Earth Hour? It seemed more like Dearth Hour. Dearth of action. Dearth of concern.
Still, when I checked my watch, there was a minute to go.
Don’t be so pessimistic, I told myself.
From the stage came the sound of chanting.
Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One!
One by one office lights turned off. Some restaurant lights dimmed. Over in Taverniti’s I could see the candles burning on each table. A few neon signs flickered before extinguishing. The cinemas seemed less incandescent.
There were cheers from the Earth Hour crowd, but I’d failed.
All that effort, all that planning, and I’d failed.
They must’ve overridden my override. Or maybe I’d got it completely wrong in the first place.
The Manny Hans sign seemed even brighter, more defiant, mocking my failure.
I’d failed and The Debt would come to get me. Come to get my leg. You didn’t mess with The Debt. Look at Gus.
The cheering from the Earth Hour crowd suddenly became louder, more raucous. When I looked up, I could see why.
The office buildings were completely dark. Every floor, every office.
So, too, were the cinemas.
The restaurants.
Streetlights.
Only Manny Hans persisted.
But then the sign flickered.
It flickered, and crackled, and expired.
After sixty-seven years, Manny Hans was dead.
A thick, sticky darkness seemed to coat everything. People were cheering. Some were yelling. Others were screaming.
‘Daddy, I’m scared,’ said a kid somewhere. ‘Hold my hand, Daddy.’
I checked my watch – 8.33.
Of course, there’d be a lag; why hadn’t I thought of that? Electricity takes time to travel along wires.
I rang Imogen.
‘I told you I’d do it!’ I was about to say, to boast, but I realised that I couldn’t.
‘I told you it’d happen,’ I said instead.
‘Told me what would happen?’ said Imogen.
‘That the lights would go out.’
‘Not here they haven’t,’ she said.
‘But in the city all the lights have gone out. It’s so freaky.’
‘Not here they haven’t,’ repeated Imogen.
Immediately I knew what had happened.
Halcyon Grove must have its own generator, like essential services such as hospitals have their own generators. And I thought I knew where it was, too.
‘Next year I’ll do the petition,’ said Imogen, and I heard the disappointment in her voice. ‘Next year I’ll make those bastards turn off the lights.’
Already my mind was racing, already I had yet another plan. But first I had to get back home.
SATURDAY
GENERATOR Y
The taxi driver wasn’t happy. She reckoned that the hippie dropkicks responsible for turning off the lights should get the death penalty.
‘Electric chair?’ I said.
‘Hang them by the ruddy neck,’ said the taxi driver.
By the time we’d reached Halcyon Grove, and I’d paid, it was almost ten past nine.
Imogen was right: the lights were on, and because the rest of the Coast was dark, they seemed brighter, more fluorescent, like the inside of a 7-11 store.
Tristan’s sister’s bike was where it always was: half on the footpath, half on their front lawn.
Great! Just as I’d hoped.
I looked around: as usual, there was nobody on the streets.
I positioned the bike and stomped hard on the chain with my heel.
It snapped.
‘Sorry, Tristan’s sister,’ I mouthed as I picked the chain up and hurried past the tennis courts, towards the anonymous grey building.
It was strange: all those times I’d walked past this building and never known what it was. But now that I was an expert on all things electrical, I figured it must be a backup generator. When the grid went down, this thing kicked in.
The wires looping into the top of the building and the engine hum coming from within confirmed this.
I tried the door. Just as I’d expected: it was locked.
I couldn’t stop the generator itself. But there was another way. I stood under the wires, took aim and tossed the bicycle chain. It flew into the air but just missed the wires. Picking it up from the ground, I tried again. This time my aim was better and the chain wrapped around one of the wires, the two ends flailing about.
‘Come on!’ I yelled. ‘Come on!’
The chain must’ve heard me, as one end touched the other wire. It was only a touch, but it was enough to cause a chain reaction, a short circuit. There was a flurry of sparks, then a crack, then the acrid smell of burning. And the lights in Halcyon Grove went out.
I’d won races, I knew what triumph felt like. But that had been nothing compared to what I felt now.
It was like all the electricity I’d denied was now zinging through me. I was glowing. I was luminescent. I was incandescent.
But then I remembered Tristan’s email: c u there when its dark!
And all the light went out of me.
Like all the other houses in Halcyon Grove, Imogen’s had been swallowed by the darkness, but unlike the other houses there weren’t flashes of light, excited talk, as residents, armed with torches, attempted to do something about it. No, her house was very dark and very quiet, just a bit spooky. And there was no response when I knocked on the door.
‘It’s me, Dom,’ I yelled through the keyhole.
‘Dom?’ came a faint voice from the other side of the door.
‘Yes, Mrs Havilland, it’s me!’ I said.
A click, as the door unlocked. I pushed it open.
Mrs Havilland was wearing a dressing-gown and fluffy slippers, and was holding a candle that threw a flickering light over her puffy white face.
‘What’s happening?’ she said. ‘Why have the televisions stopped working?’
‘It’s a blackout, Mrs Havilland,’ I said, looking at my watch. ‘The power will come back on in thirteen minutes.’
