He adjusted his tie. Cleared his throat. Tried to smile, which really didn’t suit him. ‘My apologies,’ he said. ‘Julius Warren. From the Department.’
‘What Department –’
‘Does Mr Driver’s job take him away from home a lot? Notice anything unusual about the hours he keeps?’ Julius Warren lost the smile and any patience he’d pretended to have with me.
I let a pause fill the room.
‘Dunno,’ I said finally.
He took off his glasses. Rubbed his eyes. ‘We know you want to get home,’ he said. ‘That’s perfectly understandable, Santee. And we’d like to help you achieve that goal. We really would.’
I stared at my hands.
‘We could get you some information about your mother and your sister. Would you like that?’
I said nothing, but inside I screamed – Yes, yes, tell me, tell me everything.
‘How about your father, Joseph Quinn? It’s been a long time since you’ve seen him. Would you like to? I can make it happen.’
I couldn’t tell if he was playing me. He gave me nothing. He was expressionless. Cold. I wanted to see my dad so bad. The prison was on the other side and it sounds dumb but I missed going there, cos when I was there I felt a bit closer to him. He was just inside that building. Only metres from me. But now? Now I might be able to see him? Actually, physically see him? I wanted to say sorry, tell him I loved him, make sure he was OK. I nodded, slowly.
Julius put his glasses back on. ‘Anything odd, anything that stands out to you as … different … about Mr Driver?’
‘Sometimes he gets home late. After Curfew. But he’s allowed to. He has a permit. Cos of his job.’ I didn’t think that would get anyone into any trouble. And I’d get to see my dad.
‘We already know that,’ he said.
My mind raced. What was he after? There had to be something I could tell him that might help me out and not hurt Diggs.
‘What do you know about my dad?’ I asked.
‘A low-grade Threat. Nothing special. A bit … how should I put this? Pedestrian? A bit beige? You understand what I mean?’
I understood, but I didn’t agree. Not at all. He wasn’t a Threat, and he definitely wasn’t beige. Not my dad. He was colour and stupid jokes and bad dancing and mess and …
‘He’s also very stubborn,’ Julius said.
And that got me. Right in the heart. How did he know my dad was stubborn? What had he seen? Had Dad given them hell in an interview? Gone on a hunger strike? I could imagine that. I really could. Because he was stubborn. Hope filled my chest.
‘You can visit your father and go home to your family,’ he said. ‘You help me, I help you. How does that sound?’
It sounded unbelievable. It sounded too good to be true, which is something my grandma used to say. If it’s too good to be true, it probably is. And this, most definitely, was. It had to be. The hope faded away. But it was clear I wasn’t getting out of there without giving him something. So I gave him something.
‘He drinks a lot,’ I said.
Julius Warren shuffled forward. ‘Interesting,’ he said.
So I told him how Diggs had been drunk that first night and the way he’d gone at Z. I figured it was family stuff, personal stuff, nothing that would get Diggs into any trouble. But it might just be interesting enough to get me a visit with my dad.
‘If you think of anything more, let me know.’ Julius stood. Meeting over. ‘I am here to help you, Santee. Any time.’
CHAPTER 23
One of Julius’s creepy assistants walked me, silently, to the gym and pretty much shoved me through the big double doors. There were rows and rows of students inside, heads down, writing frantically. They set up like this during our exam period but this version was way more crowded and tense. It looked as if they’d somehow managed to squeeze every student in there. What the hell was going on? Everyone was so focused they didn’t even notice me walk in. I stood there, confused, until Mr Lo motioned at me impatiently to sit down, sit down. I sat at the nearest empty desk and looked at the paperwork in front of me. GENERAL EXAMINATION was written across the first page, followed by pages and pages of equations and numbers and patterns and complicated-looking questions. I thought about walking out. Could this day get any shittier?
Mr Lo crouched next to my desk and whispered, ‘You don’t have much time, Santee. Get started.’ He handed me a pencil and genuinely looked like he cared, which was weird for Mr Lo.
