The Near & Far Series

by Serena Clarke

  She shook her head clear of that never-going-to-happen scenario, threw herself in and out of the shower, flung on a cotton sundress, and headed down, her suitcase banging behind her on the stairs. She breathlessly explained to Marian that she was late, and they sorted the bill in record time.

  “No man?” she asked, looking surprised and disappointed. When Cady just shook her head firmly, she knew to say nothing more. “Okay. Do you want to leave your suitcase here?”

  She thought for a second. “No, I’ll take it, thanks though. I think we’ll probably leave after the flash mob today. But we’ll see you when we come back through.”

  If she had any say in it, they’d definitely be going today. Shelby would have to be dragged kicking and screaming, no doubt, but she wasn’t shying away from conflict today. Tired and annoyed, without any posh accent, and with a don’t-mess-with-me attitude—her sister would just have to suck it up.

  She headed for the bus. They’d arranged to meet there, so Shelby might still be waiting. She’d drop her bag, and they could head for the flash mob together. There were ten minutes before it started, so she’d be late, but not by much.

  But when she got there, the door was closed. She fished around in her bag for the door opener Reid had given her, and clunked her suitcase up the stairs. There was no one around. She rolled her eyes—of course Shelby wouldn’t have waited for her.

  She slid the case under the stairs in the corner of the lounge, and turned to go. Then she hesitated. Nobody was here. She looked up, straining her ears for any noise from above. Nothing.

  Well. She could just have a little look. Only to make sure there was nothing untoward. For Shelby’s sake, that was all.

  She went back and pushed the button to close the bus door, then turned and quickly went up the stairs before she could second-guess herself. At the top she paused, listening for any sound from behind Kyle’s closed door. Then she opened it and went in.

  It was surprisingly neat. There were piles of mess shoved into a few corners, in a gesture of tidiness, and there were clothes scattered around, but it was a huge improvement on the last time she’d been up here. Shelby’s suitcase was on the bed, along with her favorite silk nightie. Unless she started rifling in draws and closets (a step too far even in her curious mind), there was nothing alarming to be seen.

  Just one more thing. She went toward the en suite bathroom, stepping on something by the bed. She lifted her foot, and had to smile when she saw a torn-open condom wrapper. That was good. Then, with guilty nerves rising further, she slid the bathroom door open.

  Oh, hell. Not so good. On the cabinet lay a lighter, and a glass pipe, its spherical end milky white on the inside and darkened with heat on the outside. An empty plastic bag lay on the floor next to the shower door. It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together. Even a tragic old spinster who’d been living under a cloak of martyrdom would know what that was all about.

  She turned and left the room, her mind racing. Damn. Kyle and the weasels, she could see that. But Shelby? Did she have any idea? Down the stairs, out of the bus, and along the street, she turned it over and over in her head. Her sister loved to shock, and was proud of her wild persona. But for her, this was another level. Well, as far as Cady knew, it was. Then again, maybe she didn’t know everything she thought she did.

  Twenty-Nine

  She headed for the flash mob, clutching her bag against her as she half-walked, half-ran. Approaching the corner, she could hear the sweet notes of Vivaldi swelling above the noise of the crowd, just as she expected. What she hadn’t expected was the harsh pitch of the noise: a rough, discordant hubbub, instead of a happy hum of voices, or whatever organized singing or chanting the flash mob might have involved. Jagged shouts and yells stabbed through the swoop and flow of the classical music. Without seeing a thing, she knew something had gone very wrong.

  She came around the corner, only just stopping before she barreled into chaos. Instead of a coordinated flash mob expressing Zen-like appreciation of nature’s wonders, there was complete disorder. The white t-shirted flash mob participants were matched in number by stridently shouting people dressed in black. Some of them were holding up long poles topped with a pitch-black cut-out of a bird, or a butterfly, or a bee, small creatures of the earth made dark and foreboding. They bobbed and turned above the heads of the crowd, seeming to reproach them.

