The Mouse

by Lauretta Hignett

  Steph smirked and brought over a couple more bowls.

  “Smells delicious darl, what are we having?” Ben asked her.

  “Korean,” Steph said and beamed around the table. Her smile faded as she watched Sunny dissolve into laughter.

  Chapter 19

  The next morning Sunny woke to a soft golden glow peeking out from underneath her bedroom curtains, which made getting up and out of bed easier. Pulling back her drapes, she saw the bright blue skies and the touch of the blue ocean to the east. She opened her window wide and took a deep breath, eyes closed, savouring the salty morning air. It was too late to head out for a surf as she had slept in a little –whizzing around the globe so much was bound to take its toll.

  She headed to the shower with a lighter heart this morning and decided to wash her hair. She took off her clothes and picked up her hairbrush, and brushed it out slowly, starting from the ends and working her way up, twice stopping to spray in some detangler. Once it was smooth and free from knots, she turned on the shower. While she was waiting for the water to run warm, she turned to the mirror and checked herself out, trying to be objective. How would someone else see her?

  Her eyes were still the thing you noticed first – huge, wide and icy blue-green, with lashes that were thick and dark. Her eyebrows were thick too, they had been almost unruly, but Annabel had called her Frieda Kahlo a few weeks ago. Knowing that Annabel did not approve of current standards of feminine beauty requiring that all body hair be removed, Sunny had taken some tweezers to them just to spite her.

  She still had a few freckles on her nose, but they were fading slowly with her tan. Her hair was so long it almost reached her waist when it was brushed out straight – a thick mane of ash blonde and golden highlights, it covered her lightly freckled shoulders, and hid her boobs completely. It curled around her little waist and tickled the small of her back. A little tuft of ash blonde hair at her groin was like an afterthought of her long hair, and giggling to herself, she pulled all her hair over to one side and made it into a question mark, with her pubes being the dot.

  She lamented the lack of substance in the boob area, but, standing to the side, she saw that her butt was pleasingly round and quite high. Her legs weren’t long enough, but they were strong and straight and they worked, which was the main thing. Steph was fond of saying - “It’s not what it looks like, it’s what it can do that’s important” - when she heard anyone complaining about their body. Sunny always responded by accusing her of prejudice against the disabled.

  All in all, she was pleased with how she looked. She could probably do with a haircut, but it tended to go wider when it was cut shorter. It was easier to put it in a thick plait and out of the way.

  She hummed in the shower as she scrubbed her hair, and used up almost half a bottle of Steph’s expensive conditioner. It was hardly her fault – shampoo manufacturers should do themselves a favour if they were going to make normal-sized shampoo bottles, they should make the conditioner bottles twice as big. You always used so much more conditioner, especially if you had long hair. Steph always indulged in expensive hair products, which Sunny found odd considering her aversion to chemicals and hippy-dippy instincts. But the expense paid off – her hair was a long and silky auburn, with a mirror-like shine.

  Sunny dried herself and put on her uniform for school, her mood dimming slightly as she pulled on her blazer. She skipped downstairs, jumping the last two steps into the kitchen, where Steph drank her herbal tea standing up beside the counter with Archie perched on her hip.

  “Morning, Sunny!” she smiled at her.

  “Hi.” Sunny took Archie for a cuddle; he was grizzling mildly. “Teething again, poor cherub?”

  “He kept me up a bit last night.”

  “I keep telling you,” Sunny told her, “you gotta give him some drugs. If not for his sake, then for yours. A little bit of paracetamol never hurt anyone. The opposite, in fact.”

  Steph stared at her, almost stonily. “Yeah, maybe,” she said finally.

  Wow, must have been a rough night, Sunny thought, if Steph was contemplating giving Archie some painkillers. She got herself a bowl of muesli and yoghurt and grabbed her mobile from where it was plugged into the charger in the living room. It was switched off – vaguely she remembered that it had run out of batteries halfway through dinner and had put it on charge, forgetting to get it when she went to bed. No wonder she had such a good night’s sleep.

