GLAZE (8 page)

She takes Kiara’s face in her hands and stares into her eyes for the longest, most embarrassing time.
 

‘Er, Zizi,’ I say.
 

‘Grace told me. Oh, you poor, poor baby,’ Zizi says finally.
 

Kiara’s mouth drops open in shock, then snaps shut again. ‘I am going to kill my mother,’ she says through gritted teeth.
 

‘Oh, don’t be silly!’ Zizi says with a wave of her hand. ‘You have nothing to be ashamed of. All the finest minds struggle with depression. It’s part of being creative. Juice?’

I’m used to the frantic pace of my mother’s train of thought. But Kiara looks after Zizi in utter bewilderment as she wanders off.
 

I roll my eyes at Kiara and we both join my mother in the kitchen, where she’s now blitzing a pineapple in the blender.
 

‘Van Gogh was depressed.’ Zizi pronounces it Van Go—the American way—which annoys me. She pours us each a glass of juice. ‘Virginia Woolf. Sylvia Plath, of course. One in three people will be on medication at sometime in their lives. It’s really nothing to be upset about, Kiara. You’d take insulin if you had diabetes, right? Well this is no different. It’s just your brain not producing serotonin is all. But then you’ll know all about that now.’

‘My doctor said something about it,’ Kiara says, taking a sip of her juice.
 

‘Well there you go.’ Zizi pauses and taps her glass with a spoon. ‘You know, there’s this new fantastic treatment I’ve just seen a study on.’ Her eyes go empty and I know she’s sliding some information to Kiara. I glare at the fruit bowl in frustration.
 

Kiara receives the information and smiles. ‘Is this for real?’

‘One hundred percent,’ Zizi says.
 

‘But it’s not on the market yet.’

‘I’ll have a word with your mother and we’ll see what we can do,’ Zizi says. ‘I’m on it and look at me!’ She throws her arms out wide, the peacock blue kimono she’s wearing making her look like a bright bat. I’m really not sure if this is going to help Kiara or push her over the edge. But she smiles, happy enough.
 

‘Anyway, must get back to work. Max has roped me in to create an unbeatable election campaign for Harris. Can’t stand him, personally, but Max has decided he’s the man to get behind. Help yourself to whatever’s in the fridge.’ And with a swirl of silk, Zizi’s gone.
 

I know without looking that there will be nothing in the fridge. There never is.
 

‘Your mum is amazing, you know that?’
 

‘Hmm,’ I reply, not committing to anything.

‘Sorry, Pet, I’m so selfish at the moment. I keep forgetting. Can’t she do anything about the blank?’
 

I pick a grape from the fruit bowl and pop it into my mouth. ‘Nope. Or at least she won’t. “Nepotism is another form of elitism, darling. You’ll have to wait till you’re 21”,’ I say, in a husky imitation of my mother.
 

‘And Max, can’t he do anything? Isn’t he like your godfather or something?’

‘I thought he would,’ I say, leading Kiara into the living room and throwing myself onto a pleather sofa. (Zizi won’t have meat by-products in the house. Unless it comes between two buns and is slathered in ketchup. And only then when she’s premenstrual.) ‘He made this big fuss about it in the station. Said that the police didn’t get to say who did and didn’t get on his network. But Zizi overruled him and I’ve not heard a word from him since.’

‘That sucks. What’s the point of having friends in high places if they don’t pull strings for you. What is this? China?’

‘I know, right?’
 

The anger and disappointment of Max’s silence stings. I used to love Max. Like
love him
love him. It started when I was a toddler and he would come over with new toys and play with me while he and Zizi worked on some new aspect of the network. My earliest memory is of the bright red trampoline he bought me. I used to try to jump all the way over the mesh enclosure. I thought I could fly.
 

When I went to school and I realised that most of the other kids had mothers and fathers, even if they didn’t always live together, I asked mum if Max was my daddy. She laughed and laughed and finally told me not to be ridiculous. She then told me all about sperm donors and artificial insemination. I was six.
 

