Box

  PENELOPE TODD lives in Dunedin. Once, while on a gooseberry hunt in the Makarora Valley, she and her siblings slept the night on a large piece of cardboard. Remembering what that felt like gave her the idea that started Box, her sixth novel about teenagers.

  Also by Penelope Todd:

  Three’s a Crowd

  Peri

  Boy Next Door

  Watermark

  Dark

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Box

  ePub ISBN 9781742745893

  Box is a work of fiction. All the characters, incidents and some

  of the places are figments of the author’s imagination.

  Random House Australia Pty Ltd

  20 Alfred Street, Milsons Point NSW 2061

  http://www.randomhouse.com.au

  Sydney New York Toronto

  London Auckland Johannesburg

  First published by Longacre Press in 2005

  First published by Random House Australia in 2006

  Copyright © Penelope Todd 2006

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry

  Todd, Penelope, 1958–.

  Box.

  For ages 12 and over.

  ISBN 978 1 74166 171 2.

  ISBN 1 74166 171 4.

  I. Title.

  NZ823.2

  Cover design by Christine Buess

  COVER

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO BY PENELOPE TODD

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  IMPRINT PAGE

  PROLOGUE

  Chapter ONE

  Chapter TWO

  Chapter THREE

  Chapter FOUR

  Chapter FIVE

  Chapter SIX

  Chapter SEVEN

  Chapter EIGHT

  Chapter NINE

  Chapter TEN

  Chapter ELEVEN

  Chapter TWELVE

  Chapter THIRTEEN

  For Jonathan

  ‘TWENTY-SIX of you have written what I asked for in the essay entitled, In the Two Years Since I’ve Been at Caseforth High.’ Mr Blunt was criss-crossing the room, tossing papers onto our desks. ‘One of you, however, has taken it into his head to write about our current government’s running record. That boy …’ His knuckle rapped my head and my essay landed in front of me, ‘… and that boy alone has homework tonight: writing the story of his social, educational, sporting and cultural development since attending this peerless institution.

  ‘However, Derik Love’s essay is more topical than he might know, as we are shortly to see, on the two p.m. news … What does p.m. stand for, Mr Llwellyn?’

  ‘Post meridian,’ said Disco.

  ‘And for Prime Minister — in this case ours — who will at two p.m. explain to the nation the government’s latest … extraordinary … health policies.

  ‘In the five minutes before that broadcast, which will be of immediate relevance to each of you, I would like you, Derik, to come up here and read to the class the remarkable record of achievement on the page before you.’

  Beside me Ryan sniggered and rolled his essay into a tube.

  I clumped up to the front and read in the monotone we had all perfected in our time at Crashforth:

  ‘The two years since I have been at Caseforth High are the same two years the PACT Government has been in power.

  ‘Year One. Things that looked bad: journalists found out that the drug company Pharmix funded the new PACT government’s electoral campaign.

  ‘Things that looked weird: PACT brought in Scope-cards for ID and financial transactions.

  ‘Things that looked good: it brought in free multi-purpose heart pills, blood stabilisers, and mood-enhancing pills. Lots of people started taking them.’

  ‘Cancer-immobilising pills too,’ one of the girls broke in.

  I glanced at Mr Blunt and carried on. ‘Year Two. Bad: Pharmix US found five new lethal viruses in South America. Good: They developed vaccines against the viruses. Weird: People started dying in New Zealand from those viruses — mostly high school kids. One boy at this school died from the H-virus.’

  ‘Mr Llewellyn, what does the H stand for?’

  Disco rolled his eyes at me and said, ‘Head louse.’

  Mr Blunt nodded for me to go on.

  ‘Year Three, which has just started: Bad and Weird: Two more kids from our school died over the summer from two other viruses. Dozens have died now in New Zealand.’

  ‘Okay, we’ll hold it there, thank you, Derik. You know what your homework is.’ Mr Blunt turned on the TV.

  The lady reader who earns a million bucks a year to look good while she gives out bad news said, ‘This is a special news update. The government has released details this afternoon of Endorsement, its newest health initiative. Long-awaited vaccines are ready for release to the New Zealand population, along with major health-optimising measures. Shortly we will cross live to the Beehive where the Prime Minister will announce details of the two-stage procedure.

  ‘The Minister of Health says the medical fraternity is excited by the programme which will not only eradicate killer viruses, but will achieve the perfect balance of chemicals in the human body. He says this will see pioneering New Zealand become the healthiest nation on earth, with the lowest medical costs.

  ‘Endorsement, stage one, will take effect on the first of March, this coming Monday. As an inducement for the entire population to take part, all personal financial transactions will be possible only with the updated Scope-cards being issued to the endorsed.’

  Mr Blunt gripped the edge of the table. He didn’t look up for about a minute, until the Prime Minister came on with his strained, sympathetic look and familiar, stirring tones.

