Slated (17 page)

‘Oh, and Kyla?’

I turn. ‘Yes?’

‘Don’t look so pleased with yourself. I don’t want to be bothered by you, or by anyone about you, again, any time soon. Is that clear?’

She smiles brightly as she says the words, which makes them worse, somehow.

I wipe the grin off my face. ‘Yes,’ I say, and bolt out the room and down the stairs.

Mr Gianelli, my champion, isn’t what I expect at all.

‘Who are you?’ he demands, scowling, when I slip in just after the bell.

‘Kyla Davis.’

‘Who?’

‘A new student. You arranged it with Dr Winston?’

At the mention of her name his scowl deepens. ‘Ah ha! You are the owl girl. I had to endure three meetings with that insufferable woman on your behalf.’

I look nervously behind me, but the door is shut; Mrs Ali is gone. As I turn back and glance over the students, my heart sinks: Phoebe.
Oh great.
She is in my art class, too.

He whips my owl sketch out of a pile on his desk, holds it up to the class and before he lets me sit down, proceeds to tell everyone exactly how I could make it better. And he’s right.

But today, we are painting.

What to paint?

My Happy Place
: maybe it will help me go there. I start on the sky. Soon I am absorbed in the blues, mixing them on a palette, adding wisps of cloud, white swirls with a palette knife. So lost in the sky that I almost don’t register low voices behind.

‘Wonder what she did to get Slated.’

‘Bet it was bad.’

‘Couldn’t have been much: she’s a scrawny little wuss.’

‘Maybe she tortured little children ‘cos they were the only ones smaller than her.’

‘Maybe she set fire to her house and roasted her parents alive. Sort of a mum and dad barbecue. Bet they screamed.’

I spin around.

‘Maybe I slit someone’s throat with a palette knife.’ I balance it on one hand as if checking the weight.

Her friend backs off but Phoebe laughs. ‘You know she can’t hurt anyone, now, no matter what she did before. She’ll die if she tries. Her brain will fry: zap!’

I turn back to my painting.

Green trees blue sky white clouds green trees blue sky white clouds…

‘Happy with your new timetable?’ Mrs Ali asks, smiling pleasantly at break.

And I don’t know whether to say the obvious yes, because with or without Phoebe and trying not to think what they said, I love it. Or will she feel I’ve been getting around things, and I’m in trouble if I’m happy about it?

She laughs. ‘Your face: you should see it sometimes.’

So she is in a good mood today.

I smile hesitantly. ‘I love my art class. It will really help me—’ I scan my brain for what the Head said at Assembly ‘—reach my full potential.’

She looks amused. ‘Don’t just parrot the words, Kyla. You must do your best at all times to fulfil your contract.’

‘Can I ask a question?’

‘Sure.’

‘What happens if someone like me doesn’t fulfil their contract. Can they be…returned?’

She stares back at my eyes. Something crosses her face, so fast I’m not sure what it is; then it is gone. She smiles. ‘Just keep your head down for a while, Kyla, until Dr Winston forgets how you annoyed her.’

She walks me to my next class, and I think about what she said. She didn’t answer the question. And that, in itself, is an answer.

Thud-thud; thud-thud
. My feet thump along the track.

Maybe she tortured little children…maybe she set fire to her house and burned her parents alive…or slit someone’s throat with a palette knife.

I run fast, and faster.

I can see my hands, with a knife. Maybe a sharp one from the kitchen, not a palette knife: too blunt. Or setting a fire: spraying petrol and throwing a match. Or, instead, flammable liquid in a glass bottle, a cloth in the end set alight and the whole thing smashed through a window. Would I have stayed to listen to the screams? No. How could you be sure to get away?

But I didn’t get away. Here I am.

The track blurs past and I run to keep my levels up, but can’t stop the thoughts and images tumbling in my mind.

What about torturing little children? I couldn’t have done that. Could I? Then I remember my dream: students blown to bits on the bus. They weren’t much more than children.

Could I have done any of these things?

Someone is getting close, behind me; I speed up but still they gain. I glance to my right: Ben.

‘Heh,’ he says. ‘You can go.’

I nod, unable to speak, my lungs full of the effort of keeping up the oxygen supply for my body.

A few more laps, and a few more, Ben beside me now. Once the paint brush was out of my hand and art class over, Phoebe’s words kept repeating over and over in my head. I’d come straight to the school track at the end of last morning class, today the first day I didn’t have to go to the Unit for lunch. Ben’s presence is comforting, though he gives up trying to speak when I don’t answer. Gradually, he lowers his pace. Reluctant to leave him behind, I slow down with him, bit by bit.

‘Enough?’ he finally says, and I nod. We slow, and stop. He links his arm into mine and leads me away, and we walk around the school grounds, along the paths. Other students mill about but ignore us.

‘Want to tell me what is wrong?’

I shrug.

