Crooked Halos

Jade’s coughing again, violently and then, between coughs, he leans over the side of the bed and retches blood again, and again, and again, coughs again, the wind so harshly driven from his lungs it causes his entire body to shake as if he’s coming apart at the seams.

I watch, Shannon watches and Ryan watches.

Davey rubs his back and asks Ryan to get some tissue from the bathroom.

Ryan tells him to get it himself; it’s after curfew after all.

Davey curses once and gets up, padding off almost silently towards the bathroom as Jade coughs again, flecks of blood staining the back of his hand.

I curl over and close my eyes and I feel the bed shift behind me as Shannon does the same.

More clicks as Ryan spins his rubrics cube again and the door opens as Davey comes back, no doubt clutching a handful of tissues and I can just envision him mopping up the blood on the floor as Jade coughs again.

It’s true, what Ryan said; we’re all going to die in this place.

***

There are seventeen posters of mathematical equations on the walls, forty-eight tiles on the ceiling and eighty-two words on the page in front of me.

I begin counting and re-counting the words on the board.

Behind me Ryan is reciting pi to seventy three numbers and I start to feel normal. Shannon doesn’t know I count things as much as I do, but it keeps my mind active.

Thirty three words on the board.

A shiver runs down my spine and I ignore it – shivering is your bodies way of trying to stay warm, by moving so rapidly it creates... something... it’s so cold in here even my brain is freezing up.

I briefly wonder whether or not being cold causes permanent damage to your IQ.

I disregard the idea since its stupid.

Outside the road is still icy, so the food is still rationed – the people in charge aren’t very logical, they’re keeping the heating down to try and reduce bills and they give the older children more food than the younger ones when, since we’re bigger, we generate more heat and therefore need less food.

Therefore it would be more logical to give the younger children more food and reduce our food instead.

See? I could run this place better than whoever does.

Then again, if I was running this place, I would have closed it down a long time ago.

Jade coughs again and I send him a glare for interrupting my train of thought.

Hello and welcome to Williams train of thought, next stop; Ryan has reached fifty nine digits of pi and is stuttering. Apparently he doesn’t know pi as well as he thought.

I always thought it was a peculiar expression; ‘train of thought’, I wonder briefly what would happen if you went to a ticket office and asked to catch a different train of thought.

They’d probably tell you to get stuffed, next, please.

Jade coughs and retches and the teacher, ms... whoever... winces and gingerly passes Davey the tissues.

I wonder if my train of thought goes to Georgia. Where even is Georgia? I check a map and can’t see it immediately so I ask Shannon. He peers at the map for slightly longer before telling me.

“Southeast, by the coast and that silly pointy out bit.”

“You mean Florida?”

“That’s it.”

I squint again and sure enough, there it is. Right to the northeast of Florida. Must be pretty sunny down in Georgia then.

Jade coughs and retches, coughs and wheezes, wheezes and collapses.

I continue studying Georgia on the map on the wall, glance at the thermometer on the wall and I wonder whether it’s only five degrees centigrade in Georgia.

***

Jade doesn’t come back from sick-bay this time.

Davey screams, punches a wall until his knuckles bleed and then screams again, but he doesn’t cry.

Ryan watches, his eyes all wet and watery and doesn’t say anything.

There’s a bloodstain on the floor next to Davey’s bunk, just a mark from where Jade was retching the other day.

The windows in this room open inwards and despite it being minus four degrees outside, I have on window open, just to grip onto the cold metal bar outside for a minute.

Shannon shivers from the breeze, notices what I’m doing and in seven strides, crosses the room, snatches my hand back inside and slams the window hard enough to make the glass pane shake.

Glass is made from superheated sand and I wonder if it retains any of its original heat. I touch it and its cold as ice. Apparently not, then.

Davey collapses onto his bunk, his back shaking with uneven, ragged breaths.

I don’t think I really care too much about Jade, I remember he gave me a Chinese burn on my wrist when I was seven because I wouldn’t give him my biscuit, so he gave me the burn, took my biscuit anyway and told me that if I ever told anyone he’d kill me.

Too late for that now, I guess.

Ryan pats Davey nervously on the back and receives a punch in the stomach in return, he doubles over, wheezing like Jade. Or, well, like Jade used to.

Davey breaths out through his nose over-heavily and stalks off, slamming the door behind him, but it’s not curfew yet, so they can’t complain too much. They’ll find something to complain about though.

They’ll probably shout at him for slamming the door or something.

Sure enough, as if on cue, there are shouts exploding from down the corridor, then the sound of Davey shouting back followed by the sound of a muffled slap.

There are twelve vertical bars and four horizontal ones across the window. There’s an icy handprint where I grabbed one earlier, it’s black against the grey of frost on the metal. I think its iron – that’s black, right?

We had beans on bread for tea. The younger ones just got bread. These people are so stupid – we can survive for longer without food, the younger kids need the food so much more than we do, they’re walking around like living skeletons, you can count most of the bones in their bodies if you try.

I still ate what food I was given without complaint.