Silence seemed to be looking for something, or someone. He veered off through a brick arch and into a park. Not just any old park—there the trees were massive and ancient. They blocked out the buildings and I could barely see the sky. Beyond the canopy, pieces of blue like a broken puzzle and the sound of bickering birds. It was like finding the Secret Garden in the middle of a desert.
Silence stripped a handful of birch seeds and crushed them in his hand. He threw them up into the sky and they coasted on the breeze like a swarm of insects.
“Where are we going?”
He pointed to a glasshouse.
“What’s in there?”
He cupped his hands together and made a movement like a fish.
“We’re going fishing?”
He snorted and shot off, weaving through trees and shrubs, taking paths that looked like they weren’t often taken.
When I got to the glasshouse, he was already there, sitting on the edge of a circular bricked pond. The water was dark green and murky. Silence bent over and dipped the tip of his nose into the water. I watched him as hundreds of tiny fish swarmed beneath his reflection, nibbling at him. His teeth flashed white, he laughed, his breath dimpled the surface and they darted away.
“I like it here,” I said.
He jumped, like he’d forgotten I was there.
Me too.
Then his mind came back from a faraway place. His mouth was tight and he walked out of the glasshouse, his hands deep in his pockets. That resolute walk, like he was late for an appointment.
I ran to catch up. We passed a small lake. Turtles bobbed at the edges and a one-legged heron perched on a rock. There was a kiosk and tables with red-and-white-striped umbrellas. Thirty or so Japanese tourists vied for a place in the line, long-lens cameras swinging from their shoulders.
Silence moved into the line.
I waited at one of the tables and pulled out the photo. I stared at the man with his arm around Vivienne’s shoulder. It reminded me that I was there for a reason—to find him. If he wanted to be found. If he didn’t, it would be another dead end and a new beginning for me.
Part of me wanted to go back to the last place I was happy—before Vivienne got sick—a little town up north. A friendly street, a sun-soaked place where nobody stared at my bare feet and tangled hair. I went to the local high school and started twelfth grade, even though technically I hadn’t finished eleventh before we left the last town.
Silence was having a conversation with one of the tourists, moving his hands in a language of his own. He pulled his hood away from his hair and mussed the front.
A woman laughed. She touched his hair. She nodded and bowed and said, “Yes, yes! You have photo? Yes?”
Silence seemed embarrassed. No, no.
The woman pointed at him and some of the others smiled and raised their cameras. She put her arm around his shoulder.
I saw how still he was. Lines of concentration on his forehead.
He moved away from her.
No, no, he waved his hand. Abruptly, Silence left the line.
I knew that look already. That casual swagger. I stood and put the photo back in my pocket.
The Japanese tourist who had found Silence so engaging was at the front of the line. She was digging in her bag. I knew her hand would come up empty.
Silence kept moving toward me.
I met him halfway.
As he fumbled and tried to shove the purse down the front of his jeans, I grabbed it and hid it behind my back. I moved smoothly into the line.
The woman wailed and spat rapid-fire Japanese. She turned and pointed at Silence.
He was frozen, probably torn between saving himself and waiting for me. That moment of hesitation was his downfall; a tour-bus driver in khaki shorts grabbed him by the shoulder and pinned him there. Silence wriggled and twisted but the driver had him by his hoodie.
“Is this yours?” I stooped and pretended to pick up the purse. “You must have dropped it.”
The woman put her arm down. She took the purse and bowed, red-faced.
The driver let Silence go.
Silence milked it. He tugged his hoodie back into place and scowled.
“Sorry, mate,” the driver said. “Lots of purse snatchings lately.”
I stood, incredulous, as the Japanese woman pressed a ten-dollar bill into my palm. She peeled off another and handed it to Silence. He bowed. She bowed back. The two of them looked like a couple of bobbing birds.
I grabbed Silence’s hand and pulled him away. We sat on a flight of cold stone steps overlooking a water fountain.
Silence’s ears were pink and he wouldn’t look at me.
