outside the circle, I make myself invisible. The fewer people who see you, the less trouble they can cause for you.
“It’s Ettie Spaghetti,” a girl says. The other girls stop jumping and crowd around me, chanting. Their pinches tell me how much they like me.
I know why they do not like me. It is because I keep to myself. It is safer that way. Apart from Kitty, friends are not something I do. This is one of my rules. Not one of the set that Handler Xavier made me learn from day one in the game. It is a rule I have made for myself.
I figure there is only one person you can trust in the world: you. Someone has to be looking out for me one hundred percent. And I am the only one I trust to do this. If I do not survive, there will not be anyone around to look out for Kitty. And she is not strong enough to look after herself.
“Ettie Spaghetti,” the girls scream. They dance around and make cow eyes at me.
Tick-tick-tick. I wait for Captain Hook’s crocodile to come and chew off their hands. Instead, the scholar warden arrives with the teachers.
“Silence.” The warden whacks his cane on the ground and the noise dies. “Get to your lessons. Now.”
We disperse into our classrooms, according to our trades. The room for drudges like me is the largest in the education centre. We shuffle behind our desks, and I pick the peeling skin off my knees as we wait for the teacher to arrive. She will spend the day teaching us how to look after the homes and children of the Posh. This is going to be my trade when I turn fifteen.
We are all assigned a trade at birth. Our trade numbers are spewed out by The Machine and branded on the back of our spines. You can scrub as much as you like and it never comes off. I know, because I have tried.
My trade is right down there in the gutter, with the Drainers who clean the streets. I should have grown used to it by now, I have known about my fate for nearly ten years. Ever since the day Kitty and I turned five, when the orphan warden packed us off for our first day at school.
We arrived together, but got separated after the scholar warden examined the marks on our backs.
Was it random? Or did The Machine somehow know Kitty would be beautiful and that I would have large hands rough enough to mop up dirt? The people who know things in Slum City could never give me the answer to this.
“You were born to serve as drudges. You will work for the Posh until you are of no further use,” the drudge teacher told us. “This is the trade that has been chosen for you.”
Everyone clapped and cheered. Not me. I held my claps in my fists and my tongue behind my teeth.
The drudge teacher is as old as my trees in the museum. She is retired from her trade and has been tasked by the Mangerians to prepare the next generation for their jobs. At the beginning of the day we are made to recite the drudge pledge.
“Louder,” she instructs, scrutinising our faces to make sure we are chanting the oath with pride: “I am proud to work in the homes of the Posh and to raise their children and clean their homes.”
Hiding my fury, I spit out the words.
Every morning we learn skills that equip us to work in a Posh home. Clean. Polish. Dust. In the middle of the day we are fed water boiled with the discarded plastic that wraps the vegetables in the market. The drudge teacher calls it soup. After eating, we practise what we have learnt. We wash the plates and clean the kitchen and the classrooms. Wash. Scrub. Sweep.
As I rinse the plates in the sink, the sounds of music and laughter from the pleasure workers’ classroom taunt me. There, the boys and girls learn how to serve drinks. How to dance and smile and amuse the Posh in the pleasure clubs. And how to treat themselves when they get sick.
In the yard outside, I hear the grunts of boys training to be taxi Pulaks. They are kneeling in the yard, tugging at ropes. The students have to stay there, in the sun, until one of them keels over.
“Pull together,” the Pulak teacher shouts at them.
Our afternoon classes are for child-rearing and serving etiquette. “When a Posh baby is hungry, what must you do?” the drudge teacher asks, pointing at a girl staring out of the window. The girl mumbles and the class gulps fetid air.
“Go to the scholar warden. He’ll help you learn your lesson today,” the teacher says.
When the girl returns, she ignores the chair behind her desk and chooses to stand. The lesson she learnt from the scholar warden is written in red marks on the backs of her legs.
“What must you do when a child cries?” demands the drudge teacher.
A boy at the front of the class raises his hand. “You must pick it up and soothe it,” he recites.
And pinch it when no one is looking and pull its hair.
The teacher looks at the boy, stretches her lips. “Yes, oh yes. And how must you serve the master of the house his soup?”
“You must make sure it is hot. But never too hot.”
And when he is not looking you must spit in the bowl.
The teacher glances at me. “Ettie, you’ve got something to add?”
I am one of her favourites. Teacher’s pet. I slap on my sincere and respectful mask. It must never slip. The backs of my legs were taught one lesson too many before I got smart and learnt that teachers’ pets don’t go to the scholar warden for special tutoring.
“When you serve the master of the house his soup you must not look at him but keep your eyes on the ground.”
And curse him under your breath.
The teacher claps her hands. The prints on her fingers and the lines on her palms have been worn smooth from scrubbing Posh floors. “Excellent, Ettie. I can see that you’re almost ready to serve in your trade.”
I smile at her. It makes my face hurt. Since learning of my future as a drudge I have tried to change it. Scrubbing the mark at the base of my spine with steel wool was the first thing I attempted. I was seven years old then. It left open sores on my back. The flies feasted on my flesh for weeks. When the skin healed, the numbers showed themselves again.
The next time, I applied some of the acid we drudges use to clean pots. It burnt my skin away. But when the scabs fell off, the numbers reappeared.
There are stories told by people who know things, stories about people who have tried to escape their trades by running away across the desert. But thirst always drives them back to the city, where they are caught again. They are tracked down by the Locusts who use the handsets linked to The Machine. No one knows precisely how it all works, but one thing is for sure – as long as those numbers are on our spines, there is nowhere to hide from the Locusts.
The day drags on, with nappies and teething and the correct way to cure indigestion (hold the brat upside down). My fellow trainees listen and suck it all in. Not me. I will never be a drudge. My fingers feel for the wound on my back. I have seen what the cream does to people’s skin. Another tube should do the trick. I must get another one fast. It is my last chance to get rid of my mark. The months will not stop their march towards my fifteenth birthday.
As the teacher
