“Heard he visited you regularly in prison.”
“That’s right.”
“And that he took a bullet for you.”
I stood and faced her. “What’s your point?”
“Makes one wonder about the nature of your relationship. Whether you maintained your chastity.”
“Romy!” Suyin snapped from the far end of the room. Everyone was in on the conversation, it seemed.
The temptation to rise to Romy’s insult and slap her across the face was almost overpowering, but I clenched my hands into fists and dug my nails into my palms. “I saved his life twice previously. He owed me, that was all.”
“You? Saved a Custodian’s life? Find that hard to believe.”
“That’s enough! Time for lights out,” Madison called from over near the door. Romy sneered at me and made her way back to the double-bunk she shared with Suyin. Madison popped the switch and the room plunged into darkness.
Feeling more alone than ever felt before, I climbed into bed, taking care not to brain myself on the upper bunk.
Some of the girls held conversations at a low whisper, but I paid them no heed. Although I had eventually fallen asleep in the Round Room the night before, it felt as though I hadn’t slept in a week. I rolled onto my side with my back towards the others and pulled the doona higher up around my shoulders. I expected sleep to come immediately, but it didn’t. Now that my eyes were closed, I could see the faces of my brother, sister, Sofia, and other foragers and their family members. The ones I manipulated into escaping so I could go out with them. It was like watching a guilt laden slide show.
Eventually, I fell into a shallow slumber.
* * *
I just finished breakfast when Romy, who had been noticeably absent during breakfast, burst into the room.
“He’s here!” she said, before turning and dashing back the way she came.
All the girls except Bhagya leaped to their feet and followed, chattering excitedly among themselves. The slim Indian girl followed behind in a much more reserved manner.
“Come on, it’s the chancellor!” Suyin said, gesturing for me to follow her.
“He’s here?” I asked as we hurried down the hall.
“For his weekly medical check up,” she said.
“At the Genetics Laboratory? Why not the hospital?”
“Probably because the geneticists are the most learned doctors in Newhome. You wouldn’t want some less knowledgeable doctor examining him, would you?”
“Guess not,” I said. However, I still found it odd. It reminded me of the reason Ryan sent me the lab – to find out what the geneticists were actually doing here. It occurred to me that I had one piece of the puzzle now. They were responsible for the chancellor’s health.
I followed Suyin into the foyer and joined her and the rest of the girls, who were lined up facing the front door. The boisterous excitement was gone, replaced by genuine reverence.
I stood at the end of the line, Bhagya beside me, and watched with no small amount of trepidation as an elderly Asian man stepped out of the Bushmaster armoured mobility vehicle parked outside the door. A squad of Custodians and a middle-aged man who had to be a caretaker or personal nurse accompanied him.
A Custodian opened the door and the chancellor entered. The girls held their hands by their sides and lowered their heads. I knew I should have done the same, but I had never been this close to him before, this descendent from the Founders who ruled the town with an iron fist.
He had been a strong man once, I could tell by the set of his shoulders, but now he just looked like a frail seventy-year-old. He had dyed his thinning hair black, but age spots covered his wrinkled skin. He had to have seen us as he came through the door, but he paid us no heed as he made his way to the elevator, accompanied by his entourage. In moments, he was gone. I wondered what he thought of the girls’ adoring attitude. Or did he think us genetic abominations to be tolerated and used.
“Isn’t he just wonderful?” Jess had a dreamy expression on her face.
“We are truly blessed that we see him every week,” Madison said. Even she seemed wistful.
“He looked at me when he came in!” Claire said.
“You say that every week – he was just looking for the elevator,” Romy said, but she was smiling all the same. Then her eyes met mine and the smile fell from her face like a sheet of ice falling from the ice cliffs in Antarctica.
Bhagya was the only who didn’t seemed moved by the chancellor’s appearance. I wondered what had happened to her to make her so different from the rest of the girls. She was the only one who didn’t seem to have adjusted to life here.
“Are you okay?” I asked her tentatively.
She met my gaze impassively, but didn’t respond.
“Time to see the psychiatrist again, Bhagya?” Romy asked as she stuck her face in hers. “I know you’ve got your issues, but displaying such despondency around the chancellor is just plain stupid. Can’t you forget your problems for just a moment and show some enthusiasm when we see him?”
The slim Indian girl examined Romy’s face intently, but instead of responding, turned and headed back to our quarters. She saw a psychiatrist? So she really did have problems. That thought caused memories of my brother to surface. I recalled giving him similar advice, suggesting he saw a psychologist to help him cope with the death of his teammate, Dan Smith. Little did I know at the time that he had helped his teammates murder the poor guy, and that he was stricken with well-deserved guilt.
Now that the chancellor was gone, our routine for the day resumed, starting with school.
As I devoted myself to memorising the Founders’ handbook, mastering Korean and practising taekwondo, the weeks fled by in a blur. I was exhausted by the time I hit the pillow every night.
One evening after dinner, Mr. Cho summoned me to his office. I sat before his desk, heart thumping furiously.
The councillor finished writing in a notebook, laid it aside, and fixed me with a penetrating stare. “Chelsea.”
