Everywhere Everything Everyone

by Warner, Katy;

  ‘Give me a sec, sweetheart,’ she said, and out she went.

  Mila talked and talked about her first day back at school and cracked me up with impersonations of the kids in her class and the new, serious teachers who had turned up and started changing everything. Before too long, Pip came back with tampons and pads and I never thought things like that would be such a wonderful gift.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘We girls have to stick together,’ Pip said and she put the kettle on for another round of tea.

  CHAPTER 24

  It was no surprise to find out I’d been put into the Low Stream. They didn’t even try to hide the fact we were losers by giving the group a nice name. Like in grade one we all knew the kids in the Eagle Group couldn’t read that well, but they were Eagles and Eagles are tough and no-one messes with them. But I wasn’t an Eagle. Or in ‘Group C’. Or even ‘Basic Maths’. I was in the Low Stream. Z made it into the Advanced Stream, of course, and he tried to make me feel better but it didn’t help.

  The whole school gathered for an assembly. Once, everyone would have been talking and Mrs Rook would have shouted at us to settle down. But now there was an eerie almost-silence as we filed into the gym. Everyone seemed to be covered in their own personal fog.

  Mrs Rook welcomed us to what she called the New Beginning, and droned on and on about our new curriculum and new teachers and a new standard of behaviour expected from each of us. I was sure she was staring directly at me as she said that part.

  The outdated curriculum (her words, not mine) was being thrown out along with a whole heap of inappropriate library books and unreliable text books and dangerous websites and harmful words and teachers who did not fit the New Direction of the School (but we wish them all the best in their new endeavours). Beth was not sitting with the other staff so I suppose she didn’t fit with this New Direction. Julius Warren was in her place, observing us and taking notes.

  ‘We’re getting back to basics,’ Mrs Rook announced and we had no idea what she meant but she seemed pleased about it.

  At the end of the assembly we had to line up to collect our updated school uniforms, which were almost identical to the old uniforms except now it was compulsory for boys to wear trousers and girls to wear skirts and they decided which one you were and there was no arguing or complaining because they didn’t care. Some tried, but it was no use. Their names were taken, and appointments were made for them to see the bald man. Julius. We were also given sports uniforms for the compulsory gym class we would take every second day – it was the only thing about this New Beginning that sounded any good to me.

  Walking past the library, I could see piles of books being loaded into trolleys and removed.

  People were installing screens in the corridors.

  Cameras were being mounted to the classroom walls.

  And a security checkpoint was being set up at the entrance of the school.

  The New Beginning had begun.

  I felt sick.

  Our new teacher was Mrs Emery, and she stood at our classroom door to welcome us. She was younger than a lot of the teachers we’d had before and she wore cool glasses and smiled as we entered and said, Good morning, good morning, and I thought maybe things wouldn’t be so bad.

  I’d been allocated the middle seat in the middle row, which was the worst place to sit. I needed to be by the window or the door – I hated the feeling of being surrounded, especially by people who hated me. Some of them had been my friends, before, but now they pretended I didn’t exist. Except Tash, who always liked to remind everyone I was there. Tash had gotten into the Advanced Stream, of course, so I didn’t have to deal with her, but her pain-in-the-arse friend Chloe was given the desk next to mine. She sighed loudly when she sat down, as if that was the worst thing that had happened to her, ever.

  ‘Hey, Santee,’ Imara whispered and gave me a little wave from the row in front.

  I waved back. At least some of Z’s friends didn’t hate me.

  Mrs Emery stood at the front of the class. She smiled and said, Good morning, again and we said, Good morning, back.

  ‘Good morning – who?’ she said.

  We all looked at each other like, What does she mean? A couple of people giggled. Her smiled turned into something more like a snarl and she stared the gigglers down until there was absolute silence.

  ‘You will say, “Good morning, Mrs Emery” – got it?’ Even though she didn’t raise her voice it still felt as if she were shouting. ‘Got it?’ she repeated.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Emery,’ we said, our voices quiet and unsure.

