Everywhere Everything Everyone

by Warner, Katy;

  I looked at Z – Does she know? He shrugged. Pip said nothing more about it.

  The Unit kept searching through the Drivers’ apartment well into the night.

  We slept like sardines on the mattresses. Mila cushioned herself between me and Z and took up most of the room, which was fine. I wasn’t really expecting to sleep anyway.

  In the grey morning light, I carefully stepped over Mila and snuggled in next to Z. He was already awake and staring, blankly, at the ceiling.

  ‘How about a run?’ I whispered in his ear. ‘It might make us feel better.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘We’ve got to do something.’

  He shook his head again and I realised tears were streaming down his face and I thought, Shit, Santee, you’ve done it again.

  ‘I think it’s my fault.’ He spoke quietly, his eyes still focused on the ceiling. ‘That stupid graffiti … they must have known it was us and come here and he must’ve said something he shouldn’t have said cos he’s got a bloody big mouth and – and …’ His voice trailed off to nothing.

  I said I was sorry, so sorry, because I was. Because it wasn’t his fault. It was mine. And I didn’t know how to tell him. I lay beside him, rested my head on his chest and listened to his heart thump, thump, thump.

  CHAPTER 36

  Mila was crying. Sitting on the stairs in her neat school uniform with her backpack on. But she wasn’t going anywhere.

  It had been a week and we had hardly left the cramped apartment. We sat around in a weird sort of daze, lost in our thoughts of Diggs. I helped Pip out as much as she would let me. I cleaned and cooked and checked on Mila and Z constantly and tried to make myself useful. I wasn’t part of the deal she’d made with Diggs and she had no reason to take me in. But any time I said anything about it she’d tell me, Shut up and stop being so silly.

  After a week in the fog, Pip announced we had to go back to school. And we were all too exhausted and sad to argue.

  The reality of going back hit Mila when we were halfway down the stairs, on our way out of the apartment block. She suddenly just stopped. And sat. Right there on the step.

  I sat beside her. Put my arm around her. I could have told her it would get better and easier and although she’d miss him every single day she’d get on with her life and be just fine. That’s the sort of stuff people who have never been through anything bad think is comforting. It’s what people said to me when my dad was taken. And it would boil me up inside. Mila was too smart and too special to be fed any of those lies. And so I said nothing. I just let her cry.

  ‘This is the worst,’ she said, finally.

  ‘I know.’

  And she blew her nose, wiped her eyes and headed back into the real world.

  I went outside at lunchtime to find Z at our table, deep in conversation with Tash. She was doing all the talking and he was leaning in close and listening, really listening, to everything she was saying. And it looked like she had a lot to say.

  I was stuck to the spot. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be part of this conversation. The two of them had built this invisible force field around themselves and there was no way I could get through it.

  It was Z who burst their little bubble. I must have been standing there for ages, staring at them like a weirdo, when he finally looked over and saw me. We held eye contact for a moment and I tried to send him a what’s up? but he didn’t give me anything. No smile. No shrug. Just this strange expression. He dropped his gaze, which made Tash turn around to see what he’d been staring at. Me. She waved me over and it kinda looked like Z was telling her not to. I ignored it. Told myself I was being stupid. Z was my boyfriend.

  ‘We were just talking about you,’ Tash said.

  ‘No, we weren’t,’ Z quickly said, but he wouldn’t look at me.

  ‘I was saying how sad it is about his dad. So sad. Right?’ she continued.

  ‘Yeah –’

  ‘Anyway,’ Tash interrupted me, ‘I was like wow, at least you have Santee. I mean, she’s been through all that before, you know? And then I thought, that’s kind of strange, right? Like, you were pretty much the reason your dad was taken, and now Z’s dad’s been taken. Just feels like there’s a common denominator, don’t you think?’

  The common denominator. Me. Always me. I froze.

  ‘I’ll let you two talk. I find it’s always best to be honest, Santee,’ Tash said. ‘Oh, Z, Chloe wanted me to say hi. From her. To you. Cool? ’K. Bye.’

  And then she was gone.

