Peril

by Joss Stirling

  ‘You see I believe in preparing myself thoroughly for unemployment,’ she joked.

  ‘What about Art college?’

  She wrinkled her nose. ‘Don’t think I’m good enough.’

  ‘Of course you are.’

  ‘Jury’s definitely still out on that. Are you going to apply?’

  ‘After eco-service? I think so. Part-time as I’ve got another job.’

  ‘Which college?’

  ‘Depends where Ade wants to go.’

  ‘Are you, like, attached to him by an umbilical cord?’

  ‘Exactly. We’re like brothers, from different mothers.’ He grinned.

  ‘What about the rest of your family?’

  How to explain that his people were in hiding and that he had been separated from his family for many years now, living in the community that gathered around Ade. ‘Mum died when I was little so it’s just my dad and an older sister. They’ve both got jobs that mean they spend a lot of time abroad.’

  ‘Oh? Where?’

  ‘They travel a lot.’ He had to say something that wasn’t quite so vague. ‘My sister is coming back for Christmas though.’ He’d not seen Jenny since Easter. She was one of Ade’s cousins’ bodyguards and living in Amsterdam.

  ‘How much older?’

  ‘Three years.’

  ‘That’s nice. I’d’ve liked a brother or sister but I suppose I got lucky with Theo.’

  ‘What happened to your parents?’

  She stuffed a wrapper into the empty yoghurt pot. ‘They disappeared—dead—something.’ She got up. ‘Sorry: I guess it’s a difficult subject for me. See you later.’

  Putting the tray on the clearing trolley, she hurried out.

  Of course, it’s a difficult subject, you idiot. Having lost his own mother Kel knew what it felt like to have that wound probed. He thumped his forehead. He had been doing so well until he had pushed just that little too hard. Ade may want the information as quickly as possible but Kel had to move at Meri’s pace, not his employer’s. With a sigh, he moved his tray to join his friends on their table in the centre of the cafeteria.

  ‘How’s that going?’ Ade asked, nodding towards the door through which Meri had exited.

  ‘Fine. We’re going out together on Saturday and I’m meeting her guardian. He might know more about her origins if I ask the right questions.’

  ‘Saturday?’ Ade’s eyebrow winged up. ‘But…?’

  ‘Yeah, I know, the concert. Lee, will you take my ticket?’

  Lee groaned. He was more a soul music fan than Tee Park’s brand of urban fusion that had become popular over the last decade. ‘You’ll owe me.’

  ‘I’ll be there too but as a VIP thanks to Meri’s guardian.’

  ‘You get VIP treatment and I get to sweat it out in the mosh pit with Ade throwing himself about like a demented meerkat.’ Lee shook his head at the unfairness of life.

  ‘Is he rich, this guardian guy?’ Ade asked.

  ‘No, he’s got some job that gets him the tickets.’

  ‘Interesting.’ Ade entered the new information into his phone file on Meredith Marlowe. ‘And how long have you been calling Mouse “Meri”?’

  ‘Since she asked me to yesterday. I don’t think she likes being called “mouse”. We should stop.’

  ‘But it suits her.’

  ‘Only if you think mice are sarcastic critters with a sharp bite.’

  ‘Well, now you come to mention it…. Anyway, good work.’

  Kel rubbed his throat, feeling distinctly uncomfortable. ‘It’s not exactly work.’

  Ade caught something in his friend’s expression that set off alarm bells. ‘Kel, it is. Don’t forget that. If she’s not one of us, then you can’t be friends with her; she can’t get too close.’

  He knew that. Of course he knew that. ‘It’s just a date to a museum and concert. We’re hardly shopping for rings.’

  ‘The fact that you even had that thought kinda worries me.’ Ade glanced over at Lee. ‘Perhaps I should get you to find out more about her.’

  ‘Him?’ Kel snorted. ‘After Busgate, I think she’s rather taken against him.’

  ‘She doesn’t have to like me to answer a few questions,’ said Lee.

  ‘Look, no, that’s not fair.’ Kel couldn’t bear the thought of Lee scaring the life out of her. ‘Leave it with me. I like her—but just as a friend, I promise. I won’t mess up and I’ll get the answers without anyone getting hurt.’

