Character Assassination

Character Assassination
4. The Normals

As soon as me and Khalid got back to his place we did call the police, and we were fobbed off. We'd expected as much. Then we realised that the next train to Milton Keynes wasn't til after midnight, and I didn't feel like catching a train anyway, and we were at Khalid's house and his parents weren't...

"Dad won't let you sleep in my room," Khalid said, nervously.

"Why not? You're eighteen, it's up to you."

"He just won't like it." He blushed. "Look...you can have the spare room." And he took me to the spare room. It was all lilac and Barbies and there was a long pause before I said, "This is Leila's room, isn't it?"

Khalid winced at even hearing his sister's name. "It's the spare room now. We took all her stuff, took it to her hospital, it's not hers anymore."

"I'm not sleeping here, Khalid."

He sighed. We went to his room. He snatched some blankets from the bed and we went downstairs and he dumped them on the sofa.

"You've never had a girl here before, have you?" I said wearily.

"You're the only girl I know."

Still with my clothes on, I pulled the blankets over myself.

"Your parents are seeing Leila, aren't they?"

"Yes."

"You could have gone there. Instead of going to that stupid meeting thing."

Khalid said nothing. "I see her all the time," he finally said, very sadly. "I have to do my own thing, I have to fight."

I nodded.

"Eff off now, Khalid, I'm going to sleep."

So he left. And I just lay there in the dark. Khalid's parents didn't return and I thought of them sleeping by Leila's bed, praying for a long overdue miracle. And the sun was rising when I heard Khalid come downstairs.

"Are you asleep?" he whispered.

"Yes," I said.

"I thought the police would call back."

I shrugged in the gloom.

"We have to stop them," he said.

"I know."

Suddenly I felt him crawling on the blankets, coming towards me. "What're you doing?"

"I-"

He sort of fell on top of me, and I pushed him off. He tumbled to the floor and hastily stood up again. "What're you doing?"

"Khalid!"

"You wanted me to...make love to you!" He didn't have his glasses on, but I saw his hand twitch towards his face. "You did. I mean, didn't you? Mal?"

"That doesn't mean you have to do it!"

"But I wanted to! I mean, I know there's multiple reasons why I shouldn't but there are also reasons why I should! So I just thought..."

"You're a Muslim! You can't shag around before you get married!"

"Hakan did. Lots of my friends did. And I like you, you're the only girl I'm ever going to like, I know." But he was trailing off now. I stumbled off the sofa and turned the lights on. Khalid was wearing only his underpants and my top had fallen open in the night. We both looked fucking stupid.

The light in the room quickly changed things. "I don't want to sleep with you now," Khalid announced in a faintly pompous voice. "I can see it was a mistake."

"Whatever," I said, and got back under the blankets. Khalid opened the door and I heard him stomp upstairs. Then come down again. "Mal?" he whispered. "Mal, can we forget this ever happened? Can we still be friends?"

"Yes," I said. "Of course we bloody can. Now go back to bed. War's breaking out tomorrow."

*

Next morning I texted Mum to tell her where I was, and me and Khalid went to stake out Aaron's house.

"I was hoping the police would have come to talk to him," Khalid said. "I gave them his name, his address, everything..."

"Yeah."

"The fact that I couldn't give the castle's address didn't help..."

"No-one cares about old castles. And no-one would believe us for a fucking second if we told them what was really going on."

We reached the house. It didn't look like anyone was around. I strolled down the driveway and started to climb the back gate. Khalid watched me for a second and then joined in.

"He's not gonna be in, right?" he said, huffing and puffing. "They've gone off to Scotland..."

I landed on the other side and peered through the window. No-one was there.

"They wouldn't go just like that," I said. "They'd need to, I dunno...how would they even get there? Just all pile into a car and go off and have a war?"

"It's possible." Khalid landed with a loud thump. "How do we get in?"

I thought about it, and broke one of the windows.

"Mal!"