  Mr Blunt turned off the TV. ‘I’m sure we’ll all see and hear enough of this in the coming days and hours. When you leave, each of you can take from my desk a copy of the official Endorsement handbook for school students. I’m going to tell you a story.’ He sat on the corner of the desk and stared out at the leaking brick wall of the art block.

  Ryan blew at me through his rolled-up essay. I pulled up my collar against his disgusting breath. Mr Blunt looked at the ceiling.

  ‘Once there were a king and a queen, and in the way that happens, even to kings and queens, they lay dying. They called their almost full-grown son to their bedside. The king said, “We have no riches for you; our kingdom has declined and is usurped by fools.”

  ‘The queen chipped in before her husband could take off on his hobby horse. “However we have something for you to take on the journey. Carry it with you always but do not open it — until the end of your life.”

  ‘The boy had been unaware that a journey was pending but he took from his parents a sealed box of balsa wood. The little container was too fragile to go in his pocket, too difficult a shape to be carried any way except carefully, in one hand or the other, or in both.

  ‘After the funerals and the crying when the boy clutched
the box gladly in spite of its unprepossessing nature, he set off on the journey called life. Wherever he went he had to mind the box. He grew alert. He learned to notice everything and to be always asking questions — whether they had answers or not. During difficult tasks, such as climbing cliffs, or swimming across lakes, he had to find ways to keep the box safe. He became clever and inventive.

  ‘He sometimes felt tired and wished to be free of his light but tricky burden; however he knew that he would never voluntarily let it go. When he grew older the people who loved him had to take into account the little box which sat on the table when he ate, or lay beside his pillow at night. Some were offended by it and left him alone. Others were intrigued and knew that it was intrinsic to his unusual beauty.

  ‘The box took a few knocks. Cracks appeared. It got dirty. The young man washed it carefully with a baby toothbrush. He resealed it many times with chewing gum or builder’s bog. He painted it bright colours, and varnished it to keep it safe in spite of tears and sweat and rain. When his children were old enough, he let them play with it. Although many enjoyed its magic, and others envied him and would have stolen it, the little box belonged only and ever to him.

  ‘When at last he lay dying, his attendants (he was a prince, after all) brought him a hammer and urged him to open it. The old man touched the sealed box where it lay, strange and glowing, on his breastbone. “All of me is in this box,” he said, “the whole universe. I have no need to open it.” And he died, smiling.

  ‘Overcome by curiosity and as soon as they decently could, his attendants took the box outside and broke it open.

  ‘It was empty.’

  Mr Blunt sank down at his desk and indicated for us to go.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Is that it?’

  Kids frowned, shrugged at each other, groaned. But when Mr Blunt didn’t move, we each snatched a handbook off his desk and left.

  THE FIRST night after it began we slept in a cardboard box. Marti said we would be warmer off the playground asphalt and she was right. I liked the way the sleeping bag slid on it when you moved, with a long papery ‘hishsh’. Your hair made a tiny crickly sound when you turned your head. I missed my pillow but smoothing my face along the cardboard put static in the fine hairs which felt interesting. When I lost myself in these little details everything else didn’t seem quite so menacing.

  Beside me, Marti was so quiet I knew she must be awake. All evening we’d watched one other, wanting to trust but not daring to say much. She was the quietest girl I’d ever met. I tried not to think about the grubby bandage on her forearm and what might be under it.

  I pointed my toes and arced them across the end of the box. Hishshshsh. I ran them along the cardboard ceiling until they were over my head. I tried for a scrunched-up shoulder stand but I got the wobbles and my legs crashed onto Marti.

  ‘Derik! I was just about asleep.’

  ‘Sorry. Yoga.’ I shouldn’t have said ‘yoga’ because all at once my face swelled with tears. They didn’t come out but I knew they’d be in my voice if I said anything else. So far neither of us had cried.

  ‘Yoga’ was my parents in the lounge in the early mornings: slow music thickening the air, holding my mother still as a post while she cradled one foot like a stone in front of her; Dad off to one side, grinning at me, trying to make his middle finger connect with the top of his foot, without bending his knees.

  ‘Try-hard, Dad,’ I’d say.

  ‘Come and join us, mate, so you don’t rust out like your old folks.’

  ‘Speak for yourself.’ Mum’d keep her eyes on the birch tree and pull her foot up to her waist.

  Then Dad would mime poking her off balance and I’d somersault along the sofa in my pyjamas. I’d begun to feel strange about this; I was too old for it, but it was such a habit I’d only remember when my legs whacked the far end like they never used to. Sometimes I kept going to the kitchen, other times I hung upside-down off the cushions and watched: my mother graceful and slow as grass growing, Dad working hard, ugly as he gets in his jockeys and T-shirt.

  Now I wasn’t even sure where they were. I’d lost their itinerary in the last big scramble.