  ‘We’ll see. I’m pulling you off this case the moment you get too involved, understood?’ said Ade in his ‘I’m the boss’ voice.

  By the time Kel reached the Art room, Meri had found a book on Japanese prints on the resources shelf and had it opened strategically next to the blank canvas she had purchased from Miss Hardcastle.

  ‘New approach, Meredith?’ asked the teacher.

  Meri shrugged. ‘Kel was really helpful. Pointed me in the direction of this guy.’

  ‘Hokusai. One of my favourites. I always find his prints talk to a modern sensibility even though he was working in the nineteenth century.’

  ‘I was going to do a collage of the tidal wave in my art book before I start the painting, echoing the shape but made up of tiny pictures of all the climate deniers.’

  Miss Hardcastle pursued her lips. ‘This isn’t Citizenship, Meredith.’

  ‘No, but art can be political. You told us that.’

  Volleyed that one right back at you, Miss H, thought Kel as he put on his apron.

  With a sniff the teacher stalked off. ‘I’ll leave you to it then.’

  Making it look casual, Kel wandered over to Meri’s side of the room. ‘Starting over?’

  ‘Hmm-hmm. I know now what I want to do with that.’ She glared through her glasses at the canvas as if it had personally affronted her. ‘I’m not sure Miss will approve. She doesn’t like me.’

  Kel flicked through the book of prints. ‘She’s always nice to me.’

  ‘I don’t know what I’ve done but I get this disapproving vibe off her. Can you spread some of your nice guyness in my direction so she doesn’t get all shirty about my project again?’

  Kel perched on the edge of the table. ‘You think I’m a nice guy?’

  ‘Aren’t you?’ Meri lifted the glasses to the top of her head, a nervous habit he’d noticed. She was always taking them on and off as if she couldn’t decide if she needed them or not.

  ‘I must be if you think so.’ He stole the glasses off her head and put them on. They made barely any difference to his vision, just dulled the colours around him a little. Maybe they were tinted? ‘What’s your prescription?’

  ‘It’s just minus point five,’ she said quickly, taking them back.

  ‘Maybe you don’t need them then?’

  ‘You’re an optician now?’

  ‘Fair point.’ He held up his hands. ‘So, am I a nice guy or not?’

  ‘Not when you’re stealing my glasses. But I’ve decided that, on balance, you must be because you came to my rescue yesterday.’ Hands on hips, she pursed her lips; he guessed she was doing battle with the canvas in her imagination. ‘I think I’ll go for a view of Mount Fuji. It’s in almost all his pictures, have you noticed that? I want to get the heat of the volcano and the coolness of the shape on the horizon all in one abstract: do you think I can do it?’

  Looking at her earnest face, Kel had to restrain himself. He would liked to have moved closer to stand behind her, arms casually wrapped around her, her head nestled under his chin as they chatted through her ideas, but that kind of behaviour was frowned on in the classroom. Kel ushered away his inappropriate thoughts. Just friends, remember. ‘If your tidal wave was anything to go by, then yes. There’s a lot of clever stuff going on in there.’ He tapped her forehead. ‘My friends think your last attempt is great. We’ve put it up in the clubroom.’

  ‘Clubroom? You have a clubroom?’

  ‘Yeah, where I live with the guys.’

  ‘Of
course you do, your family is abroad,’ she murmured, piecing his life story together. ‘Are you refugees? Is it like a hostel?’

  ‘Some of us are, but it’s a stretch to call Ade’s place a hostel. You should come round and see the picture. I’ll make sure we’ve picked up our socks.’

  ‘Gross. How many guys in your house?’

  ‘About sixteen.’ Ade’s court was one of the larger ones as he was first in line.

  ‘Oh my God, it must be a health hazard in there: sixteen boys’ worth of dirty underwear!’

  ‘We fumigate from time to time and chase the rats out on Sundays.’ In fact Ade ran the house like a military camp so no one left anything lying around.

  Meri wrinkled her brow. ‘You…you’re teasing me?’

  ‘What do you think? Do I smell that bad to you?’

  She took a sniff before she realized what she was doing. Her blush was worthy of a Turner sunset. ‘No, you smell, um, nice.’

