Siberia by Ann Halam Page B

Or tree bark, mixed with glue. I chewed and I chewed, and nothing changed. I didn’t mind the taste (most food was nasty, in my experience; except for what you grew yourself). But I couldn’t swallow! The wardens were patrolling, and I knew you had to clear your plate or you were in serious trouble. My panic must have shown in my bulging face.
    “It’s
meat,
” said the boy beside me, softly. “Stick it in your cheek, and bite off little lumps.That’s the way to do it.”
    “It isn’t real,” I muttered, when I’d managed to reduce the wad. We weren’t supposed to talk at meals. “I’ve tasted meat, and it tastes nothing like this.”
    “I’d never seen meat in my life,” said the boy. “Until I got here. What d’you mean, it isn’t real? It’s not imaginary.”
    “I mean real meat, like from an animal.”
    The boy laughed. “Eat up, joker girl. This is the best food you can have for getting strong, and you’ll need your muscle, with that crippled leg.”
    I looked at him properly then. He was dead white in the face, his hair was furry-short and dark, and his eyes were rain colored, with thick black lashes. He was skinny as a string bean, and he looked about my age (he was a year older).
    “You sound sensible,” I said. “What’s your name?”
    “They call me Rain. What’s yours?”
    “Sloe.”
    He choked on his mouthful, and spluttered, “You’re a real joker, you are.”
    “It’s S-l-o-e, not S-l-o-w. It’s the fruit of a wild blossom tree, people put it in the vodka where I come from. But I did choose it for the double meaning. I reckoned, if I have to have a bad leg, I might as well get some fun out of it.”
    “No blossom trees around, where I come from,” said Rain, grinning. “It’s desert. Never rains. You got any friends in this dump, Sloe?”
    “I don’t want friends,” I said, determined to sound tough.
    My only friend was Mama, and I missed her terribly, but I wasn’t going to tell a stranger that. “Friends are fake. I know what happens in school. If you have anything good, a bigger kid takes it. If you get good marks, everyone hates you, and copies your work and scribbles on it. Nobody stands up for anyone else, and only tell-tales have power.”
    “You’re dead right.”
    Then we didn’t dare talk anymore, because the hall had gone quiet, and the white-coated Cats were prowling. When dinner was over I dodged the girls’ warden and followed Rain’s line, hidden in the surging crowd. I didn’t want him to see that I was interested, but I wanted to know where he’d gone. . . . At last I saw his trail of boy Bugs disappear through a door. Their warden swept after them and locked it behind her. I was left stranded, far from the corridors I knew.
    “What are you doing, Bug?” said a passing senior. “This is the boys’ side.”
    “My friend went through there. What’s through there?”
    The big teenager looked at the notice on the door, and looked at me.
    “That says
Permanent Boarders
, kid. Can’t you read? That’s where they keep the lost souls who don’t have homes to go to. They live here all the year round, until they die and get rendered down for stew and fertilizer.”
    “I can read,” I said. “I didn’t know what it meant.”
    “Are
you
permanent?”
    I shook my head.
    “Then you can’t have a Permanent for a friend. We don’t do that.”
    But I was already backing away, horrified. Never to go home! I didn’t want to know anyone in who was in such terrible trouble. Trouble rubs off. . . .
    I made friends with Rain, later, when everything had changed.
    The first week was very, very hard. The days were bad enough, but the nights were terrible. I had to lie in my cold narrow bed, surrounded by strangers. I wanted my mama desperately but
I must not cry.
Anyone could tell that if you showed your feelings in a place like this, you would be done for.
    I didn’t know if I could survive. Then, after a week, Rose turned up, and was put into my