  ‘Better,’ she said.

  Mrs Emery was here, she told us, to teach us about the Government, History and English. We would read what we were told to read. We would respond the way we were told to respond. Opinions would not exist in Mrs Emery’s class.

  Mr Lo was still my maths teacher and I never thought I’d be happy to walk back into his classroom. But I was.

  ‘You might find this a little easy, Santee,’ he whispered to me as he handed out the new textbooks we’d be working from. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  I was happy to have an easy maths class. I couldn’t have dealt with parametric equations as well as everything else that was going on. And I thought how Astrid would be annoyed at me for thinking that – she’d tell me that I was lazy and I wasn’t trying hard enough and maths was The Most Important Thing. But Astrid wasn’t here.

  ‘You all right, Santee?’ Mr Lo asked as I was leaving class.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘You’re a smart kid. You’ll get through it.’

  He spoke as if that was the final word on it – like I’d be all right because he said so. He had no idea. I wanted to yell in his face, to tell him nothing would ever be all right ever again.

  ‘You don’t realise it yet, but it’s going to be a lot better this way,’ he said.

  I raced out of class before I said something I shouldn’t, pushed through the crowded corridors and out into the fresh air to find Z. What the hell was wrong with everyone? Why were they going along with this? I needed people to see, actually see what was happening. What we were losing. What we were giving up. I needed them to open their eyes.

  I walked towards my so-called-home alone that afternoon. Z was hanging out with his friends and I needed some time on my own. No. That’s not true. What I really needed was my own home and Mum and Astrid and everything to go back to how it was. But that wasn’t about to happen. Instead, I headed towards the piece of the wall that was the closest I could get to my real home. Being there made me feel like I hadn’t given up on them.

  The streets were less crowded than ever before. The shops were empty or closed, the restaurants deserted and lots of windows were boarded up, just like the storefronts on my side after the riots. The usual bustle of the city had just … gone. People moved around like zombies – they were there, but not really there. I wanted to snap my fingers in front of their faces and say, Wake the hell up. Why were we all going along with all of this?

  A kid, tiny, probably only four or five, rushed out from nowhere and pulled my arm.

  ‘Have you got any money?’ he half whispered.

  I didn’t. But before I could say sorry or check that he was OK he’d run off to ask the next person. They ignored him. Another swatted him away as if he were a fly, not a human who needed help. And it was then that I noticed them. People like the old man who had thrown my sandwich, but different, somehow. Less obvious. Quieter. Sitting in doorways. Crouched in the shadows of alleyways. Waiting, watching, with nowhere to go. Perhaps I’d spent too much time inside the apartment or in my own head to actually see them, all these people with no guest room or substitute family, people with absolutely nothing and no-one. I tried not to stare. I could have been one of them. Instead, I’d gotten lucky. I had Z and Mila and Diggs and food and a bed and I didn’t know, would never know, what I’d done to deserve that kind of luck. I was safe. These people were not
safe.

  I saw the van but didn’t think much of it. Not until I saw an identical one following it. And then another, and another. Four of them. White. Tinted windows. They squealed up onto the footpaths and out jumped Unit Officers. In full riot gear. Guns out.

  My insides turned to mush.

  ‘ID. ID,’ the officers barked.

  But they weren’t talking to me. They’d found their targets. The lost people. The people with nowhere to go. A man shouted, Let me go home! A baby cried. Others kept their heads down and didn’t say anything. And then they were gone. Bundled up and shoved into the vans. Driven away. It was as if they’d never been there in the first place.

  I kept my head down, like all the other zombies, and made my way towards the wall.

  I think I was hoping for some sort of sign. For a note from the other side. A feeling. A sense that my family still existed and were OK and that somehow I’d be OK too. Cos right then, after all the stuff at school and Julius Warren and then seeing those vans, I wasn’t so sure.

