The Fall

by Tristan Bancks

  The hit was a total accident but it was the thing that tipped Mum over the edge. These two kids had been hassling me all week, calling me ‘retard’ and ‘spaz’ and trying to trip me over. It wasn’t even a big thing that made me snap. One of them, Angus Dodson, threw my tennis ball under a classroom and I had had enough. I lashed out and punched him right in the mouth before I even knew what I was doing. I had never hit anyone before. I got his braces with my fist and the metal cut my finger open. I bent the braces and my mum had to pay for them. She took the money out of the savings account she’d been building for me, $20 a month since I was a baby. I hadn’t told any teachers about Angus teasing me every day so they thought I’d just lashed out without being provoked. That was a week before my operation. Mum had pleaded my case with Mrs Johnston, the principal, who decided not to suspend me but gave me a week of after-school detention.

  This week, on one of those nights when Harry had sat at the dining table staring at his laptop screen, he asked what I’d done to make Mum want to send me away for a week. I knew that he knew because I’d heard Mum tell him, but I recounted the story about the kid called Angus and the fight. I told him about another time when I took the short cut home from school across the big water pipe that’s like a high bridge across the gully. It’s pretty dangerous but heaps of kids do it. We got caught and Mum found out. Then there was being late to class all the time, getting detention for swearing, arguing with teachers, the list went on and on. I had no idea why I was doing these things. I didn’t feel like I was choosing to. ‘Hormones!’ Mum always said.

  Dad asked me about Mum. I didn’t want to say anything bad about her but I told him how it had been between us lately. Not like it used to be. We used to be good together. ‘You and me,’ she’d say, cuddling me into her on the couch while we watched re-runs of Doctor Who. But in the last couple of years, since she started working so much, life was different. When she first woke up things would be good. Or we might have a moment where things were okay but then we’d have an argument about homework or about how long I’d had the hot tap on or some misunderstanding about my sports uniform and we’d be off again. The storm never seemed to pass. Just when I thought it was over the wind would change and it’d circle back over us.

  ‘Maybe she suffers compassion fatigue,’ he’d said.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s where someone has to be so nice and understanding and kind and giving in their job that they forget about themselves. They don’t have anything left to give. Have you ever imagined how stressful it must be for her to work in an emergency unit?’

  I hadn’t. I had honestly never thought about that in my life. She never talked about work, maybe because what she saw was so full-on. And I never asked. To me she was just someone who slept, froze dinners and left notes and texts for me to make my life difficult and to control me like some evil overlord. But working ten- and twelve-hour shifts must have been pretty hard. Twelve hours is two of my school days back to back.

  Part of me wanted to tell my dad that if he paid her some child support maybe she wouldn’t have to work so much, but I didn’t say anything.

  Sometimes, when she got up in the morning, Mum looked so tired. If I asked her where my school shirt was or some other little thing she would just lose it, telling me how irresponsible I was and that I needed to grow up and that I never lifted a finger around the house. Which totally wasn’t true. But it kind of was.

  Compassion fatigue made me think about her in a whole different way. She was full up, which made me feel really sad for her. Maybe her working so much wasn’t turning out that well for either of us.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  6A OR 6B

  The lift opened and I stared at two doors lit by dim fluorescent light – 6A and 6B. The ‘A’ on ‘6A’ was slightly twisted to the right.

  Which apartment was hers? The tangled vines of sleeplessness confused everything. Harry’s apartment is downstairs on the left so that means Scarlet is on the right. Left. Right. A. B. 6B. She’s in 6B. What if the cop had returned to the apartment while I was sitting in the dumpling place? What if he was watching me now through the peephole?

  I trembled and gripped Magic’s lead tight. She panted and drooled, excited or worried. I moved carefully out of the lift, across the minefield of squeaky floorboards, and knocked gently on the door of 6B.