  Placards were being held up too. She read the messages on the nearest ones, trying to make sense of what was happening. What price our purity? said one. Others read Eons in the making, gone in a flash, and TierraChem = TerrorChem. With a shock, she remembered that TierraChem was the name of one of the world’s biggest agricultural chemical companies—enemy number one in the eyes of staunch environmentalists and eco-activists. But what did that company, and the protestors, have to do with Flashpoint?

  Then the music stopped abruptly, and a voice came over the loudspeakers.

  “People, open your eyes! This event is nothing more than blatant hypocrisy. It’s PR. It’s manipulation masquerading as environmentalism. TierraChem are responsible for doing mind-boggling damage to our precious ecosystems, and yet you’re here celebrating nature, sponsored by them. People, think harder! Paying lip service to our environment is not enough!”

  A cheer went up, as Cady’s heart sank. Kyle had organized sponsorship from an agrichemical company? Before Rownville, he’d admitted he needed funds to keep Flashpoint on the road—but was he desperate enough to take this kind of ‘dirty’ money? Surely, after their successful ‘Home’ flash mob, there would have been some other option for sponsorship. She looked around at the growing turmoil. What was he thinking? Especially here, in possibly the most avidly eco-aware state in the country. Having seen the trees at Santa Almendra, she knew how strongly some people felt about environmental issues.

  She dived into the crowd, making her way to where the speakers were, assuming Kyle would be front and center. As she struggled through, she was jostled and bumped by the growing mob, and she started to feel afraid of what might happen next. Although they were a flash ‘mob’ movement, she’d had no idea how quickly a real mob could turn, or what that would look like. Now she was finding out.

  There was no sign of Kyle. He’d assured the team that everything was under control. But now, with his judgment gone—and maybe she knew why—he obviously couldn’t organize his way out of a paper bag.

  Then she spotted Shelby in the mass of people. “Shelby!” she yelled. “Shel!”

  Her sister turned at the sound of her name. “Where have you been?” she asked, as though the biggest issue was Cady’s lateness, not the anarchy erupting around them.

  Cady ignored the question. “What’s going on? Where’s Kyle? Where’s everyone?”

  Shelby shook her head. “He was here a minute ago, but now I don’t know. The others must be here somewhere.” She staggered a little as someone knocked her from behind. “Alison and Jennifer were looking after the balloons.”

  As if on cue, a flock of the green balloons floated past above them. They watched them sail away into the blue, up into the peaceful sky that contrasted so sharply with the turmoil below.

  Shelby frowned. “Maybe not any more.”

  “Apparently not,” Cady said. Well, now that she thought about it, helium balloons weren’t environmentally friendly anyway.

  Turning back to the street, they could suddenly see Gavin further along, talking to the people immediately around him, trying to settle them down. It wasn’t working. They struggled over, ducking through protestors.

  “Did you know about this?” Cady asked him, having to yell to make herself heard.

  He shook his head, looking disgusted. “Nope. None of us knew who the sponsor was. He told us it was all under control.” The irony of his words wasn’t lost on any of them, as the increasingly out-of-control crowd grew around them.

  “You girls get out of this,” he added. “Just keep yourselves safe.”

  Cady nod
ded and grabbed Shelby, moving them away from the road, up onto the stairs in front of an office building. Holy hell. She’d been a bit late, but the event had only started about fifteen minutes ago. It was scary how fast something could go from warm fuzzies to aggressive rebellion.

  “This is insane,” she said to Shelby, waving her arm at the growing melee. “This isn’t what it should be about. Shel…we should leave.” The image of the paraphernalia in Kyle’s bathroom was still vivid in her head.

  Shelby looked sharply at her. “Leave the bus?”

  “Yes. I think we should go. Leave.” She put aside thoughts of Reid. Oh, the flirting was too good, and he was so damn irresistible. And after that phone call, she’d thought maybe…maybe. Well, whatever she’d thought then, after last night, she was done. “We should go back to our holiday. There’s so much to do. And we don’t need this BS.”

