Lisa Heathfield - I Am Not a Number

‘In the sitting room,’ Mum tells me.

‘She thought she was going to die, Ruby,’ Darren says.

‘But they’re both safe,’ Mum glares at him. ‘That’s the most important thing.’

‘We could have lost them.’ Darren’s voice is still too loud. ‘You saw it there, Kelly. You saw what those Trads did. They took a peaceful protest and they turned it into a deathtrap.’

‘I’m not going to have this discussion now.’ Mum goes into the sitting room and I’m left with Darren in front of me, his anger sharp.

‘The soldiers were hitting people,’ I tell him. ‘But we hadn’t done anything wrong.’ He steps forward to hug me, but I won’t let him. Sirens call in the distance. ‘Why did they do it?’

‘I don’t know,’ is all he answers.

‘You told us that you’d had enough and we listened. Enough of broken families. Enough of soaring crime rates blighting our country. Enough of our people hungering for jobs.’ – John Andrews, leader of the Traditional Party

I’m awake before my alarm clock and watch the sun start as a square of light in the corner of my ceiling, until it spreads across my room. I hold out my hands and stretch my fingers as far as they can go and then count them, slowly, feeling the sound of each number on my tongue.

I breathe in until I can’t any more. Hold my breath. Hold it. Hold it. And imagine what it’d be like to not be able to let it out. My lungs would be crushed until I close my eyes and drift away.

The door opens and I gasp for air.

‘Darren doesn’t want us to go to school,’ Lilli says. She walks across my room, lifts the corner of the duvet and gets into bed. I shuffle closer to the wall, but still her feet are cold against my legs. She sleeps with them outside her duvet. She likes to face the bogeyman straight on. ‘But Mum says we have to go.’

I lean over her to turn on my phone.

‘What do you want to do?’ I ask her.

‘Stay here. But Mum says we can’t.’

On cue, the door opens and Mum comes in, the purple band clear on her arm.

‘Up you get,’ she says, opening the curtains so roughly I’m surprised she doesn’t pull them down. ‘You can’t be late.’ As though everything is normal. That life hasn’t just spun away into a black hole.

‘Lilli doesn’t want to go,’ I say.

‘There are a lot of things none of us want to do,’ Mum says. ‘But we have to.’ She’s sorting through the pile of clothes on my chair, finding my school clothes. ‘This could’ve done with a wash.’ She holds up my sweatshirt.

‘Are you going to work?’ I ask. Lilli and I don’t move from the comfort of my bed.

‘Of course. It’s an ordinary day, Ruby.’

‘How can it be?’

‘It has to be,’ she tells me.

My phone beeps, but Mum grabs it before I have a chance.

‘I’ll take this downstairs. You can have it when you’re dressed,’ she says and she’s out of the room before I can challenge her.

‘Just for the record,’ Darren says. ‘I don’t think any of you should go.’ He’s standing next to the fridge, both hands round his mug of coffee.

‘You’re not helping,’ Mum says, as she grabs her car keys from the side.

‘And you’re not thinking straight, Kelly,’ Darren tells her. Mum stops and stares at him.

‘The only people not thinking straight are those bloody Trads, Darren. If you want to take out your frustration on anyone, take it out on them.’

‘And get a bullet through my head for my trouble?’ Darren’s words snap out of him and make everything go still.

‘So we just crawl into our holes like they want us to?’ Mum says. ‘Don’t go to work, don’t go to school, just stay in our homes and wither away until they completely destroy our country? Is that what we should do?’

‘I don’t know any more,’ Darren says.

‘Well, I do,’ Mum says, wrapping her scarf round her neck. ‘School is the safest place for them.’

‘How do you figure that out?’ I haven’t seen Darren look this furious in ages.

‘The Trads are going to be on their best behaviour after last night,’ Mum says. ‘They may have managed to twist the truth about the protest, but they’ll be hard pushed to keep people on their side if they hurt kids in a school.’

Darren visibly winces.

‘What do you want to do, Ruby?’ he asks me.

I look at them both standing there and memories of the protest whittle dread into me. But I know I’ll be frightened anywhere.

‘I want to go,’ I say. Maybe Mum’s right and we’ll be safer there. Or perhaps I’ve just conditioned myself to say the opposite to Darren.

‘That’s sorted then,’ Mum says, as she storms out of the room and I follow her. Darren comes into the hallway.

‘At least let me drive you and Lilli there,’ he says to me.

‘If you have to,’ I say.

Mum grabs her bag from the hall table before she opens the front door. Something makes her stop still.

‘What is it?’ Darren pulls the door wide open. Someone has painted a giant C across the wood, going from the top all the way to the bottom.

‘Who’s done that?’ Lilli asks.

Mum shakes her head in that way she does when she’s trying to be strong.

‘I’d hazard a guess it’ll be the Traditionals,’ she says.

‘Why on our door?’

‘I bet it’ll be on the door of every Core household,’ Darren says.

‘I don’t want to go to school,’ Lilli says quietly.

‘You don’t have to,’ Darren says before Mum can speak. ‘I’ll stay here with you.’

Mum nods. ‘Okay,’ she says, less determined now.

‘Ruby?’ Darren looks at me. Part of me wants to stay here with Lilli, to stay safe behind the walls of our home where no one can touch us, where I don’t have to wear this stupid purple band for everyone to see. But Mum is going to work. And I want to see Luke.

‘I’m still going to school.’ I need something to distract me from the nightmare our country seems to have stumbled into.

‘Could we clean the paint away later?’ Lilli asks Darren.

‘I doubt they’ve made it that easy for us,’ Mum says as she steps outside.

I’ve never known our school to feel like this, as though even the walls are watching and judging. And there’s a strange link between all of us wearing Core bands. People I’ve never spoken to before smile and nod at me in the corridor. And people who I thought were vague friends look away.

Never before in my life has it been awkward between Sara and me. But now a strange, invisible wall has been stacked up between us.

‘Hey,’ I say.

‘Hey.’

And that’s it. The scariest thing in my life happened to me yesterday, but I can’t even talk to her about it. She should be the first person I want to tell about the protest. She’d be able to put it right somehow, find a way to even laugh today, but she seems distant. I can’t tell if it’s because she doesn’t want to know, or is scared to ask if I was there.

‘Did your parents tell you not to talk to me?’ I ask, attempting a smile.

‘No.’ She shakes her head.

Mr Hart comes in late, his purple band strapped to the outside of his jacket. He doesn’t have to tell us to be quiet. We already are. He’s halfway through the register when James puts up his arm, a green band clear to see.

‘Sir,’ he says. ‘Doesn’t what happened last night prove something?’

‘And what exactly is that, James?’ Mr Hart’s expression is cold. If he wasn’t a teacher I think he might thump him.

‘That the Cores are out of control and violent. That if they came into power it’d be a joke.’

Violent? It was a peaceful protest until the Trad soldiers waded in.