The Territory

by Sarah Govett

  Mum made me stay in bed the whole day and wouldn’t even let me revise, didn’t want me to strain my head! We laughed about it. Never, when I was little, would I have thought I’d be pushing my mum to let me study more. Please, just one more chapter of Physics – pretty please!

  I had visitors all afternoon. It was better than a birthday.

  First Daisy, filling me in on all the details. Like how Hugo and Quentin had just fled as soon as I’d been punched out. How Raf had gazed ‘all gooey eyed’ on my limp body. (Cool.) And how Jack had almost gone into a state of shock at what he’d done. And how she’d had to spend the rest of the night (with Raf’s help – he’s so great!) cleaning up; trying to tidy up any breakages and remove bloodstains. Daisy was trying to pretend it was all OK and just really funny, but I could tell she was seriously stressing. One of her mum’s prized tacky glass sculptures had been shattered and Daisy hadn’t been able to completely get the blood off the wallpaper. In the end they’d pulled a sofa in front of it as a lame disguise, so hopefully her Mum won’t move it and go mental when she gets back in five hours time.

  Raf dropped round at about 3pm, but massively annoyingly I’d just fallen asleep again so didn’t get to see him. Even worse, Mum hadn’t realised I was asleep and had shown him into my room and I’d been snoring. How unattractive is that!?!

  Jack sheepishly appeared just before dinner. His face was all puffy and it looked like he’d been crying although he totally denied it.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Noa,’ he said, and his voice was regret itself. ‘I can’t believe I hurt you. I didn’t see you there. I just see red and then … it’s like my fists control themselves. I know that sounds lame, but that’s what happens. Honestly.’

  ‘Don’t worry – I know what you’re like. I know it was an accident. How’s Quentin?’

  ‘Dunno. I think I broke his nose.’

  ‘Poor Daisy. Lucky Raf was there to help her clean up.’

  ‘Well, he did start it.’

  I couldn’t quite believe what Jack was saying.

  ‘He basically jumped Hugo and caused the whole fight.’

  ‘Jack. You are unbelievable. They came to get us drunk and perv on Norms. Quentin was feeling me up. Just get out, Jack. Get out.’

  I was so upset I nearly forgot about having to see Mr Daniels tomorrow. Nearly.

  Mr Daniels is a nasty man with too much power and now he’s out to ruin my life.

  I made sure I got to his office first thing as he has a real issue about being on time. I knocked and he made me wait ages before saying I could come in. I don’t think he was actually busy – it just made him feel important.

  It’s the first time I’ve been in his office. It was weird. I know from hearing other teachers talk that he’s got a family and stuff but there weren’t any pictures of them on his wall or on his desk. The only photo was of him fawning over the Education Minister. It was embarrassing.

  Anyway, he gave me his most serious ‘I’m disappointed in you’ look and asked if there was anything I wanted to say.

  I know I should just have apologised and grovelled and everything, but looking at him and his tragic hair plugs and his smug, fat face, I just couldn’t do it.

  ‘Hugo Barnes started it,’ I began.

  Mr Daniels didn’t listen of course. He just pompously raised one hand.

  ‘I’m very disappointed in you, Noa Blake,’ he said. ‘Hollets is a rare and special school in that, unlike many of its peers, it opens its doors to the less-evolved members of our society.’ (I nearly choked here – I can’t believe he actually said that to my face. And anyway it’s 85 per cent freakoids so the door’s clearly not open very wide. And he’s a Norm himself although he seems to have conveniently forgotten this fact!) He went on to say that my ‘deplorable antics’ (antics!?! – it was just a robot dance!!) lent weight to the argument that there was no place for Norms at a place like Hollets.

  Now this is the worst bit. He then looked me directly in the eye and I’m sure I saw a glimpse of a smile on his lips. He was actually enjoying this. ‘I have no choice in these circumstances, but to give you a formal caution.’

  My head reeled. New Ministry regs meant that a formal caution now automatically meant the deduction of two points from your final TAA mark.

  ‘But that’s two points,’ I cried out. ‘How can that be fair?!’

  His mouth was a thin grey line.