  It was strange how perfect they seemed when they weren’t here, how smooth our life together looked now it was gone. It was easy to forget how touchy they’d been these last weeks: Dad, a biochemist who knew ‘too much about the possible outcomes of Endorsement,’ he said, ‘and too little’, with his endless meetings, hours on the Internet, phone calls in the middle of the night, a rushed trip to hospital when his stomach ulcer flared up. And Mum hadn’t been much better. Every tiny thing set her off — me asking if Ryan could stay for dinner, Ella wondering where her swimming togs were. Mum’s eyes would flare wide and she’d look incredulously at us — as if we were stopping to blow our noses when a bus was about to run us down.

  The yoga was before they knew about Endorsement.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ Marti’s voice came out of the dark.

  I deleted my parents, the morning sun on the lounge floor.

  ‘Nothing. Listening to the cardboard. Imagine a whole hillside covered with it, and you’re in your sleeping bag.’

  ‘Cool.’ But her voice was flat. ‘Actually, I can’t imagine playing ever again. Is it like this for grown-ups, d’you reckon?’

  ‘Maybe. But my parents took magnetic scrabble to play on the way to Germany. They might be playing right now.’ Jotting notes, more likely, talking in tense voices, Dad swallowing chalk tablets for his stomach.

  ‘Flying? I’d rather be on the ground. Rather lie on paper than be way up there.’ Her voice trailed off as she realised it was my parents out there in the dark sky.

  But cold air had sliced into my green cocoon. It wasn’t so much the flying, although that was dangerous enough these days with old planes being patched up, and threats of terrorism. But what if my parents got found out? What if a cardboard box was as good as it would ever get for me?

  ‘I’ll have to e-mail them today,’ I said. ‘Library. You can sometimes find a card with a few minutes left on it.’

  ‘Like you can sometimes find a nice piece of chewing gum under the tables.’ Marti made sliding sounds and her next words came right at me. ‘Sorry. I promised myself I wouldn’t whinge. That pie was really good, even the gristle. Just having something between your teeth. Yum.’

  ‘Did I tell you that guy threw it to me? Like a frisbee, then he spun round and went on smoking as if he’d never seen me.’

  ‘Shall we go back there in the morning?’

  I curled up on my side, facing Marti, and checked my breath in my cupped hands. ‘Not yet. For the feeding network there’s supposed to be a sequence you follow. We should have found out from the pie man where to go next. And we’ll have to find a tide chart.’

  ‘Is it high or low tide when we can collect food?’

  ‘Either, I mean both, between six a.m. and six p.m.’

  Marti rustled again then her voice came whispering off the cardboard — close up. ‘Explain the network again?’

  ‘It’s been set up because people who refuse to get endorsed can’t have the new Scope-card so they can’t buy food. It’s a way to get food to abstainers like us.’

  ‘I know, but who does all the feeding, do you reckon? And why would they?’

  ‘Anyone who opposes Endorsement, who can still get hold of food, also immigrants who aren’t New Zealand citizens yet, Dad says, because they don’t have to get endorsed straight away — and they’ll get paid somehow, but not with money. It works on trust.’ Well, my parents would have to fix my debts; I had nothing to trade with. ‘Then there are others who don’t really want to get endorsed but figure they’ve got no choice. They become feeders, not to feel so guilty. They kind of wish they were free like us, at first, anyway.’

  ‘Free? Free like rats. Everyone wants to trap or poison them.’ Marti rolled again so I could feel her side along mine. ‘You’re lucky your parents talked about
this. Mine hardly said a thing. They just thought it had to be a good idea because the government they voted in are making it happen. They didn’t even see Endorsement as an issue.’

  It was getting stuffy in here. I reached up and punched open one of the flaps so a sharp-edged piece of moonlight fell over our legs.

  ‘Why do you see it as an issue?’ I lay still. Marti’s answer was crucial. It was still possible that I’d made a bad mistake teaming up with her so quickly — that my panic pushed me into believing we recognised each other. It was still possible she was some kind of spy.

  Yet Marti was sitting up suddenly, putting her hand out into the fresh air. ‘Because it’s so, so … wrong! You know, my sister reckons it’s no different to tagging animals, like keeping track of endangered species, for their own good, to keep them alive.

  ‘But I reckon Endorsement — stage two — that’s when they put in the chemicals, isn’t it? — does exactly the opposite. It’s putting people in danger. Not their bodies. They’ll be kept alive forever if they’re good enough. But people’s … you know … insides, who they actually are … that’s endangered. How can someone be unique if they’ve got exactly the same levels of blood chemicals as every other single person in New Zealand?’

  ‘Optimum levels,’ I tested her, using the jargon of the advertisements.

  ‘Oh, sure. How do we know the tiny differences aren’t what make us ourselves? They’re saying our bodies don’t know what’s good for them any more. But maybe they’re all we have. They’re our … our maps. And they want to make them identical.’

  ‘I agree!’ I sat up and shuffled against the side of the box. ‘Mum’s a GP but getting inside her patients’ heads is her big thing. She said the chemicals could kind of damp down the way people feel. And also, so what if they can instantly vaccinate us against the bird flu, or the beetle flu, or whatever the next virus is. Sooner or later there’ll be one they can’t fix.’