Begin End Begin: A #LoveOzYa Anthology

by Amie Kaufman, Melissa Keil, Will Kostakis, Ellie Marney, Jaclyn Moriarty, Michael Pryor, Alice Pung, Gabrielle Tozer, Lili Wilkinson, Danielle Binks

  Mum makes no comment, just exhales a big breath through her nose as she walks in the direction of the bathroom off the hall.

  Mycroft comes over to the kitchen benchtop and leans against it. He doesn’t say anything about Mum, or Dad, or any of it, for which I am profoundly grateful. He takes the iceberg lettuce off the bench and starts stripping leaves into the salad bowl, until I stop him.

  ‘I’m doing it. It’s fine.’

  ‘I don’t mind —’

  ‘No.’ I take the lettuce out of his large hands.

  He steps back from the benchtop. ‘Okay.’

  For a moment, I’m too miserable to think properly. Then I remember something to say. ‘Tell me about the next article.’

  Mycroft rocks on his feet. ‘Well … I’m tossing up between posting the one on bio-LED trees in place of streetlights, like they’re doing in Taiwan, and another one on recovering fingerprints from cold-case evidence by vacuum metal deposition. I could post either of them at Chemistry World.’

  ‘I like the idea of sparkly tree streetlights.’

  ‘I like the fingerprints.’ He looks strangely fierce when he says it.

  ‘Why forensics?’ I ask. ‘I mean, what is it about forensics that you find so …’

  ‘It’s interesting.’ He looks out the kitchen window, tucks his hands in his jacket pockets. ‘It doesn’t matter anyway, ’cause they’ll both be pseudonymously posted.’

  ‘But you’ll know who wrote them.’ My shoulders relax as I look at him. ‘And me.’

  ‘That’s two people.’ Smiling in a subdued way, he grabs his backpack. ‘Gotta go.’

  ‘Loads of sausages tonight. I might drop by yours with a plate.’ We both know there’s no ‘might’ about it. It’s been three weeks since I got to know him, and Mycroft’s level of self-neglect still bothers me.

  He pauses. ‘Would you like to come to the zoo with me tonight? I mean, y’know, later.’

  ‘I don’t know if I’d be allowed …’ The lettuce is still in my hands. ‘Won’t the zoo be closed?’

  ‘Yes. We don’t go inside. Sorry, that sounds weird.’

  ‘A bit.’

  He grins. ‘Come on, Watts. I’m offering the finest park-bench experience available in Melbourne. You’ll meet the cream of the dero elite. We can cadge a ride on the tram.’

  ‘Now you’re tempting me.’

  His smile blooms in full as he hoicks a cigarette out of the pocket of his trackie jacket. A bellow sounds from the living room. My brother, just home from work, barrels into the kitchen and grabs Mycroft in a headlock.

  ‘Put it away!’

  ‘I will —’

  ‘Put it away!’

  ‘I am! Honestly, look —’

  ‘No cigs inside. I get enough of that shit at work.’ Mike noogies Mycroft with his free hand. ‘This bloke giving you trouble again?’

  I grin as I slice the tomatoes. ‘Nothing I can’t handle.’

  Mycroft shakes free and straightens his clothes. ‘Right. I’m leaving now.’

  ‘See you later.’

  ‘Cool.’ He bites his lip over a smile; he knows I’m coming to the zoo.

  ‘Funny guy,’ Mike says, after Mycroft closes the front door. ‘Why doesn’t he just stay for dinner?’

  ‘Don’t know.’ I shrug. It’s not my business to share.

  ‘Is Mycroft really his first name?’

  His first name is James. I found out when I saw a whole-school photo in the admin corridor. ‘Mm,’ I say.

  ‘How’re you going, anyway? With school and stuff?’ Mike picks up an apple and chomps into it.

  ‘Oh, I’m thriving.’ I wipe my hands on a tea towel. ‘Go get Dad out of the garden. Tell him I’ve started cooking and he’s only got an hour and a half before work.’

  Four weeks in.

  When it gets too much, I go over to Mai’s place, or walk with her and Gus to the park, or visit Mycroft, who makes sodium acetate fairy-tower sculptures on request.

  Sometimes I catch the tram up to Fawkner cemetery — it’s quiet there, and there’s trees, and space to breathe.

