by C. L. Taylor
‘Mouse … Megan,’ I stutter. ‘I can explain. But, please you mustn’t –’
‘Take me with you.’ She twiddles with her long, dark ponytail.
‘Take you where?’ Jude’s pointed nose pokes around the door and my heart lurches in my chest. ‘If you two are going somewhere cool I want to go too.’
Please, I beg Megan silently as her eyes flick towards Jude. Please don’t tell her.
‘Where are you going?’ Jude asks again, slipping into the bathroom. ‘We don’t have secrets in this dorm, do we, Mouse? You wouldn’t keep a secret from your best friend.’
Megan’s hands twist in front of her and her chin drops. She’s going to tell her. Jude’s such a big personality there’s no way she’d keep something this big from her.
‘What’s going on?’ Jude crosses her arms over her chest. Her eyes narrow as they flit from Mouse to me. ‘What are you two up to? Why are you looking so shifty, Mouse?’
I need to say something. I need to come up with a lie that would explain why there’s such a tense atmosphere in the room and why Mouse won’t meet anyone’s eyes. But my mouth is so dry my tongue has stuck to the roof of my mouth and my brain is on go-slow.
‘Swimming,’ Mouse says suddenly, giving me a sideways look. ‘Drew is going swimming today and I want to go with her.’
‘Swimming?’ Jude’s jaw drops. ‘Swimming? You?’
She looks Mouse up and down and laughs. It’s the ugliest, cruelest cackle I’ve ever heard.
‘Yes, swimming.’ The map, shoved down the front of my pyjama top, crackles as I stand up so I wrap my hands around my neck and press my forearms against my chest to silence it. ‘So what if Megan wants to go swimming with me? Have you got some kind of problem with that, Jude?’
The laughter stops as suddenly as it started. Her lips thin and her nostrils flare.
‘You need to watch yourself,’ she hisses. ‘There’s something weird about you, and I don’t mean the fact that you pretended to be a computer game character. There’s something snake-like that I don’t trust. I’m watching you, Drew.’ She points her index finger at me and smiles. ‘You’re up to something and I’m going to find out exactly what it is.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘Thank you,’ I say to Mouse as we walk side by side through the rec room. It’s the first opportunity we’ve had to talk alone since the incident in the bathroom. Jude has been trailing us all morning. She sat across the table from me at breakfast, glowering silently before she told Polly, in a ridiculously loud voice, that you have to keep your enemies close in a place like this.
‘For making up the lie about going swimming,’ I add as we pass the games zone.
‘Well, we are going swimming, aren’t we?’ Mouse says, giving me a sideways look. A hint of a smile plays on the edges of her lips. Was that a conspiratorial look I just saw?
‘When are you getting your boob job, Zara?’ one of the boys playing PlayStation calls as I pull on the door to the gym.
‘Right after you get your penis enlargement,’ I shout back.
A chorus of laughter follows me and Mouse into the gym.
‘I don’t know how you can do that,’ Mouse says softly.
‘Do what?’
‘Laugh it off when people make fun of you.’
I look at her in surprise. Is that how I come across? As someone who can laugh off that kind of thing? Did she not see how much I was shaking at the dinner table the other day when the whole Zara Fox thing kicked off?
‘It wasn’t me by the way,’ Mouse adds as we pass a couple of kids pounding the treadmills.
I grab the handle of the door that leads through to the swimming pool. ‘What wasn’t?’
‘Who started the Zara Fox thing. I know you think I told everyone your real name because I overheard Abi call you Drew, but I didn’t. I swear. Jez asked Jude what your name and, when she said it was Zara Fox, he laughed and asked her if she’d ever looked up “gullible” in the dictionary and found her own name.’
‘I bet that went down well.’
‘Jude went bright red. I think she fancies Jez.’
‘Let me guess, now she’s blaming me for humiliating her in front of him?’ As we step into the swimming pool changing room, we’re hit by a cloud of hot, humid chlorine-scented air.
