The Upper World

by Femi Fadugba

  Their captain stepped up to take the penalty. Hoping gravity could hear me, I reached out and prayed for space itself to bend, praying that, by some miracle, I could guide her shot safely over the crossbar.

  She gazed down at the ball … took three measured strides forward … then slotted it clean past our keeper. And, just like that, everything our team had worked for was lost.

  A chorus of boos, mostly from our home crowd, chased me off the pitch and down the tunnel. None of my team-mates could bear to look at me. Only Gibbsy followed me upstairs into the room where I sat muddy and weeping, alone. It was the same room where I’d had my lessons with Dr Esso.

  ‘Give me that jersey,’ she demanded, looking about ready to peel it off herself. ‘You never deserved it.’

  I left the grounds that evening knowing Gibbsy was right. Knowing I’d lost everything.

  CHAPTER 21

  Esso · Now

  Four ancient roads crisscrossed at Camberwell Green. As the evening light dimmed, more and more cars and buses were crowding through the dark.

  Usually, bodies and traffic move in rhythm: a bus arrives, forcing people to either jump on, get off or impatiently check their phones. But the ten or so yutes at the bus stop were far from on beat; they were lurking instead. Their confidence was practically flooding the square, and, from that extra dip in their steps, that added weight in their laughs, it wasn’t hard to guess what was in their pouches. Skengs weren’t exactly hard to get either; they were giving them out with Happy Meals up North, and even feds didn’t dare touch the roadsides strapless.

  One of the boys started walking in my direction. Another kid followed on an electric scooter. They were moving too slowly to be chasing me, but they were getting closer, almost close enough to pick my face from the crowd.

  I pulled my trousers up. Think, I told myself, then pivoted on my back foot and spotted a pub sign a few metres back in the direction of school. The Piglet’s Arms. I squeezed between two men vaping at the doorway and snuck into the red-brick tower. Without thinking about how ridiculous I must have looked, I jogged to the window, peeking through a gap in the curtains to watch the kid on the scooter roll past next to his friend.

  ‘Phew.’ I sighed and, while turning, found myself eye to eye with a guy who didn’t look too pleased with the energy I was bringing to the place. He must be the pub owner, I decided, based mostly on how much he seemed to care.

  He stepped forward like he was gliding on ice. ‘And how can I be of help to you, sir?’ His front dreads had silver streaks like a witch, and the bass in his voice pounded like a speaker pressed to your chest.

  ‘I’m meeting some mates here in a second,’ I said, shuffling away from the window. ‘Was just … err … looking out for them,’ I added unconvincingly.

  Arms already folded, he shifted his weight from one stringy leg to the other. ‘Need some ID before I can serve you.’

  ‘No need, mate,’ I said, using a cockney accent I thought made me sound older. ‘Not drinking, just having dinner. Heard the fish and chips are pukka here. Can I actually grab a table upstairs?’

  Before he could make his mind up, I was on the fifth step.

  They’d clearly invested in a fresh coat of paint for the top floor, although it still smelled like decade-old cigar smoke. It was empty, besides a young gothy couple sitting at the bar sharing a mound of shepherd’s pie. I hated that dish. It was afflicted by a lack of seasoning, and something about the ratio of meat to potatoes had never sat right with my spirit. But, after missing out on half my lunch, the shepherd’s pie looked more than peng enough, each clank of cutlery on the ceramic plate making my mouth water that little bit more. I picked the table with the clearest view of the bus stop and, when the waiter came round, ordered fish and chips, as promised.

  I was staring at my phone so hard that when I chewed down on my lip I drew blood. As the coppery taste filled my mouth, I sat wondering whether to text Gideon back, debating how much more I wanted to know. There’s no other choice, I decided as I tapped the screen.

  ESSO:

  Love for dat. What else you heard?

  GIDEON:

  Some TAS boy found ur paper. It had D and headmasters name on it. Word is you snitched fam

  I chucked my mobile across the table like it was possessed. And, after burrowing my hands into my pockets, I realized Crutchley’s snitch list was gone. I dug deeper, double-checked each corner, but when I pulled my fingers out they came back with nothing but lint. Crap! It must have fallen out when I’d pulled out my phone while trying to catch up with Nadia.

