One of Us Page 4

  If I say no, I’ll never see Oskar again. I’ll still have my room at the halfway house, but only until I’m sixteen. I can’t go back to school. I will have thrown away the opportunity, however slim, to finally do something to stop them. Maybe one small piece of missing information could have stopped the bomb at Central Station. Just like one person’s observation could have saved my parents thirteen years ago.

  Am I as brave as Oskar thinks? Could I really go that far?

  OF COURSE I’M not going to do it. It’s crazy, unreal. I have no idea how to be a spy.

  Oskar pulls up in the train station’s parking lot and I climb off the bike.

  But as my fingers fumble with the helmet strap, I hear myself say: “I’ll do it.”

  What am I doing? But I can always leave, can’t I?

  Oskar lifts his helmet off. “Good. Good.” His face breaks out into a smile.

  It’ll be OK.

  He pulls off his gloves and unclasps my helmet strap because my fingers are too cold to do anything except fumble. “I knew you would.” His friendly eyes smile into mine. “We’ll get together in the cafe tomorrow, sort out your Brotherhood ID.” He pulls a folder out of his crate.

  He has it with him. He knew I would say yes.

  “Here. This will tell you everything you need to know about the Brotherhood. Don’t let anyone see it. Keep it with you always. Oh, and don’t get a haircut.”

  “OK.” I take the folder.

  “Hey.” He pulls me into a sudden bear hug. “You’re not alone. Not now.” He lets me go and laughs into my face. “Don’t look so solemn.”

  But I don’t feel solemn at all. I watch Oskar’s bike roar around the corner. I know I’ll see him again now that we’re working together. The guilt that has been gnawing at me since the bomb lifts, just like that, and a wave of peace fills me. I think of the little boy with the cupcakes. “I’m doing this for you,” I whisper.

  I run back to the halfway house with the folder clutched to my chest. For the first time ever, it feels like going home.

  CHAPTER 5

  I STAND OUTSIDE the gate of the Institute, my finger pressing the buzzer. On the other side of the road, Oskar is watching me from the woods, which are dark in the dull afternoon light. Once I cross the threshold, there’s no turning back, just as there was no going back after I walked out of the halfway house without saying where I was going. I look at the graffiti scrawled over the low stone wall in front of the fence: Hoody Scum . . . Murderers. It wasn’t there when we drove past before.

  Nothing happens, nobody comes. I could still turn back, run across the road to the clearing up the hill where Oskar parked the car. I could tell him I’ve changed my mind. But am I such a coward as that? You might be able to prevent the deaths of innocent people. I made up my mind and I gave my word. I press the buzzer again.

  This time the gate swings open immediately, and before I have time to think again I walk in, pulling the new red suitcase Oskar gave me. The gate clangs shut behind me, and suddenly everything is different. I’m in a world controlled solely by the Brotherhood. My heart starts leaping about under my blouse.

  A high barbed-wire fence borders the drive, with another locked gate at the end, trapping me in, under scrutiny. Murderers . . . murderers . . . My feet walk to the beat of the words as I approach the second gate. Beyond it there’s a lodge, and behind that the stone mansion, with its leaded windows and crooked roof, squats solidly against the white wintry sky. Other old buildings sprawl around and behind it.

  I refuse to be afraid to walk into the Institute, even though my feet are sending me an urgent message: Turn around, go back! The cameras perched above the barbed wire swivel to track me. I feel the wool bag drag on my shoulder, and my pumps skid on the gravel of the drive. I don’t look like me, in this red-checked skirt that grabs my ankles as I walk and the floppy hat over my hair, still way too short for a Brotherhood girl. But I know that I’ll see Oskar in a week when we meet in the woods, so I make my feet keep walking.

  I won’t think about what Grandma would say if she could see me now, dressed as a Brotherhood girl, with a Brotherhood name, walking into a Brotherhood school. Because if Grandma could see me, I wouldn’t be doing this, would I?

  I stop when I reach the second gate and the caretaker’s lodge. On the wall I see the faded Gatesbrooke Council sign: One City, Two Ways. Above the sign, carved into the stone in weathered letters, is The Institute. It seems to mock the sign. I was here first, its crumbling stone says, before your State. Oskar’s Manual explained the period of Brotherhood rule hundreds of years ago before we won the first civil war: our Bloody Century, their Golden Hundred. I don’t want to walk under this arch, which has always been here.

