Slated

Chapter Seven

'Where've you been?' Mum is waiting in the door, arms crossed.

'Told you: we went for a walk,' Amy answers as we walk in, take off our shoes.

'Those shoes are muddy. You didn't go up the footpath on your own, did you? I've told you it's not safe.'

'No, of course not; we weren't alone,' Amy says, and with her back to Mum rolls her eyes.

'Kyla? Is that true?' Mum turns to me with a full dragon glare.

'Yes,' I say. And it was: Jazz went up with us. He didn't come back with us, but that isn't what she asked.

'Listen to me, both of you. You know it isn't safe for you on your own. You can't protect yourselves.'

Amy nods and I remember lessons on personal safety at the hospital. It is part of being Slated. You can't defend yourself any more than you can attack someone, so you have to be extra careful.

But what is up the footpath, but trees and more trees?

'You've been ages. I was worried. And you've almost missed Dad,' Mum says, and I notice she is standing next to a suitcase in the hall.

Her arms are crossed and I see now that Mum's skin has a strange tinge: slightly dragon-green. I can imagine scales in the light criss-cross of lines about her forehead, by her eyes. Is there a bit of smoke coming from her nostrils?

'What is so funny, miss?' she says to me.

I wipe the smile off my face. 'Nothing. Sorry.'

'Leave the poor girl alone,' a voice says from the lounge room: Dad.

Amy crosses the room and kisses him on the cheek. I stand uncertain in the doorway.

'Come in, Kyla. Have a seat. Tell me about your day, and I'll tell you about mine.'

So we swap stories. And he seems as interested in me cutting my hand, Nurse Penny's visit and going for a walk, as I am in his.

Dad works with computers. He travels a lot, installing and testing new systems, and is about to leave and won't be back until Saturday. Five whole days from now. And then he tells me about family stuff. Like he has two sisters, one visiting with her son on Saturday so I can meet them. The other lives far away in Scotland and we might visit her next summer. And that Mum is an only child; her parents died many years ago in a motorway accident. She was just fifteen.
Later that night when Amy and I go up to sleep, I fish out today's drawing from where I hid it under the others.

'Amy, this—' I hold up my afternoon's work, '—is Dr Lysander. Why were you surprised I know her?'

Amy takes the sheet from my hand.

'She looks scary!'

I shrug. 'She can be. But sometimes she's all right.'

'I'd love to work with her when I'm a nurse; she's amazing.'

'Why?'

'Don't you know? She started it all: Slating. She invented it. We learnt about it in science at school.'

I look at the picture in my hands, at her hooded eyes that stare back at mine. I didn't know that. Or did I? Everyone always deferred to Dr Lysander; got out of her way in a hurry. All Slateds have a main doctor assigned to them at the hospital, and she was mine. But now that I think about it, there was never anyone besides me in her waiting room. No one else I knew saw her. If she is so important, why would she bother with me?

They taught us the basics about Slating in the hospital school. We were all criminals, sentenced to Slating – wiping our memories and personalities – so we could start over again. With the Levo in place to make sure it all works, until it is removed the year we turn twenty-one on the anniversary of our Slating. So Slating is a second chance, for which we should be grateful: it kept us out of jail, or off the chair.

But at least if you were in jail, you'd know who you are. Not for long on the chair, though, if you'd done something bad enough to warrant that.

I bite my lip. 'Don't you ever want to know?'

'What?'

'Why you were Slated.'

'No. If the past is unbearable, why choose to bear it?'

I shrug. Because it is mine.

'Anyhow, that solves the mystery of what happened to your drawings.'

'It does?'

'Security must have taken them before you left the hospital. They wouldn't want anyone to know what Dr Lysander or anyone else who works there looks like, or where things are in the hospital. It's too dangerous.'

Whispers overheard mix together in my mind; snippets, rumours and distant loud noises at night. Guards and towers. Burnt out buildings.

'Terrorists?'

'Exactly.'

Amy switches out the light. Soon her even breathing says she sleeps. Sebastian curls along my side.

So. Dr Lysander is important, and they stole my drawings to keep her face hidden from the world. And now, I've drawn her, again. Maybe, I should hide it better? This likeness of her is the best I've ever done.

Even though I used the wrong hand.

I am in a small space, alone. Wood surrounds me. It is dark, but I hold a torch in my right hand.

Cross-legged on the floor, I'm hungry and it is cold and damp. My legs are stiff and there is no room to stretch out, but I don't care. The pages lie across my knees, kept flat by a piece of wood underneath. The pencil flies across the paper, a dance of magic that is mine alone. Creating an imaginary place so far from this one, in distance and in time: a place I long to be.

So absorbed, that at first, I don't hear the footsteps, coming down the stairs over my head. I turn off the torch and hold my breath.

They stop at the bottom; pause. Then they start again, coming closer and closer to my secret place. I should do something, hide my drawings, anything, but I am fixed like stone.

A light switches on in my face. Blinding me.

'There you are.'

I say nothing. He can see it all; the drawings, the pencil. The hand that holds it.

'Get up!' he snaps.

I scramble out, the light still dazzling my eyes.

'You know the reasons; you know how important this is. Yet still you disobey.'

'I'm sorry. I won't do it again, I won't. I promise!'

'Enough of your promises. You can't be trusted.'

His voice is full of regret; sadness, even.

'Give me your left hand,' he says, and when I don't, he grabs it.

'You have to learn. I'm sorry.'

And I almost believe he means it, as he smashes my fingers, one by one, with a brick.