‘Why?’ someone asked.
‘Fit Mix is a marvellous new formula developed to promote adolescent growth. You were the first children to be born for thirty years after the Animal Plague, and now you are approaching your teens, the Northern Government wants to take special care of you. We are concerned about your diet, particularly the amount of fake or ‘Fab’ foods you eat. Fab foods may taste nice, but they are not good for you. You might as well eat this,’ she said, holding up her tablet pen. ‘Or this.’ She pointed to her shoe. Then she loaded pictures of real fruit, vegetables, bread and tank meat on to their desktop screens and they watched a slide show.
‘You should be eating more of these,’ she said.
There was an outburst of laughter.
‘We can’t eat real food! It’s too expensive!’ someone shouted. ‘Only rich people eat real food!’
‘I know,’ the nurse said. ‘Real food is expensive because it takes up valuable space to grow, so most people eat the cheaper Fab foods instead. That’s why you’re going to drink Fit Mix from now on. You could eat nothing but carpet and shoes and still grow big and strong.’
Mika looked at the nurse and all he could see was a Telly Head leaning over him, trying to decide whether to mince him for sausages or boil him like a ham. There was no way he was drinking anything she gave him.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, and her faded yellow eyes locked on his. ‘Can you tell me what’s in the Fit Mix?’
‘Nutrients,’ she replied, shortly.
‘What kind of nutrients?’
‘Special nutrients,’ she replied, looking away. ‘Vitamins and things.’
She thinks I’m stupid, Mika thought, bristling with anger.
‘I want to see a list,’ he demanded. ‘If I’m expected to drink it, I want to know what’s in it.’
‘There’s no point you seeing a list because you won’t understand it,’ she replied, without even looking at him. She began to pull the pile of cups apart and set them out on Mrs Fowler’s desk.
‘Why not?’ he said defiantly. ‘I’m not stupid.’
‘I didn’t say you were,’ she said, turning briefly to give him an icy look. ‘But you won’t understand a list of chemicals’ names, will you? Now, does anyone else have a question?’
Mika glared at her angrily as she continued to set out cups and answer questions.
There was silence in the classroom as everyone drank the Fit Mix. Mika watched Kobi. He hesitated as he picked up the sachet and stirrer and Mika knew he didn’t want to drink it.
Don’t do it Kobi, Mika thought.
It took Kobi a while to make up his mind, but eventually he shook the sachet into the cup and stirred it. Mika watched him drink the Fit Mix and felt pressure build up inside him. Kobi had drunk it. Everyone was drinking it. What were they doing? He couldn’t believe they were drinking it without knowing what was in it. He began to consider the possibility that he was insane. After all, he’d just seen someone from his nightmares in his classroom. Maybe he was wrong about Ellie, maybe she was dead and all the people who had been trying to convince him of the fact for over a year were right; his parents, the police, the doctors, his classmates, maybe they were all right. A cocktail of bad emotions began to stir inside him; confusion, paranoia, despair, and he knew he had to get out of the classroom before he exploded. He stood up and grabbed his coat from the back of his chair. Kobi looked up at him and Mika saw a brief glimpse of intelligent blue eyes through his hair.
‘Where are you going?’ the nurse asked, sharply.
‘I need the toilet,’ he replied, stupidly.
She looked at the unopened sachet of Fit Mix on his desk.
‘You’ve got to drink that first,’ she said, pointing at it.
Mika shook his head, frozen like an animal trapped in a room with a butcher in the doorway. The whole class was staring, stifling their laughter. It was unbearable. He felt as if his skin was going to crack and a paranoid werewolf was about to jump out of it.
‘Right,’ the nurse said. ‘I’m going to get your teacher.’ She walked quickly out of the classroom with her arms rigid at her sides.
‘You paranoid freak!’ Ruben Snaith yelled from the back of the class. ‘Do you think she’s trying to poison you?’
‘Get lost, Ruben,’ Mika said. ‘It’s none of your business.’
‘Mutant weirdo, you should be locked up,’ Ruben sneered. ‘By the way, how’s Ellie these days? Back from her holidays yet?’ Then he muttered something to the boy sitting next to him, who looked at Mika and laughed. He saw a girl playing with her hair and smiling.
