Riley raced up to Z and gave him a tight hug. I headed off to let them have their moment. Riley wasn’t exactly my biggest fan. I thought he’d probably find a way to blame me for everything.
But he didn’t. Instead, he caught up with me. ‘Glad you’re all right,’ he said, and gave me an awkward pat on the shoulder. Still. It was something.
Mrs Rook wanted to see me and Z in her office. At once (her words, not mine). She seemed nervous, offered us water, poured some for herself, sat down, stood up, sat down again.
‘I wanted to extend my deepest and most sincere condolences. To you both. It is very …’ and she stopped. Took a tissue. Dabbed her eyes. I’d never seen Mrs Rook like this. ‘It is very sad.’
She wanted to know how we were and if we needed any extra support and then she suggested that, perhaps, we reconsider our decision to return to school.
‘What?’ I said.
‘Your presence here could be a distraction. For the other students. You understand?’ She looked miserable and dabbed her eyes again.
‘You don’t want us here?’ Z said.
She lowered her voice. ‘It’s not me, Zac. It’s bigger than me.’
Mrs Rook hugged us before we left and forced her business card into my hand in case I needed anything. Anything at all.
Everyone was in class. The corridors were silent. The screens played a loop of school rules and reminders. Be a Good Citizen! We emptied our lockers and walked out of school. Forever.
I think I was supposed to feel happy and relieved. I’d always imagined that’s how my final day of school would feel. Instead, I felt kinda empty. And lost. So very lost.
CHAPTER 45
They planned another protest. The details were on flyers that dropped from the sky. Little pieces of paper that scattered across the roads and gardens and bush and rooftops. They got stuck in gutters and drainpipes and under parked cars. There were so many that the Unit couldn’t stop people picking them up and passing them on or stuffing them into back pockets or hiding them in the pages of books or under cushions or inside shoes. It was almost like the officers didn’t care. There were less of them around and the ones that were there just sort of shrugged when they saw us with flyers.
DAY OF ACTION, they said. A date. A time. A place. A mission: Bring down the wall, bring back our rights! (Their words, not mine.)
Tash came over to visit us, which was weird. I still wasn’t used to being friends with her again. Part of me knew it was because she had no-one else but another part of me hoped it was because she missed me. She told us how the school had banned the flyers and anyone caught with one faced immediate expulsion and further penalties. No-one knew what further penalties meant. Not that it mattered anyway because, according to Tash, everyone was talking about the Day of Action, even some of the teachers.
‘Are you guys going to go?’ Tash said.
‘No,’ I said.
Z gave me a weird look but didn’t say anything. He and Tash started talking about other things. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to see what I’d seen again. I didn’t want to lose anyone else. Especially not Z.
I walked Tash back to her house. She lived in a big, beautiful house set at the top of a long, steep driveway. It had seemed longer and steeper when we were younger. But still. It was impressive. I remembered how we’d ridden her scooters down that driveway. How we’d gone so fast it felt like we were flying. She’d made her mum buy her two scooters for her birthday – one for her and one for me. That’s how it had been.
‘Please come to the protest,’ she said, and gave me a quick almost-hug before heading up the driveway.
As I walked back towards the place I now called home, I thought of all the times Mum had picked me up from Tash’s house. The way she was so kind to Tash’s mum even though Tash’s mum always acted like she didn’t want us there. I wondered how she’d felt, approaching that huge house in our rundown old car. Tash liked coming to our house more than being at her own, and Mum would talk and laugh and joke and make a fuss of her like she was one of us. Tash once said she wished my mum was her mum. I said we could share her. Her own mum never came into our place. She would pull up, keep the car running and call Tash to come down.
I sent Tash a message as I walked: I’ll try to be there tomorrow. I’ll try.
She wrote back quickly: U R braver than U know xx
Pip told us she would not be home that night. She was working on something that we weren’t to know about and said we were to behave ourselves and, There are eyes everywhere, and it was hard to tell if she was joking or not. The power went out, as usual, and we lay next to each other on the mattresses that still covered the floor and talked about that long-ago time in the bush. The candlelight cast weird shadows on the ceiling. I touched Z’s face. Gently traced the profile of his nose, lips, chin, neck with my finger. I ran my hand across his collarbone, his chest. He kissed me. Softly at first. Like a question. Is this OK? It was. It really was. And I felt him move closer and our kiss grew deeper. We were breathing each other in. And the world slipped away and it was as if we were floating. Together. And I never wanted that feeling to end.
CHAPTER 46
The News before the Day of Action was interrupted by what they called a Very Special Announcement. We were all home. I was trying to get Z to sit still because I was attempting to draw him. Neither of us were paying much attention to the TV, and we didn’t say anything when we heard Magnus Varick say, ‘Good Citizens.’ I don’t know if anyone responded anymore. Still, he paused and waited as if he could hear us, and once I would have been worried that the Unit would burst into our flat and arrest us for not giving the response we were supposed to. But now …
I kept drawing Z.
‘Stop moving,’ I said. He threw a cushion at me. I threw it back.
‘Hey, come on – I’m trying to listen,’ Pip said.
We laughed.
