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“I hope you’re happy with yourself,” she hisses. “You and your bully-boys have done this to her.”
“She did this to herself,” I declare coldly, and shut my door again.
Rory doesn’t laugh along with the others. He doesn’t call ArabellaBelly Flop, or even the defaultBelly. He just sits back, full of easy, languid confidence, and watches the chaos he’s created with dark, glittering eyes.
“We should see if she’s okay,” I suggest that evening, as Danny lies by my feet, his head propped against my knee as he avidly reads one of the Arabella-plastered newspapers. I run my hands through his hair, glancing nervously down at it. There’s a square photo of Arabella grinning toothily, sporting a boater hat and long pigtails, below the shrieking headline, ‘How Was This FEMALELochkelvin Student Radicalized?’
Really had to enhance the female aspect, I think to myself with a roll of my eyes. If one girl thinks a stupid thought, all girls must therefore be stupid.
It should be a warning sign that this is not the hopeful, sane article I’d hoped for — the rare kind during which I won’t wince, perhaps taking an angle of concern about the intense politicization that occurs at Lochkelvin. But the sub-heading reads,‘Will This Former Antiro Ally Be Pardoned?’And I realize Arabella’s so-called radicalization is, as Antiro HQ had ended up squabbling over on the radio, about how she’d dropped in during her rant the fact that the Queen had been brutally murdered.
They’re vicious.
“You know,” Rory drawls, flicking idly through The Guardian, “I always assumed the left never canceled their own, but Arabella’s really testing that theory for me.” Even in The Guardian, the same photo of a young Arabella has been published, this time under the headline ‘Lochkelvin Schoolgirl’s Controversial Remarks Spark Accountability Debate.’ When Rory looks across at me, he folds up the newspaper onto his desk. “If you must,” he says quietly, answering my initial suggestion. “I don’t see what good it’ll do, though. Not from us.”
“She won’t listen to you,” Danny agrees, but adds, “but you can try.”
“Feel free to place all the blame on me,” Rory says cheerfully, shaking open The Daily Toot. “I’m happy to take all the credit for this one.”
I can’t explain my feeling of unease about this whole operation. Rory, who’s usually so astute, seems blinded by the idea of personally bringing Arabella down — which he has. It was in her wilted demeanor as she fled the dining hall. It’s in her days of absence, of deeply uncharacteristic silence. While it may be the most exciting thing to have happened to Lochkelvin since the last outlandish spin of the news cycle, I cannot help but bear the pity that no one else, save perhaps Li, seems bothered to hold.
She’s said vile things to me, about me. She’s laughed at me, poured scorn on me, been rude about me and the ones I love. Started Operation Fucking Strike First and almost ruined my life. I should be delighted Rory’s blown the smugness off her stupid face by dragging her derangement into the light. I should be thrilled to finally see her precocious ass falter.
I rub my eyes. Is it because I’ve been there? Holed up in my room, waiting for storms to blow over, the hottest topic of Chinese whispers. And her storm is bigger than all of ours because it’s been magnified a thousandfold by the press. That’s more than any one person can handle, surely, their teenage misdeeds printed and published for the whole world to laugh at. What’s the crime? Being a little bit weird?
And still, the unease remains.
Because the mob-god takes and it takes.
“What does The Daily Toot say?” I ask, expecting the worst.
“‘Jaz, 22, from Manchester, is proud to be representing the deaf community,’” Rory reads, “apparently by demonstrating that deaf women can be naked and objectified, too?” He spins the paper round to show me a beautiful black woman in a seafoam-green bikini. “‘Her dream is to star in—’”
“Not that,” I sigh. “Some actual news.”
“There are a great many pages of this, little saint,” Rory points out, flicking through pouting model after model. It should be annoying, but I’ve figured out how The Daily Toot operates, and while their commitment to bikini and lingerie models never wavers, an absurd deluge of half-naked women means their daily political gossip columns must have more bite than usual. “Nothing, it seems, on Arabella. Oh, wait.” He pauses, reading a particularly dense paragraph. “‘…to say nothing of the young Lochkelvin Academy student, the reaction to whose antics this week reached fever pitch. But why should such a story strike now? Could it be another ruse from Westminster? While they may present themselves as a united front and the best of buddies for the cameras, there are royal rumblings deep within Parliament of mass blow-outs between OM and BM.’”
I raise an eyebrow at this. Rory doesn’t look surprised in the least.
“‘The hearty mockery of this over-zealous Lochkelvin student is a helpful barometer of the true level of Antiro capture within the British public, news which will do little to placate BM, whose regime’s next steps may very well be to prohibit laughter. And some digging throws up a curious tidbit: the prized Head Girl? Related not only to the head of Lochkelvin itself, but also a former potential sister-in-law of our new dear king! Is it any wonder the upper echelons of British society are as riddled with incompetence when this incestuous breeding ground is the school from which they all hail?’
“‘Meanwhile in Westminster, tensions between leadership is said to have reached boiling point after the mishandling of the Nicola Miller case, with crisis talks in the works about establishing an Antiro-backed National Convention to abolish royalty for good and declare Britain the republic that King Jimmy always used to fancy before his own hands thrust a crown on his head. Exclusive documents seen byThe Daily Tootacknowledge Antiro’s demands for a Committee of Public Safety to take control of the executive government, which won’t endear an already disgruntled OM, as Antiro vows to protect the revolution at whatever the cost — even at the expense of him. But with it open season on taking the proverbial out of Antiro via Lochkelvin’s timely ranting useful idiot, perhaps OM will realize the instability of Antiro’s authority and be persuaded not to hand the remaining tatters of British democracy to a dangerous pressure group.’
“‘While our top dogs tie themselves in red tape and bark at each other in legalese, one special adviser quipped that if the Velvet Revolution had been so-called because of its smoothness, then this one ought to be named after granite.’”
“That… says a lot,” Danny says, sounding surprised. “In the background, Antiro sneaks around and tries to subvert democracy, but in the public eye, Arabella’s become political fodder and a scapegoat. Handy.”
“Useful idiot,” I murmur, brows furrowing, remembering that phrase being associated with me.
“Very useful, since it was never intended that way. I did wonder why the footage seems to have risen so stratospherically — it must be by design. I’d been using it to get back at Arabella but Father’s been using it for a much greater purpose, to hit out at Benji.”
“Well, I don’t know about you, but as a normal, everyday citizen, I’mveryconvinced of the stability of our government,” Danny remarks sarcastically.
I glance down at my newspaper, which contains a particularly grim article I’d been reading before this revelation. “Perhaps we should remind ourselves what we’re dealing with,” I say, and begin to read the article under the headline‘Chaos Ensues as Government-Backed Antiro Measures Disrupt Food and Drink Database’:
The Chief Executive of Morrico, Louise Shan, has described the “afternoon of panic and confusion” that unfolded after the government’s sudden Antiro-backed initiatives to revamp Britain’s commercial food and drink database. The move came in response to Antiro’s prohibition of previously endorsed products by the House of Milton.
“We received the list from the government incredibly last-minute, and it was forwarded to stores with strict instructions for instant action in the middle of the trading day. Ordinarily, our stores would remove items from sale the evening before, so that workers on the night shift can pull stock from the shelves and adjust our internal databases. However, this decree being issued last-minute meant our workers were forced from their sections to assist their colleagues in overhauling the rest of the store and pulling affected brands as quickly as they could. Our employees also had to physically prevent customers from removing these items from the shelves. By the time the work was finished, our stock levels were minimal and customers complained of empty shelves.