Well, I hoped like hell that the power would come back on in thirteen minutes.
‘Where’s Imogen?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know,’ said Mrs Havilland.
‘You don’t know?’
‘I mean, she was here, but then the lights went out and I couldn’t find her any more. She’s okay, isn’t she?’
‘I’m sure she’s fine,’ I said. ‘Did you try calling her?’
‘She doesn’t answer.’
I took out my phone and tried her number. It rang, but she didn’t answer.
‘You don’t think something’s happened to her, do you?’ said Mrs Havilland, her voice becoming increasingly fretful.
‘I’m sure she’s fine,’ I said.
And I was sure she was fine, she was just with Tristan, that was all.
And that was her choice, I told myself.
But she didn’t know Tristan like I knew Tristan. To him she was just a conquest, a notch on his belt, somebody he could brag about to his mates. And I couldn’t let her become that. Not Imogen. I moved closer to Mrs Havilland, and as I did I smelt the alcohol, the fumes crawling up my nostrils.
‘So do you want me to go and find her?’ I asked her.
‘Please,’ she said.
‘So when she asks, you can tell her that you asked me to find her?’
‘Yes, of course,’ she said.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’m going to do what you asked me to do. Don’t worry, Mrs Havilland, the lights will be back on soon.’
There was a lot of noise coming from inside the Jazys’ house. At first I thought they were really freaking out and I felt a bit guilty – obviously not everybody enjoys a blackout. But as I got closer I could hear people making spooky noises followed by screams of laughter.
I went to step off the footpath and onto the Jazys’ lawn, but
something made me hesitate. It didn’t take me long to realise what it was. So far, all the crazy stuff I’d done tonight had been for one reason and one reason only: The Debt. Really, I’d had no choice: either I did it, or they took my leg. Like I said, no choice. But this had nothing at all to do with The Debt. With this, I did have a choice. I hesitated, but then I crossed the line, stepping off the footpath and onto the grass.
And as I did I had this feeling that I’d left something behind.
Something intangible but irretrievable.
I kept going, remembering how Alpha and Thor had moved, how they’d seemed to glide across the ground.
I stopped by the double front window, trying to work out if any of the spooky noises, any of the laughter, belonged to Imogen, but they didn’t, so I kept going, ninja-ing along the side of the house.
At the back of the house an expanse of lawn, host to an array of rattan furniture, led to an enormous blue-tiled pool. Okay, maybe it wasn’t quite as enormous as our pool, but it was a fair size.
On the other side of the pool was another, separate building. It was dark on the outside, dark on the inside.
I’d heard Tristan bragging about his ‘man cave’ before, telling everybody how private it was, how he could do anything he liked in there.
That had to be it.
Was she in there?
I took out my phone, rang her number. Inside the man cave, a Lady Gaga song played.
I wanted to go and bash on the glass sliding doors.
‘Imogen,’ I wanted to say. ‘You have to come out, now.’
But I knew, if I did that, Imogen would know I’d been monitoring her emails. How else would I know exactly where she was right now?
And if she knew that, then she would hate me forever. And I wouldn’t blame her. I had to find another way to get her out of there.
But how?
And again I had the feeling that I had a choice here. That I could walk away right now.
But again, I kept going.
I crept along the side of Tristan’s pad, across a further expanse of lawn, until I came to a shed. The door was unlocked, so I pushed it open. Using my iPhone torch app, I checked out what was inside.
There was an enormous ride-on mower; a battery of whipper-snippers; an arsenal of gleaming gardening equipment.
But it was the humble can of fuel that caught my arsonist’s eyes.
I grabbed it, and some matches, and ninja-ed back to the pool.
I unscrewed the cap, and was about to slosh the contents into the water, when I hesitated.
Was there any chance of the house catching fire, too?
No, it was too far away.
Satisfied that I wasn’t about to barbecue the entire Jazy clan, I upended the can’s contents into the pool.
But then I thought of all those cop shows I’d seen on TV: my fingerprints would be all over the can now.
What the hell, I thought, as I tossed the can into the water.
I waited until the fuel had dispersed across the pool’s surface before, standing well back, I took out a match, lit it and flicked it towards the pool.
The match extinguished before it hit the surface.
I tried again, and this time it worked. Really worked. Whoosh! Two-metre-high flames danced across the surface; dirty smoke billowed upwards.
As far as destroying forensic evidence went, tossing the can in the pool had been an excellent idea. As far as occupational health and safety went, perhaps not so excellent.
Because just as I stepped back behind a hydrangea bush, there was an explosion, the second major kaboom! of the night. And an almighty spout of water gushed into the air.
By some strange optical trick, I could make out my reflection in it. I was grinning, a contorted grin, like a demented gargoyle. Then the spout dispersed and my image was eaten up by the flames.
The sliding doors to Tristan’s studio slid open, and Tristan appeared. Guns blazing, sixpack sixpacking; he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Shorts but no shirt.
Right then, I wanted another bomb, one to blow him and his sixpack to kingdom come.
Imogen appeared after him.
