by Markus Zusak
Then flat on the earth again, where the world doesn’t recognize you anymore. Your name is what it always was. You look and sound like you always did, yet you’re not the same, and when a city wind begins to call out, its voice doesn’t only hit the edges.
It connects.
It blows into you, rather than in spite of you.
Sometimes you feel like it’s calling out for you.
CHAPTER 8
She broke into me.
It was that simple.
Her words reached into me, grabbed my spirit by the heart, and reefed it from my body.
It was the words and the voice, and Octavia and me. And my spirit, on the silent, shadow-stricken street. I could only watch her, as slowly, she collected my hand and placed it gently in hers.
I took all of her in.
It was cold and her smoky breath flowed from her mouth. She smiled and her hair kept falling over her face, so beautiful and true. She suddenly had the most human eyes I’d ever seen, and the slight movements of her mouth whispered without the words. I could feel her pulse in my hand, beating gently onto my skin. Her shoulders were slight, and she stood with me on the city street that was slowly flooding with darkness. Her hand was holding on to me. She was waiting.
Silent howls howled through me.
The streetlights flickered on.
I remained still. Completely still, looking at her. Looking at the truth of her, standing before me.
I wanted to pour myself out and let my words spill onto the footpath, but I said nothing. This girl had just asked me the most brilliant question in the world and I was completely speechless.
“Yes,” I wanted to say. I wanted to shout it and pick her up and hold her and say, “Yes. Yes. I’ll come and stand outside your house anytime,” but I didn’t say anything. My voice found its way into my mouth but it never made it out. It always stumbled somewhere, then became lost, or was swallowed again.
The moment was cut open. It fell in pieces all around me, and I had no idea what would happen next, whether it would come from Octavia or me. I wanted to crouch down and pick up every piece of it and put it in my pockets. In a way, somewhere close to me, I could hear the voice of my spirit, telling me what to say, or what to do, but I couldn’t understand it. The silence around me was too strong. It overwhelmed me, until I noticed her fingers wrapping tighter in mine for just a moment.
Then gone.
Slowly, she let her hand come loose, and it was over.
My hand fell back and gently slapped my side from the impact of her letting go.
She looked into me and then away.
Was she hurt? Did she expect me to speak? Did she want me to hold her hand again? Did she want me to pull her into me?
Questions lunged at me, but still I didn’t get close enough to doing anything. I simply stood there like a hapless, hopeless fool, waiting for something to change.
In the end it was Octavia’s voice that stamped out the burning silence of the night. A quiet, courageous voice.
She said, “Just …” She hesitated. “Just think about it, Cam,” and after a moment of thought and a last glance into me, she turned and walked away.
I watched.
Her legs.
Her feet, walking.
Her hair, echoing down her back in the dark.
I also remembered her voice, and the question, and the feeling I felt rising up through me. It shouted in me and warmed me and chilled me and threw itself down inside me. Why didn’t I say anything?
Why didn’t you say anything? I abused myself.
I could hear her footsteps now.
They lifted and scratched just slightly as she walked away in the direction of the train station.
“Cameron.”
A voice called to me.
“Cameron!”
I remember clearly that my hands were in my pockets, and when I looked over to my right, I swear I could make out the figure of my spirit, also standing against the brick fence, also with its hands in its pockets. It looked at me. It stared. It said more words.
“What the hell are you doing?” it asked me.
“What?”
“What do you mean what? Aren’t you going after her?”
“I can’t.” I looked down, at my old shoes and the jaded bottom sleeves of my jeans. I just looked and spoke. “It’s too late now anyway.”
My spirit came closer. “Bloody hell, boy!” The words were brutal. They made me look up and stare, to find the face connected to the voice. “You stand and wait outside some girl’s place who couldn’t care less, and when something real arrives, you fall apart! What kind of person are you?”
It shut up then.
The voice ended abruptly.
What it wanted to say was said, and we resumed standing against the fence, with our hands in our pockets, and silence feeding on our mouths.
A minute passed, and another. Time scratched itself through my thoughts, like the sound of Octavia’s feet.
Finally, I moved.
It was after about fifteen minutes.
I took a final stare at the house, knowing it was probably the last time I would ever see it, and I began walking toward Redfern Station, under the electric wires, and through the cold of the street. The leaded windows of houses glimmered when the streetlights rushed at them, and I could hear my feet lifting and then clawto the road as I started running. Behind me somewhere, I could hear the footsteps and breathing of my spirit. I wanted to beat it to the station. I had to. I ran.
I let the cold air splash into my lungs as I thought the name Octavia, over and over. I ran till my arms ached as hard as my legs and my head throbbed with the blood rushing into it.
“Octavia,” I said.
To myself.
I kept running.
Past the university.
Past the abandoned shops.
Past a few guys who looked like they might try to rob me.
“Come on,” I told myself when I thought I was slowing down, and I looked hard into the distance to see the legs and footsteps of Octavia.
