Everywhere Everything Everyone

by Warner, Katy;

  Z chatted easily about nothing as we walked through the city. Past the stores and office blocks, past the billboards of Our Leader, Magnus Varick, with his charming smile, past the big screens that played an endless cycle of breaking news. Network still down! was the latest message scrolling across the screens.

  We crossed the cool, calm park that bordered the city. On the good side. Of course. The park felt out of place, sitting there among the shiny city buildings. It was all lush green and trees and fountains. Dad and I had run up and down the wide, open space when I was a kid, desperately trying to fly this kite I’d been given for my birthday. We never managed to make it fly.

  ‘That’s home,’ Z said, pointing to a nice apartment block that looked out onto the park. It was one of those old-fashioned blocks, painted yellow with shutters on the windows and little balconies covered with brightly coloured pot plants. It had a garden out front and a big old tree and it looked warm and inviting and I wished I lived in a place like that. ‘And there’s Red.’ He pointed again, this time to a beaten-up car parked on the side of the road. It definitely looked like Red had seen better days.

  He unlocked the passenger door, jumped in and slid across to the driver’s seat. He gestured for me to follow. I ignored Mum’s voice echoing somewhere in the back of my mind – you’re grounded – and got in the car. I wanted to go with him. And I never got to do what I wanted. There were so many rules; I just wanted to break one. Or two.

  ‘So, you’re allowed to just go for a drive, whenever you want?’ I said.

  ‘Not technically,’ he said.

  I felt a surge of something run through me, like a fizz of electricity. He grinned as he started the car, and the feeling got stronger.

  CHAPTER 7

  The passenger window wouldn’t open and the radio didn’t work and my seat slid backwards every time he hit the brakes but, according to Z, that was all part of Red’s charm. I was nervous. Not just because I thought the entire car was going to fall to pieces as we drove. But also because we were alone. It was just me and him.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said. I really hoped he didn’t. ‘You think Red is a shitty name for a car.’

  Red was a shitty car full stop, but I didn’t tell him that. I laughed, relieved, and said, ‘Nah, it’s just an obvious name. I mean, Red? Really? Why not Dorothy, or Dolores or something?’

  ‘Those are good names,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’m good at naming things. Like, um, see that dog?’

  It was a border collie or something, bounding along next to its human, excited to get into the park.

  ‘Robert,’ I said.

  ‘Robert?’ he said. ‘Really?’

  ‘What? It’s a good name for a dog.’

  Number Seven on my list of things about Z – he laughed really easily. It didn’t take much to make him laugh, loudly and like he meant it, as if you were hilarious when really you were probably just a bit weird. But he never made me feel like he was laughing at me, and that was a nice feeling.

  ‘My sister picked the name. And cos she’s the boss of everything, I went with it. Like always.’

  ‘Sounds like my sister,’ I said. Thinking about Astrid brought back that guilty feeling and I checked my phone for the thousandth time that day in case the network had suddenly come back to life. It hadn’t, and so my apology sat in my phone, unsent and unread.

  Z drove very carefully. He slowed down when the signs told him to and kept two hands on the wheel and his eyes constantly flicked from road to mirror to side mirror and back again. I wanted to remember all those details so I could tell Mum how responsible he was if it ever came up.

  I watched as the city became the suburbs, which then gave way to warehouses and factories and paddocks of yellowing grass dotted with sheep and cows. There was more room out here. The roads were wider and the sky seemed bigger. The sun flickered through the trees and made everything look like it was in strobe light. I closed my eyes and concentrated on breathing and tried not to think about the nauseous feeling that was coming over me in waves.

  ‘Hang on,’ Z said. ‘We’re almost there.’

  Of course Z had noticed I was about to be carsick. He noticed everything.

  I felt the car slow down to a stop and stumbled out of it as quickly as I could. My skin was clammy and my lips tingled and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I crouched in the dirt and put my head in my hands and repeated, Do not throw up, over and over again in my head like some kind of mantra until I felt Z’s hand on my back. The thought of throwing up in front of someone I actually liked, someone who might actually like me, was more than embarrassing. What a way to kill the moment before the moment had even happened.

