Box Read online

  ‘I better go, Gran. I’ll try and visit you soon … no, I’ve got no phone number. I’ll be somewhere else by then. I’ll let you know … somehow. Say hello to the girls … and Pops. Bye.’

  Outside there was a warm wind carrying scents of pine resin and wood smoke along with some memory of a good time — but as I walked away from the house, following the scrap of paper gusting along the gutter, I didn’t know what to do next. No-one needed me and my useless know ledge — useless now that the others had memorised it and would pass it on to Becka when she asked for it. Why hadn’t Becka asked me to help out with anything? But then, why would I want her telling me what to do? Because it was simpler, that was why. Simpler to have someone think for you and organise you than to have to do it for yourself.

  I could go down to the Town Hall and hang out there — do what Disco was doing at Andersons Bay. Or I could start on the plan Marti, Disco and I had discussed in the night — making a hut, one that would keep us dry and hidden and warm enough, all winter if it had to. It would mean raiding our own homes for tools, boards, corrugated iron, anything we could get our hands on. We’d agreed it would have to be somewhere in the heart of the green belt.

  I could go and scout for a site. I was heading for the school with the vague idea I’d call in and check things out first. Nobody was there. Wind whipped round the bike shed and made mini tornadoes of dust and leaves. The box was folded up hard at the end of the bike shed and there were still dark drops of blood staining the concrete from Disco’s ‘operation’. Hell, I missed those guys. I wondered what this whole experience would have been like without them and I knew that by now I would probably be hiding out with my grandparents, just waiting to be found and made to get my wand fitted.

  But ‘we’ might be all over, now that Becka had Disco and Marti on her side. She might take them back to the flash house to live, and leave me wandering around on my own. I was having my own little funeral; I just had to choose the songs for it. I hunkered down on the wooden rail beside the water fountain and let the tragic feelings wash over me.

  I watched an insect crawl over the concrete towards my foot. Another bee, dragging its belly on the ground while something pale trailed out behind — its sting, by the look. It had done the dirty on someone and now it was creeping off to die. I eased my toes over it, felt the tiny crunch under my shoe.

  At the same time I heard voices up in the trees, like voices from the playground: kids fighting over the best swing, or over who’d kicked somebody in the back and how hard.

  Did!

  Did not!

  There was that whining, panicking tone that went with, I’ll get my big brother onto you. And the jeering, mocking one: Aw, who’s still in baby-pants? I couldn’t hear the words but suddenly there was a scream, one word that came clear and sharp. ‘Don’t!’

  It jerked me to my feet. Someone was getting a rougher time than I was, and I wanted to see it happen. I took the nearest mud chute up the hill.

  I smelt the smoke first, then saw it — dense, yellow-green sick stuff sliding and undulating over a flat clearing below the track. Even though the wind roared high in the trees, here it barely stirred. A kid emerged from under the edge of the pall, and stood up, backing away, flapping his jersey. Two other boys crawled out after him, clutching their eyes, coughing, and colliding together.

  Where is he?’ one of them growled. ‘I’m gunna stuff bloody leaves down his throat.’

  The one with the jersey laughed. ‘Too scared to hang around.’

  From the lip of the clearing I watched, fascinated, as the smoke funnelled out of two holes in the ground, one on each side of the clearing — the nearest like a tunnel mouth.

  ‘Where’s Sam?’ Jersey was suddenly stock-still.

  ‘Isn’t he here?’ One of the boys on the ground squinted round through streaming eyes.

  The smoke from the tunnel had suddenly changed colour. It oozed out tar-black with a stink like poison. ‘What is that?’ I was right beside them now.

  ‘Shit. I don’t know. What else did that creep put down the chimney?’ Squint was kneeling up, crawling, hands out in front of him, to escape the snaking black.

  ‘Where’s Sam? I said!’ Jersey was at the tunnel mouth, tearing up loose clods and leaf mould. The third boy joined him, peeling back a slab of corrugated iron. The smoke burped up in great black lumps. The stench bit our throats. I joined the others, clawing and wrenching. There was a kid under this clearing — who could only be dying if he had to breathe that evil stuff. We used our bodies like graders to swipe off the dirt cover. We tore the roof off a tunnel, hurling boards, iron, plastic sheeting. Every few seconds someone rushed away to grab breaths of fresh air.