When I made it to the station there were hordes of people pouring through the gates and I managed to slip through between a guy with a suitcase and a woman holding flowers. I went to the Illawarra line and sprinted down the escalator, past all the suits, the briefcases, and the different day-old perfumes and hair spray.
I made it to the bottom, nearly tripping.
Look at this bloody crowd! I thought, but slowly I edged my way along the platform. When the train arrived all the people crammed and crushed and shook their heads when I got in their way. There was even a pretty bad smell like someone’s underarm sweat. It licked me in the face, but still I looked and rushed through the crowd.
“Get out of the way,” someone snarled, and I was left with no other choice.
I got on the train.
I got on and stood in the packed middle compartment, right next to a guy with a mustache who was obviously the owner of the putrid underarm sweat. We both held on to the greasy metal pole until both the train and I got moving.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Sorry,” and I made my way through the carriage downstairs. I figured I’d do all the lower levels of the train first and come back on the upper levels. This was the only train going to Hurstville. She had to be on it.
She wasn’t in the carriage I got in on, or the next.
I opened the doors between each carriage and went through, with the cold tunnel air coughing around me before I entered the next carriage. Once I nearly slammed the door in my spirit’s face as it closed in on me.
“There!”
I heard its voice point her out to me in the crowd of humans locked up in the suburban train.
I saw her just after the train rattled and burst out of the tunnel and into the paler darkness of the night. She was standing, just like I’d been standing a few carriages back, but facing the other way. From the lower level of the train I could see her legs.
Footst
ep. Footstep.
I edged my way closer and made it to the stairs and started climbing them.
Soon I could see all of her.
She stood and looked out the smeared window of the train. I wondered what thoughts she was thinking.
I was close, and I could see her neck and the movement of her breathing. I saw her fingers holding the pole as the train stuttered and the lights flooded and blinked.
Octavia, I said inside.
My spirit shoved me forward.
“Go on,” it said, but it didn’t dare me, order me, or demand anything anymore. It was just telling me what was right, and what I needed to do.
“All right,” I whispered.
I walked closer and stood behind her.
Her flannel shirt.
The skin of her neck.
The ruffled streams of hair landing on her back.
Her shoulder …
I reached out and touched her.
She turned around and I looked into her and a feeling lurched in me. God, she looked beautiful. I heard my voice. It said, “I’ll stand outside your house, Octavia.” I even smiled. “I’ll come and stand there tomorrow.”
That was when she closed her eyes for a moment and smiled back.
She smiled and said, “That’d be good, Cam.” The voice was quiet.
I moved closer and grabbed hold of her shirt at her stomach and held on to her, relieved.
At the next stop, I told her I’d better get out.
“See you tomorrow?” she asked.
I nodded.
The train doors opened and I got out. When they closed I had no idea what station I was at, but as the train pulled and dragged itself along, I walked with it, still looking into her through the window.
When the train was gone I stood there, eventually realizing how cold it was on the platform.
Something struck me.
My spirit.
It was gone.
I searched everywhere for it, until I realized. It didn’t get off the train with me. It was still in the carriage, with Octavia.
TRACK
A crowded train drags itself through me.
I own it now. I live inside the carriages, letting them carry me home.
If I stay inside long enough, the train slowly empties, until it’s just her and me standing inside it, under the flickering fluorescent lights and above the metallic shifting of the wheels, rolling over the tracks.
The train breathes.
It speaks.
Its voice is made up of memory and the words of now.
Sparks flick and fall from above.
We stand.
I hold her by the shirt.
My spirit’s at my shoulder, whispering.
Even when I get out of the train, I find myself running alongside it, bargaining with fatigue, and making sure I’ll always remember it.
Finally, it goes too fast. It shivers in front of my eyes and fades, and I bend down, amongst the words. I allow my hands to fall to my knees. I suck the air hard. I can’t breathe it quick enough, it tastes that good.
CHAPTER 9
“Oi,” Rube said to me when I made it in that night. “What the hell happened to you? You’re a bit late, aren’t y’?”
“I know,” I nodded.
“There’s soup in the pot,” Mrs. Wolfe cut in.
I lifted the lid off it, which is usually the worst thing you can ever do. It clears the kitchen, though, which was pretty useful that night, considering. I wasn’t really in the mood to be answering questions, especially from Rube. What was I going to tell him? “Ah, you know, mate. I was just out with your old girlfriend. You don’t mind, do y’?” No way.
The soup took a few minutes and I sat and ate it alone.
As I ate, I started coming to terms with what had happened. I mean, it’s not every day something like that happens to you, and when it does, you can’t help but struggle to believe it.
Her voice kept arriving in me. “Cameron?”
“Cameron?”
After hearing it a few times, I turned around to find Sarah talking to me as well.
“You okay?” she asked.
I smiled at her. “Of course,” and we washed up.
Later, Rube and I went over and collected Miffy, walking him till he started wheezing again.
