All The Lonely People

by David Owen

  Kat dropped the slushie and hauled herself forward, gripping Safa’s fingers and scrabbling awkwardly onto the juddering roof.

  ‘You’re freakishly strong,’ she breathed.

  ‘Like a mother lifting a car off her child.’

  The roof of the mobility train was cold and smooth. They sat cross-legged and facing each other as it moved off down the high street.

  Her own beverage lost, Kat accepted the remaining cup of fluorescent slush and took a long sip, before clutching her forehead.

  ‘Jesus Christ, brain freeze.’ It felt like being trepanned with an icicle.

  ‘Press your thumb against the roof of your mouth,’ said Safa.

  ‘You what?’

  Safa huffed frustratedly and shoved her thumb into Kat’s mouth. Its incongruous warmth swiftly thawed the painful frost.

  ‘Uh, thanks,’ said Kat once her mouth was a thumb-free zone, and then smacked her lips. ‘What’s that taste?’

  ‘Nobody knows what orifices this humble thumb has plumbed before.’

  Kat took a slug of slush to wash out the unsettling flavour, which only gave her brain freeze again. ‘Dammit!’

  The train eased to the bottom of the high street, where gentrification had been held at bay by a butcher that had been there longer than Kat had been alive, newsagents and phone-unlocking shops. Nobody was waiting for collection, so their ride turned around and began the slow return journey uphill.

  ‘Shouldn’t this be enough?’ said Kat, as the street glided by.

  ‘We had two before you dropped yours.’

  ‘No, I mean us. We’re together and we’re having fun.’ It came out as a question – what if Safa wasn’t having fun at all? – but the other girl nodded for her to continue. ‘Shouldn’t this reverse the fade? It should count as a connection to the world.’

  Safa seemed to consider this for a second, and then turned her head to watch the people they were passing. ‘Look at everybody here. It all comes so naturally to them.’

  On cue a group of lads clutching pints outside a pub burst into laughter. Couples were strolling hand-in-hand between restaurants, casually checking menus in the window.

  ‘They belong here, the way they are. They always have,’ said Safa. ‘They have a real place.’

  For as long as she could remember Kat had felt separate to these people. To all people. She had envied how easily they fit, how the fabric of the world had made space for them.

  ‘And we don’t?’ she said.

  ‘It’s not just us. Some people never manage to find it. You remember Aaron? Well, of course you don’t remember him, that’s kind of the point.’ Safa rolled her eyes. ‘Anyway, he was secretly dating Selena.’

  ‘Selena Jensen?’

  ‘Selena freakin’ Jensen. I caught them kissing once. Literally the hottest girl in school, the one everybody wanted. And I think he really loved her. But he couldn’t make that connection last. Some people just can’t.’ Safa took her hand, chilled from the drink, and it felt more real than anything. ‘Can you honestly tell me you’ve ever felt like you belong?’

  She had, for a time, in the communities she’d found online. That might have unravelled, but it had been real. Losing it wouldn’t have affected her so severely had it not. Had it come at the expense of relationships in the real world? She might have been putting her eggs in the wrong basket all along.

  The cart rumbled underneath them. In that moment, face-to-face with Safa, Kat felt like she had found a place to belong. They were like an undiscovered deep sea species, strange and translucent, unseen by human eyes.

  ‘I always wanted a friend who would message me out of the blue, even if it was something totally random, a picture or video they thought I’d like,’ said Kat. ‘It shows somebody out there is thinking of you. I thought when I grew up I would find my people. My lifetime friends, like the Backwash crew have. It just . . . never happened. Maybe it doesn’t happen for people like me.’

  ‘It can happen now,’ said Safa, eyes zealously wide. ‘The fade is the only chance we have to make a place for ourselves.’

  Kat took a shaky breath. ‘You really believe it’ll let you become another person?’

  ‘It has to!’ Safa said. ‘You think I made this happen just so I could steal some chips and mess with people?’

