Deadlands (3 page)

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I can see why.’

She glanced at me suspiciously, as if she’d detected the sarcastic undertone in my voice, but I smiled innocently back at her.

Comrade Pelosi led me past a bare area dominated by a rusty sculpture of a sun with dull metal rays poking out of its centre and towards a squat barn-like structure with a domed roof. It instantly reminded me of the shed where we used to keep the sheep in the winter.

‘All your classes will be in here.’

My stomach flip-flopped, and taking a deep, calming breath, I followed her inside.

The room was as gloomy as the reception area – the only lighting coming from oil lamps that were placed on each desk – and although there had to be thirty or so students in the room, it was almost eerily silent. Everyone had their heads bent, their hands clasped on the desks in front of them.

A freakishly tall man stood at the front of the classroom, his eyes closed and his arms raised above his head. He was almost as skinny as the Mantis, and his long hair was scraped back so tightly his brow looked as if it took up two thirds of his face. He immediately made me think of the huge rain spiders we’d sometimes find on the walls of Gran’s cottage.

His eyes snapped open. ‘So we give thanks to the Guardians for the air that we breathe, the food that we eat and the safe environment in which we flourish,’ he said.

A low murmuring started to hum in the background. Comrade Pelosi, or Acid Face as I had decided to dub her, cleared her throat.

‘Comrade,’ she said. ‘Sawubona. New pupil for you.’ Then she stalked out, leaving me stranded at the side of the classroom.

‘Please come to the front,’ the teacher said.

Squirming with self-consciousness, I walked stiffly towards him. My boots clunked over the concrete floor, and a couple of girls in the front row sniggered. The words
Give thanks for each new day
were written on the blackboard, but the rest of the dusty brick walls were bare. There were no windows, and despite the size of the room I began to feel claustrophobic.

‘Welcome,’ the teacher said, his flat black eyes boring into my skull. ‘I am Comrade Xhati. Please, tell us a bit about yourself.’

Crap. I really
really
didn’t want to stand in front of all these strangers and talk about myself. I turned to face the class, heart hammering in my chest, everyone’s eyes focused on me. The girl directly opposite me smothered a yawn and flicked her hair over her shoulder. It was intricately plaited and fell almost to her waist. The Mantis was right. I was one of the only students with cropped hair. My first day, and already I stood out like a sore thumb.

‘My name’s Lele . . .’ My voice cracked, and I had to clear my throat and start again. Someone giggled. ‘My name’s Lele. I live with my dad and stepmother and . . .’ What else was there to say?

‘Thank you, Lele. And why are you joining us halfway through the year?’

‘Um . . . I’ve just moved here. My grandmother . . .’ I could feel tears starting to build up, and I swallowed. ‘She died recently – we lived with her out in the Agriculturals – and so my brother and I were sent here to stay with my dad.’

The door at the back of the room opened, and a tall guy with a hectic mass of dreadlocks entered, letting the door slam behind him with a crash.

Comrade Xhati sighed and narrowed his eyes. ‘I hope you have a good excuse, Thabo.’

The latecomer held up a piece of paper. It was impossible to tell for sure from where I was standing, but it looked like one of the pamphlets the Resurrectionists in the parade had been handing out. ‘Sorry, Comrade Xhati,’ he said. ‘Got caught up. The cause, you know.’

Comrade Xhati nodded, but he didn’t look entirely convinced. ‘I see. Well, take your seat.’

The girl with the plaits whispered something to her neighbour and squirmed around in her seat to stare at the late arrival. She gave him a small flirty wave, but I couldn’t see if he responded or not.

‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ Comrade Xhati said, reaching over and touching my hand lightly. His fingers were icy. ‘But you must think of your grandmother as being in a better place.’ He paused as if waiting for me to agree with him. I didn’t. ‘Do you have an exercise book? Something with which to write?’

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak again.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘You’ll find a seat near the back.’

The desks all looked fully occupied, but then I spied a space at the rear of the classroom that was hidden in its own pool of darkness, its lamp unlit.

I dropped my head and retraced my steps, a flurry of whispers tracking me as I walked to the back of the room:

‘Are those army boots she’s wearing?’

‘What a freak.’

‘Check out her hair!’

