Kindred

by Michael Earp

  “Oi, you,” one of the Feds says, catching my eye. He’s a lanky pig, rail-thin under his bulky stab-jacket, and he unholsters his prod and primes it, coming my way. I spin on my toes, launching across the station. It’s now I realise that Maita is at my side, and she grabs my hand as we surge up the escalators. First rule of a good flee: don’t look back. The clump of boots behind is enough to let me know they’re hot on our heels.

  Here’s a secret: I kinda love fleeing from the Feds.

  Is that sick? Maybe.

  I love the way my heart rips up into my throat, the zingy fear goo that floods all my brain sockets, the burn of cold air in my throat, the pavement barely touching my feet. It makes me feel alive and awake and aware to a new level, life broken down to the total basics: run. Flee. Get away. Keep free!

  And it’s got this whole new dimension to it with Maita gripping my hand, like I’m not just running away from something, but towards something else, something better. How simpery and lovesick, ugh!, though screw it. She makes me think that I can make it. I take a quick-sec to look at her, and she’s got it in her face too. The thrill of a good chase! I grip her hand harder and she grips mine and risks a glance and a little smile. Those teeth. She’s almost got a full set. What a babe!

  We skitter down a cobbled lane, leap a street-cleaner bot brushing the junk up out of the gutters, narrowly avoid a truck backing up for a delivery in a big, oily cloud of biodiesel, then quickly slam it into reverse as a pair of Feds races up the other end of the lane. Maita pulls my hand, saying, “This way!” and we jump up onto the delivery dock. The driver drops an armload of boxes as we skate by him and I’m like, “Sorry!” and he swears back at us as we careen off the hallway walls and boom, into a kitchen bustling with cooks and dish hands. The Feds burst in and Maita’s curls get all in my face and mouth as she swings about and pulls me through the doors.

  All her delivery-biking musta made her extra good at the dodge, ’cause she loops ‘round a server holding huge, steaming baskets of dumplings without even dislodging a single one. Me, I slam into the doorframe, knock into the server, all the baskets fly into the air and dumplings go everywhere. Maita pulls me through the restaurant and we zoom over the tiled floor, clumping up onto tables on our way, while customers gape at us with mouthfuls of noodles, and cups of paper-wrapped chopsticks spill onto the floor. The Feds bumble through behind us and I hear a great clatter-crash of bowls and tables and mid-mouthful patrons hitting the floor. Me and Maita hook it out the door and around the corner, then she grabs my hand and pulls me towards a cafe, the kind where you have to swipe your funds card to get in the door, to prevent loiterers and the likes of me coming in out of the cold. She pings her card against the reader and the doors open for us with a burst of warm air. We watch the Feds go past from a table by the window and I flip ‘em the finger as they bumble off up the laneway, chasing nothing.

  “Not today, swine,” I say.

  “We might get our breakfast after all,” Maita says, grinny, as a server drones by and taps the screen with the menu, looking bored. The smell of toast and bacon is filling my nose and making my saliva glands fire into overdrive, and I’m wondering if Maita might wanna shout me a slice of banana bread or something when it hits me. Here I am, relaxing after a gleeful flee from the coppers when the rest of the Rats might be in trouble, might be getting carted off to the kid factory as we speak. I glance at Maita, the server with her steamy-hot jug of synth Cofi, the cosy cafe and plates of eggs coming out from the kitchen and I wanna stay here with her, I really do, but I got my Rats to think of – my family.

  “I gotta go,” I say, mournful.

  “Why?” she asks as I stand up. She puts a hand on my arm and it’s warm and soft and brown, fingernails shining with chipped holograph polish.

  “The Rats. I gotta make sure they’re okay.”

  “I’m coming too,” Maita says, standing up as well and slinging her jacket back on.

  “Nah, nah, you stay here. I don’t want to get you into trouble.”

  “How do you know I don’t like trouble?” she says, and smiles and I get all swooshy in my heart and my head, ’cause hell, I love trouble too.

  The server seems pissed when we get up and head out without ordering anything, but Maita pings her a tip and she throws us a less-snarly look as we exit.