‘No, I mean it, I am,’ she said.
We stopped being stupid. I put down my drawing and sat with Pip.
Varick held onto the podium as if it might fly away from under him. ‘It saddens me to speak with you this evening. However, there are a small minority of citizens who wish to undermine and destroy the Safety and Security we have built across all the Regions. We cannot allow this to happen. We cannot allow the great work we have done to be destroyed by these Threats. And so, we are imposing a forty-eight-hour lockdown, effective immediately. All events and travel are cancelled. All Citizens must remain indoors. We know that all Good Citizens will be supportive of this necessary measure. Thank you. And good night.’
The screen went black.
‘Bastard,’ Pip said.
But before we’d had a chance to turn off the television, numbers flashed up on the screen – counting down from ten with these loud beeps keeping in time. Once it got to one the beep got louder and louder. And then this explosion of images burst from the television. A kid being shot at the protest cut to a close-up of Varick drinking Champagne cut to a family being pushed into the back of a van cut to Varick’s men in suits eating and eating and eating cut to an old woman holding a bleeding child in her arms and crying cut to someone begging on the street cut to rich people dancing at Parliament cut to … the screen went black. The power went out.
‘That should have done it,’ Pip said.
‘Did you do that?’ I said.
‘I might have helped,’ she said, and patted my hand. ‘Just a tad.’
The next day it felt like no-one had remembered anything about a forty-eight-hour lockdown. I mean, some of them must have been following the rules, of course. But they were the minority. It felt like the whole world was outside and they were right on time.
‘You wanna get out of your pajamas?’ Pip said.
‘Don’t think we should go,’ I said, and slipped back under the blanket.
‘We can’t miss this, Santee.’
What the hell was wrong with them? Of course we could miss this. I didn’t unde
rstand how they could even want to go. Risk it all over again – for what?
Z crawled under the blanket with me. I stared at him. He stared at me.
‘What?’ I said, finally.
‘We owe it to Mila.’
‘You can’t say that,’ I said, and tried to roll away from him, but he caught my arm, forced me to look at him.
‘Please,’ he said.
My heart hammered through my chest and my arm ached even though it didn’t really hurt much anymore and I couldn’t stop the bad thoughts whirring through my head, but somehow I made it outside. Into the Day of Action. With Pip on one side and Z on the other and thousands of people all around us.
The Day of Action started at Parliament where Pip said there would be some speeches before everyone moved to different sections of the wall.
‘To show our support for the other side,’ she said.
It was overwhelming to have to walk the exact same route we’d taken last time, but without Mila. Time would always be marked by her now: With Mila and Without Mila. I never imagined she wouldn’t be here. I suppose no-one ever thinks that about the people they love.
Even with the summer sun glaring down on us, I felt the hairs stand up on my arms. The closer we got to Parliament the worse I felt until we were there, back at that same spot, and I didn’t know if I wanted to throw up or scream or run away or collapse, right there where she had. But Pip put her arm around me and said, Look, and it was then I realised I’d kept my head down the whole way and hadn’t noticed the signs people were carrying.
Mila was everywhere. Her face. On banners and placards and watching me from the walls of buildings. And the crowd was huge. Bigger than last time. There were elderly people wearing nice hats and dads pushing babies in strollers and couples holding hands and kids jumping around clapping and music blaring from speakers. And Mila. Everywhere.
I looked at Pip and said, Thank you, and she started to cry and it was my turn to hug her. The way Mila would have done. Easily. Gently. Kindly.
There were so many people that we couldn’t get close enough to hear the speeches, but it didn’t matter. We got the idea of what was being said from the chants that rippled through the crowd – Down with the Regime! Down with the wall! We added our voices and the message was passed back and back and back to the people who stood at the very edge of the crowd.
I scanned the rooftops for the Unit. I imagined them standing up there with their guns locked on us. Sitting ducks. But I couldn’t see them. No helicopters or drones were around. I tried not to think the worst, but it was difficult not to. It felt like a trap. A cruel joke. And we were just waiting for the punchline. I couldn’t breathe.
‘Check that one out,’ Z said, pointing to a big old sheepdog. ‘What’s its name?’
I shook my head.
‘Fred,’ he said.
I shook my head again.
‘No?’
‘It’s definitely a Ron,’ I said, my voice wobbly. He laughed and pointed to another dog and we thought of another name, and another, and I knew what he was doing and it worked and I thought, There’s Number Ten on my things-I-know-about-Z list: He is the best person I’ve ever met, the best person I’m likely to ever meet.
And then we were moving again, like a huge serpent winding through the streets and down the alleyways and across the city towards the wall. I knew the section I needed to go to. And Z knew, too. We found our way to my part of the wall, the section closest to home, and stood with the crowd that had already gathered there. We shouted and cheered and whistled and hoped that the people on the other side were there. That they could hear us. A woman at the front of the crowd held up her hands to shut us up and we did. We held our breath and crossed our fingers and waited and waited. Nothing. She got us to make noise again. She was like a conductor with an orchestra. Then silence again. Wait, wait, wait, the conductor seemed to be saying. And then – BAM! There it was. The other side. They were shouting and cheering and it was muffled but it was there. It was definitely there. We cheered back and waited and they answered and on it went and it was wonderful.