  GIDEON:

  Bmt … D is on a MERK TING bro

  It was the only possible sequel to his first text. Half measures weren’t taken with snitches; justice was total and swift. It had to be, to make sure everyone had an opportunity to learn.

  ‘Rule number one: you never rat. Rule number two: they disrespect you, get ’em back.’

  I couldn’t even remember the next bit of the lyrics, but I remembered singing them with a smile like everyone else, never realizing how it felt to actually be about that life, to be a slave to those rules. Instead of responding to Gideon, I shrank into my self-pity, wondering how the strangest and shittiest day of my life could have got even stranger and shittier. As my steaming strip of cod arrived, I couldn’t help staring at it and thinking, Just a couple days ago, you had no idea you’d be dead.

  The young couple left, and the night evicted whatever life was left on the pub’s top floor. The beige wallpaper looked duller, everything did, and my appetite was so limp I could barely find the will to lift my fork. My phone lit up with a new notification.

  GIDEON:

  Should be safe in Peckham. Texted Rob and he said theyre goin library tonight for revision. You cutting tru?

  I almost swallowed the chip in my mouth whole. I’d forgotten to text them about the library. I’d just assumed they wouldn’t go ahead without me.

  I reached for my phone on the table, desperate to warn them, but met it already vibrating for my attention. I prayed it might be Gideon calling with better news. Or even Nadia or Kato ringing to share some kind of genius escape plan. I had first noticed my hands trembling when I’d cut my cod in half, and each second since the shaking had got weightier, to the point where I could now barely hold the phone steady enough to read the caller name.

  INCOMING CALL:

  UNKNOWN

  I thought about ignoring it. I wanted to, but my reflexes got the best of me, and a second later I was poking at the answer button.

  ‘Evening, Esso.’ The voice was shaky. And white – I assumed.

  Who the –

  Before I could finish the thought, they continued: ‘It’s Mr Sweeney. I’m calling with bad news.’

  Bad news? I pressed the phone closer to my ear, gripping the table edge with my free hand.

  ‘I told Crutchley about your … ummm … unwillingness to cooperate. Based on that, your fight with Devontey today and your prior demerits, you’re expelled.’

  Expelled?

  The word didn’t feel real to me.

  ‘You’ll get a letter at home on Monday, so don’t bother coming into school after half-term – you’ll be turned away. Oh, and I already warned Crutchley that you threatened to make up lies about both of us. You had a chance to get to him first, but you didn’t.’ I could literally hear the smugness. ‘But don’t beat yourself up about it. He’d never have taken your word over mine anyway. Good luck with your life, Esso Adenon.’

  The voice vanished and the screen turned black. I hadn’t said a word.

  I felt the phone slide from my fingers and drop to the floor. A web of cracks ripped across the screen. There was too much shit coming at me all at once. Too much for me to bear.

  The table next to me started blurring and spinning. Bile crawled up my throat, the sour taste making me nauseous. A second later it was like someone had wrapped their hands round my neck, squeezing tighter and tighter, until I couldn’t down a
nother molecule of oxygen. And, the more I tried ripping the hands from my throat, the more I just scratched at my own skin. On the cycle went – my fear feasting off my pain and my pain cranking up my fear, and, with each new loop, the pair grew fatter and hungrier, hungrier and fatter.

  Is this what a heart attack feels like? I wondered. Am I dying?

  I wanted to spring out of my chair but I was stuck. It was like I was trapped inside my own body, my darting eyes the only part of me allowed to move. While struggling to break free, the full impact of the visions finally hit me with lethal force: not only were they all real, they were also inevitable, unavoidable, unstoppable. The gory vision I’d had of Preston getting run over had already come true. So had the one with Nadia and me in the hallway. That meant I was maybe an hour away from D and Bloodshed pulling up on me in Peckham, and my mates showing up for the massacre as well. Everyone had been right about me. My mum. Mr Sweeney. My primary-school teacher who once joked that, if I didn’t somehow find a way out through football, I’d eventually end up dead or in jail.

