This is How We Change the Ending

by Vikki Wakefield

  Tash is back, circling like a bird of prey. ‘Do you know Banksy?’ she barks.

  ‘Umm…’

  ‘Loner graffiti artist. Girl with a balloon? Kissing coppers?

  Don’t forget to eat your lunch and make some trouble?’

  She looks like she has a fever.

  ‘Are you sick?’

  ‘No,’ she says.

  ‘Okay. Let’s have a completely random conversation.’ I pat the spare beanbag.

  She ignores it. ‘You’ve heard of Banksy, though, right?’

  I nod. ‘There’s no way he’s a loner. I bet he has a stencil cutter and someone to carry his spray cans and a PR man. He probably has a tea lady.’

  Tash regards me carefully. ‘What—exactly—does the tea lady do?’

  ‘Makes his tea.’

  She puffs out her cheeks. ‘I’ve got a theory for you. Banksy—is a woman.’

  ‘No way. Impossible.’

  ‘Think about it. No guy would be able to put his art above his ego. He would want the whole world to know who he is.’

  ‘I’m not buying.’

  ‘I’m right,’ she says, smirking. ‘It’s the perfect cover.’

  I pull too hard on the rubber band and it snaps, scattering pages. ‘That artist DOT DOT DOT is better. Art that’s mass-consumed and printed on greeting cards has peaked—it’s tipped over the edge into a bottomless well of uncool.’

  Tash watches me sort the pages. ‘Ever done it?’

  ‘Done what?’

  Slowly, she rolls her sleeve to reveal a tattoo of a girl hugging a nuclear bomb on the inside of her forearm.

  I whisper, ‘Holy shit! You’re Banksy?’

  A fast-moving rash is spreading from her collarbone to her neck. She rolls her sleeve back down. ‘I knew I couldn’t trust you.’

  ‘I was going to stop coming here, anyway,’ I repeat.

  ‘What do you stand for?’ She points her fist at the centre’s rule chart and pops up three fingers, one by one. ‘Fuck. The. Establishment.’

  A few nearby kids clap and punch the air even though they have zero context.

  I feel bad. But not bad enough to follow Tash when she leaves.

  Mim appears next to me. ‘What was that?’

  ‘A difference of opinion.’

  ‘She needs this place more than most.’

  ‘More than me?’

  ‘You’d have to ask her about that.’

  I try to push myself out of the beanbag, but beanbags are designed to make you look like a three-legged giraffe stuck in a tar pit.

  Mim offers her hand and hauls me out. ‘We get why you all act so tough, you know.’

  ‘I’m not tough. That’s the problem.’

  She says through her teeth, ‘The willingness to expose wounds is a sign of privilege. Vulnerability is a survival risk, so you don’t show it.’

  ‘Is that a quote?’

  ‘It’s a fact.’ She bends down to pick something up. ‘Don’t forget your rage book.’

  ELEVEN

  I’m sitting outside a noisy cafe called Celestial Beans, drinking my second glass of complimentary tap water, waiting for Mum. It’s fancy. The food’s weird. The couple at the next table are sucking greasy beans from a shared bowl and slurping from cups without handles. We have cups at home with no handles.

  Mum is twenty minutes late.

  Her text came through last night, three days after I sent her my number. No explanation, just the time and the place. I caught two buses to get here. I keep checking my phone and waiting for a message to say she isn’t coming. I’m nervous, but not the kind that twists your guts—it’s more like a slow-moving feeling that something bad is about to happen. I read somewhere that people feel like this after they’ve been transfused with the wrong type of blood.

  Science says it’s impossible for us to recall a memory without altering it in some way—that’s my first thought when I realise the woman with her back to me, just inside the door of the cafe, is her. I wouldn’t have known if she hadn’t lifted her ponytail and wound it around her finger. Something about the action was familiar.

  Memories are made when groups of neurons are primed to fire together, and the brain has around a hundred billion neurons, each capable of making tens of thousands of connections. But the human mind is susceptible to glitches and failed saves and data corruption, just like a computer, except science also tells us it’s nothing like a computer and making a memory isn’t as simple as entering the correct data.