I printed my name in the boxes provided (at least I could answer that section correctly) and stared blankly at the first page. I could do this. I wasn’t terrible at maths. I just had to focus. That’s what Astrid always told me: You know this stuff, Santee. You’re good with numbers but you have to try, you have to want to do well.
I took out my calculator, which had once been Astrid’s, and hoped that some of her genius might magically find its way through the buttons and into me. The first section was multiple choice, which should have made things a lot easier except that my answers didn’t even appear as choices. I chose way too many As in a row. Then too many Cs. But, still, I got to the end of the section and thought how Astrid would be pleased that I hadn’t completely given up. And maybe I’d actually done OK, too. I turned to the next section feeling a whole lot better until a buzzer rang and someone shouted, Pencils down.
I looked around. People were shaking out their hands and rolling their shoulders, stretching. They snuck looks at each other, silently saying things like, How easy was that? and, Finished! I slowly closed my not even half-finished exam and sat there staring at nothing. It felt as if I’d just finished a long-distance race and come dead last.
‘You can stop apologising now,’ Z said.
I’d said sorry about a thousand times, cos I was. I felt terrible about running off and being an idiot but he said he understood and that it was OK and he meant it. I pulled him into a tight hug, which surprised me as much as it surprised him. I wasn’t one of those hug-and-kiss-and-squeal-like-a-moron types like some of the other kids at school. But right then, I needed someone to hold onto. Someone real and there and a friend. A boyfriend. And I was lucky. I had Z.
The whole school had escaped outside and everyone was standing around in groups talking quietly. It was surreal. Like the volume had been turned right down on everyone. There were no footballs flying around or screams of laughter or anything like that.
Z and I found the only empty table. It was the one that was permanently covered in bird crap. No-one ever sat there cos you never knew when they’d strike. A lot of people had learned that the hard way. I didn’t care. Things couldn’t really get any worse and anyway, what was a bit of bird poo? Wasn’t it supposed to be lucky or something?
‘Do we go back to the normal timetable now?’ I said as we sat down, carefully avoiding the mess. I never imagined I would actually look forward to Mr Lo’s class.
‘Nah, we’ve got exams. All day.’ Z took a bite out of his apple.
More exams? Hadn’t we had enough already?
‘They’re streaming us,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘The exams. They’re using them to work out where we fit. You know – Low, Moderate or Advanced.’ He continued eating, like this wasn’t completely new information. ‘You gotta get in the Advanced stream, Santee.’
‘Shit,’ I said. I didn’t want to tell him that I hadn’t even finished half of that first exam.
‘It gives you more opportunities …’ and he kept talking and I pretended to listen but I’d heard it all before. From Astrid. It wasn’t the first time, or the last, that I wished I’d listened to my sister.
Tash was sitting nearby, at her usual spot – the table where I’d once sat. She was on her own and her hair was a bit of a mess and she looked so … sad. We made eye contact. I wanted to say, You OK? but we didn’t do that anymore – talk or care. She rested her head on the table. Something was very wrong.
Seeing her like that made me feel
awful, which was stupid. I should have been happy seeing her upset, considering what a bitch she’d been to me for the past couple of years. But I couldn’t help it. Cos for years before that she’d been my best friend, and I’d been hers. I knew more about Tash than she liked to remember.
I remembered the sleepovers and the stupid dance routines we made up, and the night we snuck booze from her parents’ cabinet and made ourselves sick and got in heaps of trouble (but she took the blame cos she was like that back then), and the times we lay on the scratchy picnic rug in her back garden and stared at the stars and made up great futures for ourselves. She’d wanted to work with kids, be a kindergarten teacher, and I wondered if she still wanted that. If she still saw that future for herself. And I couldn’t imagine how the girl I’d once been so close to, who made me laugh and stuck up for me, had turned into this person. Or maybe I did know and it hurt too much to think about it.
Even so, I stood up. I couldn’t just ignore her when she was like that. And Z stood with me.
As we approached Tash’s table, a bunch of her friends swooped in from nowhere and gathered around her. They were all, Oh no, you poor baby, and Don’t cry, you’ll ruin your mascara, and Oh honey, it’s so sad. They were so fake. All of them.
