She is texting; and when she rests the phone on her lap, I see the screen photo of her with children. For the first time I wonder what it’s like for the Flawed to live life in the same world as everybody else they love, but under different rules. It has never occurred to me before. I think of Angelina and her children. Angelina will have job restrictions, curfews, travel restrictions. How can she mother her children if she is living under different rules? What if there is an emergency in the middle of the night? Can she break her curfew to bring her children to hospital? What if the Tinders go on a family holiday abroad and Angelina can’t go? What if Colleen decides to work and live abroad? Her mother won’t be able to visit her. Ever. And why have I never thought of these things before?
Because I never cared, that’s why. Because if people have done something wrong, they deserve their punishment. They’re not criminals, but they’re just missing being physically behind bars. Only… if Angelina, who could never hurt a fly, can so easily be considered Flawed, then perhaps this woman before me is no worse, either. I have never spoken to one before. It’s not that we’re not allowed to; it’s just that I wouldn’t know what to say. I step around them when they’re near me; I avoid their eye contact. I suppose I act like they don’t exist. They’re always in the Flawed section of the supermarket, the one I pass through aisles to avoid, buying their grains and oats and whatever else they have to eat as part of their basic diet for their basic living. A life with no luxury is the punishment. I never thought it would be such a bad thing; it’s not like they’re behind bars. But then I never thought of having to live like that when your husband doesn’t, or your kids don’t, or the rest of society doesn’t. And then they’re not really allowed to socialise together. No more than with one other at a time. For every two Flawed, there needs to be a regular person just for numbers. I think of a Flawed wedding, a Flawed birthday party, and shudder. I wonder what they even talk about with each other. Do they swap stories of how Flawed they are, show their brands and laugh with pride, or are they ashamed, as they should be?
I feel Art’s lips on my earlobe. “If you don’t stop thinking, your head will explode,” he whispers. His breath is hot, and it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I want to stop thinking. I really do, but I can’t. For once he doesn’t have my full attention. He’s trying to bring me back to him, but I can’t go there. I’m caught in this thought, in this moment.
The bus stops and a woman with crutches gets on. The driver helps her and guides her to the Flawed seats, which have the most legroom. The seats are deliberately set further away so people don’t have to touch them or bump against them, reinforcing that distinction between us and them. She sits beside the Flawed woman, who smiles at her.
The other woman throws her such a look of disgust that I’m embarrassed for the Flawed mother, who looks away, hurt visible in her eyes. She senses that I’m looking at her, and our eyes meet for a minuscule moment before I look away, heart pounding from having made contact. I hope no one has seen. I hope it doesn’t look like I’m on her side.
“What is going on with you today?” Art asks, a slightly bewildered and amused expression on his face.
“Oh, nothing,” I say, trying to smile. “I’m just perfect. That’s all.”
He smiles and rubs the palm of my hand with his thumb, and I melt.
Juniper sits across the aisle from us, her body pushed so far up against the window she couldn’t possibly get any further away from me and Art, or anyone else on the bus for that matter.
I don’t know when things became like this between me and Juniper. Photos and stories prove that we were extremely close as children. Juniper is the big sister by a small amount, but she enjoyed mollycoddling me, taking on the role of nurturing big sister. But when we began high school, things started to change between us. Though we were in the same year, we were in different classes and made our own friends for the first time and the divide began. I excelled in school – I adore information and am always hungry to know more. I read books, I watch documentaries, my favourite subject is maths and I hope to study it at the city university when I finish school this year. My aim is to win the Fields Medal, the International Medal for Outstanding Discoveries in Mathematics, viewed as the greatest honour a mathematician can receive, like a maths Nobel Prize. You have to be under forty to win it. I’m seventeen. There’s time. Test results so far show that I’m on course to get into my university programme with ease. Juniper isn’t the jealous type, but the difference in our marks at school was the first thing to set us apart.
My results were celebrated; hers weren’t. They were never bad; they just weren’t perfect. Everybody always wanted her to do better, to be better. And I understand the pressure she was under, but I could have been there to help her, not be the one she eventually blamed.
She thinks I’m a know-it-all, which she has told me plenty of times, and I try not to be, I really do. I know I have a habit of correcting people’s grammar or recounting dictionary definitions, but that’s just me. Doing it does not make me feel I am better than the person I am saying it to. It is just an expression of who I am. I try to ask her questions, the meaning of things, pretend not to know something that I do know, but she finds this patronising. She’s right, but I don’t know what else to do. My striving for perfection includes wanting to have the ideal relationship with my sister, like in the movies I see and the books I read, the stories that tell you that sisterhood is the one real true love and relationship you will have in your life.
Juniper is dyslexic. She sees this as another failure, another trait that has let her down, but I can see that it makes her view things in a different way. I’m a problem-solver. I read the signs, the proof that I see before me, and come to a conclusion. Juniper is cleverer than that. She reads people. I don’t know how she does it, but she watches and listens and arrives at conclusions I could never imagine, and usually she’s right. I look at things straight on; her perspective seems to curve round things, wind and twist, turn things upside down to reach the answer. I have never told her that I think this about her. I tell myself it’s because I don’t want to come across as patronising, but really I know it’s because I have a jealousy of my own.
I think about what Mum said earlier about Jimmy Child maybe not being the only person to have been found not Flawed.
“Did you know that there might be other people who went through the Flawed court and were found to be not Flawed?” I whisper to Art.
I feel his grip on my hand loosen as he turns to me. He’s annoyed I won’t let go of this. “No, I didn’t know.”
“I think there must be other people found innocent that we don’t know about. Has your dad ever said anything?”
“Bloody hell, Celestine, drop it, will you?”
“I’m just asking.”
“You’re not really supposed to.”
“Aren’t I?”
“Not here, anyway,” he says, looking around nervously.
I go quiet. I can only look ahead at the Flawed woman, head swirling with unfamiliar thoughts. Dangerous thoughts.
At the next stop, the Flawed woman gets off and a rather large lady gets on. She recognises the woman with the crutches and sits down beside her, and they chat.
At the next stop, an old man gets on the bus, and I almost call out to him. He looks so much like my granddad that I’m convinced it’s him, which doesn’t make sense because my granddad lives on a farm in the country, but then I see the large F symbol on his armband and I shudder, annoyed with myself for ever thinking someone like him could possibly be related to me.
My prejudice strikes me. I had been repulsed