  Switching it on and perching on a stool by the counter, she tucked into her muesli and watched with growing concern as her phone started to hum with all the messages she had gotten overnight. Twelve missed calls, four texts. All from Hunter.

  She’d forgotten to call him after she came back to Korea. He was going to be furious. Sunny put her head in her hands.

  Steph noticed. “Everything OK?” She even had the nerve to look concerned.

  “Fine. Uh, just Annabel, lists of things she wants me to bring her tonight after school. I better head upstairs and pack my bag…” The phone started buzzing again. Incoming call, from Hunter. Sunny bolted to her room and pressed the answer button.

  She started talking before he could get an angry word in. “I’m sorry! My phone died and I put it on the charger and didn’t think about it and I incidentally had a very good night sleep last night, but everything is fine and I’m all ok and I don’t have anything to report…”

  “Mouse.” He cut off her stream of chatter with one growly word. “I was going outta my mind.”

  “I know! I’m so sorry, I am. But I really didn’t have anything to report…”

  “You are the worst. Agent. Ever.”

  “I know,” she said forlornly. It was evident he’d just been very, very worried about her.

  “So. Will I be graced with your presence this evening?”

  “Yeah. I got the whole weekend free.”

  “Good. I’ll see you this afternoon. And Mouse – “

  “Yeah?”

  “You better redeem yourself,” Hunter said darkly, and hung up.

  Sunny shivered. She wasn’t sure if it was in dread, or in anticipation. She shoved a few random things into her overnight bag and bounced back down the stairs, giving Archie a bit sloppy kiss and Steph an awkward half-smile on the way out the door to school.

  She called Annabel on the way. “Hey darl. Still sick?

  “Yeahhh,” Annabel moaned. “I’m not as bad as yesterday though. I’ve got the humidifier going.”

  “I can tell. I can understand you”.

  Annabel coughed a bit more. “How’s it going with the surf god?”

  Sunny thought for a moment. “Good, I think. I might have more to tell you this evening. Can you still cover for me for a bit? And I can crash at yours when we’re done?”

  “Wow. You, babes, are hornier than Pamplona in July.” She hacked and coughed a few more times. “Simon will be away again today. Something about going to see his uncle, instead of having to go to school without me.”

  On impulse, Sunny decided to say something. “Uh, Annabel… is Simon… Okay?”

  “He’s fine!” Annabel sounded surprised. And defensive.

  “It’s just that… he’s a normal guy; there’s nothing wrong with him. Why can’t he cope at school without you?”

  “He can.” Annabel paused, then huffed out a breath. “Look, Sunny, we both know that he’s a little… dependent on me.”

  “You mean in love with you.”

  “Yes,” she said defensively. “Well, I love him too.”

  “Not in the same way.”

  “We’ve talked about it,” Annabel said airily, “And he’s okay with how things are. And if he doesn’t want to be at school, like you said, he’s a normal guy, and he can make his own decisions.”

  “Annabel, I don’t want to be a dick, but isn’t that a little… cruel?

  Annabel sighed. “I know.” There was a long, long silence, and she sighed again. “I guess I’ve always hoped that he’ll get
over it.” She took a big breath and choked back a cough. “And he will. He’ll have to. Someday.” She took another deep breath. “It’s been over a year since I’ve said anything to him about it. Last time, he swore that he was fine, he just saw me as a friend now. But I know he’s lying.”

  “And he knows you know.”

  “Yeah. Look, you know I’m normally pretty forthright on this kind of thing. But I don’t want to rock the boat. As I said, I love him, and he’s my best friend. But that’s all there ever will be. He knows it. And he will get over it,” Annabel said resolutely.

  “Yeah. Maybe,” Sunny murmured. Annabel sounded like she was trying to convince herself more than anyone else. “I guess I’ll call you when I’m headed over, okay?”

  “Yup. Catch ya later.” And she hung up.