  ‘Santee,’ he said quietly.

  I looked up. He handed me a water bottle. I tried to smile a thank you but I felt sweaty and cold and hot all at the same time and I just wanted him to leave me alone for a moment. He must have got the message because he disappeared and I took a sip from the bottle and splashed some water on my face and took deep breaths of the hot, eucalyptus-scented air. Eventually the feeling started to fade and I could actually take in the surroundings. I knew the place. We were in the National Park, where people had hiked and climbed and biked and made out and camped and wandered until it was considered unsafe for reasons unknown, fenced off and forgotten. I’d been there when I was seven or eight for a class excursion. We sat in the dirt and sketched purple wildflowers and magpies and collected gumnuts and leaves that had fallen from the trees. That was a long time ago, though. Everything had changed since then. Except, it seemed, that spot.

  Z had parked right at the edge of the lookout – a small clearing off the dirt track that wound up through the bush. From there you could look out over a valley of trees. The only thing between us and the drop below were a couple of big rocks and fallen tree trunks. I hoped the handbrake was one of the things that actually worked in Red. Z sat on the bonnet, pretending he hadn’t been watching me trying not to be carsick. I joined him.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ I said. I was dying inside, but at least the moment had passed.

  ‘When I was a kid I threw up all over Mum’s laptop,’ he said.

  ‘No, you didn’t,’ I said.

  ‘We were on this long road trip and I told her to pull over, but she thought I was joking so she didn’t and then, bam, out it came. It was pretty impressive. All over the back seat. And her laptop was next to me so, yeah, I killed it. With my vomit.’

  I didn’t know if his story was true but it made me laugh. And that made me feel better.

  We sat on the rocks at the edge of the drop, our sketchpads on our knees, pencils ready. But we were too busy talking to actually draw. Z stretched out, using his backpack as a pillow, and stared up at the sky as he spoke about moving from his old school – cos it was a bit shit (his words, not mine) – and the movies he liked and the comedians he admired and the books he’d read. He looked so relaxed and conversation seemed so easy for him. Of course it did. I mean, he was Z. He was always smiling and people liked him and that made me wonder why, exactly, he’d wanted to hang out with me at all. I started to panic; perhaps he brought a lot of girls to this spot. Maybe it was just a line. Maybe this whole thing was some kind of joke. I was such an idiot. Of course I shouldn’t have agreed to go with him; he was basically a stranger. A good-looking, popular, funny stranger who probably had a list of girls he’d brought here, and here I was, just another name he could tick off. Someone he’d laugh over with that Riley guy and his friends the next day.

  ‘Look at that.’ He sat up quickly and pointed to the sky. There was a hawk, hovering, circling in on its prey. He took his sketchpad and pencil and started scribbling. And he was so excited about a bird that all of my worries vanished to nothing. He was a dork. A cute dork who liked to draw and, maybe, just maybe, liked me. ‘You gonna draw or what?’ he said.

  And I did.

  I stared at this big, old tree, trying to find
a place to start. Her trunk was bruised and scarred and home to thousands of ants. I squinted up into her branches and watched as the light crisscrossed through, changing the colour of the leaves as it did. I only had a pencil but even if I’d had all the colours in the world I wouldn’t have been able to capture that light. I never could. I took a photo of the tree with my phone so I didn’t forget. I also snuck a photo of Z as he sketched, bent over his pad, biting his lip, concentrating. He was so into drawing he didn’t even notice me do it. I wished I could be that focused but my mind kept wandering and my hands kept shaking and, in the end, I gave up trying to draw and lay back on the rock, using my backpack as a pillow the way Z had. I’d almost forgotten what quiet sounded like. There were no sirens or helicopters, just birds singing to each other and the hot breeze pushing through the trees. The warmth of the rock radiated across my back and the sketchpad slipped from my hands.

  ‘Shit.’ I woke with a start. I was sure I’d only closed my eyes for a second. I sat up quickly.

