Half Bad Read Free Page B

with him, the closer the better. We’ve both got shorts on, and we’ve both got skinny legs, only his are paler than mine and dangle farther over the end of the comfy chair. He has a small scar on his left knee and a long one up his right shin. His hair is light brown and wavy, but somehow it always stays back off his face. My hair is long and straight and black and hangs over my eyes.
    Arran is wearing a blue, knitted jumper over a white T-shirt. I’m wearing the red T-shirt that he gave me. He’s warm to lean close to, and when I turn to look up at him he moves his gaze from the telly to me, sort of in slow motion. His eyes are light, blue-gray with glints of silver in them, and he even blinks slow. Everything about him is gentle. It would be great to be like him.
    “You enjoying it?” he asks, not in a hurry for an answer.
    I nod.
    He puts his arm round me and turns back to the screen.
    Lawrence of Arabia does the trick with the match. Afterward we agree to try it ourselves. I take the big box of matches from the kitchen drawer and we run with them to the woods.
    I go first.
    I light the match and hold it between my thumb and forefinger, letting it burn right down until it goes out. My small, thin fingers, with nails that are bitten to nothing, are burnt but they hold the blackened match.
    Arran tries the trick too. Only he doesn’t do it. He’s like the other man in the movie. He drops the match.
    After he goes back home I do the trick again. It’s easy.
    * * *
    Me and Arran creep into Gran’s bedroom. It smells strangely medicinal. Under the window there’s an oak casket where Gran keeps the notifications from the Council. We sit on the carpet. Arran opens the casket lid and takes out the second notification. It’s written on thick, yellow parchment and has gray writing swirling across the page. Arran reads it to me; he’s slow and quiet as always.
     
    “Notification of the Resolution of the Council of White Witches in England, Scotland, and Wales.
    “ In order to ensure the safety and security of all White Witches, the Council will continue its policy of Capture and Retribution for all Black Witches and Black Whets.
    “
In order to ensure the safety and security of all White Witches an annual Assessment of witches and whets of mixed White Witch and Black Witch parentage (W 0.5/B 0.5) will be made. The Assessment will contribute to the designation of the witch/whet as White (W) or Black/Non-White (B).”
     
    I don’t ask Arran whether he thinks I’ll be a W or a B. I know he’ll try to be nice.
    * * *
    It’s my eighth birthday. I have to go to London to be assessed.
    The Council building has lots of cold corridors of gray stone. Gran and I wait on a wooden bench in one of them. I am shivering by the time a young man in a lab coat appears and points me to a small room to the left of our bench. Gran isn’t allowed to come.
    In the room is a woman. She’s also in a lab coat. She calls the young man Tom and he calls her Miss Lloyd. They call me Half Code.
    They tell me to strip. “Take your clothes off, Half Code.”
    And I do it.
    “Stand on the scales.”
    And I do that.
    “Stand by the wall. We have to measure you.” They do that. Then they take photographs of me.
    “Turn to the side.”
    “Further.”
    “And face the wall.”
    And they leave me there staring at the brush strokes in the cream-colored shiny paint on the wall while they talk and put things away.
    Then they tell me to put my clothes on, and I do that.
    And they take me through the door and point at the bench in the corridor. And I sit back down and don’t look at Gran’s face.
    The door opposite the bench is paneled dark oak and is eventually opened by a man. He’s huge, a guard. He points at me and then at the room behind him. When Gran starts to get up he says, “Not you.”
    The assessment room is long and high, with bare stone walls and arched windows above head height along each side. The ceiling is arched too. The