‘Pretty much. She can be vicious when she thinks someone’s done her wrong. That’s why she started spreading stuff around about you. She said you were kicked out of school for wearing shorts and a tank top to lessons, that you stuff your bra with socks to look more like Zara Fox, that you’re a liar and that you flirted with Israel when you knew she liked him –’
‘I thought she liked Jez?’
Mouse dumps her bag on a wooden bench. ‘Who knows. I’ve been here for three weeks and I’ve lost track of the number of guys she fancies.’
I dump my bag beside Megan’s and sit down heavily. Opposite us is a row of ten cubicles. All the doors are ajar. We’re the only ones here. Us and the CCTV unit blinking above the door.
‘There are no locks on the cubicle doors,’ Mouse says. ‘Just in case you were wondering. Oh, and I can’t actually swim. I like paddling in the sea but that’s about it. Anyway, cold air and water bring on my asthma.’
‘I can’t remember the last time I went swimming,’ I say. ‘I haven’t been for years. Dad used to take us but then Mason dived into the shallow end of a pool on holiday when he was ten and knocked himself out. He’s been afraid of water ever since.
‘Megan.’ I shift back on the bench so my back is against the wall and pull my knees into my chest. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way but how come you’re so chatty all of a sudden?’
She laughs. It’s the first time I’ve heard it and it’s an infectious gurgly giggle. Her laughter stops as suddenly as it starts and she claps a hand across her mouth, her eyes fixed on the CCTV camera in the corner of the room. It’s as though she’s only just noticed it’s there.
‘What?’ I say. ‘What is it?’
She shifts on the bench so her back is facing the CCTV camera then she cups her hands around her mouth.
‘You asked, the other day, how long it takes to get moved to pre-treatment,’ she says quietly.
I nod.
‘Normally it’s about ten days. But I’ve been here over three weeks, longer than anyone else. Everyone I arrived with was sent to pre-treatment ages ago.’ She raises her eyebrow and gives me a knowing look.
Oh! I get it now. Mouse chose to keep quiet so she couldn’t be assessed by her therapist and moved onto pre-treatment. Genius. Absolute genius. But she’s worried they’ll move her on anyway. That’s why she was so scared in assembly when the names were read out. She thought she might be on the list.
‘You know the post-treatment kids that were in assembly the other day?’ Mouse says, her voice so low I have to lean in to hear what she’s saying. ‘They all arrived here after me. I know what they were like when they got here. And the kids before them. They’re not the same people they were when they came in, Drew. It’s like they’ve been brainwashed.’
I lean away so I can see her eyes. Her pupils are huge and filled with fear.
‘I know,’ I whisper. ‘I met someone, at home, who’d had the treatment. He’s like some kind of programmed zombie now.’
‘I don’t want that to happen to me, Drew. I don’t want to change.’ She reaches into her pocket and takes two short, sharp puffs on her inhaler.
‘I like who I am,’ she says, as she tucks it back into her pocket, ‘no matter what other people may think.’
She looks at me so intently I have to look away. She sounds so truthful. She looks so truthful. But I only have her word that she didn’t tell Jude my real name. All this could be a ruse. She might already have told Jude about the map of the basement and all this is so she can get more information out of me. But I can’t do this alone. I can’t see any way that I can get hold of a staff pass, cause a disruption that will distract the CCTV came
ras and the friends, and slip away unnoticed. I need help.
‘Megan,’ I ask, ‘why did you get excluded from school?’
‘Schools,’ she corrects me.
‘OK. Why were you excluded?’
She plucks at a loose thread on the hem of her jumper. ‘You’ll judge me if I tell you.’
‘I won’t. I promise.
‘No, I can’t.’
‘Megan, I want to get out of here and so do you. If you’re serious about that you need to be honest with me.’
She’s still for a couple of seconds then she shrugs her shoulders. ‘Stealing,’ she says. ‘There you go. Judge me all you like but that’s the truth. I was excluded for stealing.’
When I don’t immediately reply she looks worried, then perplexed. ‘Why are you smiling, Drew? What’s so funny?’
Chapter Twenty-Three
‘So do you think you can do it?’
Megan grins. ‘Of course I can do it. Compared to nicking a watch a lanyard should be a walk in the park.’