“Yes, Sir?”
“I mentioned before that your advanced learning and ability to impersonate your brother presents me with an opportunity previously denied me.”
“Sir?”
“I’m going to send you ‘back’ to school.”
Chapter Eight
“I’m sorry, Sir?”
“Starting tomorrow, you will attend year twelve at Newhome Secondary College, masquerading as Brandon. The school has the potential to be a hotbed for subversive ideas and sedition, and I want you to be the chancellor’s eyes and ears there. You will spy on the students, taking note of radicals, insurgents, and malcontents. You are to be quietly rebellious and openly critical of the system so that you can draw out any radical elements. Then you can monitor them, and if needs be, they will be dealt with before the rot can spread.”
“I don’t understand, Sir. My brother attended year eleven over three years ago, how can ‘he’ go back now? I will be three years older than the rest of the students.”
“It is not unheard of for school dropouts to return to complete their schooling so they can go on to university,” Mr. Cho said.
“But what of my brother’s criminal record, Sir? He confessed to being a murderer and smuggling drugs in the letter he posted to the authorities before he died. Everyone would wonder why I wasn’t executed or imprisoned for life.”
“Your brother’s letter never saw the light of day, since the magistrate ruled it inadmissible as evidence,” Mr. Cho explained.
“So Jack–”
“Was only charged with manufacturing drugs, smuggling and selling them, and other lesser smuggling charges. The part he played in the murder of Dan Smith was not mentioned. We thought it best to leave that stone unturned, lest word got out that foragers were killing each other. It’s hard enough getting people to volunteer for that vocation as it is.”
“I see.”
“If anyone asks you where you have been the p
ast two-and-a-half years since you quit foraging, your official answer will be that you were housebound due to an injury sustained while foraging. Your back-story, though, should you need to give it to win over any malcontents, is that you spent those years in prison, charged as an accomplice to your fellow foragers criminal activities. Due to a lack of evidence, and your vehement insistence that you did not participate in those activities, you were not charged for them like Jack Chan was. Have you got all of that?”
I nodded, my mind a jumbled mess of thoughts and fears as I considered the enormity of the task he was giving me. I recalled telling Ryan when he sent me here that I would rather stay in prison forever than report on citizens disillusioned with living in this place. However, I now had an opportunity to be on the lookout for dangerous malcontents and report them. This way they could be removed from the general populace before they instigated another breakout or similar destructive act of rebellion.
“Be at the school office at eight tomorrow morning and register for year twelve. I will meet with you every Friday evening and you will report all and any suspicious activity directly to me. Dismissed.”
* * *
Newhome Secondary College looked nothing like the schools I saw in the ruins when I was out foraging with Con’s team over two years ago. A large rectangular gravel-covered exercise yard fronted the street. The school building, a three-storey affair, faced the two adjacent sides of the yard.
My stomach was tied in knots and my heart raced unmercifully as I strolled through the yard towards the school office. A girl masquerading as a boy, I felt so vulnerable and completely out of place as I passed dozens of other students – all male – since girls were not permitted to attend school. I focused on slowing my breathing and tried to calm my nerves by reminding myself that I had plenty of practice impersonating my brother in the past. Somehow, that didn’t quieten my shaky nerves, because I knew how easily my cover could be blown. Although I wore my brother’s baggy jeans, hoodie, and baseball cap, if someone accidently put their arm around my waist or knocked off the cap and revealed the distinctive birthmark above my left eyebrow, the game would be up. Still, if that did happen, it would only result in my “arrest” by Custodians and subsequent release back to the lab. There was no danger I’d be locked in prison for pretending to be a boy like when I impersonated Brandon two years ago.
Thirty-minutes later, registration complete, the year twelve Class-B homeroom teacher, Mr. Kershaw, fetched me from the office to take me to the classroom where my class would meet every day for twenty minutes before the lessons commenced.
Only a few years older than myself, the teacher appraised me thoughtfully as we wove our way through corridors crowded with students accessing locker banks or hurrying towards homerooms.
“What made you come back after a three year absence? And midyear at that,” he asked.
Sticking to my routine of avoiding eye contact with others where possible, I kept my head down as I replied. “Leaving school early wasn’t the buzz I thought it’d be. Decided I’d rather get a job in engineering, but need a uni degree for that. Would have come at the beginning of the year but for a recurring back injury.”
“Sorry to hear that, hope it’s all better now. But don’t you think it will be hard to pick up again? The subjects you’ve chosen follow on directly from year eleven, and won’t be easy to pick up midyear.”
“I’ve been studying at home, Sir. Didn’t have anything else to do.”
“Fair enough. Well, here we are.”
I followed Mr. Kershaw into a room crammed with two-dozen single-seater desks, each worn and heavily defaced with graffiti and scratches. Twenty boys aged seventeen or eighteen were making quite a ruckus as they talked, laughed and argued. One student in particular caught my attention, towering at least six inches over the rest. Caucasian like me, he was slim and had dark wavy hair. The way his Adams apple bobbed up and down his long neck as he spoke was both mesmerising and kind-of disturbing.