When I got older and I started to see less of Max—he was always halfway across the world making sure Glaze worked globally—I developed a crush so bad I could hardly speak to him when he did come over. Zizi told all of her friends about it at a dinner party. They all cooed and laughed. I ran back up to my room and refused to come out for two days.
 

The crush died after that. But right up until last week I still thought he was amazing. Him and everything he’d created and stood for. But now he won’t do anything to overrule Zizi and get the blank taken out, I’m so angry with him I probably couldn’t speak to him even if he did bother to see me. Every time I see his face on an e-mag or on the side of a bus I want to take a black marker to it and give him a pirate’s patch and black tooth. Because I know he was right to laugh at Detective Lee. Max is the one with the real power. And yet, when it’s come to me, he’s not willing to use it.
 

Of course, it’s Zizi I’m truly angry with. She was the one who made the decision. She was the one who could have saved me but chose not to. For the first time in her life she sided with the authorities. Some rebel she is.
 

I wave at the wall and the petal print pattern fades and is replaced with the image from whichever channel I left it on last. Some music channel by the looks of it.
 

Zizi never watches TV. She doesn’t need to. She streams all her entertainment direct to her eyeballs. Even then, there’s only one show she’ll watch, called
Corner Office
. It’s a soap opera about corporate life, which Zizi watches precisely because it’s so far from reality. She calls it her one indulgence.

‘Oh, Christ, no. Make it stop!’ Kiara groans, covering her ears with her hands.
 

Nathaniel Buckleberry has come on, playing his latest song. I’ve not heard it yet, but I’m guessing it’s the one he played for everyone at the protest. In fact, as I pay attention to the lyrics, I realise the song is called ‘Protest Song’. He never was known for his burning originality.
 

‘Sing with me, these words of protest,’ he warbles, strumming his acoustic guitar in front of a choir of school children. I wave my hand to flick channels before I hear any more. Some old game show is on.
 

We watch it for a bit, shouting out answers when we know them. Although Kiara is cheating, I’m sure, by stripping the answers from her stream. She probably doesn’t even know she’s doing it. All that information is waiting for her, like it won’t be for me for years.
 

‘Are you really going to go through with it?’ I ask, pointing at the back of my neck.
 

‘Elephants,’ she says, answering the last question. ‘Huh? Oh, the chip. Maybe. I don’t know. I’m not sure I know what I’d do with myself without it.’

‘All right for some,’ I say under my breath.
 

‘Oh, Pet, I didn’t mean...’

I wave her apology away. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not your fault.’
 

‘I meant it though. It’s not all that. Take this, right. I’ve have, this very second, got a slide from Mum asking what I want for dinner. It’s the third one today. I’m tempted to say “peace and quiet”, but she’ll only cry again.’ Kiara stands up. ‘Anyway, I’d better go. Thanks, Petri. I needed this. I missed you.’
 

‘Me too,’ I say, and I stand to give her a hug. ‘Don’t leave it so long, OK? I’m always here for you,’ I say into her thick, apple-smelling hair.
 

She smiles and waves goodbye, calling up the stairs to thank Zizi as she lets herself out.
 

‘Always here,’ I say, to the empty room. ‘Because I sure as hell don’t have anywhere else to be.’

7

‘ETHAN,’ I SAY,
to the school secretary a week later. ‘I know he was here at City High at the beginning of the year and he lent me something I want to give back.’
 

I’ve not been able to stop thinking about Ethan since I got the ban. Everyone in school looks at me with pity. Or doesn’t even bother looking at me at all. It’s like if you’re not on Glaze, you don’t exist. That’s why I have to find him. The only other teenager I know who’s not on. Someone who can tell me that I’m real.
 

‘Hmm.’ Mrs Sanderson chews on the inside of her cheek as her eyes gloss over. I hit her desk with my fist without even meaning to. Even the school’s octogenarian secretary is hooked up and the rage is enough to make me want to cry. Cry or hit something. She blinks at the sudden noise and snaps out of her feed. I fiddle with her pen holder, making like I knocked it over by mistake. She sniffs and drops back into checking her files. Teachers and staff have an override on the blockers at school. They need uninterrupted access to information in order to teach. Or so they say. A few of the older teachers retired when the government made it part of the system. Mr Smythe, our old Head of English, said kids might as well be taught by robots. A lot of us thought that sounded like a better option.
 