Careful not to catch anyone’s eye, I slunk into my chair.

Comrade Xhati asked a question about the life cycle of an aphid, and the students all started writing industriously. Bending down to my bag, I pulled out my sketchbook. On the first page my best friend Thandwisa had written:
Don’t let them grind you down. We love you and will miss you stacks, so don’t forget us. XXXX
. Thanks to the tears welling in my eyes, the writing was blurry, but I knew the message off by heart.

Now all I had to do was to figure out how to light the lamp. I tried to attract the attention of the guy next to me, a gangly kid with taped-together glasses and furious acne, as he scrawled something on a sheet of rough paper, but he appeared to be ignoring me deliberately.

Now the tears were really building up.

‘Is there a problem, Lele?’ Comrade Xhati called from the front of the class.

‘I’m fine,’ I said as a tear escaped and crept down my cheek. I wiped it off with the back of my hand, but I could feel others waiting to take its place. I wished I could tell everyone that I wasn’t crying because of them, but instead I looked down at my desk and watched as a second tear plopped down onto its varnished surfaced. I smudged it away with my finger. Another one fell onto Thand’s message, but I didn’t try and brush that away. Instead I watched as the R and I in ‘grind’ swelled and bled on the page.

I almost jumped out of my skin when I felt a tap on the back of my shoulder. It was Dreadlock Guy – Thabo, the teacher had called him. ‘Here,’ he whispered, handing me a box of matches. I smiled gratefully and took them out of his hand. ‘First days suck,’ he said.

‘You got that right,’ I replied, hastily wiping my wet cheeks, and hoping he wouldn’t think I was lame for crying.

The first match died, but the second caught and the lamp in front of me flickered and glowed. Someone had etched
Everything’s better with zombies – NOT
into the wood of my desk, and this made me smile.

I passed the matches back to Thabo. ‘Thanks.’

‘No worries,’ he said, smiling lopsidedly at me and winking. He was cute. Very cute. High cheekbones, dark eyes, awesome hair. He was wearing an old army greatcoat over a washed-out T-shirt, but he somehow made the outfit look cool. I could feel blood rushing into my cheeks.

He leaned back in his chair, and I turned to face the front. Somehow the fact that the lamp was lit on my desk made me feel better – more connected to everyone – and the tears finally dried up.

While the other students scratched away with their pencils, I glanced around me. With the exception of Zit Face next to me, none of them wore the regulation uniform. Most appeared to be wearing denim or canvas jackets that could only have come from before the War. A couple of the girls had brightly coloured plastic beads around their necks, and some even had sparkly clips and slides stuck into their hair. I’d never seen anything like it. And there I was in my itchy grey tunic, with my agricultural enclave anti-lice haircut and my mother’s boots. I couldn’t have stood out more if I’d tried.

Not knowing what else to do, I flipped to one of the few free pages in my battered sketchbook and started drawing. Sometimes I do this without actually knowing what the sketch will eventually be, and this time, as I shaded and cross-hatched lines over the page, a face began to emerge. It looked just like the Rotter I’d spied outside the gate: large, fathomless eye sockets, a dark space where the nose should be and the curve of a skinless jaw. Looking up I saw Zit Face watching me, an expression of disgust on his face.

‘We’ll continue after break,’ Comrade Xhati said. There was the clatter of chairs being pushed back, and everyone started streaming out of the door. Zit Face pushed past me, knocking his bag against my chair. He didn’t apologise.

I hung back before following them out into the rain, down a narrow corridor and into a wide concreted rec area covered with a stretched tarpaulin and dotted with wooden tables and benches. Cliques of students of all ages were already gathered around the tables in the centre. I looked around for Thabo – the only person so far who’d seemed human – but couldn’t see him anywhere.

I hesitated, not sure which table to head for. A couple of girls were pointedly staring at my boots, so I made an issue of glaring at them and headed for an empty bench in a corner, away from the main throng of students. The rain was beating a tattoo on the canvas above me, and a fine mist blew through the edge of the covering, but I didn’t care about getting damp. I was just grateful not to be the centre of attention. Sitting down, I pulled out the roti Dad had made for me that morning. I wasn’t in the slightest bit hungry, but I picked at it for something to do while I checked out the kids around me.

