State of Grace

by Hilary Badger

  That’s the thing about the pretruth. Once enough people believe it, it’s almost impossible to change their minds.

  ____________________

  Ever since we made it down from the roof, Dennis has been hiding in my hut. And the entire day, he’s been wanting to know what Fern’s doing. How long it’s going to be until Fern gets here. Whether Fern’s coming soon.

  Then when Fern actually turns up all ready for the completion party, Dennis doesn’t seem to know what to say. He just keeps looking at her in her melon-coloured sungarb, her hair swishing down her back, a garland of pink flowers circling her head.

  ‘I love your garland,’ I tell her, giving her a hug. ‘You look so … um …’

  The word Fern’s expecting me to use is dotly. Except right now I can’t quite bring myself to say it.

  ‘Everyone loves them.’ She’s smiling as she says this but I can tell she’s really working hard to do it. ‘People are saying the garlands are the dotliest things they’ve ever seen.’

  Then she asks Dennis, ‘Why aren’t you wearing yours?’

  For the first time since Fern walked into the hut, Dennis looks away from her.

  ‘The flowers wilted, didn’t they?’

  Fern seems to be expecting this. Her smile completely disappears. To her, Dennis’s garland wilting probably seems like one more way she isn’t dotly enough.

  Fern takes her own garland off and starts unwinding flowers from it. She shapes them into a rough circle and puts it on Dennis’s head. The garland sits there on Dennis’s fluffy hair, thin and withering already. Looking at it, Fern’s practically in tears.

  ‘It was meant to be perfect. When she collects you, I wanted her to see it.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Dennis can hardly talk either.

  Fern goes over to him and kisses him on the cheek. She leaves her face there for a while, her smooth cheek pressed up against his small, sweaty one.

  ‘You haven’t done anything. I’m the one who didn’t make it properly.’

  It’s obvious she’s close to bawling.

  ‘Should we go?’ I ask.

  Way off in the gazebo, I can hear dottracks playing, turned up loud enough to dance to. The air is warm and moving just enough to carry the sound of people shouting and laughing. I don’t know if the completion night party’s the best thing for Fern right now, but I guess I don’t know how else to distract her.

  ‘I just have to pick up Blaze on the way past.’

  That bit gets Fern’s interest. ‘Sure you two aren’t into each other?’

  ‘Totally, totally sure,’ I tell her, even as I’m wondering if we ever could be or maybe if we already are.

  ‘Okay. Whatever you say.’

  Then Fern says goodbye to Dennis. She hugs him, just in case Dot comes for him while we’re at the party. Dennis’s face crumples and he doesn’t even pretend not to be crying.

  ‘Keep the shutters closed till I get back, okay?’ I tell Dennis.

  Dennis nods. Really softly, so Fern can’t hear, he says, ‘Are you definitely going to fix her up when we leave?’

  ‘We’re definitely going to try.’

  ‘Don’t try. You really have to do it.’

  I know that, I want to tell him. I’m just not sure if we can. I’m not sure about anything once we climb the escarpment and push our way through those straggly trees.

  So I just say to Dennis, ‘Don’t look out or someone might see you.’

  Not that Dennis is paying a whole lot of attention. I can feel him watching us, or Fern anyway, the entire time we’re walking away.

  28

  COMPLETION NIGHT.

  It doesn’t feel like it but it’s here. And when me Fern and Blaze get to the party it’s just the way I’d always imagined it. Lanterns glowing in the trees and people dancing on the lawn. Everyone is circling and swaying in one huge, hot mass. The dottracks are so loud I can feel them as much as I can hear them.

  In the crowd, the first person I spot is Sage. She already has her sungarb off and the lanterns turn her big, pale body all kinds of different colours. When she sees us, Sage winds her way over and grabs onto Fern. She sinks back into the crowd, taking Fern with her, leaving me and Blaze just standing there next to each other.

  Apparently there’s nothing either of us can think to say or do that isn’t awkward.

  ‘Dance?’

  I have to suggest it. Without something to distract us, it’s going to be a seriously long night. We’ve already agreed we can’t leave for the escarpment until the party’s really going. Our strategy is to make sure everyone sees us so that later on it’ll take them longer to figure out we’re missing.