  A façade had slipped, though only enough for Kat to know it was there, not to glimpse beneath it. There was so much Safa was hiding, so much she was pretending to be. She tugged at her jean shorts, and Kat saw now how uneven they were. Wildly frayed edges spoke of scissors and spur of the moment.

  They jumped down from the mobility train when it stopped to let pass an already bedraggled hen party. When they returned to the square they found the night in full swing, outside seats at capacity with more standing around them. Kat yearned for each person they passed, as if they were tugging at her soul, coaxing it closer to become inextricably bound up with theirs.

  She tried to ignore it. ‘Being ourselves has to be better than being nothing.’

  ‘The fade doesn’t make us nothing,’ said Safa.

  ‘So what are we?’

  ‘Whatever the fuck we want! Who do you want to be tonight?’

  The answer surged to the surface of Kat’s mind, like flotsam on a swell. If the fade was an opportunity to be somebody else, anybody else, it would allow her to be who she had never been: herself. The person she had always wanted to be in the real world.

  ‘There’s something I want to do,’ she said. ‘It’s dangerous, and a bit stupid.’

  Safa seemed to puff herself up, the façade snapping firmly back into place. ‘I like the sound of it already.’

  17

  The Fight Never Stops

  Garden Hill was the focal point of the nearest park, a lump of mud and grass rising tall enough to be seen above the houses around it, a ring of trees scratching at the sky from its top. By day it was the domain of dog walkers and joggers, and by night an unearned reputation for being dangerous meant it was studiously avoided.

  A lifetime of warnings jangled in Wesley’s head as he shut the metal gate behind him and made his way up the concrete path. It was beginning to drizzle, fallen leaves growing slick underfoot. It wasn’t the idea of unknown assailants lingering in the dark that worried him. It was facing who he knew would be waiting at the top.

  Jordan was silhouetted against the sky, a human shape blotting the town’s jumble of lights. When he heard Wesley’s approach and turned, it was impossible to see the expression on his face.

  ‘Haven’t been up here in a long time,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ said Wesley, trying to remember his last visit, sure it must have been together.

  ‘I remember when I first came here – not specifically, you know, but when I was little – it seemed so huge. I probably thought I could see the whole country from up here. It’s weird, thinking how small my world used to be.’

  Wesley gritted his teeth. ‘I bet you saw a lot more impressive things in Australia.’

  ‘You don’t have to go that far to expand your horizons.’

  Being stuck at home, looking after the mess Jordan had left behind, hadn’t given him much of a chance.

  ‘Why did you want to meet up here?’ said Jordan.

  ‘I thought it would bring back some memories.’

  ‘It does.’ The low light caught Jordan’s smile. ‘Remember when we had that frisbee, and we thought if we threw it from up here it would go all the way to our house?’

  ‘It’s probably still in that bush.’

  ‘We must have lost so many things up here, man. Like that random baseball you had from the charity shop.’

  Wesley remembered it. ‘It was signed by some American player. I really loved it. You dropped it in the mud and rubbed it off.’

  ‘Ah, shit. I don’t remember that.’

  They stood with an empty space between them, and Wesley kept his eyes on the view. Headlights traced familiar roads and cranes blinked red
and white. If his brother had forgotten what used to happen there, Wesley was ready to help him remember.

  ‘What about that time you invited me to come up here with all your friends?’

  Jordan frowned. ‘You came up here with us a few times, didn’t you?’

  ‘Twice,’ said Wesley. ‘I was so excited the first time because I’d been wanting an invite for ages instead of being stuck at home by myself. They were already up here, and soon as we joined them you ordered them all not to speak to me.’

  Beside him, Jordan was silent, though he let out a sharp breath through his nose.

  ‘At first we were all just sitting around, and nobody would even look at me. When we played football, you made sure nobody passed it to me. It was like I didn’t exist. Then you went home and left me here by myself.’

  ‘Come on, I was probably just messing—’

  ‘The second time,’ said Wesley, knowing he wouldn’t be able to stop until he was finished, ‘you had to convince me because I didn’t want the same thing to happen again. You said you had just been messing around, that it was like a test, and I’d passed. So I went with you again.’