  Sunny wandered the next couple of blocks to school thinking about Simon. She was mildly offended that he didn’t think of her as a good enough friend to hang out with her without Annabel around. She could help. Maybe distract him a little. He was a great guy; he was kind and thoughtful and supportive. And Sunny would never say it out loud, but he was unintentionally, absolutely entertaining. Some of the dumb things he said were hilarious.

  She’d thought of herself and the others as the Three Musketeers, and didn’t realize the group would fall apart without Annabel. It was more like she was Earth, Annabel was Venus, and Simon was one of Venus’s moons. He couldn’t do without her. She decided there and then to put in more effort to make sure Simon thought of her as a constant figure, someone that he could rely on.

  When the bell finally rang in her last class, she headed to her locker to pick up her bag, and out of the corner of her eye, she thought she caught a glimpse of Simon’s tall blonde figure walking away down the corridor, immersed in the throng of students. She quickly craned her neck to look, wanting to talk to him – but she couldn’t see him. She must be mistaken, he hadn’t been here at all today, at least not in any of her classes, and Annabel had said that he had gone to hang out with his uncle.

  She trekked back to the PE changing rooms and headed into a stall, where she quickly re-plaited her hair to the side and changed into her sneakers, ripped jeans and a striped t-shirt. Making sure there was no one else in the room, she held her overnight bag in her hand and pulled the vibrations from her fingertips all through her body and went into the Alternate.

  The girl’s bathroom looked utterly bizarre in the Alternate, in a stunningly beautiful kind of way. After a full day of strenuous activity by hundreds of PE students, there was hair and sweat everywhere; the bacteria were going crazy. It glistened on all the bench seats and in hand prints on the lockers in the room. It was fascinating and disgusting at the same time.

  Having amused herself with that for a while, she drifted upwards and out of the school, and headed south to Sydney, following the coastline. On the way, she spotted some huge, stunning green lights in the ocean. They were enormous – bigger than cars, and the lights swirled so gently and serenely, she was mesmerized. Drifting lower, she realized she was looking at a pod of whales, swimming and dipping up and down gently in the deep water of the Pacific.

  Not even the beauty of these majestic creatures could keep her attention diverted for very long, and she flew back up and zoomed back towards land, and straight into the corridor of Hunter’s apartment. She pushed the vibrations back down and knocked on his door.

  Hunter wrenched the door open and scowled down at her. “Glad you could finally make contact, Agent Mouse,” he drawled sarcastically. He filled the whole doorway with his body, long legs in ripped jeans, his arms folded menacingly over the taunt muscles of his chest, clad in a worn grey t-shirt.

  He must not know how he looked, she thought, towering over her and smoldering in the darkness of his small hallway. If his intention was to chastise her, it had the opposite effect. She thought she might start a bushfire with the flames in her cheeks. She turned and walked into his kitchen to hide her blush, and slid herself up on a stool by the counter.

  The apartment was almost in darkness. Hunter had drawn the blinds in the kitchen and pulled heavy curtains over the sliding door in the lounge that leads out to the balcony. There was no light apart from a hazy warm glow from an orange hurricane lamp in the lounge room. The atmosphere was cosy, cave-like and overwhelmingly seductive.

  But then again, everything about him was sexy. If he rented a bathroom-less squat above a cat boarding kennel, it would still be sexy.

  Hunter followed her in and went to the fridge, pulled out a couple of different blocks of cheese, and put them on a chopping board with a knife.

  Sunny took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, again,” she began. “I guess I’m not a very good agent.”

  Hunter gave her a grudging half-smile. “I was very worried, I’ll admit. I don’t know what you get up to when you go off like that; you’re so unpredictable.” He paused and closed his eyes for a second, his brow furrowed. “The worst part is that I know exactly how much trouble you could get into if you got caught in North Korea.”

  “Give me some credit,” Sunny replied, slightly annoyed. “I’m not stupid.”

  He walked to the pantry and got out a packet of crackers to go with the cheese, and cut a slice of brie, put in on a cracker and handed it to her.