  ‘I don’t dance.’

  ‘It’s not hard, Blaze. Anyone can do it.’

  ‘Not me.’

  ‘You so could, if you tried.’

  ‘I don’t work that way,’ he tells me. Then he adds a kind of full stop by sitting down on the grass.

  I’m part-way through lowering myself down next to him when someone comes up behind me. A pair of arms close around me and I feel warm breath in my ear.

  ‘Stop right there,’ comes Jasper’s laugh. ‘Don’t even think about sitting down. You’re dancing,Wren. Right now.’

  Blaze turns his head so he’s looking back towards the huts. In the opposite direction, basically, from me, Jasper and the patch of lawn where everyone is dancing.

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You have to. It’s completion night. Someone’s going to be chosen! Maybe it’ll be you if Dot likes your dancing.’

  I try to act normal so I tell Jasper, ‘I’ve got some new moves. I’m just saving them for later.’

  ‘What’s wrong with your old moves? I always liked them.’

  Jasper slides closer, his hand tugging on mine, ‘C’mon.’

  Even though Blaze isn’t saying anything and Jasper’s saying way too much, it’s Blaze I’m noticing. New leaves, snapped green twigs, cool running water. That’s what he smells like tonight.

  ‘Go,’ says Blaze to the air. ‘If you want to dance, go.’

  ‘See?’ Jasper tells me. ‘Thank you, Blaze.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘It’s happening. It’s decided. Come on.’

  The crowd of dancers opens up and sucks us in. It’s sticky-hot in there. All around me, people are smiling and waving their arms in the air, smiling completion-night smiles. It’s hard to breathe, impossible to hear. In my ears, there’s nothing but pounding dottracks.

  I belong 2 Dot, U belong to Dot, we all belong, forever and ever, we belong …

  I guess some people are singing but I can’t actually hear their voices over the music. With their mouths gaping open, it kind of looks like they’re screaming.

  Jasper keeps on pushing through the crowd. Being Jasper, he wants to be right in the middle of things. That’s where Brook is, and Sage, too.

  But Fern’s nowhere. I wave at Sage and mouth Where’s Fern? but she either doesn’t understand or she doesn’t know.

  Before I can ask again, Jasper’s pulling me back towards him, yelling into my ear to be dotly and start dancing.

  ‘Did you see Fern?’ I yell back.

  Suddenly I have to know where she is. If I’m going to dance, it’s Fern I want dancing next to me.

  My best friend Fern, who thinks she’s predotly because of something I made up.

  Fern, who I’m about to leave behind in a place not created by Dot but by something or someone called Shepherd.

  I definitely don’t want to be dancing with Jasper, with his loud laugh and flashing white smile.

  But Fern’s nowhere in the crowd of dancers. Someone’s dragged all the cushions out from the gazebo and there are people lounging on them, but even there I can’t see Fern.

  ‘She’s fine!’ Jasper shouts. ‘She’s having fun. Like we should be!’

  ‘Tell me where she is.’

  Jasper laughs, ‘Only if I get a kiss.’

  He looms up towar
ds me but I push him away.

  ‘What?’ he complains at the top of his voice. ‘It’s completion night. It’s the dotly thing to do!’

  Anyway, I guess Jasper thinks I’m joking with my push, because he leans in again and then his face is mashed against mine, his tongue working its way between my lips. I try pulling away but this time Jasper’s really holding me, his whole body up against mine so I can feel him, his chub and everything, under his sungarb. The only thing I can move is my head. When I turn it, there’s Blaze on the grass still.

  He’s not looking at the huts anymore but right at me and Jasper instead.

  ‘Fern went off with Gil. They’re hooking up,’ Jasper yells, as the music fades down between tracks.

  Brook looks up. He seems pretty interested in what Jasper just said.

  ‘Hooking up?’ I repeat, trying to get my head around such a prenormal statement. ‘Fern’s not into guys.’

  ‘She is now.’ Jasper’s tongue is on the rim of my ear.

