Chapter Text
Nick
My chest still hurts. Even though I had at least two weeks in the infirmary, listening to nurses who didn’t even want to address me talking about my three fractured ribs as if the people in charge weren’t the ones to break them. When I finally showered alone this morning I caught sight of the dark bruise that’s still across my chest. It stretches down and across my torso, worse than any injury I ever got from rugby, dark grey against the my pale skin. I was hoping to get a tan this summer, but I guess that’s out of the question now. I’m also sure that my face is still a mess, although I haven’t seen a mirror in this place since I arrived.
This place.
I don’t know where ‘this’ is. I was unconscious when they brought me in, having had my head slammed repeatedly into the ground before they hauled me into the van that pulled up outside our house and shattered our lives. There were rumours, back at school, that a centre for those people – that is, I suppose, people like me now – had been built some time in the 90s at the edge of our town. In an old army barracks set back from even the minor roads and repurposed as a place to hide us away. But they could have brought me anywhere. Well, not anywhere, I suppose, there are still places in the country where they don’t treat people like this anymore. But anywhere in the Home Counties is pretty much still fair game.
Looking out of the window doesn’t give me any clues, nor did it when I was in the infirmary. Everything around us is grey, old concrete… the walls are too high to see anything and the windows are all filthy. It doesn’t matter that the seat they’ve directed me to is next to a pane of glass. It’s almost like they’ve done it deliberately. Rubbing it in after I screamed bloody murder when I woke up here. The blow to my already aching face only did a little to keep me quiet at the time.
Now, I’m sat on the world’s most uncomfortable chair, with a small pouch of painkillers in my pocket and a neatly folded pile of nondescript clothes and a towel resting on the desk in front of me. I have been told, from the point that I left the infirmary to the point I will leave this place at eighteen, that I am not to speak or be spoken to. Exceptions to the latter: to receive instructions from the priests that run the centre or from the teachers who will continue our education. There are no exceptions for me. My cheek and ribs throbbing tell me exactly what will happen if I disobey. My clothes are all plain – I don’t know what happened to the tracksuit I was wearing when they took me – and, I imagine, grey or beige. I wouldn’t know any different if they weren’t, but why waste money on dyed clothes for people who will never see colour? Everything I am wearing itches, and the towel that they handed me earlier is rough and coarse. I haven’t seen my room yet, but I imagine the bedding is the same.
I am, to put it lightly, furious.
Furious with the people in charge, for taking me like they had any right to; furious with Dad, for publicly and officially denouncing Mum as his soulmate back in France so he could marry Martine, effectively condemning us back home; angry at David, for already being in Scotland, and therefore reaping the benefits of a more lenient jurisdiction and, unfairly, I’m angry at Mum for letting them take me. For not putting up enough of a fight. Even though I can still hear the crack of her head against the kitchen counter as she went down trying to grab me. It was so loud that I heard it even over my screams.
It’s not fair to be angry with her, but I haven’t got anything left in me but rage and so I am just burnt and fuming at everything around me.
Dad started all of this. First, by leaving us – although it was easy, in the grand scheme of things, to keep up the pretence of pretending that he was just working away while Mum fretted and twitched the blinds every time a van drove past. Seven years of living on the edge culminating in a single text message to tell me that Mum was officially, in French records, no longer his wife and his soulmate and that David and I, in the eyes of the law, would never be worthy of our own. I knew I never would, already, from the moment he walked out of the door… but he could have lied – said that he and Mum had never been soulmates in the first place – or lived with Martine quietly and had a new family (kids between non-soulmates might not have the best prospects in the world… but kids of broken soulmates may as well give up). But no, he made his choice… and now I’m the one who has to live with it.
There aren’t many boys here, at least. Not many of us poor unfortunate souls knocking about this place. It’ll be easy for me to keep my head down, get back to Mum in a few months time when I turn eighteen. They’ll have earmarked me for some menial job, I’ll have to officially register and declare my status to any employer, landlord or police officer that comes my way, but at least we’ll be together.
Maybe there’s a calendar somewhere, I don’t even know what day it is.
A ruler slams down on the desk in front of me, making me start in a way that I wish it didn’t. My nerves are still fried. The image of Mum’s blood, thick and oozing on the kitchen tiles, the look of horror in her face when they grabbed me… they’re all burnt into my brain. I may be big for my age and she may have been determined, but neither of us were any match for the half a dozen militia who broke through the door. I don’t want to be on the receiving end of that ever again.
“Six-four-two.” That’s my name here. No longer Nick Nelson. Three digits only. “Your new roommate. Eight-one-one.”
The teacher points gruffly to a boy, a little younger than me, hovering behind him. I wonder about the numbering system, if I came in after him… but I presume there is some logic. The boy is tall, although I would probably still beat him in height, and skinny in a sort of lithe, dancer way. His curls are unruly and his eyes are the sharp, clear sort… completely opposite to my muddy ones. They remind me of Imogen’s – the sort of unclouded you could get lost in. The thought of Imogen throws me slightly, the memory of her turning away from me when news spread of my Dad’s betrayal. As if being condemned and soulmate-less could be catching. But then, the boy in front of me smiles awkwardly, once, before his face drops back to a neutral mask as the teacher turns to him.