  Clearer than anything else right now was death. D was going to die. Nadia was going to die, along with all my friends.

  We were all going to die.

  CHAPTER 22

  Rhia · 15 Years Later

  In the three weeks that had crept by since Tony and Poppy had let me go, I hadn’t witnessed a dull day at Walworth Home for Young Ladies. On my first weekend, a fight broke out in the shower room over a stolen earring that looked like a WWE Women’s Championship match – choke slams, torn-out hair, the lot. Most of the beef was between Bloodshed girls and competing sets. So those of us not inked knew keeping our mouths shut and chins tucked was our only bet for dodging the crossfire.

  There were all sorts in here. Like this one skin-and-bones girl down the hall. She’d do these magic tricks (them ones where you picked a random card and she guessed it), but she always guessed wrong. The worst part was having to pretend you were impressed when she finally got it right on the fourth go.

  Then we had this Brum girl who sat opposite me at lunch every day and refused to stop staring at me while I ate.

  And finally there was my roommate, who (unfortunately) reminded me a lot of Olivia. She never stopped sharing the detailed layout of the five-storey mansion she was going to own when she was rich. During the day, she was bouncy – bossy even. But after lights out, just as I’d be slipping into the deepest, lushest part of sleep, she’d wake up screaming. Top-of-her-lungs screaming. I’d learnt there was no point trying to calm her down either – you just had to wait till she was done, then watch her wander the room in confusion like she was searching for the part of her childhood she’d lost.

  Dr Anahera’s office was on the top floor (pretty much the only room in the house not decorated like a cell) and had a nest-level view of the lone tree in the care home’s backyard. With the day near done, only the sun’s top edge floated above the horizon, the rest of its tired corpse buried in dirt. We all had to do therapy once a week and I usually signed up for the late sessions – there was less time to think after, that way.

  ‘We talked about the concept of “choice” last week. Have you had any interesting reflections since?’

  ‘Yeah, actually,’ I replied to Anahera. ‘I don’t think free will exists. We don’t choose shit.’ Looking back at everything that had led me here – like Dr Esso showing up with all that hope just before it all evaporated – there was an inevitability to my doom. An unavoidability.

  ‘Well, that’s an interesting development.’ I could imagine her practising that fake smile in therapy training, probably in the same course where they’d taught her to prevent her patients learning how she really felt about them. She always looked chirpy but concerned – a flight attendant serving you drinks while the plane was in free fall.

  ‘Lemme explain, Miss Anahera –’

  ‘It’s Doctor,’ she interrupted in her thick New Zealand accent. ‘I don’t like making a fuss about it, but it’s either “Doctor” or “Professor” that goes in front.’

  ‘My bad. So, Doctor Miss Anahera,’ I continued, ‘I think I’ve actually got proof.’

  From beneath us came the crash of exploding dishes. Another fight in the kitchen was my guess. Anahera and I both shook our heads before she told me to carry on.

  ‘I found a physics book in the library that talks about this thing called the clockwork universe theory. I actually came up with a cool thought experiment to show you how it works.’

  She probably didn’t give a toss, but she was the only person I could find for miles who was getting paid to pretend she did.

  ‘So, imagine you took a super-detailed MRI scan of my brain right now,’ I instructed, ‘and you got a printout showing you exactly where every atom in my head is, how heavy each atom is, and how fast they’re all moving.’

  She gazed up from her notes and blinked – therapy speak for ‘I’m listening’.

  ‘Now here’s the cool bit,’ I continued. ‘For our physics homework last week, we had to use this one equation to calculate where two snooker balls would end up after colliding with each other. And I had this realization that – theoretically – anyone could take that MRI scan of my brain and, using the same equation from my homework, predict how all the atoms would collide with each other and where they’d all be a second later. And you could just run that calculation over and over again on all the atoms in and around our brains to figure out where they’d be at any point in the future. And, since our brains are made up of nothing but atoms and our brains make all our decisions, you could basically predict every decision I’ll make between now and when I die.’