She was, thankfully, fully dressed. Dishevelled, but fully dressed.
Pfft! More noises.
I looked behind me – the rattan furniture was catching alight, a daisy chain of firebombs, taking the flames inevitably towards the house.
Tristan’s little sister was the first to appear at the back door, followed by her parents.
I ran to the garden hose, wrenched the tap onto full. The pressure was good and I was able to quickly douse the rattan-fuelled flames.
Then there was a lull, everybody just standing there, shocked, staring at the half-empty pool, not knowing what to say.
Eventually Tristan’s little sister said, ‘The poor Kreepy Krauly.’
I could see what she meant: the blackened carcass of the award-winning pool cleaner was floating on the surface.
‘Almost poor us,’ said Mr Jazy, looking at me, smiling.
‘What the blazes were you doing here?’ said Tristan.
The pun, I’m sure, was unintentional.
‘I could hear the explosion from up the street,’ I said. ‘So I came running.’
‘Lucky he did,’ said Mr Jazy.
But Tristan was having none of it. ‘That quickly?’
he said.
More people were arriving now, most of them neighbours. But among them was Roberto, strangely out of context with all those home owners.
‘I saw some kids running off,’ he said loudly.
‘Looked like street kids from Surfers.’
‘They’ll be on CCTV then,’ said somebody else.
‘Power’s down,’ said somebody else. ‘There is no CCTV.’
And then everybody was talking and there was no mistaking the collective sense of unease, of shock.
I couldn’t blame them, I’d had the same feelings not so long ago when the walls had been breached; Halcyon Grove was no longer quite so halcyon.
I was ready to make my retreat when I noticed that Tristan was holding Imogen’s hand.
Holding it!
Retreat, my rectum.
I moved closer to Imogen and said, ‘Your mum’s been looking for you.’
‘You saw her?’ she said.
‘Yeah, she got scared in that dark house all by herself.’
Imogen let go of Tristan’s hand.
‘I can walk back with you if you like,’ I said.
‘Thanks,’ said Imogen.
We’d just reached Imogen’s house when the lights went back on. I checked my watch: 9.33.
WEDNESDAY
THE STATE TITLES
Everybody wanted to go to the race, even Toby.
‘Just love to watch my big bro perform,’ he said.
But as we were all waiting for Dad outside our house I heard him say to Mom, ‘Laziko’s is on the way, isn’t it?’
Now I understood why Toby wanted to go to the race: Laziko’s had the best kebabs on the Coast.
But what about me? Did I want to go to the race?
If you’d asked me that during the last few days, my answer would’ve been an emphatic ‘no’.
Compared to The Debt, running around and around in a circle seemed so trivial, almost silly.
Especially not on Monday, after Dad had added an A brand to the P brand and the inside of my thigh had burned all night.
But today when I woke up I realised I’d changed my mind.
The Debt wasn’t going to stop me from doing what I loved most in the world. I just wasn’t going to let them.
A minibus pulled up, jerking to a stop, Dad driving, Dad smiling.
Because he got driven everywhere by Marcus, Dad didn’t drive much, so when he did he got a little bit excited.
‘This bad boy’s got some grunt,’ he said as we took our seats.
‘Bad boy?’ said Gus.
‘Yeah, get with it, Pops,’ said Dad. ‘It’s all
about bad boys these days, isn’t it, kids?’
Miranda and Toby agreed: ‘Yes, Dad, it’s all about bad boys.’
But I wasn’t so sure. About bad boys. Or about my dad, my Calabrian-speaking dad.
While I’d been busy with The Debt, I hadn’t been able to give much thought to what I’d witnessed at Nimbin. But now that I’d actually managed to make good the repayment it was constantly on my mind. When I looked at my dad, smiling his goofy smile, he hadn’t changed a bit. But when I thought of him speaking Calabrian, he had changed. How could he not?
The radio was tuned to Classic Rock FM, and ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ by The Rolling Stones was playing.
‘And listen to this bad boy,’ Dad said, turning up the volume.
Even more ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ by The Rolling Stones.
We pulled up outside Imogen’s house.
She was waiting for us, wearing a flowery dress, wearing high heels, like she was going to the theatre, not a race, but I suppose when you go out as infrequently as Imogen, you’re going to make the most of it.
I could see Mrs Havilland standing at the upstairs window, waving goodbye. From the forlorn look on her face, even paler than usual, you would think that her daughter was going away for months, perhaps even years, not just a few hours.
‘Poor Beth,’ said Mom to Dad. ‘She really is getting worse.’
‘Poor Beth,’ repeated Dad.
How would you say that in Calabrian, Dad? I thought.
‘This is so cool,’ said Imogen as she sat down next to me.
I could see, however, that Gus was thinking it wasn’t cool at all, that he was thinking this was not how a serious athlete prepared for a race. He’d wanted to drive up with just the two of us in his old ute, but Mom had insisted that we all go together, that we go ‘as a family’.
Gus needn’t have worried, though, because I felt great. Better than great. What were a few laps of an oval for somebody who’d turned off – and turned back on – the city’s lights?
Turn off the Lights Page 15
