Read Online Siberia by Ann Halam - Free Book Online

class. She’d been staying in the town with her mother and her mother’s important friend: having a shopping spree. Her uniform was made to measure. Her underwear was
out of this world
compared to what the rest of us had to wear. She’d also got herself kitted out with mouthwatering pencils, and colored pens, and a geometry set. I was surprised she wanted to be friends with me, but I wasn’t too proud to go along with it. Better the devil you know, I thought. Rose can’t pull any surprises.
    And it got better. In ways the fact that we had no contact with our families made the loneliness easier to bear. You concentrated on the present. I joined the running club for the disabled, because I was allowed to take my brace off when I went running. The physiotherapy teacher said it would do me good. I didn’t think so at first, but then I could
feel
myself getting stronger. At night I’d lie in my dormitory bed, that was so narrow you had to be careful about turning over, and tell myself, Mama is all right, she’s sleeping now, cozy and warm in our cupboard-bed. . . . If I was feeling strong, I would write imaginary letters to her in my head.
    I’m all right, Mama. I’m going to be good and do well and make you proud. Until next summer. I love you. . . .
    Winter closed in, more quickly than at home. Snow poured out of the sky, until the pillars that supported the buildings were buried. The dormitory was freezing at night, and the night warden would patrol, stripping back the blankets suddenly, to make sure we weren’t cuddling with each other, or sleeping in our nice thick uniforms (both of which were strictly forbidden). By the midwinter break—when none of us left school, we just had boring activities instead of lessons. . . . I could run twice round the snow-packed playing fields before I collapsed. I didn’t look good, but I could cover the ground. We were allowed to stop for a breather near the main gates, and I noticed, while jumping on the spot to keep warm, that I could see a tree: one skinny, crooked tree, away down the road toward the town. It was bare and iced up now, but it would have buds. It would have leaves, unfurling in the sun: and when those skinny branches were hidden by a green cloud, it would be time for me to go home.
    One day in February my class had a science lesson, in the laboratories. This was a privilege that we’d been waiting for, but the laboratory was a disappointment. It already looked run-down; there was no electricity, and there were broken hospital notices that no one had removed. I was still excited, because I knew my mama and dadda had been scientists, when we lived in the city. She’d taught me interesting scientific things (I didn’t count the Lindquists, which I thought were purely magic); and I was looking forward to showing off my knowledge.
    I felt important. No other Bug had a
right
to be in here, but I did!
    We were divided into groups, one group to each bench. I was with Rose, and our friends: Tottie—a girl so small she only came up to my elbow, but she had a fierce temper; a boy called Ifrahim (not everybody had plain names, it was about half and half); a boy called Lavrenty; a girl called Bird, who had homemade tattoos all over her face; Bird’s friend Miriam; and a girl who wasn’t one of us, who’d been dumped on us by the teacher. We had a tray of different materials. We were supposed to write whether we predicted they would burn, and then wait for our turn to use the Bunsen burner and try and burn them. We set ourselves up, with our goggles, and our beaker, and our spatula and our notebook, and I wrote down what we thought would happen.
    Wood would burn, and a stone wouldn’t burn.
    Water wouldn’t burn, and metal wouldn’t burn.
    I felt all this was beneath me. I said that
anything
would burn if you made it hot enough, even rock or steel, but nobody agreed. Bird said I was daft. I suppose she was right: a Bunsen burner isn’t a volcano. . . . It wasn’t