Siberia by Ann Halam Page A

your mama . . . I wanted to
be
you, back then. Or I wanted you to be me. Maybe I still do, and that’s why I told the warden—”
    “I wanted to be
you,
” I broke in, quickly. “I still do. I want yellow hair.”
    I had realized long ago that it must have been Rose who got me my invitation to the principal’s office, and caused me to betray my mother. Teachers didn’t report students for crimes against the Settlement Commission, like boasting that your mother had taught you science. They’d be too scared of being questioned themselves. . . . Wardens did things like that. But how would a Cat have got to know about something that had only happened in a school lesson? Somebody must have told tales. Rose had been there, she’d seen Mr. Pachenko looking shocked. She must have realized she could get me into bad trouble, and she wouldn’t have been able to resist an opportunity like that.
    I
knew,
but I didn’t want her to confess. I didn’t want to be told for sure. I didn’t want to have to do anything about it.
    How can I explain about Rose? I think she truly liked me, but she hated me too. She hated me because I
belonged
in the city. I had been born there, and nothing could take that away from me. But Rose had been born in the Settlements, and it didn’t matter how many pretty things she had, she could never be like me. . . . And I knew she hated me, but I never tried to get away. I suppose I thought if I could handle the danger of being friends with Rose, it proved I was tough enough to survive. Yet I sort of really liked her too. Life gets very twisted, in a prison.
    “We’re a team,” I said. “A mutual admiration society.”
    Rose hiccuped, giggled, and put her hand over her mouth. Her hands were soft and pretty: somehow Rose managed never to be the one scrubbing floors. Her nails gleamed, like little pink claws, in the candlelight.
    We called the party our Annual General Meeting, and held it on a night when the moon was dark. We’d been out of the dorms together before. It wasn’t too dangerous when you knew the wardens’ routine; if you had a skeleton key. Ifrahim was clever like that. He could make a key out of a pin or a paper clip, and he’d taught us all how to pick simple locks. In third year, top juniors, they didn’t patrol the dorms through the night the way they did with the younger Bugs. They locked us in, and came around to look through the glass of the door at intervals. They trusted in the red lights to keep us behaving ourselves: but we knew how to avoid the camera eyes.
    Rain and Amur (another Permanent I’d recruited for his criminal skills) and I left our beds stuffed with blankets. We sneaked out of the Permanent Boarders’ block and met the Termers up in the tower. There we feasted among our spoils, wrapped like savages in stolen New Dawn blankets, in the smoky, smelly light of stolen New Dawn candles; playing cards while we passed the bottle round. Someone drunkenly called for a speech. I stood up, arm in arm with Rose, and explained how much I’d learned at New Dawn College, and how rehabitu-witulated I was.
    “Here’s to a life of crime!” cried Rose.
    We were getting dangerously loud. We didn’t hear the lookout scrabbling down from the roof, until he catapulted into the room, headfirst. It was Amur, and he was scared. “Out of here!” he gasped. “The guards are coming, a bunch of them, out of the main gates guardhouse. They must have had a tip-off!”
    “How d’you know they’re coming here?” cried Rose.
    “Where else? Come on! Come on!”
    “But all our stuff!” groaned Bird.
    “Don’t be stupid,” I hissed. “There’s always more.”
    The candles in the dark lanterns were doused, all but one. Amur was already shooting down the struts: Rose and Bird, Lavrenty and Ifrahim followed. Tottie grabbed a last spoon of stew, stuffed it in her mouth, and dived wildly through the trapdoor. We heard her gasp and choke as the metal bar on the other side of the gap