  So much can go wrong.

  But my memories must be faulty: now that I can see her profile she looks nothing like the mum I remember. One neuron must have misfired, and I filed the skinny zombie edition away in my memory box. Nobody I know has ever transformed this dramatically—at least, not in a positive way.

  It’s her.

  She picks up her phone and plays with it. I watch her hands. They’re steady, and that’s the only reason I sit down at her table. I can almost hear her counting to ten in her mind before she takes a shuddering breath, and speaks.

  ‘Nate?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Hello!’ She’s almost shouting. ‘It’s good to see you!’

  She has shiny hair. Her fingernails are polished.

  ‘I didn’t recognise you.’

  She smooths her hair, then her skirt. ‘I’m glad you came. Are you hungry?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘You should try the ancient grains with yoghurt and raspberries. Delicious.’

  Does she have a brain injury or something? What the hell are ancient grains? Mummified oats they discovered in the bottom of a sarcophagus? Should be, at eighteen bucks for a bowl of cereal. There’s a patch of flaking white paint on the wall, near her head—I know that if I go over there and start picking at it, I won’t stop until the whole wall is grey.

  I glance down at the menu.

  ‘I look different, huh?’ she says. ‘You haven’t mentioned it.

  I’m vegetarian now.’

  ‘I did mention it. I said I didn’t recognise you.’

  She spoons a mouthful of mush and swallows without chewing. ‘I know it must be a shock. Look, are you sure you’re not hungry?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘No. So you’re clean?’

  ‘Three years,’ she says. ‘I have a sponsor.’

  Three years? Three. Years? Almost four since I saw her last.

  ‘I have a job. It’s not much—four days a week selling gym memberships. I get cheap gear and—’ She stops when she sees my expression. Her lips flatten. ‘Gym gear.’

  There she is. I can still see the zombie underneath. The last time I saw her, I was pushing thirteen and she was a skeleton with a full repertoire of tics and two missing teeth. (I want to ask how she fixed them. Teeth are expensive.) She could barely hold a conversation; she kept fixating on random details, like the way my voice sounded so much like Dec’s when it started to break, and how my arms were too long and my feet too big. Puberty seemed to terrify her—a sign of something sinister.

  But this is also the same mother who patiently dug up my dead pet rat three times in three days because I was terrified we’d made a mistake and buried him alive.

  ‘That’s great. Good for you.’

  ‘I signed up thirty-two memberships last week,’ she says. ‘My boss says I could sell sunglasses to a blind person. I think I’ve found my superpower.’

  ‘Convincing people to buy something they don’t need is your superpower?’

  She flicks her hand. ‘Building muscle makes you live longer.’

  She needs to see the stats on the number of deaths caused by barbells.

  ‘Blind people do need sunglasses. Just because they can’t see doesn’t mean they don’t need sun protection.’

  ‘I s’pose. And so they don’t get freaked out by people looking at them.’

  I’m not sure if I sigh out loud or just in my head. ‘I think I might have disco
vered my superpower too.’

  ‘Oh, yeah? What is it?’

  ‘Invisibility.’

  ‘Everyone says that. I’d want to fly or move things with my mind. There’s a childcare centre right next to my apartment complex. I’d move that.’

  ‘So you’ve got an apartment?’

  She swipes through some photos on her phone. A sixth-floor one-bedroom, she says. Just big enough to swing a cat. It has a balcony. She grows succulents because they’re hard to kill even if you forget about them for a long time. They’re tough.

  If I bite my tongue any harder the tip will fly off and land in her bowl. She’ll be a lapsed vegetarian.

  ‘What does the sponsor do?’

  She tells me his name is John. He saved her life. He drops in every day. I stop listening after that. I can tell he does more than drop in—it doesn’t really matter because she’s done worse. She’s still smiling and her mouth is still talking. She looks good. John might be a magician.

  ‘—still with that girl?’ She’s asking about Dec.

  ‘Nance is all right,’ I snap. ‘And she’s not a girl. She’s twenty-four.’

  ‘And the kid? The one with—?’ She twirls a finger. ‘Is he still only half there?’

  ‘Otis. My brother.’

