Ignorance (BEING REWRITTEN. SEE 'THE REVOLT')

Chapter One

I feel so very different from everyone at this stupid school. Even though, in a lot of ways I am exactly the same; I work hard to please my parents, I spend time with my family, I watch the news. But the thing is, I care and I observe. I care more about the things that we are not taught at school than the things we are, about these pieces of knowledge that are kept from us. 

To get home from school I have to take the tube alongside the hundreds of other school children my age, all wearing the standard Upper London uniform; a grey blazer, grey trousers, black shoes, white shirt. When I finally manage to escape from the cramped metal cage I have to walk through the network of underpasses that I know always will lead me home. Home: the tall and thin, seemingly absurd by the laws of physics, block of flats. I have been told, ordered, to call it home even though it’s just a small group of rooms that I am obliged to spend my time in. Everyone in this city just accepts what we are told to think or to say or to do, without question. That is not who I am or who I want to be at any point in my life. 

Everyday, I sit at the same lunch table. Everyday I am with the same group of people who I neither like or ever want to get to know. We sit together because that is what we were told to do and no one dares go against what we are told. No one talks at lunch. We sit in silence chewing the food, which matches the blazers that defeat our individuality, in unison as if we are some kind of team. I tried to change the routine once. At lunch when we are meant to sit and read one of the thousand books that apparently exist – all on topics of physics or maths or chemistry – there is nothing about the history of this city or this world; I got up and put down the book. Instead, I walked over to the next table along and I told them to get up. Of course, they ignored me. I tried another group and after the next one, I felt a hand clamp down on my shoulder and a rough voice ask me what I thought I was doing. There is something inherently wrong with a school that prevents us from having any kind of thought that goes against what we have been taught.

Today, it's the same. I trail down the steps from school, my bag strapped securely to my body, to the station. Then get on the crowed tube filled with one hundred other teenagers and just as many adults. I don't usually pay that much attention to who I'm with. There isn't usually much point but today, today there is a man standing next to me in the cramped carriage. That means nothing on its own but his hood is up, concealing the features of his face. I can still make out the coppery tone of his complexion and a few strands of dark brown hair are spilling waves onto his skin. We’re not meant to cover our faces, I think it's something about not being allowed to withhold information. 

The train jerks and I bump into him causing his jacket to fly open and can I see a can of spray paint shoved into the inside pocket. This isn't normal. He looks at me and grins, placing a finger, caked with a mixture of mud and paint, on his lips. When the train slows down at Victoria, a lot of people get off, including the man standing next to me. The long line of people snakes up round to the hall where the signs to the underpass are. I'm among that winding path of people. After a while, I get to the hall and make my way over to the pass I take on the way home; the man is gone and I haven’t seen him since we got off the train.

It’s a small home, for four people, yet surprisingly cold, shoved amidst the other flats in this block . This is probably because the walls are a mixture of breeze blocks and plywood, painted over 15 years ago with an industrial green. It was probably once a lovely natural green, like some of the colours carefully printed on the books shoved under my uncomfortable bed. Now it’s slowly showing through the grey of the material behind. I never go into my parents’ room, they don't always reciprocate this privacy. They still force me into the kitchen every night to watch the news which is probably heavily censored and controlled by the government because, well, it seems as though everything in this place is.