TABLE OF CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
PART ONE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
PART TWO
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
PART THREE
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT PAGE
CHAPTER 1
I wasn’t going to make it.
Curfew was about to kick in and there was no way I’d be where I was meant to be in time. I tried to run faster. I was meant to be at home, indoors, like everyone else at nine o’clock. Instead I was outside, running down the middle of the street and wishing time would just stop.
The bus had dropped me off and the driver had said, Got far to go? And looked at her watch like she was making a point. I told her, Nope, not far, which wasn’t a complete lie. Besides, what was she going to do? Offer to drive the bus to my front door? I don’t think so.
So I ran.
My backpack hit my back, bounce-bounce-bounce, as the world quietened down around me. There was no-one outside. No cars or buses or bikes or people walking dogs or kids screaming in the broken-down playground or orders for burgers and fries being made in the drive-through or couples out for evening walks just cos it was a nice night. Everywhere was silent, everything closed and locked. Everyone was where they were supposed to be.
Except me.
I could feel people watching me from their windows. Look at her, I imagined them saying as they shook their heads, fingers itching to call the Emergency Line as soon as the clock ticked over to nine. Then the Unit would turn up and do whatever it was they did to people who were out after Curfew. They’d call me a Disturbance. Or maybe a Potential Threat. That would be much worse. Once you were a Potential Threat it didn’t take much to lose the Potential part of the label.
I didn’t want to think about what happened to Threats.
I begged my legs to move, move, but all they wanted to do was stop. I wished I’d left my backpack behind. It was slowing me down. I could run a lot faster than that. Correction – I had run a lot faster than that. Once I was all about being the first over the line and blue ribbons and crappy fake gold medals and people cheering my name – Santee, Santee, Santee – but that was a long time ago. Now I was just that Weird Girl they all ignored. (Don’t talk to her, Tash had told the kinda-cute new boy only a couple of weeks before. He’d noticed the drawing I was working on and said it looked interesting. Interesting? What the hell does that mean? I’d said and he’d laughed and was about to say something more when Tash swept in from nowhere and dragged him away. Don’t talk to her. She said it so I could hear it. She’s a freak. They always made sure I could hear it. Me and the new boy hadn’t spoken since, though he’d caught my eye a couple of times and I’d smiled. And he’d smiled back. So there was that, I suppose.)
My crappy apartment block came into view and it took all I had not to turn around and run in the opposite direction. The tired concrete building loomed over the bitumen. Rows and rows of tiny windows peered out onto another identical block, and another, and another. So many eyes. In the dull light they kinda looked like a pack of monsters. Hungry, watchful monsters that would swallow me up. I kinda wished they would.
I heard the Unit patrol car siren.
Curfew.
I ignored the stitch in my side and the fact Mum was going to kill me and ran into the mouth of the monster.
Home.
‘Don’t you ever, ever do that to me again. You hear me? Never,’ Mum hissed in my ear.
I could tell she wanted to shout but she couldn’t because that’s not what we did. Shouting was not allowed in our flat. We were surrounded by too many eyes and ears and Good Citizens who were keen to do the Right Thing. I was three minutes late, maybe five. Depends on your clock. Mum considered this The End of the World but even then she wouldn’t raise her voice. I wished she would.
‘What the hell were you doing?’ Astrid demanded, frowning. My big sister had slipped into Mum mode. She did that a lot, despite the fact that our actual mother had the whole Mum thing down pretty well. When we were little, people thought it was funny and cute, but I’d always known it was just Astrid’s way of proving she was better than me.
‘I just …’ I searched for the right words but knew anything I said would sound like bullshit. I felt my face burning and avoided their eyes. ‘I lost track of time.’ Even I thought it sounded like a lie, which it was. But not entirely.
‘Where?’ Mum said. ‘Where were you when you “lost track of time”?’
She always asked the right questions. I stared at the TV, hoping for something that would distract her. The News was on cos it was always on at that time of night. The words Breaking News! and Live! scrolled across the screen and I saw images of the Unit in riot gear, ready to storm a building full of Threats. The building was only a couple of blocks from the deli where I worked on weekends. I shivered. I walked past that building every Saturday and never gave it much thought, and now it was about to be ripped apart by the Unit. What had the people inside that building been planning to do? Another bomb on another bus? Another car speeding into another crowd? I felt sick thinking about it even though I should have been used to it by now. There had been heaps of Threats identified lately. And more attacks. Unexpected. Violent. And always close enough to our neighbourhood to scare us.
Everyone was frightened. All the time. Including Mum. I finally looked at her. She’d sunk into her old armchair and was rubbing her forehead like she was exhausted. I hated seeing her like that and I hated being the reason for it. I wanted to reach out and hug her, crawl into her lap like I had when I was a kid and cuddles made everything better somehow. But I didn’t.
‘We didn’t know where you were,’ Mum said.