They saw me watching.
‘Piss off, Santee,’ Chloe said. Me and Tash had always thought she was the worst. Stuck up and mean and a bit of a moron, actually. Tash had clearly changed her mind on that.
‘You OK, Tash?’ I said, ignoring Chloe completely.
Tash wiped her eyes. She really had ruined her mascara. Chloe handed her a tissue. ‘If you really want to know, her dad is stuck on the other side of the Safety Border,’ she said. ‘It’s tragic.’
‘Shit,’ I said.
‘Sorry,’ Z added.
‘Thanks,’ Tash said. To Z. Not me. ‘I’m just so scared for him, you know? It’s not safe over there. With all those Threats. They’re bad people over there.’
‘What?’ I said.
‘Come on, Santee. You know that’s why they built the Safety Border. To keep people like you away from us. Separating the good from the bad, Good Citizens from Threats,’ she said. ‘It’s a good thing. It’s keeping us safe. But my dad …’ and her voice broke and she was crying. Again.
It might have been what she said or how she said it or the shitty day I was having or D (all of the above), but I lost it. This fire went up inside me and before I realised what I was doing I was right in her face, screaming at her, Stop, stop, stop. And then she was up and smirking and shoving my shoulders, Come on bitch, hit me, bitch, come on psycho.
So I did.
And she stumbled backwards and looked shocked, like she couldn’t believe I’d actually done it, and I couldn’t believe I’d done it either, and we stood there looking at each other and I went to say, Sorry, because I was, but Tash ran at me and grabbed my hair and pulled it, hard.
Trust Tash to pull hair in a fight. Typical.
‘Break it up!’ the principal’s voice boomed across the schoolyard.
Tash and I sat outside Mrs Rook’s office. Our principal had to make a Very Important Call. ‘Can I trust you two to be civil for five minutes?’ she’d said, and we’d nodded and were left alone together.
Tash moved one seat over as if she didn’t want to get too close to me. It was so immature. Something you’d do in primary school. I was waiting for her to tell me I had cooties. Idiot, I thought, but I said nothing. It wasn’t worth it.
I glanced around the office. The usual receptionist wasn’t there. Some other person sat at her desk now, typing away loudly. Tap, tap, tap. Smashing the keys like they’d personally offended her and this was their punishment.
The bald man appeared. Julius Warren. I lowered my eyes, shrank into the seat. I could feel him watching me.
‘Who’s that?’ Tash said.
I shrugged and started to hum, very softly. A tune I’d remembered from Mila’s violin practice. It was another one of Beth’s weird ideas. Go to a happy place, she’d once said. What’s the soundtrack to that place? I’d never tried it cos I thought humming would made me seem even crazier than usual.
‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ Tash hissed across the empty seat.
I ignored her and stared at the clock on the opposite wall. I watched the seconds tick around and around. It had taken me ages to learn to tell the time. Astrid had helped me. She’d drawn all these clock faces on scraps of paper. I tried to think about that and not the bald man or Mrs Rook or anything else.
But Tash wouldn’t give up. ‘Do you know that guy?’ she said.
I ignored her.
‘He’s totally staring at you,’ she whispered. ‘It’s creepy.’
He knew he was making me uncomfortable. I could feel it.
‘Sir?’ Tash called to him. ‘Can I help you?’
I didn’t know if she was trying to stick up for me or hurt me. I just wanted her to shut the hell up.
‘Santee has been helping me with some important … how should I say it – investigations,’ he said.
‘Right,’ Tash said and gave me a weird look.
‘I’ll see you later, Santee, yes?’ he said, but I didn’t answer him. He waited a moment before adding, ‘Maybe your friend would like to help out, too. You know where to find me.’ He handed a file to the receptionist, who sweetly said, ‘Thanks for that, Julius,’ and then he was gone.
‘What the hell was that?’ Tash said, and moved closer. ‘What a creep.’
For a moment I saw a little, teeny piece of the Tash who’d been my friend. It disappeared pretty quick.
