This is How We Change the Ending

by Vikki Wakefield

  I step off the kerb without looking, and a car swerves and beeps. I jump back.

  White noise in my head. The mural looks messy, blurred at the edges, as if it’s been painted in the dark, in a hurry.

  There are words on it. The words belong to me.

  When they’ve burned all our houses

  the streets will inherit.

  They’re my words—I wrote them in my notebook and now they’re on the wall. And the odds of a person from the same suburb, who goes to the same youth centre, coming up with the exact same combination of words have to be statistically improbable.

  Tash. The thief.

  I lunge for a gap between a trailer and a truck and somehow make it to the other side.

  I hope she gets arrested. I have no idea where Tash lives, but if she isn’t here at the centre now, I’ll find out. I’m trying to think of a time when she could have stolen my notebook, or at least copied the lines. Maybe she has a photographic memory. Maybe she took a photo. But—if Tash has a page from my notebook, she could implicate me.

  I’m staring at the wall, trying to decide whether to salute it or spit on it, when a news van pulls up in one of the wheelchair parks. A woman wearing a tight grey suit gets out first, followed by a bearded guy carrying a camera the size of a suitcase.

  I duck my head and slouch off towards the entrance.

  The woman spots me and rushes over. ‘Excuse me?’ She fumbles in her pockets. ‘Are you a member of the centre?’ She flashes an ID card.

  I nod. ‘Yeah, but—’

  ‘We’re almost ready. Could you answer a few questions

  about the vandalism?’

  ‘Sorry. I don’t know anything about it.’

  The guy hoists his camera onto his shoulder and aims it me.

  ‘Look, I don’t—’

  ‘Just a quick sound bite? We’ll blur your face.’

  I put up my hand, say, ‘No comment,’ and run off like a guilty kid.

  Inside, Povey is dozing on one of the couches. Tash isn’t here.

  I nudge him awake. ‘Hey. What happened to the wall?’ He blinks and tries to focus. ‘Are you all right?’

  He groans and closes his eyes again. ‘Headache. Been nanging, hey.’

  I find Macy in the storeroom putting labels on filing boxes.

  ‘There’s a Channel Nine news crew outside. They tried to interview me.’

  She sighs. ‘I thought this might happen.’

  ‘You’ve seen the wall?’

  ‘The Hubble Space Telescope has seen the bloody wall.’

  ‘Do you know who did it?’

  ‘Well, if I knew, you would have noticed them strung up and disembowelled on your way in,’ she says, but she doesn’t seem that upset. ‘They used to do that, you know, to deter crime and dickheadedness.’

  ‘When did it happen?’

  ‘Sometime last night.’

  Macy goes to the bathroom and comes back a minute later with her hair semi-brushed and her name tag pinned to her T-shirt. She grabs my hand and drags me behind her to the rec room.

  ‘Stay here.’ She nods at Povey. ‘Make sure he does, too. The last thing we need is Mr Whip-It representing the clientele.’

  Povey’s already asleep again. He doesn’t look well.

  Dec says I shouldn’t touch anything but booze and homegrown. Nitrous is bad. Pingers are bad. Psychs are bad. He told me if he ever catches me doing anything that God didn’t put on this earth, he’ll kill me himself. I raised my doubts about God and alcohol with him, but he said booze is just barley, wheat and potatoes. Whatever. Seems to me Dec and Povey head for the same planet, only on different spaceships.

  Macy is back, sweating, flustered, looking like she didn’t just brush her hair five minutes ago.

  ‘What did you say to them?’

  ‘Nothing that did you, me or the centre any favours.’ She looks pretty pleased with herself.

  FIFTEEN

  We’re all glued to the Channel Nine news. Every available chair, beanbag, box, table—even a stack of Mim’s magazines—has been dragged in front of the TV. I count around twenty kids, not including Macy, Mim and Thomas.

  No Tash. Guilty by dissociation.

  ‘Shut up! Everybody sit down and shut up!’ Macy leans so far forward her chin is almost on her knees.

