The Gender Game (2 page)

"
M
errymount Mill
,"
read the sign hanging above the entrance of the graystone windmill.
"Facility for Convicted Juveniles."

I wrinkled my nose, flexing my fingers around the handle of my tattered suitcase.

I had no idea why it was called Merrymount. There were no "mounts" around here, or anywhere in the flat land of Matrus—mountains were a luxury enjoyed only by our neighbors in Patrus. And nothing about this towering brick building, or the shriveled brown fields that surrounded it, could be described as
merry
.

But I ought to start getting used to it. This was to be my residence for the next two years, assuming I behaved myself.

This would be my third home—if a detention facility could be called that—in five years. A textiles factory deep in the countryside, about twenty miles from here, had been my first, and a sewage plant on the other side of the city, by Veil River, had been my second. A flour mill certainly beat the latter.

If I managed to keep myself in line here for the next two years and successfully complete my seven-year incarceration period, I would be on track for reintegration into the city a few days after my twenty-first birthday… whatever life the Court expected a girl with no family to live after having spent her adolescence locked away from society.

And I had better not slip up. I'd already rebelled against the Court at the age of eleven by committing obstruction of justice, and after being convicted of womanslaughter (albeit involuntary) via the use of a weapon (even if it was a dinner fork) a few years later, there would be only one fate left in store for me if I didn't get through these next two years without first-degree infractions. It would be straight to the city labs, where I would be put painlessly to sleep without further trial or consideration.

There would be nobody to miss me, I supposed. I no longer had my younger brother. He'd been flagged as "excessively domineering" in the matriarchy's screening lab when he was eight and consequently deemed an unfit member of Matrus' peaceful society. A score of five out of five for both aggressive tendencies and insubordination was essentially the kiss of death for any Matrus-born boy. Tim was a slave in the coal mines in the Deep North now. Or so I’d been told. I hadn't seen him since the day I’d failed to smuggle him to Patrus.

After I’d been caught and sedated by the riverside, I’d been forced to spend the next two weeks in isolation—my first taste of imprisonment. The more I begged to be sent to the mines with my brother, the more I was ignored. I even tried to locate the aircraft that transported the boys to the North once I got out, but I was caught near the hangar and thrust back into isolation with the stern warning that if I stepped out of line again, I would be locked up long-term.

Over the years, I’d eventually managed to see the futility in pursuing Tim, but the day I gave up looking for him was the beginning of a steeper downhill slide. A slide that I still struggled to find reason to fight against. And my anger simply fueled my rebellion.

But I had to fight it now, and keep my head down, unless I truly did have a death wish.

My aunt, uncle, and cousin Cad might miss me if I was gone, though I almost never saw them as they lived on the other side of the river in the patriarchy of Patrus.

Then there was the owner of my old orphanage, Ms. Connelly. She had always been kind to me, though she'd probably be senile by now, assuming she hadn't died already. The few childhood friends I'd had would have moved on with their lives. None of those friendships had been deep.

"Keep moving, Ms. Bates," my escort said to me, nudging me in the shoulder. She was a green-uniformed warden armed with a crossbow; a stocky woman nameless to me and about half a foot short of my height.

The warden ushered me through the doorway and we emerged in a small reception room whose walls were lined with lockers and hanging white aprons. An oval desk stood opposite the doorway, behind which sat a plump middle-aged woman with cropped brown hair and horn-rimmed glasses.

"Violet Bates," she said, glancing up. Her lips, lined with plum-colored lipstick, pursed. She rose to her feet with a black registry book and wound around the table to approach us. She paused a few feet away, eyeing me shrewdly. "Nineteen years old."

I nodded curtly.

"Almost a clean record for the past four years," she went on. "Two minor incidents of violence against fellow inmates, involving punching."

I nodded again, swallowing. Those punches had been well-deserved.

She furrowed her brows before concluding, "Right, I know where we have space for you. Follow me. My name's Ms. Maddox."

Ms. Maddox led me through a back door and we arrived in what I could only assume was the main place of work in this mill, a vast circular room filled with aisle upon aisle of grinding and sifting machinery. I sneezed. Everything in here was dusted with white particles.