  The parking lot only has a few cars in it. But this evening, Oskar has told me, is the Institute’s big Spring Meeting. That’s why he wanted me to go in today. The security guard comes out of the lodge and walks toward the gate, his walkie-talkie crackling in the quiet afternoon.

  “And you are?” he barks.

  “Verity Nekton.” My voice sounds loud and clear, as if it’s true. My heart thumps.

  I hold out the letter Oskar gave me and the guard studies it. A brown-and-white spaniel walks up behind him and sniffs my hand through the rails. It’s not much of a guard dog. It gives my knuckles a quick lick. The gate slides open, then clangs shut behind me.

  I’m alone now. The Brotherhood don’t trust television or computers. But they seem to have no problem with security cameras and signal-blocking technology. Even if I had a cell phone, I wouldn’t be able to use it in here. Oskar feels very far away already. I must remember his warning about sticking to my story: You’re in real danger if they find out, K. You’re pretty isolated in there. I focus on the dog to calm my breathing. The white line down to its nose gives its chocolate eyes a sad and thoughtful look. Its tail wags slowly but hopefully. It’s going to be OK. And at least I won’t have to read or hear about terrorist threats every day. They don’t do news here. You see, Oskar? I did read the Manual.

  Even before I walk through the glass doors into the lobby, I can see that this is nothing like any school I’ve ever been in before. The smell hits me first, an ancient reek seeping from the oak paneling and the worn flagstones. Lavender polish too. A staircase with scrolled wooden banisters sweeps up to the floor above. It’s so quiet that I can hear the solemn ticking of an ornate clock over the high-backed bench against the wall. Then I see a boy standing by the door opposite. All my calmness vanishes and I freeze. It can’t be, I tell myself. But I look again and it is: it’s the boy I collided with at the train station, before the bomb. Does he recognize me? Nausea floods my throat. Get a grip, K. I look up and our eyes meet. His are chestnut brown, I see now, and surprisingly warm. But they flick over me without recognition. I let myself breathe out.

  “Are you all right?” He’s so sure of himself, entirely at home, while I am on foreign ground.

  Pull yourself together, K! I manage to nod.

  “You are Verity, aren’t you?”

  I nod again.

  He shrugs. “OK, well, Brer Magnus asked me to show you to the Sisters’ house.” He steps forward to hold the door open and reaches out his hand for my suitcase. “Shall I take that?”

  “No!” I say. Then I remember what Oskar said: “Be friendly, K.” I take a deep breath. “Thanks, though.”

  He shrugs again, and turns away. “Sure.”

  I follow his red-checked shirt out of the lobby and across a grass quadrangle in front of a canteen with long glass doors. The Institute isn’t one building at all, but rather a series of jumbled buildings connected by walkways and paths, everything hidden behind a wall or glimpsed through an archway. I know why they wear red check. It was the pattern favored by the Brotherhood leader, Antonius Nekton, on his battle standard four hundred years ago, when they last won control of the country. He was a nice man who burnt non-Brotherhood citizens at the stake.

  I hurry to keep up, bump
ing the suitcase over cobbles, struggling with my skirt. This doesn’t feel like a school to me, more like an old stately home. I wonder what it’s like during the day, when the pupils are all here. The boy’s dark hair is cut in the Brotherhood style, so short that I can see the lighter skin where it’s been shaved at the back of his neck. I think of Oskar’s blond hair that comes down to his collar. The boy stops outside a stone cottage in another grassy courtyard, and I almost walk into him, putting my hand out to stop myself so that my suitcase tips over on to its side.

  He steps smartly back. “This is it,” he says, opening the door for me. “Your room’s upstairs.”

  I pick up the suitcase, but somehow it gets caught in my check skirt and almost tumbles on to the grass.

  A flicker of a smile crosses the boy’s face. He’s laughing at me again. “I won’t offer to carry your bag up for you.”

