by Claire Zorn
‘Ah, my faithful pupils,’ Effrez said.
‘Sir.’
‘What are you doing in here? Bell hasn’t gone yet.’
‘It’s raining, sir,’ Lokey replied.
‘That it is. You don’t appear to have defaced anything, so I’ll let it slide. How are you going with Heart of Darkness, Mr Findlay Heath?’ He put his briefcase on the desk and unwound his scarf from his neck. He actually managed to wear a scarf and look more like a poet than a wanker. He was a mixture of Professor Snape from Harry Potter and Badger from The Wind in the Willows. Other than taking our class for homeroom, he refused to teach anything other than senior English.
‘Good, sir,’ I replied. I’d read four pages.
‘Excellent. You know that the essay is due in a week. I’ll be interested to hear your thoughts.’
So would I.
The bell rang and students filed into the room. Effrez leaned on the front of his desk and watched everyone take their seats. He didn’t have to call for quiet.
‘And how are we all today?’
The tone was more menacing than conversational. Effrez folded his arms, eyes scanning the class as if looking for prey.
‘All looking very relaxed, aren’t we? Anyone got any idea what is happening out there?’ He gestured toward the windows. ‘You know, out in the world? Out there beyond Facebook and your smart phone and whatever reality television show they happen to be spoon-feeding you these days?’
No one made a sound. It was safest not to when Effrez was having one of his ‘episodes’. Morning announcements began to crackle through the intercom but he turned the volume down. Then he smiled and sat in his chair as if he was about to tell us a nursery story.
‘Did you know, dear pupils, that there are two countries out there – neighbours – who don’t like each other very much? They both like to puff out their chests and show how big and tough they are. Well, one of them has some special missiles, not very nice ones, and they are going to test them. It would be nice to think that our government, good honest folk that they are, would put their hand up and say that Australia will impose sanctions unless the tests are abandoned. But they won’t. Don’t want to jeopardise all those big trade dollars, do they? Have any of you heard about this?’
Half the class raised their hands tentatively.
‘Well, that’s better than none. Assuming you’re being honest. I suggest the rest of you pull your heads out of your arses.’ Mr Effrez walked to the door and shut it. ‘And who is going to the march tomorrow? Come on.’
Nobody moved.
‘WHO IS GOING TO THE PROTEST?’
The class shuddered.
‘Have I taught you nothing? If you have anything vaguely resembling a spine, you will go. I want to be asked why none of my pupils were in class. If I hear any of you are at school tomorrow, I will be bitterly disappointed.’
He strolled back to the window, hands in his coat pockets.
‘Not everyone’s as relaxed as you lot about all this. There’s a group of activists building a self-sustaining settlement – complete with underground water-table access – outside the city. They believe that climate change is going to cripple our resources, either global warming, or more terrifying, nuclear winter if there is a full-scale nuclear war, which there may well be. Any of you heard about these people?’
Lokey raised his hand.
‘Mr Loke? Wonders will never cease.’
‘Saw it on Today Tonight, sir. My dad said they’re a bunch of commie hippies.’
‘Did he now? Do you even know what a commie is, Alexander?’
Lokey grinned. ‘Someone who drives a Kombi van, sir?’
‘Ahhh, very amusing. I’d rather be with a bunch of commie hippies than rely on our government if it were a matter of life or death.’
The bell sounded.
‘So,’ said Mr Effrez. ‘To conclude, tomorrow, come to the march. Don’t just bugger off to Westfield.’
I spotted Lucy in the corridor. She smiled and walked over.
‘What did your class do?’ she asked. ‘I could hear Effrez through the wall.’
‘He wants us to wag tomorrow,’ Lokey said.
‘No kidding?’ She looked at me. ‘I’m not the only one, then.’
‘He’s a freakin’ nut job,’ Lokey said. ‘Talking about some hippies starting a freakin’ commune.’
Lucy looked puzzled.
‘It’s not important. You coming to bio?’
‘Unless it’s been cancelled. We live in hope.’
At recess Lokey and I went to our usual spot behind the science block with some other guys. Our group had semi-merged with Lucy’s, but I didn’t sit with her, trying again to play it cool. I saw her briefly in the corridor after third period and she winked at me, which I definitely didn’t handle as coolly as I would have liked. I went to English, where I bluffed my way through a conversation about Heart of Darkness before spending the rest of the period reading an article on climate change that Effrez had photocopied out of The Monthly magazine. (He was introducing us to investigative journalism, something I’m pretty sure wasn’t part of the syllabus.) After English was modern history where I sat next to Lucy and didn’t learn a thing I was so bloody distracted.
By lunch the rain had cleared and I kicked a ball with a few guys until we were booted off the basketball court. We all went down the bottom of the oval and dumped our bags at the edge of the bush. Then we noticed Mr Effrez leaning against a tree further in the scrub, he was looking out over the valley and smoking a cigar. As we sat down he slowly turned around.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said gravely.
‘Sir.’
Effrez flicked his scarf over his shoulder and strolled over.
‘I’m fairly certain this area is considered out of bounds,’ he said.
‘Would you be more comfortable if we were smoking cigars, sir?’