It’s the day after our conversation in the swimming pool changing rooms and we’re sitting up against a wall of the bowling alley pretending to watch the match. The boys are totally showing off, jumping about and high-fiving each other whenever one of them gets a strike. They think we’re whispering to each other because we fancy them. Idiots. Hopefully whoever is monitoring the CCTV will think the same.
‘How did you learn how to nick a watch, Meg?’
‘My dad.’
‘Wow. Is he a …’
She laughs. ‘No, Drew, he’s not a thief if that’s what you’re thinking. He’s a magician.’
‘Like Dynamo or David Blaine?’
‘He’d like to think so, but the nearest he’s got to appearing on TV is sitting next to one.’ She laughs dryly. ‘He does a lot of working men’s clubs. He travels all over Wales doing his show but he mostly works in the Rhondda.’
‘I bet your birthday parties were fun when you were a kid.’
‘Nah, it was embarrassing, having a dad who pulled scarves out of your mouth for a living. I wanted him to have proper job like the other kids’ dads. What does your dad do?’
‘He’s a psychologist.’
‘Like Dr Rothwell.’
I nod. The more Megan opens up to me the more I like her, but I’m not ready to tell her everything about Dad just yet.
‘You OK?’ she asks.
‘Yeah. I was … I was just thinking about my brother. I didn’t go out to the running track yesterday because we went to the pool instead and –’
‘We sat in the changing rooms until Jude came in, you mean!’
‘You haven’t been swimming you liars, your fingertips aren’t wrinkled!’ I say and Mouse laughs.
We lapse into a companionable silence that I break by sighing loudly.
‘What if Mason was outside yesterday and now he thinks I’ve been fast-tracked to the treatment centre?’
‘He’ll be outside today.’ She gives me a reassuring smile. ‘I’m sure you’ll see –’
She’s interrupted by the sound of the bell ringing.
‘Lunch,’ we both say in unison.
*
We don’t say a word to each other as we fork overcooked spaghetti bolognaise into our mouths. Megan’s been really chatty over the last twenty-four hours and it hasn’t gone unnoticed. We’ve both noticed several kids nudging each other as we’ve been chatting and I’ve seen a few of the friends exchange raised eyebrows. We need to be more careful. The last thing either of us need is for her to be moved to pre-treatment before we hatch our plan.
I push the muddy-tasting mince around my plate with my fork. Jude is sitting next to Jez but it’s not him she’s watching intently. It’s me. Ever since she discovered me and Mouse in the en suite she’s followed us everywhere, including the swimming pool. The only reason we got to chat uninterrupted in the bowling alley was because she had a therapy session. I glance away. As I do, Mouse nudges me sharply. I pull in my elbows to give her more room. A second later, she nudges me again. This time I give her a look. She’s definitely the type to hog the armrest on a train.
‘I can’t move any further to my left,’ I hiss, ‘not unless I want to end up on Jake’s lap!’
She shakes her head. ‘I don’t want you to move up. I want to know what your brother looks like.’
‘Huh? He’s about five eight with brown hair, a floppy fringe and –’
I follow Megan’s line of sight and gasp softly. Over on the other side of the canteen a guy with brown hair and a green catering uniform is removing trays from the stand and stacking them up on a low table.
‘Is that –’
‘Sssh.’
Turn round, I tell him in my head. Turn round. I need to see your face.
For several agonising seconds he continues to unload and stack trays, keeping his back to us. My stomach is a tight knot. Turn around, I will. Mason, if that’s you, turn around!
Out of the corner of my eye I see Mouse reach for her tray.
CRASH!
In one quick move, she yanks it off the table and onto the floor. The plate, knife and fork clatter onto the tiles and the plate upends, splattering the ground with mince and spaghetti. The boy by the trays has turned round to see what the noise was.
And he’s staring straight at me.
Mason!
‘What the hell’s happened, here?’ Destiny rushes over to us. ‘Megan? Did you do this?’ She gestures at the mess on the floor.
Megan nods dumbly, a pained, apologetic expression on her face.
‘It slipped out of her fingers,’ I say. ‘When she was trying to get up.’
Destiny shakes her head. She doesn’t buy it.
