We stop at the traffic lights. There’s a bunch of girls about my age standing there, but they dinnae look like me. They look young. I turn the music up, sneakers off, feet on the dash. I light a fag and look out the window at one of the girls. She’s got great legs, really slim but nice. She turns around, laughing tae her pal, and her smile is stunning.
‘I’d shag that,’ I say and flick my ash away.
17
I’M UGLY TODAY. I am sat on a hill staring at the school, and I cannae believe Angus got them to let me come back. It has been four weeks and two days since I got put in the Panopticon. My days were going like this — get up, fuck about, have the odd half-arsed meeting with Helen before she leaves, play cards with Angus, wait until Isla, Tash or Shortie gets back from school, go and get stoned. It was civilised, but Angus had to go and fuck it up.
The school bell clangs and guppies start swarming out the doors like a virus. Faces. Eyes. Elbows. I put on my star-shaped sunglasses and stand up. I got them from the vintage shop this morning. They are total quality. I have to shake these jeans out, so they sit better. I borrowed them off Shortie; they’re baggy, so they hide my tag. If it was on show, the whole school’d be talking about it.
Walk down through the school gates and push in, against the tide of people. They are all heading up the street tae the chippie, or home. I am going to the woods. I get a few hiyas, and glances — a lot of glances actually. I dinnae feel like speaking to anyone.
Last time I got dragged back to school it was by the polis and I was handcuffed — it was just after lunch on a Monday. The entire Home Ec rooms, and the computer rooms, all watched me being marched by. I went into the computer rooms earlier to try to look up the difference between human blood and squirrel blood. It is different. Molecularly. That means if the police say the blood they have from my skirt is human, then I’ll know they are lying. Or the experiment have gone into the labs in the middle of the night and just switched the samples around, ay. Why would they do that? Cos I’m their golden girl, they cannae fucking let me get away. They want to go all the way. Locked door. Square room. One vertebrae. Snapped. I’m gonnae find out what’s happened, if the samples are human blood. If they are. Fuck!
If that happens I will need to click my feet three times and find a place far — far fucking away — to call home. Maybe an igloo. I could be the lone Eskimo, friend of whales and seals. Except I dinnae think Eskimos are right friendly with whales and seals. I think they just stab them, skin them, eat them, and wear their skin.
Can you imagine it — a life in a secure unit, then prison. I wouldnae mind if it was for something I’d done! I mean I would, but it’d be different. It makes me burn when I think about it, right inside, like I just want to — disappear. Just like that. That’s how it happens. You blink one day and what was there a second ago is gone.
I push through a gap in the bushes, into the woods. It’s colder in here and quieter. The leaves have turned to mulch on the forest floor and the boughs are nearly bare. When I breathe out there is a wee stream of silver. Autumn has gone quickly this year and winter is appearing, but she hasn’t put on a show yet. Even the weather is still — waiting to see what will happen.
I climb up on my oak tree, let myself fall back until I am hanging by my knees, hair trailing across the forest floor. It’s soothing. The trees still have some leaves, all dry and crackly. The rest are mulch. Hundreds of tiny wishes drift through the woods, they sparkle in the dim, and dance up as silver orbs.
I remember Hayley catching a wish for me when we were younger, before she moved away to Singapore and some great life with friends who are rich and clever. Hayley had the most perfect tits I’ve ever seen. So neat, smaller than mine — more upturned with really pale-pink nipples. I could easy have been her wife. She would have got some fancy job with her dad’s company and I would have waited at home, tae love her, and make her some tea, after a long day. Instead I ended up with Jay. Sucking on a mouldy pole — that’s what Tash calls it. Hayley was quiet, and kind. Kindness is the most underrated quality on the planet. I feel hollow just now. Hollow where a heart should be. Like when you know someone loves you, but you urnay good enough — that it will go. That you’ll make it go, it’s only a matter of time.
Take a joint out my bra. Fucking shitty lighter, light again, inhale — that’s better, inhale deeply. The forest floor is damp and wild garlic sweetens the air. Somewhere the river gurgles.
There’s a newspaper near my head. It’s damp, but I can still read the headline.
Nobody Could Prevent Child’s Murder.
I have to close my eyes, tears at the back of them, dizzy, let my legs fall down over my head until I feel solid ground. Sink down. Lump in my throat. How can someone do that, ay? And how can someone say — on the front of a fucking newspaper — that there was nothing they could do to stop it?
Seriously. How not? How can you not stop it? If you take a kid who is in danger out of a place where it’s gonnae be tortured tae death — well, that kid would not be murdered then. Fact. It was a head social worker said that headline. What kind of message is that to send out to baby-murderers? What kind of apology, or acknowledgement of responsibility, is that?
It’s not an apology. It’s not an explanation. It’s a fucking insult, that’s what it is.
It’d be different if it was their baby. You’re sure as fucking shit it would be different then. It’d be different if it was some foreign country and they were being ethnically cleansed, or were war victims. But it’s no different here, at home, if you’ve no money. It’s no different here. They just let it happen. They say they dinnae, but they do. All the fucking time.
You can stop it. You go in, and you look, with your eyes open; if they have a record of continuous bruises, or bumps, if you visit and they have chocolate smeared all over them — wipe it off. See what is underneath. Dinnae even fucking think about leaving until you do. But they pass by things, don’t they, like, professionally. They have never asked me about rooms without windows or doors. Not once.
‘How many social workers have you had, Anais?’
‘Thirty-eight.’
‘Who are the worst to break in?’
‘Graduates. They’re itching for a good specimen, it makes them feel better about all their student loans, and it makes them believe they’re now a grown-up. It’s all very serious. They think everything’s great. Child abuse. Getting battered. Drug addiction. They fucking love it — makes them feel dead professional and important. Everyone wants to feel important, ay?’
As specimens go, they always get excited about me. I’m a good one. A show-stopper. I’m the kind of kid they’ll still enquire about ten years later. Fifty-one placements, drug problems, violence, dead adopted mum, no biological links, constant offending. Tick, tick, tick. I lure them in to begin with. Cultivate my specimen face. They like that. Do-gooders are vomit-worthy. Damaged goods are dangerous. The ones that are in it cos they thought it would be a step up from an office job are tedious. The ones who’ve been in too long lose it. The ones who think they’ve got the Jesus touch are fucking insane. The I can save you brigade are particularly radioactive. They think if you just inhale some of their middle-classism, then you’ll be saved.
Helen’s like that. She thought that what I really needed was homeopathic tongue-drops. She said I should take them if I ever felt like I was getting angry.