  ‘Welcome back, sleepyhead,’ Z said.

  I felt my face grow hot. I hoped I hadn’t been snoring, or drooling in my sleep. I pretended to search through my bag for something and wished I could climb inside it.

  Z sat down beside me. ‘Show me what you drew.’

  ‘Um, no,’ I said, and shoved my battered sketchpad into my bag. I really needed a new one. I was running out of pages and the cover was falling off, but they were expensive and not really a priority when there were nights we had to eat porridge for dinner or nothing. ‘Yeah, I was doing more napping than drawing,’ I said.

  ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ he said.

  ‘Shut up,’ I laughed and shoved him, gently. The way Z looked at me made my heart thump and as he moved in closer I wondered if this was the moment he would kiss me or I would kiss him, and I wasn’t sure how it worked or if my breath smelled OK or what I was supposed to do with my hands. It was like something just sort of took over and I moved towards him and felt my eyes close.

  ‘Here,’ he said, and handed me his sketchpad. ‘Swap.’

  ‘Yeah, OK, sure,’ I said quickly, hoping he hadn’t noticed that I’d almost kissed him. Idiot. I gave him my sketchpad thinking it might distract him from my bright red face and wobbly voice. Idiot, idiot, idiot.

  He opened the book gently and really looked at each sketch before he turned the page, and there was something about the way he did that that made me feel special. I loved drawing but I never thought I was all that good at it. Not like my parents. Not like Z. So I just did it for myself. Beth said it was a way to channel my energy (her words, not mine) and maybe she was right. But Z’s sketches were next level – there was the hawk and the detail of a dried-up leaf and it all looked so realistic. I wondered if he felt sorry for me, now that he was really studying my attempts at drawing. I looked up and locked eyes with him. He’d been watching me and he had this expression on his face that I couldn’t quite work out.

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘What?’

  He didn’t say anything for a while.

  ‘You’re an artist,’ he finally said. I expected him to start laughing, like it was some kind of joke. But he didn’t. He meant it.

  ‘Nah,’ I said, and avoided his gaze.

  ‘You are.’

  I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m really not.’

  I grabbed the book out of his hands, stuffed it into my backpack and stood up. ‘We should get out of here,’ I said.

  I wasn’t an artist. No-one was. Not anymore. It wasn’t something the State liked all that much, so they took it away. I mean, we still had art, of course. There was a big gallery near the university. It was full of old paintings trapped inside ornate golden frames, landscapes and still lifes and scenes of men returning from war, and statues of naked bodies carved out of marble and stuff like that. I used to wander around that gallery and think that maybe those artists were trying to tell me something, you know? Like maybe there were hidden messages in the way they chose to position that particular orange in that particular fruit bowl on that particular table. I mean, did the white tablecloth in the still life mean something? Or was it just supposed to look pretty?

  ‘Yeah,’ said Z after I’d explained my theory to him. ‘It all means something.’

  ‘I dunno,’ I said. We sat in the car, ready but also not ready to head home. ‘I mean, the stuff is amazing, right? Like, totally realistic. But I don’t think it means anything. I think they prefer it that way.’

  ‘Who?’ Z said as he started the car.

  I shrugged. I wasn’t meant to say stuff like that. Anything negative anyone said about the government, no matter how small, could be twisted into something massive and suddenly you were a Potential Threat even though you’d only complained about the crappy art gallery. I trusted Z, despite only spending a few hours with him, but Mum’s constant worrying had made me paranoid about that sort of thing.

  The sun had moved and the birds had changed their song and I was freaking out about getting home. I had definitely left it much later than I had planned. Z was reversing the car out when suddenly, just like that, it stopped. Dead. Nothing. He pulled on the handbrake.

  ‘What the hell?’ I said, or maybe I shouted. Just a little.

  He shook his head and muttered something like, This happens all the time, but he wasn’t smiling or laughing when he said it. He tried to restart the car but Red wouldn’t budge. She just made this awful whirring noise, over and over. We sat there, silent. This. Was. Not. Happening.