‘I sent you a message,’ I mumbled. That was the truth. The message itself wasn’t so truthful. I’d told her I was finishing a project at school. Lie. I’d written, Be home after dinner 7.30 ish. Also a lie. She’d responded with three kisses: xxx. According to Mum that meant I Love You. It had made me feel bad but it hadn’t stopped me. I’d figured she wouldn’t find out. I was wrong. Of course.
‘Santee,’ Mum said and this time she didn’t hiss but sounded disappointed, which was actually even worse. Part of me wondered if that was her plan. But still, as bad as I felt for lying to her, I couldn’t tell her the truth. What was the point? I was home and I was safe and if I’d told her where I’d been she’d just lose it. She always did when I tried to see Dad.
I looked back at the TV. Shots had been fired. From inside, from insi
de, an excited voice said over the footage, and my stomach lurched. The Unit opened fire. The screen went black for a moment and then we were back in the studio with the smug News anchor. I wondered who was in that building. Had they been watching the News? Did they know the Unit had them surrounded and that they were supposed to come out with their hands up? Did any of them survive?
We saw reports like that every day. At first it had been a shock and we’d stand around the TV and cry. Now the shock might have gone but the fear had grown and grown. So when Our Leader, Magnus Varick, and his men in suits announced all these rules to keep us safe, we followed them. Like Curfew. We were too scared not to. Plus, they said it was to protect us.
But that didn’t stop the bad stuff from happening. And it always happened on our side of the city, where thousands of people were crammed on top of one another in little apartments and burnt-out cars were left near the abandoned factory and the dead-end streets stank in summer. The bad side. The good side was where people had more money and better jobs and the apartment blocks weren’t towers of concrete and nothing bad ever happened. Whatever. The bad side wasn’t the bad side to me. It was just where we lived. And it had its own good things, like the cafe where people chatted in all kinds of languages while music spilled out of passing cars and mashed together in a mix of beats and bass, and the graffitied walls that were like some sort of free art gallery, and the delicious smell of bread from the bakery in the mornings, and the brightly lit restaurants families crowded into on Sundays, and the park where dogs ran freely, and the cinemas with their over-buttered popcorn and cheap movies. But most importantly, it was full of memories of Dad.
It was home.
As if she could read my mind, Astrid said, ‘You were trying to see Dad again, weren’t you?’
I glared at her. She looked like she’d just won a prize and it made me want to hit her. But I didn’t. At least I had the guts to try to see him. I was the only one who did. And that made me better than Astrid. So I ignored her. ‘I didn’t mean to be late.’
‘Santee … ’ Mum started to say something and her voice made my stomach twist. She wasn’t whispering anymore. ‘It’s not about you being late.’
‘What is it then? What?’ I snapped, and Mum flinched, just a bit.
‘We’ve spoken about this. You are not to go there.’ She was about to launch into a lecture, but I didn’t let her. I’d heard it all before.
‘You don’t give a shit about him. You never go to see him. You never want to talk about him. Maybe you’re happy he’s gone.’ I wasn’t shouting, but I was close.
‘I’m not arguing with you about this, Santee,’ Mum said.
‘See! You never talk about it.’
Mum took a deep breath and let it out slowly, her lips in a tight straight line, her eyes unblinking. ‘Santee. You know it’s not safe to go out there,’ she said in a low, quiet voice. ‘So from now on, you go to school and you come straight home. And you go to work and you come straight home. That’s it. That’s your life now. OK? Nothing else.’
I knew I should shut up but I’ve never been great at taking my own advice. And so I didn’t shut up – I laughed. Not a friendly, ha-ha, isn’t-that-funny laugh, but a mean, screw-up-your-nose-and-curl-your-lip laugh. Cos, seriously, Mum was grounding me. Grounding me? Didn’t she realise my whole life was basically one big grounding anyway? All our lives were. You couldn’t actually do anything here. Everyone was too fricking scared. Scared to make too much noise. Scared of their neighbours. Scared to speak up, to be heard, to say anything. And I was tired of being scared. I was over it. My chest felt tight and the room was hot and I couldn’t hold it in any longer. ‘I’m over this bullshit,’ I shouted.
‘Santee!’ said Astrid, as loudly as she dared, in that voice. The one that always made me want to run away because I hadn’t done anything wrong and it’s not fair to be stuck with two mothers – my actual mother and my big sister. There was no space, no room, for me to just be.
‘Bullshit,’ I screamed. Mum and Astrid stared at me, mouths open but silent, as I ran into my bedroom. I slammed the door and threw myself onto my bed and hated myself.
I shared a room with Astrid because we didn’t have a choice and after I’d screamed into my pillow and punched it a couple of times, she snuck in. She acted like I was some kind of bomb that would explode in her face. Maybe I was.
‘Stop being an idiot,’ she eventually said. ‘I saved you some dinner.’
‘Not hungry,’ I lied, and rolled over to face the wall.
She sighed like an old lady as she sat on the edge of my bed and rubbed my back the way she always did when I lost it. ‘We all miss him, you know.’