  “You know,” he began, “A lot of agents go dark for a long time, for various reasons. They check in when they can.”

  “So I’m not that useless, after all,” Sunny gave him a cheeky grin and crunched into her cracker.

  “I’m just a bit more concerned about you.” Hunter went on coldly, “because you have no espionage training at all. And because there hasn’t been an asset so far that hasn’t checked in because they forgot to put their phone on the charger.”

  Sunny shrugged. “Hey, I’m not surgically attached to my mobile like most teenagers. I thought it was a good thing.”

  He cut her another slice of brie and handed it to her. “You know…” he started, but he stopped and frowned at the counter.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  He was preparing some sort of speech, she could tell. And it was something she probably didn’t want to hear. “So, what’s happening with North Korea?” Sunny asked in a rush. “Have they decided when to try taking the compound?”

  “We’re going in on Sunday,” Hunter’s frown deepened. “Since you told us that the compound had been reinforced, we’re going to wait a few days before we go in and hopefully the excess soldiers have been moved on. It’s hard, with their EMP. We have to push the army back by force so that we can send a unit in there. We have to ship over our oldest trucks, ones without electrics; they’re the only ones that work out there.”

  Hunter took a deep breath and stared stonily at the table for a long moment. “Look, I think I need to get this out of the way.”

  Sunny felt a prickle of unease. “Oh God, what?”

  “In my line of work, keeping your cards close to your chest is everything,” he said slowly. “But I get the feeling that I need you to know everything about my life so that we can help each other.”

  “I understand. Is this about your work, or your family?” Please let this not be about me, Sunny thought to herself frantically.

  “Both. I told you that my parents were both military? Well… they… They enlisted me in a… a special program when I was four.”

  “What kind of ‘special program?’ Obviously not kinder ballet…”

  Hunter frowned. “A special division within ASIS. A training academy for kids.”

  Sunny could see where this was going. She had suspected as much. Having him confirm it made her angry. “For babies, you mean. Training spy kids? Little boys and girls that can sneak in anywhere and listen to any conversation without suspicion? Maybe even slip some poison into a dictator’s drink?”

  He shook his head and gave a mirthless laugh. “You really do catch on quick.”

  “It’s not exactly a surprise. I had thought
about what might have made you the youngest and most experienced secret agent in the world. It makes perfect sense, but it’s so twisted and morally corrupt. You couldn’t consent to be used like that; you had no choice!”

  “My parents consented for me.” Hunter’s jaw tensed.

  “It’s sick.”

  “But every effective.”

  “You and those poor little kids. It’s horrifying.”

  “It wasn’t that bad. A lot of training, an operation here and there… And we’re not unique either. Almost every country in the world has a unit like ours.”

  Sunny sighed. There wasn’t any excuse in the world that could make this okay. “You never had a childhood, did you?”

  “Not in the conventional sense. And I never knew any different. It was a normal childhood, as far as I was concerned. But that’s not the part that I needed to tell you.”

  Sunny was silent. What could be worse?

  After a moment, Hunter turned towards the window and began talking. “I had a close friend in my unit. Agent Pierce. Pierce was hilarious, over-the-top, fearless, absolutely deadly. We got on like a house on fire.”

  Sunny swallowed hard and stayed silent until Hunter continued.

  “We were sent to Slovakia on a mission together when we were seventeen, and Pierce got captured. I flipped out and went rogue.”

  Hunter dropped his head into his hands and covered his face.

  “I blew the mission, got a lot of people killed. Including Pierce.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “I ended up burning that whole village to the ground,” Hunter whispered. “I can’t… I shouldn’t tell you. You shouldn’t know this stuff. But you need to understand what I am. What I do.”

  “What you were forced to do, you mean.”

  “Sunny, don’t you see?” Hunter turned and looked her in the eye. “I’m not normal. I’ll never have the things I want or the life that I want. I’ve been trained from an early age to kill. And I lost the only thing that I ever cared about.” His face crumbled. “They died because of me.”