A/N: I'm back, guys! So yeah, I lost around 2000 words I wrote on chapter seven, which sucks, so I kind of forgot about updating yesterday like I was going to, and I began to re-write chapter seven. But I forgot to save it like an idiot (I felt like using a stronger word here, trust me), so I'm writing it AGAIN now. IT MAKES ME SO ANGRY. Also, in other yet not totally unrelated news, NaNoWriMo in nine days... This is going to be insane, what with my A Levels. Crazy! But I will still try and update for you guys and write that at the same time as doing essays and such for Sixth Form. I WILL BE MEGA CRAY CRAY BUSY. Also, if there is anyone out there who wishes to chat or something, my twitter is Accio_Glasses. I do follow back!
-Lauren
Chapter Two
Location: The L. E. O. station
After refusing to answer any of the questions that the L. E's asked me, I slept in the cell at the station overnight and it was highly uncomfortable. Every time I managed to drift off, a door would slam, or another person would shout. Usually, though, my body just woke up unexpectedly. By the time I finally fell into a decent sleep, it was five in the morning, and one of the L. E.s came to wake me up at seven.
Operating on two hours of sleep would be hard enough in usual circumstances, but I needed to speak with my appointed lawyer. As I had no money and was only eighteen, and therefore apparently not eligible to choose my own lawyer, the L. E. O. had picked one for me. As I was being led to the main interview room, I caught a glimpse of other people who had been arrested during the early hours. Most of them were drunk, or maybe sleeping off some type of drug, but a few stared out of their cell at me defiantly. As if they were proud of being caught for breaking the law. I try to remind myself that I, too, broke the law, and that my criminal act was premeditated, but I wasn't triumphant about being arrested. Maybe their expressions were just to show the L. E. O. that they weren't scared of them.
At the table in the interview room was a tall man, obviously over six feet tall, folded into a small metal chair. He had short brown hair that had been styled into the latest fashion. He had green eyes and was wearing a sharp black suit. He looked to be in his early twenties. Very professional - this was the first thing I thought when I saw him.
I sat down and the L. E. - Law Enforcer - left us alone. My lawyer cleared his throat before beginning.
"Miss Hayes. I am Andrew Colton, your state- appointed lawyer. I'll be spearheading your defence for your trial."
"I know," I replied. It had been the first time I had spoken in over a day, so it came out slightly hoarse and raspy. I hadn't meant to sound defiant, but I realized a second too late that I did when Andrew's eyebrows went up.
"What exactly happened last night?" he asked, all business.
"I woke up at twenty past two in the morning, got changed, and snuck out of my house. I climbed up a tree and got through the window of the drawing room in the De Morville's house. I then got to the safe and broke into it, stealing ten million pounds. I got as far as the doorway to the drawing room before the guards caught me. They called the L. E. O. and here I am." I told him, trying my best to look petulant, arms folded across my chest, my voice and face devoid of emotion. I was suddenly aware of how tired and ruffled I must truly look. I ignored this.
"And your reasons for attempting to steal ten million pounds were…?" he prodded, his voice a little gentler now. I think he was just relieved that I had told him the truth instead of trying to lay some sort of emotive lie on him.
I shrugged, trying to seem unruffled by my predicament. "I needed the money."
His eyebrows went up again at my comment and he made a tiny note on the paper on his clipboard with his expensive- looking fountain pen. "Why did you need the money, Miss Hayes?" he asked next, a little more probing than gentle this time.
I sighed, leaning forward now, realizing that telling the truth was something that I had to do in a nicer and more personable way if I wanted to earn his trust and enable him to give me a decent defence in court.
"My family and I live in the slums," I explained in a low voice. "The Trials are coming up, okay? Every year, my parents are getting lower and lower scores on the fitness tests. I'm scared that they'll take them away from me. How would I be able to live then, without my mother and father? Aside from the fact that my job doesn't earn enough to feed a hamster anyway, what would I do on my own with bills to pay? The extra money that we get from the L. E. O. is eaten up by the bills as soon as it comes in anyway. It is no use.
"So I remembered that the families that have enough money or are very influential are able to get out of the Trials somehow. When I was twelve, I hatched this crazy plan to break into the house and steal their money so that my family and other families like mine wouldn't have to do the Trials anymore and that they would be safe and kept together. The L. E. O. doesn't see the sort of devastation that a family is left with when one of their own is put in the Group Home." It all came out in a big rush and once I had said it, I was oddly glad that I had got it out finally. It was like this massive weight had been lifted from my chest, now that someone understood why I had even made the crazy plan to steal an eighth of what the De Morvilles had.