‘You gotta stop drawing attention to yourself. Play the game, that’s what they say, right? That’s what you gotta do,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘I thought you were smarter than this. Seriously.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘You can be such an idiot, Santee.’
I resisted the urge to slap her.
She grabbed my arm. I pulled away, but she leaned in close. ‘This is a good thing, Santee. You’re going to be safe now. You’re out of there.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘The Safety Border. It’s great. You got out of there and now we can hang out, maybe, if you want.’ She smiled.
My heart pushed itself right up into my throat and I was scared that if I opened my mouth it might just fall out, bam, onto the floor. I ground my teeth and concentrated on the patterns in the carpet.
Tash had been so awful to me the day Dad was taken. I was like her, crying at the table, waiting for some friends to gather around and tell me it was OK. But they didn’t. Instead she announced, in front of everyone, that my dad was a Threat. We’re all a bit safer now, she’d said, thanks to the Unit cleaning up the place, right? They all agreed. And she ignored me. Everyone did. It was like I had become invisible. And that was it. We officially weren’t friends anymore. I had no-one. Until Z. I tried not to think about how my fight with Tash would have looked to him. How crazy and messed up I must have seemed.
‘Dad was visiting my aunty over there. Near your place. That’s how he got stuck. But I can’t tell Chloe or anyone. And you can’t say anything. OK?’ she went on and on and I mumbled Sure, I won’t say anything, cos apart from Z I didn’t have anyone to tell.
‘Mum says we gotta keep that quiet, you know? Otherwise we could look like Threats,’ she said. ‘Like you did – do … sometimes.’
‘I’m not a Threat,’ I said. ‘You know that.’
‘But you have to admit you act like one. Sometimes. Like just now, when you lost it at me,’ she said. ‘Mum reckons you’re dangerous.’
‘Dangerous?’ How could her mum think that? I’d known Tash’s parents since I was a kid. They knew me. They knew my family.
‘You’re the reason your dad ended up … well, who knows where he is. But it was your fault, Santee. That thing you did ... I mean, come on, what did you think would happen after that?’
Tash’s words stung like
she’d just slapped me across the face. Tears filled my eyes.
It was your fault, Santee.
You’re the reason …
Your fault.
I knew it was my fault. I’d carried it around with me for a long time. I’d tried to visit him so I could explain, so I could say sorry, so I could make it better.
‘I didn’t do it on purpose, Tash. It was a mistake.’
Tash shook her head like there was more she wanted to say but she couldn’t find the words.
We sat in silence until Mrs Rook called us into her office, Tash’s words swirling around and around in my head.
The principal didn’t care about all the shit I was going through. She kept saying, Things have changed, things have changed, as if I hadn’t noticed the wall or the fact I had no family. She wasn’t interested in my questions. Her only advice was Pull Your Head In. Which was pretty shitty advice. Tash looked all serious and said, Of course we will. I said nothing.
And I stayed silent for the rest of the day. Through all the exams, which were so hard they made my eyes burn. I said nothing on the walk home. Or back at the apartment, which the Drivers insisted was my home – they were always saying, Make yourself at home, help yourself to whatever you want, this is your home – but it wasn’t. Not really. It never would be. I said nothing as we ate dinner and watched the evening News. I overhead Z telling Mila that it wasn’t her fault. Santee just needs space, she’s upset. I went to bed feeling more alone than ever.
To make the day even worse, I got my period. Bam. I didn’t know what to do. I had nothing. I had no-one. I couldn’t ask Astrid for help. I couldn’t go out to the store. I folded up some toilet paper and put it in my underwear and hoped for the best. Mila found me in the bathroom. I was washing my hands and crying and cramping all at the same time.
‘Don’t cry,’ she said, and hugged me. ‘We’re here for you.’
And the words all rushed out because it was easy to forget Mila was only ten, and she listened and took my hand and said she knew what to do. She took me next door to Pip, who made me peppermint tea and sat me down in her lumpy old armchair with a hot water bottle.
Everywhere Everything Everyone Page 12