‘Slightly. I should give you each a detention.’
‘Except you’re down here smoking a cigar, sir,’ Lokey said.
‘Except I know that another detention for you, Mr Loke, and you’ll be up for a suspension. Don’t see why you should get a holiday.’
‘Looking out for us, sir?’
‘Always. You did an excellent job in class today, Mr Heath, bluffed your way through an entire conversation.’
I wasn’t sure whether to thank him or apologise.
‘Interesting how as soon as a book becomes mandatory reading no one wants to read it. You do read though, don’t you, Fin?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What was the last thing you read?’
‘The Road, sir. Cormac—’
‘McCarthy. Excellent. Read Heart of Darkness, Mr Heath. Read it in light of McCarthy’s work. McCarthy, like most of us, owes a great deal to Joseph Conrad.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good. Will you gentleman all be attending the protest march tomorrow?’
Lokey pushed the toe of his sneaker through the dirt.
‘Don’t see the point, sir. It’s got nothing to do with us. If they want to blow each other up that’s their business.’
The bell rang. Mr Effrez stubbed the end of his cigar against a tree trunk. He took a small metal box from his pocket and placed the cigar end inside it. He turned and started walking back toward the school. Then he stopped and looked at Lokey over his shoulder.
‘I dare say it’ll be your business, Mr Loke. You can trust me on that.’
Two
The guy with the gun is screaming now. He’s saying something about Max again. He grabs a handful of my hair and wrenches my head back. His mouth is next to my ear, his breath tobacco-drenched and foul. My eyes try to focus in the dark, but all I can make out is the pattern of the brick wall in front of my face.
I found Lucy in the corrido
r after last period. She was standing with two of her friends. They looked me up and down in that way girls do; I must have passed their examination because they relinquished her.
‘Do you still want to go to the library? Or do you just wanna go home?’ I tried to sound like I was completely neutral.
She grinned. ‘You really think I’m going to give up that easy? There’s no way you’re beating me on this essay, Findlay. Your arse is mine.’
I swallowed.
The school library was empty except for a few other seniors. The librarian gave Lucy and me a warning look, as if she suspected us of using the reference section for purposes other than research (I wish). We actually got more work done than I was expecting. Lucy was a good influence. After we were done photocopying, Lucy started to pack away her things and I thought that maybe it was going to be nothing more than a study session. Maybe I had imagined this thing between her and me and she really was way out of my league. Maybe I was just a curiosity to her. Maybe she was just toying with me; practising for someone more popular. We’d been friends ever since that first modern history lesson. Maybe what I saw as flirting she saw as a way to ease her boredom. She laughed at my jokes. That was a good sign, wasn’t it?
‘So, Findlay, tell me. What do you like to draw, I mean, besides people you are stalking, of course.’
‘Of course. Um, people mostly. At the moment it’s usually people with, like random things.’
‘Random things?’
‘Objects that they are kind of linked to, in my head, in an abstract way. But, um, I like to play with the scale, so I did a drawing of my mum sitting next to an alarm clock, but the alarm clock was bigger than her. It sounds really dumb when I say it like that. But I think if you met her you’d understand. I did another one of her with a massive empty birdcage. With one of those mirrors that people put inside them, for birds to look at themselves or whatever. I did that one after she left. So, you know, paging Dr Freud.’
‘Your mum left?’
‘Yeah. Two years ago. My brother and I got home and there was all this stuff missing from the house. I thought we’d been robbed, but I couldn’t work out why a burglar would take our kitchen clock. Then I found this letter on the table in the hallway. My dad was supposed to be home earlier that day. He was supposed to find it, not us. But he didn’t come home, so I was the one who found it and I . . . read it. I shouldn’t have. I really wish I hadn’t, but . . .’
‘Shit, Fin.’
‘Yeah. I mean we still see her a lot and stuff, but she made it pretty clear she didn’t want to be at home with us any more.’
Lucy looked at me intently, like she expected me to continue.
‘She was really young when she had us so maybe that has something to do with it . . . She’s really smart, she’s done a lot of study into human behaviour, had some stuff published. She was offered some amazing jobs when we were younger. What I mean is, I think she missed out on a lot, having us so young. And Dad can be a total prick. He stuffed up a fair bit . . .’ I could feel my throat tightening. I hadn’t talked much about this stuff, wasn’t the kind of thing you could really debrief with Lokey.
‘But, to leave? That’s horrible.’
‘Yeah. It’s pretty bad.’
‘I understand about drawing her. I don’t draw, but I play the piano a bit. Write songs.’
I had seen her play. It should be illegal to look that sexy in a school hall.
‘I think it’s how I process things. My sister was quite sick a few years ago. Eating disorder; she nearly died. I wrote a lot of music around then. For me, it’s like I’m not thinking about the thing I’m writing about, not directly anyway. But something clicks over in my head and music comes out and I don’t even know where it comes from. Does that make sense?’
‘Totally. If you asked me to talk about how I feel about stuff, I can’t. But I can draw it.’
As she looked at me I could feel her gaze reaching right inside of me. Like she could see into the tunnels of my mind that no one had ever seen before. She didn’t speak. I inhaled slowly, trying to get the balls to do what I wanted to do. I leaned toward her, testing a little to see if she would shift away. She didn’t.