She led me across the room to a staircase. By the time we'd reached the top, my calves were burning and Ms. Maddox was positively wheezing. I'd counted eight floors in total.

"You're right at the top," Ms. Maddox explained, panting as we turned into a dim, worn gray-carpeted corridor lined with wooden doors. She stopped at the sixth door to my right and turned the handle. She pushed, but the door didn't budge. She huffed in frustration. "Josefine!"

There was a span of silence before a vague voice replied, "Yeah?"

"You have locked your door again! Were you not reprimanded just last week for this?"

A bed creaked. Light footsteps sounded. A chair scraped and the door slowly drew open.

A waifish girl who looked no older than nine stood barefoot in the doorway, wearing a checkered brown dress. Her face, splashed with freckles, was round and framed by a ginger mop of short, yet wildly curly hair. The apples of her cheeks were high and plump, her small lips pursed and heart-shaped. She had a look of righteous indignation in her large—almost bulbous—green eyes.

Her fingers flicked to the chair at her side. "It wasn't
locked
," she muttered, scowling.

"Obstruction of entry to dormitories is forbidden," Ms. Maddox countered. "I do not want to have to remind you of that again."

The girl rolled her eyes exaggeratedly and retreated into the room. Ms. Maddox led me inside. The windowless room was square-shaped and held very little, save for a bunk bed which Josefine had just climbed onto, the chair, a rickety table, and a chest of drawers.

"Well, this is Josefine Rankin," Ms. Maddox explained.

Josefine scrutinized me through the jungle of her low-cut bangs as she perched on the top bunk.

"Hello," I said, offering her a small smile that she didn't return.

"The bathrooms are situated to your right when you walk out the door, at the end of the hallway," Ms. Maddox explained. "Meals are served at eight, two, and seven-thirty. Work finishes at seven p.m. each day. Lights out at nine-thirty p.m., no exceptions. You should be asleep by ten p.m. Wake-up call is four a.m. You have thirty minutes to get up, get washed, and be downstairs in the work room."

I grimaced. Wake-up call here was one hour earlier than even the sewage plant.

"I trust that Josefine will answer any questions you may have," Ms. Maddox ploughed on. "At four-thirty a.m. tomorrow, you'll be given a briefing of your tasks. It's ten to eight now, so you'll have to wait until tomorrow morning for food."

My stomach was rumbling after the long journey to get here, but I was used to skipping meals.

"You'll find that most of the same rules apply here as they did at Divedun Sewage as well as at the textiles factory," Ms. Maddox continued. "Wardens roaming the building night and day, routine searches when entering and leaving the dining room, etcetera, etcetera."

"Right," I muttered. I'd been searched before embarking on the journey to Merrymount, too. Nothing sharp was allowed in my suitcase, not even nail clippers. That was why there were never mirrors in the dormitories of these facilities, only in the bathrooms, which were monitored by wardens.

"I'll see you tomorrow morning," Ms. Maddox concluded. She backed out of the room and clicked the door shut behind her.

I turned slowly to the bunk, resuming my focus on Josefine. I cleared my throat. "You, uh, sleep up there, I assume."

Josefine nodded.

"Okay…" I heaved a sigh before dumping my suitcase on the lower bunk. I sat down, spreading my palms over the mattress and gauging its softness. A little softer than my previous bed. Not that this was saying much.

I removed my boots and rolled off my socks, stretching out my legs and toes. I sat there for a few minutes in silence, staring at the blank wall opposite me. Then I glanced at Josefine, who was still sitting in the same position, knees drawn up against her chest, arms around her shins.

"Going to the restroom," I murmured, before leaving the room and taking a right turn down the corridor.

The bathrooms were clearly marked at the end and I moved inside to find a showering area and a row of sinks and cubicles. I stopped in front of one of the sinks to splash my face and caught my gray eyes in the mirror. I hadn't slept much last night and it showed. I looked like crap. My skin, lightly tanned by the sun, appeared dry and lackluster, and my black shoulder-length hair, normally dead straight, was crimped and escaping in all directions from my pony tail. I shook it out, running my fingers through it, before heading to a stall to relieve myself.