  CHAPTER 8

  We weren’t going anywhere. Red had given up on life. We looked under the bonnet for some kinda clue but we were both useless when it came to cars. He slammed the bonnet shut, apologised, kicked Red’s front tyre, apologised again (to me or Red or perhaps both of us) and then stood on the rock and swore into the sky (and Beth told me I had impulse control issues?). Seeing Z’s breakdown actually helped me keep it together. A little. And I wondered if this was how Astrid felt with me being the way I was all the time.

  ‘We could walk?’ I said. ‘If we start now we might make it before Curfew.’

  ‘No way,’ Z said. ‘It’ll take hours.’

  ‘We should try. Maybe we can hitch a ride? Someone might take pity on us.’

  ‘Or the Unit might pick us up,’ he said.

  He was right. It wasn’t worth the risk. We’d have to stay. Z said something but I wasn’t listening, I was freaking out inside and I didn’t want him to notice just how scared I was. I moved away from him, leaned against the gum tree and watched the breeze move through her branches. It looked as if she were nodding at me. Yes, I imagined her saying, you are an idiot, Santee. A big, stupid idiot.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Z whispered beside me.

  I reached out and squeezed his shoulder. ‘Not your fault,’ I said, cos that’s exactly what Z would have said to me, had it been the other way around.

  Every ten minutes or so Z tried the engine, just in case. Not that we could have gone anywhere even if Red had miraculously sprung back to life – Curfew had definitely started. As often as Z checked the car for signs of life, I checked my phone. There was still no network but I wrote out long, apologetic messages anyway. I imagined Mum and Astrid pacing the floor, panicked and stressed, and it made me feel sick. I closed my eyes and counted one to ten, slowly, slowly.

  When he was sure, really-really sure, that Red was actually dead, we got out and sat on the bonnet (it was all she was good for now) and watched the sky turn dark and fill up with stars. In different circumstances it would have been nice, maybe even romantic. I didn’t think I was into romantic stuff until I sat there with Z. Having him close made it a little easier to push Mum and Astrid from my mind. It was probably terrible to do that, to stop thinking about them, but there was nothing I could do except chill and wait.

  I put my hand near Z’s. Or maybe he put his hand near mine.

  ‘My mum’s gone,’ Z said suddenly. I didn’t know why he’d said it and I made
a stupid oh noise cos I didn’t know how I was supposed to respond. I was no good at that stuff. I looked at him but he was focused on the stars. He cleared his throat. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘you don’t need to hear this.’

  ‘Yeah I do,’ I said. ‘Tell me.’

  And he did.

  ‘Mum was a journo and she was always getting into trouble with the government, you know? Varick hated her,’ he started.

  ‘Magnus Varick? Our Leader, Magnus Varick?’ I interrupted.

  ‘Yeah, him,’ he said.

  I raised an eyebrow without meaning to.

  ‘Not him personally but him, his people, you know what I mean.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  ‘We’d get weird phone calls in the middle of the night. A couple of times someone threw bricks through our windows. And they slashed Mum’s tyres. That kind of thing.’ He said it so matter-of-factly, like this sort of stuff happened to everyone. ‘She wrote articles that made people ask questions, and they hated her for it.’

  ‘What sort of questions?’ I said.

  ‘Like, OK, she wrote this thing asking why the elections were stopped and how does stopping elections actually keep anyone safe. How is that in anyone’s best interest?’

  ‘That’s quite a question,’ I said carefully. ‘What’s the answer?’

  ‘That Varick is a corrupt arsehole.’

  I didn’t know what to say to that. I mean, it’s not as if I hadn’t heard it before, especially from my dad, but to hear Z say it so casually, like it was no big deal, was something else.

  ‘They called her a Potential Threat cos of that article but she didn’t care. She always said that the angrier they got, the closer she was to the truth. She was real tough.’ He smiled a little. ‘Varick’s reported as calling her a pain in the arse.’

  ‘Really?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah. She was fierce.’

  I liked that. That word. For his mum.

  ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘they closed the newspapers down. You remember when they did that?’