I Am Margaret by Corinna Turner

you rather we drew up a chart of how many days we have left and ceremonially marked one off every day, with accompanying sighing, weeping and general hysteria?”
    “Don’t be stupid! That wouldn’t help!”
    “No, it wouldn’t,” I said pointedly.
    “Exercise, girls. Follow,” said a guard, looking in.
    We trooped after him down to the gym, where we were each weighed on a fat measuring machine and allocated a code. We typed this into each machine when we moved to it, and it calibrated itself accordingly. We were all hot and sweaty when we’d finished, but no one was exhausted to the point of tears. I was looking forward to the yard time later. Exercise machines, ugh. Outside, there’d be fresh air.
    Fifteen minutes access was allowed to the washrooms for us to wash the worst of the sweat off, then I changed back into my own clothes so I could start examining the despised jumpsuit. Like Jane, I wasn’t too bothered—we really did have more important things to worry about!—but Polly’s fate had left everyone unhappy and improving the fit of these ugly suits would lift people’s spirits.
    It took me all of fifteen minutes to fit a simple drawstring to mine, but it was surely going to take the dorm as a whole considerably longer, so I held my tongue. I’d explain how to do it after afternoon exercise.
    Stretching out on my bunk, my thoughts drifted inexorably to Bane. What was he doing? Was he in trouble about the fire alarm? Had he been caught? How had he done it? He’d probably just lit something flammable under his chair and chucked it somewhere out of the way.
    So did any of the teachers see him do it? If not, did anyone tell on him? Hopefully not, for despite his unconventional looks he was popular, though admittedly more so with the girls than the boys. His hot temper was a frequent cause of friction—read fights—with his own sex. Bane would’ve been all right in the boys’ block, but how glad I was he wasn’t in there.
    Bane, Bane … my heart ached to see him, but, don’t do anything stupid, my love , said my head. Think things through.
    And suddenly it was time for lunch. Then back into the gray jumpsuits and out into the yard. This was simply the area between the building and the wall, which had been invisible from the parking area. No possibility of seeing into the boys’ yard on the other side of the compound.
    They ran us around on the sandy ground for a while, then made us do ‘jumping jacks’ and stuff, and finally allowed us to walk about and amuse ourselves for ten minutes. Then it was back up to the dorm and another fifteen minutes of washroom access. Naturally we’d only be allowed showers once a week, with the environmental cost of clean water what it was.
    And then the guard was locking our dorm again. Why did I have the feeling variety wasn’t going to feature highly in our schedule?
     
    “ All right,” I told Bane, “Enlighten me. How do I come into it?”
    “ You go up to the fence—it’s fairly near the hut at one point—and persuade the guards to go over and speak to you. While they’re at that safe distance, I’ll sneak up and set the fireworks off. I thought right in the middle of all the speeches would be the most embarrassing for them. It’ll be live bloc-wide!”
    His tone of delight drew a smile from me.
    “ How’ll you get in? It’s bound to be locked.”
    “ I’ve got that all figured out. What do you think?”
    “ Well...” I hesitated, caution fighting a brief but vicious battle with attractive action. “All right.” After all, if I said no he’d probably try it anyway. On his own. And then someone really would get hurt. Probably him. “We’d better get back over there and make sure you’re seen around. So no one wonders where you were all evening. You came through the gates, right?”
    “ Yeah. Figured that would be the best alibi. Let’s go join the picnic for a minute, then the dancing, then each lot will think we’re with the other