  ‘I’m a nice guy who smells nice: I’d better quit while I’m ahead.’ Pleased with that encounter, Kel returned to his potter’s wheel and settled down to work. He caught Meri’s eye across the classroom and winked. So cute the way she blushed.

  How could you be so stupid? Meri asked her reflection in the girls’ toilets. You actually sniffed him! Did you leave all your common sense at home this morning? She splashed her face, wishing she could wash away the memory so easily.

  The comp-punk girl from the bus, who also happened to be in her Art class, strolled in and stood at the next sink. Throwing her bag on the floor, she took out a lipgloss and touched up her dark red lips. Meri wasn’t wearing her glasses so the effect was more clown smile than the vampiric cool that the girl was aiming for, one of the reasons Meri rarely wore any makeup herself as she couldn’t take herself seriously with it on.

  The girl noticed her watching. ‘Hi. Systems running OK?’

  Meri had heard that comp-punks had their own jargon and this was easy enough to translate. ‘Fine. You?’ Meri searched her memory for a name—Sadie Rush. She’d been the one to drop the hint about not sitting in the seats on the bus. A decade ago, comp-punks had taken over from geeks as the poster boys and girls for computer obsessives. Sadie and her friends still had the geek skills but had also developed their own music and sub-culture.

  ‘Just rebooting.’ Sadie waved the lipstick. ‘So, you and Kel seem very friendly recently?’

  ‘You noticed that?’

  Sadie laughed. ‘Of course. Nothing much better to do when Art gets boring than gather some data.’ She plucked at the run in her fishnet tights, not bothered that it had reached all the way up under her imitation leather skirt.

  ‘He’s been really nice to me because, news flash, Miss Hardcastle has turned out not to be my greatest fan.’

  Sadie rolled her eyes. ‘God, yes, she can be bitchy. I think she prefers the guys, you know—sees us as competition?’

  ‘So it’s not personal?’

  ‘Not in the sense you are the only one. She told me my sketch was “gauche” and the kind of thing you’d expect from a GCSE student.’

  ‘Ouch.’

  Sadie got out a brush and began back-combing her fountain of black hair. It crackled with static. With Meri’s vision, the black had such depth and texture, shades of almost navy blue, she could have looked at it for hours.

  ‘Something wrong?’ asked Sadie.

  Caught girl-watching, so embarrassing. ‘You’ve lovely hair.’ Meri felt rather envious of the easy-in-her-skin exuberance of Sadie.

  ‘Oh, thanks. I was thinking of getting it highlighted.’ She tucked a strand behind her ear.

  ‘But you don’t need to! It’s got so many different colours in it already.’

  Sadie grimaced. ‘Crow black as my brother tells me.’

  ‘You take fashion tips from your brother?’

  Sadie brandished the brush at the mirror, eyes meeting Meri’s in the reflection. ‘You know, you’re right. He still wears brown socks with navy shoes so he can talk. Why haven’t we ever chatted before?’

  Meri shrugged. ‘I’m shy, I guess.’

  ‘So am I—no really, I am. With boys that is. This may be the twenty-first century but I seem stuck back in the 1950s. I’ve been meaning to ask Lee Irving out for weeks now and never got up the courage.’

  She liked Count Twit? ‘Yeah, that would take courage.’

  ‘The word is he digs comp-punks but I’m not sure that’s right. Getting mixed signals from him. Hey! As you’ve got an in with his crowd with Kel, could you, you know, put in a good word for me if you get a chance?’

  Meri laughed at the absurdity of that idea. ‘You saw what happened yesterday on the bus. I couldn’t exactly say a character recommendation from me would be helpful.’

  ‘But you were so cool! We all said so when you got off the bus. We’d kinda got into the habit of making way for the three of them and finally someone stood up to that crap. We were high-fiving you, but just quietly and invisibly so they didn’t see.’

  ‘How brave.’

  ‘I know.’ When Sadie smiled she showed her slightly gappy teeth, a friendly feature, Meri decided. ‘It’s not that we’re scared of them so much as in awe. Kel’s definitely the most approachable of the three.’

  ‘Yes, he is.’ This time when her eyes met Sadie’s, they shared a smile of agreement.

  ‘Do you want to go to Crazy Beanz after school, you know, hang out and have a chat?’ Sadie asked. ‘Some of us comp-punks go there most days.’