  ‘I don’t set the penalties, Noa. And if you ever speak to me in that insubordinate manner again you will lose a lot more than two points.’

  It took all my self-control to remain silent.

  But still: two points. Two whole points!! Hugo Barnes gets nothing and I lose two points. Two points can easily be the difference between a pass and a fail. But Mr Daniels just sat there as if he’d just given me a detention or asked me to pick up litter. Does his miniscule brain not register he might have given me a death sentence? Or does he get some sort of perverse kick out of playing God like this?

  ‘You, student of ant-like importance, I sentence you to die a slow and miserable death of starvation and disease, now please turn to page twenty-four of your text book and copy out the section on inert gases.’

  I don’t know what I’m going to tell my mum. She’s going to go mental.

  I told Daisy and she tried to cheer me up, saying I’d be fine and my marks were good enough anyway, but I could tell by the way she started curling her hair with her finger that she was properly worried for me. I avoided Raf. I saw him hanging around by the main entrance where we’d arranged to meet so I slipped out the side door. I think he saw me. I know it’s not his fault but I couldn’t really handle seeing any freakoids now, even him. I mean he was caught openly laughing at Mr Daniel’s hair in Assembly and gets away with an off-the-books bollocking. Jack’s right. It’s all so massively unfair.

  It was Jack’s shoulder I really wanted to cry on, but things are so messed up between us. Why can’t everything just be simple? Like it used to be.

  I take back what I once said. The Territory is a terrible place to live.

  We went to see Aunty Vicki and my cousin Ella today.

  It took ages to get there. There weren’t many other cars as electricity’s so heavily rationed, but Aunty Vicki and Ella live right at the edge of the Territory so it’s never quick. Mum gets extra rations anyway in case she needs to get to some terrible disease outbreak quickly.

  Aunty Vicki always jokes that you can see the mosquito grids and hear the cries of the Wetlanders (Fish) from their top window. Then we say, ‘What do they sound like?’ and she takes a big gulp of water and gargles and says ‘Gulp, gulp’ at the same time and manages to snort some of the water out of her nose. I know it sounds lame, but it’s actually pretty hilarious. And difficult. I tried it once at home but snorted the water down my windpipe instead and literally couldn’t breathe for two minutes. Drowning would be really rubbish. I should write that on a Post-it and stick it above my revision timetable. A motivational aid. Dad got me this really lame book about ‘how to revise’ and there was a whole chapter on ‘motivational aids’. It was pretty dense. You don’t exactly get skivers anymore.

  Living next to the Wetlands isn’t that hilarious for Aunty Vicki and Ella though. Occasionally they’re woken at night by the sirens, massively powerful searchlights and the staccato of machine-gun fire, if some poor Wetlander decides it’s all too much and tries to scale the Fence. They’re usually firing at dead bodies, the fence being electric and everything. There’s been less and less mention of any of this recently though. Ella’s sitting the TAA this year too so I guess it’s all a bit more real now.

  Ella rushed out to meet us and gave me a massive hug and sort of ruffled my hair. She always acts like she’s my big sister or something, even though she’s only three months older than me. Aunty Vicki waited inside the house. She gave me a hug in the hall but just sort of nodded at Mum. I mean she said all the right things, but there was no real warmth there. Which is rea
lly sad ’cos Mum always says they were really close when they were young. There’s a picture on our mantelpiece of them with their arms wrapped round each other, matching tragic fringes and gappy teeth.

  We sat outside in their tiny paved square. They’ve turned all the rest of their garden into a vegetable plot. Food’s scarce out here. But the vegetables didn’t look so good. Lots had greyish-yellow leaves. ‘Grey rot,’ Aunty Vicki said. ‘Apparently the soil is too wet. And salty.’ And then she did this weird sort of little laugh, all brittle and harsh and we didn’t really know whether we should be joining in or not, ’cos it wasn’t funny. At least Dad managed a chuckle and Aunty Vicki seemed to thaw a fraction of a degree. He always gets it right.

  Mum and Aunty Vicki started getting on a bit better until school got mentioned.

  It’s a massive issue between them. That I’m going to Hollets and Ella’s stuck at Swithin’s (a right dump).

