Flawed

Most people who don’t know our personalities can’t distinguish between me and Juniper. With a black dad and a white mum, we have both inherited Dad’s skin. We also both have Dad’s brown eyes, his nose and his hair colouring. We have Mum’s cheekbones, her long limbs. She tried to get us into modelling when we were younger, and Juniper and I did a few shoots together, but neither of us could stay at it. Me because posing for a camera failed to intellectually stimulate me, Juniper because she was even more awkward and clumsy under people’s gazes.

When it comes to how we act, how we dress and everything else about us, though, we couldn’t be further apart.

I put on a cream linen dress and baby-pink cashmere cardigan, with gold gladiator sandals that spiral up my legs. It’s hot outside, and I always wear pastel colours. Mum likes to buy pastels for all the family. She thinks that we look more like a unit when we’re dressed that way. I know of some families who hire stylists to help co-ordinate not just the clothes but their overall look as a family. None of us wants to look out of place or like we don’t belong, though Juniper often likes to do her own thing, wearing something that’s not a part of our family colour palette. We let her do just that – her loss, though Mum worries that it makes us look fragmented. I think the only person who looks fragmented is Juniper.

As usual, I’m downstairs before my sister. Ewan is at the table eating breakfast. He’s wearing cream linen trousers and a baby- pink T-shirt, and I feel happy we match. A good start to the day.

Mum is staring at the TV, not moving.

“Look what I got last night,” I sing.

No one looks.

“Yoo-hoo.” I circle my ankle in the air, graceful like a ballerina.

Ewan finally looks at me, then down at my ankle, which I’m dangling near his face.

“A bracelet,” he says, bored.

“No. A bracelet is an ornamental band for the wrist, Ewan. This is an anklet.”

“Whatever, Thesaurus.” He rolls his eyes and continues watching TV.

“Art gave it to me,” I sing loudly, floating by Mum to get milk for my cereal from the fridge.

“Wonderful, sweetheart,” she says robotically, as though she hasn’t heard at all.

I stop and stare at her. She is completely engrossed in the TV. I finally pay attention and see it’s News 24, and Pia Wang is reporting live from Highland Castle. Pia Wang is the correspondent for the Guild. She covers every case in extreme detail, providing a profile of the Flawed, during the trial and after. It’s never a favourable profile, either. She does a good job of burying whomever she wants, though to her credit, she’s covering Flawed cases, people who have made bad decisions, so she’s not exactly trying to glamourise them.

I look out the window. Dad’s car is gone. He must have been alerted to the story and had to take off early. That happens a lot.

“This case has garnered more attention than any other,” Pia says, her face perfect with peach-blush cheeks. She is wearing peach, and she looks like you could eat her, a perfect china doll. Glossy black hair, a fringe framing her innocent-looking, petite face. So perfect. “Even gaining attention around the rest of the world, which is reflected here in the turnout outside the Guild court in Highland Castle, with record numbers of people turning out to support their football hero Jimmy Child, Humming City’s best striker, who has led us to victory for so many years. And today he is victorious again, as he left the court only moments ago having been deemed by Judge Crevan and his associates not to be Flawed. I repeat, breaking news to those who have just joined us: Jimmy Child is not Flawed.”

I gasp.

“What?” I say. “Has that ever happened before?”

Mum finally breaks her stare from the TV. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I … maybe once,” she says vaguely.

“Not a surprising result when a Crevan owns a share in the football team,” Juniper says suddenly from behind us. I turn to her.

Mum’s face looks pained. “Juniper …” she says simply.

“Damon Crevan. Owns a fifty-five per cent stake in Humming City, but I suppose everyone will tell me that’s just coincidence. If you ask me, it was his wife they put on trial,” Juniper says. “And that dirty man got away with it.”

Nobody disagrees. Jimmy Child’s glamorous wife has been on the front page of every newspaper for the past few weeks as her lifestyle was thrashed out for all to see. Every aspect of her, every inch of her body, was fodder for gossip sites and even news sites.