"What? This guy's a nutter anyway. We're saving people from him!" And I stuck my hand through the window and turned the lock, and wiggled through. On the other side there was a living room, but it was quiet and empty. I went out into the lobby, and on the stairs there was a suitcase...

"Mal!" Khalid shouted from outside. "Mal, I'm not...I can't climb through there!"

"Then keep guard!" I called, and went upstairs. In the room I took to be Aaron's there was another suitcase, and this one had a gun in it. I looked at that gun for a very long time, remembered Grandad and Mum and me wanting revenge that day, remembered the anger that bit at me every time I thought of that old woman walking the streets alive while Roseanna, Roseanna...

Someone opened the front door.

I panicked. I was about to run and hide, although God knew where I'd hide, and we'd broken the window anyway. And Khalid was still out there, and someone was coming up the stairs, right to the bedroom-

I grabbed the gun. Aaron came in.

"Freeze!" I said.

We looked at each other for a long few seconds. I put the gun down again.

"I'm not actually going to shoot you," I said. "I don't do that. You dick."

Aaron leaned forward and snatched it from my hand. He threw it in the suitcase, closed the suitcase, and glared at me.

"Mal, right?"

"Yeah."

"I don't know how you got in my house, don't really care, you got me? There are bigger things happening here than us. You don't want no part of it, I gathered that, and maybe that's for the best, you're just a little kid." In a weird way, his speech sounded rehearsed. "So go back to your folks, tell them the woman who killed your sister is about to be killed herself, tell them us voiceless are finally gonna have a voice."

"You're going to kill children," I said.

"Maybe I am," he said cooly. "You don't visit your kid's gravestones every day, you don't go to sleep at night knowing it's all gonna happen again! Because, little girl-" And I started to talk, to call him a dickhead, but he cut me off- "we are their in-fer-i-ors. Everything humankind's ever done- science, space, the internet- it's nothing to them, no acheivement, fuck all! Clever dogs that sometimes learn tricks. Their war, their big, awful war that Potter sorted out... it wasn't good versus evil, kid, it was a case of treating us like pets versus treating us like animals."

And my blood went cold. And I just watched him. And I wanted to kill people. Before, I'd wanted to kill Dolores, and now I wanted to kill everyone who'd put her into power, everyone who'd ever said a kind word to her, everyone related to or desended from her...and then it stopped. I knew what I was.

"You killing children, killing anyone, that's wrong."

"History, Mal, you ever take it?" said Aaron. "The slaves got freed cos they fought against that shit, not cos they sat back and took it and thought of the children." (Now might be a good time to mention that Aaron was black.) "We're going to have a war. It's been hovering over the history books for long enough, we're meeting up in Scotland soon and we're going to set fire to that castle, and hurt whatever comes out of it. Kids or not kids." And we stared at each other. "Get out, now," he finally said. "Go."

So I went. I grabbed Khalid from the back garden- literally grabbed him- and we ran down the street.

"I'm sorry I didn't see him come in, Mal-"

"Shut up!" I said. "That's not important now." Khalid looked hurt, but I didn't have time to comfort him. "God, he's going to kill people, they all are, those normal people are gonna walk up there and kill kids.
They really are." And I knew why, that was one of the worst things, I knew what'd driven them to it. It was horrible and wrong and it made perfect sense. "There's going to be a fucking war!"

We reached Khalid's house without even realising. I sat on the sofa. Khalid fetched me some tea and then went on the computer.

"Sorry," I finally said. "Oh God, I just treated you like shit."

"S'alright." Khalid said. He looked hard at me, and I knew he was thinking about last night. "Mal, you know Aaron and that lot won't get far. Hogwarts must have loads of contingency plans in case some uptight Muggles get ideas."

"So they'll all die, then."

"Maybe. Someone's going to. Loads of people. We've got to stop it." He was typing something on his computer.

"Dolores," I said. "She's gonna be their main target..." I didn't know what to say, if I was making myself as bad as they were. "I'll cheer, if she dies."

"I will too," Khalid said grimly. I put my tea down and went to him.

"What are you doing on there?"

"Booking us some tickets to Scotland."