“That was stupid,” I said. “How many times a day do you do that?”
He held up three fingers, then flicked up a fourth.
“And is that what you call work?”
Yes.
“Is that what the others call work, too?”
Some.
“It’s theft, is what it is. What if you took that poor woman’s passport and she couldn’t go home? What happens if you steal a man’s wallet and his kids can’t eat?”
Silence let his shoulders drop. He looked down at his feet.
“Aren’t you scared of getting caught?” My voice was shrill. “Why do you do this?”
He shrugged again. He pulled out his notebook and wrote: I need to make $200 a week.
“For what? To live?”
To stay.
Silence jerked to his feet and beckoned me to follow. We traipsed along a sawdust pathway between rows of shedding plane trees, through an archway draped with vines, and into a clearing. He pushed his way through a cluster of bamboo stalks and stooped to prise open a green box that looked like an old water meter. The lid flipped open and he stood there, shamefaced.
There was a graveyard of wallets and purses scattered in the bottom of the pit.
I sucked in my breath, then let it out with a whistle. “You’re pretty good at this,” I said. “You’re the Artful friggin’ Dodger, reincarnated.”
Silence frowned. I think he knew it wasn’t meant to be a compliment.
“If you need money, I’ll give you what I have. You can’t keep doing this. How old are you, anyway?”
He gave me three bunches of fives.
“You’ll have to find another way to make a living. First this, then you’ll graduate to home invasions and muggings.”
Silence looked mortified. He put the lid back on the box and dusted off his hands.
“How do we get out of here? I’m hungry.” I changed the subject because all those lost things made me feel unbearably sad.
Silence took me to a takeout place in a dirty street full of bars with blacked-out windows. Sandwich boards advertised happy hours and silhouettes of female bodies promised good times. We ate greasy kebabs on a park bench and watched men come and go through the curtained doorways.
“Do you know where I can find the university?” I asked. “There’s somebody I need to check out.”
Silence nodded. He pointed to his watch and showed me that it was nearly six. He wiped his chin and stood up.
“Do we need to go? Back to the house?” I said. There was a seesawing sensation in my belly.
Induction. The word sounded like it described the process of sucking-dry, like dragging the dregs of a milk shake through a straw. Some words just don’t match their meaning at all.
“Okay. I’m ready,” I lied and bit my lip.
You could say one thing, and mean something else.
CHAPTER SIX
RATS. ANOTHER THING THAT GAVE me the pinprick terrors. We passed through the trapdoor. On both sides, lumpy bodies scurried along the fence line between the houses. The fig tree was alive with dark, writhing shapes and high-pitched squeaks.
Silence picked up an apple core and buzzed it at the fence. A few seconds of stillness, then the rats resumed their dusk raid as if we weren’t even there. My teeth ground and I squeezed his hand a
s we made our way along the flattened path through the weeds.
Darcy let us in. She stood back and watched me without expression as I lost my balance and landed hard on the concrete floor. When Silence offered his hand she sighed and flounced up the stairs.
“She hates me,” I said as I wiped off my backside.
Silence snapped his hand open and shut—yap yap yap—which I took to mean that Darcy hated everybody.
I was the center of my mother’s world for sixteen years. It was a strange feeling, that someone I barely knew could dish out dislike based on a badly timed giggle. It made me wonder whether my opinion of myself was wrong. Vivienne protested too much sometimes. She told me she loved me enough for two, that fathers were overrated. She kept me close, even closer when she was out of love. Was I in fact deserving of dislike? How could I measure my own character with only one reference?
I resolved to be nicer to Darcy with the see-through skin.
Silence led me into the kitchen. Crates were lined up around the table but there was nobody there. Coke sat flat in plastic cups, swimming with cigarette butts. Cold chips—just the overcooked and greenish ones—were lying on a sheet of butcher’s paper. It seemed as if there had been a meeting, abandoned.
Silence scraped together a handful of chips and shoved them into his mouth.
“Where is everybody?” I asked.
He pointed up.