  ‘Look—’

  This time Wesley could tell that his brother remembered, and he wanted to make him squirm. He had bottled these memories up for years, and now the cork had popped.

  ‘You put me in a fight against somebody else’s little brother. I didn’t want to do it, but you said I’d embarrass you if I chickened out. All your mates crowded round and I knew I didn’t have a choice. When I lost, you told me I’d let you down and you wished the other boy was your brother.’

  ‘What’s your point?’ said Jordan, rounding on him, feet scraping in the dirt. ‘I did shitty things as a kid. I’m sorry, all right.’

  ‘Why couldn’t you have been kind to me?’ said Wesley, feeling his throat grow thick. He fixed his eyes on the horizon’s lights, tried not to notice how they blurred.

  Jordan laughed sharply. ‘Kind? What makes you think you deserved it?’

  ‘I needed it,’ Wesley said, turning to face his brother, noticing for the first time that they were almost the same height now.

  ‘Nobody was ever kind to me, you don’t see me crying about it.’

  ‘What about Dad?’ Wesley shouted.

  ‘You wanted to know if it was true, what he said about you? I think you’ve just proved it,’ spat Jordan. ‘You really are too soft to be his son.’

  The garage seemed ten times more sinister by night, and the gravel underfoot ten times louder. Kat kept admonishing herself for not wearing a balaclava, each time remembering it would have been pointless.

  ‘A balaclava wrecks your peripheral vision, anyway,’ said Safa. ‘And your hair.’

  They reached the flaking garage door, and Kat pushed its top. It rocked on its rail before the latch caught.

  ‘It’s locked,’ said Safa, who seemed to have a particular passion for stating the obvious.

  The door was old. By leaning enough of her weight on it the bottom opened by a couple of inches before the locking mechanism could stop it. She transferred the pressure to Safa, and then dropped to her knees, snaking an arm into the gap. Paint and dust lodged in her fingernails. The mechanism was old, little more than a rusty latch, and a few hard tugs dislodged it.

  ‘Kat burglar,’ whispered Safa.

  Kat answered with a regal bow.

  Inside, everything was as it had been just a few hours before, the old car blocking the shelves at the far end of the space. Kat slipped around it and checked the shelves quickly for anything she might have missed earlier, but there was nothing significant.

  ‘This is the bad guys’ lair?’ said Safa, swiping dust from the roof of the car.

  On the walk over, Kat had told her everything she knew about their plot. Safa hadn’t seemed to care too much about foiling Nazi terrorists and saving Tinker, but she was very excited about stealing a car.

  ‘All the cars in the world and you want this pile of junk.’

  The key was still in the wheel arch, and Kat held it up triumphantly. ‘If they don’t have the car, they can’t hit anybody with it.’

  Safa shrugged her lip. ‘You don’t have to get involved at all.’

  ‘You said you didn’t fade so you could just mess around,’ said Kat, opening the driver door. ‘If it gives me a chance to stop them, I have to take it.’

  She slipped in behind the wheel, and Safa dropped into the passenger side. The car smelled of cheap deodorant, the kind little boys were told would attract fantasy women.

  ‘Do you know how to drive?’

  ‘I’ve had a lesson.’

  ‘That isn’t at all the same thing.’

  After fumbling the key into the ignition, Kat gripped the steering wheel in both hands. Stealing a car was not something she would usually do, or even think about doing. Maybe that was the point; she was either more herself than ever or not herself at all. The boundaries of her body had blurred. It was time to be boundless.

  Kat fired up the engine. ‘You’d better put on your seatbelt.’

  Safa urgently obeyed, and Kat put her foot down hard.

  The car juddered forward, and stalled. They sat in confused silence for a moment.

  ‘That wasn’t quite as dramatic as I’d hoped,’ said Kat.

  ‘It hasn’t filled me with confidence about this whole endeavour.’

  Again, and this time she did everything a little more gently. The car inched forward and out of the garage, gravel grinding under their wheels.

  The hill and everything around it seemed to recede, and Wesley tried to brace himself against the shaking in his legs as he squared up to his brother.

