GLAZE by Kim Curran Read Free Book Online Page B

overlapping triangles—emblazoned on his chest, brushed aside her hair and placed the gun at the base of her skull. There was a hiss of compressed air, a dull thunk, and that was it. Kiara was chipped.  
    She was given a free t-shirt, told to wait two hours before trying to access Glaze, and sent home.  
    This place is absolutely nothing like that.  
    It’s small and grey with a single window high up in the wall peeking out on to a slate-grey sky. An old cell given over for the purposes of chipping people, I guess.  
    There’s a large chair in the middle of the room and a woman standing behind it. But she’s dressed in a policeman’s uniform rather than a WhiteInc shirt. And she’s not smiling.  
    ‘Take a seat, Petri. This won’t take long,’ Lee says. My hearing has finally come back.  
    I back away from the chair and into a corner of the cell, shaking my head. ‘You can’t,’ I say. ‘You can’t do this to me.’ I try to grip onto the walls with my fingers, but there’s nothing to hold on to but flaking grey paint.  
    ‘It’s an easy choice, Petri. A couple of weeks in a young offenders institute waiting for your chance to see a judge, only to be chipped anyway? Your mother is only trying to protect you.’  
    ‘She’s only trying to protect herself,’ I shout. ‘God forbid she had to deal with the drama of her daughter being in jail.’  
    Lee tilts his head and looks at me, his face filled with patronising concern. ‘Come on, Petri. It’s only five years, after which…’  
    ‘Only five years?’ I roar. ‘That’s practically a life sentence!’  
    He steps towards me and I push myself further into the wall. There’s no escape.  
    ‘You can’t…’ I keep saying, over and over.  
    But he can.  
    Lee takes hold of my wrist, gently, and pulls me towards the chair, where the woman is adjusting the equipment. He makes soothing noises, like someone trying to calm a spooked horse.  
    There’s an inevitability to this. Me, this room, that chair, and the woman in the rubber gloves with the chipping gun in her hand. I wanted nothing more than to be chipped, and now I’m about to be. Only instead of giving me everything I wanted, it’s about to take it all away.  
    Talk about being careful what you wish for. I laugh, and it comes out in a strangled croak.  
    Five years till I can have the blank removed. Only five years, they say, like it’s no big deal. I’ll be nearly 21 by the time I’m actually able to get on Glaze. And what will be the point then? The hope of getting hooked up was the only thing keeping me going. Now I’ll never belong. I might as well stay in this cell for ever.
    I stagger towards the chair and it appears to loom, growing too big to fit in such a small space. In my mind, it’s become an electric chair and I’m walking towards my execution.  
    I’m laughing, full out now, while tears pour down my cheeks. Lee and the executioner share a worried glance; they think I’m crazy. Unhinged. But what do they expect? For me to skip happily to my fate as they steal the most important years of my life?
    But I know it’s futile to resist. I’m powerless. I’m just a kid.  
    I drag myself up on the chair and slide into it, feeling weird about placing my trainers on the clean seat covering.  
    The woman with the gun walks around me and places a palm on my forehead. I feel the chalky softness of the rubber glove against my skin. She brushes the hair at the back of my neck away and I flinch at the heavy presence of metal pressed against the top of my spine.
    ‘Breathe in,’ the woman says.  
    I obey.  
    There’s a hiss of air and I pass out.

6

    ‘SIX MONTHS BAN! Oh, Ryan, what are you going to do?’
    ‘Oh, it’ll be OK. I guess I’ll be watching a lot of TV.’ He laughs.
    I look up from the book I’m pretending to be buried in and over to where Ryan and Amy, and Pippa and Karl are sitting in the common room. The four of them have become the