“What’s up there?”
Attic, Silence whispered. The word seemed to stick in his throat. He cleared it. The effort made him cough and even that sounded like someone had turned his volume down. After a minute of breathless hacking and hocking into the sink, his face was pale. He collapsed onto the floor, his chest an over-inflated balloon. I heard his lungs crackle.
I patted him on the back. “Should I get someone? Tell me what to do.” Don’t die, don’t die on me, kid. I wanted to run for help but my feet felt like they were fused to the floor.
“He needs his inhaler,” an Aboriginal girl said from the doorway. “I’ll get it.” She disappeared up the staircase. When she came back, she held a small, blue canister to Silence’s lips and cupped the back of his neck.
He inhaled the mist. Within seconds, his breathing steadied and he leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes.
“I’m Bree,” the girl said. She had short, curly black hair, a dimpled white smile that took up most of her face. Bottomless eyes. She grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “Relax, will you? He’ll be fine in a few minutes. It happens all the time. Asthma.”
Her accent was warm and familiar, her voice gravelly. Her words rolled over each other like marbles in a cup.
“Do you need more?” she asked Silence.
He pushed her hands away.
“Dust sets him off,” she said to me. “Are you ready? Come on, everyone’s upstairs.”
I thought about what Carrie said. Pledge. Allegiance. Sacrifice. Virgin. Well, maybe not the virgin part, but the other things sounded serious and binding. And what I needed then was not to be bound, not by anything, especially people.
“Arden said you were small,” Bree said and started up the stairs.
Silence followed. He looked back at me standing by the sink and raised his eyebrows.
I shook my head. “I should go.”
“It’s dark,” Bree said and kept walking. “Come on. I brought rum. Carrie’s got vodka and pretzels.”
Silence clapped.
Pretzels. Pretzels were harmless enough.
The attic space was cavernous, echoing. We entered through a square in the ceiling after climbing a rickety ladder that groaned and flexed under our weight. The windows were blacked out and a sloping roof touched the top of my head in places. The light from two candles drew looming shadows on the walls.
They sat on the floor in a semicircle.
Arden wore a trench coat that spread like a dark pool around her. Cigarette smoke drifted in a halo around her face. She handed the butt to Malik and he crushed it on the sole of his boot.
“Here she is.” Arden smiled.
Joe added to a chain of pretzels by biting the corner off one and linking it to the next.
Carrie gave me a fang-toothed smile and slapped the empty space next to her. She offered me a bottle of vodka and lemon, but I shook my head.
Silence sucked another blast from his inhaler.
“Sit,” Arden said. “Are you okay?” she asked Silence.
“He got wheezy,” Bree said. She opened a twist-top bottle with her teeth, chugged and swallowed. “He’s better now.”
Darcy shuffled to close the space between her and Carrie.
Carrie jabbed Darcy with her elbow.
I sat next to a young boy with long hair the color of rain-soaked wheat and shifty eyes that rolled and flicked from side to side. His fingers were bitten and raw, swollen around the nails, like burst sausages. He looked about nine or ten.
“AiAi,” Arden said and reached across to tousle his hair. Aye-aye. “He’s the baby of the family. Who else have you met? Joe? Carrie? Darcy, our little ray of sunshine?”
Carrie snorted. She was so big she couldn’t cross her legs properly and her chin touched her chest.
Joe and I nodded to each other. He offered the bag of pretzels.
“We don’t need her,” Darcy said. “The group’s getting too big. We’ll get found if we get too big. If they find me they’ll take me back.”
Arden looked over at Darcy.
The girl shrank.
Arden turned her laser-stare to me. “So, tell us about you. Where are you from? And what have you done?”
“I haven’t done anything,” I stammered. “I’m from the country . . . ”
“Everybody’s done something, country girl.” She lit another cigarette and lazily pulled a flick-knife out of her boot. She flipped it open and sliced a ragged tip from her fingernail. “I know it. We all know it.” She waited. The tip of the knife was pointed in my direction.
