Everyone fell completely silent.
That image of Mila in her twenties got a whole lot clearer in my mind.
‘I’m sorry, Santee,’ she said finally. ‘I don’t want to make you upset.’
‘It’s OK,’ I said, even though it wasn’t. It wasn’t OK that her school would make her regurgitate that crap. Mila was smart. She could think for herself, could smell bullshit a mile off. Those kids I met at the wall? They ate up all that bullshit. And that wasn’t OK, either.
‘Can I keep going?’ Mila said.
‘Well, I don’t know about the rest of your audience, but I’m learning a hell of a lot,’ I said. ‘Keep going.’
She took a moment, straightened her back and cleared her throat. ‘Citizens are required, by law, to remain loyal to their Region as movement of any kind has been proven to have strong links to Threat activity.’
‘I’m sorry, love, but I can’t listen to this,’ Pip said quietly, and left the room.
‘Me neither,’ Z said as he followed her out.
We heard the front door slam.
Mila stared at the empty seats. Her eyes were glassy and her lip was trembling, just a little.
‘Hey,’ I said gently. ‘Don’t worry about them. We all know you’re way too smart to just believe whatever some teacher tells you.’
‘Our new teacher is a moron,’ she said, smiling.
‘Same here,’ I said.
She gave me a hug, planted a kiss on my forehead. ‘I wish it was under different circumstances, but I’m glad you’re here, Santee,’ she said.
‘Me too,’ I said. ‘Now, come on, practise this speech. You need to get an A-plus, or whatever it is you geniuses get.’
‘A-plus-plus-plus,’ she said, and laughed, and started her speech from the top.
CHAPTER 26
The next morning I woke before the sun was up. I was in a shitty mood and didn’t want to go to school. I kept thinking about Mila’s speech and the kids at the wall and the zombies in the city who just ignored all those nowhere people as they were thrown into vans and taken away.
I turned on the bedside lamp and grabbed my sketchpad, but I’d used up most of the pages and there wasn’t enough room for all the things I wanted to draw. I needed to create a mess. A huge mess. I wanted to scribble over everything I had sketched cos it all seemed so pointless now. I felt trapped. Useless. Like a tiny speck just getting thrown around wherever, whenever, with no say in it. At all.
I needed a bigger canvas. I needed room to scream, but not with my voice. With my pens. My markers.
I changed, packed my bag and snuck into Z’s room. I was sure Diggs would catch me, that he’d set up some kind of surveillance in the hallway. But it was worth the risk. Z had to be a part of this.
He was all rolled up in his blankets like a cocoon and he looked kinda cute and funny and I thought about taking a photo of him, but that would be super weird so I didn’t.
‘Hey,’ I said, and shook him.
He murmured something and tried to roll away from me, so I shook him harder. He opened his eyes and freaked out when he saw me standing above him in one of his old hoodies.
‘Shhh,’ I said. ‘It’s me. Get dressed. We’re going for a run.’
‘No,’ he said, and pulled the blanket over his head.
‘I need to do something, Z,’ I said. ‘I feel so useless.’
He groaned a bit as he sat up and said, ‘For you? Anything.’
We slipped out of the apartment and into the morning. I wanted to run. Really run. Sprint through the park until my legs screamed and my chest ached. Smash and destroy everything in my way. Instead I jogged slowly with Z, who kept telling me, Go ahead, go ahead, but I stayed right beside him. This guy who hated running, who was so crap at it, had agreed to come just because I’d asked him. Why would anyone do that? I didn’t get it. But I knew I wanted him there, with me.
I led us to an alleyway. We’d walked past it on our way to school and I knew it would be perfect. It was enclosed by walls that were clean and smooth. There was no way walls like that would be left so clean back at home. Where I grew up every surface was tagged, stickered, stencilled and painted. The Unit had stopped caring about it, stopped trying to cover it up. I liked it. It was way more exciting than the stuff in the art gallery. Over here, the walls were grey or white or brick or glass and they were blank. Which was good. It meant my message would stand out.
