Broken Monsters. Lauren Beukes

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СКАЧАТЬ switching up the exercise. Black power, the speaking stick, all the rituals that count. They all stop dead and watch for their cue.

      Shawnia starts flopping her body around, like she’s having a seizure, and they all follow suit, trying to let go of their bones, making their limbs limp as tentacles. Layla flops her body forward so that her unruly curls brush the ground. (Which are not a weave, thank you for asking. She got them the old-fashioned way, from her mom, and yeah, that means she’s a mixie and no, you can’t fucking touch my hair, what do you think this is, a human petting zoo?)

      ‘Couldn’t get a ride?’ Cassandra whispers. ‘Bet Dorian could have given you one.’

      Layla accidentally on purpose tries to smack her. But Cas ducks, making it look like part of her movement.

      ‘Oh no, too slow!’ she whisper-mocks, both of them grinning.

      ‘Focus, please!’ Mrs. Westcott yells. She says drama came straight out of human sacrifice rituals. Some ancient prehistoric tribes used to kill their chieftain every winter solstice as an offering to the gods to ensure that the spring would return, until they figured out that killing off their smartest and brightest maybe wasn’t the best way to run a society. They started re-enacting the sacrifices wearing masks to fool the gods, to allow the chieftain to return as a new man, or close as.

      You can inhabit a role, Layla thinks, you can reinvent yourself. She thought she could get away with it. Whole new school year, whole new school on the other side of the city, whole new Layla.

      She played the divorce card on her dad to get him to buy her new clothes to fit in with the cool kids. But it was tough to keep up the act. Like dying your hair blonde, according to Cas. ‘Trust me. The maintenance is a nightmare.’

      Besides, it turns out it’s harder to fool teenagers than old gods. Clothes maketh not the mean girl. Eventually you’re going to slip up and say something colossally dorky, like you read Shakespeare for fun.

      It took a week before she decided it was too much effort and blew her cover on purpose so she could go back to wearing her usual uniform of jeans and geeky T-shirts. Hard enough being the in-between Afro-Latina, who can fit in with the white kids or the black kids, but not both at the same time. But it sucked being back where she started, on the outside, eating lunch alone in the gymnateria or cafenasium, whatever you want to call it, because like all well-intentioned charter schools, Hines High was short on funds.

      That was before she made friends with Cassandra, or more likely the other way round, because, let’s face it, Cas is so out of her league. She’s super-hot, even though she never wears makeup, with her fine sandy-brown hair, big gray-blue eyes and freckles, and breasts that make boys do double-takes. And she doesn’t give a fuck about anything.

      It’s how they became friends, when Cas called Ms. Combrink a bitch to her face and Layla covered for her, clumsily, yelling out, yeah, she had an itch too. It landed them both in detention, but they got to talking and she persuaded Cas to come along to audition at the theater school. She aced it without trying, even though she sings like a frog with emphysema. Life lesson: looks plus don’t-give-a-fuck confidence mean you can have anything you want – any guy, any friends. But Cas chose her. Which makes Layla infinitely grateful and paranoid. She’s told Cas she’s waiting for the day she dumps a bucket of pig’s blood on her head – Carrie-style.

      ‘Gross. I would never do that.’ Cas was dismissive. ‘If I was going to humiliate you in public, I’d be much more subtle and vicious.’

      But it means she doesn’t push too hard when Cas changes the subject every time personal stuff comes up. It’s part of what she admires about her – that Cas is unknowable. Like Oz. But unlike that huckster wizard, you can’t just pull back the curtain on Cas, because all you’ll find are curtains behind curtains. It’s part of her ineffable cool. But Layla can’t tell her that because she’ll get a big head, and she already has big boobs to contend with. It would definitely throw her off balance.

      Shawnia raises her fist again for the final exercise before they launch into rehearsals proper, the cycle of gratitude. Double-clap-stamp, round the circle. ‘I’m happy today,’ she starts, ‘because … I got an acceptance letter from U of M!’ Clap-clap-stamp. Everyone whoops.

      Layla has her sights set further than that. When she graduates in three years’ time, she’s getting out of Michigan. She’s not naïve enough to think she’ll make NYU or Los Angeles, but there are other cities with great theater schools. Chicago, Austin, Pittsburgh.

      ‘I’m happy today because I got a date for prom,’ Jessie says. Clap-clap-stamp.

      ‘Did she pay him?’ Cas whispers and Layla tries to keep a straight face. Maybe because Jessie’s the only other white kid in theater group, it’s easier for Cas to pick on her. ‘By the way …’ Cas flashes her screen at her, to show her a tweet from Dorian. ‘Hitting the ramp l8r. Anyone up for a skate?’

      The claps continue round the circle.

      ‘You stalker!’ Layla whispers, trying to hide her delight, already calculating who she can bum a ride with to get there.

      ‘I’m doing it for you, baby girl. For looo-ve.’

      ‘No phones, girls!’ Mrs. Westcott calls out from the stage.

      ‘I’m happy because it’s end of the weekend,’ David intones and gets answered with boos, but he just raises his voice, ‘which means I get to go to school tomorrow and see all my boys!’ Clap-clap-stamp.

      ‘I got a text from a boy who likes me,’ Chantelle says.

      ‘But do you like him?’ Mrs. Westcott teases.

      ‘Oh yeah.’ Chantelle looks smug.

      Clap-clap-stamp.

      ‘I spoke to a boy I like,’ Keith says. Clap-clap-stamp, a wolf-whistle.

      ‘My little brother made the hockey team,’ Cas says. ‘More time at practice, less time to bug me.’ Clap-clap-stamp.

      ‘I’m happy because …’ Shit, Layla has had half the circle to think of something. ‘I’m seeing my boyfriend later.’ She flushes. Clap-clap-stamp. Saying it makes it true. Or commits her to trying, anyway.

      She didn’t intend to get high. But after rehearsals, hanging around watching the boys in the skate park, the weed blunted the boredom of waiting for her mother, who kept texting to say she was held up, until everyone else had bailed to go home, including Cas, and it was only her and Dorian, who kept sliding away from her, and she had to get used to it.

      He’s aiming for kid sister. She wants unsisterly things. It’s not that big an age difference. She’ll be sixteen in December. But he’s graduated already and taking a year out, crashing on the couches of some artist-musician friends down by Hubbard Farms while he decides if he wants to go to college. ‘In the right light, Detroit’s kinda like the new Bohemia,’ he told her, passing her the joint, taking care not to brush her fingers with his. She wanted to reply that in the right light, he could be the Florizel to her Perdita, except he probably hasn’t read The Winter’s Tale, and he’d think she was even more of a dork.

      He’s not the only guy in her life who fundamentally doesn’t get it. Yesterday’s weekly scheduled phone call with her dad (like she’s in prison or something) went badly, and it’s been gnawing at her. She was telling him СКАЧАТЬ