Outside In

by Sarah Ellis

  Shakti got very animated when Lynn described the cottage. She took over the story.

  “Off the grid. That’s wonderful. Like Pilgrim Farm up in the Kootenays. We were off the grid. It was so empowering. No ownership, no competition.” Blah, blah, etcetera, blah.

  Lynn forged on to the end. “… and then we went back to the cottage and went skim-boarding on the top of the reservoir.”

  When it was over, Shakti rushed on with her enthusiastic approval.

  “You know, this could be the answer. The model. Small family-like pods. Gleaners. Tiny ecological footprint. Living lightly on the earth. Urban wilderness dwellers.”

  Lynn felt the familiar worm of worry, the worry of Shakti’s enthusiasms.

  What had she done?

  “Shakti! Listen. If their secret gets out it could destroy their family. They trust me.”

  “Of course, of course. I understand. But, Lynn, from now on you have to tell me where you are. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  “Will you tell this Blossom that I know about her?”

  “I don’t know. Yes. But not right away. I have to think about it first. Shall I go get Jean?”

  “Sure. No, hang on. Let’s take a look at the video again, now that I know who’s who.”

  Shakti brought up the site and together, quietly, they watched the plunging boy.

  “Wow. That must get the day off to an exhilarating start, jumping off a twenty-story building.”

  It was like a peace offering.

  “Thinking of trying it?”

  Shakti smiled and punched the air. “Yes! But I guess I’d need to work up to it. Maybe tomorrow I’ll jump off a can of soup. No, that might be too much. Make it a can of tuna.”

  Lynn retrieved Jean.

  “All sorted?”

  Shakti nodded. “We’re good.”

  As Jean said her goodbyes at the door, hugs all around, something in Lynn relaxed and slid into tune.

  Harmony lasted as long as it took Lynn to check her messages. There were several from Celia, saying she should phone Kas, that she should phone Kas right away, had she phoned Kas yet?

  There was one message from Kas.

  Whatever shit you’re pulling with Shakti leave me out of it. Don’t bother to reply.

  FOURTEEN

  Shoot End Up

  “Look. It’s obvious that you’ve found friends you like better than us.” Kas slammed her locker open.

  “It’s not that.”

  “What, then? You make up some lie about staying at my place. You don’t warn me. Then you turn up in some video with some mystery people and you won’t tell me or Celia who they are.”

  “Kas, I’ve told you. I’m sorry about the sleepover thing. Really. There are no friends better then you. Never. On that other thing you just have to trust me.”

  “Trust?” Kas kicked her locker shut. “How about you trust us for a change?”

  The rest of the day at school had a black hole in it. Whenever Lynn caught sight of Kas she was glaring. Celia looked like she was going to burst into tears.

  Why were they making things so complicated just because she had a friend who was not their friend? It wasn’t that she liked Blossom better. Well, at the moment she did actually like Blossom better. But that was just because Kas was being so difficult.

  At the end of the day Lynn went home, checking in with Shakti as agreed in the new obedient-daughter protocol. She kicked around her room, tried to concentrate on the French skit, complained to Kapok, who understood her position completely, ate too many cookies and finally admitted that she needed to see Blossom.

  “Going to the cottage,” she called out as she went out the door. “Back by seven.”

  She encountered Blossom and Larch on the path circling the reservoir. Blossom grinned and waved, Larch smiled at the ground, and Artdog danced on his hind legs.

  “You’re just in time,” said Blossom.

  “We’re going to the garden,” said Larch. “Gordon is going to be there. The visitor can come.”

  ≈≈≈

  The garden was on an empty lot between two houses, a fenced-in area with tidy rows, compost boxes, a shed, some twig chairs. A small maple tree glowed fresh green in the corner. Base-jumping squirrels ran barber poles around its trunk.

  “Look,” said Larch, pointing to a pile of straw. “That’s different from before.”

  “Who owns this?” asked Lynn.

