by Kim Curran
Ryan is shaking his head, staring daggers at Logan. ‘Don’t man. Seriously,’
Logan doesn’t seem to care. ‘He got banned for sharing a video that contravened WhiteInc’s decency rules.’
‘What kind of video?’
‘Seriously. Shut up.’
‘Of him and his girlfriend.’
It takes awhile for the pieces to fall into place. Ryan and Amy. Ryan and Amy.
‘Oh,’ is all I can think to say.
‘“Oh” is right,’ Logan says. ‘Boy, if I let a video like that get loose my woman would dust my ass.’
Ryan glares at him. ‘Shut up, man. How did you know anyway?’
‘Hey, there are no secrets on Glaze. One of my comrades acquired it.’
‘But it was only seconds before I realised I was streaming. A minute tops.’
‘A minute is a long time. Especially when someone loops it.’ Logan blinks and a video of a girl laid out on a bed starts playing.
Her face is contorted, so it takes me a while to realise it’s Amy. She’s groaning.
Ryan hides his face in his hands. ‘Oh, god. Ohgodohgodohgod.’ He says, over and over. ‘Make it stop.’
Logan blinks and the image of Amy freezes.
There’s a buzzing in my ears and a strange, hot weight in my stomach, like I’ve swallowed a lump of coal. All I want to do is get away from both of them. I head for the door.
‘Petri, wait, let me explain.’
There are no locks on the door. I bang on the wood, softly at first, then with increasing urgency as I sense Ryan coming up behind me.
‘Can you let me out, please?’ I shout louder than I mean to.
‘Come back when you have something to sell.’
‘But I don’t have anything,’ Ryan says.
‘Shame. Six months is a long time.’
I can smell Ryan’s aftershave behind me. Close. Too close. He’s looking back at Logan trying to think of something he can trade.
‘I start to bang harder. ‘Out. Now. Please!’
The door clunks and I wrench it open, scraping my knuckles against the wall as I do.
‘Come back when you have something worth my time,’ Logan shouts. The game starts up again: men screaming and guns being fired.
9
‘WAIT!’ RYAN SHOUTS down the corridor.
I punch the down button on the elevator over and over, as if that will somehow hurry it up. It eventually arrives, but I don’t even get the satisfaction of Ryan having to shove his hand between the doors to stop them from closing. They’re still wide open by the time he catches up with me.
‘Petri, let me explain. Please,’ he says stepping inside. Before I have a chance to get out the doors finally decide to close.
‘I don’t know what you mean. You don’t have to explain anything to me.’ I stare at the floor and wish that it would open up.
‘The video was a huge mistake, but like I told Logan, I didn’t know it was streaming. It happened a couple of days before the riot, but I, well, I didn’t want Amy to find out, so I’d been pretending I was still hooked and, God, it was exhausting. So at least that’s one thing I don’t have to keep lying about.’
‘Hey, it’s not like you put a video of me for the world to see!’ I laugh stiffly. ‘Not that you would ever make a video of me like that.’ I laugh harder like it’s all one big joke and I’ve been an idiot. It sounds utterly unconvincing and I wish I could shut myself up. ‘I mean, it’s not as if someone like you really needs to explain yourself to someone like me. It’s not like we have anything in—’
Ryan finally does the job I wish my brain could have done. He shuts me up. With a kiss.
It’s hard and unexpected. I’m still mumbling as his lips press against mine, but finally I stop and give in.
It’s not how I had imagined it. And believe me, I’d imagined kissing Ryan McManus.
There’s no sound of birds from way off or tingling in my stomach. My feet remain firmly on the ground. I’m aware of how dry his lips feel and how odd it is when his teeth bash against mine. I’m also thinking about the chewing gum I saw on the metallic walls behind me that my head is now being pressed against. In all, it’s a relief when the doors finally slide open and we’re back on the ground floor.
Ryan steps away from me. His eyes closed and a dumb smile on his face. He lets out a long sigh. ‘I’ve wanted to do that for ages,’ he says, finally opening his eyes.