‘Over here, please!’ She raises a hand and clicks her fingers. ‘Mop and bucket as quickly as you can!’
Mason, still staring at me from across the room, visibly starts. His eyes flick towards Destiny and he raises a hand and points to his chest.
‘Yes you!’ she barks. ‘As quickly as you can, please.’
*
I can barely breathe as Mason crosses the canteen with a mop in one hand and a bucket in the other. I’m so terrified that Destiny or one of the other friends will realize we’re related that I avoid making eye contact with him and instead continue to push my spaghetti around my plate with my fork.
‘Sorry,’ Megan says, as he draws closer. ‘I’ve made more work for you.’
‘No worries. I was getting bored of stacking trays anyway.’
Tears well in my eyes at the sound of my little brother’s voice and I have to bite down on my lip to stop them from spilling onto my cheeks. He sounds normal. They haven’t sent him to treatment yet. He’s OK.
‘Megan, would you please not talk to this student,’ Destiny says, sounding flustered. ‘He’s working here for punishment, not to be fraternized with and – oh for God’s sake! Josh! Get down from that chair. If you don’t sit down immediately …’ She rushes off to the other side of the table where Josh and Connor are standing on their chairs and having a sword fight with breadsticks. Several of the other friends rush over to them too.
I can feel Mason standing behind my chair. I can hear him sniffing as though he’s got a cold, and the splosh of the mop hitting the bucket. He’s so close I could touch him if I reached out a hand.
‘It’s OK,’ Megan hisses, nudging my elbow. ‘The friends are all distracted, but be quick.’
I slowly twist in my chair; I don’t want to draw attention to myself. Mason’s floppy hair looks dirty, there are raised, angry spots on his jaw and dark circles under his eyes. I’ve never seen him look so pale and unhealthy. As I watch, he slaps the mop onto the tile floor, smearing bolognaise sauce left and right and then dunks the mop into the bucket. He knows I’m sitting here. He saw me from across the room. So why isn’t he looking at me?
‘Mase,’ I whisper. ‘Are you OK?’
He doesn’t reply. Instead, he twists the water out of th
e mop head then slaps it back onto the floor.
‘Mason. Talk to me, please.’
This time he looks up. His blue eyes meet mine and he blinks, once, twice, as his eyes fill with tears.
‘What are you doing here, Drew?’
‘I’ve come to help you escape.’
‘You?’ He laughs softly, dryly.
‘What?’
‘You were supposed to get help – tell the police, a teacher or social services or someone. Or at least Mum! What good can you do?’ He crouches down, picks up the broken pieces of plate and stacks them up on top of each other.
‘You were never supposed to come here, Drew,’ he whispers, as he reaches between me and Megan and places the broken crockery on the table. ‘You’re in danger too now and it’s all my fault.’
‘No, it’s not!’ I touch the back of his hand. He snatches it away as though electrocuted. ‘Anyway, I’ve got a plan to get us both out of here.’
‘Quick!’ Megan hisses. ‘Destiny’s coming back.’
‘Here.’ I shove the folded map into Mason’s hand. ‘It’s a map of the tunnels in the basement. They lead outside.’ Out of the corner of my eye, I see a bright blue sweatshirt heading towards us.
‘Steal a staff pass,’ I say. ‘And we’ll meet you down there after dinner, in the central tunnel, under the entrance hall.’
‘Thanks for tidying up!’ Megan shoves me away and throws her arms around a startled Mason and hugs him close. A second later, Destiny draws up alongside us.
‘Megan Jones!’ she barks. ‘Let go of that boy!’
But Megan continues to hang tightly onto my brother’s shoulders. When he tries to wriggle away she tightens her grip.
‘Megan!’ Destiny yanks at her arm. ‘Let go!’
‘Would you like a cuddle too?’ Mouse says, suddenly letting go of Mason. She hooks one arm around Destiny’s neck and the other around her shoulders. Destiny’s a strong woman but Mouse has surprise on her side and it takes the friend several minutes to extricate herself from Mouse’s death grip. Several of her dreadlocks come loose from her bun during the struggle and when she finally pulls away and stands up her cheeks are flushed.