My phone rang, shrill in the quiet of the library. I grabbed it. Mum. I blocked the call. It rang again.
‘Jealous girlfriend?’ asked Lucy.
‘Yeah. Sorry, I better get this.’
‘It’s your mum, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah.’
She laughed. I gave her the finger and answered the phone.
‘Fin?’ Mum was panicked. I could tell from the pitch of her voice. It wasn’t an unfamiliar sound.
‘Yeah, Mum. Who else would it be?’ I rolled my eyes at Lucy.
‘Where are you?’
‘School. The library.’
‘Have you seen the news?’
‘What? No. What’s wrong?’
‘God, Fin. Get home. Where’s Max?’
‘I don’t know. What’s wrong, Mum? Would you just chill for a minute?’
‘Fin, go to the supermarket, get as much non- perishable food as you can carry. And water. Get water—’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘The missiles, Fin. Something’s gone wrong, very wrong. We don’t know much, but it looks as though regions in the north of Asia have been hit as well as the Gobi Desert. Word is it’s a nuclear test gone wrong, but it might have been deliberate. We don’t know––’
She dropped out.
‘Mum?’
‘Fin? Can you hear me?’
The line crackled. ‘Just,’ I answered.
‘I’ve tried to get on to your dad but I can’t. I can’t get Max either. I want you both at home as soon as possible, but you need to get food and water, Fin, understand?’
Lucy was making faces at me, trying to make me laugh.
‘Yeah, Mum. It’s cool, it’ll be fine.’
‘Call me when you get home, promise.’
‘Yes, Mum.’
I hung up. Lucy frowned.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I think we should go.’
‘Sure, you know we could grab a coffee—’
‘No—’
The wail of a siren sounded over the loudspeakers: the evacuation alarm. It was usually reserved for bushfires. An announcement followed, it told anyone who was still on the school premises to go to the quadrangle immediately.
‘What’s happened?’ Lucy asked.
I told her what my mum had told me.
‘We should go to the quad,’ Lucy said.
‘No, I reckon we should get out of here. Go into town, get food. Get a bus from there.’
We shoved our stuff into our bags and left the library, ducking down a side path that led behind the science blocks. Soon we were on the driveway and then out onto the main road.
By the time we got into town the sky had changed. It was like the sun was being choked with thick orange dust. The sky glowed, throbbing with colour, but it was like it had swallowed up all the sunlight. Everything beneath the sky – the streets and buildings – was monotone. People were standing out on the street looking up, like they expected to see Godzilla crash through the streetscape.
‘Oh my God,’ Lucy whispered.
We looked up, absorbed by it. It was beautiful – and wrong.
Lucy tried to call her mum but couldn’t get through. She tried again and again. I could see her bottom lip starting to tremble. She put her phone away and took my hand.
We went to the big supermarket near the highway. The aisles were already half empty. Mute, we both grabbed trolleys and filled them with whatever was left. Baked beans in barbecue sauce, canned sausages, creamed corn, canned baby carrots, as much bottled water as we could carry home.
We carried the shopping bags up
to the bus stop.
‘It’ll be okay,’ I said, even though I had absolutely nothing to base that on.
I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Lucy was distracted and she twisted a strand of hair around and around her pinkie. When the bus came we got on and I sat next to her. I wanted the trip to be over because I felt awkward, like I was failing. But at the same time I didn’t want the afternoon to end. The sky was weighed down with colour and light and under any other circumstances it would have been romantic. We didn’t say anything the whole way. The bus reached our stop and we both got off.
‘Can I help you carry some of your stuff?’
‘No, it’s okay, it’s fine.’
‘Really, it’s no problem.’ I held out my hand. She gave me one of her grocery bags to carry. We walked across the road and down the street a bit to Lucy’s house. I followed her up to the porch and waited while she unlocked the door. I handed her the grocery bag.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘I’ll call you, okay?’
‘Bye, Fin.’ She leaned over and kissed my cheek. I watched her go inside and disappear from my life.
Three
I dropped my keys twice trying to open my front door. When I got inside I dumped the shopping bags and called my brother’s name. There were no signs of life. I went through to the living room and there he was, game console in his hands, eyes on the TV screen.
‘Max, why didn’t you answer the phone? Mum’s been trying to call you . . . Max?’
His eyes didn’t leave the screen. I took the controller from his hands.
‘What are you doing? Fin! You dickhead! I’d almost finished level seven!’
‘Haven’t you seen outside?’
‘What?’ He went to the window. His eyes widened. ‘Whoa. Cool!’
‘Not cool, Max. Definitely not cool.’
A thin woman with too much make-up told us that the nuclear missiles had been launched around four pm, Australian time. The woman looked out at us from the television screen and told us that it was unclear what had gone wrong. She crossed to a concerned-looking man who said that firestorms from the blasts would have incinerated cities and wilderness areas. According to scientific modelling it would be a matter of days before clouds of dust and ash choked the atmosphere and, as a result, the temperature would begin to drop. He made cheery predictions about infrastructure collapse, crop shortages and global famine.