  ‘How’s school?’ Aunty Vicki asked and the temperature literally dropped about five degrees. I moronically started talking about my new friend Raf.

  ‘Raf?’ Aunty Vicki practically jumped down my throat. ‘That’s a pretty posh name for a Norm.’

  My silence said everything.

  ‘Let it go, Vic,’ said Mum.

  But she couldn’t. ‘What, so it’s not enough that your daughter is going to Hollets, she’s now got to make friends with Childes too? I’m surprised you deign to even visit us. We are so beneath you now.’

  It’s like she blames Mum. Like Mum’s massively immoral for taking up a place that the Ministry pays for. I asked Mum about it once and she said that Aunty Vicki thinks that she should quit the Laboratory as the system is so unfair. But Mum’s doing good work. She helps with disease prevention and everything. Mum just turned away and looked embarrassed when I said this.

  ‘I’m no saint, Noa,’ she said. But she’s just being modest.

  I hung out with Ella in her room. She has a massive print of Kaio above her bed. He is just the coolest. Mum would only let me put up prints of animals or maps or something equally lame which would obviously be much more embarrassing than nothing, so I have nothing on my walls. I saw Ella’s school files stacked on a bookcase. I had a rant about how boring I found Geography and how hard I found Trigonometry. Ella looked at me blankly. ‘Trigonometry,’ I repeated, afraid that I’d pronounced it wrong and looked like a complete denser. Ella seemed to shrink a bit and said they hadn’t done that. Which is really weird as it’s a major part of the Maths paper. Ella said that they hadn’t done a lot.

  They did a lot of other stuff, like survival skills. She can purify water using a muslin and iodine tablets, identify five types of edible seaweed and light a fire using two dry sticks. Which is cool and everything but…

  ‘In case we fail,’ Ella said quietly. I felt sick. I mean she’s not even got the chance to try. How could she beat me, let alone a freakoid, if she’s not even learning Trig? Ella’s actually really clever. She gets things (and agrees that Uncle Pete is horrific, which is an excellent indicator). They’re just preparing her to be shipped off.

  Ella said that Aunty Vicki’s trying to help her study after work every day. But often she finishes late. She has to work long shifts now that Uncle John isn’t around anymore.

  ‘It’s not so bad,’ Ella said. ‘Mum’s going to come too. And your mum’s going to help us out with malarial tablets and stuff.’

  ‘Don’t talk like that. It’s not going to happen,’ I tried to reassure her. ‘I’m sure you’ll pass.’ But we both heard how fake my voice sounded.

  There was an awkward silence.

  ‘Let’s not talk about it any more.’ Ella said. ‘Since when do we ever talk about school anyway? Let’s talk about guys.’ And then she launched into far, far too much detail about some guy called Matt who she’s sort of off and on with and who likes to walk around with his hand around the back of her neck, which if you ask me, shows he’s clearly a bit of a psycho.

  ‘Now it’s your turn.’ Ella looked at me eagerly. ‘Have you snogged Jack yet? Have you conquered the ginger mountain?’

  I gave an exasperated sort of ‘Aggghhh. How many times do I have to tell you? WE’RE JUST FRIENDS.’

  Ella laughed so much she looked like she might pee herself just a little. She loves winding me up. Then she sat up all serious and asked, ‘You’re not really friends with a freakoid, are you?’

  ‘He’s not like the other ones. He’s … he’s cool.’

  ‘Yeah, right!’

  ‘No, he is. He’s interesting and funny and has these really amazing eyes that change colour, well, not change obviously as that would be impossible, but seem to change if he winks, which he does a lot.’

  ‘Oh, God. You’ve actually fallen for a freakoid, haven’t you!’ Ella sounded properly shocked. She wasn’t winding me up this time. ‘You do know that it’ll just be some sort of sick game to him, don’t you. “Hey let’s snog a Norm. See what it’s like while some my age are still around.” It’s probably for a bet.’

  ‘He’s not like that.’

  ‘They’re all like that.’

  ‘Do you actually know any?’

  ‘What, you mean because I’m at some rubbish school and not good enough to mix with them?’

  And then we both looked at each other and realised that we sounded exactly like Mum and Aunty Vicki.