‘Umm.’
He reaches out and tucks a lock of my hair behind my ear. ‘So, am I forgiven then?’
I nod.
‘And Amy doesn’t need to know about the video?’
‘I… er.’
‘You’re amazing, Petri.’
I guess this is how you’re supposed to feel after your first kiss. Dazed and lost for words. I thought I’d be happy. Giddy, maybe. Mostly I feel weird and acutely aware that I want to get out of this tiny, stinking metal box and away from Ryan.
He steps in for another kiss.
‘I have to go,’ I say, stopping him with a hand to his chest. ‘Zizi’s going to go mental if I’m not home soon.’
‘Oh, sure. OK then.’ He follows me out of the elevator and through the doors to the fresh air outside. ‘I’ll cycle you home.’
‘No, that’s fine,’ I say, taking in a deep breath of the cold air. ‘I can walk from here.’
‘Oh, OK.’ Ryan’s fiddles with his bike chain as I start walking at my top speed towards the exit. ‘I’ll catch you at school then?’ he shouts after me.
I raise a hand behind me in acknowledgement and start walking even quicker.
So that was kissing, I think as I make it out onto the street. What’s all the fuss about?
I have to walk three streets till I find a bus stop where the buses will actually stop. It’s getting dark and I’m in an area I only know as the place you’re not supposed to be in after dark. I could call a company car to pick me up. Only it will be logged and then Zizi will want to know what the hell I was doing here. Finally a bus pulls up and it’s heading in nearly the right direction so I hop on.
It’s packed with commuters and a few kids coming home late after some extra-curricular activity or other, so I can’t find a seat. I squeeze myself between a man with a large rucksack and a boy with a cello, and hold on to the pole.
A few girls from my school are sitting in the seats at the front. Back from a hockey match I guess, judging by their long, mud-covered socks. I keep my head down and pray I’m not recognised. These are not the kind of girls you’d want to be recognised by. They are the tough girls. The ‘rude’ girls. The bitches. Alexa Andrews, in the year below me but already captain of the hockey team, and her gaggle of teammates. She’s a bully and made my lunchtimes utter misery for months, till she got bored and moved on to her next victim. She’s brutal, which is what makes her so good at hockey.
She and her friends are sitting in silence, smiling to each other. It looks as though Alexa’s eyes are drifting, although it’s hard to tell with the colour-change contacts she wears.
You are kidding me, I think. Even Alexa’s on Glaze? I’d forgotten she was kept back when I went up a year. Precisely why she’d targeted me. ‘Great.’ I must have said this last bit out loud, because the man with the rucksack looks down at me.
Alexa looks over too. She looks me up and down and then turns back to her friends.
I know they’re sliding stuff about me, judging by the moments of silence punctuated by giggles. They’re probably bitching about my clothes and my hair and how I’m a sad loser. And they’re right.
I remember Logan’s offer. My mum’s DNA for a ticket on. It’s too much to sacrifice. But maybe if I can find something else worth trading...
An old man, with a grey suit as crumpled as his face, gets on the bus. He moves unsteadily past the people and the bus takes off before he’s had a chance to grab hold of a bar.
I reach out my hand to steady him, but before I can, Alexa is on her
feet and helping him sit down. She doesn’t even make a big deal over it. Just helps him into the seat and goes back to sliding messages back and forth to her friends.
I gasp so loudly that the man with the rucksack looks down to check what’s wrong again.
I can’t believe it. Alexa? Doing something nice for somebody? It’s like I’ve found myself in another dimension.
‘Classic!’ one of the girls says out loud and high-fiving Alexa. ‘Charlotte’s a cracker. Classic.’
It’s then that I realise. They haven’t been bitching about me. It’s all been about this girl Charlotte.
I don’t know which is worse: thinking they were all silently discussing me, or knowing I’m not even important enough to be mean about.
