by Darren Groth
“Let’s go? Sounds like good advice, Mun.”
Rowan. I wrestle with his bear hug, trying to lash out.
“You don’t want to take on this one, Trey,” he says to Nike D-Bag. “Ice hockey player. Knows how to throw ’em.”
He hangs on to me and gets some help from Digger. The two of them muscle me out of reach.
NO!
The girls emerge from the onlooking crowd and add their two cents.
“Seriously, you got nothing better to do, Trey?” asks Maeve.
“Like shave your palms?” suggests Renee.
Caro confronts Nike D-Bag, feet apart, hands on hips. “Get in Munro’s face again, Trey,” she says, “and I’ll let Mr. Wilson know you shoplifted your nice LeBron shoes there.”
He laughs nervously, tells her to piss off and calls out to me. “Lucky your babysitters were here, dipshit!” He gives me the finger, accepts a bounce pass from one of his gangsta goons and shoots an air ball.
Rowan and Digger shunt me through the crowd and off the court. The girls follow. I’m released only after I’ve promised to be good. I breathe, counting down from twenty.
“No doubt Trey Jensen was outta line,” says Rowan, wiping the sweat from his brow. “But that fuckwit outweighs you by fifteen kilo, brother.”
“Twenty,” corrects Digger.
“You got some kind of death wish, Munro?” asks Renee.
I stretch the fingers of my right hand. “Life wish, actually.” I quickly add, “I’ve faced up to worse than him.”
Caro begins examining the welt on my arm. It’s a welcome development. And not unfamiliar. Caro went all Florence Nightingale on me after Monday’s girl-on-the-grass flashback. Lots of oohs and awws and other sympathetic noises. The suggestion of a cold washcloth to put on my neck and forehead. And, best of all, she touched me. Four times. Twice on the upper arm, once on the shoulder and once on the face. It was a better treatment than the breath counting, the muscle releasing, the morning exercises, the work with your unreasonable thoughts mantra…all the Ollie-advised calming techniques put together.
“Thanks for having my back out there,” I say. “All of you.”
“No worries,” replies Rowan. He consults with Nurse Caro. “Is he going to be okay for the escape room tonight?” She nods. “Good. Well, Munster, I think you’ve met your quota of trouble this week.”
The others agree. Digger’s phone bursts to life, looping the Darth Vader music from Star Wars. He checks the incoming text.
“From Kenny,” he says. “Ms. Mac’s done the placements for volunteering.”
Fair Go Community Village is always looking for Living Partners to help make a difference and create meaningful connections with our special-needs residents.
You will provide friendship, coaching, education and experience to positively impact the residents’ ongoing life journey.
You’ll be a key part of the daily routine, with activities in the areas of vocational and educational training, community access, fitness and recreation, home maintenance and a multitude of other life skills and fun experiences.
The role of Living Partner is a wonderful opportunity for you as a young person with energy and compassion. You are the sort of individual who views time spent with our special-needs residents as a privilege.
No experience necessary.
We look forward to meeting you!
Rowan slides the printout back across the desk. He keeps his eyes fixed on our Biology teacher, Mr. Pearce, standing at the whiteboard like a six-and-a-half-foot, sweaty-armpitted, praying mantis. He murmurs through a cupped hand, “This your placement?”
“Yeah,” I whisper.
“And you don’t want to go here?”
“No!”
“Did Trey Jensen’s devil breath melt your brain at recess? This joint seems like a pretty sweet setup.”
“Not for me.”
“Not for you? Ah, I see. Too much baggage—is that it?”
I flinch. My vision buffers for a second, stuck in its download.
You remember when you helped out on Evie’s field trips? You weren’t much help, were you? Wherever they went—Science World, the PNE, Watermania. Whatever the activity—eating lunch, crossing the road, walking in a crowd. You were always a helicopter. How is she doing? Is she enjoying herself? Is she listening? Is she learning?
You didn’t have to watch out for her the whole time. You know that. You loved being there. Evie loved that you were there. That should’ve been enough.
But you couldn’t help yourself.
Rowan looks down at the desk, begins tracing the scratches on the surface with his finger.