  Then suddenly Squint had a leg and I was helping him pull this kid out of the smoke, feet-first, like a baby being born backwards. We ran, dragging him over the dirt, not daring to look back at his face, until we were way clear of the fire. By that time he was scratching at the earth and as soon as we let go he rolled on his back and began to gasp and suck with his eyes still squeezed shut.

  ‘You burnt?’ asked Jersey.

  ‘Nuh …’ Sam rolled on his side and vomited, sat up and opened his eyes. We stared at him. His mouth was normal-coloured, his chin grimed with yellow clay from the dragging, the top half of his face sooty except for white wrinkles round his eyes.

  Jersey kicked dirt over the sick. ‘How come you’re not dead?’

  Sam croaked between coughs, ‘Took a big breath when I saw the black stuff. Tried to follow you guys. Then I scooped a hole and stuffed my face in with the billy rag.’

  Jersey shook his head and sank down beside Sam, arms around his knees. They looked like brothers.

  They all looked about my age. The other two were poking with long sticks where black and yellow smoke twined up together, but more thinly now.

  ‘That’s the end of that hut,’ said Sam.

  ‘Sure is. All that work. Might have to go and get the tent after all.’ Jersey blinked up at me.

  ‘You living here?’ I pulled my water bottle from my pack.

  They looked at me, at each other, at my hitched-up sleeves, bare wrists. ‘Were.’ Sam’s voice still sounded scratched. He accepted my bottle and poured into his open mouth. ‘Dug this cool maze and covered it up.’

  ‘We had one direct opening for the fire but this prat from another gang came and shoved all these leaves down on it, then rubber I reckon, and chucked iron on top.’

  I tried to recall if I’d seen any of these boys at Becka’s meeting but it was hard to tell. For long moments we stood looking at each other. One of them I’d played at cricket but I couldn’t remember which school.

  ‘Where am I going to wash?’ said Sam, breaking the eye contact, shaking earth from his shirt.

  The others looked at him blankly, with their muddy knees and grimy hands.

  Then we heard the sirens. I could picture the fire engines labouring up around the school, turning onto the greasy side road edged with leaf mould. The violent wail hung over the trees and shut off somewhere way too close for comfort. We heard the shouted commands and I knew the exact hydrant cover they’d be tearing off, where they’d be slamming the big hoses into place. The bush seemed to shudder at the invasion, or maybe we were the ones shuddering. I threw on my backpack and led the way out of there, running.

  We crossed gullies, scrambled up two mud guts, tore our way through a nest of blackberry and found ourselves finally at the top of the bank above Mayor’s Drive.

  ‘Where are you hanging out?’ Squint asked me when Sam had finished coughing and spitting.

  I shrugged. ‘Back that way. Not far from your … ex-hut.’ It was amazing we hadn’t crossed paths already.

  Sam wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. His face was smeared like a charcoal drawing. The whites of his eyes gleamed. ‘I want to see what they do.’

  And suddenly watching the firemen was the only, the perfect, thing. We jogged back, dodged the blackberry, sl
id the mud chutes and found a hollow where we could crawl up on our bellies and look down on the three of them. Through the trees we could just glimpse a second engine driving off. These firemen had hauled their hose the fifty metres into the bush and after a quick scout round at the puny threads of smoke winding out, after yanking up a few sheets of iron, they planted the hose in the tunnel mouth and turned on the water. It rushed and sizzled through the clearing, erupting in geysers from this hole or that, making the iron rise and clap down again. They turned the clearing into a mud-lake floating with leaves.

  ‘Hey, my beanie,’ Jersey whispered. ‘I’m going to get it after.’

  Squint dug him in the ribs. ‘Shush-up.’

  The firemen turned off the hose. It snaked after them as they walked away. They had better jobs to get on with.