We stopped, and I waited for Z to catch his breath. The alleyway was deserted. There were no windows looking onto it, only fire exits and loading docks. I’d seen the cameras as we’d entered but it didn’t look like there were any more down the long cobblestone passageway. That didn’t mean a drone wouldn’t fly overhead, or a patrol car wouldn’t drive past, but it was worth the risk.
I took a marker from my pocket and stood at the wall. I’d been thinking, over and over, about what I could write. This could be it. The one chance I’d get to leave some sort of mark, get the voice out of my head, that feeling out of the pit of my stomach. I drew a cartoon face. Big, bold lines. A girl’s face. Screaming. A speech bubble. Help me!
‘Shit, Santee,’ Z said quietly.
The streetlights buzzed and clicked off.
‘I had to do something, you know?’ I said.
He didn’t say anything. I thought he was pissed off at me for dragging him into this, for making him part of something so stupid. Then he took the marker and wrote, under my picture, DOWN WITH THE REGIME.
He smiled at me. ‘You’re amazing.’
We walked back to the apartment with the secret of what we’d just done bubbling inside me. I thought about the people who would walk past it on their way to work. Would they notice? What would they think? How would Varick react? Would he ever know? I couldn’t believe I’d done it. After they took Dad away I did a lot of crazy, stupid things, but they all seemed a bit childish now, compared to what we’d just done. Back then I’d done things like smash up the pot plants in our concrete yard. I’d just needed to destroy something, to get back at the neighbours. This was so much better than smashing pot plants.
My whole body trembled with every step, but I wasn’t scared or nervous. I was happy. For the first time in the longest time.
‘You OK?’ Z said.
‘I want to make people think,’ I blurted out. ‘About the wall and Varick and my dad and your mum and just … everything.’
He murmured, Yeah, me too, and smiled and put his arm around me as we continued through the park.
‘I want to do more,’ I said. ‘You in?’
‘You kidding me? Of course I’m in.’
I kissed him. Pulled him in close and felt his heart pounding through his chest and into mine.
CHAPTER 27
We watched the News every night, both hoping and dreading that there’d be something about the graffiti. Diggs wanted to know why we were so interested in the News all of a sudden.
‘Mrs Emery quizzes us on it,’ I said. Which was true, even if it wasn’t the reason I watched.
It didn’t matter, anyway – the graffiti never got mentioned on the News. And out there, on the walls, our messages were painted over and covered up and it was like they’d never existed.
One night the News included a segment about a family who lived close to the wall. They could see it from their backyard. It shadowed over everything. But they didn’t mind. They explained to the reporter how much better life was with the new Safety Border. It’s a relief, the mother said. We never really felt safe with all that Threat activity so close by, the father added. The children nodded in unison. They stole our bikes once, the middle child said. The mother looked sad. I’m sure there are some nice people over there, but most of them are criminals and it’s about time something was done about it.
‘Shit,’ Diggs announced loudly, ‘we’ve got a bloody criminal in our house. Lock up your bikes, kids!’ And he laughed and they laughed and I knew he was being funny and trying to cheer me up. I knew he d
idn’t believe what those people were saying, but still, something about it hurt.
I wanted to break into that family’s yard and write all over their fence, take my pens to the part of wall they could see from their house and write on it too, so no matter where they looked they would see my messages. Help me! Let us out / Let them in. Freedom! Maybe then they’d wake up to the fact that the wall was wrong. None of us were safe. People on both sides were trapped. All of us. The Drivers understood that. And so did Pip. So it made me think that, maybe, there were more people like them out there somewhere. And maybe other people, one day, would work it out.
I started to call the Drivers’ apartment home. I felt so guilty every time the word slipped out because it couldn’t be home – not really, not without my family. But I’d just have to think about those vans picking up lost people to remember how lucky I was. The vans, like the graffiti, were never mentioned on the News.
‘Who decides what makes the News?’ I asked Diggs late one night.
Z shot me a look that said, Don’t say anything. As if I would. I told Diggs about the vans I’d seen and how people were taken away in them. ‘Do you know where they took them?’ I asked. ‘Is it that Processing Centre thing?’