“I get it. Dad couldn’t swim for a whole year after the rescue. We’d go to Coolum—his favorite place in the world to bodysurf—and he’d just sit on the sand, reading Rugby League Week. Sometimes he’d get the shakes and have to go back to the hotel room. Wouldn’t even look at the water.” He stops tracing. “It was hard.” Several classmates turn and stare, their looks all communicating the same thing: Shut your piehole. Out front, Mr. Mantis scans the rows of bugs, looking for a lunch date.
I take two deep breaths. “This isn’t the same. I just want to do my hours somewhere else. In a place that’s… not a privilege.”
Rowan adjusts his neck chain and shrugs. “If you say so, man.”
“Can I change?”
“Doubt it. We call it the ‘voluntold program’ for a reason—you do your fifty hours where they say you will.”
“Shit.”
“Maybe Ms. Mac can help. Go see her after this.”
“Rowan Hyde. Disturbing the peace, as usual.” Mr. Pearce rubs his hands together. His voice suggests he’s caught a fly. “A question for you, young man: a population or groups of populations whose members can interbreed and produce fertile offspring—what’s the biological term?”
Rowan twists his mouth. “Can you repeat that, sir? My Canadian friend here may not have understood.”
I shrink in my seat. Our classmates no longer want Rowan to shut his piehole. Mr. Pearce rolls his eyes, flicks his bony arms, presses his hands together. “Population or groups of populations, members can interbreed, fertile offspring produced. What’s it called?”
Rowan slaps his desk. “Splendour in the Grass music festival, sir.”
The room unloads. Mr. Pearce sighs and waits it out—the eye wipes, the fist bumps, the simulated sex acts. He grasps a red marker in his twig fingers and begins stalking the whiteboard. Rowan waits for his name to get written up, then leans over.
“Brother, if you want to avoid voluntolding at Fair Go, you’re gonna need a pretty good excuse.”
“You need a pretty good excuse,” says Ms. MacGillivray, typing at speed of light, eyes fixed on the monitor. She has two long scratches on her neck. They look like a fish-gills tattoo I saw on Reddit. “Have you got a pretty good excuse, Munro?”
You do—you’re afraid of this Fair Go place.
Tell her.
“I just thought students might, you know, have a choice. Seeing as it’s a volunteer program.”
Ms. Mac stops typing and gives me a sappy look. “Oh, that’s a lovely thought. But I guess you haven’t heard the students calling it the ‘voluntold program.’” She stifles a laugh. “I wish we could call it that, honestly.”
“So…I’m stuck.”
“No, you’re in prime position.” Ms. Mac gets out of her seat and sits on the edge of her desk, hands in her lap. “You’re away from home, on your own. Trying to fit in. And you’ve had a rough go this week, no risk. Yes, I heard about the fire drill Tuesday. And the spat on the basketball court at recess.” She holds up a hand. “That’s a conversation for another time. What I want to say right now is give this a chance, Munro. You told me in our first meeting that you want to be better. Fair Go is tailor-made for that. I hand-picked it just for you. Spend some time out there, and you will be better. I guarantee it.”
I exit the guidance officer’s digs won
dering what a Bail Her Swift guarantee is worth.
School week is done, eh? You made it.
No thanks to you.
So where are we going now? Where is this train headed? Sea World? Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary?
No.
Are we going to the beach?
I—not we—I am going into the city to a place called Liber8 with my new friends.
What is Liber8?
It’s a bunch of rooms you have to escape from. They have clues and stuff. You race against the clock.
I think that’s stupid.
What you think doesn’t matter.
Yes it does. You brought me here to Australia. You wanted to “find a place for me to go.” So, I want to go to the beach.
You will go to the fucking beach when I say so. Okay? I’ve got six months here, you know.
Not if you keep losing it.
“You’re looking intense, brother,” says Rowan, voice raised over the noise of the train. “Still mulling over that arsehole Jensen getting in your face on the basketball court?”
I quit leaning against the handhold by the doors and put my weight on both feet.
“I’m thinking about Fair Go, actually.”
