This is How We Change the Ending

by Vikki Wakefield

He falls into step beside me, two for one of mine. You’ve got to master the saunter, but Merrick always trots as if he’s warming up for a sprint.

  ‘Who’d you piss off today?’

  ‘Won’t know until I feel hot breath on my neck.’ He laughs and starts thumbing through his deck.

  Merrick collects the saddest Pokémon cards, the ones most people don’t even bother trading. His reasoning is this: if they’re so miserable they’re being chucked, then nobody’s collecting them, and one day they’ll be rare and sought after. Problem is, he thumbs through them all the time, so they’re not even mint.

  ‘What’d you get?’

  ‘Slowbro,’ he says. ‘Pacifist. Prefers not to fight. He’s got a Shellder attached to his tail but if it’s knocked off, Slowbro unevolves. The Shellder’s poison stops him from feeling pain but if it bites down, Slowbro gets all psychic on yo’ ass. Still, he’s pretty pathetic. Worth keeping around.’

  ‘Devolves,’ I say.

  ‘Whatever.’

  I kick the oval gate open and hold it. ‘Sounds like an unhealthy relationship. Shit, man, who makes this stuff up?’

  He grabs the gate. ‘Artists, Nathaniel. Visionaries. Humans with insanely creative minds, the likes of which the likes of you could never understand.’ He lets the gate go and it hits a kid behind us. ‘Sorry.’

  I snigger. ‘Bet none of them were born and bred in Bairstal.’

  He licks the back of the card and sticks it to my forehead.

  ‘Jesus, Merrick.’ I flick it away and it flutters to the ground. ‘Hepatitis B, coming right up.’

  He bends to retrieve the card and slides it back in the deck.

  We take the path through the long, narrow paddock that runs between the back of the school and the train line. In spring, you can hardly see the weeds for woolly bear caterpillars. In summer, it’s snake heaven. A few late locusts click and scatter as we pick our way through the dry grass.

  ‘Plague’s coming,’ I say. ‘And all you can talk about is pool and Pokémon.’

  Merrick gives me a serious stare. ‘You should pay attention,’ he says. ‘Slowbro is basically you.’

  Dec’s in a good mood. He must have won on the dogs or ponies. When I get to the flat he’s shirtless, Nance on his lap, Jake on the floor playing with his Lego.

  I don’t ever remember being allowed on his lap.

  Otis is jammed in the space between the arm of the couch and Dec’s rib tattoo, the one with our names being strangled by a snake and cut with a dagger. One day I’ll ask him for that story.

  ‘All right, Nate?’

  I sling my bag in the corner near the door. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘They fill your brain with more useless shit? When I was your age I’d already been working with my old man for two years.’

  ‘Doing what?’ I ask, before I can censor myself.

  Dec doesn’t work, unless you count betting as a vocation or growing a hydro crop as primary production. It’s his fault I can’t use my own bedroom.

  Dec’s eyes turn slitty.

  Nance crosses her legs and works on folding the hem of her dress into a concertina.

  ‘Nah, I mean what did your old man do?’ I smile to take the sting out. ‘Wasn’t he a boilermaker or something?’

  I really wouldn’t know. I have at least two grandparents somewhere, a grandfather on Dec’s side and a grandmother on Mum’s, but they’re like mythical beasts. Mum is still alive, somewhere, but I’ve stopped counting the days until she comes back to visit. Now I count in years. That’s why family is so important to Dec—he says anyone can hatch an egg but not all reptiles look after their young. He always says reptiles but it’s not worth correcting him.

  Dec doesn’t answer. He’s trying to figure out if I’m trying to be clever, or just continuing my long tradition of stupid. It’s better for me if I’m not being clever. A week ago, when I forgot again and called him Dad, he said every time I did that it felt like he’d given me a gift I didn’t bother to open.

  ‘I’ll make us something to eat,’ Nance says. She swings her legs onto the floor, but he puts both hands around her waist to hang on. ‘Dec!’ She slaps his forearm and pulls away.

  Otis slips sideways. He lands on his back, head in Dec’s lap, and he starts bawling.

  Jake springs to attention.

  Nance leans down to pick him up, but Dec says, ‘Leave him. Let him work it out,’ and she freezes.