They think this is funny, Mika thought. They all think I’m insane.
Burning with anger he pushed desperately through the desks, bouncing off the backs of chairs. But before he reached the door, the nurse returned with Mrs Fowler and the Headmaster, Mr Grey, and he was trapped.
Mr Grey looked as if he’d spent his life eating concrete and drinking floodwater. Even his collar, which came right up to his chin, looked as if was made of concrete. As he walked into the classroom the silence was so absolute, Mika could hear the hum of the processors sleeping in their desks. Everyone was scared of Mr Grey, even Mrs Fowler.
‘Where are you going?’ Mr Grey asked abruptly, his eyes rolling like stones.
Mika didn’t reply.
‘I hear you refuse to drink the Fit Mix.’
Still Mika was silent, worried that if he opened his mouth, he would say something he would regret.
‘It’s vitamins, Mika,’ Mrs Fowler said, in a wheedling voice, as if she was talking to a baby. ‘It’s good for you. When was the last time you ate real food? Christmas? This is supposed to be a fun day, you’ll be getting free sandwiches for lunch and you’ll be hearing about a new game . . .’ She trailed off, fiddling with the streamers tied to her cardigan buttons.
How could he get out? He felt frantic now. The nurse and Mrs Fowler stood between him and the door while Mr Grey held a tablet in his hand and read Mika’s student profile. Behind him, the whole class was staring and stifling their laughter.
‘Mika Smith,’ Mr Grey said, and his voice filled the classroom like train station air. He raised his eyes and looked at Mika calmly. Mika felt a cold chill penetrate his clothes.
‘Why do you rebel against everything?’ he said, quietly. ‘I see from your profile that you are the most intelligent boy in this class, yet your marks are abominable and you are rude and disruptive. Have you become so paranoid that you believe that you, a twelve-year-old boy, know more than your government and school?’
Mika looked at his feet and shook his head. He didn’t know what he thought about anything. He’d just seen a Telly Head in his classroom.
‘Nurse!’ Mr Grey barked. ‘Get the Fit Mix.’
The nurse scuttled to Mika’s desk and collected the cup, sachet and stirrer. Mika realized he was going to be forced to drink it and he ran forward and tried to escape round the side of Mrs Fowler, but just as he’d slipped past, Mr Grey grabbed his arm and dragged him back into the classroom.
‘Oh no you don’t,’ he snarled, gripping Mika’s arm so hard, he cut off the blood supply to his hand.
‘You can’t force me to drink it!’ Mika said, trying to wrench his arm free of Mr Grey’s grip.
‘Yes I can,’ Mr Grey said. ‘Everybody else has. If you don’t drink it, I’ll give your parents a hundred credit fine.’
There were gasps from the class. A hundred credit fine was the maximum amount and Mika knew his parents would be mad as hell if he went home with that. The nurse held out the cup of Fit Mix with a brittle hand. It looked pink and slimy.
‘Drink it,’ Mr Grey said.
Mika took the cup, his heart thudding madly in his chest. Everyone was staring at him.
‘Come on, you paranoid freak!’ Ruben yelled. ‘Get on with it!’
Mika wasn’t quite sure how it happened. One moment he was staring into the cup of Fit Mix, willing himself to drink it; the next, th
e cup jerked up in his hand, and the contents flew out in a pink, slimy arc and hit Mr Grey full in the face. Everything froze for a moment as if someone had pressed pause during a movie, the Fit Mix, Mr Grey, Mika’s heart, the nurse, teacher, classmates, everything, and there was a dreadful silence as everyone watched the Fit Mix begin to run down Mr Grey’s face and on to his collar.
‘You ungrateful little—’ the nurse screeched at Mika, her pale eyes venomous. ‘How dare you!’ She stomped towards the front of the classroom, as if she’d had enough of it all, her shoes rapping like gunfire on the hard floor.
Mr Grey calmly took a handkerchief out of his pocket and began to mop his face. Mika felt his guts melt with fear. Ruben sniggered behind him.
‘You!’ Mr Grey roared, pointing at Ruben. ‘Stand up! How dare you laugh! That’s a fifty credit fine! Let’s see how funny you find that!’