“Go to school,” Mum says in a warning tone. “Any more talk like that and they’ll come for you, missy.” She clips Juniper’s nose playfully.

She was almost right.

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When I step outside, I see Colleen standing at her family’s car. The front door of her house is open, and she looks like she’s waiting. I guess she won’t be going to school today, probably heading to the courthouse to her mum’s trial. My heart beats wildly as I try to figure out what to do. If I say hello, I might get in trouble. Anybody could see me speaking to her from their home, and I might be reported. What if Bosco sees me from one of the windows of his monstrous mansion, or as he leaves for work? Saying hi may be seen as disloyalty towards the Guild, as support for her and her mum. Would that be seen as aiding and assisting a Flawed? I don’t want to go to prison. But if I ignore her, it will be rude. It is Colleen’s mother who’s Flawed, not her. She looks over at me and I can’t do it. I look away quickly.

Behind me I hear Juniper say, “Good luck today,” to Colleen. It annoys me how easily she does it and then puts on her headphones and ignores everyone.

Art is already at the bus stop waiting for me, as usual, looking delicious, as usual. I leap on him as soon as I get to him.

“Bird.”

“Mouse.”

He kisses me, but I pull away quickly, excited to discuss the news.

“Did you hear about Jimmy Child?”

I expect Art to be elated. Jimmy Child is his hero, and up until a year ago he had his posters plastered all over his walls. Most boys did. Throughout the trial, Art had the opportunity to meet him, though a quick meet and greet in a holding cell before court wasn’t what he’d been dreaming of throughout his boyhood, and he hadn’t wanted to discuss it much.

“Yeah,” he says. “Dad left at the crack of dawn this morning. He wanted to push the verdict through first thing, in time for the morning news.”

I think about how I should have said hello to Colleen; I should have known Bosco wasn’t home to have seen me, he was at court early, and what harm would it have done anyway to simply say hello? I’m angry with myself.

“I can smell your brain burning. You okay?” He sticks his knuckle into my frown and screws it around.

I laugh. “Yeah, I was just thinking. I didn’t know they had secret Naming Days. I thought it was always public. That’s so sneaky.”

“Not as sneaky as you and me,” Art says, fingers creeping up my top.

I laugh and stop his hand from travelling, something suddenly on my mind. I look over at Juniper, who is listening to her music so loudly I can hear every word from here.

I lower my voice. “Do you think Jimmy Child’s wife was put on trial?”

“Serena Child?” he asks, surprised.

“Yeah. When you think about it –” because I have been thinking about it, ever since Juniper said it, and on the walk to the bus stop with my new wobbly legs that haven’t been working since I stood up this morning – “every day it wasn’t about him or about what he’d done, but about how she was so annoying and so fake and such a woman, how could he not cheat?”

Art laughs. “I don’t think that’s exactly what Pia said.” He smiles at me fondly. “‘Reporting live,’” he says, imitating Pia. “‘Isn’t Serena Child such a woman? How could he not cheat?’”

I laugh, realising how stupid it sounds, then turn serious, wanting to be understood. “No, but the way they talked about her looks. The surgery. The clothes. Her past … her cellulite. She’d kissed a girl – so what? Her tan being too orange, her eating disorder when she was fifteen. She went to school with someone who ended up being a bank robber. She never cooked a meal for her husband. He had to keep going to that diner. We learned everything about her. Like she was the one who was Flawed. Not him.”

Art laughs again, enjoying the ridiculousness of what I’m saying, or perhaps the fact that it’s so surprisingly out of character for me to say it at all. “And why would they put her on trial?”

“So he gets away with not being Flawed. People say she wasn’t a good wife, so how could he not have cheated? And the star player is still the star.”

His smile instantly fades, and he looks at me like he doesn’t know me. “Celestine, be careful.”