Dread made my arms tingle. “I ran away,” was all I gave her.
Her laughter was short. “We’re all running.” She sighed. “There’s something you need to understand about us. We’re not a gang. We’re family.”
Family. The word struck like a gong.
“There are rules we follow so that we can stay together,” she continued. “Some of us are listed as missing persons and that means there are people looking for us. Who’s looking for you? Are you missing?”
“Nobody.” I wasn’t missed.
“Well, you’re lucky. If you want to stay, you need to keep our secrets. Can you keep other people’s secrets, Friday?” Her eyes glittered.
“Yes.”
“AiAi here has a junkie for a mother. He’s had so many broken bones he rattles when he walks. He’s got one leg shorter than the other and he’s missing more teeth than he’s got left. Did Silence tell you why he can’t speak?”
“No.”
“His father stood on his throat. In boots. For a long time. And Carrie pretends she’s a vampire dyke to keep the . . . ”
“Stop,” Carrie said in a hoarse voice. “She gets the picture. We’re all really fucked up.”
“Speak for yourself,” Darcy said.
“Yeah? Hey, Darce, tell us how you earn your keep,” Carrie hissed.
“I earn more than you do . . . ”
“Dysfunction is the new black.” Joe smirked.
Arden held up her hand and their bickering stopped. “Here’s the deal. We all contribute two hundred dollars a week to the family budget. We don’t care how you get it. Nobody will judge you. That money is looked after by me”—she pointed to Malik—“and him. You feed yourself during the day and we meet back here every night at six for dinner. We watch each other’s backs. We are invisible. We’re quiet and we don’t get caught.”
“I got caught,” AiAi said.
Arden smacked him on the top of his head and his mouth snapped shut.
“What happens with the money?” I as
ked.
Arden frowned. “Expenses. If you need a doctor, stuff like that. It’s for our future.”
AiAi said, “Tell her about the place, Arden.”
Arden ignored him. “So, can you keep our secrets, Friday?”
Silence grabbed my hand and squeezed it.
Carrie’s eyes were dark with something unsaid and Darcy stared at a crack in the floorboards.
Bree closed one eye and looked into her empty bottle. She turned it as if it was a kaleidoscope.
Only Joe nodded and smiled encouragement.
“I can’t stay long,” I said. “I need to find my father.” It felt like a lie as it left my lips.
Arden pounced. “I thought you said nobody was looking for you.”
“He’s not looking. I’m looking. He doesn’t know I exist.”
“Then why do you want to find him? Look, we have a good life here. Nobody tells us what to do or when to do it. It’s perfect.”
It sounded perfect. So why did I feel like somebody had walked through my web, like all the strands of my life were just floating in the breeze? It seemed wiser to hole up in a hotel until my money was gone or until I found a new beginning, whichever happened first. I could at least sleep in a real bed and live by my own rules.
Silence timed his beseeching look perfectly.
My resolve slipped. “Maybe I could just stay for a while. If that’s okay with everyone, I mean. I have enough money for a couple of weeks.” I looked around. “Just until I can sort out something else.”
Arden glanced at Malik.
Darcy got up and flounced off.
Malik shrugged as if he didn’t care but his eyes were blinking like a camera shutter on high-speed. I sensed violence curled up inside him, waiting for a nudge. I couldn’t erase the image of him lying with Arden on the bed. He made me squirm, even though he was perfect, aesthetically—built like a fireman on a calendar. His expression was indifferent but he was wound tight.
More rapid, reptilian blinks. He twisted one of Arden’s dreadlocks around his finger and brushed the end over his chin stubble. He looked straight through me.
CHAPTER SEVEN
WHEN ARDEN DISMISSED US ALL like children at nine o’clock, I discovered that Darcy had made up my bed with a blanket and pillow. My backpack was lying next to the mattress and a corner of the blanket had been turned down. This unexpected kindness left me confused but grateful. I climbed in and waited for my body heat to build up, but the cold kept getting colder and my toes went numb inside my socks.
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