When I returned to the sinks, another girl had entered—a girl I recognized instantly. Her features were ratty, with thin lips, a protruding upper jaw and lanky brown hair that clung to her scalp like a helmet.

Vera Sykes. A girl who had almost caused me to gain a third infraction over the past five years due to a run-in I'd had with her back in the textiles factory. I had not seen her since.

She looked just as surprised to see me, her eyes widening a fraction as she stared. But then she turned away abruptly, deciding to ignore me. She washed and dried her hands before sweeping toward the door. Though, as she brushed past me, she moved a little too close—managing to nudge me in the back. Then she sped up, hastening through the exit.

Idiot
.

I couldn't stand girls like Vera. Girls with neither brain nor backbone. Her way of surviving the facilities was by becoming the full-time ass-licker of whoever she deemed the toughest person in the block… or the toughest person who could stand to be around her. She'd been friendly with me for a couple of days before I'd started avoiding her. After that, she'd gone behind my back and revealed her second face.

Though in fairness, I wasn't good at getting along with people my age in general. I struggled to connect and was often labeled a loner. Not that I minded. Making friends in facilities like this wasn't encouraged. It wasn't supposed to be a social club and that was one of the reasons girls were uprooted and made to rotate the facilities.

I returned to my room to find Josefine lying on her back, staring up at the ceiling. She didn't look at me as I entered, though she addressed me for the first time. "What's your name?"

"Violet."

"And… how did you wind up here?"

I sat down before turning my mind heavily back to that fateful day at school. It had been a sticky Monday afternoon. I'd been fourteen years old when a girl two years my senior, whom I'd had a history of discord with, had picked a fight with me in the dining hall because I'd objected—in no timid words—to her jumping the line. We'd started with bare hands, and would have continued that way if she hadn't scooped up a fork. I’d reciprocated to ward her off, not to plunge the fork into her throat. But she had launched at me at exactly the wrong moment, and at exactly the wrong angle. She’d died in the hospital a few hours later.

After that, my life became one of slavery to my country. Waking up at the same time every day, being carted from one chore to the other. And trying to stay out of trouble. I'd gotten into a few fights—only two of them recorded—but I had been careful to avoid the use of actual weapons. Weapon usage by anyone other than an authorized warden was strictly prohibited throughout Matrus; it was one of the most basic commandments of our monarch, Queen Rina.

I didn't feel like spilling all this history to Josefine now. So I just replied, "I got into a fight with a bully… What about you? And how old are you, by the way?"

I took a seat in the chair so that I could see her as we talked. She'd positioned her head closer to the edge of the bunk and was looking at me now.

"I'm eight and a half… I'm only supposed to be here for another two weeks," she replied. "Mom was taken to the Drewsbury Center while I got stuck here. We got caught."

I frowned. "Caught?"

"Caught without permission, trying to return from Patrus. We wanted badly to move back here—it's our home. I was born here and so was Mom. But the Court was telling us we'd have to wait two weeks for approval. We couldn't wait that long. Mom was going mad, and she was going to get into a lot of trouble if we didn't leave Patrus right away. So she traveled back with me in my uncle's rowboat… We left Dad."

It was disturbing that Josefine should be put in a facility like this one, which was filled with girls convicted of far worse crimes than premature migration. Her crime had not even been hers, but her mother's. But this was common of the Court's decisions. They were known to make statements, however harsh, to discourage the public from even considering infractions. Matrus' government frowned upon residents who decided to move to the patriarchy in the first place, so making it difficult for them to return ensured that they thought long and hard about their choice.

"How come you went to Patrus to begin with?" I asked, although I hardly needed to. There weren't a lot of reasons that women who were born and bred in Matrus would migrate to Patrus.

"Because of my dad," Josefine responded grimly. "He was born there. He moved to Matrus because my mom asked him to. They married here and he took her name. But he couldn't survive here. He begged Mom to let him take us back with him."