‘Something had you running like a lunatic.’

‘Just a few things some girls said, that’s all. It’s stupid.’

‘What?’

I don’t answer, but I tug his hand to change direction. We walk alongside the admin building until we get to the memorial, and I stop in front of it.

So many names, carved in stone: all dead. Six years ago. What an imagination I have. I give myself a shake. I was only ten years old then, I couldn’t have been there.

‘Kyla, what is it?’

‘Don’t you ever wonder? What you did to get Slated. What if I was a terrorist? What if I killed people, like these students: threw a bomb on their bus.’ Ben shakes his head. ‘I don’t know what I could have done. I can’t think I could have ever done anything as horrible as that; you, either. But we’ll never know. All we can do is live our lives as they are now; be who we are, now.’

I consider his words. The thing is, I can’t imagine Ben ever having done anything dreadful; Amy, either. But somehow I am less sure of myself.

‘But how can I know who I am now, if I don’t know who I was?’

‘I know who you are: Kyla, lunatic runner, and my friend.’ He slips his arms around my shoulders. ‘Kyla with the shy smile, and the face that shows every feeling inside. What else is there to know?’

I look up in Ben’s warm eyes, like melted chocolate, just now asking a question:
who are you, Kyla
?

‘I like to draw, and paint,’ I say, slowly. ‘I’m good at it, too.’

‘Kyla the artist. Good. What else?’

I rack my brains for answers. ‘I hate broccoli. I like cats.’ It’s a start, I guess.

Ben smiles and his arms tighten. My stomach flips.
Sweet sixteen and never been kissed.
There is something in his eyes that says it will be
now
, me with clothes stuck to my skin and hair limp from running, out in the open where anyone might see. Tori’s presence still hangs between us, but just now he doesn’t seem to care, and neither do I.

But something draws my eyes, makes me turn to look at the memorial and all the carved names. The one at the top suddenly jumps out as if someone had shouted it out loud.

Robert Armstrong.

I gasp and pull away. Ben lets go.

‘What is it?’ he says.

I step up to the memorial, and feel along the letters. Amy told me Mum had a son named Robert, who died. Before she married Dad, her name was Armstrong.

Robert Armstrong
.

Is it her son? My…brother?

‘Kyla, what’s wrong?’

But I shake my head; I can’t tell him, though I see the disappointment. His face says
don’t you trust me?
Amy made me promise to never mention Robert, so how can I?

The afternoon passes in a blur. My levels manage to stay up in the 5s still from running, but my thoughts are in turmoil. How could Mum have me – Amy, too – if her son was killed by terrorists? And years before, her parents were, as well. To get Slated you had to have done something really bad. What if I was a terrorist?

That night at dinner is weird. Mum seems to keep staring at me, catching me out. To sit up straighter; to eat my broccoli, which no matter how I try makes me gag; to answer inane questions about school. Maybe she is watching for me to slip up enough so she can send me back.
Return
me, like Tori.

Amy has to study for a maths test; I jump to wash up. I will do everything exactly right. I concentrate: stack the plates, wipe the counters. Wash each dish with extreme care, and…

‘What is with you tonight?’

I spin round and knock a glass off the side; it smashes on the floor. Splinters fly everywhere. Mum sighs and I scamper for the dust pan and brush in the cupboard.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say, and kneel down to brush the shards on to the pan.

‘Kyla, it is just a glass. It’s no big deal. Now, are you going to tell me what is wrong?’ And I look at Mum, really look at her: and she isn’t the Dragon, at least not for now. Her face is troubled, not angry, and she reaches out a hand to help me stand up. ‘What is it, hmmm?’

I can feel pricking at the back of my eyes and blink furiously, but it’s no good.

‘Well?’

‘I hate broccoli,’ I say, and burst into tears. But that isn’t why I am crying, is it? It is more that I hated broccoli the first time I tasted it, here, just days ago. As soon as it was in my mouth, I gagged: my body recognised it. If I always hated it – even before I was Slated – I’m not a new person, no matter that they say I am. If I’m not a new person, whatever I may have done is still there, still part of me, hidden someplace inside. And while my brain is turning these thoughts over, the rest of me is busy crying, in great gulping, hiccupy sobs – like my body and my brain aren’t connected, they don’t go together. And I don’t understand why.

My Levo starts to vibrate; Mum curses under her breath. Drags me into the lounge and on to the sofa. Fetches Sebastian and makes me hot chocolate. Sits next to me, rubs my shoulder while Sebastian purrs on my lap. Her face a question that does not understand, but says nothing.

‘I’m too much trouble; you’re going to want to send me back,’ I finally say into the silence.

‘What? Of course not. What do you mean?’

And I tell her about Tori being
returned
. And there is no surprise on her face.

‘Tori was the pretty girl with Ben at the show, right?’

I nod. ‘What happened to her?’