For Rotter-lovers, they really knew how to dress, and now that I could see them in the daylight it was clear that everyone was wearing at least something – even if it was just an accessory – from before the War. My eye kept being drawn to one guy in particular. He wore bright blue jeans that weren’t even slightly faded and he’d pinned guineafowl feathers to the lapel of his denim jacket. His straightened black hair was tied into three bunches at the back of his head, and he was surrounded by a group of girls. Every time one of them spoke, they glanced at him as if seeking approval.

I had no idea how I was going to get through the day. Everyone seemed to know everyone else, and they all wore those vile Resurrectionist amulets. The cult hadn’t really caught on in the Agriculturals, and I tried to imagine what Thands or my other friends would say if they could have seen me surrounded by a group of Rotter-lovers.

‘Hey,’ a voice said.

I looked up. Two girls stood in front of me. I recognised one of them – the girl with the plaits. Now that I was close to her I could see that her hair wasn’t actually real; the plaits looked plasticky and synthetic. The other girl was about my height, short and stocky, her mouth full of large square teeth. ‘I’m Summer,’ Plastic Hair said. ‘And this is Nyameka.’

‘Hi,’ I said, barely able to drag my eyes away from their clothes. Summer’s jacket was a soft, pale pink satin, the stitching intricate and neat. Nyameka was wearing gorgeous, rubbery, slipper-like shoes. ‘I’m Lele.’

‘So, like, you just moved here, right?’ Summer said.

‘Looks that way,’ I replied, trying to smile.

‘And, is it better than your old school?’

‘No.’

The two of them giggled. ‘Seriously? But aren’t you from the Agriculturals?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What’s it like out there? Do you really all live in huts and stuff?’

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘No!’

‘But you don’t have, like, running water and toilets, right?’

‘Of course there’s running water! It’s not that different from here.’

They seemed to find this hilarious.

Finally Summer managed to control herself and sat down next to me on the bench. Too close if you ask me; she reeked of garlic. ‘Now, Lebo –’

‘Lele.’

‘Right.’ (Giggle.) ‘Sorry.’ (Giggle.) ‘You know the Lottery Ball’s, like, at the end of term?’

I almost dropped my roti on the floor. I couldn’t believe Summer had just mentioned the Lottery so casually. Fortunately she didn’t pick up on my shock.

‘And I’d really
really
appreciate it if you’d vote for me to be Queen,’ she continued, handing me a pamphlet. There was a crap sketch of a sun scrawled on it, and at the bottom the words
Vote Summer for Queen!

‘Great slogan,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘Never mind.’ Detecting sarcasm clearly wasn’t one of her strong points.

‘All you have to do is sign your name at the bottom and post it in the ballot box in Comrade Pelosi’s office.’

‘So what do you win if you’re Queen?’

They giggled again, which was really starting to annoy me. ‘You don’t actually
win
anything,’ Summer said. ‘It’s, like, a total honour to be named Queen.’

‘Why?’

‘Because everyone says that then you have a better chance of getting picked.’

‘You’re not serious,’ I said.

‘What do you mean?’

She looked genuinely confused. I couldn’t get my head around it. When we’d first got wind of the Lottery several years earlier, no one in the Agriculturals had taken it seriously. Most of us had assumed that it was just a crazy rumour. But what I really couldn’t understand was why Summer would want to win what for all she knew was basically a death sentence (or worse). I mean, at that stage no one knew for sure what happened to those who ‘won’ the Lottery. Just that, for some reason, the Guardians prized teenage bodies so highly that they were willing to trade water, paper, food, building materials and even electricity for their yearly supply. I remember thinking: Was she seriously that brainwashed?

I decided it was probably best to keep my opinions to myself. I was already enough of an outsider as it was. And this was, after all, a radical Resurrectionist school. ‘Where did you get your clothes?’ I asked instead.

‘You like?’ Summer said with a flick of her hair.

‘Yeah. They’re cool. Is your jacket from before the War?’

Summer and Nyameka shared a look. ‘Well,
ja
. Obviously.’

‘So is there a shop or somewhere where they sell this stuff?’

‘You really don’t know?’

‘I wouldn’t ask if I did.’

‘Well, see, if you want something you have to order it from Thabo.’