A couple of helicopters appeared overhead. Low. Menacing. Then the drones came out. Watching. Waiting.
‘Maybe we should go,’ I said.
‘They can’t arrest us all,’ Z said. ‘There’s too many of us.’
I wasn’t so sure. Besides, they hadn’t been interested in arresting anyone last time. All Varick had wanted before was to stop the protest, and he didn’t care how it happened or who he killed. So long as it stopped. As much as I wanted to believe it would be different this time, I just couldn’t get rid of that feeling in my gut that kept telling me, Get out of here, run, run. I saw kids everywhere, younger than Mila, and I couldn’t shake the image of them lying on the ground soaked in blood. I squeezed my eyes shut. Tight. Smoke billowed across the city. Something had been set alight. I could hear the high wail of the sirens as the Unit raced through the streets. The sky darkened. The helicopters remained. And still the people around me shouted. But part of me knew they wouldn’t be allowed to go on like this forever.
And then they arrived. Like I knew they would.
The Unit marched into the crowd and the people booed them and I wanted to throw up cos this was it. It was going to happen all over again. Everything started spinning and my heart was banging and banging and Pip’s mouth was moving but I couldn’t hear what she was saying cos everything was static and she helped me to the ground and sat with me and rubbed my back and Z had found a bottle of water and was pouring it on my head and I wanted to tell them, Stop, leave me alone, get out of here, but nothing was coming out.
Everything went blotchy and blurry and then ... Nothing.
‘You with us?’ Pip’s voice and face came back into focus.
I nodded. ‘Sorry.’
‘It’s OK, love,’ she said.
We sat there for a moment and Pip kept telling me it was fine, everything was fine. She scrambled around in her bag and found an old cough lolly and made me eat it and I started to feel a little more normal.
‘Come look at this,’ Z said.
They helped me to my feet and we pushed through the crowd to the wall where some Unit Officers stood shoulder to shoulder with some regular citizens.
‘Look,’ Pip said.
I could not believe what I was seeing.
The Unit Officers were breaking the wall apart. They had these heavy hammers, which they pounded at the wall, and a machine that made a heap of noise and dust as it cut through the concrete.
Real cracks started to appear. Small at first, but they didn’t let up, and finally we could see through to the other side. Just a little. A glimmer. Of something. They moved faster then and the crack grew wider and taller until someone from over there was able to pull their way through to over here and we all went silent. Absolutely silent.
The young woman stood there like she had landed on a different planet. We stared at her. She stared back. Then her face broke into pieces as she cried and laughed and screamed to the sky and she shouted out names of people I didn’t know and the crowd gathered her up and people filmed it on their phones and then more people were slipping through the crack, more and more and more.
‘Go, Santee,’ Pip said, and she gently pushed me towards the wall.
‘What?’
‘Go through the wall. Go home. You can go home.’
I stared at them. I didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t expected this. I wasn’t ready for it.
‘What about you?’ I said.
‘We’ll be fine, love.’
I looked at Z. He had closed his eyes and turned his face up to the sky. I remembered him doing the same thing out in the bush and I wished I could go back there, right now.
‘Come with me,’ I said, and grabbed hold of his hand.
He opened his eyes and gave me that smile of his that I hadn’t seen, not properly, in what felt like a million years. ‘Dad’s here,’ he said.
‘You th
ink he’ll come back?’
‘Don’t you think your dad’s coming back?’
I nodded and he nodded and I said OK and he said OK and we just looked at each other. I didn’t know how to move, how to step away from him. It was as if there was something, a real, physical thing holding me to him, and I knew it was going to hurt like hell to break it.
Pip said, ‘Go, love. We’ll be all right, I promise.’ And I believed her because I had to.
I didn’t say goodbye cos I couldn’t. And I couldn’t believe that this was it. Everything felt too big for words. I said, I love you, because it was true, and it was all I could think to say that came close to what I felt. For them both. But even that was too small for all of this.
And then I walked away. Pushed through a sea of excited faces and happy tears and shouts of joy and waited for my turn to slip through the hole in the wall.
An officer took my hand to help me over the rubble that had gathered at the bottom of the wall and as I stepped up and through the opening I thought I heard him say, Good luck, Santee. Peter? I couldn’t be sure, and there was no chance to turn around to check. I just had to keep going. Through the Safety Border, the wall, to the other side. To my home.
The crowd cheered and clapped as I stepped through. I searched for a familiar face, for anyone I recognised, and they stared back as if trying to work out if, perhaps, I could be their lost daughter or sister or whoever it was they needed me to be. But I wasn’t theirs. And none of them were mine. And I could see the disappointment on their faces, which probably matched my own. A group of official-looking people surrounded me and wanted to know, What’s your name? How old are you? Who are your parents?
‘Wait here,’ they said, but there was no way I was going to wait anywhere except where I knew they’d be waiting, and so I shoved past the questions and the clipboards and ran towards that split in the road where, on mornings long ago, Mum had always gone her way and me and Astrid had gone ours.
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