  It was time to go and I felt really bad about leaving Ella with things being rubbish and tense. We’ve never argued before and that’s probably the last time I’ll see her before the exam. I made Dad stop the car at the end of the drive and I sprinted back and just hugged Ella goodbye again, properly this time.

  ‘Good luck! Stay dry,’ I said, furiously blinking away tears.

  ‘Good luck! Stay dry,’ she repeated, eyes wet too.

  During the drive back I asked Mum and Dad if there was anything we could do to help Ella. I mean it’s so unfair. They looked at each other before talking. They do this sort of telepathic agreeing thing before talking about something serious. I wish I knew how it worked.

  Then they just shook their heads. We didn’t have any money spare. If it wasn’t for the free place, I’d be at some dump school too. Even Dad’s salary as a family lawyer wouldn’t cut it. He’d have to be doing humungo deals rather than wills and probate to pay Hollets’ fees.

  Mum said that Aunty Vicki would go too if it came to it. Make sure Ella was safe.

  ‘In a way, Ella’s lucky,’ Mum said. I nearly choked. Yeah, real lucky.

  Raf is complicated. Good complicated, I guess, but complicated nonetheless.

  He came round to mine to study this evening. By some horrific bit of bad luck on my part, both Mum and Dad were back from work and so I had to do the whole ‘meet the parents’ thing. Raf was great with them – really polite but still natural and totally himself rather than some phoney creep version. Mum seemed to like him immediately, although she tried a bit overly hard at first and did massively exaggerated smiles like she was auditioning for mime school or something.

  Dad was outwardly completely friendly, but I could see he was still trying to figure Raf out, work out what some freakoid might want with his precious daughter. I was kind of pleased about that. Dad’s always distrusted freakoids that bit more than Mum. I think it was him who was totally adamant that I was going to be born a Norm.‘No one is messing with my beautiful daughter’s head.’ Go Dad!

  He ruined it a bit though with his, ‘Well, I suppose you want to go and study now,’ as if it were some massive innuendo for drop down and do it on my bedroom floor. We escaped to my room. Dad insisted we left the door open though, which again made me turn scarlet with embarrassment and Raf shake with laughter.

  Anyway, as practice for the analytical writing section of the English exam we had to write a 500 word essay on how well the introduction of the TAA solved our problems in the aftermath of the Great Flood. Upside – this was a section in which you had to actually structure an answer so the freakoid
s didn’t have an advantage. Downside – although in English there’s not supposed to be a right answer, in the exam there definitely was one – one that basically said everything about the Territory and the TAA was just AMAZING!

  When I talk to Jack or Daisy about the TAA, the conversation always goes the same way. We agree that (1) it’s massively cruel to send any fifteen year old to their pretty much guaranteed death and (2) it’s massively unfair that freakoids have this huge advantage and that the test is nearly all about recall and facts rather than ideas or expression.

  With Raf it was different. He sat on the floor. We both did. He said he finds it more comfortable and I didn’t want to tower over him and give him an unflattering view of my thighs pressed onto a chair. (Daisy’s advice.)

  ‘So, this is such a great essay!’ I laughed, automatically assuming Raf would join in. ‘The TAA is the purrrrrrrfect solution to all our problems.’

  Before I had time to worry that I’d somehow morphed into Daisy, Raf replied, ‘It might not be the worst.’

  I was silent, stunned, betrayed. Was he no different from every other freakoid after all?

  ‘So the TAA is OK then, is it? “The best we can do”? SERIOUSLY?!? It’s OK that in June thousands of Norms are going to die, is it? It’s OK that my cousin and probably my friends and probably me are going to be dragged from our homes and dumped in a malarial swampland? That’s great, isn’t it? That’s just such a great system.’

  By now I was standing, angry. I didn’t care how chunky my thighs looked from his angle, I kind of hated him right now.

  Raf remained calm as ever and gave me one of his most hypnotising blue/green gazes.

  ‘Noa, that’s not what I meant and if you calm down for one minute… OK, obviously I phrased that badly. The TAA is horrific. I just meant no one’s come up with a good solution and some have come up with even more terrible ones. What do you know about what happens in other countries?’