  Up ahead I could see a group of kids. No. I heard them first. A bang, followed by cheers and shouts of laughter. As I got closer I realised they were throwing stuff at the wall. Rocks and things like that, which they’d collected in an old trolley. I headed towards them more quickly. That was what I needed: to throw something. To shout and scream and leave a mark on the smooth concrete face of the ugly wall. Maybe that would help shift the feeling that had settled in the pit of my stomach. I checked for drones, scanned nearby buildings for surveillance cameras, looked over my shoulder for the Unit. The way we did on the other side. We always checked. Just in case. I couldn’t see anyone or anything watching, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

  ‘Hey!’ I called to the kids.

  There were six of them, rummaging through their stockpile of homemade missiles. Bottles and bricks and chunks of concrete. They were there to do some damage. Good, I thought.

  The smallest one launched half a brick at the wall. ‘Take that, arseholes,’ she screamed with a voice that didn’t match her tiny body.

  The brick sailed over the top of the wall and they all clapped and cheered and patted her on the back. ‘Kill the Threats!’ their little high-pitched voices screamed.

  I stopped.

  They didn’t want to hurt the wall, they wanted to hurt the people on the other side.

  Something inside me broke into hundreds of little pieces and suddenly I was running towards them shouting, Piss off, stop it. I don’t know what I was thinking. Neither did they. They didn’t move. They just stood there with these looks on their faces like, Who the hell is she? They weren’t scared of me even though I was bigger and older and quite possibly crazy.

  ‘What do you want?’ One of the boys grabbed a bottle and held it high above his head.

  ‘Stop it!’ I said. ‘You could hurt someone.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘That’s the point.’

  They laughed and moved in closer. These little shits. All arrogant and used to getting their own way. Spoilt rich kids.

  ‘Piss off!’ I shouted.

  But they didn’t.

  We stared each other down from a few metres away, me and the boy with the bottle. He made like he was going to throw it at my head and I ducked and moved back. It only made it worse. The boy looked very impressed with himself – like he was suddenly the most powerful person in the world, and I was just an ant.

  ‘They’re people,’ I said. ‘Like us.’

  ‘Explain yourself,’ the boy said, and he didn’t sound like a little kid anymore. He sounded like a Unit Officer.

  I said nothing.

  ‘Show us your ID,’ he said, still using that Unit voice.

  ‘No,’ I said, cos there was no way I was going to let a bunch of kids start ordering me around.

  A rock sailed through the air and bounced off my shoulder. The sting of the impact rushed down my arm. I tried to keep my face neutral, normal, as if it hadn’t hurt at all.

  I kept my eyes on the boy with the bottle. Whoever had thrown that rock had shown him up. They’d had the guts to throw their missile when he’d just stood there, threatening me with it. He raised the bottle again. The air buzzed and tightened around me. He had to do it, had to throw it at me now, or he’d lose his position. He’d be just another ant, like me. He narrowed his eyes and steadied himself and I stood there and waited. I was not going to make this easy for him.

  The bottle flew through the air and I shut my eyes and tried not to flinch.

  It smashed apart at my feet.

  Close.

  The glass sparkled on the ground.

  The kids laughed at the boy and he ran towards me, arms swinging and swearing his head off. He was much younger close up. Tiny. Like those little kids I’d see walking to school, holding their mothers’ hands, their backpacks almost as big as them.

  He shoved me hard in the stomach and I stumbled back and I didn’t know what the hell I was supposed to do cos this was a little kid. How could I fight a little kid?

  ‘Traitor!’ he shouted in a high-pitched whine.

  The other kids joined in. All of them as small and angry as this boy. The girl with the good arm gave me a little shove as she said, ID, ID, show us. She pushed me again.

  And that was enough.

  I pushed her back. She fell. The boy went at me again and I punched him, hard, just in the arm, but it must have hurt cos his face went all blotchy and red and I thought he was going to start crying.

  A drone hummed overhead. I looked up to see it hanging above me, watching us. I’d never felt so relieved to see one of those things. The kids scrambled to their feet and took off, leaving their trolley of missiles behind. I watched the drone hover, collecting our images, recording us for future reference.

