘fashion’ means even lamer than normal. I’m pleased she has principles and everything and didn’t make me a freakoid, but she could at least have let them laser my eyes. I’m probably the only person at Hollets who even owns a pair of glasses.

  Anyway, Raf was sitting in the middle of the front bench, which was surprising. Most freakoids sit at the back as they don’t have to concentrate as hard ’cos they’re going to upload all the key points later anyway. And there were some spaces free at the back. One next to Amanda, which, OK, even most freakoids would avoid if they didn’t fancy a plague of flirtation and coma-inducing giggling. But there was also one next to Barnaby, who’s pretty harmless.

  To look at the board or watch Mr Malovich, Raf just needed to look straight ahead. But he kept looking left towards the window. And smiling. And it seemed that he was looking at me. I checked and there wasn’t anything remotely amusing happening outside. And I wasn’t sitting next to someone properly hot like Daisy, as Daisy’s in a different Chemistry class. Obviously, it might be that he was laughing at my squinting face, which admittedly is pretty funny in a massively unattractive way. (Daisy says it’s not as bad as I think it is but I’ve done it in front of the mirror and it’s pretty hideous.)

  But the thing is even that wouldn’t be normal freakoid behaviour. Freakoids ridicule Norms all the time. But not normally by smiling. It’s usually more direct. ‘Hey, Fish Face,’ is a classic. Or ‘How are the swimming lessons going?’ is another piece of hilarity. Fish and Fish Face have now completely taken over as insult of choice. A couple of months ago, Water Monkey was all the rage and it’d be rare for a Norm to walk down the corridor without being treated to a freakoid doing monkey arms and saying, ‘Ooo ooo ooo,’ interspersed with the odd, ‘Glug glug glug’. And who do you think looked more like a denser?

  I told Daisy about Raf maybe liking me at lunch and she said she’d check it out in Maths, which we all had together in final period.

  ‘He’s definitely looking at you,’ she confirmed. ‘And he’s really cute. For a freakoid.’

  ‘Who is?’ Jack had crept up on us without our noticing. Which makes us pretty deaf as he’s not exactly a ginger ninja.

  Both of us paused, knowing Jack’s reaction.

  ‘Raf, the new boy.’ Daisy finally replied.

  ‘The new freakoid you mean?’ Jack exploded. ‘I can’t believe you sometimes, Daisy. Get a grip on your hormones, for God’s sake. He’s a freakoid. End of story. Just one more robotic loser guaranteed to take a Norm’s place. Just stay away from him.’

  ‘It’s not me he’s into.’ Daisy spat back.

  And then Jack shot me this look. And it was so full of confusion and disappointment that I felt a little bit sick.

  So Jack’s off the rugby team. Coach Potter told him yesterday evening. From hero to zero in 60 seconds. Apparently the Governors had decided that, in light of the ‘incident’ last Friday, Jack’s being on the team was ‘weakening team spirit’.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jack, but it’s out of my hands now,’ Coach Potter had said.

  It’s so unfair. Just because some freakoids couldn’t handle the fact that a Norm was actually loads better than them and showed them up. And surely if it was the ‘incident’ that worried them, then it was Quentin, not Jack, who should go. Jack thinks it all came from Quentin’s father who’s a school Governor. Quentin was one of the weakest on the team so most likely to get bumped if Jack had a permanent place. Quentin’s dad also ‘sponsors’ the team, which basically means that he buys all the uniforms and pays for the minibus to take them to games. He’s not exactly going to keep paying for other people’s children to be driven round everywhere, while his son sits on the bench like a loser.

  At least this should mean Jack stops getting Fished as much and has more time for his SAM project.

  I tried to convince him that it was probably all for the best, but although he nodded along and made all the right noises, he still didn’t look convinced. I’ve promised to help him revise for the next three big science tests, as he needs a bit of a boost at the moment. He’s also talked me into modelling for his next drawing for his SAM portfolio. That, I am not looking forward to.

  Raf sat at our table at lunch today.

  We’d been paired together for Chemistry. We were learning about Group 1 metals and both laughed at exactly the same time when Mr Malovich said ‘effervesce’ in a weirdly squeaky, high voice and then tried to cover it up with a cough. Jack started laughing too, but then stopped when he saw that Raf was laughing. He can be such an idiot sometimes.

  Then in the canteen I saw Raf hovering, tableless, with a tray and he caught my eye and walked over.

  ‘Can I join you?’ he asked, his incredible eyes looking all, well, incredible. Daisy started smirking in a really annoying way and Jack looked pissed off, but we couldn’t just leave him standing there, could we? I think Jack just wouldn’t like any freakoid on principle.

