Slated

Chapter Five

I see?' Amy asks. She cranes her head forward, but I angle the sketch away.

'Not yet. Hold still, or I won't be able to finish it.'

'Bossy thing.'

'It won't be long now,' I say, glancing back at Amy and then down to my drawing, for a few final strokes of my pencil.

Amy smiles. 'Are you level?'

I turn my wrist to check. 'Yes. 5.2 and steady.'

The door opens but I don't look up.

'Are you girls ready for breakfast?' Mum says.

'Nearly,' I say, looking at Amy one more time, then at the sketch in my hands. A final stroke, there. 'Done,' I say, and put the pencil down.

'Let me see!' Amy springs up, and Mum walks over.

'That is so good,' Amy says.

Mum's mouth is in a round 'o' of surprise. 'That is Amy, you have captured her, just so. I want to frame this and hang it on the wall. May I?'

I smile. 'Yes.'

Breakfast is pancakes. Eaten with butter melting in streaks, and syrup, or strawberry jam. I try both, together: very nice.

'Don't think you'll be eating like this every day,' Mum says. My sketch of Amy is on the fridge with a magnet instead of a frame on the wall, and Mum has reverted to her pointy self.

'Amy, you've got twenty minutes before the bus and you don't look even a bit ready to me.'

'Can't I stay home with Kyla today?'

'No.'

'Where's Dad?' I ask.

'Work, of course. Where I should be, but had to take leave to mind you.'

I do the math. Amy is going to school, Dad's at work: that leaves Mum and me for the whole day.

'When can I start school? Can I go today?'

'No.'

Amy explains. 'You've got to be assessed by the area nurse first; she has to think you are ready. Then the school tests you to work out where to put you, what year. Though they've sent some books for you to read.'

'Oh.'

'The nurse is dropping in this afternoon to meet you,' Mum says.

I vow to act as well adjusted as possible.

Amy dashes upstairs in a flurry of finding school books, uniform. She is in her last year of A-levels. At nineteen she should be done, at university, studying nursing like she wants to, already. But she needed an extra year to catch up. And she was fourteen when she was Slated. I'm sixteen now. How many extra years of school will I have?

'You can wash up,' Mum says.

'Wash what?'

She rolls her eyes.

'The dishes.'

I stand and look at them on the table.

She sighs. 'Pick up the dirty dishes from the table and put them there.' She points at the worktop next to the sink.

I carry one plate across and go back for another.

'No! That will take forever. Stack them up. Like this.'

She stacks plates, pulling out knives and forks and clattering them on the top one, then plonks the lot on the worktop.

'Fill the sink. Add soap, just a little.' She squeezes a bottle into the sink.