  ‘I’ve figured it out,’ Mycroft says, during recess. ‘Watts, you’re a Martian. I googled “west of Ouyen” and found these pictures — it’s all desert and salt lakes and endless flat paddocks. Seriously, it’s a lot like Mars, especially if you use the right filter —’

  ‘Show me,’ Mai says, grabbing the phone he’s waggling, and I see the photos. Homesickness cuts through me with a stiff, serrated blade.

  ‘No wonder you’re struggling so much with urban life,’ Mycroft goes on. ‘You’re a stranger in a strange land. If I’d come from … Watts? Watts, where are you off to?’

  I don’t really know where I’m going. I just need to go.

  ‘Watts!’

  I hear Mai say, ‘Now look what you’ve done,’ but I’m already halfway towards the school gate. Energy zips around my body. My bones feel like they’re vibrating.

  I need to walk. I want to follow my legs to the back paddock, boots crunching past the mallee scrub and the windmill, moving onward. Walking, walking, until I’m walked out. No voices nearby, no noise pollution from traffic, no people, no smells of exhaust. Just the sound of my boots clomping all the way to the dam.

  I’ll shed my boots there, and my socks and flannie and tank and cut-offs. I’ll step into the mud on the bank, plunge straight into the cool brown water. This feeling will ease away, float off into the dam like so much oily scum, and my mind will spring back into shape. Everything will be manageable. Everything will be okay.

  The rhythm of moving, stretching my legs, actually makes me feel better. The only problem is, no matter how far or how fast I walk, I can’t reach the back paddock or the dam. And I’m on Sydney Road, so voices and noise pollution and traffic exhaust are a given.

  I want to get out of here. But no amount of walking is going to get me back home.

  I end up in the only place I know will be quiet. By the time I arrive I’m thirsty, and plastered with sweat. I have a drink from a tap, then wander around the rolling green grounds before picking out a plinth to lie down on. Just the fact that I can see trees and sky makes something ease in my chest.

  I lie in the sun, try not to think, read a book. After a while, there’s the sound of shoes scuffing gravel, back behind me.

  ‘When you die, do you want to be buried or cremated?’

  I sigh, but I’ve had enough time and space to calm down by now.

  ‘Cremated.’ I speak up to the clouds. ‘I want my ashes to be scattered on the little hill in the west paddock.’

  ‘I thought you’d say something like that.’ Mycroft walks over to the side, so I can see him even while I’m lying down. ‘Me, I’ve always thought maybe a sea burial. Everyone standing on the ship, looking out over the waves while they say all the words, then they push your coffin off the side and — plop, you’re gone.’

  ‘A sea burial?’

  ‘Yes.’ He leans on a headstone, pulls a cigarette out of the pack stashed in his T-shirt sleeve. ‘D’you think the coffin just sinks straight to the bottom, or would it float around for a while?’

  ‘You’d know the physics better than me.’

  ‘I think it’s to do with air pressure.’ He taps the cigarette on the pack, leans to light up, blows smoke as he slips the pack away. ‘Maybe they leave holes for the water to get in, or add weights to the bottom. I guess they must sink reasonably quickly. Otherwise you’d have all these coffins floating around the ocean, like plastic bags …’

  ‘I think they sink, Mycroft.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says.

  ‘It’s okay.’ I roll on the granite plinth, until I’m sitting up with my legs crossed. ‘But I don’t know why I’m your friend, sometimes.’

  ‘Is it because I’m your neighbour and you can’t get away from me?’

  ‘You’re too insightful. You open your mouth and all these razors come tumbling out.’

  ‘I’m not th
at insightful, Watts. If I was, I’d have the insight to censor my own bullshit.’ He sits on the plinth beside me. ‘It’s disturbing that you came to a cemetery.’

  ‘I just needed some time on my own.’

  ‘Surrounded by all the dead people, yes.’

  ‘I just needed …’ I pause, but then all the words tumble out. ‘I’m stuck here, y’know? I’m trapped. With thousands of people all living in the one place. And yes, there’s action, and twinkling lights, and things happening, but I feel like I’m watching this endless cycle of people getting up, and eating, and going to work, and watching the same TV shows, and saying the same things, with this backdrop of bitumen, and cement, and all this stuff on repeat, with me standing outside watching it, fighting against it, all the time. Like, where am I? Where the hell am I? And there’s no space to move, and I can’t see the sky, and everything gets this pickled-in-aspic feeling, like you could slice into it and each slice would be the same cross-section, this thick grey jelly …’

  I slump on the plinth, exhausted from explaining it all.

