The Girl with All the Gifts

8

One hundred and seventeen days have passed since the day when Liam and Marcia were taken away and didn’t come back.

Melanie continues to think about it and worry at it, but she still hasn’t asked Miss Justineau – or anyone else – what happened to them. The closest she’s come is to ask Mr Whitaker what two little ducks means. She remembers Dr Caldwell saying those words on the day when it all happened.

Mr Whitaker is having one of those up-and-down days when he brings his bottle into class – the bottle full to the brim with the medicine that makes him first better and then worse. Melanie has watched this strange and mildly disturbing progress enough times that she can predict its course. Mr Whitaker comes into class nervous and irritable, determined to find fault with everything the children say or do.

Then he drinks the medicine, and it spreads through him like ink through water (it was Miss Justineau who showed them what that looks like). His body relaxes, losing its tics and twitches. His mind relaxes too, and for a little while he’s gentle and patient with everyone. If he could only stop at that point, it would be wonderful, but he keeps drinking and the miracle is reversed. It’s not that Mr Whitaker gets grumpy again. What he gets is something worse, something quite awful, that Melanie doesn’t have a name for. He seems to sink in on himself in total misery, and at the same time try to shrink away from himself as though there’s something inside him that’s too nasty to touch. Sometimes he cries, and says he’s sorry – not to the children, but to someone else who isn’t really there, and whose name keeps changing.

Knowing this cycle well, Melanie times her question to coincide with the expansive phase. What might those two little ducks be, she asks Mr Whitaker, that Dr Caldwell mentioned? Why did she mention them right then, on the day when she took Marcia and Liam away?

“It’s from a game called bingo,” Mr Whitaker tells her, his voice only a little blurred around the edges. “In the game, each player gets a card full of numbers from one to a hundred. The caller calls out numbers at random, and the first player to have all their numbers called wins a prize.”

“Are the two little ducks one of the prizes?” Melanie asks him.

“No, Melanie, they’re one of the numbers. It’s sort of a code. Every number has a special phrase or group of words attached to it. Two little ducks is twenty-two, because of the shapes the numbers make on the page. Look.” He draws them on the whiteboard. “They look just like ducks swimming along, you see?”

Melanie thinks they look more like swans actually, but the game of bingo doesn’t interest her very much. So all Dr Caldwell was doing was saying twenty-two twice, once in ordinary numbers and once in this code. Saying two times over that she was choosing Liam instead of someone else.

Choosing him for what?

Melanie thinks about numbers. Her secret language uses numbers – different numbers of fingers held up with your right hand and your left hand, or your right hand twice, if your left hand is still tied to the chair. That makes six times six different combinations (because holding up no fingers is a signal too) – enough for all the letters of the alphabet and special signs for all the teachers and Dr Caldwell and Sergeant, plus a question mark and a sign that means “I’m joking”.

A hundred and seventeen days means that it’s summer now. Maybe Miss Justineau will bring the world into the classroom again – will show them what summer looks like, the way she did with spring. But Miss Justineau is different these days, when she’s with the class. She sometimes forgets what she’s saying, breaks off mid-sentence and goes quiet for a long time before she starts up again, usually with something completely different.

She reads from books a lot more, and organises games and sing-songs a lot less.

Maybe Miss Justineau is sad for some reason. That thought makes Melanie both desperate and angry. She wants to protect Miss Justineau, and she wants to know who’d be so horrible as to make her sad. If she could find out who it was, she doesn’t know what she’d do to them, but it would make them very sorry.

And when she starts to think about who it might be, there’s really only one name that comes into her mind.

And here he is walking into the classroom now, at the head of half a dozen of his people, his scowling face half crossed out by the wobbly diagonal of his scar. He puts his hands on the handles of Melanie’s chair, swivels it around and pushes it out of the classroom. He does it really fast and jerky, the way he does most things. He wheels the chair right past the door of Melanie’s cell, then he backs in, pushing the door open with his bottom, and spins the chair around so sharply and suddenly it makes Melanie dizzy.

Two of Sergeant’s people come in behind him, but they don’t go anywhere near the chair. They stand to attention and wait until Sergeant nods permission. One of them covers Melanie with his handgun while the other starts to undo the straps, the neck strap first and from behind.

Melanie meets Sergeant’s gaze, feeling something inside her clench like a fist. It’s Sergeant’s fault that Miss Justineau is sad. It has to be, because she only started to be sad after Sergeant got mad with her and told her she’d broken the rules.

“Look at you,” he says to Melanie now. “Face all screwed up like a tragedy mask. Like you’ve got feelings. Jesus Christ!”

Melanie scowls at him, as fierce as she can get. “If I had a box full of all the evils of the world,” she tells him, “I’d open it just a little way and push you inside. Then I’d close it again for always.”

Sergeant laughs, and there’s surprise in the laugh – like he can’t believe what he just heard. “Well, shit,” he says, “I’d better make sure you never get hold of a box.”

Melanie is outraged that he took the biggest insult she could think of and laughed it off. She casts around desperately for a way to raise the stakes. “She loves me!” she blurts. “That’s why she stroked my hair! Because she loves me and wants to be with me! And all you do is make her sad, so she hates you! She hates you as bad as if you were a hungry!”

Sergeant stares at her, and something happens in his face. It’s like he’s surprised, and then he’s scared, and then he’s angry. The fingers of his big hands pull back slowly into fists.

He puts his hands on the arms of the chair and slams it back against the wall. His face is very close to Melanie’s, and it’s all red and twisty.

“I will fucking dismantle you, you little roach!” he says in a choking voice.

Sergeant’s people are watching all this with anxious looks on their faces. They look like they think there’s something they should be doing but they’re not sure what it is. One of them says, “Sergeant Parks…” but then doesn’t say anything else.

Sergeant straightens up and steps back, makes a gesture that’s halfway to being a shrug. “We’re done here,” he says.

“She’s still strapped in,” says the other one of Sergeant’s people.

“Too bad,” says Sergeant. He throws the door open and waits for them to move, looking at one of them and then the other until they give up and leave Melanie where she is and go out through the door.

“Sweet dreams, kid,” Sergeant says. He slams the door shut behind him, and she hears the bolts shoot home.

One.

Two.

Three.