Lisa Heathfield - I Am Not a Number

‘Perhaps.’ I know Mum would be angry, but maybe she’d be a little bit pleased that we’re protesting too.

There’s a crowd in front and behind us. I didn’t know there were so many Core supporters in our town. They’ve probably travelled in from a bit further away, but I’m surprised so many people want to show it. I wonder if some of them have come over to our side since the election? Since the government’s ideas have got crazier and crazier. I can’t imagine that everyone who voted for the Trads will be happy with restricted internet use and having their relationships monitored.

It’s almost single file again as we curve around the edge of the playground. I used to spend hours here, being pushed on the swing by Mum and Dad, then me pushing Lilli, then friends pushing each other and being told to leave. There’s no one there now. The swings aren’t moving, there are no shadows on the slide. Tomorrow there’ll be children laughing again, but for now we walk past with hardly a word.

There’s more space around us when we get to the hill. Hebe bushes are planted in random clumps for us to walk around. Their colour matches the purple of the Core symbol, so it seems that nature is on our side too. I reach out to touch the flowers. They look a bit like thistles, but they feel like feathers. If it was daytime there’d be tons of bees on them.

‘There are lots of people here,’ Lilli says, looking up at me.

‘How very perceptive of you, Chicken Bones,’ I say and she thumps me.

Three men are at the top and they must be standing on some sort of stage. They stick out above everyone. Two of them hold the purple Core Party flag, with its yellow steps going up the middle. The other has the loudspeaker and now we can hear his words. They rumble through the crowd in front of us and light a fire round my bones.

‘We won’t be forced into silence!’ the man shouts. ‘We won’t be ruled by bigots who love only to hate.’ The people around us are even louder now and I start to cheer with them. ‘We will champion your rights because each and every one of you has a right to free speech, a right to freedom of movement. A right to freedom!’

I’m glad we came here. It’s good to feel a part of this, to feel we might finally make a difference. That things really might change.

‘Our rights should be at the core of our society.’ His words thunder from him as people cheer again.

I look up into the sky. It’s a clear night and stars are beginning to reach out. Thousands and thousands of them watching, looking back at us. It makes me feel part of something even bigger.

‘We want to live in a tolerant country!’ The man’s words jump among us, landing on our hands, our ears, our skin. They skim up to the leaves and I imagine the wind picking them up and taking them to whisper in strangers’ ears. To let them see. Let them believe too. ‘A country that does not judge. Does not turn away those who cry for our help. We champion the rights of everyone, regardless of your class, your faith, your sexuality, your roots.’ The roar from the crowd is thick enough to touch. My arm stays in the air like everyone else’s. ‘It’s not a solution to cut down those who cry for help. Instead, we will listen. We will care. And we will rebuild our society from the foundation up. We won’t cease in our fight to champion the rights for everyone.’

‘Champions! Champions!’ My voice joins in with the chant, but Lilli stays silent, her arms by her side.

We’re getting pushed forwards. More people must be coming from the back.

‘Core Party for peace!’ the man with the loudspeaker calls above us all.

Suddenly we’re pushed so far forward that Lilli stumbles and I only just manage to pull her upright again. The crush is instant and people start to scream.

‘It’s okay,’ I tell Lilli. ‘They’ll make space.’ But it’s getting difficult to speak.

People scramble on to the stage and the man with the megaphone falls and disappears. And I see now, through gaps in the shoulders, that there are soldiers with plastic shields and they’re driving themselves into the protesters, forcing us together.

‘I can’t breathe,’ Lilli says, as more bodies press into us.

There’s yelling and it seems so distant as I lose my grip on Lilli’s hand. Everyone is pushing us, pushing everywhere, trying to run, but there’s nowhere to move. We’re all stuck and more people keep pounding into us and there’s nowhere for us to go.

My breath is being squeezed from me.

‘Get back,’ someone shouts. A woman beside me falls and I try to reach for her, but she’s sucked under and trampled on.

‘Lilli,’ I say, but the word is only a pinch of letters.

Mum. Luke.

My sister has tears in her eyes, but I can’t hear her crying.

We’re heaved forwards, my feet barely on the ground. My lungs are being crushed and there’s not enough air.

I see Lilli lifted, pulled up. A man grabbing her with one arm, pushing her over the heads of others.

‘Ruby!’ she screams, but I can’t see her. My eyes hurt. How can there be so much air above us, just out of reach?

We move forwards. I trip over something soft, but the pressure of the bodies around me keeps me upright. People are shouting, desperate. Get back. Make space.

We move as a dying animal, down the side of the playground as people pile over the fence, stumbling and falling. There’s screaming as we spill forwards until there’s space, enough air now.

‘Lilli.’ My voice is too quiet. Yet my breathing is easier, just splinters in my lungs now. ‘Lilli!’ I don’t want to be crying, but everywhere there are people shouting and none of them are my sister. The man lifted her up and she’s gone.

I’m being pushed further along and I look up as a soldier raises his baton and he brings it down on a man. I hear him hit him, a deadening thump on bones and I know I have to get away from here. But I can’t get through, because people are fighting back, charging into the soldiers. I’m stumbling over crushed banners and there’s nowhere to hide. And everywhere there are the distorted faces of the soldiers behind their transparent shields. Just their eyes through their helmets and they raise batons and they strike out and I’m too close as panic burns my chest.

Someone in front of me falls, clutching his eyes. A soldier has a spray and I see him grab a woman by her coat and she begs as he holds the can close to her skin. And so I run. Past stumbling bodies, through a cloud of terror, wading through cries I’ve never heard. I’m at the fence with others and we’re clambering over it, someone helping me so I don’t fall.

I make it to the alleyway, but I’ve left my sister behind and my phone is ringing and it’s my hands that take it from my pocket and my mum’s voice is shouting and I tell her that I don’t know where Lilli is. Terror seeps from me into the wall at my back.

‘Lilli’s here,’ I hear my mum say.

She’s at home.

I run, the phone in my hand, through the streets I thought I knew, past houses with doors closed to me. I see someone running towards me and I know it’s Darren and he reaches me and hugs me so tight.

‘You’re safe,’ he says and I don’t know whether it’s my lungs, my heart, or my head that hurts as he pulls me towards our home. Where my mum is standing in the doorway and she holds me before I’m even inside and when our front door shuts behind us the relief to be safe is bright.

‘Jesus, Ruby,’ Darren is shouting.

‘You said the protest would be okay.’ I can’t make sense of the words I want to say.

‘I never said that.’

‘This isn’t helping,’ Mum says. ‘They’re back now.’

‘Where’s Lilli?’ I ask.