Then he turned his cold eyes on Mika, the pink slime still glistening on his grey lashes and brows. ‘Come with me,’ he hissed, and dragged Mika out of the classroom by the collar of his T-shirt.
6
DON’T BELIEVE THEM
After yelling at Mika for fifteen minutes, Mr Grey left him sitting on a chair in his office with instructions to ‘think about what he had just done.’ He left, Mika assumed, to go to the staff hygiene room and wash the Fit Mix off his eyebrows.
Mika had never been in Mr Grey’s office before and he looked around miserably at the bare desk and three hard chairs – the sort that dig into your back when you sit on them. The walls were painted grey and the window looked out at the Fab Food Factory and an electricity pylon. Facing Mr Grey’s desk was a bank of screens showing views from the security cameras – the dark playground underneath the school; dismal, deserted hallways; dripping urinals and classrooms of pupils doing their morning work. He stood up and searched for a view of his classroom. Finding it, he watched his classmates. The Telly Head nurse was handing out bags, walking through the rows of desks with a tight smile on her face and nodding abruptly as everyone said, ‘Thank you’. He watched them snatch the bags hungrily and rummage, taking things out and putting them on their desks as if it was Christmas and they were opening Santa sacks. A baseball cap, a mug and lots of smaller things he couldn’t see well enough to identify. The colourful balloons bobbed on the walls. They were enjoying themselves. He turned away and sat down again on the hard chair in front of Mr Grey’s desk and put his head in his hands and tried to think about ‘what he had just done’. He was as eager to know the reason for his behaviour as Mr Grey, but he had absolutely no idea. He felt confused, lonely and afraid.
I should apologize, Mika thought. Say that I’m really sorry and make up some excuse for what I’ve done. Make it all better so I can go back to class and be ‘normal’.
But he didn’t feel normal, so how could he act normal? How could he take a goody bag from a Telly Head and laugh and smile like everyone else? And the mayhem in his head had been getting worse since he left the classroom, not better. While Mr Grey was yelling at him, at the back of his mind was a whisper: ‘They’re trying to poison you, they’re telling you lies. It’s all lies. Don’t believe them.’
Ellie’s voice, he wondered. He’d thought he’d heard her speak to him many times since she’d disappeared. Someone was talking to him . . .
He rocked on the seat holding his head and the Telly Heads swarmed around him like umbra ghosts, knives raised, ready to chop him up and serve him as canapés.
I want Helen, Mika thought desperately. She’ll make me feel better.
The office door hummed, startling him. He watched it slide open and Mr Grey and Mrs Fowler walked in. Mrs Fowler had taken the streamers off her cardigan. She looked anxious and hovered uncomfortably to the side of Mr Grey’s desk. Mika sensed she felt uneasy about the way he was being treated, but he also knew she wouldn’t do anything about it. Mr Grey was the boss.
Mr Grey looked smug now he was clean. He was holding his tablet in one hand and an object Mika recognized in the other – the detention collar. The last time Mika had seen the detention collar was on the neck of a boy called Detroit Pippin who’d tried to burn down the school when he was seven. The fire didn’t take because the school was too damp, but by the time Detroit Pippin was eight, he was living in a prison complex off the north coast of Ireland.
‘Your parents will be here soon,’ Mr Grey said, placing the detention collar gently on his desk so the weight didn’t dent it. ‘We’re going to have a nice little chat.’
Mika groaned inside. He was beginning to realize throwing Fit Mix in Mr Grey’s face was a far worse crime than trying to burn down the school.
‘Right!’ Mr Grey continued in a businesslike manner, standing with his back straight and his feet together. ‘Punishments!’
He delivered them as if he was reading a shopping list. ‘A seven-day exclusion starting tomorrow,’ he said, looking up briefly from his tablet to gauge Mika’s reaction. Mika stared ahead and refused to give him one. ‘The detention collar to make sure you don’t go anywhere or have any fun during your exclusion; the sorting beads, ten thousand, six colours; and last but not least the hundred-credit fine. I’m sure your parents will be absolutely delighted.’
Mika glared at the detention collar and bit his tongue. He didn’t care about the exclusion, the collar and the stupid sorting beads, but he did care about the hundred-credit fine – he deserved punishment but his parents didn’t. It wasn’t fair.