  Jake does too, and it scares me that a three-year-old knows better.

  Otis thrashes about like a flipped turtle, his muscles tense, but useless; it’s like his brain sends messages but something gets in the way. Wah, wa-ah-ah-ah-ah. He sounds like a baby goat.

  I’m still standing by the door, watching Jake’s right hand—he lets go of the Lego car he’s holding and reaches for Otis, eyes on Dec, hand underneath the couch so Dec can’t see. His palm flattens; his fingers flutter.

  Otis’s eyes glaze. He goes still, then slowly, slowly, kicks one leg over and rolls his body onto the floor.

  ‘Good boy!’ Nance says.

  Jake gathers Otis under one arm and pulls him close.

  The size difference is extreme now: Jake looks at least a year older. They both have Dec’s chameleon eyes and Nance’s shiny brown hair, but Jake has strong toddler muscles and Otis is flabby and weak; Jake hardly ever stops talking and Otis mumbles back-to-front words; Jake can kick a footy for miles and Otis has trouble holding a spoon. It’s like the piece that Jake took away with him was a major connection between Otis’s motherboard and his battery pack.

  Dec has realised something has happened without his say-so. He holds us half-cocked with a grim smile until he decides we’ve had enough. He reaches for his guitar. ‘No worries,’ he says.

  Jake claps.

  Nance moves like someone pressed Play.

  Otis smiles and drools.

  My knees are knocking and I hate it.

  THREE

  On Thursday after school there’s no one at Youth but me, Merrick, Tash and Mim, one of the volunteers.

  Back in the nineties the building used to be a community hall. Outside, there’s a long, curved brick wall facing the main road with the word YOUTH painted in graffiti. It’s an ambigram: it reads the same right-side up and upside-down, but I’ve never stood on my head to confirm that. Macy always grumbles about how much it cost, saying she could have turned a blind eye and one of us delinquents could have done it better and for free, but instead the council commissioned a local artist.

  That makes it art, I think, not graffiti. Art has permission.

  The centre has double automatic doors with a glitchy sensor—from the inside, you have to pull off a dance routine to make them open. It has a kitchen and one gigantic rec room with a few old couches, beanbags, a big-screen TV, a pool table, two computers, a PlayStation, and a couple of bookcases with stacks of books, magazines and board games. At the back of the building there’s a room where Macy sleeps sometimes, and two toilets, plus a shower, all locked. You have to ask for the key to the toilets, and if you don’t come out within a reasonable time, you can bet one of the youth workers is coming in.

  I figure something bad must have happened for that rule to appear on The Chart.

  The Chart tells us what we can, can’t and must do.

  We can:

  • use whatever we like as long as somebody else isn’t using it

  • watch whatever we like as long as it’s rated G, M or MA15+

  • eat or drink whatever we like from the group pantry or fridge

  • say whatever we like unless someone asks us to stop

  • borrow whatever we like as long as it doesn’t leave the centre

  We can’t:

  • bring drugs, alcohol or weapons onto the premises

  • watch porn or anything rated R18+

  • invade others’ space or privacy

  • be violent, sexist, racist, homophobic or offensive

  • threaten or bully
<
br />   • deface, destroy or steal property

  • bring nuts, eat nuts or leave nuts lying around

  • take too long in the bathroom (otherwise somebody’s coming in)

  • shout with raised voices (this is a new rule)

  We must:

  • share

  • be respectful

  • show kindness despite difference

  • clean up after ourselves

  • smoke outside in the courtyard

  • and leave everything as we found it.

  There’s a three-strike policy. Strike one: a warning. Strike two: a suspension. Strike three: mandatory counselling and a possible permanent ban.

  Mim’s adding more National Geographic magazines to the pile on the bookshelf. I’ve never seen anybody read them but her. She has dark curly hair to her waist and she’s tiny. Fierce, though. She’s only here a few days a week. She stays in the background, talks fast and moves slowly, looks young but seems old, and she’s watchful in a way that makes you feel safe, whatever happens. When she finishes her shift, a big guy picks her up from the door so she doesn’t have to wait outside in the car park by herself.

  ‘More magazines?’ I say.