  ‘Half-brother.’

  My half-there half-brother. She says it like he’s not a full person.

  ‘And how is Declan?’

  ‘Dec is Dec.’

  ‘You’re angry.’ She slumps back in her chair.

  I nod. ‘A bit. How did you find us?’

  She frowns. ‘What do you mean? I always knew where you were.’ It’s the wrong thing to say and she knows it. ‘Look, I knew this was a bad idea. My sponsor said this would be tough for me.’

  Tough? Tough?

  ‘I’m hungry. I think I’ll order something now.’ I choose a tasting plate with goat’s cheese and other stuff I can’t pronounce, because it’s the most expensive thing on the menu. After I’ve ordered I tell her I don’t have any money.

  ‘That’s fine.’ She pulls a credit card from a zippered pocket in her purse, separate from the rest of her cards. She scrapes underneath her fingernails with a corner, chewing her lip. ‘For emergencies,’ she says.

  ‘I’m starving.’

  ‘Well, that counts as an emergency.’ She laughs. ‘You’re getting so tall. I bet you eat a lot.’

  ‘All the time.’ I roll my eyes. ‘Never stop eating. Seven or eight meals a day. Nance says I have the metabolism of a racehorse. She had to put a padlock on the fridge because I sleepwalk and she’d get up in the night and I would be, like—’ I make grunting noises and mime stuffing handfuls of food into my mouth. Mum leans back in alarm. ‘She’s a great cook. Nance says soon they’ll have to make the doorways bigger so I can fit through them.’

  Nance never said or did any of this. Nance can’t cook for shit, but every time I say ‘Nance says’, Mum flinches like I’ve flicked her wrist with a rubber band.

  ‘Nance says I’ll need both bunks soon, so I have somewhere to put my legs.’

  She did say that.

  ‘I want to know about you,’ she says, slapping my hand harder than she needs to. ‘What’s been happening? Give me the good stuff.’

  The tasting plate arrives. The joke’s on me—it has about eight foods I can’t identify, and everything smells like dirty socks boiled in vinegar. I store a yellow cherry tomato in my cheek and cut the cheese into isosceles triangles. If this isn’t going to be a sentimental reunion I might as well embark on a full reconnaissance mission.

  ‘Do I still have grandparents?’

  ‘I haven’t seen them since before you were born.’

  ‘Why not?’ I bite down on the tomato accidentally. I’m forced to swallow it.

  ‘They kicked me out when I got pregnant with you. I never want to see them again.’

  ‘What about on Dec’s side?’

  She laughs. It’s an ugly sound. ‘I met his old man once. His mum was really young—she ran off with someone else when he was four. Dec always said he hated his old man but then he went and turned out just like him.’

  ‘Like how?’

  I know how he turned out—I want to hear her say it. I’m not sure why I’m asking. Maybe I want to know where I come from. I would like to be a throwback, but it doesn’t exactly sound as if I’m a direct blood descendant of royalty or genius.

  Right now I think I’d prefer to turn out like Dec.

  She turns to stare at that patch of flaking paint on the wall. ‘Drunk and mean and not around.’ She looks back at me. ‘He was never there when I needed him.’

  I push the plate away. ‘He’s mostly there.’

  ‘He must really love her, huh?’ She looks sad. ‘And you. I mean, he kept you. I used to think he only did that to hurt me.’

  ‘He didn’t have a choice, did he? You left me behind.’ My voice is too loud.

  ‘John says we have to become a monster to defeat a monster,’ she says. ‘One day you’ll understand.’

  When I was younger, I wished she’d come back, be different—better. I thought I wanted a new beginning, but I’m not a kid anymore and now I’m not so sure. I think I want an ending.

  I leave the flat as soon as Nance and Dec start arguing about money, or the lack of it. Dec’s complaining about O still using nappies, and Nance is furious because he spent three hundred bucks on a second-hand kayak.

  I don’t want to run into Merrick or Tuwy, so my options are limited. No Youth, no underpass. No money, no shops. All that time it took me to master the saunter—now I realise it doesn’t work when you’re on your own. Move too fast and it looks like you’re nervous; walk too slow and you’re too easy to catch. Only make brief, heavy-lidded eye contact with other humans (ignoring them altogether is a further sign of submission) and make like the clock’s ticking, like you have somewhere to be. Except I have nowhere to be.