  ‘I want you to apologise.’

  Jordan choked out a laugh. ‘For what?’

  For pretending he didn’t exist. For letting his friends beat him up. For making him feel worthless and running out on them when they needed him most.

  ‘For everything,’ he said.

  Jordan kicked at a chunk of tree branch, sending it tumbling down the slope and into darkness. ‘You can’t go through life expecting apologies, Wes.’

  ‘You left us,’ said Wesley. ‘Do you know how difficult it was after you were gone?’

  ‘It’s not as simple as that.’

  ‘It seems pretty simple to me.’

  Jordan lifted a hand, as if trying to dredge up the right words. Then he growled with frustration and wheeled away towards the trees, swinging his arms at the air as if fighting invisible enemies.

  ‘You think it’s fair I was expected to support my family when I was still at school?’ he said. ‘I had to work every night to bring money home, and it still wasn’t enough! I wanted to get my exams and see what I could do with myself, but there was no chance. It was too much pressure.’

  ‘But that’s how it was, and you still left,’ said Wesley, holding his voice steady. ‘You knew you were leaving that same pressure on me.’

  Jordan turned back towards him, arms now hanging limp at his sides. ‘So you should know how it feels.’

  ‘Apologise, or I can’t let you come back.’

  ‘What are you going to do to stop me?’

  Wesley’s punch caught his brother above the eye, a wide swing that landed with a dull thud and sent pain careening up his arm. Hardly flinching, Jordan replied by digging a fist into Wesley’s stomach, doubling him over. As he staggered away, gasping for breath, his brother walked him down.

  ‘You want me to say it’s all my fault?’

  There was no air in his lungs to form the words, but Wesley forced himself to nod. Jordan answered by kicking him in the side, knocking him over into the dirt.

  ‘Just tell me one thing,’ said his brother. ‘Instead of blaming me, why don’t you blame Dad for anything? If it’s anybody’s fault, it’s his.’

  ‘At least he cared about you,’ Wesley gasped.

  Their eyes met. Jordan lifted a foot to kick him again, and Wesley braced himself. The blow never
came, his brother pulling out of it at the last moment.

  ‘If only you knew,’ he said. ‘Go.’

  Wesley climbed to his feet. ‘You can’t just—’

  ‘Get out of here before I kick the shit out of you!’

  Pain throbbed in his stomach and reached tendrils out into his body with every step. Back down the hill and onto the road. It was nothing compared to the shame that came crashing into his mind, like a wave breaking on rocks. He had sworn he would stop Jordan from hurting them again, and instead he had ended up in the dirt.

  As he hurried past a row of local shops that were closed for the night, he knew he should head home, work out what his next move would be. Instead his feet led him somewhere else, and before he knew it he saw the McDonald’s sign glowing in the night.

  Before he could turn into the car park, hands grabbed him from behind and slammed him into a shop’s metal shutter.

  ‘I told you he hangs out here.’

  ‘We’ve been looking for you.’

  Blocking any route of escape, Luke and Justin took down their hoods.

  18

  Collision Course

  Kat imagined that some people, caught in the throes of youthful rebellion, would find themselves transformed into a rally driver as soon as they took control of a car, regardless of previous driving experience and the panic gnashing in their chest. They probably wouldn’t lose all sense of coordination and be forced to use the kerbs on either side of the road like children’s rails at a bowling alley.

  ‘Watch out for that post!’ shrieked Safa, and Kat wrenched the steering wheel, bumping up onto the pavement.

  ‘Rock, rock, rock!’

  Some kind of malformed decorative stone loomed in the headlights and Kat managed to swerve around it with all the elegance of butter in a hot pan.

  If video games had taught her anything (and as much as she loved them she really hoped they hadn’t) it was that driving recklessly should summon half the city’s police force into her rear-view mirror, send pedestrians swearing and screaming, and ultimately see the car catch fire for no apparent reason. Luckily the streets were largely quiet, the only onlookers a couple of guys safe on the opposite pavement who whipped around at the sound of groaning suspension, but hardly seemed to see the car at all.