  ‘Can you just get off?’

  Jasper loosens his grip and straightaway I spin around.

  I need to find Fern more than ever now. And I need to tell Blaze this thing with Jasper isn’t a thing at all. So, using my shoulders and my elbows, I try parting the crowd but it’s hot and slow and sweaty.

  By the time I make it to the edge of the grass, Blaze has already gone.

  ____________________

  He isn’t in his hut or any of the empty ones either. So I go to my hut, thinking maybe Blaze is in there with Dennis or something. But Dennis is lying on the bed, Fern’s garland still on his head. He’s all interested to know what Fern’s doing right now, if she’s having a good time and everything. So he obviously hasn’t seen her.

  I cut him off to ask, ‘Have you seen Blaze?’

  With a fingertip, Dennis touches the point of the coconut knife by his side.

  ‘Not since he brought this around.’

  I guess Blaze thought Dennis should have the knife with him, just in case.

  It’s then I think of one other place Blaze might be. I’m hoping he’s there, because it could be sort of significant.

  ‘If he comes here, can you tell him I’ve gone to the pond?’

  Dennis spins a finger in one ear while he thinks about that. ‘Aren’t there heaps of ponds in this place?’

  ‘Tell him the one that glows.’

  As soon as I say this, Dennis wants to know all about the glowing pond and exactly where it is and everything. I start telling him, but it comes out sort of blurty and I’m not totally sure Dennis even gets what I’m talking about.

  So in the end I just say, ‘Blaze knows which pond, okay?’

  Out on the path again, I run-walk past Fern’s hut and Gil’s, both empty. I pass the blackened patch of grass still there from the bonfire we had forever ago.

  Then I’m off the path, heading into that one particular clump of magnolia trees. I keep getting glimpses of the pond through the trees. Not the water but the pale green glow coming off it as two long, solid legs kick the surface.

  It’s hardly any distance through the trees to the pond, but on the way I still manage to think up a million things I could blurt.

  I could remind Blaze what Jasper’s like, how it wasn’t really a kiss. Or tell him it was, but not one that mattered because it only went one way.

  I could even ask him why he cares so much.

  If he cares, that is. But when I get to the pond and there he is, guess what? I’m not the one who starts talking.

  ‘I worked something out.’

  I sit down. I put my legs into the water.

  ‘There’s no Dot.’

  I frown. As far as I can tell, Blaze had that figured out a long time ago. He pauses for ages, but I don’t get that precalm feeling I usually do, the one that makes me want to fill in any kind of silence. Instead I just wait for him to keep talking.

  ‘But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a point. Going to the beach. Waiting for the waves to break. Eating ice-cream. Everything we talked about, it’s all good. But the point is doing it with someone else.’

  ‘Someone like who?’

  ‘Maybe your someone is Julius.’ He kicks his legs and the pond brightens, fades, then brightens again. ‘My someone is …’ Blaze stops.

  He shifts on the edge of the pond.

  ‘Just say it. Whatever you’re thinking, you can say it. It’s only me.’

  But Blaze is literally squirming, so I tell him, ‘You know what? Turn around if it’s easier. That way you don’t have to say it straight to my face.’

  ‘I suck at this,’ he mutters, just as I hear people coming through the trees towards us.

  Their voices are way too loud and way too familiar to ignore.

  ‘I thought you were showing me something.’

  ‘Let’s kiss first.’

  ‘I don’t want to though. I don’t –’

  ‘How do you know you don’t like guys if you haven’t ever tried?’

  ‘I just know. Really. It’s how Dot made –’

  Gil interrupts. ‘I know you took them. We found one of your garlands under the pillow in the hut.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Fern pleads. ‘You know I’d never eat a newfruit.’

  ‘Here, let me help you take this off.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘It’ll make you dotly again. It’s what Dot wants.’

  ‘You’re all mixed up, Gil. You only think you can hear Dot.’

  These are my words coming from Fern’s mouth.

  Then there’s this sharp little intake of breath followed by a single word.

  ‘No!’

  She starts to cry out, then her high, wavering voice stops altogether, replaced completely by Gil’s.