  Mim smiles. ‘I’ve read them all. They take up too much space at home.’

  ‘Have you been to any of those places?’

  ‘Europe. Egypt. Africa. France, for a year, when I wasn’t much older than you. Twenty-three now and it seems like a lifetime ago. I’m saving while I’m studying at uni—next stop, Antarctica.’

  ‘And you came here? Like, voluntarily?’

  ‘That’s what volunteers do.’

  ‘I mean you came back here, to Bairstal.’

  She shrugs. ‘Someone once told me you can fly all you want, but you need a place to land. This is my place. Do you want to travel, Nate?’

  I snort. ‘No point deluding myself. Put that on The Chart, after no shouting with raised voices. “No deluding yourself.” Anyway, isn’t shouting and raising your voice the same thing?’ ‘I’d have to think about that.’ She hands me a magazine. ‘This is a good one. I see you writing all the time, but do you read?’

  ‘Not really,’ I say.

  ‘Coughbullshit,’ says Merrick. ‘He reads everything. He stockpiles facts so he can shoot you down with them.’

  ‘I mean, not books. News, mostly. Articles and stuff.’

  ‘On the inside, he’s an angry young man,’ Merrick says.

  ‘Ignore him. On the outside, he’s a dickhead.’

  ‘It’s not my fault. I was born with foetal alcohol syndrome.’ He looks at Mim and waits for sympathy.

  ‘You can’t catch that from pickled sperm. It has to pass through the placenta,’ I say. ‘And you’d probably have brain damage—oh, wait.’

  Mim laughs and Merrick yells, ‘What would you know? You don’t read!’

  ‘No shouting,’ I remind him.

  Mim glances at The Chart. ‘I’m pretty sure there’s a distinction between a shout and a raised voice. And maybe your delusions are dreams in disguise.’

  I snort. ‘Pretty sure they’re just delusions.’

  ‘Told you. Angry,’ Merrick says, walking away.

  Mim sighs. ‘There’s always a way out, even when you feel like you’re walking around blindfolded. Just don’t do what I did and think you have to close the door behind you.’ The phone in the kitchen rings. ‘I’ve got to get that.’

  I tuck a magazine under my arm, find a comfy spot on the couch and start reading an article. My eyes move over the words, but I can feel Tash’s glare.

  She comes here a lot. I don’t even know if she goes to school—not ours, anyway. She has short black hair, cut like a boy’s, and she wears op-shop clothing. No judgement, it’s just that she goes out of her way to wear stuff that hurts your eyes: today, blue-and-yellow football socks with a long pink skirt. One time it was a men’s suit jacket over a shiny dress that made her look like she went to a ball half-naked and her old man tried to cover her up. She’s got dark eyes that show white all around her irises, so she always looks ready to jump out of her skin. Never says much—just burrows deep in a beanbag and watches TV, or plugs in her earphones and gives everyone her fuck-the-fuck-off face. She always makes sure her beanbag is backed up against the wall.

  Merrick, for once, hasn’t bothered trying to get Tash to talk. One too many burning stares from her, I guess, and manlier men than him have tried. Now he’s got his cards spread out over the pool table in rows, like he’s playing Solitaire. Every now and then he moves one to a different space and grunts.

  ‘Merrick.’

  ‘What.’

  ‘Give me your phone. I need Spotify.’

  I don’t have Spotify. Too many choices, too much disposable shit. My music library is curated: only the top 100 songs by my top 100 artists of all time, at all times. There’s something pure about having to weigh up whether a new track deserves to replace an old one—you have to test its staying power for at least three months. I’ve lost hours debating between a ten-minute anthem and a two-minute guitar solo.

  But right now we need something upbeat, and my stuff is the opposite.

  ‘Merrick.’

  He gives me the finger.

  Someone donated a jukebox a month ago. It’s a Wurlitzer, really old, from the sixties or something, with faded lights and chipped buttons. It sits in a corner where the coffee machine used to be before someone didn’t leave it where they found it. Macy has a coin stuck to a piece of Blu-Tack near the slot. The coin spits out after you choose a song and we’re supposed to put it back after. Hardly anybody plays it, though—there’s nothing on the playlist after about 1965, and the records jump and scratch.