  Z sat on the table and stared up at the sky. It wanted to rain. The clouds were thick and heavy and the air had that smell to it. I sat next to him, but he wouldn’t look at me. He was concentrating hard on the clouds.

  I twisted my fingers in knots that matched the ones in my stomach. And then I told Z about my dad. The full story this time, because last time I’d left some parts out – the parts I didn’t like remembering. I suppose I thought if I left out those bits for long enough then maybe they would no longer be true. Like I could rewrite history if I tried hard enough. Thing is, I always remembered the bad part. Not talking about something doesn’t mean you forget it. No matter how hard you try.

  The part of the story I didn’t like to remember happened before Dad was taken away. When I’d been a loud, stupid brat. Even more than I was now. I said that to make Z laugh, but he didn’t. He didn’t even look at me. So I took a deep breath. This guy who thought I was an artist and a genius and special … I didn’t want him not to think those things anymore. And there was no way he would after I told him the truth.

  The truth.

  The truth was, I was the reason my dad was taken away.

  I said it. Just like that.

  He didn’t ask why or how. He didn’t say, No you didn’t, I don’t believe you. He kept his eyes down. Played with a loose button at the bottom of his shirt.

  I’d never told anyone apart from Tash. And once I’d told her, she’d stopped being my friend. I didn’t want to think about all the things that would stop once I told Z. But I told him anyway. I owed him that.

  ‘My dad is a bit like your dad,’ I said quietly. ‘He hates this government, and Varick, and everything they stand for … And, he did things. Like organised protests with his students at the Uni. And he made signs cos he was an artist, you know, and he was smart and people liked to hear him talk at rallies and whatever. Anyway, they’d started shutting down all these departments at the Uni. You remember that? And Arts was one of the first to go and that meant Mum and Dad were fired and they were angry, really angry about it and they organised a protest and they made all these signs and banners. And I brought one to school. One of the signs. Cos I was confused and upset about how everything was changing at home and in the world and here at this shitty school ... they’d taken away the Art Room and Ms Francis just disappeared and I couldn’t deal with it. So I stole one of Dad’s protest signs. A real bad one. The stuff it said about Varick – it was really bad, stuff no-one would say out loud – and I snuck it into school and I was going to stand up in assembly and start my own protest with it, to get the Art Room back, but … I never …. They found out about it, Mrs Rook and some of the other teachers, before I’d even … And I had to sit in her office and they all wanted to know where I’d gotten it and who had made it. And I told them. I told them it was my dad.’

  I spoke fast and quiet and I couldn’t tell if Z had heard me or not cos he didn’t react. But I kept going. I’d gotten this far. ‘Later that night the Unit took Dad away. And it was my fault.’

  I wanted the sky to open up, for the rain to start thundering down. Right there. I wanted to feel those heavy, fat raindrops burst against my face, my arms, my legs. I wanted the rain to pierce through my skin, sting me, hurt me. But nothing happened.

  Finally, he spoke. ‘Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?’

  ‘No, that’s not –’

  ‘And how about my dad, Santee, how about Diggs? Why d
id they take him? What did you do?’ He turned to look at me.

  ‘They just asked me questions.’

  ‘Who?’

  I couldn’t speak. I hadn’t meant for any of this to happen. I wanted to go back, way, way back, to before. Before me and Z. Before the Wall. Before Tash hated me. Before Varick.

  ‘Who?’ He grabbed my arm. Not hard. Not mean. But pleading. Like he thought I had the answer he was searching for.

  I steadied myself. ‘Julius Warren. I told him Diggs worked late and could sometimes drink too much and how he tried to punch you that time.’ I watched Z crumple and it felt like my heart was splitting apart. ‘He told me he had information about my dad and he could help me get home and …’

  My voice got stuck in the back of my throat. I’d run out of words.

  ‘You know what? You’re still a brat. Selfish and full of shit and a fucking brat.’ His voice was low but it pounded in my head as if he were shouting. I couldn’t look at him with his face all twisted like that. I focused on the clouds. They were angry and grey. In them I could see the faces of all the people I’d hurt. Dad, Mum, Astrid, Diggs and now Z. And Mila.

  ‘I wish I’d never met you,’ he said.

  And he left.