He turned the TV up loud. Way too loud.
‘Tell me again,’ he said, and I did.
He wanted to know when it had happened and what the vans looked like and who was taken and I couldn’t answer all his questions.
‘Santee.’ He spoke in that kind of whisper that wants to be a shout. He got close to my face. ‘This is bloody important.’
One of his eyes was bloodshot and I wondered if that meant he was drinking again. Since my first night there things had calmed a little inside the Driver home. Or maybe, compared to what was happening outside, it just seemed that way. He said he had something important to do and stormed out, slamming the door behind him and making the walls shake, and Z just shrugged at me and Mila said, He gets like that, don’t take it personally.
Anyway, I decided right then that I’d never tell him about Julius Warren – if he got this angry about the vans I didn’t want to see his reaction to that bit of news. I didn’t like the way his face seemed to change, the violence in his body that he could barely keep inside.
Diggs didn’t come back that night. That was the start of seeing even less of him than usual. He was always working and said it was easier to stay at the office, so Pip would come around to make sure we were eating and sleeping and doing all the things that kids supposedly can’t do without an adult being around. They hadn’t figured that we had Mila. And Mila was more responsible and grown-up than most of the actual adults I knew.
Without Diggs around it was possible, although banned, to sneak into Z’s room. Or he’d sneak into mine. I thought it was a rule worth breaking. And who could stop us? I’d wait until I was sure Mila was asleep, tiptoe across the hall and quietly open his door. Most of the time he’d still be up drawing. He was obsessed with lettering and kept going on about finding his style. His sketchpad was full of different ways to write DOWN WITH THE REGIME.
‘Time to get a new sentence,’ I joked.
‘I like it,’ he said. ‘Simple, easy to remember. And not all of us can be as creative as you.’
‘Shut up,’ I said and shoved him.
‘You’re an artist,’ he said. Again. Just like he did that first day we’d hung out. He always said it. And I always told him to shut up cos I was embarrassed by how happy it made me.
He sat on his bed, hunched over his sketchpad, and I lay beside him. He had this serious expression on his face, like he was constantly judging the work he was doing and none of it was good enough. I reached out to touch the back of his neck, feel where the hair was shaved and short, trace my fingers down his spine. He threw the sketchpad on the floor and turned to me and we kissed and it felt like my whole body was alive with electricity as he pulled me closer. I wanted to touch him and feel him touch me and it was as if we couldn’t get close enough. My skin turned to goosebumps as he slid his hand under my shirt, his fingers running up and down my back and me falling, falling into this rhythm, this moment.
I tried not to wake him as I slipped out from under his arm and out of the bed. It was early. Very early. But I couldn’t sleep. I looked over at Z and part of me wanted to get back into bed, climb under the sheets and curl up next to him and just go with it, forget everything else except being there with him. But I couldn’t. Not now. I snuck out of his room and back into mine, got changed, grabbed a pen and headed outside.
I was an artist.
And I had to keep going. I didn’t want to fall in love with Z and the Drivers and life with them and forget everything that had led me to this. It would be easy to get used to the wall and everything it stood for. I could get comfortable with the nice house and the perfect boyfriend and the surrogate Dad and cute little sister. I could pull my head in like Mrs Rook told me and I could be the smart kid Mr Lo seemed to think I was … or I could be me.
I ran and ran and it felt like I could go on forever.
CHAPTER 28
Diggs was actually home for once when we got in after school. We could hear him chatting and laughing with Pip as we walked in.
‘I made cupcakes,’ Pip announced. ‘Come get one before your dad eats them all.’
They were both in a really good mood, which was nice after a crappy day with a psycho teacher. We sat down and Diggs ran around making us coffee and tea and pouring orange juice for Mila. I wondered if he was feeling bad about being so absent.
Julius Warren had asked me again about Diggs’s activities (his words, not mine). He’d called me to his office over the loudspeaker and I dragged myself there as slowly as possible. He had made heaps of changes to Beth’s office. Removed the posters I’d once hated but now missed, got rid of her filing cabinets and comfy armchairs. I had sat opposite him at his large desk.