  My legs stung. Little specks of blood bubbled to the surface and ran down my shins.

  I stopped at my section of the wall. I blocked out the noise of the traffic, the sirens, the people who passed by. I placed the palms of my hands onto the surface of the wall and closed my eyes and imagined that Mum and Astrid were doing the same thing on the other side. In my mind the wall disappeared and the three of us stood there, palm to palm, and I said something like, This is weird, and Astrid laughed and Mum said, It’s a moment, Santee, don’t be so cynical. That didn’t happen. Of course. But imagining things like that kept me going.

  CHAPTER 25

  I was in my bedroom trying to finish an essay that just didn’t want to be written, so I was happy to hear Mila calling my name. I headed into the kitchen, where she had rearranged the chairs into a neat row. Pip was already sitting there, waiting.

  ‘You’re my test audience,’ she said, and pretty much shoved me into a chair.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I have to do a speech for school and I need to practise,’ she said before running off to find Z.

  ‘She’s just like her mum,’ Pip said, and chuckled quietly to herself.

  ‘Is she?’ I said.

  ‘Enthusiastic, full of energy and far too smart for her own good.’

  ‘Sounds like her mum was pretty great.’

  ‘She was,’ Pip said. ‘And she would have thought you were pretty great, too.’

  There was so much more I wanted to ask her, but Mila came back, dragging Z with her.

  ‘This better be good,’ he said as he flopped into the chair next to me.

  ‘It will be,’ Mila said, and took her place in front of us, palm cards in hand. She took a deep breath. Smiled. She looked calm and composed and this vision of her in ten years’ time flashed through my mind: Mila standing at a podium, inspiring the crowd and being in charge and doing something good.

  ‘Good afternoon students, teachers and honoured guests,’ she said in a voice that was hers, but also not hers. ‘Today I will be discussing the Safety Border. Our city had been plagued by Threats for decades. Countless leaders attempted to curb these heinous acts; however, it was not until Magnus Varick’s unprec
edented and courageous move to build the Safety Border that real change occurred.’

  Pip shifted in her seat, but Mila didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘Research proved that in our city, Threat activity originated in the area now known as Region Two. In order to contain and limit the movement of this activity, Varick and his government implemented the Safety Border. Essentially, it separates two distinct cultures growing in our capital. That of Region One and that of Region Two.’

  ‘I need a snack,’ Pip said loudly. ‘Anyone else want a snack?’

  ‘Pip,’ Mila said, ‘it’s a three-minute speech. You can wait for three minutes, can’t you?’

  Pip sighed. ‘Yes, love, sorry.’

  ‘That’s OK.’ Mila smiled again and returned to her palm cards. ‘The Safety Border provides an efficient and effective way to monitor movement and Threat activity while also keeping Good Citizens safe and secure. Citizens from both Regions have welcomed the Safety Border and the protection it –’

  ‘Have they?’ Z interrupted.

  ‘This is a speech, Z,’ Mila said. ‘You can’t interject like in a debate or –’

  ‘Does Santee welcome the wall?’ Z said.

  I reached over and squeezed his arm and tried to say, Leave it, but he didn’t get it.

  ‘Does she, Mila?’

  ‘Um.’ Mila shuffled through her notes. ‘My speech isn’t about Santee.’

  ‘But it kinda is, right? I mean, she’s stuck here cos of that wall,’ Z said.

  ‘Yes, I know, but …’

  ‘But what?’

  Mila looked confused; she wasn’t used to her work being criticised, to getting the answer wrong. ‘This is what we’re learning in class,’ she said.

  ‘Doesn’t make it true,’ Z said.

  ‘I know that, Zac,’ she said. ‘I’m not stupid. I know exactly what’s happening. I also know that if I give a speech about greed and abuse of power and fear-mongering and the truth about this regime, we’re all going to end up in a lot of trouble.’