‘There was an Ethan Fisher who was with us for a single term.’ Mrs Sanderson says. ‘But then he stopped coming to classes. Which is quite rude really—’
 

‘Do you have a picture?’ I ask, before I get another lecture from Mrs Sanderson. She’s not actually a teacher, but she certainly takes every opportunity she can to teach us some good manners.

She blinks again and fiddles with her monitor, trying to send the data she’s seeing to the screen. ‘I still haven’t quite got the hang of this,’ she mumbles, as an image of a yawning cat appears there first. ‘Ah, there we are. Yes, I remember this boy.’
 

The boy with the golden-brown eyes stares back at me from the screen. He’s staring into the lens like he’s daring it to fight him.
 

‘That’s him.’ I reach out to touch the screen.
 

‘Uh-uh,’ Mrs Sanderson says, slapping my hand away. ‘No finger marks, thank you.’ She spins the screen back, taking Ethan away from me.
 

‘Do you have his address? So I can, um, give him his book back.’

‘Well, yes. I’ll slide it to you.’
 

‘I’m not on,’ I mutter and my knuckles go white as I grip the edge of her desk, resisting the urge to hit it again.
 

‘Oh, yes, right. I forget you’re so young. And what’s this I’ve heard about a blank? We have had chats about your temper in the past, Petri. Maybe this will be a lesson.’

‘The address,’ I say, through clenched teeth.
 

She hunts around on her desk, grabs a scrap of paper and a pen and starts scribbling. Her handwriting is even worse than mine.
 

‘I sent various messages to his home. It’s quite rude, really—‘

‘Thank you!’ I say, grabbing the paper out of her hand.

‘Rude!’ she shouts after me, but I’m already out of the office and heading down the hall.
 

My next class starts in five minutes on the other side of the grounds. I’ll have to run to make it in time.
 

I take a peek at the scrap of paper in my hand.
 

Ethan Fisher

51 Alice Street

EC1 2AA

No wonder he knew exactly where I lived. He lives around the corner from me, on the same street my nanny used to live on. In what Zizi calls the ‘un-gentrified area’. I feel less weird about him walking me home that night, knowing it was on his way home too. If I ask the driver to stop a road early on my way home tonight, I can drop by and say hi. Just a casual, one neighbour to another kind of thing. The idea of seeing him sends butterflies scattering in my stomach. Nerves, I tell myself. Nerves about the idea of turning up, unannounced, at some strange boy’s house. I know it’s unwise. Stupid, even. But I have to see him. In part to say thank you, but mostly to ask him how he copes with not being on. What he does all day? Who his friends are? If he has any? He’d said the boys in black, the anarchists from the riot, weren’t his friends. I imagine what his friends might be like and whether he lives with his parents. Does he have any siblings? Maybe if they’re not on either it might be OK. I think of him and his family all sitting around eating together, actually connecting with each other without the distraction of Glaze to get in the way. Maybe I should tell Kiara. Or ask her to come with. But when I saw her at lunch today she said was having a ‘bad one’. She still hadn’t started her meds, despite what her mother and my mother and her father and practically everyone was telling her. She said she might start next week.
 

She’d smiled. Although it looked like it had caused her actual physical pain to do it, and forced herself to take another bite of her sandwich. We’d both eaten in silence, watching everyone around us get on with life. Watching everyone participate. The irony not lost on either of us.
 

Someone bangs into me and I drop the paper with Ethan’s address. I scrabble to pick it up, and my bag falls off my shoulder, scattering its contents on the floor. No one stops to help me pick them up. They step over me like I’m not even there.
 

I shove everything back in my canvas bag, put the address in my pocket, and head to my locker. I’m going to be really late for art now.
 

‘Hey, Petra!’ Ryan is walking towards me.
 

It’s too late to run away. I’ve been trying to avoid him. When I’m not around him, I can rationalise what an arrogant idiot he is and how I want nothing to do with him. When I am around him... Well, I pretty much hate myself.

‘Petri,’ I say with a sigh, when he approaches.