I knew that. Logically. Of course. How could anyone not miss him? He’d been gone for almost three years now, since I was thirteen, but it felt like forever. I couldn’t understand why they refused to even try to visit him. They said it was dangerous and irresponsible, travelling all that way on my own. Making a nuisance of myself (Mum’s words, not mine). Mum and Astrid made all these empty statements like, We need to fly under the radar, we can’t cause a fuss, we have to be careful. And I got it. I understood. But I just couldn’t, and wouldn’t, put Dad behind me. I wasn’t going to pretend everything was OK. Cos it wasn’t.
They’d found out about me going there a couple of times and I’d promised to stop. But I didn’t. I got better with my timing and planning and lying and I always made sure I was home before Curfew. At first I tried to go every month but it wasn’t easy to get there and soon I was missing a month or two. And then, that morning, I realised it was something like four months since I’d been there and I felt like shit and couldn’t stop thinking about him. I was at school, trying to concentrate, but I saw Dad’s face and heard his voice in everything and everyone all day. So I went out there. I left class early, skipped out on a session with Beth and caught the bus that took me all the way to the outskirts of the suburbs. From the bus window I watched the houses make way for the bush. Or was it the other way round?
When I finally got off the bus my legs were wobbly and I felt like throwing up. I made my way down the long driveway of loose, hot gravel and joined the small crowd that had gathered by the fence enclosing the prison. They were always there. People like me, waiting and waiting for the moment they’d be allowed through the gates to the people they loved. That moment hadn’t come. Ever. Well, not since I’d been heading there and not that anyone else in the queue could remember, anyway. But I still went, like all those others, cos maybe one day they’d let us in. And if I wasn’t there when that happened … I didn’t want him to think we’d forgotten about him. Dad had been in there for a long time. At least, we assumed that was where they’d taken him that night. We never knew for sure, and we didn’t know if they’d moved him. We were never told anything. All we had to go on were careful whispers, and we never knew if they were rumours or the truth.
As usual, the Unit Officers recorded my name, my address, took my photo. I knew the drill and did all the right things. I was polite and looked them in the eye, and when they asked why I was there I told them the truth, like I always did. I want to see my father. Joseph Quinn. Usually I’d search their faces for a sign of recognition but their faces were always blank and they’d say, No visitors. But that’s not what they said today. They said, OK.
My heart stopped. OK. They never said OK. Before I could ask what they meant they walked over to the next person to go through the whole process again, and I truly believed I was going to see my dad. So I waited. Longer than I should have.
I explained it all to Astrid. The reason I was late. Waiting around too long because the Unit had said OK. It sounded so stupid when I said it out loud.
‘I thought it was a sign,’ I said. ‘Or a code. You know?’
‘Seriously, Santee? Grow up. They were never going to let you in,’ she said, and the tone of her voice made me feel like a little kid. ‘You can’t keep going there. It’s pointless.’
I
knew she was right. Deep down I probably knew, even while I was outside the prison, that I wasn’t going to see Dad. But I wanted to believe that it might, somehow, be possible. I didn’t need Astrid being all Astrid about it.
‘Leave me alone,’ I said, and she did. She turned off the light and closed the door behind her.
I couldn’t hear them but I knew Mum and Astrid would be talking about me, wondering where they’d gone wrong and why the appointments with Beth weren’t working. I wanted to shout at them, Stop talking about me! Instead, I rolled onto my back, stared at the ceiling and counted from one to ten, slowly, slowly, and tried to Control That Temper the way Beth had taught me.
Beth was a psychologist. After I’d shoved Tash, who’d started it and totally deserved to be shoved, the school said I had to see Beth once a week. Mum agreed, I disagreed, but what I wanted didn’t matter. And so I’d been seeing Beth for nearly three years and, for some reason, she’d been unable to change me. What a surprise.
In our first ever meeting Beth said I had to Control That Temper and count to ten in my head before I said something I would regret.
‘Imagine white clouds gently rolling across a bright, blue sky. Can you do that? Can you try?’ Beth had smiled and stared and waited for me to say something. I told her she was a moron, or something like that. Obviously, I didn’t count to ten that time. But Beth just nodded and said she understood. It didn’t take me long to work out she was quite good like that. You could throw all the crap you wanted at her, and her perfect smile and and her positive attitude and even her neat hairdo wouldn’t budge. Although sometimes I’d catch her just staring and staring and it felt like she was looking right through me to the life she could have had if she hadn’t become a school psychologist. Maybe a model. Or a News anchor. She could have done either with that hair and that smile. Blargh.
For once, though, the counting and the clouds worked and I thought how happy Beth would be when I told her that I’d done it. Controlled That Temper.
Better late than never.
CHAPTER 2
Mum might have banned shouting but she still knew how to make a lot of noise. And she did, at five o’clock every morning. She slammed drawers and doors and banged pots and if she was feeling particularly annoyed she’d start up the vacuum cleaner. It was her version of screaming, Get out of bed! I once suggested she could bring me a coffee instead. I mean, that’s a civilized, calm way to get someone out of bed, right? She wasn’t impressed.
Everywhere Everything Everyone Page 1
