The Line

The Line - Part One

OK, this is likely to be a bit of an epic!! Before you get started, just in case you'd like to know where it's going, it's a young adult sci-fi story set in the chillingly conservative world of the future,  where an unlikely heroine finds herself right at the heart of a looming revolution.

Pampered teenage princess Minti has a charmed life, and is madly in love with the drop-dead gorgeous captain of the razorball team (and son of the soon-to-be President) - before an unexpected catastrophe sees her exiled into the terrifying ghetto beyond the Line. There, she meets the enigmatic and charismatic rebel leader Zak, who's leading a secret movement to destroy the foundations of the Republic they all live in. And nothing in Minti's life will ever be the same again....

So please start reading here, I'll try to post regular updates - any feedback would be great :-)

THE LINE

Chapter One

It’s First Cut tomorrow morning. To be honest, I’m not that bothered. The knowledge just sits there at the back of my mind. Not making a nuisance of itself, or jumping up and down, or anything. Just sitting there politely and minding its own business.

A few of the girls in my grade are scared stiff, though. You only have to look around the Ref to see that.

The Ref tends to look cosy in winter, and tonight’s no exception. It’s a huge oak-panelled hall with long bare wooden tables and a seriously high ceiling and windows that don’t have any curtains or blinds, and are maybe ten feet tall. In the daytime, those windows face out onto rolling green lawns and the big iron sculpture of a horse that Cordi’s father paid for last year. On a winter evening like this one, they look like there’s nothing behind them but thick black cardboard. The darkness turns those windows into the world’s biggest and blurriest mirrors, and you can see ghostly reflections of all the uniformed girls eating at the tables.

When you eat in here on a winter evening, you can feel the frosty night pressing in ominously outside, bleak and punishingly cold. Somehow, that makes inside feel even warmer, more welcoming. More reassuring.

At the end of the room, near the open double doors that led to the hallway, you can see drifting steam from behind the brightly lit serving counters. Savoury food smells hang deliciously on the air, winter comfort food - gravy and dumplings and roast beef and roast lamb and roast chicken and half a dozen types of vegetable and whatever else happens to be on the menu that night.

In the normal run of things, the Ref’s noisy enough to be deafening, a low steady background roar of conversation echoing in the huge space.

Tonight, however, it’s slightly but definitely quieter than usual.

As I glance down our table and see the girl sitting at the end of it, I can’t stop myself from rolling my eyes.

‘God, look at her,’ I mutter to Cordi and Guinni, who I’m sitting with like always. ‘She looks like she’s going to faint.’

They follow my gaze over to Rinda, who’s sitting on her own. She looks like she’s in a world of her own, too. As if anything could be happening in the Ref – a bomb, an invasion, a troupe of flying monkeys chucking bread rolls at each other – and she wouldn’t notice a single thing. She’s pushing food around on her plate with a distracted, tense, sick look. Suddenly, abruptly, she jumps up from her seat, grabs her tray and starts hurrying towards the exit.

As she scurries past us, Cordi starts singing, just loud enough for her to hear. The verse in question has been doing the rounds ever since the First Cut exams, a spoof of some ancient, corny song. One of our teachers had given us a furious speech about the new version, a totally unexpected speech that quivered with a passion and a fury that we’d never imagined the dried-up old biddy was capable of.