  I feel my face flushing, but I concentrate on what Oskar told me. Friendly . . . Nice. “Thank you,” I say—with dignity, I hope. I don’t look back to see if he’s watching me bump the case inside and up the narrow stairs.

  As I thump it down onto the landing at the top of the stairs, a door flies open.

  “Hi!” A smiling girl bounds out. “I’m Serafina. You must be Verity.”

  Yes, I must.

  “That’s such a pretty name,” says Serafina. She pulls me toward her, knocking my hat off and burying my nose in her curly brown hair, which smells of grapefruit. “Oops!” she laughs.

  Oskar said they hug a lot, but this is way too much. Nobody has hugged me since I was little, and I hope she can’t feel how tense I am. I pat her shoulder awkwardly until she lets me go. Was that friendly? Maybe not.

  “Um, I like your perfume,” I say.

  “Thanks.” Serafina picks up my hat and the suitcase and carries them into the room, setting the case on a bed to the right of the door. There are three beds. One is a jumble of clothes, files, and makeup bags. “That’s Celestina’s bed,” says Serafina.

  Their names are so long. Mind you, K is short even for a citizen.

  She points to the bed beside the door. “This is yours,” she says. “There isn’t much space, I’m afraid. Only a few of us live here.”

  She bounces herself down on the bed opposite mine. Hers is covered in stuffed animals, like a five-year-old’s bed. She sits there watching me and jiggling her foot in its flowered slipper. Her skirt fits her perfectly and her top wraps prettily around her shoulders. None of her clothes are red-checked except for a little scarf knotted loosely around her neck. She doesn’t look drab at all.

  I put my case on the bed and pull out long skirts, horrible ruffled blouses, and a candy-striped dress that looks like a deck chair. It’s almost the only thing that isn’t covered in red checks. I don’t think Oskar went to the same Brotherhood shop as Serafina. I’ve never seen any of these things before. There aren’t any jeans or pants or shoes I could run away in.

  Serafina jumps up and puts the deck-chair dress on a hanger. “Brer Magnus said you’ve just rejoined the Brotherhood?” She gives me a quick sidelong glance. “So does that mean that before, you had to wear, well, men’s clothes?”

  “Men’s clothes?”

  “You know . . . pants?” She gives an embarrassed little laugh.

  “Oh. Pants. Well, yes.”

  Men’s clothes! I must be careful that the real me doesn’t seep through my Brotherhood clothes. Perhaps Serafina already knows my cover story. At least then I won’t have to show her the Certificate of Infant Initiation for Verity Nekton.

  Serafina hasn’t finished. “But why weren’t you brought up in the Brotherhood?”

  Maybe she doesn’t know my story after all. “My parents were killed by a bomb when I was two,” I say. “I grew up in the system.”

  Serafina is silent. Does she believe me? It’s the truth, I tell myself—just not in the way she thinks. “Well.” She brightens. “It must be great for you to finally get to be with your own people.”

  This almost makes me laugh. “Oh. Yes, great,” I say quickly. I carry a bundle of clothes over to the wardrobe and fish out some hangers from the empty bit that they’ve left for me.

  Serafina jumps up and comes over to help. “It’s so nice to have someone new. And you’re so lucky, your first day. It’s the Spring Meeting.”

  Lucky me. But Oskar thought it would be a good idea to throw me straight in. “Keep your eyes peeled, K,” he said. “It’s one of their major events of the year, an ideal opportunity to recruit young people to the cell. We’d like to know what goes on there, who turns up.”

  “It’s a really big thing,” says Serafina. “Not just for the school, lots of other people come as well. It’s quiet now, but give it an hour or so and everyone will start to arrive. You’ve got time to unpack, though—shall I get you a cup of tea?”

  I say yes so that I’ll have a few minutes alone. When I can hear her footsteps clattering down the stairs, I cross the room and look out of the window at the front of the cottage. Lights have gone on in the long windows of the canteen and I see people moving around, putting out trays of glasses. The bedroom runs the whole width of the house, but from the back window all I can see is a willow tree and a grassy lawn leading to woods. It would be easy to climb down the drainpipe and drop from the porch roof, I note.

  Serafina comes back in, two mugs of tea in her hands. But she isn’t alone. Behind her is another girl in a long green dress.