‘Any news?’ he had asked, smiling like we were best buddies. Gross.
‘Any news for me?’ I replied, and flashed him back the same fake smile.
‘We’re working on it.’
Liar, I thought. I repeated the stuff I’d already told him. He sighed loudly and sent me back to class, where Mrs Emery was waiting with a lunchtime detention. Perfect.
Pip’s cupcakes were just what I needed.
‘Santee,’ Diggs said, and motioned to a couple of plastic bags on the chair beside him. ‘Those are for you.’
‘Me?’
He nodded and Pip said, ‘Open them.’
They were full of clothes and shoes and stuff like that and I couldn’t believe it and didn’t know what to say, so I just kinda stood there like an idiot staring at all the stuff. New stuff. My own stuff.
‘Thought you could do with some new things,’ he said. ‘Pip helped. No biggie.’
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry and I ended up doing both at the same time.
‘Don’t get all weird about it,’ Diggs said as I gave him a hug, which was definitely not the sort of thing I usually did. But it seemed right.
That night felt like some kind of celebration. Diggs made this fancy pasta thing and the five of us sat around the table eating and talking and laughing with classical music booming from the stereo. We missed the News and for a moment I worried about what the neighbours would think, except our neighbour was there, with us, also not watching the News.
Pip said, ‘Did you hear about the random checks?’
And Diggs said, ‘Pip. No. Not in front of the kids.’
Of course then we really wanted to know, but Diggs insisted that Mila go to bed and she tried to argue with him but it was no good and in the end she went to her room as if it had been her idea all along anyway. (She said something about needing eight hours’ sleep to be at her optimum. Her words. Not mine.)
The random checks didn’t sound like anything new. The Unit would turn up and take people away. Just like they’d done to my dad and our old neighbour from numbe
r four and heaps and heaps of people. No-one talked about it back then but it didn’t mean it hadn’t happened. And according to Pip it was happening again now.
‘But it’s not just people. They’re checking everything. Going through cupboards and pulling up floorboards and checking under beds.’ Pip moved in close and spoke like she was telling us some sort of scary story at a campfire. ‘They’ll use anything against you.’
‘Against you?’ I said.
‘For crimes against the State,’ Diggs said. ‘Bull. Shit.’
‘What stuff are they looking for?’ I looked at Z to see if he was thinking the same thing. Our pens and markers and sketchpads. What if they found them? We didn’t even hide them. Z kept his head down, his eyes away from everyone.
‘A banned book,’ Pip said, ‘or film. Maybe you’d left it on your shelf. Forgotten about it. I mean, that can happen, can’t it?’
‘But they don’t really care – they can make anything look bad,’ Diggs said. ‘It’s all about context.’
CHAPTER 29
We walked to school together every day. Me and Z. I thought it might get awkward, like maybe we would run out of things to say to each other, but even when we walked in silence it felt right. And it wasn’t like Z was all that quiet. He liked to talk. A lot. He talked while we did the housework, which was something I wanted to do on my own as a way of thanking the Drivers but he always insisted on helping with. He talked to the checkout operators when we bought groceries from the nearby supermarket. He talked in his sleep. But he was a good listener, too, and he never got annoyed with how much I went on about missing Mum and Astrid or my frustrations about not being able to contact them or anything. He always listened.
We kept going on our morning runs, even though it made the days long and exhausting. It was worth it. It felt like we were the only people trying to do something, anything – the rest of the world kept their heads and eyes further down than before, their ears and mouths shut. No-one questioned anything. And it seemed like the words we wrote never lasted long enough to get through to anyone. When we felt really brave (or stupid) we’d walk by the building or fence or rubbish bin or spot on the footpath a few hours later to find our graffiti had been scrubbed away. And I’d wonder if, maybe, the whole thing was just in my head. But Z would squeeze my hand or smile his smile and I’d know it was real. DOWN WITH THE REGIME. Z added it to every picture I drew or sentence I wrote. I wanted all of it to come down – the wall, the school, the Regime and especially Magnus Varick.
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