There was a knock on the door and an L. E popped his head into the room. "Mista 'Orris asks tha' you wrap this li'l conversashun up, Mista Col'on, an' he apologizes in a'vance, on'y ee needs ta see ya abou' tha' case from las' munth. Surry."
Andrew sighed and wrote something else on his clipboard and smiles at me without any real humour.
"I apologize, Miss Hayes, and I'll be back in just a moment." With that, he dropped his clipboard on the steel table and walked out of the room, following the L. E with the thick cockney accent. I sat for a moment, trying to fight the impulse to read what he had been writing about me. After two minutes, my curiosity got the better of me, and I quickly snatched the clipboard up, scanning it with my eyes.
The notes that he had taken surprised me. It seemed that he intended to really play up how I was poor and lived in the slums and that I had tried to steal the money because I couldn't stand the pain of losing my parents, as so many of my family had been lost to the Trials before. Unaware that I was practically imitating him, I raised my eyebrows and swiftly placed the clipboard back where it had been sitting when I had picked it up.
I returned to my earlier pose and crossed my arms across my chest and waited for a few minutes until my lawyer re- entered the room. Shutting the door behind him softly, his eyes did a customary sweep of the room before landing on me. Giving me a small smile that, again, didn't reach his green eyes, he walked back over to his chair and folded himself into it once again.
"I am sorry about that, Miss Hayes. There was a case that Mr. Horris wished to discuss with me,"
I had quickly grown tired of hearing him call me 'Miss Hayes'. "Please, call me Laurel," I told him and he nodded, smiling slightly.
After glancing at his notes, he leaned forward in his seat again so that he was closer to me. "Now, Miss Hay - I mean, Laurel, the way that I am going to go about this is by exaggerating the fact that you are from the Slums. Are you okay with that?"
Well, it was damn nice that he was asking me when he had clearly already had his mind made up. "That's fine with me; I don't really care if I get made to look like a pauper if it gets me a reduced sentence."
"Good," he replied, nodding. "Then we will have another chat in two days time when I have a better case. I will be researching your history, and that of your family's, if that is okay with you, and then I shall be back with more information to make you look good." He stood, grabbing a black leather briefcase that I hadn't noticed before, clutching his paperwork under his arm, and held out his right hand for me to shake. I stood also, reaching over and shaking his hand. "Best of luck," he muttered as he exited the room. An L. E walked over to me, cuffed me (I didn't see why; it was about a three metre walk to my cell) and led me into the corridor. Ahead of me, near the reception, Andrew was signing out. I was thrown into my cell after having my wrists freed from the stainless steel handcuffs and I watched as the L. E slammed the door of my cell shut.
I sat down slowly on the fold out bed (really, it was just a concrete slab with a thin mattress on top of it. There was no need for sheets or a duvet, as the station was kept a stable temperature that was really very warm) and thought hard about what had just happened. My state lawyer seemed to know what he was doing, which was a comforting thought, and he had said that he would have a stable case to work on with my background and the information that I had supplied him with in the interview. But, at the same time, he hadn't exactly said that he would be able to get me out of going to the Island. Part of me whispered that I'd known all along that I would end up going there. They always did.
I was woken abruptly a few hours later by a female L. E, which was something that I had never seen before; all of the L. Es that I had ever seen were men.
"You're being taken to a more secure holding place today," she said in a kindly voice. I looked up at her through my curtain of unruly wavy hair. No doubt I looked like absolute shit, whereas she was standing in front of me in her pristine white uniform with straight red hair combed back into a high ponytail. I nodded, swinging my legs over the side of the bed and onto the floor, holding back a yawn.
"Do you think I could get something to change into, and maybe a hairbrush?" I asked in a voice hoarse from the time that I had spent being asleep. The L. E considered my question and then left. A minute later, she returned with an armful of clothes and a hairbrush.
"Use that quickly, you're not meant to have it. I'll stay here and watch in case you try something funny with it," she told me quietly. I was taken aback - I hadn't actually expected her to do what I asked - and then I saw it. The silver 'TRAINEE' badge pinned to her lapel. Figures, they would send in an L. E that wasn't even qualified yet. I was half amazed at my luck and half insulted; didn't they think I could take her? She looked about six stone soaking wet, was smaller than me and was obviously quite the pushover. I didn't think that she had chosen the right career for her, funnily enough.