  I checked my phone: three per cent battery. No response from Mum yet. This happened when she was busy. She couldn’t check her phone if she was trying to keep someone alive. And how was she to know that checking her phone tonight might keep me alive?

  Mum?

  I pocketed the phone and listened for thumps or footsteps or a creaking chair. It was late, ten-thirty maybe. I prayed that Scarlet would open quickly, that anyone would, except the policeman with the moon face.

  If I had somehow picked the wrong door, I was ready to run as fast as my crutches would take me. Which wasn’t very fast. I would take three steps at a time, maybe four, and I would scream like a maniac, alerting every person in the building. Not that anyone would open their door to help, I figured.

  I didn’t hear anything at all.

  I knocked again, slightly louder this time.

  Footsteps. Very light. Padding towards the door. Socks or slippers.

  Then silence.

  Someone was standing on the other side of the door, watching me.

  Please let it be Scarlet rather than her mother, I thought. I stood up straight and forced a smile, which probably made me look crazy.

  A lock twisted. A chain jangled. I took two steps back from the door as it inched open.

  TWENTY-SIX

  SCARLET’S APARTMENT

  Scarlet’s slightly puffy, just-woken face appeared in the gap between door and jamb.

  ‘What do you want?’ she croaked, squinting against the sickly yellow light from the landing.

  ‘Could I come in? Please? I need to tell you something.’

  She looked uncertain.

  ‘It’s important,’ I said. ‘I’m worried. I don’t know where else to go.’

  She looked at me the way the police officer had, sizing me up. Her face disappeared from view and the door closed. The chain slid across and the door swung open. Her hair was wild. She wore a pink onesie with thick, pink socks.

  ‘Don’t judge,’ she said. ‘Whose dog?’

  ‘Sorry, I –’

  She bent down and ruffled Magic all around the face. ‘Cute,’ she whispered. Magic licked her neck and chin. She took the dog by the collar. ‘My mum’s asleep. We have to be quiet.’

  I followed Scarlet and Magic down the dark, narrow hall to the lounge room. The apartment smelt like food. Something spicy. Magic’s never-been-cut toenails tapped loudly on the floorboards. We passed an open bedroom. It was dark and small with an empty single bed. Scarlet’s, I figured. There was a closed door on the left and a little bathroom – shower, sink and toilet. Then a tiny kitchen. A very different layout to Harry’s place. The same size but different.

  The lounge room was shabby, which surprised me. I always imagine that other people must have perfect lives and live in perfect houses, have perfect families with perfect cats and well-behaved guinea pigs. I had assumed that about my dad, too. Not that I thought he had a guinea pig.

  Scarlet’s place was hectic. A giant messy bookshelf filled one wall, with books parked at odd angles. There was a torn orange lamp on a table in the corner, a ratty old rug, vases and ornaments everywhere, magazines and papers on every available surface. Like Mum’s and my house, it was stuffed with life. Harry’s apartment felt temporary, like he was just surviving there for a moment. Scarlet’s apartment looked and smelt and felt like lives were being lived there.

  I moved carefully towards the wide glass sliding door and peered out. I couldn’t see the other balcony from there. Still, my stomach flipped.

  ‘Does your dad know you’re here?’ Scarlet whispered, taking a seat on the tired grey leather couch. She flick
ed on the TV in the corner of the room and turned the sound down low.

  I shook my head. ‘He didn’t come home.’

  ‘Why not? Did you go to the police?’ she asked.

  I nodded.

  ‘What happened?’

  Magic sniffed around the room, licking crumbs from under the coffee table. A music video played on the TV. An old hip-hop clip with a guy wearing a clock around his neck.

  I had rehearsed what I would say but now I hesitated, unsure where to begin.

  ‘What?’ she asked, seeing my fear.

  ‘The man who I told you pushed the other man from the balcony …’ I whispered.

  ‘Did they catch him?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘He’s a police officer.’