  Daisy whispered in my ear, ‘In there [big pause – the pause is crucial] like swimwear.’ I nudged her to shut up, but couldn’t stop myself from laughing. It’s one of our phrases at the moment. We know it’s lame but I guess we find it funny as swimming is out big time. Water’s kind of lost its appeal.

  Lunch was particularly bland. Mucor loaf wit
h potatoes. We’re getting less and less meat (if you can call Synthmeat meat) at the moment and more and more mucor, which only Daisy is happy about as she’s become a lame vegetarian. I think it’s just to annoy her mum. (It’s not going to be for animal cruelty reasons as I don’t think tissue cells grown in a factory lab exactly feel pain.) I once actually passed a mucor factory when driving somewhere with Mum. It was really weird: a dozen huge metal cylinder vat things where they grow the fungus and then a more normal-looking factory building where I guess they process it and add all the zillion different flavour combos that always end up tasting pretty much the same anyway, ie grim.

  I asked Raf how come he’d moved to Hollets just six weeks before the TAA. As soon as the words were out of my mouth I wanted to claw back my massively boring question. About equal to Daisy’s dad asking her first boyfriend if he played a musical instrument. She was mortified. Anyway, Raf’s dad had moved jobs – he was a scientist like Mum and had been promoted to head up a team at the Laboratory.

  ‘Robotics?’ Daisy butted in. I felt annoyed with her for talking to him, but I guess it wasn’t exactly going to be an exclusive conversation, with two other people on the table and everything. And, to be fair to Daisy, everyone wanted to know more about the robots. We’ve all heard that they’re going to make robots to run stuff like the refuse centres and Dad had just been saying the other night how old all the bin men and cleaners and road sweepers were starting to look. I mean Al, who’s normally at the refuse centre when I go, looks even weaker than me and I always feel properly guilty when he helps me throw the bags into the different skips. And it’s not as if anyone who’s had to pass the TAA is going to accept that sort of job. Well done, you’ve revised your guts out or have incredibly rich parents who’ve paid to freakoid you up. Now here’s a broom.

  Raf said that his dad was actually involved in disease-control, like Mum, but even so I could see that all talk was about to turn to robot stuff. It was like I could see my chance to find out more about HIM just start to fade away and I so wanted to talk to him that I did something incredibly embarrassing. I opened my mouth, made a sort of weird gargling ‘agh’ sound, and then shut it again and flushed fuchsia. Floor swallow me now.

  Raf smiled his killer smile again and said, ‘Sorry? Is there something you wanted to say?’

  Before I had the chance to respond, Hugo barged past and knocked his tray into Raf’s back, definitely on purpose. There was this massively tense pause as everyone waited to see how Raf would react, but Raf just looked up and smiled at Hugo. Not his normal smile. No glinting as it didn’t reach his eyes. But his lips were definitely turned up at the corners. I would have decked Hugo. Well, tried to anyway.

  ‘You don’t deserve to be a Childe,’ Hugo spat at him. ‘You’re a mutant. Your parents should have disposed of you once they saw you and your disgusting eyes growing in the WombPod.’

  Raf just kept on smiling (ish) and started to eat his dessert. This alone was pretty impressive as it was parsnip and honey puree, which everyone knows is grim.

  I told Hugo to get lost. I shouldn’t have got involved.

  ‘Getting cosy with the new boy are you, Noa? Finally think you’re in with a chance of some Childe-action? No one else would touch you. Well, Jack obviously, but he doesn’t count, now does he?’

  Jack jumped to his feet. I’ve never seen him so angry. It took all my strength to yank him back down. The last thing he needs now is to be caught fighting in the canteen and have a point deducted.

  When Hugo left, I asked Raf how he managed to stay so calm. He said he was just used to it. He’d had it all his life. Freakoids didn’t like him and neither did Norms.

  ‘Can’t imagine why,’ Jack mumbled under his breath. He can be really rude sometimes.

  Then Raf leaned in towards me, all mock serious and minty-fresh breath, and thanked me for ‘my concern’. And then he winked. Green and blue to just green and then green and blue again. It was ACE.

  Studying with Jack can be quite hard work. It’s not that he’s stupid, far from it, it’s just that our brains work so completely differently. I don’t know exactly how I remember stuff. I just seem to read things a lot, make a few flashcards and then it’s there in my head. With Jack it’s all visual though. If he can picture the thing or link whatever we’ve got to learn to an image, then he’s fine. If not, he’s in BIG TROUBLE.