  ‘I’d like that. As long as I don’t have to have my eyebrow pierced first or something.’

  ‘Nah, that’s only for the second meet-up. See you at the gate then.’

  After Sadie left, Meri nodded at her reflection. Not bad: two friends in two days and one was a dating-boyfriend kind of friend. It seemed that as soon as one person reached out to you, others would follow. Theo had been right: there had been potential friends waiting in the wings.

  Kel woke up on Saturday with a low fever. He’d stripped off his T-shirt during the night and all the covers but still he felt too warm. He rolled out of bed, stumbled over the guitar he’d left on the floor and then stubbed his toe on the desk. This sucked: he was supposed to be seeing Meri today and he really didn’t want to cry off.

  A shower: maybe he’d feel better after one?

  He bumped into Lee in the corridor outside the bathroom. Both wearing towels round their waist, they looked like members of some Pacific island tribe. Lee’s jaguar markings were slightly visible in the afterglow of his early morning jog.

  ‘You feeling OK? You’re looking a little rough. Late night?’ asked Lee.

  Kel shook his head. ‘No. I think I’m coming down with something.’

  ‘I’ll get you some paracetamol.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Lee could be a pillock at times but he was always the first to offer a helping hand when someone was in trouble.

  After a shower and a couple of tablets, Kel began to think he could manage the day. If only his skin would stop dry-itching. He had wanted to look good for Meri; if this went on he was going to be a blotchy mess.

  Ade joined them in the sunny breakfast corner of the kitchen. ‘You look like shit, man.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Feeling hot? Itchy?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Ade and Lee exchanged a glance.

  ‘Wow. This could be it. Our late developer might finally show his spots.’ Lee grinned.

  ‘Hardly late. But I really could do without this right now.’

  ‘Oh yeah, today’s the big date, isn’t it?’ Ade got out his phone. ‘You should be fine as long as you don’t strip down to a T-shirt. Markings sometimes take months to come through after the first fever but, if she is one of us, we don’t want her to see you in blaze-out mode.’

  ‘That’d scare her off for sure.’ From his chirpy tone, Lee was thoroughly enjoying Kel’s dilemma.

  Ade elbowed Lee. ‘Look, Kel, you need to read this. I
t was everything I could find on Theo Woolf, Meri’s guardian.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Sticking to plain toast and black tea, Kel read through the notes. ‘They’ve moved around a lot.’

  ‘Yeah—some time abroad, then Durham, Nottingham, St Ives, now London. He’s been working his way up the arts funding ladder. People seem to like him from the chat online.’

  ‘Any chance he’s one of us?’

  ‘No sign of that. Parents, grandparents, all very middle of the road, traceable in their local area for years, no hint of difference from those around them. Theo is the only one with the wanderlust but he’s never made contact with any of our communities in the various places he’s lived.’

  ‘And he’s no relation to Meri?’

  ‘None at all, which is the oddest thing about this. He can’t be much more than twenty years older than her but he seems to have been her guardian since she was four. How many parents would leave guardianship to a man that age?’

  ‘There was a lot of disruption around the time of the great floods in the UK—loss of life and some public records being ruined. Maybe it was something to do with that. Definitely something to ask about.’

  ‘Try to be subtle, OK? We don’t want to tip him off.’

  ‘Yes, I get it.’

  Ade poured a second bowl of cereal. ‘It would be so great to find another girl out there. We don’t have enough.’

  ‘If our people stopped birth selecting in favour of boys, then our population wouldn’t have become so out of balance. I know your uncle outlawed the practice but I think it still goes on in some countries. We can’t carry on turning a blind eye.’

  ‘And even if it doesn’t, the time lag means that the imbalance will linger while our generation grows up. It’s a crying shame,’ said Lee, surprisingly weighing in on Kel’s side of the argument. ‘What?’ He must have seen their expressions. ‘Hey, I’m no misogynist. I can do the maths. If we want to hook up inside our own community we need a bigger pool of talent.’

  ‘So tastefully put, Lee. Maybe we should transfer you from protection to the diplomatic service?’ said Ade wryly. ‘Kel, we’ll keep an eye on you tonight from a distance. If the fever gets worse, call it off. Some guys have a strange time with their skin change.’