  “Nobody,” said Blossom. “At least, I don’t think so. Maybe Gordon does. He’s the one who gets it organized. He got the people in charge to put in a tap for water and every so often he gets a load of good dirt or some seeds or plants for free. Even though he’s a citizen he knows about finding and trading. Hey! Here he comes.”

  A motorcycle pulled up alongside the fence, and a young man in a suit dismounted and pulled off his helmet. He held up a paper bag and did a little happy dance.

  “Larch! Dude! Cool tie! Get a load of this! A bulb bonanza! Blossom! Good to see you. Artdog! Handsome as always. And who’s this?”

  “I’m Lynn.”

  “Lynn!” He pointed his finger pistol style and made a toc noise with his tongue. “Now, you look like the kind of woman who can handle a dibber.”

  Gordon’s device rang. He barked into it. “So. Scan the stats.” He slid the device back into his pocket. “Toronto office has screwed up again. Typical! Okay, getaloada this. We got calla lilies! You up for it, Larch man?

  Larch nodded. “Larch is up for it.”

  “Okay, this whole area here. Three bulbs deep. Plant ’em in groups.”

  Larch frowned. “How many is a group?”

  “Oh, right. Exact as always, eh, dude! They could use you in the Toronto office. Let’s say five to a group. Shoot end up.” He pulled a pencil out of his briefcase. “Then a sprinkle of bone meal. It’s in the shed. Then water. One group every two pencils apart. Oh, and hey. I’ve got something else for you, dude. You’re going to love it. Here it is.” He extracted a card from his pocket. “What do dogs say in other languages? In Danish: vov-vov. In French: ouah-ouah. In Japanese: kian kian. There’s a bunch more here.”

  His pocket rang. “Okay. Gotta run. Catch you later!” He frisbeed the card at Larch and vaulted over the fence. The motorcycle popped into life and peeled away.

  Lynn and Blossom fetched tools and bone meal from the shed and returned to find Larch poring over the bulb packets, staring at the pictures.

  He pointed to the fancy botanical name. “What does this say?”

  Blossom sounded out the Latin. “Zantedeschia,”

  “Is that their real name?”

  “Yes. Are you fine if Lynn and I mulch?”

  “I am fine.”

  Larch settled in to measure and dig, supervised by Artdog. Blossom and Lynn wielded pitchforks spreading straw.

  “Did you hear that?” said Blossom. “Did you hear Larch use I? ‘I am fine.’ He’s doing so well. I think it’s you. He talks about you all the time. ‘Does the visitor know about earthquakes?’ ‘Does the visitor like grapefruit?’ We try to keep things predictable for him, but maybe he needs more people now.”

  “Blossom, where did he come from?”

  “From the facility. Bad things happened to him there. I was five when Fossick found him and brought him home.”

  “What about Tron?”

  “Runaway. He was in a citizen foster home, but you’ve seen how he is. It was like prison to him. He came when I was eight.”

  “But, how did that work? Did Fossick adopt them?”

  “No, you need citizen papers for that. We just took them in.”

  “But, I mean, didn’t anybody notice that they had disappeared? There would be records.”

  “When nobody cares about you, when you’re a stray, it’s not that hard
to disappear.”

  A stray. Blossom talked as though she was describing a cat. How could she be so … matter-of-fact, standing there pitching straw?

  “And Fossick?”

  Blossom smiled. “Ask him sometime.”

  They worked on in easy silence. The garden was layered with stripes of sound. At the bottom was bridge traffic, a steady hum. Above that the now-and-again creak of a crow. Then some higher, squeaky bird. Then the snarl of a siren overlaid with the back-up beep of a truck. And, on the very top, Larch singing a little chant to himself.

  They finished with the straw cozies, but Larch was still planting bulbs.

  “He loves anything to do with measuring,” said Blossom. “Let’s go pick some chard. It’s down by the compost.” She called across the garden. “Are you okay, Larch?”

  Larch nodded.

  The compost boxes were in the lower half of the garden, screened by some flowering bushes.