  I turn on the switch at the wall. The jukebox lights up. I push the coin into the slot, run my finger past the Elvises—at least a dozen of them—and press the button for Dion. ‘Runaround Sue’ starts.

  Hey, hey, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh—

  Merrick says, ‘Fuck’s sake, Nate, turn it down.’

  Mim looks up from drying dishes and smiles. She tosses her head, slings the tea towel around her neck, throws her hands out wide, and starts doing the twist from side to side.

  Yeah, I should have known it from the very start

  This girl will leave me with a broken heart—

  Merrick nods his head.

  I’m watching Tash.

  She’s got her headphones in, eyes down. She’s focusing hard on the screen, squished down so deep in the beanbag half her body is swallowed up, but her index finger has curled, hovering over the power-off button. She presses it. Her eyes flick to Mim. One corner of her mouth pinches, leaving a crease in her left cheek—it could be the beginning of a smile, or she might be preparing to deploy her fuck-off face. The toe of her left foot is tapping in perfect time.

  At around six, a few more kids filter in, raiding the fridge and taking over the PlayStation and the computers—always the first choices.

  Merrick brightens up and takes hold of a cue, waiting for a challenger.

  Tash makes herself some toast and goes back to her corner.

  Mim has her bag packed and waiting by the door, but Macy calls to say she’ll be running late again. Mim puts her bag back inside her locker in the kitchen.

  I go back to reading the NationalGeographic article. It’s about the coy-wolf, a canine hybrid, the result of cross-breeding between dogs, coyotes and grey wolves. The coy-wolf should have been a genetic disaster, but instead resulted in a superior animal: bigger than a coyote, wilier than a wolf, and the dog-like part of its brain (roughly ten per cent) made it unafraid. So these wild creatures are roaming the suburban streets of North America in ever-increasing numbers. Assimilating. Probably wouldn’t be long before people came home to find a coy-wolf reclining on the couch, hogging the PlayStation.

  I laugh.

  Tash looks up and stares at me.

  I laughed because I had a thought: I’m a cross-breed, a genetic disaster. On the inside
, I’m an outsider. I have to assimilate. But what if I’m like the coy-wolf? If only I could tap into the ten per cent part of my brain that wasn’t afraid—shit, what if I have potential?

  I open my notebook and write the thought down under the title: Mongrels make good dogs.

  Mim looks across at me reading her magazine. She winks.

  I turn the page.

  Mim comes out of the kitchen.

  Two younger boys leave.

  Merrick chalks his favourite cue and places it back behind the bookcase so nobody else can jinx it.

  Tash takes her plate to the sink.

  I turn another page.

  You hear sounds sometimes. They’re common, so your brain thinks they’re normal. Shouts, breaking glass—nothing to worry about, because whatever is happening is happening outside, or across the street, or over the back fence, so it can’t touch you. And you can’t change anything anyway. By the time you realise that, not only is it going to touch you, it’s going to leave a crack in everything, it’s too late.

  It sounds as if the glass is breaking somewhere miles from here. When the doors burst open, nobody reacts. Not straightaway.

  I don’t recognise the guy. He’s shirtless, bare feet and blue jeans, longish hair and red eyes, like he has a high fever. There’s nothing in his hands—no weapon, no reason to think he will hurt anyone. He runs to the middle of the room and stops, as if he’s trapped and he’s looking for a way out.

  Mim says, ‘You need to leave, right now,’ and steps towards him. ‘Leave.’ She points at the door.

  The guy turns slowly in her direction.

  She stands her ground. ‘These are kids. This is not the place for you. We can find you some help somewhere else. Let me call somebody for—’

  The man launches, chops at her neck with a flat hand, and she goes down. Her head hits the floor and she’s limp.

  But he doesn’t stop. He straddles her and punches her, twice, so hard her cheek caves in and the bridge of her nose splits open. He spreads his fingers and stares at the blood on his knuckles, gets up, runs around the room grabbing things and smashing them onto the floor.

  He leaves as suddenly as he arrived. The doors don’t even glitch.

  ‘Call an ambulance!’ Tash screams, and for some reason I can only think that her voice is husky and it doesn’t match her skirt.