  Scarlet looked at me blankly. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I saw him. Half an hour ago.’ I tried to keep my voice from shaking all over the place. ‘He was in uniform, in an office at the police station just down there.’

  Scarlet watched me carefully, her left hand slowly scruffing the fur on Magic’s neck.

  ‘I swear it was him,’ I said.

  ‘Why would a police officer –’

  ‘I don’t know. But it was definitely him.’

  ‘That’s crazy. Are you sure?’

  ‘One hundred per cent.’

  ‘Did you see him close up?’

  I thought about it, then shook my head.

  ‘From me to the front door away?’ she asked.

  I looked down the darkened hallway and shrugged.

  ‘Further?’ she probed.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Twice that far?’

  I nodded. ‘Maybe three times.’

  ‘That’s like thirty metres or something. Are you sure –’

  ‘It was him.’

  She raised one eyebrow. ‘I don’t know what police officers are supposed to do in the Blue Mountains but here, in the city, their job is to help people.’

  ‘That’s what I thought but –’

  ‘And I told you that the Hills are in Queensland. No one’s even living in that apartment.’

  ‘Well, there was someone there last night.’

  ‘Are you sure it was that balc –’

  ‘Yes, I told you! It was the balcony next door.’ I pointed outside, raising my voice.

  ‘Shhhhh.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I whispered.

  Scarlet continued scratching Magic. She watched the TV screen. Another old rap video with three guys wearing thick gold chains. We didn’t talk for a while. Scarlet just sat there.

  I looked at her silver bracelet. It had the words ‘Nanakorobi yaoki’ engraved on it and some Japanese characters underneath. Well, they looked Japanese. I figured Scarlet’s mum or dad or both might be from Japan.

  ‘What does that mean?’ I asked.

  ‘Fall down seven times, stand up eight. It’s about resilience,’ she said, and without missing a beat: ‘Last night, did you actually see the face of the man while he was speaking? Or did you hear his voice and see his face separately?’

  ‘What difference does it make?’

  ‘Just … did you?’

  I thought about it. I had heard the voice upstairs although not exactly what he was saying, and then, later, I saw the man’s face down below, those eyes looking up at me. But I hadn’t actually seen his face when he spoke because he was up on the balcony.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘But I heard his voice. Then I heard the footsteps and the lift. And then I saw his face down there.’

  ‘But did you ever actually hear that voice come out of his face?’

  ‘No,’ I said. Magic had settled in under Scarlet’s legs, the traitor. ‘But what difference does it make? I know it was him.’

  ‘Right,’ she said, looking at me like she was waiting for me to say something. ‘I know it’s a crazy idea but what if the man you saw last night was a police officer?’

  ‘He was!’ I said. ‘That’s what I’m telling you.’

  ‘But what if it wasn’t his voice that you heard above, the person who did the pushing? What if, when he was standing over the body, holding the umbrella, he was there on police duty? What if he lives in this building or the block next door or what if he was walking past and heard the guy fall and went to help him?’

  ‘Help him?’ I said. ‘He wasn’t helping him.’ I started to hate Scarlet in that moment.

  ‘What makes you so sure that you’re the only person in the world who saw him fall?’ she asked. ‘I mean, wouldn’t it make more sense if other people had seen it, too? There are fourteen apartments in our block and heaps next door on either side. You’re not in the Mountains any more.’

  Anger bubbled up in me. I had to keep my head, though. ‘Why would he follow me upstairs? And break into the apartment? It was after two in the morning.’

  ‘Did you see him break into the apartment?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you know for sure that it was him? Did you ever see him apart from when he looked up at you from the yard?’

  I hesitated. ‘No.’

  She looked at me like she pitied me. ‘So, one possibility is that they were two different people. Or maybe he thought you pushed the guy.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Think about it,’ she said. ‘Two in the morning. A man is pushed from a building. A policeman goes to help him. He hears a noise from above and looks up to see a face at a window, someone taking a photo. The face disappears. What’s he going to do? He’s going to radio for someone to come investigate the scene and take the body to the morgue or something and maybe he’s going to go up and try to arrest whoever was at the window. Maybe he did break into your apartment. Maybe you’re the prime suspect.’

