The Territory Read Online Free Page B

grateful. And I hadn’t said freakoid.
    But she couldn’t resist being evil.
    She turned to Jack and said, ‘Jack Munro, we haven’t heard from you yet, have we? What are you grateful for?’
    I could see Jack struggling. She was smiling. Red lipstick stained her front teeth.
    ‘Are you grateful for our brave police force, chasing down and eliminating Subversives?’
    Silence crackled.
    Luckily the bell rang at that exact moment so Jack got to leave the room. He punched the wall as we walked to the next lesson. His knuckles bled pretty badly and he left a reddish stain on the paint. I told him to put ice on it as soon as he got home.
    Another thing – I didn’t point it out to Jack ’cos I didn’t want to alarm him, but as we walked down the Art corridor to get to final period, I saw that the frame next to the window had been changed. Jack’s charcoal sketch had been removed and a scale drawing of a ruler now sat in its place.

    We’re going to have a party! Well, when I say ‘we’ I mean Daisy, but Jack and I are going to help organise it. Daisy’s parents are going away in a fortnight and Logan’s doing his clinical exam in the Third City as it has THE BEST medical programme, so her house will be completely empty. Logan’s going to be a doctor. Great. He’ll have one incredible bedside manner.
    Daisy’s told her parents that she’s going to stay at mine and they won’t think to check with my parents that it’s OK. They’re really self-centred like that. Just assume that if they want something to happen because it’s convenient for them, then it will.
    Daisy, Jack and I met by the benches at the east corner of People’s Park to start planning. It was a hot day so we wanted to be outside. I think we were all relieved to have something to focus on after Territory Day. It might seem a bit weird throwing a party with the TAA just weeks away (ten weeks one day – not that I’m counting!) but I think people kind of need it. Freakoids, not that we’ll probably be inviting many, can go out all they want as they’re pretty certain they’ll pass so the TAA isn’t such a big deal for them. Us Norms know that we might well only have very limited time left here so, as well as revising our guts out, we need to cherish life as we know it now, before … well, you know before what.
    ‘Who shall we invite?’ Daisy asked, pen poised over a notebook she’d covered in malc doodles of flowers.
    ‘Please tell me you haven’t started a new book for the party?’ I said, rolling my eyes. Daisy likes ‘pretty things’ (think pretty tacky) and has to start some new flowery/generally grim notebook every time she begins a new project. If she put as much time into making flashcards she could sell them for massive amounts to younger students, and probably actually remember some stuff.
    As we started going through who we wanted to invite/would rather be thrown off a bridge than spend time with, a strange figure stumbled out of the bushes towards us. A boy, probably twelve or thirteen, with a shock of curly brown hair. His arms hung limply by his side and he walked with a weird, lurching gait. His eyes looked at us, but seemed blank, as if he wasn’t registering what he was seeing, and a thin spittle of saliva hung off his bottom lip like the beginnings of a spider’s web.
    I had a sudden, sick realisation.
    Daisy must have seen my face because she turned to me and whispered, ‘Who’s that?’
    ‘That’s Jimmy White.’ I whispered back and we both shrank into the bench a little. Everyone in our area knew the name. He had been a year below us at Hollets and had been a slightly below-average student. He was born a Norm as his parents hadn’t been rich enough to afford the procedure to make a Childe. Anyway, when Jimmy turned eleven, his dad unexpectedly made partner at the big accountancy firm he’d worked at forever. With the promotion came a fat bonus. His dad spent it all on a late upgrade for his