“Still?” Rowan pulls on the cuffs of his leather jacket. “Stuff it, Mun! That’s in the future—this is now! Friday! You’re coming into town for a sick puzzle-room breakout with your new mates. We’ll go to the Snag Stand or Little Saigon afterward. Hungry Jack’s in the mall, if we’re really desperate. You look sharp, by the way.”
Jeans, retro Grizzlies ballcap, old sneakers—apart from my Robbie Vergara tee, hardly sharp. I did take the elastic band out of my hair, so now I look sixteen instead of fourteen.
“You’re in Australia!” continues Rowan. “Here for a good time, not a long time, so that’s what we’re gonna do.” He digs into the inner pocket of his jacket. He pulls out a small plastic bottle with all the flourish of a busking magician. “I reckon this might help you loosen up.”
“Coke?”
“Bundy and Coke.” Rowan looks around for spying eyes.
“Bundy?”
“Bundaberg rum. Have some.”
I bite my bottom lip. Booze: essential for mental-health recovery. In the summer after the funeral, I got wasted twice on “borrowed” Pabst Blue Ribbon, figuring I’d test out that whole drink-to-forget thing. Although it tasted like ass, the beer numbed the ache for a few hours. And it did sort of muffle the Coyote—it sounded like it was talking through a tin can. But I didn’t forget, not for a minute. Not when I took a piss in my goalie mask or when I cried on Louis’s shoulder or when I staggered into our front yard and threw up on the garden hose.
“Think I’ll pass.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Good time, not a long time?”
“I’m okay.”
Rowan shrugs, glugs and stashes the bottle back in his jacket.
The train slows and comes to a stop. The stretch of Brisbane River we’re perched over is flat, not a ripple in sight. It looks more like earth than water. Rowan taps me on the shoulder.
“This bridge—people live in it.” He points toward the large concrete support to the left of our car. A line of windows runs up the center of the pylon. A small balcony at the top has a sad-looking plant and a line of laundry. “In 2011 pretty much everybody east of here went under.”
Rowan digs up a short YouTube video called Brisbane River Flood—Walter Taylor Bridge. It shows the rushing river, brown and swollen and sweeping beneath the deck. Debris enters the shot: a pontoon dragging branches, a small white boat still attached to its buoy. I watch it twice, then hand the phone back.
“Pays to live up high, hey?” he says. “No rescue required.”
A flush appears in Rowan’s cheeks and ears. I don’t know if it’s the Bundy and Coke or the YouTube footage, but I have an inkling he’s set to fill in a few blanks about his dad’s heroic deed. Then the train lurches forward, pitching us both out of the moment. Rowan shudders and settles back into Friday-night anticipation.
“Caro is excited for this, brother. You were all she could talk about in Physics this afternoon. She even got roused on by Ms. DiMambro for being too chatty. That never happens with Caro.”
“Glad I’m getting other people in trouble and not just myself.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t think she’ll mind too much if there’s, ahem, a bit of ‘trouble’ tonight.” He does air quotes around the word trouble.
“Really? You went there?”
“Oh, I went there. What’s the matter? Worried you won’t get any alone time?”
“That’s exactly what I’m worried about.”
Rowan watches me fan the fingers of my right hand, then massage the palm. Before he can repeat his good time, not a long time spiel, I point to his jacket.
“Think I might try some of that Bundy and Coke after all.”
Rowan and I meet the others outside Liber8. Digger is pumped.
“Been looking forward to this for a loooong time!”
“Didn’t you do this two weekends ago?” asks Renee.
“Yeah. With my cousin.”
“And last weekend?”
“Yeah. With my mum.”
“So when you say you’ve been looking forward to this for a loooong time, you actually mean seven days.”
Digger bows his head. “It was hard, I’m not gonna lie.”
“Just make sure you don’t give anything away,” warns Maeve.
“Yeah, we’ll tell Jessica Mauboy if you do,” adds Rowan. “I doubt she’ll want to come to a semiformal with a walking spoiler alert.”
Digger swears under threat of electroshock therapy that he hasn’t done the asylum escape.
