The Girl with All the Gifts

13

The week goes by, slow and inexorable. Three Mr Whitaker days in a row reduce the class to unaccustomed lethargy.

Whether by accident or design, Sergeant stays away from Melanie. She hears his voice yelling transit in the mornings, but he’s never visible when she’s taken out from her cell, or when she’s brought back to it. Each time, she feels a surge of anticipation. She’s ready to fight him again, and declare her hate for him, and defy him to hurt her some more.

But he doesn’t come into her line of sight, and she has to swallow all those feelings back into herself the way a rat or a rabbit will sometimes reabsorb into its womb a litter of young that it can’t safely give birth to.

Friday is a Miss Justineau day. Normally this would be a cause of intense and uncomplicated joy. This time, Melanie is afraid as well as excited. She almost ate Miss Justineau. What if Miss Justineau is angry about that, and doesn’t like her any more?

The start of the lesson does little to reassure her. Miss J has come back unhappy and preoccupied, folded in on herself so that her emotions are impossible to read. She says good morning to the class as a whole, not to each individual boy and girl. She makes no eye contact.

She tests the children with short-answer and multiple-choice questions for most of the day. Then she sits at her desk and marks their answers, writing the test scores down in a big notebook while the class works on sums.

Melanie isn’t thinking much about the sums, which she finishes in a few minutes. They’re just easy calculus, most of them with single variables. Her attention is focused on Miss Justineau, and to her horror she sees that Miss Justineau is crying silently as she works.

Melanie searches her mind frantically for something to say. Something that might comfort Miss J, or at least distract her from her sorrows. If it’s the marking that’s making her sad, they can switch to a different activity that’s easier and more fun.

“Can we have stories, Miss Justineau?” she asks. Miss Justineau doesn’t seem to have heard. She goes on tallying up the test scores.

Some of the other kids sigh or tut or fidget. They can see that Miss Justineau is sad, and they clearly think that Melanie shouldn’t be bothering her with selfish demands. Melanie sticks to her guns. She knows the class can make Miss J happy again if she’ll only talk to them. Her own happiest times have always been here, like this, so how can they not be Miss Justineau’s happiest times too?

She tries again. “Can we have myths of Ancient Greece, Miss Justineau?” she asks louder.

This time Miss J hears. She looks up, and shakes her head. “Not today, Melanie,” she says, and her voice is as sad as her face. For a few moments she just stares out at the class, almost like she’s surprised to see them there. “I have to finish these assessments,” she says.

But she doesn’t go back to the notebook. She keeps looking at the class. There’s kind of a frown on her face. It’s like she’s the one who’s doing hard sums, not them, and she’s reached one that she just can’t work out.

“Who the hell am I kidding?” she asks really quietly.

She tears up the tests, which is surprising but the kids don’t really mind, because who cares about test results? Only Kenny and Andrew, when they’re trying to outscore each other, which is really lame and stupid because Melanie is the best in the class and Zoe is the second best, so the boys are only fighting for third place.

Then Miss J tears up the notebook. She rips the pages out a few at a time, and shreds them with her hands until they’re too small to tear any more. She drops the pieces into the waste-paper basket, only they’re too small and light to fall straight. They turn in the air, spread out, make a mess on the floor all around it. Miss Justineau doesn’t mind. She starts to throw the pieces up in the air, instead of just dropping them, so they spread out even further.

She’s not happy exactly, but she’s stopped crying. It’s a good sign.

“You want stories?” she asks the class.

They all do.

Miss Justineau gets the Greek myths book out of the book corner and brings it to the front. She reads them the story of Actaeon, which is scary, and Theseus and the Minotaur, which is even scarier. At Melanie’s request, she winds up with Pandora again, even though they all know it. It’s a good way to finish off the day.

When Sergeant’s people come, Miss Justineau doesn’t look at them. She sits on the corner of the teacher’s desk, turning the Greek myths book over and over in her hands.

“Goodbye, Miss Justineau,” Melanie says. “See you soon, I hope.”

Miss Justineau looks up. It seems as though she’s about to say something, but there’s a bump right then as someone – one of Sergeant’s people – gets hold of Melanie’s chair from behind and takes the brakes off. The chair starts to turn.

“I need this one for a moment,” Miss Justineau says. Melanie can’t see her any more, because she’s been turned mostly away, but Miss Justineau’s voice is loud, like she’s very close by.

“Okay.” The soldier sounds bored, like it’s all the same to him. He moves on to Gary’s chair.

“Good night, Melanie,” Miss Justineau says. But she doesn’t go away. She leans down over Melanie, her shadow falling on the arms of the chair and on Melanie’s hands.

Melanie feels something hard and angular being shoved down between her back and the back of the chair. “Enjoy,” Miss Justineau murmurs. “But keep it to yourself.”

Melanie leans back, as hard as she can, squaring her shoulders against the chair’s bare metal plates. The something is wedged against the small of her back – completely out of sight. She has no idea what it could be, but it’s something that came from Miss Justineau’s hand. Something Miss Justineau has given to her, and only her.

She stays in that position all the way back to her cell, and all through her straps being untied. She doesn’t move a muscle. She keeps her gaze fixed on the floor, not trusting herself to meet the eyes of Sergeant’s people without giving the secret away.

Only when they’ve gone, and the bolts have shot closed on the cell door, does she reach behind her back and slide out the foreign object that’s been lodged there, registering first the solid weight of it, then the rectangular shape, and finally the words on the cover.

Tales the Muses Told: Greek Myths, by Roger Lancelyn Green.

Melanie makes a strangled sound. She can’t help it, even though it might bring Sergeant’s people back into the cell to find out what she’s doing. A book! A book of her own! And this book! She runs her hands over the cover, riffles the pages, turns the book in her hands to look at it from every angle. She smells the book.

That turns out to be a mistake, because the book smells of Miss Justineau. On top, strongest, the chemical smell from her fingers, as bitter and horrible as always; but underneath, a little, and on the inside pages a lot, the warm and human smell of Miss Justineau herself.

The feeling – the bullying, screaming hunger – goes on for a long time. But it’s not nearly as strong as it was when Melanie was smelling Miss J herself, right up close, with no chemical spray at all. It’s still scary – a rebellion of her body against her mind, as though she’s Pandora wanting to open the box and it doesn’t matter how many times she’s been told not to, she’s just been built so she has to, and she can’t make herself stop. But finally Melanie gets used to the smell the way the children in the shower on Sunday get used to the smell of the chemicals. It doesn’t go away exactly, but it doesn’t torment her in quite the same way; it becomes kind of invisible, just because it doesn’t change. The hunger gets less and less, and when it’s all gone, Melanie is still there.

The book is still there too; Melanie reads it until daybreak, and even when she stumbles over the words or has to guess what they mean, she’s in another world.

She will think of that later – only a day later – after the world she knows has gone away.