I Am Not a Number

‘It’s worth it for the other policies,’ Ashwar says. ‘Did you know that that seventy per cent of A and E departments are taken up with drunk people at weekends? Seventy per cent, Conor. How can that be a good use of public money?’

‘There are other ways to deal with it than banning drinking in public and increasing the legal age,’ Conor says.

‘Are there?’ Ashwar looks around. ‘No other government has wanted to tackle it and see where it’s got our country. Nothing is getting better. It’s getting worse. We need a change and we might not like all of the Trad’s policies, but it’s a small price to pay if the rest of it is working.’

‘Is it?’ Mr Hart asks. ‘As Conor brought up the subject of immigration, let’s talk about that.’

Cameron yawns loudly from the back.

‘Am I boring you, Cameron?’ Mr Hart asks him.

‘Just a bit,’ Cameron says and people around him laugh.

‘I can see nothing boring in people being forced from their homes.’ Anger is beginning to tick through Mr Hart. ‘They’ve lost everything: their communities, their families, their way of life. They don’t want to leave everything they love. They don’t want to trek hundreds of miles carrying everything they own on their backs. They don’t want to put their children in blow-up dinghies and set out across an ocean that might drown them all. They do it because they have to.’

‘But what about our country?’ James challenges him. ‘If the Core Party had it their way we’d let them come here and wreck our way of lives and our homes. That’s not exactly right, is it?’

‘These people don’t wreck our homes, James. They actually boost our economy, but that never really gets reported, does it?’

‘Perhaps because they don’t boost it enough,’ James says.

‘So what would your solution be?’ I ask James.

‘We should just send them back.’

Send them back? As if they’re objects, not people.

‘I would hope,’ Mr Hart says, ‘that if the roles were reversed and it was our homes and families blown apart, that we would find compassion somewhere. That people would help us and let us in.’

The bell cuts him off. There’s a longer pause than normal before we all get up.

I get a message on my phone as I walk out of the classroom. People are believing the lies, Luke texts.

I know, I reply. I’m scared.

Don’t be.

Meet at oak at break? Sara coming too.

Okay.

Someone smacks the back of my head. It’s hard enough not to be a joke, but there are too many people pushing in front and behind me to know who it was. Shoulders, elbows squeeze down the corridor to first lesson. It’s the same as always but everything has changed. The crush of it unwinds memories of last night and although I can breathe now my lungs remember. The splinters still thread through them and I have to push past people, get out of the way, to reach a space where I feel safe.

It’s starting to rain a bit as I walk to the oak tree. The sky feels tight, dripping down headaches the way it does before a storm. I think Sara might use it as an excuse not to turn up, until I see her legs sticking out from where she’s leaning against the trunk the other side.

‘You’re here,’ I say when I get to her.

‘I said I would be.’ She doesn’t look angry, but there’s an edge to her words.

‘How are things?’ I sit opposite her, cross-legged. The leaves above us are umbrella enough for now.

‘A bit odd,’ she says. She picks a blade of grass and its roots come up too.

‘I used to think those were a fairy’s legs,’ I say, pointing to them.

Sara laughs. ‘You always were a bit strange.’

I want to tell her that there’s a part of me that still believes it, but she’s shredding them apart already.

I hate this awkward feeling that’s sitting between us now.

‘Luke’s going to be late,’ I say. ‘Aldridge is having a go at him about homework.’

‘Okay,’ Sara says. And the wall goes up again. Somehow I have nothing to say to a friend who I can usually talk with all day and night.

I watch the rain falling.

‘You don’t have to support the Trads you know,’ I say, ‘just because your parents do.’

‘Same back to you,’ she says.

‘But I believe in what the Core Party says.’

‘All of it?’

‘Most of it.’

‘So why can’t people believe in most of what the Trads say?’

‘Because they’re wrong.’

‘So says you.’

‘And so says you up until recently.’

‘Can’t I change my mind?’

‘I don’t think you have,’ I say. ‘I think you’re supporting the Trads because you’re scared.’

‘Scared?’ Sara does a laugh that isn’t really one.

‘Yes. Like we all are. Since the soldiers came with the guns.’

She pulls up a clump of grass this time. Too many fairy legs to count.

‘You know they now say they’re going to really limit our internet.’

‘Mum says that’s good. We can actually chat like in the olden days.’

‘I’m serious, Sara.’

‘Well, what would the Core Party do? Make us use it until our brains explode?’

‘They don’t think banning the internet is the solution to cutting depression. They want to do active things, like put more money into mental health.’

‘Can we talk about something else?’ Sara asks. I know she feels the fracture that’s opening up between us.

‘But what about the Trads putting up the age of consent?’

‘It’s to cut teenage pregnancies,’ Sara says, but I know her heart isn’t in it.

‘More like it’s to cut all the fun from our life.’

Sara breathes out as though she’s fed up with me, fed up with it all. ‘Can’t you tell me something I want to hear about?’

‘Like what?’

‘Like why is grass green?’ she says. ‘If the bottom bit in the earth is white, how come the top bit is a different colour?’ Sara crosses her legs and we sit opposite each other with our knees almost touching. She’s like my mirror. ‘Because surely, if they’re exposed to the sun all the time, they should be bleached-white. Or at least a bit sucked-dry yellow from the wind and everything.’

‘I do actually know the answer,’ I say. Sara’s laugh is genuine this time. It makes me want to hug her tight and tell her that we’re going to be okay.

‘I thought you might, mega-plant-brain.’

‘It’s not really green,’ I tell her. ‘It’s the chlorophyll in them. It absorbs all the other colours and has no use for the green so sort of chucks it out again.’

‘Of course it does.’

I hold Sara’s hands, one and then the other. ‘I’m not going to let all this Trad and Core stuff make us fall out,’ I say.

‘Nor am I,’ Sara replies. She puts up her pinky finger and hooks it through mine as we used to do at primary school.

The thunder is so sudden that we scream. We’re laughing as we jump up and grab our bags. And I don’t care that the rain really starts on us as we run back to school, because I’ve got my best friend by my side, our fingers still linked.

‘Love you, Starry,’ I shout.

‘Love you right back, Rudey,’ Sara laughs, wiping under her eyes so that the rain can’t paint mascara down her cheeks.

‘Do you want a lift, Luke?’ Darren asks him.

‘I’m all right, thanks.’

‘You’ll get soaked,’ Darren tells him.

‘I like the rain,’ Luke smiles. There’s a soldier close by so I know he won’t want to kiss me, but he squeezes my hand. ‘See you tomorrow.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Get in, Ruby,’ Darren says through the window. ‘I’m blocking the traffic.’

But it feels wrong to just leave Luke like this. Since we’ve started going out, I don’t think we’ve ever said goodbye without at least a hug. So I lean in to kiss him, just quickly, but enough to feel his lips on mine.

A car horn behind us ruins it.

‘Ruby,’ Darren shouts.

I don’t bother to check if a soldier has noticed us before I get into the car.

‘Not your wisest move,’ Darren says as he starts the engine.

‘They can’t lock me up for kissing my boyfriend.’

‘You might just have to play along with them for a bit,’ Darren says, as he starts to drive. ‘Until things settle down.’

In the mirror I can see Luke walking away, his bag on his back.

‘What if I don’t want to?’ I ask.

‘They’ve got guns, Ruby,’ Darren says. And it’s enough, that one small word, to pull me right back into reality.

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