  She paused to take in a deep breath and waited a few seconds before pointing her biro tip at me. ‘If I’m getting this right, you’re implying that it’s equations and forces out of our control that determine our future. Not us.’

  ‘Yeah, I think so.’ I was plucking at a saggy wrinkle in the leather armrest that, at the right angle, kinda looked like the folds in a pug’s forehead. ‘What do you think?’ I asked, nervous as usual about the notes she took while I spoke. ‘And I’m not asking for your algorithm’s answer either. I actually want to know what you reckon, what you feel about what I’m saying.’

  She crossed her legs and put her pen to the side. ‘What you’re describing is the classic free-will-versus-fate debate.’ I could see her auditing each word before letting it out. ‘And I tend to agree a bit with both sides. There’s a nice quote that goes, “Life is like a game of cards: the hand you’re dealt is fate; the way you choose to play them is free will.” I guess I believe that no matter how stingy life is, it always gives you at least a few choices. Even if you have to go deep inside yourself to find them.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ I mumbled. After looking deep inside, I still felt that what she was saying was a heap of nonsense. And the statistics were on my side. ‘Look, I don’t think it’s a crazy exaggeration to say that 98% of the kids who are born into shit situations grow up and die in the same shit. And 98% of people who are born lucky – surprise, surprise – stay lucky.’

  She looked over her glasses at me. ‘And what about the other 2%?’

  ‘You’re being serious?’

  ‘You can assume I am, if you like,’ she replied. ‘Or you can assume I’m joking. In which case – please, humour me.’

  ‘Honestly, who gives a flying fuck about that 2%! All anyone ever wants to talk about is the other 2%. I literally just told you that 98% of people in this world don’t get a choice. 98%! Why the fuck are we talking about that lucky 2%?’

  I could feel my temperature rising, and I wasn’t sure I wanted it any other way. Nothing of what she’d said rhymed with reality. None of it fit into the declining grooves that shaped my life. I’d had that football contract in my hands, Tony and Poppy ready to adopt me. I’d been killing it at school, topping my class in subjects I used to be bottom set in. I’d had a complete stranger walk into my life, revealing everything about my birth m
other. And then like atoms smashed together it had all split apart again so quickly. Like clockwork, I’d circled back round to where I’d always belonged.

  ‘Rhia, I’ve spent most of our short time together focusing on one thing: slowly dismantling the shame you carry around, which is clearly linked to difficult things you’ve had to endure throughout your life. But today you’ve swung to another extreme where you now believe we live in a predetermined world with no choice and no hope. And I’m afraid I can’t support that either.’

  ‘Where’s this going, Doctor Anahera?’

  She grinned at the cheek of my response, but wasn’t letting it distract her this time. ‘My point is, I’ve seen you figure out concepts that I hadn’t even heard of until I started my PhD. I’ve watched you do a thousand kick-ups on that lawn out there, while barely looking at the ball. It’s frightening how capable you are. How powerful you could be.’

  A memory pinched me – Dr Esso claiming something similar in our last lesson. Both of them were infected with that same blind optimism.

  ‘But?’ I asked. There was always a ‘but’. Sure, I wasn’t attacking people in the showers like the other girls, but I wasn’t the easiest fosty either.

  She looked at me with pained eyes, then started tampering with the device on her ear. ‘You already made tenure,’ she mumbled to herself. ‘And it’s not like they ever pay you on time anyway.’

  The gadget flashed red, repeating, ‘Do not manually deactivate,’ loud enough to hear from where I was sitting. Two beeps later, she dropped her arms back to her lap, the light on the earpiece now off.

  ‘I’m sure you already know what this thing does,’ she said, pointing at it. ‘It’s got an AI brain that pulls from a database of over a million therapy sessions just like this. Each time you speak, the Thera-Bot tells me what response to give: the exact words most likely to have you leave here not feeling too sad or too happy.’ She undid her top button. ‘So me freestyling like this without my device on could earn me a reasonably firm slap on the wrist. You follow?’