  ‘You’ll make Dot cry if you scream.’

  ____________________

  I know exactly how it feels to have Gil’s hands creep and slither all over you because you think it’s what Dot wants you to do. And now those same cool hands are touching Fern.

  ‘Relax,’ says Gil as Fern whimpers. ‘This is going to be so dotly.’

  I’m going into those trees. I’m going to stop Gil before anything actually happens, tell Fern about Shepherd. Make her listen this time.

  I’m about to do it too, when I hear this howling coming from the trees. Or maybe screeching’s a better word.

  It’s Dennis. Dennis with his wilted garland still on his head.

  ‘You’re hurting her!’

  I’m crashing through the trees now, Blaze close behind me. Gil still has Fern around the waist. Her sungarb’s on the ground, all shredded and dirty. And in Dennis’s hand the coconut knife gleams as it catches the glow from the pond.

  ‘I’m going to get you,’ he stammers.

  But Dennis is shaking and crying so hard, he can’t even swing the knife where he wants to. All he manages to do is nick Gil’s forearm with the flat, sharp blade. He might be bigger than Julius, but in that moment, they’re like the same person.

  Both of them too young to look after themselves properly.

  Both of them needing my help.

  ‘Who’s this?’ Gil asks, not even flinching as he presses a finger over the cut on his arm.

  ‘It’s nothing to do with you.’ Fern’s voice comes out tight and shrill. ‘It’s between me and Dot.’

  Dennis is frozen. He’s gawking at Gil’s arm.

  ‘I’m in trouble, aren’t I?’

  That’s when Gil takes the coconut knife from Dennis. It’s easy. Dennis is so spun out he just uncurls his grip and lets Gil wrap his own fingers around the handle. The blade arcs through the air.

  A split-second before it happens, I realise what he’s about to do. Gil drives the blade into Dennis’s neck. Dennis stumbles back, so the blade doesn’t go in as far as Gil would’ve wanted.

  At first, Dennis doesn’t doing anything. It’s like he doesn’t even realise. It’s only when Gil allows his arm to return to his side that Dennis yowls and blood
starts pumping out of the yawning red slash in his neck.

  Dennis’s hand goes up to the wound. While it’s there, the gushing stops. But then he pulls his hand away and blood keeps flowing. Fern screams as Dennis’s chin tucks into his chest. He wobbles on his feet, gasps for air and then crumples.

  He hits the ground and stays there.

  Fern starts beating on Gil’s chest with balled-up fists. Somehow though, Gil’s speaking quite clearly. He even sounds happy.

  ‘Anything predotly must be crushed.’

  ‘He isn’t predotly. You don’t get it! I was looking after him. Dot wanted me to. She told Wren.’

  Wham, wham, wham. Gil sounds hollow where Fern hits him. His hand lifts, fingers firming up their grip on the coconut knife.

  ‘Get back, Fern.’ I’m kind of surprised to hear my own voice.

  She turns to me. Sweet, round face, half a garland on her head and a butterfly dipping and fluttering around her.

  ‘I’m going to be chosen. Dot’s coming down and she’s going to choose me.’ She says it firmly, like that will make it true.

  ‘You’re not. No-one is,’ I tell her. ‘Look around. It’s completion night and Dot’s not here.’

  Softly, I say, ‘Why not? Because there is no Dot.’

  On the ground, Dennis makes a rasping, gurgling sound. I want to kneel down and scoop him up, run off with him and Blaze.

  Save him.

  But I can’t do that until Fern knows, really understands, the truth.

  I work hard at sounding calm.

  ‘The Books are written by someone called Shepherd. It even says so on the last screen. I can show you.’

  Fern’s face is just totally uncomprehending.

  ‘Me and Blaze are leaving. With Dennis. We’re going right now.’

  It’s the most serious blurt I ever had and now that I need to make the most sense, I feel like I’m making the least.

  ‘You need to come too.’

  I grab Fern and I can feel my fingernails gouging her soft skin.

  ‘You can’t stay. Obviously. Not after what Gil just tried to do.’

  It seems like Fern’s working hard to sort her thoughts into something resembling sense.