Maureen Johnson - The Name of the Star

“I know,” I said, “but . . . they’re all . . . really young. Like me.”

“Who do you think goes into the army? Young people. This entire nation was defended by young people. Young people on the battlefield. Young people in airplanes. Young people in the headquarters, breaking codes. The number of people I knew who lied to sign up at fifteen and sixteen . . .”

She trailed off, watching a guy lingering around a bike that was clearly not his. She smoothed out the jacket of her uniform, though it wasn’t wrinkled. It probably couldn’t wrinkle.

“Thank you for letting me know,” she said. “Not everyone considers me—worth informing. You’re like Boo, very conscientious. She’s a good girl. A bit of an ongoing project, but a good girl. Now I should go and see to that bicycle.”

Jo marched across the street, barely checking to see if cars were coming her way. Halfway across, in the path of a tiny sportscar, she turned back.

“Fear can’t hurt you,” she said. “When it washes over you, give it no power. It’s a snake with no venom. Remember that. That knowledge can save you.”

With just an inch or so to spare, she stepped out of the path of the car and continued on her way.

27

ICAN BARELY REMEMBER WHAT I DID FOR THE NEXT few days. Classes were canceled all week. Callum and Stephen took turns keeping watch. And the days ticked by. November 4, November 5, November 6 . . . The news kept track even if I didn’t.

On Wednesday, the seventh of November, I woke around five in the morning. My brain had suddenly clicked back on, and my heart was racing. I sat up and looked around the dark room, examining every formation. That was my nightstand next to my bed. There was my bureau. There was the wardrobe door, slightly open, but not enough for someone to hide behind. There was Jazza, asleep in her bed. I grabbed my hockey stick and stabbed around under my bed, but felt nothing. Then I realized that that wasn’t a very good test for a ghost, so I stood up on the bed and jumped out as quietly as I could, then got down on the floor and looked underneath. No one was there. Jazza shifted, but she didn’t wake.

I took my robe and bath basket and walked quietly down to the bathroom, where I examined every stall and every cubicle before taking my shower, and even then, I kept the curtain partway open. I didn’t care if anyone walked in.

I went to breakfast as soon as it opened, long before Jazza was out of bed. I saw Callum standing on the corner, over by the refectory. He was wearing a dark blue London Underground suit with an orange Day-Glo vest over the jacket, and he had a clipboard. If he had planned on trying to blend in, that wasn’t really working.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“Pretending to survey traffic patterns for a new bus route. I have a clipboard and everything.”

“Did you guys make that up?”

“Course we made it up,” he said. “It was the only thing we could think of to justify my standing in front of a school all day, and the clipboard was the only prop we had. And you shouldn’t be seen talking to me, so keep moving.”

He turned back to his clipboard, ending the conversation. I hurried away from him, feeling stupid.

I was the only person at breakfast at that hour. I tried to eat my normal plate of sausages but could only get down some juice and the bitter, lava-hot coffee. For entertainment, I read the brass plaques on the wall—names of former students and their various achievements. I looked at the stained-glass image of the lamb in the window above me, but that only reminded me that lambs are famous for being led to slaughter, or sometimes hanging out with lions in ill-advised relationships.

I had to know what they could do to stop the Ripper. I had to find out, or I would go insane. I got up, shoved my tray into the rack, and went back outside and right up to Callum.

“I just said—”

“I want to see what you do,” I said.

“You’re looking at it.”

“No, I mean . . . I want to see how you take care of them.”

He kicked at the cobbles.

“I can’t do that,” he said.

“So how am I supposed to stay sane?” I asked. “Don’t you think I deserve to know what can be done? I’m defenseless. Show me.”

“Do you have any idea how many forms I’ve had to sign saying that I’d never talk about this?”

“So you’d rather stand around here with a clipboard all day? If you don’t show me, I will stand here and stare at you. I will follow you. I will do everything you don’t want me to do. I am giving you no choice.”

The corner of Callum’s mouth twitched slightly. “No choice?” he said.

“You have no idea how reckless I can be.”

He looked around, up and down the street, toward the square. Then he walked away for a few moments and made a call.

“Here’s the agreement,” he said when he walked back to me. “You don’t tell anyone. Not Stephen. Definitely not Boo. No one.”

“This never happened. I wasn’t here.”

“And it stays that way. I got a call from Bethnal Green station earlier. They’re having a problem there. Come on, then.”

We walked to Liverpool Street station. Along the way, I also counted the cameras—thirty-six that I saw, and probably loads more I didn’t. Cameras attached to the corners of buildings, to traffic lights, in deep window wells and perched high on stone ledges, sharing poles with streetlights . . . so many cameras, and not one of them would do the slightest bit of good when it came to the Ripper.

At Liverpool Street, he flashed a badge to get into the station, and I tapped my Oyster card on the reader. By the time I was going through the gate, he was halfway down the escalator, and I had to hurry to keep pace with him.

“What do they think you do, exactly?” I asked when we got on the train.

“I’m officially employed by the London Underground. They think I’m an engineer. That’s what my file says, anyway. It also says I’m twenty-five.”

“Are you?”

“No. I’m twenty.”

“So what do they do when they figure out you can’t . . . engineer?”

“People get my name and number from other station managers, and they only call me when things are . . . not right . I show up, and the problem goes away. A lot of people, in my experience, really don’t want to know the details. If they knew how many of their problems I fix, how many trains I keep on time . . . I’m probably the most important employee they have.”

“And the most humble,” I added.

“Humility is overrated.” He smiled. “It’s a big area to cover. There’s a whole world down here. The Tube itself has about two hundred and fifty miles of track, but the majority of what I do concerns the parts that are actually underground, about one hundred and twelve miles of functional track, plus all the unused tunnels and service tunnels.”

The train whizzed along. All I could see out of the windows was dark, and occasionally the suggestion of the brick walls of the tunnel around us.

“This station we’re going to is one I work at a lot. They know me. It was the site of the largest loss of life in any Tube station, anywhere on the network. It was used as an air raid shelter during the war. One night, they were testing antiaircraft weapons near here—a secret test. The people heard what sounded like an air raid and ran like hell for this station. Someone tripped and fell on the stairs, and soon hundreds of people were crushed in the stairwell. A hundred and seventy-three people died, and a lot of them seem to have stuck around.”

With that, the recorded voice announced that we were pulling into Bethnal Green. When we got off, the station was extremely quiet. A man with a large belly and a face full of broken capillaries was waiting on the platform.