  “This is Celestina,” says Serafina. She puts the mugs down on her bedside table.

  Celestina stops in the doorway, her long black hair swishing over her shoulders. She’s slowly twirling a hat with a thin red-checked band, watching me.

  “This is Verity,” says Serafina.

  “Hello, Verity.” Celestina stares me out.

  Did she say my name with a question?

  Her eyes are the green of new ivy leaves. Her emerald dress makes her look like a model. She doesn’t come closer to hug me. I wish my heart rate would slow down. She’s looking at me as if she can see right through me. But Oskar said to stay calm. I give her a big fake smile.

  Celestina doesn’t smile back and I look away first. She’s won the first round.

  “Let me help put your things away,” says Serafina. “You can have these drawers.”

  I wonder suddenly if they’ve had to move their stuff to make room for me. I’ve never shared a room before and already it feels like it’s closing in on me. Maybe Celestina doesn’t like a strange girl suddenly crashing in, making everything more crowded. She’s sitting on her bed, carefully touching up her makeup, even though it already looks perfect to me.

  It doesn’t take long to put my things away. I sit on the bed—my bed—drinking tea and listening to Serafina chat. I don’t have to say much. It’s as different as possible from my room in the halfway house. All the quilts are different colors and the walls are a soft cream, so that when Celestina switches the light on, the room seems golden. It’s getting dark when Serafina jumps up. “Time to go!” She throws a cardigan over my shoulders. “Here, have this. It’s cold now.”

  “I’ll catch up to you.” Celestina is still sitting on her bed, doing her hair. Watching me.

  CHAPTER 6

  I FOLLOW SERAFINA downstairs and out into the grassy courtyard. It’s enclosed by weathered old walls on three sides, but to the right there’s a stone arch and a path leading down the side of the house into a rhododendron grove.

  “What’s down there?” I ask Serafina.

  “Nothing really, just woods. And a pool—for brothers.”

  We walk back toward the canteen building, which is full of people, milling around, greeting each other, holding glasses of wine. There are children there too, dodging under arms and weaving around to the table where the cookies are. Serafina half-turns to me with an excited little laugh. “People are arriving!” she says.

  We walk past the canteen and along the walkway to the main building. “There’s a lot of security.�
�� I point at the caretaker’s lodge through the glass doors of Reception. Immediately I wish I’d kept my mouth shut. That sounded just like the sort of thing a spy would say.

  “We can ask to go out when we need to, though,” says Serafina. “Mr. East opens the gate. It’s just for our protection.”

  “Protection?”

  “Yes.” She gives me a second uneasy look. “We’re not exactly flavor of the month.”

  And why is that? I wonder. Could it be because you blow people up?

  The door of the main building is wedged open and now it’s crowded with people coming through from the parking lot, so noisy with the rise and fall of voices that you can’t hear the clock at all.

  Serafina pulls me over to a table in the corner, covered in a gold brocade cloth embroidered with birds and flowers. A book is open on the table, with a pen lying on it. Serafina signs her name in round swirling handwriting. She passes me the pen.

  But as I touch it to the creamy paper, my mind goes completely blank. K Child.

  “Just sign your name, Verity.”

  I write it quickly then, because there’s a line forming behind us. Verity Nekton. It doesn’t look like a signature at all. I should have practiced.

  “The Meeting Hall’s upstairs,” says Serafina.

  The banister is smooth from centuries of hands running up and down its oak curves. It would be perfect for sliding down. I look down at the crowded lobby below, now a sea of red Brotherhood check, and a wave of nausea washes over me. What am I doing here? Isn’t it glaringly obvious that I don’t belong? Calm down, K, nobody will notice you in all this crowd.

  I glance at our reflection in the stairwell windows as we go up the turn in the stairs. Serafina and Celestina wouldn’t be seen dead in a skirt as shapeless as mine. Under my black hair, my face looks pale. My heart lurches. My hat! I’m the only girl I can see with an uncovered head. Serafina has tied her scarf over her head. I watched her do it and I still didn’t remember the hat. But I think of what Oskar said: Smile. You have to look friendly. Like Serafina. How much will it matter, not having a hat?