We enter the foyer—it’s a cross between a dentist’s office and a nightclub—and Caro pulls me aside. Released from the buzz-killing Sussex school uniform, she is formidable. Mascara, eyeliner, deep-purple lipstick, dark-gray bangles. Hair like a black portrait frame. A bright-yellow dress contrasts the shadows. She’s not breathtaking—she’s breathgiving. She’s mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
“Are you okay, Munro?” she asks, leaning in close to my ear to combat the shouting promo coming out of the giant monitor on the foyer wall. “I’m still thinking about how woozy you were on Monday.”
The hand she has on my sleeve is burning a hole in my shirt. “I’m good. Just one of those things. Won’t happen again.”
“I brought a washcloth in my bag, just in case.”
“That’s very sweet of you, Caro.”
She notices goose bumps on my arm and smiles. “Now you’re cold! Mind you, so am I. The air con in here is cranked.”
We pay our money. A listless guy with stretched earlobes appears from a back room and gives us blindfolds. Renee asks if she can have a whip as well. Rowan makes a crack about “fifty shades of Renee.” I put my blindfold on; immediately my head feels heavy, as if the Grizz hat I’m wearing has been replaced by a football helmet. Lobe Guy tells us to line up single file and put our hands on the shoulders of the person in front. I clamp my left hand onto Renee. Caro—behind and at the end of the line—holds on to me, giving small squeezes.
Right there and then I think, This is good—this can all work out fine.
Evie would be scared if she was here.
She hated the dark. You know that.
And now she’s in a box, buried in the ground.
When Lobe Guy tells us to take the blindfolds off, Caro, Rowan and I are in a cell with gray bars and white padded walls. Splotches of “blood” dot the floor under our feet. HELP ME has been scratched into one of the padded panels to our right. In the corridor outside the cell, there are three objects: a broom handle, a single work boot and a mounted picture frame with columns of weird symbols and numbers. A black combination lock secures the door. The air smells like bleach and sweat. Next door, I hear Maeve, Renee and Digger, laughing and whooping, the sounds leaking through a gap between
the wall and the ceiling. From what I can make out, they’re in a similar cell, same lock. Rowan surveys the space—barely big enough to fit three people—then pulls out the Bundy and Coke for a swig. He hands it over, and I do the same. When I offer it to Caro, Rowan intercepts.
“Not a good idea,” he says, reclaiming the bottle.
“I don’t drink,” says Caro. She gives me a thin smile and twists one of the bangles on her wrist.
“Oh, I’m…I’m sorry, Caro. I don’t like to drink either…normally. I mean, I drank a couple of times, over the summer, but it didn’t do anything for me. So…yeah.”
Lobe Guy comes to my rescue, asking for quiet so he can give us the background to our escape scenario. Standing in the corridor where we can all see him through the bars, he pulls a grubby laminated card from his pocket and reads aloud in the voice of the teacher in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. We are trapped in a “home for wayward girls” in 1920s Brisbane. One of our friends, Vera, has recently died after a prank gone wrong. She was in the attic, rope around her neck, faking suicide in the hope of guilting the headmistress out of her stern rules and cruel punishments. When the headmistress discovered Vera, she didn’t notice the hidden chair she was standing on and lunged for her. The chair was knocked out from under Vera’s feet, hanging her for real. Inconsolable over what she’d done, the headmistress flung herself out of the attic window, splatting on the ground far below.
Now we are locked up, accused of killing the headmistress as payback for Vera’s death. We have one hour to escape the home, prove our innocence, avoid lethal injection and elude a vengeful ghost. Lobe Guy puts the card back in his pocket and stifles a yawn. If we need a clue to help us along, he concludes, we’re to press the button on the remote provided. Rowan claps his hands as Lobe Guy locks the doors and departs. The digital clock high up on the dividing wall begins to count down.
“Let’s GTFO.”
These peeps are fun. A bit like your friends back at DSS, eh? I mean, the friends you used to have back at DSS. They didn’t hang out with you much in the summer after Evie died, or when school started again. Apart from Louis. But even then, there were times he blew you off too.