  CHAPTER 37

  I had to prove Z wrong. Show him I had changed and I was sorry. I apologised over and over by text message but got no response, and thought of how Mum would say, Actions speak louder than words. It made sense now. I had to do something. So, instead of going to Pip’s after school, I headed to Unit HQ. I was going to get information about Diggs. I thought that could help, at least a little. It was the not knowing that was the hardest. Living with all those what-ifs and endless scenarios and questions, questions, questions. It could drive you crazy.

  There were no crowds at Unit HQ. The wire fence was still up but no-one was shouting through it or shaking it or anything. They’d all given up, I suppose.

  And just one officer was standing guard. ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ I said as politely as I could, considering how much I despised them.

  He looked above my head like I wasn’t even there.

  ‘I would like to see my brother. He’s an officer. Like you. You might know him?’ I was doing that thing my mum did. Talking and talking and talking cos I was nervous. I stopped myself. Took a deep breath and gave him Peter’s name.

  I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it sooner. Peter would help me. He’d helped me before and he would know where Diggs was, or at least find out for me. He might even be able to get us a visit with him. Of course he would. He was Peter.

  The Officer held his ear and spoke into a device I couldn’t see and I smiled at him because I thought this meant my plan had worked.

  ‘No,’ the officer said. ‘He doesn’t work here. Move along.’

  ‘He does,’ I said. ‘He works here.’

  ‘You talking back?’ The officer stood taller, bigger, rested his hand on his gun as if to remind me he had one and I did not.

  I said nothing. My heart thudded in my chest. He stepped closer to the fence. I thought he was going to shove his hand through the wire and grab me by the throat and kill me, right there, with his bare hands. No-one would have stopped him. ‘Piss off,’ he said.

  And I did.

  I could hear him laughing as I ran and ran and ran.

  I walked back to the apartment and into a family moving into the Drivers’. They looked like the kind of family we always saw on the News: two girls, one mum, one dad, and an annoying, yapping dog that might have been cute if its humans hadn’t just taken our home. I pushed past them as I climbed the stairs and they didn’t say anything to me. And I said nothing to them.

  Pip said it would be better to ignore them.

  ‘What would I want to say to them anyway?’ I said, but Pip just shrugged. I wondered if she didn’t trust me either. If she thought Diggs’s arrest was my fault, too. It felt like she was being distant. I could feel the panic rising up in me. Maybe they all knew what I’d done and they were going to kick me out, send me off to the Processing Centre.

  ‘Why did you get our house?’ Mila said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s what I want to say to them. That’s what I want to know. Why does that family get our home?’

  ‘They proved themselves to be Good Citizens. So they get the house. It’s all part of the deal,’ Pip said.

  ‘What deal?’ Mila said.

  Pip started humming a little tune, which always drove us crazy cos it meant that was the end of that. No more questions. No more answers. Pip never answered questions. And we had a heap of them: When did you meet Diggs? How do you know him? Why did you take us in? Do you work? Where do you work? Her response was always to hum that irritating song.

  Z got home right on Curfew. Mila told him off cos that was her job now.

  ‘I don’t want to hear it,’ he said, and stormed off into the bathroom for a really long time.

  ‘What’s up with him?’ Mila said.

  ‘He hates me,’ I said, cos there was no point in lying to Mila.

  She sighed. ‘No, he doesn’t.’

  I wanted to tell Mila what was going on. How I’d stuffed everything up. Again. But I couldn’t handle her hating me, too. That would be too much.

  Z finally emerged from the bathroom and threw himself onto his corner of the mattress, pulled the blanket over his head and went to sleep. Or pretended to.

  I couldn’t even pretend to sleep. When the apartment fell into a soft snore, I carefully untangled myself from Mila’s arm (she was like a little koala, clinging to us in the night like we were trees) and tiptoed to the front door. I sat in the corridor with George the Gnome and the pot plants and tried to think about nothing. But my thoughts went from Dad to Tash to Diggs to the new family in the apartment to Mum and Astrid to the Unit Officers shouting, Stop or I’ll shoot, to the man on the street with no shoes to the explosion and the smoke and then to the Safety Border. Every thought led me back to the wall.