  ***

  I was right – the Rats are lined up on Swanston Street with their eyes all streamy and red from the fumes. They’ve got their hands on their heads and a group of Feds are herding them towards a truck with a big cage on the back.

  “That them?” Maita asks, and I nod a sad yep.

  “We’re too late,” I say, and my eyes well up ’cause I can’t stop thinking about my Rats, my little dark-tunnel pseudo-family, getting herded to the kid factory, forcibly buzz-cutted, de-wormed and barcode-stamped to toil for a corp till they come of age or die.

  Zooming from the Feds might be all zippy action and slapstick shenanigans, but it’s got, like, real consequences that we try to conveniently ignore, or we wouldn’t be able to keep going.

  I see Sammi, their eyes rimey-red and streaming, and they’re giving what-for to the Fed who’s tryna flexi-cuff them. Dav, snarly and righteous, takes off his Rat-made prosthetic leg and tries to clunk one of his captors with it, but misses in a wild arc borne of fury. The street-charity social worker, a harried babe scrolling madly on her hand-u, tries to go-between the Rats and the Feds and make sure no underhanded tactics or heavy-handed methods get used. She drops the tab, sudden – it parabolas from a chain on her wrist, and in one hand she catches Dav’s prosthesis as he swings it again, and with the other she pushes away a Fed who seems set to cork him one in return.

  “What can we do?” Maita says, and I shrug.

  “Nothin’,” I tell her, gloomed and resigned.

  Maita perks. Her eyes go big as they travel across the scene: the Rats in a higgled line behind the truck, rumbling and ready to cart them off to whatever institutionalisation that’s waiting for them. They’re blinking and wan even in the filtered light, their faces streaked with clean from their tears. Feds strut in bulky stab-jackets, puffing, tryna appear tough and doing a pretty good job of it. What’s Maita on to?

  Then I’ve got it! I want to kiss her, but I’ve been wanting to kiss her all morning, waiting for the right moment when she might throw me the sigs that say she’s feeling it too, for all the signs of enthusiastic smooching consent. No time for an impromptu make-out fest, though, we’ve got Rats to save.

  ***

  The last Rat gets loaded into the back of the truck and the Feds stand around, grunting and strutting about all pleased with themselves for another job well done, rounding up the strays, sweeping up the trash and all that. Now the Rats are all in, I throw a sig to Maita. She nods back, her face wrapped and hidden from the CCTV in a scarf, the dip of her chin just visible in the side mirror. Then the truck peals out in a wide arc across the tram lines and takes off up Swanston Street in a cloud of biodiesel. The Feds all take a moment to register, ‘cept the one who was supposed to be driving, who shouts out, “Oi!” and they all cotton on real quick and bumble off up the road as the truck speeds away.

  I mosey across the street, unlock Maita’s bike, swing the helmet on and wobble into the bike lane. The sun has come out again and it glimmers off the puddles in the gutters, blinding me for split secs here and there. I zoom past the Feds who have lost the truck and are standing in the road and scratching their heads. They block the trams, who bing at them wildly until they get out of the way.

  I give ‘em a bit of a wave, and one of ‘em brandishes his hittin’ stick at me, swinging futile as I pedal by.

  When I roll up to the pre-agreed laneway, skidding on the asphalt, the truck’s rumbling and the Rats are tumbling out of the back. There’s cheering, high-fives everywhere, general revelry and giggs. Everyone’s swapping their views of the daring escape and uploading ‘em to the feed. Maita climbs down from the cab and hands the ke
ys to Dav who jumps right in and starts revving the engine.

  “Where you gonna go?” Maita asks us.

  “We’ve got a few places we can hide out for a couple days till the raids die down,” I say.

  “So …”

  “Yeah …”

  I kinda shuffle my feet a bit, jam my hands in my pockets, ’cause I’m not sure how to proceed now that the excitement’s over.

  “We could, I dunno, still get a Cofi or something,” I tell her. “If you want.” Does she? We’ve only known each other less than an hour, and I’ve already spun her through a whole wringer of trouble.

  She takes my hand, threading her smooth, dry fingers between mine. The contact sends sparkly zings across my bod, lighting it up with glee and potential. The Rats all go, “Oooooh” and I go blushy-red like some goofy jerk. I use my free hand to undo the heart pin that Sammi gave me this morning, and I’m like, “Hey, do you want this?” and she nods, flashing back the coyest of smiles.

