Standing on the Edge (That Goat Will Probably Eat You)

Faraday

"Faraday Wilson, you get your sorry backside down these stairs!"

Ah, the sweet chorus of yet another reaping day. My last, whatever happens.

"This could be my last morning in this house; you could at least let me sleep in!" I shout back, like every year. It'll only make Ma angry but I can't help myself and besides, she's constantly angry anyway. I hear her thump the wall to try and get me up, but my bed is warm and comfortable and there's a horrible uncertainty about today that always makes me wish I could just sleep through it.

"You're setting a bad example for Tara!" she shouts. Damn. She knows she's got me there. I haul myself out of bed and find my reaping outfit set out on the desk for me. She must have been in during the night and fought her way past the piles of stuff I've left lying around. Every so often I try and clear it up but most of it has been on the floor so long that I can't remember where it should go. How did she even manage to find my reaping suit? I'm fairly certain it was under a pile of Technical Theory books for school that I haven't needed for years.

Tara appears at the door between my room and hers, rubbing her eyes. She's a cute kid, is our Tara. Nine next year. This year. We measure years on reapings here. I get a lump in my throat just thinking about the year she turns twelve, standing in the pen with the other kids, me stood with Ma and the fretting brothers and sisters. "Fara," she murmurs, "You'll be okay, won't you?"

I pull her into my lap, ruffling her hair. Dark brown, like mine, and the same length too. If it wasn't for the shape of her face she'd look like I did as a kid. "Sure I will, Tara," I say. That's our little joke; she's Tara, I'm Fara. It makes more sense if you pronounce it Faar-a.

Apart from Tara, everyone calls me Faraday.

She snuggles into my shoulder, sucking her thumb. I remove it from her mouth. "You're meant to have stopped that," I remind her gently. She bites mine instead, trying to be funny. But I'm never in a laughing mood on reaping days.

"It's your last year," she says. She's been clinging to that like a snuggle blanket. If she ever thinks about her reapings, she doesn't say anything. And Tara always says what she thinks, even if it might be dangerous for us. Sometimes I feel like gagging her.

"I know."

"Faraday, are you coming or not?" roars Ma. I push Tara off my lap and she slips on a pile of old maths homework, crossed out in angry red pen. I'm no good at maths. That's another thing I'll be able to stop this year; school. If I get through this reaping alive I'm an official adult. I can earn pay. And then maybe I can get Ma and Tara and I a nice new house near the square, not this old wooden leaky thing.

"I'm getting dressed, Ma!" I shout. She grumbles but she can't shout at me. Tara shuffles back through to her room and draws the curtain. I slide into the clothes. They're last years so they don't fit right; I grew again a month or so back and the trouser legs need letting down, but we can't afford any new ones. Instead, I use a penknife to slit one of the threads holding the hem in place and let it down myself. It looks a mess but it's better than showing my grubby brown socks.

The suit is an actual suit, right down to the jacket. Dark blue, which Ma jokes is so it won't show the mud. I get dressed automatically and run a comb through my hair, thinking. It's not likely to be me. There's hundreds of eighteen year olds here - we're a big district and the pens take up almost half of the square even though they cram us in until we nearly can't move - and I'm just one. The square itself is huge, enough that if you shout from one side they might not hear you from the other. From the back of it the people on the stage seem tiny, little more than ants. You have to look at the screens. But I've not had that view for six years.

Next year I will.

"Faraday! Your toast is getting cold!" That explains the vague burning smell. My ma is an excellent cook, but for some reason she can't get the hang of toast. I hear Tara trot off downstairs. I follow, buttoning up the light blue shirt, the one with the rip in the elbow, as I stumble down the uneven wooden steps, yawning.

I'm not normally up at this time. My shift is the afternoon, and school is only one morning every three days. Even then I'm usually late. Tara has school every day because she's not had enough education to be able to work yet, but I happen to know that they're expecting her to work in the hydro plant once she gets to eleven. It helps to have friends in high places, not that Thom and Callie count as friends. They're just colleagues and we've got to talk about something while we're fiddling with wires, suspended in the air. Thom is a sneak, a gossip, and his father is the owner of the pylon production companies, so he gets info all the time. I asked him to check about Tara; he wouldn't tell me anything that's actually important in case I asked him.

Callie is difficult. The mayor's daughter. Take that look off your face; no sappy romantic stuff here. There was when we were young, and there was something about her being 'important' and me being a pleb that made us feel special, but we're both of us too intelligent to keep that up. Now she's my best friend, or as close as I think I can get.

I eat the toast, even though it's dry. "Butter shortage?" I ask, trying to swallow the lump. It tastes like cotton. Ma nods, giving me one of her piercing looks. Oh. Trouble in Ten. Weird, usually it's District Eight that starts all that off. Tara, perceptive kid, takes a sip of her water and chirps, "Oh! There must be something wrong with the cows!"

I put a finger to my lips. She imitates me, frowning, so I know she's understood. Ma ruffles my hair fondly, though it hurts. She's just worried about me. It doesn't mean I'm not annoyed.

"Leave off, Ma," I growl, "I brushed this."

"Can't tell," she grumbles back.

The kitchen is a shambles. Every reaping I look around, memorising it, though it's impossible to memorise everything. Dark and dingy, there's always some corner where I'm not sure what's lurking in there. It's not much, but it's home.

I hate it. We could catch any manner of diseases here. And nobody would care. Even our neighbours, who live in similar circumstances, don't interfere in our lives. There's nothing we could really do for each other.

It's only until I'm earning. None of the families here have kids above eighteen.

The rest of breakfast goes by in a steady, nervous silence.