  Shelby snorted, instantly inflamed by the suggestion. “BS? Tell the truth. You’re just sulking because your crush didn’t work out, and mine did. That was obviously never going to happen.”

  “It’s not about that!”

  Despite her denial, that one stung. Sisters knew exactly where to stick the pin. Cady had more to say, but on the other side of the road, some of the rioters had surrounded a car and were starting to rock it from side to side. She grabbed Shelby’s arm and pulled her down the steps and further along the street, where they stopped outside a second-hand book store. A salesperson stepped out to see what was going on, then quickly went back in, closing the door firmly behind her and sliding the lock across.

  “I’m not leaving,” Shelby said.

  “Shel, it’s not a good idea to stay any more. Everything’s changed so much, in such a short time.” It killed her to know that her heart’s project had gone so dramatically off course, but this wasn’t what they signed up for. The little team was splintering—the regulars being kept in the dark, Reid all matey with the creepy weasel gang, and Kyle off on some trip that Cady didn’t want to be part of. And that she didn’t want her sister to be part of.

  How had it all turned around so quickly? Flashpoint was becoming something else now, something altogether darker. For her, it was over, and she wanted them both safely out. And there was something else to think about—their visas. They couldn’t afford to get caught up in anything dodgy. Being deported definitely wasn’t one of the things on Cady’s bucket list. She’d have to confront Shelby with her bathroom discovery. If she didn’t know about it, she should, and if she did know…she needed a major, kick-in-the-pants wake-up call.

  “Kyle’s not good for you,” she added. “You know what he’s into, right? The drugs?”

  “Yeah, I know now. But so what?” Shelby looked at her, petulant. “You’re not my mother. Don’t tell me what to do, like you know better. Like you always do.”

  Cady took a step back. “I don’t always! But it’s not about that anyway. It’s about you being safe, and it’s about this.” She waved her arm at the chaos that was unfolding around them. The flash mob turned real mob was attracting overexcited opportunists. Taking the chance to join in the intoxicatingly bad fun, some kids were tagging a building with the jerky text of graffiti artists the world over. Someone smashed a beer bottle on the road, and a cheer went up. “This isn’t what we came for.”

  But Shelby wasn’t listening. “You were always their favorite. The smart one, the neat one, the responsible one…so freaking good.” She spat the word out. “And the pretty one.”

  “The pretty one?” What the hell? She looked at her sister, years of competition and resentment now doing battle on her face. Her gorgeous face. “But you’re the pretty one.”

  “No, I’m the one who works harder at it. Oh my God, I hate how this fucking fake tan smells.” She jerked out her artificially brown arm, rigid with anger. “You just are prettier, and you don’t even have to try.”

  This was getting mental. “Shel, what are you even talking about? It’s not about trying—I have no clue what I’m doing most of the time!” Somehow, despite starting out with a very similar canvas, she just couldn’t achieve the same end result as Shelby. She couldn’t count the times she’d stood in front of the mirror despairing over her plain self, while her sister colored and tweaked and polished until she was magazine-cover glossy. “And anyway, it’s not true. Everyone knows you’re the pretty one.”

  Shelby was about to reply when a teenager slammed into her from behind, almost knocking her off her feet. Cady steadied her and pulled her into the bookstore doorway, out of the way of the growing melee. The police would probably be here shortly.

  “This is crazy—we shouldn’t be having this conversation here.”

  “Right. Responsible as ever,” Shelby said, stepping pointedly back out into the street, belligerent, daring Cady to bite. “Even when you broke free, you did it so…uptight. Plan this, schedule that, organize the other thing. Mum’s gone, and you don’t even seem to care. Just live, why don’t you?”

  Only a sister could be so ruthlessly dead-on. Those few words summed up everything Cady most wanted to change about herself. What she most disliked, what she most wanted to be different. But there was no way she’d show Shelby now what a direct hit it was.

  “Whatever,” she replied, borrowing from Shelby’s who-gives-a-shit phrasebook, refusing to play the game. “Just go then.”