  The reporter I ran into a couple of hours ago is on the TV, standing near the end of the wall outside Youth.

  ‘Rumours of the closure of YouthWorks, a popular youth centre in Rowley Park, have prompted teens to protest by vandalising a local landmark.’

  A photo of the original mural is displayed on the screen.

  ‘Sometime last night this mural, designed by a well-known artist, was defaced.’

  Then it switches to a shot of the wall as it is now.

  ‘Locals are at a loss to explain how this could have happened near a busy main road without any witnesses. We asked youth worker Macy Blair to comment on the vandalism.’

  Macy appears. With her shaved head and tatts, she looks like a member, not the director.

  ‘This is their centre. If they want to use it to protest something that directly affects them, then I call that a good use of space.’

  ‘Do you know who’s responsible?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  We all cheer and clap.

  The camera shows Macy heading back inside the centre. As she closes the door on the camera-person, she sticks out her pierced tongue.

  ‘God, they made me look like I did it,’ Macy says, holding her head in her hands.

  ‘Agnes Butcher, a Rowley Park resident for over forty years, disagrees.’

  We groan. Agnes lives across the road and every week she lodges a complaint about noise. It’s probably her who throws stones at the court lights. She’s clutching her hand-bag in front of her. Her voice is low and quivery, nothing like the razorblades-on-glass pitch she saves for us when we’re scrimmaging.

  ‘It’s disgusting. They’ve fouled their own nest. My taxes pay for this and all those entitled brats do is destroy it. If they don’t paint over it soon, I’ll do it myself.’

  ‘Fuck, Agnes, we’re not gonna steal your pension,’ I say.

  ‘Two sides, remember?’ Macy cautions. ‘She’s old and alone and probably scared.’

  ‘The local member of parliament, Robert Down, has responded by saying: “Peaceful protest is a basic right of democracy, but destructive, violent behaviour only damages their cause. I suggest these young persons find a way to get their message across without upsetting the people who hold this decision in their hands. It could be argued these methods invite condemnation, rather than support.”’

  ‘Robert Down,’ someone says. ‘Bob Down. Get it?’

  ‘What violence?’ Mim cuts in. ‘I didn’t see anyone throwing punches. They don’t even mention why the centre is being closed—because an adult with no affiliation was violent, and there’s no funding for security. It’s one-sided reporting.’

  ‘The council says the vandalism will be cleaned up in the coming days. The teens affected are noticeably silent on the matter.’

  The camera pans to me as I put my hand up and walk away, muttering, ‘No comment.’ It doesn’t show my face, but we all know it’s me.

  Cooper groans. ‘Nice one, Nate. You had a chance to say something. Why didn’t you?’

  I don’t have an answer.

  The reporter signs off. An ad for furniture polish comes on.

  ‘That’s it?’ I say.

  ‘Looks like it. Well, I might as well go out with a bang.’ Macy stands and turns off the TV. ‘Maybe they care so little they won’t even bother to replace me. I guess the cat’s out of the bag, guys.’

  ‘Can we put a line through that no-shouting rule now?’ Mim says. ‘I feel the need to scream.’

  Macy doesn’t just put a line through it—she tears the entire chart from the wall. ‘Doesn’t mean you can’t respect each other,’ she says, waving her finger. ‘Common rules of
decency still apply. Or I’ll be the one throwing punches.’

  ‘Tell us how long we’ve got.’

  ‘Three months, give or take,’ Macy says. ‘Now, who did it?’

  I say nothing—technically, I didn’t.

  ‘Someone knows something. Come on. I’ve got nothing on the cameras, but you all know where the cameras are, right?’

  She’s right. We do.

  ‘Nobody knows anything?’

  I shake my head along with everyone else.

  ‘We could picket the wall. Stop them painting over it,’ Cooper says. ‘That might get some attention.’

  ‘But if nobody ends up giving a shit, it’ll just prove their theory about the lack of support for the centre,’ I say.

  ‘Just because you don’t give a shit doesn’t mean nobody else does.’