  “Last of the winter crop,” said Blossom. She pulled out a pocket knife and started harvesting.

  “What’s Tron doing today?”

  “He and Fossick are helping someone who is building a cardboard bike.”

  “Is that even possible?”

  “They’re going to find out. Hold on. Is that Artdog? Is he growling?”

  They peered around the end of the compost box.

  “Oh, no.”

  Larch had abandoned his digging and was curled into a ball. Artdog was glued to his side, alert and growling.

  Standing on the edge of the garden were three girls. Grade eleven-ish. High boots. Big bling. Smoking. Sneering. Yelling.

  “So, is that like some fashion thing? Hey, Tardo, we’re talking to you.”

  “Yeah, what’s with the hair?”

  “Goes with the clothes, though. Goes with the tie.”

  “Goes with the fat.”

  Blossom put her hand on Lynn’s arm and whispered, “They’ll get bored and go away. Don’t react.”

  “Wanna go out with me, Tardo?”

  “I think he’s just shy. He just needs encouragement, don’t you, Tardo? I’m very encouraging.”

  Larch pulled himself into a smaller ball, and the trio moved closer.

  Lynn felt Blossom tense up.

  “Wanna see some encouragement?” One of the three, the one with the tiny, shiny purse, reached out to touch Larch.

  “No!” Blossom exploded, racing across the garden and plowing headfirst into the girl’s stomach. The girl doubled over and started coughing. Her friends were squealing and squeaking, pulling out screens and tapping on them like mad.

  “Get out of here! She’s a maniac!”

  Blossom scrambled backwards and fell, her hand to her forehead. Lynn saw blood running over the hand and ran toward her. Larch was moaning, rocking back and forth. Artdog was barking.

  “There’s another one! Look, she’s got a knife!”

  Lynn looked down. She was holding Blossom’s pen knife. When had she picked that up?

  The girls turned and ran.

  Blossom leaned over and took off her shoe, pulled off her sock and held it balled up against her head. Then she crouched down in front of Larch.

  “Nobody is going to touch you. Nobody, nobody, nobody. They’ve gone away. Nobody is here except me and the visitor.”

  Lynn felt helpless. “What can I do?”

  Blossom pointed to her pack. “There’s first-aid stuff in there, and get some water from the tap.”

  Blood was not Lynn’s favorite thing. But she couldn’t be a wimp in front of Blossom. Keeping her stomach in place with willpower, she cleaned up the cut on Blossom’s forehead and put on a couple of Band-Aids. Larch gradually stopped rocking.

  “Head wounds,” said Blossom. “They always look worse than they are.”

  “How did you get cut, anyway?”

  “Belt buckle. Fancy belt buckle.”

  “Should we go home?”

  “No,” said Blossom. “We’ve still got bulbs to plant. What do you say, Larch? We don’t want to disappoint Gordon. Don’t worry. Those girls won’t come back.”

  “All right,” said Larch.

  “We’ll sit right here,” said Blossom. “We’re not going to do any work. Just you.”

  “All right,” said Larch.

  “I think Artdog needs a treat.” Blossom reached into her pocket for a biscuit.

  “All right,” said Larch. “Zantedeschia, three bulbs deep.”

  Lynn and Blossom settled down on a twig bench.

  “You’re right about those girls,” said Lynn. “They think we’re knife-wielding maniacs.”

  “I shouldn’t have done it. I don’t know what happened to me.”

  “Come on, they were being totally obnoxious.”

  “Yes, but we can’t afford to retaliate. Ever. It makes us conspicuous. I should have thought of something else. I was wrong.”

  “You were protecting Larch.”

  “You don’t understand. I promised Fossick. We all did. No violence.”

  “But sometimes you have to break a promise.”

  “No. If you break a promise it means you didn’t really make it in the first place so it’s not worth anything.”

  “But sometimes it’s not that easy. What if things change, or keeping your promise does more harm than breaking it or, like, somebody breaks your promise for you?”