I stood up and picked the hairbrush up off of the pile of clothes that the trainee had dumped on the floor (it was a good job that I had been keeping my cell clean) and yanked it through my hair many times. When the last knot was finally out, I patted my hair, which had been reduced to a static mess. I sighed, feeling that this was at least better than the crazy birds nest than it had been before.
I handed the brush back to her and she leaned out of the cell to throw it onto the desk. I was fully aware that now was the chance for me to escape: if I rushed her at just the right angle, I would be able to knock her down, or to the side, and then break free. The doors would only take a second and the small fence outside was one I could easily hurdle. I'd be out and then I could be free, even if I was doomed to be in hiding for the rest of my days.
But I just couldn't do it. My mind drifted to my parents, a thought that I had been attempting to block from my mind for over a day now. They wouldn't want me to become an outlaw. At least if I went down with my head held high and full of dignity, I would have shown the L. E. O. that they could try all they wanted, but they could never fully control us.
I reached over and picked up the clothes. The bundle held a pair of blue jeans and a white vest top. A black hooded jacket, the type that you wore when going to the gym, was folded on top, and it was thick and comfortable. I turned away and pulled off my leather jacket. The trainee blushed almost as red as her fiery hair and muttered something about standing outside and to pass my old clothes through the hatch in the door, which was open. The cell door shut and I paused for a moment, thinking.
If there was one thing I couldn't get rid of, it would be my leather jacket. My father had bought it for me two years ago for my sixteenth birthday, and it held a real sentimental value for me. I placed it carefully onto the bed and pulled off the thick black leggings and the green top, replacing them with the jeans (which turned out to be skinny jeans, a little too big, but it wasn't like they were hanging off of me) and the white top. Over that, I pulled on my leather jacket and then donned the hooded jacket too. There, that would work. I pushed the old clothes through the hatch in the door and the L. E scrutinized me, knowing that I had kept the leather jacket, but choosing not to say anything about it.
Huh, I guess she really was a push over.
I was only left waiting about five minutes or so before a male L. E came to pull me out of the cell by handcuffs which he had fastened around my wrists. As I was led past reception, through the doors and into the back of the L. E. O. van, I wondered whether my parents had been told about me being caught yet. All those years, and they had never known what I had been planning. A sharp, acute pain in my chest sprang up and I realized that I missed them. I had always been independent, even as a small child, but now… now I just wanted my mom and my dad to pull me out of trouble as they always had done in the past when I had gotten a shouting at from a teacher at school or a warning from work.
That wasn't going to happen. Not now, probably not ever. The thought depressed me, so I decided to focus on something else instead.
I knew that tomorrow I would be meeting with Andrew again and he would tell me what he had found out while he had been taking a leisurely stroll through my past. Hopefully, he had found something that would benefit me and my case.
Once I was secured to the side rail in the van by my handcuffs and seated on the bench, the L. E and another man, probably the guy's partner, climbed into the front of the van. The engine rumbled into life beneath my feet and, with a lurch, we started forwards towards my new temporary prison.
I hoped the trial would be soon. I couldn't stand being locked in a cell for much longer; at least on the Island, you got to walk around. I hated feeling trapped, and that was exactly what being put into a cell in a prison at the station or the gaol block was. The problem was, while I was stuck inside a tiny room being monitored by the L. E. O. every hour of the day, my family and others like me would be getting ready to take the Trials. I scrunched my face up, attempting and failing to put that thought out of my mind. You tried and it didn't work, Laurel. You can't save them.
The only problem was that I had had my chance. I'd had the chance to save people the torture of being sent to the Group Home, or watching their family and friends be dragged off, and I hadn't taken it. If I hadn't of wasted time in the hallway with Jose, listening to him rambling on about the guards knowing about the system override, I'd of made it back home ten million pounds richer. And then who knows what I could have done to change the people who lived in the slums' lives for the better.
Why did I stand there and listen to Jose Matthews anyway?! I was at the doorway of the drawing room, for God's sakes! Even if they already knew, I would have been gone before they had even hit the corridor. And then everything would have been different.
I wouldn't be sitting in an L. E. O. van, cuffed to the side of it and on the way to a detention centre, for one thing.
The only thought that could give me any comfort was the fact that I had shaken them up. The L. E. O. and the De Morvilles. Hopefully the other eleven families that made up the new government.
And if I could shake them up… so could anybody else.