  We were revising Chemistry for tomorrow’s test. Jack got all the tests for the different elements stuff, as they normally involved some colour change, but then we did equilibria and he was just so lost. I even tried an explanation based on saunas and plunge pools, but his expression turned even blanker. At one point, he got so frustrated he punched the wall again. No major damage this time, just a bit of blood on his knuckles and a slight dent to the right of the light switch. Jack’s step-dad must have heard as he yelled up at Jack to, ‘Cool it!’ which was embarrassingly try-hard. Jack’s step-dad thinks he’s ‘down with the kids’. He’s not. He also thinks Jack’s got anger issues. Which he does.

  Normally Jack’s the nicest, kindest guy you could ever imagine, but when he gets massively annoyed or frustrated about something, he goes into caveman mode and punches something. Luckily so far it’s always been a wall. He’s got a poster above his bed of Florrie Fox and I know he’s not really that into her, even though she’s really hot, it’s just that the poster is the perfect size to cover a hole he punched in the wall there three months ago. It was plasterboard, but I still can’t believe his whole hand actually went through! It’d be impressive if it wasn’t so dense.

  That happened after Jack overheard his step-dad try to convince his mum to send him to a therapist to deal with his issues. ‘After all it’s not my genes he’s inherited. You don’t want another Subversive in the family.’ Anyone slagging off Jack’s dad is like someone pressing a trigger button in Jack’s brain. The swelling on his hand took two weeks to go down and he could barely grip a paintbrush all that time.

  At least tonight Jack looked really sheepish as soon as he’d punched the wall.

  ‘I just can’t do this,’ he said. ‘And it’s all malc anyway. I mean, why do I need to know about some guy called Le Chatelier and how best to make ammonia, but I hardly need to read any books anymore? Do we really want to live somewhere filled with ammonia-making scientists where no one can write a poem?’

  I know what he means. They took poetry off the syllabus last year – no one could believe it. You can still do it if you’re going for a SAM in Literature but no one at Hollets is being put forward for one. And the few novels we study are SO limp. All about sacrifice and the importance of government.

  Dad couldn’t believe it when he saw the reading list. He’s drawn up his own list of ‘classics’ for me, from books he’s got stashed away in the chest by the sofa.

  ‘At least you’ve still got Art,’ I said.

  Jack nodded, nursing his now swelling hand.

  ‘So give your hand a break, OK? No more punching, not until after the exams anyway.’

  Jack’s given me a sneak preview of his SAM portfolio and it properly rocks. The theme is evolution and he’s done charcoal drawings of different species morphing into each other: a bat into a crow, an ant into a rat. They’re dark and menacing but beautiful at the same time.

  Each year they publish a list of the 500 students who’ve been awarded a SAM alongside the normal pass/fail lists. So far no one from Hollets has got one. But that’s all going to change this year. Jack’s going to get one – I know it.

  The only other people I know, or rather know of, as I obviously don’t know them personally – I wish! – who got a SAM are Kaio and Frankie Lebore. Kaio’s like the poster boy for SAMs as they were introduced in his exam year and everyone, even lots of freakoids, thinks his music is ACE. I mean you have to be pretty cool to be so famous that you don’t even need a surname. Kaio always says he was a pretty average student but he could play about twelve instruments by the time he was ten. Wheneve
r anyone criticises the TAA syllabus and its focus on science and facts, Kaio gets wheeled out and the Minister for Education does a big spiel about how SAMs protect creativity so it’s all OK. Hmmm.

  Frankie Lebore’s a super-hot writer and poet and got his SAM two years later. He used to be paraded around too by the Ministry to recite some ‘uplifting’ poem or short story. But then one year his poem wasn’t exactly uplifting – it was supposedly about bullfrogs but everyone knew it was about the fat, corrupt officials at the top of the Ministry, so he’s been dropped. The programme was actually pulled from the air halfway through his poem. The look on the news anchor’s face was hilarious!

  I really didn’t feel like going to school today. I had a really malc headache, one that felt like I had a stone lodged behind my left eye. Mum wouldn’t let me stay at home though. She said I didn’t have a temperature so even if we miraculously got a doctor’s appointment, they’d still probably not give me an Approved Absence Certificate and she didn’t want to risk losing our food rations for the week. Fair enough, I guess.

  My headache seemed to be cured by our Physics test results. I got 85 per cent, which was really cool as I was up there with the freakoids. Jack got 71 per cent, which was a miracle. I mean, 71 per cent in PHYSICS! If he does that in June he’ll be safe – and dry! He reached over and dug a pen in my ribs so I’d turn round and he mouthed, ‘Thank you!’ I gave a mock bow back and then we just grinned stupidly at each other for a while. Daisy got 53 per cent and started fiddling furiously with her hair, which is never a good sign and showed that she was properly upset. I tried to smile at her but she wouldn’t look up from her desk. I wish she’d revise more with me and Jack. I think it’d really help her focus, but she says that’s not the way she works and she’s massively stubborn so she’s not about to change her mind now.