Free The New Girl (Downside) by S.L. Grey

okay, Martin? How was your meeting?’
    Martin mumbles something under his breath that could be anything from ‘go fuck yourself’ to ‘great, thanks for asking’.
    ‘Listen, Martin,’ Tara says, before he climbs into the back seat. ‘About what happened this morning. I just want you to know, it was all my fault. I shouldn’t have raised
a hand to you.’
    She’s expecting him to say, ‘No you shouldn’t, you stupid bitch,’ or words to that effect, but he just shrugs again.
    ‘We’ll talk about it when your father gets home this evening. We’ll sort it out.’
    ‘I don’t need to talk about it,’ Martin says.
    ‘Your father should know what happened, Martin. Unless... unless you’ve already told him. Have you?’
    He yawns. ‘No. Why would I?’
    Tara experiences a twinge of guilt at the relief she feels. Is it possible that this could be buried? It’s not as if she’s been abusing the kid, is it? It was just a moment of
madness. Could’ve happened to anyone. And no one could say she wasn’t provoked.
    He straps himself in without having to be asked, yawns again and starts humming something under his breath (Tara hopes it isn’t ‘I Just Wanna be a Sheep’). She’s so used
to seeing him continually fiddling with his iPhone that it’s disconcerting to see him without it. And does he look paler than usual? He rests his head against the window, a faraway look in
his eyes.
    ‘Martin?’ she asks, twisting round in her seat. ‘Are you feeling okay?’
    He stops humming, looks straight into her eyes and says, ‘Yes, thank you, Tara. I’m just primo.’

Chapter 6
PENTER
    Penter pokes her head around the gate and looks at the road outside the precinct. There’s a constant stream of the machines going by and from the documents she’s
seen, there are even more on other roads. She’s amazed that the browns don’t all just smash into each other and terminate themselves. Despite herself, she feels another prickle of
admiration for their organisational skills. To live at such speed and not cannon into one another is a feat in itself.
    She shuts the gate and retreats into the quiet precinct. If she were here longer, or if her role were different, she’d need to venture out, but as it is, she has work to do in the precinct
and there’s no reason to brave the rushing machines.
    On her way back to the house, she looks up into the bewildering sky and stops to feel the sun’s warmth. It’s like when she was a halfpint and would move too close to the heat vents.
She knew it was hazardous, was parching her skin, but at the same time the warmth in her muscles and bones was irresistible. She’d heard about the sky and the sun, of course – everyone
has; everyone dreams of them secretly when they’re due for a renewal, she’s sure – and the Ministry warned her just how uncanny they were, but nothing could have prepared her. The
thin air out here makes her feel like she’s floating and about to evaporate away. The sun is like a prophetic floodlight, like all the faulty wiring in the world coiled into a single, massive
point of danger. The sky is like all the garment dye ever produced and she doesn’t know how it could have been manufactured, how they could have made it so big, how they could have used so
much material, and how it still stays floating above them.
    She detours through the garden and marvels at the opulence of green, the acrid breath of the trees’ leaves. She plucks a sappy leaf off a berry tree, consciously suppressing her guilt at
the desecration. Up here, there’s an abundance of plant life, leaves are left to coat the ground and rot into the soil. Fruit is left to fall and is given over to the insects and the birds
– those creatures that swirl in the ether like solid breath. She looks at the living green tissue in her hand and a drop of white sap leaks out of the end of the stem and spills onto her
palm.
    Some of the trees are higher than the central victual court