  Can’t walk forever, so I turn around and head home.

  One street over from the flats I run into Nance, pushing Otis in the pram, half-dragging an unwilling Jake behind her. Both are screaming.

  ‘I’m trying to get O to sleep,’ she says.

  I don’t mention she’s still wearing pyjama bottoms. ‘I can take Jake.’

  ‘Where’ve you been? Somewhere exciting?’

  I think of Mum. Maybe she’s still sitting in the cafe, eating my leftovers. I left before the conversation turned to Dec for the hundredth time. Told her I’d miss my bus.

  ‘Just catching up with someone I used to know.’

  ‘Oh. That sounds like fun.’

  She says ‘fun’ with her tongue poking the inside of her cheek, like she’s trying to recall the flavour of something without actually tasting it, and it hits me—Nance has no friends, unless you count Margie upstairs, and Margie only ever drops in when she wants to borrow eggs or milk or money, so the entire relationship is based on Nance serving black coffee and being embarrassed that we don’t have enough of whatever it is Margie wants to borrow.

  Nance hands over Jake and takes off, cornering the pram like a rally car. One broken wheel is spinning. O is still yelling.

  ‘Skate,’ Jake says.

  He has short legs and an even shorter attention span—it takes us twice as long as it should to walk to the park. When we get there he’s tired and thirsty and he wants to go home again. It’s a mild day but the concrete is sizzling. D&G is here, as usual, but instead of pulling tricks he’s pedalling figure-eights in the shallow track. A couple of boys around ten are writing swear words in chalk around the edge.

  Jake grabs his crotch, and for a second he looks like a mini-Dec. At least he’s toilet-trained. I tell him to piss behind the shelter because the toilets are filthy. I check my phone.

  Jake’s only out of my sight for half a minute. When I look up he’s climbing down the side of the shallow track, and by the time I get there he has walked straight in front of the bike.

  D&G grow
ls and drops his BMX to avoid hitting him.

  I grab Jake by the waist and swing him over my shoulder. ‘Sorry about that.’

  D&G just stands there with his thumbs hooked in his back pockets, staring at the bike as if Jake almost ran over it, instead of the other way around. I can’t see any major damage and it was already a bit banged up anyway.

  ‘Is everything okay?’

  He doesn’t reply, so I carry Jake away.

  ‘I want to talk to the man.’

  ‘No. You don’t talk to strangers.’

  ‘Can I ride his bike?’

  ‘You can’t. It’s too big. And don’t go on the track—you could have been hurt.’ I plonk him down. His eyes are filling with tears. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘No, what?’

  ‘No crying.’

  ‘I’m not crying. You are.’

  ‘Don’t cry,’ he says, sticking out his bottom lip. ‘No! No crying. Pussy.’

  ‘That’s not a nice word,’ I tell him, and he follows up with, ‘Fuck. Fuuuuuuuck!’

  My first instinct is to smack him. I turn my back instead. Nance says if you don’t pay a screamer any attention he’ll stop screaming, but that doesn’t work either. I walk ahead without him, and he throws himself at my legs and punches me behind the kneecap. I turn and raise my fist and he backs away. There’s snot dangling from his nose and a graze on his cheek.

  I’m out of options—except for the hardest thing. I don’t know why it’s so hard.

  I scoop him up and hold him until he stops fighting.

  TWELVE

  Wednesday afternoon, double English. Mr Reid has handed us each a pad of miniature fluoro Post-its, a Faber-Castell HB pencil, and an A2 photocopy of a Snakes ‘n’ Ladders game board.

  ‘Where’s the dice?’ Lee says.

  Reid shakes his head. ‘There will be no rolling of dice yet, Fortescu.’

  A2-sized photocopies are the unicorns of the classroom. These, plus the legit Post-its and the deadly-sharp Faber-Castells, make me think Mr Reid has financed this exercise, which further leads me to believe that he’s committed to having himself a teaching moment.