Alexa, her gang, and cello boy all get off at the next stop, which leaves a little more room. I move to sit down and watch Alexa through the window saying goodbye to her friends. She catches me looking and gazes back. Blank. I was right. I don’t even register for her.
The bus pulls away and I stare out the windows, hoping to recognise a street name or something soon. The bus is winding through all the back roads and it feels like it’s taking for ever. The streets start to get nicer, the cars more expensive and the shops are actually selling stuff, rather than closing down. Finally, I recognise a street name and know that the compound isn’t far away. I push the stop button repeatedly.
‘I’ve got the bloody message,’ the driver yells at me, before grudgingly opening the doors.
The sol-lights come on as I step off the bus, glowing slowly into life like miniature sunrises. I quickly check my bearings: Zizi’s favourite café, where they make flat whites precisely how she likes them, is on my left and the old library, now a hairdresser’s, is on my right. I head for home.
I’m a street away from the compound when I walk past my old nanny’s house and look up at the windows to see if she might still be there. I used to come here after school sometimes. Mostly when I’d been pushed around by Alexa and her gang and wanted to clean up before going home. Maria, my nanny, never lectured me about it. She never told me I should tell anyone or that I should stand up to them. She would clean up my cuts and brush my hair and sing an old Swahili song. She translated it for me once but I only remember one line: ‘this too shall pass’.
I haven’t seen her in four years, not since Zizi decided I was old enough to wait till she got back from work on my own. She fired the nanny and replaced her with a new security system, with cameras all over the house so she could log on and watch me from the office.
The windows in the house are lit and I see people moving around in the living room and hear the sound of children laughing. It can’t be Maria. She didn’t have children of her own. I turn away and kick at a stone, angry at Maria for moving. Angry at me for not coming to see her. Angry at the world for moving on and leaving me alone.
It’s then that I remember. I dip my hand into my pocket and pull out the scrap of paper.
51 Alice Street
Ethan’s address.
I check the house numbers of the buildings next to me, 32 and 34. I start running up the street, crossing over between the parked cars till I’m on the odd side of the street. Forty-five, 47, 49.
I stop outside number 51. All the lights are off and there’s no car parked in the driveway. Judging by the weeds creeping up between the cracks in the tarmac, no car has parked here for a while.
Broken tiles crunch under my feet as I step onto the path leading to the door. A light comes on as I trigger the sensor. A dog barks, but it sounds like it’s coming from the house next door. I look for the entry phone, but there doesn’t seem to be one, only an old-fashioned brass doorbell. The chime rings out loud and long, more like a woman singing ‘bing bong’ than the usual electronic sound.
A light flickers on in the hall and I hear a coughing from behind the door.
‘What?’ the man who opens the doors says. He’s wearing a tatty dressing gown and slippers. He continues to cough; wet and worrying.
‘Mr Fisher?’
He gazes at me through rheumy eyes. A distant look that I recognise. If this is Ethan’s dad, then how come he’s allowed on Glaze and his son isn’t?
‘Mr Fisher?’ I say again.
The man finally snaps out of his feed and gives me his attention. ‘No, I’m not Mr-sodding-Fisher. He’s the sorry git I rented this house to. Left it in a shocking state, too.’ He spits on the path next to my feet.
‘Do you know where he moved?’ I say, looking down at the glistening phlegm.
‘Sure.’
I wait for him to finish. Only he doesn’t. ‘Can you tell me where?’
The man makes an ugly sucking noise and his stained dentures clunk back in place. ‘He moved from here... straight to there.’ He points over my head at an alleyway between two of the houses. ‘You’ll be able to find him easily enough.’ He shuts the door. I hear him shuffle away and the hall light flicks off.
I cross back over the road and enter the alley. Any light is swallowed up after ten feet. I have no idea where it leads. There’s only one way to find out.
I walk normally for the first few steps or so. But as the darkness becomes deeper I increase my pace. I make out shapes in the gloom: mattresses dumped over back walls, abandoned shopping carts. I bang my knee off a pile of bricks, but keep on running. There’s a small light at the end of the alley, getting slowly brighter, leading me on like a will-o’-the-wisp. I put on a burst of speed, worried that if I don’t move fast enough it will disappear.
