Free Siberia by Ann Halam Page B

heart, and tried never to think about it. One day I’d be old enough to leave this dump, and I would go and search for my mama. Meanwhile I was here for the three meals a day, the warm clothes, the vitamin pills, and whatever else was going.
    Rose went on being friends with me, when I was a Permanent Boarder, and I went on being friends with her. There wasn’t a school rule keeping Permanents and Termers apart, it was something the students had decided themselves: but my self-appointed guardian didn’t like it. Once he found me sharing a weed (that’s a prison cigarette) with Rose, behind the kitchen rubbish bins. He took great pains to catch me alone after that, and told me Rose was bad company, and she would do me harm.
    I knew Rose wasn’t to be trusted. It was the spice of danger that made her interesting. “I’m bad company myself,” I said. “Warn Rose.”
    Yagin watched me, as he’d promised. He had an annoying way of looking—as if he knew every naughty thing I’d ever done, but he would always forgive me. It gave me the creeps. But there wasn’t much he could do about my being friends with Rose. He couldn’t hang around near the students without getting into serious trouble. I often avoided seeing him for weeks at a time.
    My tree down the road put out its leaves. It was never much of a green cloud, but made the best show it could manage. I went to the gates to look at it sometimes: until the summer faded. New girls moved into the dormitories. After they’d been issued their uniforms, we old Bugs took anything worth having, substituting our own worn-out stuff. We threw shoes at them when they cried at night, and warned them they would be killed if they complained. . . . Deep inside, where my hope was buried, maybe the person I used to be survived. But I had betrayed my mother, and the only way I could live with that was to become hard and hateful; so I just let it happen. At least, as the winter went on, the crying stopped. It was a relief not to have to be cruel anymore. On very cold nights I wrapped my stolen extra blankets tightly around me, hid my head under the pillow, and dreamed I was in the snowy forest. Mama, I whispered in my heart. I’ll come and find you.
    I knew she was probably dead; but you have to believe in something.
    I knew I wasn’t the little girl she had loved anymore, but I couldn’t help that.
    The winter passed. By March my tree emerged from the blizzards, looking more sickly than ever, but at least it was alive. So now I was twelve.
    It was during my second year that we started the real stealing. I don’t know what Yagin would have done if he’d found out: but he didn’t. Maybe he was fooled by the way I still worked at my lessons and got high marks (which I did because it was easy and it was good cover). Or maybe it was because it happened very gradually.
    First we were taking things from the new Bugs, same as the year before: a nasty game, but it kept us warm and fed. Then Rose talked to one of the townspeople, one of those bad lots who hung around the New Dawn College gates in the hopes of some kind of pickings, and set up a regular trade. That’s what she told us, anyway. Maybe it was really something to do with that friend of her mother’s: I never knew. I left that side of it to Rose.
    My job was to organize the stealing. We Permanents had chores, around the kitchen and the housekeeping stores, and we weren’t too well supervised. I recruited Rain, and a couple of other Permanents. Later there were more people involved: Bird and Lavrenty, Tottie and Ifrahim. We’d recruit anyone useful. It grew to be an empire. On my thirteenth birthday I didn’t go to look at my tree: I’d forgotten all about it. We’d just traded a stack of blankets and a box of canned food over the fence: I sneaked out of the dormitory (we had a lockpick in our gang by then) after lights-out, and celebrated with my thieving friends, on vodka and plenty of greasy chocolate.
    The third