“Show him your room. Show him the ropes. You know the rules.” This last part is final, a thinly veiled threat, and he throws a thick, spiral notepad down on the pile of clothes. It has my identification number scrawled hastily on the front, underneath a crossed out two digit one. When I open it, the first page has the indents of previous pages’ writing and there is a scrap of the perforated edge trapped in the spirals – whoever owned this previously didn’t get much use out of it. I refuse to dwell on why.
As the teacher turns away and returns his attention to the board, the boy sits down slowly next to me. He’s looking at me strangely, slightly spooked, and I can’t work out why until he brings his hand up and touches my cheekbone once, softly, a puzzled look in his eyes.
Ah.
I guess that answers my question about whether the bruise is gone. I pick up the pencil that has been dropped next to me on the desk.
You should see the other guy, I scrawl and then hastily cross it out. This isn’t the time for jokes. But, my new roommate smiles kindly and takes the pencil from me.
Are you okay? He writes, neat and precise next to my scrawl. I shrug. Okay is a relative term, and I doubt he wants to hear about my cracked ribs and horrendously bruised ego at the way I sobbed when they took me. Instead, I take the offered pencil and scribble the first thing I think to ask him, remnants of small talk in a simpler time.
What’s your name?
But, he shakes his head hastily.
No names. Not allowed.
Of course. Guess I’m about to live with a stranger then.
Tell me something about you, then. Anything at all.
He pauses, as if he is genuinely contemplating his answer, pencil pressed against his lips. The wood dents his bottom lip, which is plumper than I’ve seen on any boy before. He’s attractive, in an unusual sort of way. Almost pretty. It’s a shame he’s here, there would have been artsy girls at Higgs who would have loved him. Eventually, he seems to decide and writes, very precisely, on the page.
According to my dad my eyes are blue.
It’s a good joke, considering neither of us will ever know what blue looks like, and I let out an accidental snort. Across the room, the teacher glares at us and so I temper my expression. Eight-one-one pulls out his own notebook – a different brand to mine, they’re clearly not buying in bulk – and opens it to a set of maths problems. They’re almost all filled in and my heart sinks. Trust me to end up sat next to some proper nerd when I can’t even ask him for help. He passes me a blank set of calculations and then, gently, nudges me with his little finger.
Still okay? He taps the message he has written in my own notebook without me even realising and I nod, staring at the calculations hopelessly. The teacher is silently picking at his nails in his chair – he clearly doesn’t care about how we do academically… which is somewhat of a relief. Underneath, he writes, very carefully, don’t ever write messages on your work.
It’s an ominous warning. Made even worse when he continues.
i work in the kitchen on the breakfast shift so i can burn these pages tomorrow. don’t let them see.
Oh.
It’s a keen shift in he way he writes… less precise, more hurried… and I carefully, trying not to draw the attention of the teacher, tear away the page we have been writing on and settle it on my lap. He gives me a little thumbs up on the table.
We sit in silence (ha!) and complete our maths work. Well, try in my case. Every so often my new friend reaches over to correct something I’ve done and, rather than be annoyed by it, I’m weirdly grateful. After a while, I feel a slight tug in my lap. He has reached over and taken the torn page from my notebook.
Why are you here?
It feels like it should be an intrusive question, but weirdly I don’t mind answering. He’s here too, after all. Maybe he also has a shitty dad who ruined his life. I reach over, brace the page on his thigh and write sloppily.
My parents were soulmates… then my dad stood up on record and said that they weren’t anymore so he could marry someone else. Now I’m here. You?
His response comes quickly, a full sentence in five characters.
I’m gay.
The confusion must be written on my face. It’s not, as far as I’m aware, expressly illegal to be gay. Although if the real right wingers in the new government get their way it will be eventually. He shrugs.
I was outed when I was fourteen. Basically everyone except my best friends stopped speaking to me. I guess they thought it might be catching? Or they might accidentally end up with me as their soulmate if they said a word to me. Eventually it got too much and I…
There’s a blot on the page as I watch him write, a smudge that I realise too late is a tear. He’s crying over the page.
I did something stupid. Ended up in hospital and then here. I guess being gay was tolerable but being gay and mentally ill was just too much.
I don’t know how to reply… what I would say if I were even allowed to speak. It feels so unfair, for the world to have allowed a child to have spiralled down to rock bottom. But then, I suppose, nothing about this is fair for either of us. Still, I feel weirdly protective.
Across the room, the teacher has propped his feet up on the desk and is slumped back in his chair, eyes closed. I don’t think he’s asleep, but he’s at least not looking and so I reach up and wipe away the boy’s tears with the pad of my thumb.