The collar was made of two pieces of hinged metal. Mika felt his body compress as its weight was fixed to his neck. Mr Grey turned the screws with alarming enthusiasm until Mika was fighting for breath and could feel his head swelling up like a tomato. He wondered whether he should say something, but remembered the fate of Detroit Pippin and stopped himself.
‘I don’t think he can breathe,’ Mrs Fowler said, watching nervously and biting her thumbnail.
‘Really?’ Mr Grey said, looking at Mika’s face with a furrowed brow as if he hadn’t noticed his eyes were popping out of his head.
‘He does look a bit red in the face,’ she added.
Mr Grey reluctantly loosened the collar.
It pressed into the skin on Mika’s neck and cut into his shoulders. Mr Grey explained that the collar would give him an electric shock if he tried to leave his apartment.
‘One foot outside your fold-down and you’ll get a shock powerful enough to make you wee your pants,’ he said, with a nasty smile. Then he went to one of his cupboards and took out a large container of sorting beads and dumped them in Mika’s lap.
‘Those should keep you busy,’ he said.
Mika looked at the container blankly. The beads were so small they could only be picked up with a pair of tweezers, and Mika would have to separate the six colours into six smaller containers before he went back to school.
‘Do you have anything to say?’ Mr Grey asked, with an eyebrow raised.
Mika shook his head. Any thoughts about apologizing had vaporized.
‘Fine,’ Mr Grey said. ‘Save it for your parents, eh? Right. I’ve got more important things to do. I’ll see you in a week’s time when you come to my office to tell me how sorry you are and drink the Fit Mix.’
Mika gritted his teeth.
You’ll be lucky, he thought.
* * *
The Headmaster talked to Mika’s parents in the hallway outside his office, and Mika sat waiting for them to finish, chewing his nails and imagining all the terrible things Mr Grey was saying about him. Mr Grey looked pleased when he re-entered the office, and Asha and David were speechless with anger; Asha’s eyes were so hard and glittery, Mika couldn’t look at her, and his father’s face was pale and taut and his hands were clenched in bloodless fists. They turned and walked out of the office without saying a word, and Mika rose and followed, clutching the container of sorting beads, his heart feeling like a punchbag that was about to get a good pummelling.
He followed them out of the school gates feel
ing as dark as the clouds overhead. The walkway was dreary and deserted because everyone was at work or school and the wind blew gusts of drizzle in his face. His parents were still wearing their work uniforms, and Mika suddenly realized how much trouble they would be in for having to leave early. He watched their backs as they walked ahead of him, aware that he was in the eye of a storm and worse was yet to come. He listened to the roar of trains and hover cars on the traffic trunk into Oxford Central, the whine of the rich people’s pods on the air roads above the clouds and the hollow clang of metal on metal in the Fab Food Factory and felt a wave of despair.
How, he thought, had the world become so horrible?
He looked around and all he could see were rain clouds, floodwater and concrete created by human beings. Even the plague had been a human invention; the animals had caught it from a mouse who’d escaped from a research laboratory, yet everyone blamed the animals. And because of the plague, humans had poisoned all the trees and plants so the animals didn’t have anywhere to live or food to eat. Everything beautiful in the world had been killed. How had they ended up living like this? He yearned for what he had never seen. He ached for the grass he had never felt beneath his feet and the flowers he had never smelled. And he was angry that the world he had been born into was ruined. How could people have let this happen? It didn’t make sense. His world didn’t make sense and he didn’t make sense. He felt as if he was staggering around with his arms outstretched and a blindfold on, trying to solve an impossible puzzle. But how could he, a twelve-year-old boy, find out anything? He wasn’t even allowed to make the decision not to drink some stupid vitamins. And everyone laughed at me, he thought. They think I’m a freak. Even Kobi drank it.
They entered their fold-down apartment in silence. It was gloomy and cold, but Mika’s parents didn’t put the light on, they stopped by the sofa and turned to face him.
‘Well?’ Asha said, her face dark.
‘I couldn’t help it,’ Mika muttered, feeling more afraid now than he was of Mr Grey.