My breath is heavy and hard by the time I make it out of the alley, more from the fear constricting my chest than the short run. I look around to see where the alley has led me.
It’s a graveyard.
Mossy slabs of once-white marble rise up out of brambles and weeds, like they’re trying to reach for the sun. I step over the small, brick wall that marks sacred ground from the unconsecrated. I can’t avoid stepping on the gravestones, but I try anyway, saying silent apologies to the people lying beneath. Angels with broken wings gaze down on me as I pass.
Up ahead there’s a clear patch of ground where someone has fought back the bushes and weeds.
I step over a fallen log and pull a strand of ivy out of my way. Whereas all the other stones look like they’ve been here for years, decades maybe, this headstone looks new. It’s small, only about a foot square; black marble with flecks of red I can only just make out in the lights scattered between the graves. I kneel down to read the stone.
John Fisher
Beloved father
Sleep on now, and take your rest
I reach out and touch the stone. It’s cold, the marble drawing the heat away from my fingertips. The skeleton of a dried rose lies on the ground next to it. I wonder if Ethan left it here. How often does he come and visit his father’s grave? Does his mother come too? His sister? Brother? Does he come alone?
I stand up and brush off the scraps of dead leaves and twigs that have embedded into the skin of my knees.
‘Where are you, Ethan?’ I say.
10
IT TAKES ME LONGER to get back to the compound than usual, as if the ghosts of the graveyard were weighing me down.
I press my palm against the reader but the gate refuses to open. This happens. The systems go down and everything goes back to manual. I wave at Phil, the security guard in the booth, and he gets up to let me in. From what Zizi told me, he used to work in research for the company but something went wrong. And now he spends his days opening and closing doors for other WhiteInc employees. I understand why he’s so miffed.
The house is blissfully empty when I get in. Zizi must be at work still trying to crack the election campaign. The fridge is empty apart from a packet of bean sprouts that are already liquefying in their bag, a lump of cheese and a single, dried-out kiwi fruit. I feel sorry for it. I grab the cheese and take a bite. It tastes like plastic. I close the door and punch the reorder button on the fridge’s display
screen. I should have done it earlier in the week. Now, Zizi’s usual order of fruits, vegetables and fish will be delivered to the door tomorrow. I press the + sign on the screen and add a pack of sausages and a couple of meaty pizzas to the order. I don’t eat much meat myself, but it will annoy Zizi. And right now, that’s enough for me.
I take a can of Coke Clear from the cupboard and slump into the living room. The can makes a small fizz when I open it and take a swig. It’s warm. I place the can on the teak coffee table, which Zizi rescued from somewhere in Indonesia, making a point not to use a coaster. I know I’m being petty and passive aggressive and all the things Zizi has been accusing me of over the last week. But I don’t care. I collapse onto the sofa and put my feet up on the table next to the can.
I wave the TV into life.
Two stern-faced women sit opposite each other in a brightly lit studio. They’re having a tough time containing their clear hatred for the other. The presenter sits between them relishing it all.
‘We are winning the war on AIDS,’ the woman on the right says through clenched teeth. ‘Through a combination of treatment to reverse the virus and education to stop infection in the first place, our programmes have clearly been a success.’
‘Programmes you inherited from my government,’ snaps the woman on the left. ‘And if they’re such a success, why are you closing them?’
‘Because they’re not needed any more. Only 212 new cases of HIV have been reported in the past twelve months. That’s down 86% from last year.’
‘But it’s not only HIV clinics you’re shutting down. It’s pregnancy planning clinics.’
‘Pregnancy planning? You mean abortion clinics. At least have the honesty to call them what they are,’ says the woman who couldn’t be more on the right if she tried.
‘All right then,’ the other woman says, straightening her skirt. ‘Abortion clinics. Fifteen were shut last year alone. Would you care to explain?’