  ‘Christ.’ Mycroft leans his shoulder against mine. ‘It’s fucking depressing, when you put it that way.’

  ‘You were right.’ I scrub my hands against my cheeks. ‘I feel like an alien here. Or a, a missing person. D’you know what I mean?’

  ‘I know,’ he says solemnly, and I realise that he does know. I’m the way he was seven years ago.

  ‘I’m lost in this city,’ I say miserably.

  ‘It’s okay, Watts. I found you.’ Mycroft puts his arm around me, curls me in. ‘I found you.’

  Oona stands at the mouth of darkness, her hair full of sunset, her mouth full of smiles. She belongs to the day, to fresh air and warm breezes.

  ‘Come on, Meg,’ she says.

  She’s wearing sensible denim overalls, a white shirt and bright-red gumboots. Her hair is twisted up in a crown of golden braids, and strings of yellow beads hang from her neck.

  ‘I just don’t get why you want to go in there.’

  ‘I told you. I want the witch to tell me my destiny.’

  Her smile is teasing, but there’s something else in her eyes. A longing for answers to a question I don’t know.

  We’ve all heard the stories about the Witch Queen. She dances in the drains, and if you bring her a treasure, she’ll tell you your destiny. There’s a guy at our school who knows another guy who will sell you a map of the drains so you can find her. Sometimes the Year 12s head there before their exams, hoping for a miracle. When they come out again, they don’t talk about it. They act all mysterious, but I don’t reckon they ever go down there at all. The mystery is just there to cover up the fact that they chickened out.

  I don’t believe in witches.

  Oona charges forward. I hesitate. I’m afraid of what we might find in there. Cold fingers brush my ankles.

  ‘Why now?’ I ask. ‘It’ll be dark soon.’

  ‘Because she can’t be found during the day. You know how these things are.’

  More nonsense.

  ‘Please.’ Oona turns back to me. ‘I can’t go in without you.’ She reaches out her hand. I reach back and our fingers entwine.

  I would follow her anywhere.

  I’ve always followed Oona, ever since we were kids running squealing in our knickers under the sprinklers. For a while in primary school I tried to be her — I wore my hair the same way and got my mum to buy me the same dresses and shoes and accessories. But it never worked. I always looked like a cheap knockoff, paling in comparison to the real thing. By high school I had grown into the role I was born to play — the sarcastic best friend. I stood by Oona’s side, and made sure I never took up any of her spotlight. If that meant shivering in her shadow sometimes, while she shared the light with someone else, then so be it. It was a small price to pay.

  Oona texted me on the first of January, asking me to meet her in a cafe. It was important, she said. She’d had an epiphany. We ordered iced coffees and sat by the window, watching people clean up the debris of their new year celebrations.

  Do you believe in destiny? she asked.

  I don’t believe in fate any more than I believe in witches. But it’s hard to say no to Oona.

  I don’t know, I said instead. I think we make our own destiny.

  Oona nodded. I stirred my iced coffee and waited.

  I want to fall in love, she said, and my own heart thrummed with hope. But she shook her head and frowned. It isn’t working. I’m looking in all the wrong places.

  Look here, I wanted to tell her. Look at me. But I didn’t. I never do.

  But last night I realised I’m doing it all wrong. I’ve been trying to barge into love. To break it open and force my way in. But what if love doesn’t work that way?

  My hope shrivelled into resentment. You’re overthinking it, I told her.

  Oona ignored me. What if love is something wild? she said. What if you have to surrender to it? Surrender to your destiny?

  I rolled my eyes.

  I’m handing it over to fate, she told me. She dug in her bag, pulling out a Sharpie and her wallet. She selected a ten-dollar note and wrote I LOVE YOU in tiny, neat letters — across the bottom of the note.

  Whoever gives this note back to me will be my true love, she declared.

  Then she flashed me an impish smile and headed over to the counter, passing the note to a waiter and telling him to keep the change.

  We walked home together as the sun grew high and hot, parting at the corner as usual. She gave me a hug and I breathed in her sun-warmed hair.

  As we step into the tunnel, a gush of stale, muddy air eddies around us, drawn up from deep below. It smells like old dirt and things best left undisturbed. I don’t need to ask Oona why she’s here. It’s been nearly a year since she surrendered to her destiny, and she’s getting impatient. She’s been on a few dates with boys in our class, hoping for the reappearance of the note. But of course there’s been nothing, because there’s no such thing as destiny.