  But as Shelby started to do exactly that, something else occurred to Cady. “Wait,” she called after her. “When did you decide I was the smart one? You’re just as smart.”

  Shelby turned back and shook her head. “Not smart like you.” She shrugged: who cares? “There was no point in trying to compete with that.”

  “Is that why you just gave up?” Cady remembered when it happened—when Shelby stopped caring about school, the approval of the grown-ups, the way they measured success. It was about the same time she discovered the power of her looks and the strength of her personality. “Why did we have to compete, anyway?”

  Shelby ignored the question. “Look, you win, okay? You were their best daughter. Now Holt likes you better. I can live with that.” Her face showed it was a lie, but she was toughing it out.

  Cady shook her head. “But that’s not true either! Holt doesn’t even know us. And Mum and Dad…just because I was there, it didn’t make me the favorite. You know how much they wanted you around.”

  “I’m not going to feel guilty about that! And I’m not going to be where you think I should be now, either.” Her voice rose higher as she spoke, and her cheeks reddened. “You leave if you want to. You were the star of the bus—that’s fine. Kyle thinks you’re smart, and he used your ideas. But he likes me. He said he loves me.”

  Cady’s head was spinning with everything this argument was stirring up. And Kyle’s sudden declaration of love rang major alarm bells. “Shel, stop, please. You need to—”

  “No! There are other things you don’t know. I can’t even…” She pressed her hands to her face, closing her eyes for a moment.

  “What other things? What?”

  Shelby opened her eyes, and Cady could see that they were full of anguish. “I had the test, okay? For Wodarski-bloody-Ebner.”

  “But we agreed we wouldn’t get tested!” Cady could feel panic pushing up from her guts at the prospect of facing that reality.

  “I know, but that was just stupid.”

  Cady flinched at the words, but she knew it was true. Their avoidance strategy couldn’t have lasted anyway—they’d both have to front up to it eventually. Her heart was racing. As sisters, whatever test result Shelby had got was quite likely to be hers, too.

  “I had to know,” Shelby continued. “I had to. And now I know.” Her voice broke on the last word, making it obvious what the test result had been.

  “Oh, shit. Oh, Shel, no.” They looked at each other, the implications crowding in. “How long have you known?”

  Shelby sucked in a long breath and looked up at the sky, battling the emotion. “About three ye
ars.”

  “Three years! Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Did you really want to know? While you were in the middle of looking after Mum?”

  They both knew the answer to that. Cady searched for something positive to say. “You know, everyone’s different. This doesn’t mean you’ll have the same outcome as her.” She was telling herself, as much as Shelby.

  “It does. You know it does. And until then, I’m going to live. Really live.”

  Cady thought of Kyle, the bus, the drugs, their visas, and pointed to the chaos on the road. “We can live, but we don’t have to do it mixed up with all this. Come on, let’s hit the road.”

  But Shelby wasn’t having it. “Cady, you’re such a fucking nana! I know what lies ahead for me. I’ve seen it. And you want me to play things safe? Be oh-so-good and careful?” She took a step back into the street. “Jesus, just let me have this one thing!” She spun around, her hair flying, and plunged into the crowd.

  Cady’s first instinct was to follow, but she held herself back. She needed a moment to absorb the impact of the shock. And anyway, it would be pointless trying to reason with Shelby now. Her funny, brash, glittery-confident sister had just let her cover slip. Or not so much let it slip, as ripped it off and thrown it on the ground. What Cady often envied—the determined wildness, the devil-may-care attitude, the bold personality—had obviously started as Shelby’s way to paper over her insecurities. But they continued as a one-finger salute to the illness she could see waiting just over the horizon.

  And maybe that illness was waiting for her, too. Her chest was a heavy wodge of anxiety, for what Shelby was facing, and for herself. More than Shelby, she had first-hand knowledge of the reality of Wodarski-Ebner, the slow, inexorable shutdown of a body turning on itself. She felt sick as this new truth settled around her, fogging her view of the future with dark uncertainty.