  The first problem is that Amy is late for work. The kind of late that can even get a decent staff member, an otherwise employee-of-the-year type person, seriously fired. She is late for work because she is bored with kissing Steven. This is the second problem. A problem for her. A problem, apparently, for Steven.

  Her boss’s name is Boz. Amy likes Boz a lot. Take right now, as they stand on the footpath in the failing light, about to enter the enormous waterfront house. Not only is Boz not firing her, despite the fact she has shown up an hour late to their most important job all season; he is wearing a lace-trimmed apron over his barrel chest and offering to carry her crate. “Stack it on top of mine,” he says, nodding at the one already in his arms.

  “It’s fine,” says Amy, though her knees are close to buckling, close to all-out giving way. What has Boz packed in this thing? A complete set of china? China itself?

  “Are you sure?”

  A metre away from them, on a neat strip of grass, Natalia sighs. Amy’s noticed she likes a bit of distance, does Natalia. It’s her habit to stand just outside the fray, a little apart from the action. This way she can be observed in all her glory; she can be properly seen. She turns to face them, and the glitter on her cheeks sheds diamonds of light into the dusk. She says to Boz, “If you want to carry another one so much, take mine.” Briefly she breaches her magic metre, slides her crate onto his and steps back.

  Boz absorbs the extra weight with a stoic grunt, adjusts his balance. “Come on, then.”

  They commence their ascent of the driveway.

  They are a caterpillar, a conga line, a train rattling through the growing dark. Boz in front of Amy in front of Natalia: the entire Cassie’s Catering dream team. Boz’s great, muscled limbs propelling him forwards, with occasional halts to shift his load; a curtain of stray curls blocking Amy’s vision so that she ploughs her crate into Boz’s back whenever he stops. Clinking jars and loose croutons perform a dull percussion.

  “Ouch!”

  “Sorry.”

  Natalia walking lightly, almost skipping, behind them. “It was your boyfriend who held you up? Is that what you said, Amy?” Her liberation from crate-carrying has made her chatty.

  Amy attempts to blow the hair from her eyes, then sucks in a breath. “Yes.”

  “His car break down or something?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then what?”

  Amy strains to dodge the question, but all her energy is focused on the steepness of the driveway, the bulk of her load. “We had a fight.”

  “Bummer,” says Natalia, her voice tinkling.

  Natalia irritates Amy for obvious reasons; what is less obvious to her is how Steven knows about the kissing. It’s not like she’s told him she finds it boring. She is good at lying to her boyfriend. “That was amazing. You are amazing,” she always says when the kissing is done, when they’re bringing things to a close. She has always thought it the perfect response – personal, affectionate, not too wordy. She has always been privately proud of it.

  But this afternoon, on his couch, as she was tying her hair back into a loose bun and putting the cushions in their proper place, Steven said, “You say that exact thing every time.”

  Amy patted a cushion, tried to keep the alarm out of her voice. “Because I mean it.”

  “It sounds …” He trailed off with a sigh.

  “What?” Amy had insisted.

  “Robotic. Like you’re an actual robot.”

  “I know the definition of robotic, Steven.”

  “Like the words have been plugged into your system, and you’re just spitting them out unfeelingly.”

  He began to cry.

  As the tears of Steven spilled over his lids and rolled down his cheeks, as his nose dripped wetly, a hole began to grow in Amy’s stomach. It was flame touching paper; it expanded inside of her, black-rimmed and flickering. It was failure, it was suffocation, it was guilt. The only thing Amy could think of to make it stop was to start kissing Steven again.

  So she did.

  She took his hands and ran her thumbs along the sides of them. He liked it when she did that. She breathed into his mouth and stroked his hair. And eventually he kissed her back, quite a lot.

  Which was what had delayed her arrival at work.

  Finally Boz reaches the top of the driveway and stops. Amy and Natalia pull up behind him. There’s a click like a camera shutter; the porch light blazes.

  They blink against it.

  “Whoa, this place is …” says Natalia.

  “Yup,” says Boz, his deep voice turned soft.