“Seats!” the teacher snapped as he stood behind his desk beneath the interactive whiteboard. The students sauntered over to sit at their assigned desks, conversation slowly winding down.
I stood near the door, feeling conspicuously out of place, wondering if I was supposed to find myself a desk or wait for the teacher. Having never stepped inside a school before, I had no idea what I was supposed to do.
“Twelve-B, we have a new student today, so please make him welcome. Brandon, grab yourself a seat,” Mr. Kershaw said.
Aware that twenty boys were staring at me, a girl pretending to be a boy, it took all my will power not to squirm and fidget in embarrassment and discomfort.
I quickly surveyed the room, wondering which of the four spare desks to go to, when a boy with dark, curly hair and bronzed skin beckoned me over to the empty desk beside him in the second last row.
I plonked myself down, remembering to mimic my brother’s more masculine style of movement.
“Thanks,” I said, giving him a brief nod.
“I’m Mehmet,” he said, nodding back.
The teacher opened the roll and called out names. When he called out my last name, the tall boy who caught my attention previously spun about and looked at me, clearly shocked. I stared back at him, concluding he must have known Brandon, even though he would have been in year eight when my brother was in year eleven.
He wasn’t the only one to show an interest in me, either. Three boys sitting in the row beside me – a muscular Italian, a short-haired Greek, and a dark-haired Anglo-Saxon – put their heads close and whispered furiously amongst themselves. I was trying to listen to the teacher as he outlined the program for the day, so I couldn’t listen to what they were saying, but I heard them whisper Brandon’s name.
I had hoped no one would remember Brandon. If they did, it would just make my job harder. I figured I’d better stay away from those three and the tall guy where possible. Last thing I wanted was for my brother’s ex-acquaintances to blow my cover.
After the morning classes came and went, I followed my classmates downstairs to the crowded cafeteria during the lunch break. It was indoors, with a kitchen at one end and filled with rows of cheap plastic tables and chairs covered with graffiti written in permanent marker or carved with a knife.
I bought myself a premade sandwich, bottle of water, and found a spot at a vacant table. Keeping my head down, I took surreptitious glances about as I ate, listening to the boys as they talked and joked. I knew I was supposed to be listening to see if any of them were spreading subversive ideas, but what hit me instead was the amazing atmosphere that came from so many boys being together in one place. This was something I had never experienced, since girls in Newhome were restricted to their homes for most of their lives. All part of the Founders’ attempts to create a society that would not repeat the mistakes of our ancestors – mistakes that led to the near extermination of the human race. The Founders believed that restoring males and females to their time honoured, distinctly different roles, would help create a society free of conflict. Women were confined to their homes for the most part so they could carry out their assigned duties as a mother and house wife. They were not to cavort around the town at will, gossiping with one another and distracting men from their work. When they did leave the home, it was to go shopping, visit relatives, or attend the Solidarity Festivals.
As I sat there, witnessing displays of camaraderie, competitiveness, and in some cases, hostility, among the boys, I realised I was jealous. I’d have given anything to have been part of something like this when I was a kid rather than being stuck at home doing needlework and housework with a mother and sister who despised me.
Aware that I should be eating rather than gawking at what was going on around me, I was about to take a bite of my sandwich when three boys suddenly dropped food trays on my table. One sat beside me and the other two opposite. My spirits sank when I saw one was the giant from my class. Even seated he towered over me. His friends were a boy with
curly blonde hair and the Turkish lad who had invited me to sit beside him in homeroom this morning: Mehmet.
“Brandon Thomas,” the tall boy said, his dark brown eyes glaring daggers at me. I wondered what he wanted, hoping he didn’t have a history with Brandon. I was supposed to be searching for malcontents, not sparring with someone over bygones I knew nothing about.
“What of it?” I spoke an octave lower than normal, and with as much Brandonesque attitude I could manage.
“How come you’re here?” he asked.
“I’m doing year twelve,” I said.
He gripped his food tray so hard his knuckles turned white. “No, not at school – in Newhome.”
Chapter Nine
“Come again?” I asked.
“One of my mate’s a forager. I recall him saying that no one’s seen you since the breakout. Figured you went out with the others.”
I glanced at Dylan’s companions. The blonde guy watched me with unconcealed suspicion, while Mehmet simply pulled the lid off a plastic container filled with steaming pasta and vegetables. He sniffed it and pulled a face, but got stuck into it with a plastic fork all the same.
“Apparently not,” I replied gruffly.
“Don’t remember me, do you?” Dylan said, leaning closer.
“Should I?” I moved back slightly. I hated it when people invaded my space.
“My name’s Dylan. Dylan Morton,” he snapped.
I just stared at him from beneath the rim of my cap. The name meant nothing to me.
“Gerry and Fiona’s cousin.” The animosity radiating from him was palpable.
I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. Gerry was one of the foragers in charge of the breakout I instigated two years ago. His sister had gone out with him. And thanks to me, that meant they were both either dead or Skel slaves.
I must have gone visibly paler, for Dylan pressed the attack. “Joined the dots, have you?”
Forager - the Complete Six Book Series (A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Series) Page 105
