I would find that tree and it would take me up the ladder to the place where Moonface and the Saucepan Man lived. I would disappear into the Land of Treats with Jo, Fanny and Bessie, and eat exploding toffees.
Lots of credits later, I still had not found the tree. When I stopped being a dead-brain, I realised that the magic faraway tree never was. Just a bunch of hocus in a book.
“We’re going to work the parade today,” Handler Xavier says.
Bingo!
“Kitty and I will handle the parade with a couple of the others, while you do school, Ettie.”
See, I said bingo too soon. It is my own fault for wanting it too badly. Handler Xavier searches my features. I give him my yippee-I’m-going-to-school face, even though school is hideous, right up there with flies and plastic. And even though I do not like Kitty gaming without me.
“But Kitty hasn’t done school for days now. They’re going to notice and ask questions.” I shake my head like this bothers me, as if I care about people sticking their noses too close to the game.
“I cleared it with the scholar warden last night. I told him Kitty’s down with sun sickness.” Handler Xavier sucks in my concerned face. “But it’s good that you’re being careful, Ettie. You’re sweet. A real team-player.”
As sweet as the plastic taste of sunblocker on my fingers.
Kitty wipes a wand over her eyelashes. She smoothes her hair and fixes it with the clip she has forgotten to thank me for. She gives the sliver of mirror a smile. One of the smiles she has learnt at school. It is a pretty trick that makes men look at her. It makes me want to smack her face. No, I do not. Of course, I never could.
The handler peers out the window. “It’s going to be a hot one today.”
Black clouds are massing on the horizon. But they do not signal rain. It only rains before the middle months. These clouds tell me a floater is coming. Burning slicks of oil from the olden days, which still haunt the seas.
Sometimes the wind drives the floaters back out to sea, but on calm days they stay close to shore, brooding, until the Scavvies brave the fires and drag them away. When the slicks lurk on the shoreline, the sky is dark for days, and you cannot tell if it is day or night. Except when the sun’s face burns a hole through the smoke.
I grab the nose shields from our box of possessions and give one to Kitty. It will not block the taste or allow us to breathe better. But it helps filter the poison and stops your nose clogging up.
I leave them both and fly off to school. I take the second star to the right, straight on till morning. I am on my way to Neverland with Wendy and Michael and John. Far below me, the taxis, packed with traders, cross the river to Mangeria City. I swoop over the taxi Pulaks, flying high to dodge the arrows of the Lost Boys. Higher than the trees in the museum. As high as the magic faraway tree, where Dame Washalot hangs out her huge panties before tossing the dirty water.
Dodge those arrows, Wendy. Dodge that soapy water, Jo, Fanny and Bessie. “Watch where you’re going,” a Pulak shouts. I step off the road and into a gutter full of muck. I clasp the shield over my nose and keep my eyes on the road as I trudge to school.
Children loiter outside the education centre and wait for the scholar warden and the teachers to arrive. I edge away from a group of girls leaping in and out of squares on the concrete. Standing outside the circle, I make myself invisible. The fewer people who see you, the less trouble they can cause for you.
“It’s Ettie Spaghetti,” a girl says. The other girls stop jumping and crowd around me, chanting. Their pinches tell me how much they like me.
I know why they do not like me. It is because I keep to myself. It is safer that way. Apart from Kitty, friends are not something I do. This is one of my rules. Not one of the set that Handler Xavier made me learn from day one in the game. It is a rule I have made for myself.
I figure there is only one person you can trust in the world: you. Someone has to be looking out for me one hundred percent. And I am the only one I trust to do this. If I do not survive, there will not be anyone around to look out for Kitty. And she is not strong enough to look after herself.
“Ettie Spaghetti,” the girls scream. They dance around and make cow eyes at me.
Tick-tick-tick. I wait for Captain Hook’s crocodile to come and chew off their hands. Instead, the scholar warden arrives with the teachers.
“Silence.” The warden whacks his cane on the ground and the noise dies. “Get to your lessons. Now.”
We disperse into our classrooms, according to our trades. The room for drudges like me is the largest in the education centre. We shuffle behind our desks, and I pick the peeling skin off my knees as we wait for the teacher to arrive. She will spend the day teaching us how to look after the homes and children of the Posh. This is going to be my trade when I turn fifteen.
We are all assigned a trade at birth. Our trade numbers are spewed out by The Machine and branded on the back of our spines. You can scrub as much as you like and it never comes off. I know, because I have tried.
My trade is right down there in the gutter, with the Drainers who clean the streets. I should have grown used to it by now, I have known about my fate for nearly ten years. Ever since the day Kitty and I turned five, when the orphan warden packed us off for our first day at school.
We arrived together, but got separated after the scholar warden examined the marks on our backs.
Was it random? Or did The Machine somehow know Kitty would be beautiful and that I would have large hands rough enough to mop up dirt? The people who know things in Slum City could never give me the answer to this.
“You were born to serve as drudges. You will work for the Posh until you are of no further use,” the drudge teacher told us. “This is the trade that has been chosen for you.”
Everyone clapped and cheered. Not me. I held my claps in my fists and my tongue behind my teeth.
The drudge teacher is as old as my trees in the museum. She is retired from her trade and has been tasked by the Mangerians to prepare the next generation for their jobs. At the beginning of the day we are made to recite the drudge pledge.
“Louder,” she instructs, scrutinising our faces to make sure we are chanting the oath with pride: “I am proud to work in the homes of the Posh and to raise their children and clean their homes.”
Hiding my fury, I spit out the words.
Every morning we learn skills that equip us to work in a Posh home. Clean. Polish. Dust. In the middle of the day we are fed water boiled with the discarded plastic that wraps the vegetables in the market. The drudge teacher calls it soup. After eating, we practise what we have learnt. We wash the plates and clean the kitchen and the classrooms. Wash. Scrub. Sweep.
As I rinse the plates in the sink, the sounds of music and laughter from the pleasure workers’ classroom taunt me. There, the boys and girls learn how to serve drinks. How to dance and smile and amuse the Posh in the pleasure clubs. And how to treat themselves when they get sick.
In the yard outside, I hear the grunts of boys training to be taxi Pulaks. They are kneeling in the yard, tugging at ropes. The students have to stay there, in the sun, until one of them keels over.
“Pull together,” the Pulak teacher shouts at them.
Our afternoon classes are for child-rearing and serving etiquette. “When a Posh baby is hungry, what must you do?” the drudge teacher asks, pointing at a girl staring out of the window. The girl mumbles and the class gulps fetid air.
“Go to the scholar warden. He’ll help you learn your lesson today,” the teacher says.
When the girl returns, she ignores the chair behind her desk and chooses to stand. The lesson she learnt from the scholar warden is written in red marks on