Flawed. Cecelia Ahern

with the place that he isn’t new here, unlike me – as I was being led in, I frantically looked around to examine my new surroundings. His T-shirt is covered in white powder, and so is his hair. There are splashes of it on Tina and the male guard, too, which confuses me. The boy is tall, broad. He has a bold, stubborn face, a guilty look. He’s young like me, but his face looks older.

      The fact that he is young makes me sit up. I want him to see me. I want to share a look, a glance, something to comfort him, and to comfort me. The guards aren’t as polite and gentle with him as they were with me, and this, selfishly, gives me hope that this has all just been a great big misunderstanding and I’ll be able to walk out of here as normal. I watch him, his mean, tough, bold face, and will him to look at me. I wonder what he has done. It can’t be a criminal act or he wouldn’t be here, but it must have been close. Whatever he has been accused of doing, I have no doubt that he did it.

      He looks up at me once he steps into his cell and sees me through the transparent wall we share. My heart flips. Contact with somebody, for the first time in hours. But as quickly as he sees me, he looks away again and strides with his long, lean legs and sits with his back flat against the transparent divide, so that all I can see are his back muscles, rippling through his soiled T-shirt.

      Insulted, scared and suddenly feeling even more alone, I sense the tears start again. They comfort me; they make me feel human and remind me that I am human, even in here, in this box within a series of boxes.

      The guards lock his door and leave. They disappear out the main door and I’m alone again, but this time with a boy who won’t look at me.

      The main door opens, and I see Mum, her face worried and frantic, and my dad, stern, wide jaw working overtime to contain himself. As soon as Mum sets her eyes on me, she becomes composed again, like she’s taking a walk in the park and enjoying her surroundings, so I know that it must be bad. When Dad sees me, his face collapses. He’s never been one to hide his feelings. Tina unlocks my cell door and as they enter I rush to hug them both.

      “Oh, Celestine,” she says, voice laden with grief, as she squeezes me tightly. “What on earth possessed you?”

      “Summer,” Dad says harshly, to which she reacts as if she has been slapped.

      I feel stung, too. The first real contact I’ve had since this happened and I was hoping for defence, for back-up, not for an attack, not for my own mother to agree with them and point the finger at me. I knew that I was in trouble, but now it is really setting in.

      “Sorry,” she says gently. “I didn’t mean to, but it is just so out of character for you. Juniper told us what happened.”

      “It didn’t make any sense,” I say. “The whole thing defied logic.”

      Dad smiles sadly.

      “The man was coughing. Wheezing. He was about to pass out, probably die, and the fat woman and the broken-leg woman just kept on ignoring him! They were in his seat!” I’m talking quickly, leaning forward, in their faces, trying to make them understand. I’m almost pleading with them to see my side of the story, telling them how disgusting and unfair the entire thing was. I get up and pace. I start the story from the beginning, elaborating, maybe exaggerating, maybe the fat woman was fatter, maybe the coughs were more life-threatening. I try to get them to see what I saw, to say that they understand, that if they’d been in my shoes, they would have done the same. To tell me I am not Flawed.

      Dad is watching with tears in his eyes. He is struggling with all this. It is Mum who jumps up suddenly and grabs me by the shoulders. Surprised by her grip, I look around and notice that the guy in the cell beside me is no longer sitting with his back to me but is instead on his bed, where he can see us. I wonder if he has in some way understood what I said, if he read my lips, but Mum grips me tighter and turns my focus back to her.

      “Listen up.” Her voice is a low, urgent whisper. “We don’t have time. Judge Crevan is coming to see you in a few minutes, and you have to use every charm you’ve got. Forget everything we taught you. Right now, forget about right and wrong. This is for your life, Celestine.”

      I have never seen or heard Mum like this, and she’s scaring me. “Mum, it’s just Bosco; he’ll under—”

      “You have to tell him you were wrong,” she says urgently. “You have to tell him you know you made a mistake. Do you understand?”

      I look from her to Dad in shock. Dad is covering his face with his hands.

      “Dad?”

      “Cutter, tell her,” Mum says quickly.

      He slowly lowers his hands and looks so sad, so broken. What have I done? I crumple into Mum’s arms. She moves me to a chair at the table.

      “But if I tell Bosco I was wrong, it will mean admitting I’m Flawed.”

      Dad finally speaks. “If he finds out that you feel you were right to do what you did, then he will brand you Flawed.”

      “Don’t lie about what you did, but tell him you made a mistake. Trust me,” Mum whispers, afraid of being overheard.

      “But … the old man.”

      “Forget the old man,” she says sternly, so coldly, so devoid of all the love that I know her to have, that I don’t recognise her, and that means I no longer recognise the world. They are my roots, my foundations, and they sit before me now uprooted and saying things I never thought they’d say. “You will not allow a Flawed to ruin your life,” she says, and her voice cracks.

      We sit in silence as Mum tries to compose herself, to put the mask back on. Dad rubs her back smoothly, rhythmically, and I sit there, stunned. My thoughts are barely thoughts at all as they hop unfinished from one to the other over what they have just told me.

      They want me to lie. They want me to say that what I did was wrong. But to even tell a lie is to be Flawed. To gain my freedom, I must for the first time become Flawed. It doesn’t make sense. It is illogical.

      The door opens, and Mum and Dad bristle. Judge Crevan is coming.

      

      I notice the boy in the cell sit up, too. I see the flash of red before I see him. Judge Crevan is like a winged man with his floating blood-red cloak. I see his sparkling blue eyes and his blonde hair, and I think of Art and I feel at home. He smiles at me through the glass, his eyes crinkling at the sides as they always do, and inside I relax. I feel safe.

      “Celestine,” he says, as soon as Tina lets him into the cell. He flashes his perfect white teeth and spreads his arms, and as he does, he looks like he’s lifting his wings, about to take off. I run straight into them, and he closes his arms, the red robe wrapped around me. I feel protected. In his cocoon. It will be all right. Bosco will take care of me. He won’t let this go any further.

      As he hugs me, my cheek is pushed up against the rough crest on his chest. I am face-to-face with the Guild’s crest and motto, “Purveyors of Perfection”.

      He kisses the top of my head and releases me.

      “Right, let’s sit. We have a lot to discuss, Celestine.” He fixes me with one of his infamous stern gazes, and just as I always felt before, it looks comical, cartoonish. This is not the man I’m used to seeing in his house.

      I hide the nervous smile that is twitching at my lips. Laughing now would not be good.

      “Things are going to be very difficult for you over the next few days, but we’ll get you through them, okay?”

      He glances at Dad, who suddenly looks completely exhausted, and I think for the first time what he’s had to tell people at work. How can he work at a news station when his own daughter is making the headlines?