  Who is the ‘they’ we’re talking about anyway? The government? The entire system? Or is it one guy, sitting behind a desk, who put a tick in a box because he felt like it and sent it down the line? It feels like we’re swinging at an enemy without a face. Even our mysterious activist isn’t showing hers. What’s the point?

  ‘What does it mean—about the houses?’

  It takes me a few seconds to realise Deng is talking about my words on the wall.

  ‘It means if they don’t want us on the streets, then they shouldn’t shut our youth centre. Are they so stupid they didn’t think of that?’ Cooper says.

  ‘It’s powerful,’ Mim says. ‘But ambiguous. I think it’s about displacement. It’s the backfire effect. Instead of causing division they’re creating an army. Anger unites people. That’s what it means when it says the streets will inherit.’

  ‘Only if people can be bothered doing something,’ I say.

  She rolls her eyes. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t tell us what it means. It just makes us think.’

  My words were taken and used out of context, but I’m never sure what they mean when I write them anyway. They always seem foreign to me. Macy will suspect I’m involved if I speak up. Even if I could explain, I can’t.

  Now I know how a dead poet would feel if a dead poet could feel.

  ‘Do you know anything about all this, Nate?’ Macy asks.

  I shake my head. I want to give Tash a chance to explain. If I drop her name now, she could drag me into it, and then she might never return my pages.

  Mim gives me a sharp look. ‘It wasn’t Nate.’

  It pisses me off that she can dismiss me so easily. ‘How would you know?’ I say.

  ‘I just know.’

  Thomas, who hardly ever speaks except to bark orders, clears his throat. ‘I agree with the message, if not the method. “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” Desmond TuTu.’

  Macy nods. ‘Okay, listen up. I don’t want anyone going all vigilante and causing trouble. Off the record, I think we should decide if it’s worth organising a petition. Remember, we need the local residents onside, so nobody is allowed to upset Agnes.’ She shoos kids from chairs and starts cleaning up.

  I go outside. I need a picture of the wall before Agnes gets slap-happy with a paint brush and my fifteen minutes’ of anonymous fame are over.

  I stand back and snap a pic, then move closer. From a distance, it looks as if the mural has been painted. Now I see it’s a large poster, like the gig flyers on empty shop windows. It’s made from separate sheets of A4 paper, pasted with glue and spray-painted around the edges to blend with the background of the original mural. That explains why it’s slightly blurred, and how Tash could have done it so quickly without anyone seeing. But it’s only temporary. Any more rain and the whole thing will disintegrate.

  I could claim some responsibility and take the credit, or the blame. I could deny everything and let Tash take the fall. Or I can stay quiet and see how things play out.

  So many emotions. So many options. I don’t know what to do with that.

  I have my notebooks spread out on my bunk. I started filling notebooks because it was the only way to quieten my mind—there were too many things I couldn’t say out loud. Still can’t. Eleven, total, written over a period of about seven years. I thought there were more. It’s not much for a life’s work.

  The first notebook is still blank apart from a single sentence:

  If I could go back in time I would shoot the goat.

  After that I started collecting random thoughts and questions, like:

  Can you feel a cloud?

  Who invented Pokémon?

  Where do flies go to sleep?

  A few pages later I seem to have solved these mysteries, which proves what I already know: I have always been good at research. I like facts. Facts resolve questions, and a question with an answer is a worry that has lost its power.

  I wrote down scientific discoveries:

  • the deadliest flu virus in the world was created in a university lab

  • microbes are evolving faster than we can develop methods to fight them

  • we are probably in the middle of a mass extinction event right now and floated conspiracy theories:

  McDonald’s/government-owned/Happy Meal toys are bugged and burgers contain mind-control drugs

  Later, I seemed to be preoccupied with documenting conversations between me and Dec:

  How to Foil a Home Invasion (keep a machete under the bed)

  Why Marijuana Should Be Legalised (stoned people are chill)

  And lately I’ve regressed to making cryptic statements:

  • religion is the root of evil

  • slam poets are the new evangelists

  • no one left without an agenda to tell the truth

  Reading through, the first thing I notice is how often I change my mind. And the common thread between the early notebooks and the last one, the one I can’t seem to finish, is that I only seem to write about my worries, never the things that make me feel happy, or proud, or valued, like:

  Nance

  Otis

  Jake (ish)

  Merrick

  There are so many worries left unresolved. And so I conclude:

  I’m a pessimist

  I have a conflicting set of beliefs

  I don’t stand for anything

  One person can’t possibly make a difference

  It’s safer to keep yelling down the well

  One thing is sure: I’ve been through my latest notebook twice and the page with the sentence from the wall is definitely missing, and that worries me because I can’t remember what else is on that page. I don’t usually re-read what I write. It serves a purpose at the time but it’s like exhaling vapour. Was there anything personal? Did I mention names?

  It’s possible Tash has no intention of using any more words from the missing page. I don’t know her well enough to guess. I do know it’s bad manners to drag someone you hardly know into a pointless war.

  SIXTEEN

  Owen Kleinig. That’s his name—the kid who got his face smushed by Pug and Rat.

  He has a stainless-steel stackable lunchbox with about eight compartments. It’s filled with food cut into heart shapes and smiley faces, and his name is written on the lid in huge letters. The compartments are arranged in a semi-circle on the table in front of him and, if I’m not mistaken, he’s sorting the foods into complementary colours: strawberries with cucumber, carrots with blueberries, cabbage with corn.

  I’ve never seen this many pieces of fruit and vegetables in a lunchbox before. Come to think of it, this is my first sighting of purple cabbage.

  Owen Kleinig is the sole occupant of the senior study room in the school library. I’m sitting at the end of the magazine aisle, watching him through the glass. We’re not allowed to eat in here, but Miss Sheridan has walked past twice and she hasn’t said anything. Year Eights aren’t supposed to be in the senior study room, either.

  I’m trying to decide whether I should mention what happened the other day—apologise to him, or at least acknowledge
his existence—when he suddenly tips the contents of each compartment into the lid. With a look of furious concentration, he uses his fork to make a pulp, and scrapes the mess into a sandwich bag. Once he has carefully sealed the bag, he stands, slips it into the pocket of his shorts and re-stacks the lunchbox.

  Miss Sheridan makes another pass. She stops and says, ‘If you’re finished now, Owen, you can make your way outside.’

  He nods, but when she’s gone he lets out a sigh. He wipes the table, pushes the chair underneath, picks up a stray piece of carrot from the floor, and drops it in the bin. He turns off the light and closes the door behind him. When he passes he throws me a backwards glance. It makes me think he knew I was there the whole time, but his expression is blank. There’s something about his entire methodical process, broken by an act of violence against fruit and vegetables, that makes me add Owen Kleinig to the top of my worry list. This is a kid who looks like he’s ready to break, and not in a shoot-up-the-school kind of way—more like he’s about to walk into a river with pockets full of mashed vegies. And I feel like it’s partly my fault.

  I stuff my phone in my bag and get up to follow. My bag catches on the rack, bringing down a whole folder of Science Illustrated.

  ‘Shit.’

  I stuff them back in the folder as quickly as I can, but Miss Sheridan has eyes in the back of her head and ears like a Fennec fox.

  ‘I know you’re going to put those back in date order, Nathaniel. Am I right?’

  I nod and sigh and get to work.

  By the time I’ve sorted and replaced the folder, Owen is long gone.

  I spend another ten minutes checking the benches by the hardcourts, behind the A-frame shed (out of bounds), and in the alcove under the middle-school stairs. Being a senior has granted me some invisibility, if not invincibility or an all-access pass, and usually I’d be able to guess where someone like Owen Kleinig would go to be left alone. They’re all places Merrick and I used to hide too.

  It’s not until five minutes before the bell that I see him step from behind the partition concealing the walkway between the music block and the library. I walked past the opening at least twice. He must have been there all along. There’s noise and movement all around, but Owen Kleinig is unnaturally still, as if he’s waiting for something to happen.