  One thing at a time, that had been one of Beth’s lessons. Focus on the here and now, that’s all you have to do. But the here and now was the problem. I wondered what Beth would say about that. I wondered where the hell Beth had gone. And all my jumbled thoughts cycled around and around again.

  The front door opened and Pip slipped out. She said nothing and for a moment I wondered if she’d even noticed me. She pulled a battered packet of cigarettes and a lighter from the pocket of her dressing gown.

  ‘Are you allowed to smoke out here?’ I said.

  ‘No,’ she said, and lit up. ‘Want one?’

  I almost laughed. ‘No,’ I said quietly.

  Smoke curled out of her mouth, her nose. She smoked slowly, like she was really thinking about each drag she took. The tip of the cigarette glowed a brilliant red.

  ‘It’s not your fault, love,’ she said.

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘Your dad. Diggs. Any of that. Not your fault.’ She dusted the pot plants with cigarette ash. How did she know?

  ‘But –’ I started.

  ‘No. No buts. That’s the truth,’ she said, and started to hum very, very softly.

  CHAPTER 38

  I had been living with Pip for a month. It felt like heaps longer. Probably because in all that time Z pretended I didn’t exist. Even though we lived together, I missed him. And I missed Diggs. And Dad. And Mum and Astrid, who I still kept trying to contact even though it never seemed to work. I constantly had this nauseous feeling, which made it difficult to eat and sleep and think and even draw. I didn’t want to do anything. Except maybe curl up on the street and wait for the white vans to take me away. It would have been better that way. That’s what I thought.

  I hadn’t done any homework for ages. I knew I should but it was hard to find the motivation. Even Mila didn’t seem as into her assignments and projects as she used to be. And she barely did any music practice. She spoke about Diggs a lot, wondered what he was doing, where he was, sat
at the bottom of the stairs for hours just waiting for him. It was hard to watch. But at least she was still there, with us. Z was always with Riley, doing whatever he could to avoid being in the same room as me.

  I walked to school alone, through the city that was desperately trying to hold on to some version of what it had been. The good side. The clean, shiny city for people who could afford it. But every day there were more people lining up at the Futures Office, and more of those fancy stores and nice restaurants were boarded up, closed. It started to remind me of home.

  The security check at the school entrance was hectic. Long queues and stupid guards who seemed to like the tiny bit of power they’d been given. They weren’t Unit Officers, but they wanted to be. They were even worse than the real ones.

  In maths class, Mr Lo was pissed off at me. He’d moved beyond disappointment and now he was just plain annoyed. When I told him I hadn’t finished my homework he didn’t check to see how I was holding up, or if I was finding the work too easy or too difficult. He just sighed. He was over it. And over me.

  I hung back after class cos I felt I owed him an apology. I mean, he’d tried with me and I’d let him down. I hated that he was suddenly treating me with the same contempt he showed the rest of the class. I had to promise that I would do better.

  ‘Mr Lo –’ I started, but was cut off by the loudspeaker.

  ‘Mr Lo to the office. Mr Lo to the office.’

  He started packing up his desk, throwing pens and papers and the chipped coffee mug he always carried into his tattered satchel.

  ‘Mr Lo?’ I tried again.

  ‘Not a good time, Santee.’

  And he walked towards the office, just like that. I stood there for a moment before packing up my own bag and heading to the bathroom. It was lunchtime. I was back to hiding there during breaks.

  Back when everything had gone wrong at school, when I’d lost Dad and my best friend and my whole world felt like it was collapsing in on itself, Mum had let me stay home. I had my uniform on and was sitting on the couch, trying to tie my shoelaces, and they wouldn’t work and I threw my shoes across the room and burst into tears. Hey, hey, hey, Mum had said but she wasn’t angry even though I’d left a black mark on the wall. She sat beside me. Rubbed my back. Let’s all stay home today. What do you think? And we had. Mum made us hot chocolate and the three of us cuddled up on the couch and everything felt like it was going to work out somehow. I longed for my mum to appear, take me home and tell me it was all going to be OK. I really needed her, and I wiped my eyes and blew my nose and hoped no-one could hear me crying, alone, in the cubicle.