  ‘What?’ I snapped at her. ‘Firstly, he’d need a warrant to enter the apartment,’ I said, but it didn’t make me feel much better.

  My head was swimming. How could she reverse everything I had worked out? I’d been thinking this through for twenty-something hours and she had taken two minutes to tear it all to pieces. How was it possible that I hadn’t seen him speak? I had played back the sound of the argument over and over again in my mind. I had replayed the image of the man’s face, I had looked at the blurred photo on my phone. When I was hiding in the cleaner’s cupboard I had been so close to him that I’d felt the floorboard lift as he stepped on it. And then I had seen him at the police station but, in all that time, I had not heard him speak and seen his face at the same time, which meant that … maybe the man I saw was not the man I heard in the apartment above.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Why didn’t other police come to investigate the crime scene?’

  ‘You were in the cleaning cupboard all night, weren’t you?’ she asked. ‘Maybe it happened while you were in there.’

  ‘But the body was already gone before I hid in the cupboard,’ I said.

  ‘Look, I don’t have all the answers. It just seems like there are holes in your story. Maybe you don’t have all the answers either.’

  I would have screamed at her if her argument didn’t make more sense than mine. If her logic was correct, I was accusing a police officer of a serious crime. Had I had put two and two together and made five?

  Scarlet looked at me with those steady eyes. ‘I feel for you, Sam. I know what it’s like not to have a dad around but to have him go missing must make you feel really scared.’

  I hated that word ‘scared’.

  ‘But that’s why you have to go back to the police. It sounds like the man you thought was the murderer might actually have been trying to help. And you should tell your mum, and tell her that your dad is gone. Do you want me to tell my mum? We could go down there with you now and talk to the cop.’

  I hung my head. All the tiredness and pity and anger washed over me and I had no energy at all. Scarlet stood and put a hand on my back. I hated that. It confirmed that I was the little kid and she was the smarter, older girl. I had
fooled myself today into thinking that I was more mature, more in control than I had ever been in my life. Now I felt like a baby. Or like everything Mum had said about me taking stupid risks, not thinking things through, being ‘ruled by hormones’ was right. I felt so tired. How stupid to try to be a crime reporter, using techniques from comic books, when an actual crime had been committed and I needed to tell someone.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Scarlet said.

  But it wasn’t. Nothing was all right. I bent down and picked up my backpack, wiping my face and turning away from her.

  ‘Magic, come.’ I crutched across to the hallway.

  ‘Why don’t I tell my mum and –’

  ‘No. Don’t. It’s okay. I can work it out. Thanks.’

  ‘But if your dad’s not home …’

  ‘He might be now.’

  I moved quickly and quietly down the darkened hall to the door.

  I tried to open the latch, but couldn’t. Scarlet reached past me and opened it easily. Another dent to my pride.

  I went across to the top of the stairs.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to –’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said firmly.

  ‘Okay, well … I want to help you. Just knock if –’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I will.’

  She watched me for a few seconds longer and then clicked the door closed, leaving me there in the empty stairwell with my smelly old dog. A few moments passed before her footsteps padded away up the hall.

  Idiot, I thought. I am an idiot.

  Magic bent down and licked her own bottom.

  I turned and looked at the door of 6A. Murky grey like all the others, a brassy handle and a couple of locks. Had I, somehow, dreamt the whole thing? Could I be as wrong as she said I was?

  Magic looked up at me as if to say, ‘Can we go?’

  We moved off towards the stairs and something shiny caught my eye at the edge of the door of 6A. I moved as quietly as I could towards it, trying to stay out of view of the peephole.

  It was tape. A small piece of sticky tape near the top of the door. One end was stuck to the door, the other to the doorframe.