  Blossom shook her head and set her mouth in a line.

  “You’re only as good as your word.”

  The twig bench started to poke into the back of Lynn’s legs. She slid off onto the ground and snuggled up to Artdog.

  They sat in silence until Larch announced that he had planted all the bulbs, all ninety, or you could say seven and a half dozen, or you could say eighteen groups of five.

  “I’ll get the tools and the chard,” Lynn offered.

  On the way back to the cottage they talked about the amazing base jump and skimming and how Lynn was a natural and how did Gordon keep his motorcycle that completely shiny and wouldn’t it be cool if you could actually make a bike out of cardboard and how boring and pathetic the mean girls were.

  But it felt as though they were just talking for the sake of Larch. Talking to keep the real questions at bay.

  FIFTEEN

  Zombie Power

  The next morning was flash protest day. Jean and Rob and a couple of other faux-corporates came over early and Rob cooked a huge energy-enhancing brunch.

  Seeing the kitchen alive — pancakes flipping, coffee dripping, fruit whirring in the blender, Lynn realized how empty their house had been since Clive left.

  Rob said he was disappointed that none of her friends could make it.

  “You know, busy with school stuff,” said Lynn. And busy with not talking to her. How did it happen, that everything got so messed up, so messed up with secrets? If she told Kas and Celia about the Underlanders, it would make it better with them but way worse with Blossom. Unless she just didn’t tell Blossom, but then she’d be doubling the secrets. And the fact of her telling Shakti was already getting in the way.

  In the meantime, it would all have to wait until they had all saved the free world by wearing suits and pantyhose.

  The idea of the protest was brilliantly simple. The protesters strolled across the bottom of the hotel driveway in ones and twos so as to block vehicle access to the hotel entrance. The entrance gleamed with marble and twinkling lights and doormen dressed like toy soldiers with braid and brass buttons.

  At first Lynn couldn’t tell the protesters from the real conference people, but gradually she began to see who was who. Some of the disguises were totally convincing. Lynn had to admit that Shakti pulled it off in her silver-gray suit with pearls. Others didn’t work out quite so well. A scraggly beard here, an un-made-up face the
re, a coat from a bygone decade, several errors in footwear, wrong purse. But, on the whole, they passed.

  The merry-go-round of faux-corporates worked well until taxi drivers started honking their horns and big black cars started to inch forward. Traffic backed up. For a while they let the odd car through. Then they increased the barrier.

  Finally they started pausing in the middle of the road until, without any signal, they all just stopped, like a game of statues, but with suits.

  One of the toy soldiers tried to make them move along. Then a security guard, not so toy-like, tried the same thing. But they just stood staring into space, not speaking to each other.

  People got out of their cars and started yelling. A car edged up to Rob until its bumper touched his leg. He remained immobile, vaguely smiling into the middle distance. A zombie.

  It was the power of doing nothing.

  Lynn couldn’t take the pressure of all the attention. There were no other young people in the group, and she felt too conspicuous. She drifted to the end of the line and found a bench. Jean caught her eye and winked.

  Then the cellphone cameras started appearing, and a big-haired woman with a microphone appeared, flanked by TV cameras. At a soft signal the statues came to life. Shakti took a lipstick and mirror out of her purse and redid her mouth.

  It was the perfect thing to do. It was defiant, provocative. It was a movie star thing to do.

  Lynn settled in to watch. Shakti was like a magnet for the spotlight. She was good at this — a little bigger, a little brighter than ordinary people. The slash of lipstick was the exact same red as her scarf. She could have been the real thing.

  At just the right moment, she spoke. “People have the right to a place to live. All people.”

  The statues shifted. One by one they said it. Microphone woman moved from one statue to the next.

  Once the cameras were running it should have been over. The plan had been to disrupt the meeting for about half an hour to get some media attention and then just walk away. This was the balance point. The security guards and the toy soldiers stood poised. The taxis stopped honking. Everyone was taking a deep breath.