  The house is huge, three storeys at least. The roof so far up that the night has claimed it. And the garden: swathes of cut grass, rows of magnolias rising from a bark chip sea. Topiary figs in rustic planters. Wisteria-drenched lattice. Weeks ago Boz told Amy who owns this place, but now that she actually wants to know she has forgotten.

  They file through the porch door. Boz puts down the crates and pats along the wall, as if to reassure it. No thieves here! Just honest professionals, running (a mere!) sixty minutes late. At last, light blooms to reveal the kitchen. They pause a moment to take it in. Convection oven. Granite splashback with pot-filler. Bench-mounted soap dispenser – this is the item that impresses Amy the most. Of all the unnecessary luxuries, someone has spent good money to have immovable liquid soap? There are two sets of sinks. There is a marble-top island. There is an industrial espresso machine.

  “These people are loaded, yeah?” Natalia says, casting her gaze around, sly as a cat. “Like, private-jet loaded, right Boz?”

  Boz must be stressed out because he doesn’t answer her and Boz is prone to answering everyone; he is the politest person Amy knows. Instead he begins silently unpacking his crate, wrenching the lids off each plastic tub, one by one. He looks up. “Has anyone seen the peri-peri sauce?”

  Natalia tosses her auburn hair and gazes into the middle distance; she is a lead singer and this is her music video. “Yes, I saw it,” she says with frightening gravity.

  “Where?”

  “I don’t recall. It was a peri-peri long time ago.”

  Boz looks combustible, which is not like him at all.

  “I’ll check the ute,” Amy says quickly.

  Amy takes the other exit, into the hall. Here the ceiling is high and patterned, and the walls sprout plaster archways painted with gold leaf. She passes a painting that looks familiar. She stops to peer at it. She’s pretty certain it’s the original of a print in Steven’s parents’ living room.

  Oh, Steven. It’s not that Amy doesn’t think he’s great. Objectively he is really great. It’s just that when they kiss, her mind drifts; she is a gull on a current of air, the ocean below her. She and Steven are in the water somewhere, or on it; she is so high up she can barely see them. Bobbing sticks, they could be. Scraps of seaweed.

  Lately she has been thinking: maybe kissing is not my thing.

  She has been thinking: maybe I have a condition. A lip malfunction. An und
iagnosed skin disease that detracts from ordinary human sensation.

  She has been thinking: maybe kissing is inherently boring, and the likeability of kissing is a universal conspiracy.

  She has been thinking: or perhaps it is only Steven. I can’t rule out kissing full stop on the basis of a single person. Yes, he is great. He has a lovely smile. And dimples – always a plus. Piles of incredible hair. He makes me laugh. He’s smart. Kind. But there are bad things, too. Like his shirts. His three Hawaiian ones. Hawaiian!

  Taken in combination, three bad shirts are a justifiable barrier, surely.

  She should try kissing other people before making up her mind.

  Not that she hasn’t tried.

  There was Barker. He kissed with his teeth.

  And Pau. It was enjoyable at first, then after three weeks she found herself doing geography homework in her head. The capital of Latvia (lips on lips) is Riga. The Australian state with the longest land border (tongue on tongue) is New South Wales.

  Which leaves her … where? Ruling out kissing altogether, when she is barely sixteen? What comes next – ruling out sex? Simply because she has never once longed to have it with her objectively sexy boyfriend?

  There’s a shadow at the end of the hallway. Amy watches it until it becomes a man walking towards her. She remembers she is a caterer, and that caterers should be in the kitchen, not here in this private, opulent part of the house, in this original-artwork repository.

  She searches for a doorway, but the walls on either side go on and on. Then she sees a red velvet curtain a little up the hall. She hurries towards it, slips a hand through. Her fingers meet air. She presses the curtain aside and ducks behind it.

  “Hello.”

  Amy stifles a shriek. Someone is in here – standing next to her, in fact. In black tuxedo pants, a white dinner shirt and a brown-and-yellow-spotted bow tie. At first Amy thinks, inexplicably: the man from the hallway. Her hand goes to her chest.

  She looks again.

  “Sorry if I surprised you.” She is smiling: this someone, this person who looks not much older than Amy, who is fairer than her, and only slightly shorter.