  Oona carries a blue backpack of supplies — a torch, extra batteries, a family-sized block of top-deck chocolate, a litre of water and the map she bought from a guy behind a 7-Eleven last Thursday. I offer to carry the bag because I’m a sucker, but Oona gives me a cheerful grin and says we’ll take turns.

  The tunnel slopes gently downwards, round and large, easily tall enough for us to walk upright. A trickle of water runs through it, only an inch or so deep. The grey concrete is barely visible under layer upon layer of graffiti, tags and messages and animals and girls with big eyes holding umbrellas. The graffiti snakes down the drain before us, squiggly lines converging into blackness. I turn back and look at the mouth of the tunnel, lit blazing gold and orange. Ripples of sunset dance towards our feet, swirling into the colours from the graffiti, reflected on brown water.

  We walk. Oona hums to herself. The light grows dim, and I switch on the torch. It’s like moving back in time, as the graffiti becomes faded and the bands it refers to grow more and more dated. NOFX. Linkin Park. Mötley Crüe. There are other things on the walls, too — snatches of poetry, spells, wishes. I see a few references to something called the Witch’s Ball. Dark mould blossoms across the pale concrete ceiling like my grandma’s Florence Broadhurst wallpaper. We pass under a black grate, and pause to soak up the last rays of sunset. I can hear the clamour of roosting birds and the rumble of cars. The light turns Oona’s braids into a glowing crown. Rusted metal rungs lead up the slimy concrete walls to the grate, and I long to climb them and escape the damp darkness.

  ‘What are you going to ask her for?’ Oona asks, her voice bouncing off the concrete walls.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Witch Queen.’

  I shrug into the darkness. ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I haven’t really thought about it.’

  ‘How can you not have thought about it?’ Oona sighs with exasperation. ‘What are you even doing here?’

  I don’t respond, as in my opinion, it
should be entirely obvious.

  ‘Remember Harvey Webb? I heard he came down here and asked the Witch Queen to make him swim faster. And now he’s going to the Olympics.’

  I do remember Harvey. In Year 7 he’d lent Oona a pencil for a maths test and I’d seen my own longing mirrored on his face. Everyone loves Oona. Had he really come down here? Had he walked through the same brown sludge?

  We pass a tributary that can’t be too long, because twilight spills down it into the main tunnel. I can tell it’s getting late; as Oona stands silhouetted at the mouth of the tributary, she doesn’t seem golden and glowing anymore. The light is fading and turning grey and ominous. Oona’s figure is empty black, and I fight the urge to rush to her and press her flesh, just to make sure she’s still real and warm. She consults her map, and we head down further into darkness.

  The light from the torch passes over opening after opening, each one slightly different. Some are curved and smooth, like tubular waterslides. Others are jagged with white calcification and mud. Graffiti teeth and lips encircle one, making it a gaping mouth swallowing up the darkness. Floating in the muddy stream at our feet are several sky-blue feathers and a scrap of black lace. I can smell roses. Painted signs indicate landmarks that Oona checks off on her map. Godzilla Point. Cactus Island. Tram Room. Under each of these signs is a large white square painted with a grid — a guestbook where urban explorers leave their names. Combo. Sharkyshark Proserpina. Woody, Dougo and Sloth.

  ‘I wonder what she eats,’ Oona muses.

  ‘The Witch Queen?’ I ask. ‘Probably nothing because she doesn’t exist.’

  Oona’s chuckle echoes off the walls. ‘Maybe she eats the unbelievers,’ she suggests.

  ‘Maybe.’

  There’s a pause. ‘I wouldn’t let her.’

  I know she wouldn’t. Oona has always looked after me. Countless times some popular group has tried to lure her away, but she never lets me go. She is fierce and loyal and true, and the fact that this isn’t enough fills me with self-loathing.

  I hear a rhythmic sound, like a steady drip, but sharper, dryer. It gets louder as we continue downstream. Irrationally, I wonder if someone has planted a bomb down here, under the streets. My throat closes over as I imagine being buried here, crushed by dust and rubble and earth. The drain curves sharply, and I see the source of the ticking. It’s a clock, hanging from a bent and rusted nail up on the wall. It reads 7.44. I pull my phone out of my pocket. There’s no signal down here, but the clock still works. It confirms it really is 7.44. I wonder if my parents will be worried.