“He sounds bloody terrible. Maybe he’s got the flu or somethin’,” Rube suggested. “Or the clap.”
“What’s the clap?”
“I’m not sure. I think it’s some kind of sex disease.”
“Well I don’t think he’s got that.”
When we took him back over to Keith he said Miffy got fur balls a lot, which made sense, since that dog seemed to be made up of ninety percent fur; a couple percent flesh; a few percent bones; and one or two percent barking, whingeing, and carrying on. Mostly fur, though. Worse than a cat.
We gave him a last pat and left.
On our front porch I asked Rube how the Julia girl was going.
“Scrubber,” I imagined him announcing, but knew he wouldn’t.
“Ah, not bad, y’ know,” he replied. “She’s not the best but she’s not the worst either. No complaints really.” It didn’t take long for a girl to go from brilliant to run-of-the-mill with Rube.
“Fair enough.”
For a moment, I almost asked how Octavia rated, but I wasn’t interested in her the way Rube was, so there was no point. It wasn’t important. For me, it was the way that thoughts of her could keep finding me that was important. I just couldn’t stop thinking about her, as I convinced myself about everything that had happened.
Her appearance on the street in Glebe.
Her question.
The train.
All of it.
We sat there a while on the worn-out couch Dad put out there a few summers ago and watched the traffic amble by.
“What are youse starin’ at?” a scrubberish sort of girl snapped at us as she idled past on the footpath.
“Nothin’,” Rube answered, and we could only laugh a while as she swore at us for no apparent reason and continued walking.
My thoughts turned inward.
In each passing moment, Octavia found a way into me. Even when Rube started talking again, I was back on the train, pushing my way through the humans, the sweat, and the suits.
“Are we workin’ with Dad this Saturday?” Rube stamped out my thoughts.
“I’m pretty sure we are,” I said, and Rube got up and went inside. I stayed on the porch a fair while longer. I thought about the next night, and standing outside Octavia’s house.
I didn’t sleep that night.
The sheets stuck to me and I turned and got tangled in them. At one point, I even got up and just sat in the kitchen. It was past two in the morning then, and when Mrs. Wolfe got up to go to the toilet, she came to see who was there.
“Hey,” I whispered.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Well, go back to bed soon, all right?”
I sat there a while longer, with the talkback radio show talking and arguing with itself at the kitchen table. Octavia filled me that whole night. It made me wonder if she was sitting in her own kitchen, thinking of me.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
Either way, I was going there the next day, and the hours were disappearing slower than I thought possible.
I returned to bed and waited. When the sun came up, I got up with it, and gradually, the day passed me by. School was the usual concoction of jokes, complete bastards, shoves, and a laugh here and there.
For a few anxious seconds in the afternoon, I wasn’t sure what Octavia’s last name was and feared I might not be able to look her up in the phone book. I was relieved when I remembered. It was Ash. Octavia Ash. When I got the address, I looked the street up on the map and found it to be about a ten-minute walk from the station, as long as I didn’t get lost.
Maybe for comfort, I
jumped the fence and gave Miffy a pat for a while. In a way, I was nervous. Nervous as hell. I thought of everything that might go wrong. Train derailment. Not being able to find the right house. Standing outside the wrong house. I covered all of it in my mind as I patted the ball of fluff that had rolled over and somehow smiled as I rubbed his stomach.
“Wish me luck, Miffy,” I said softly as I got up to leave, but all he did was prop himself up and give me a look of Don’t you stop patting me, you lazy bastard. I jumped the fence anyway, though, and went through the house. I left a note saying I might go to Steve’s that night so no one would worry too much. (The odds were that I might end up there in any case.)
I was wearing the sort of thing I always wear. Old jeans, a jersey, my black spray jacket, and my old shoes.
Before I left, I went to the bathroom and tried to keep my hair from sticking up, but that’s like trying to defy gravity. My hair sticks up no matter what. Thick like dog’s fur, and always slightly messy. There’s just never a lot I can do about it. Besides, I thought, I should just try to be like I was yesterday. If I was good enough yesterday I should be good enough today.
It was settled. I was going.
I let slam shut behind me and the fly-screen rattle. It was as if each door was kicking me out of the old life I’d lived in that house. I was being thrown out into the world, new. The broken, leaning gate creaked open, let me out, and I gently placed it shut. I was gone, and from down the street, maybe fifty yards away, I looked back for a second at the house where I lived. It wasn’t the same anymore. It never would be. I kept walking.
The traffic on the street waded past me, and at one point, when it all got blocked, a passenger from a cab spat out the window and it landed near my feet.
“Christ,” the guy said. “Sorry, mate.”
All I did was look at him and say, “No worries.” I couldn’t afford to be distracted. Not today. I’d picked up the scent of a different life, and nothing was going to get me off it. I would hunt it down. I would find it, taste it, devour it. The guy could have spat in my face and I would have wiped it off and kept walking.