  We went down and waded around, made the iron schloop and judder under our feet, pummelled the mud into porridge. It smelled sour. Jersey shook out his beanie and pulled it over his ears. Sun broke through the gaps in cloud and trees. It was still and hot in the clearing and when we’d finished mucking round we stood kicking the ground. Now what? I had no influence with these guys. Sure they’d lost their hut, but I couldn’t offer for them to stay with us; the school was too open for such a big pack of kids. I could join up with them, but I wanted Marti and Disco; I wanted funny and quick-thinking, plaits and big feet. I didn’t want three other muddy boys like me.

  ‘Are you onto the feeding network?’ It took an effort to speak.

  ‘Yeah, everyone knows about that. Four fifty-one this avo,’ said Squint. ‘Where do we go, Sam?’

  ‘Sam rubbed his palm and stared. ‘Can’t read it. Short name, starts with s.’

  ‘Styx Café?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, that’s it.’

  ‘Say hi to the ferryman,’ I muttered. ‘Good food,’ I said, louder, ‘but weird colours.’ Of course I’d lost track of where I was supposed to go next since we’d missed a couple of feeds. And I couldn’t go and use a computer now.

  ‘Hey, come on you guys. I need to find a tap,’ said Sam. ‘Then I vote we go and stay at the landslip tonight. It’s warm so we won’t need cover. Lots of leaves to sleep on.’

  ‘What’re you doing?’ the third guy asked me.

  I shrugged. ‘I’ll find my friends. But I might come and see you later.’

  Might not too.

  ‘Okay. Sweet. Later, then.’

  They ambled off as if they didn’t have a care in the world.

  Once they’d gone, I stood for whole minutes, staring at the mud, the upturned iron and caked leaves. Alone in the heat, I felt stuck and vaguely nauseated. Sam and his mates were treating Endorsement like a big adventure game, playing with each novelty as it came up. Becka and my mates were out there sharpening themselves up on the risks they were taking. I didn’t want to do either. I wanted to lie down and go back to sleep. I forced myself to walk.

  Back at the school I had to wait in the trees until three girls gave up trying to make the swings loop round the horizontal bar. The wind had dropped away to silence; even the birds seemed to have gone quiet. Finally the girls picked up their shoes and left.

  In the bike shed I scrunched my butt down between racks. It was feeding time in an hour but I didn’t even know where to go. Bugger it — I’d go and eat that tin of tuna, and whatever else I damn well felt like. Becka had stuffed everything up for me. She’d got what she wanted: the feeding network and my friends. It was stinking hot here with the afternoon sun slamming onto the corrugated iron. The air was strangely still and heavy. It made my limbs heavy, and my head.

  Then, as suddenly as a slap on the back, wind banged into the iron. I jumped up, tearing my pocket wide on broken metal, and the first drops of rain skittered across the roof. Black clouds were boiling and racing up from the sea, tearing above the treetops. Leaves whirled and danced over the playground and on into the bush. A sheet of newspaper clasped my leg and rattled there. The temperature dropped in seconds; I untied my sweatshirt and put it on while the sun was still trapped in it.

  The fresh air sent volts through me. I ran up the hill and found the tree where we’d hung our food bags. The plastic fluttered above me as I climbed: far too noisy to be full. The food had gone. Someone had snatched the bottom out of the bag, taken everything that fell. And I knew I’d have done the same. I wouldn’t care whose food it was if I came across some now. Even though I’d had food at Becka’s, it was the idea of not having more that made me desperate. I was on my own now. Survival meant doing what I had to, to stave off hunger — and fear. I didn’t want to think about the night ahead.

  I went to check our sleeping bags. At least they were still there, stowed in their plastic bags in a hole under tree roots. At least Marti and Disco hadn’t come to take their things yet. I pulled out the parka I’d rolled in with my sleeping bag and put it on. I had no idea where to start looking for food. Hadn’t Becka told us all where to find out? But I felt a splurge of rage that I should have to go hunting for information that I’d had free access to only twelve hours ago. It didn’t matter that I had lists and lists of names in ‘Grandma’s Attic’. You were supposed to go only where the last feeder told you to, or by starting again with the clue on the supermarket notice board. But with the mood I was in, I figured I’d just wander down and take my chance — the chance that feeders wouldn’t know who to expect.

  My feet seemed to want to take me back to the Styx — at least I knew Sam and his mates were going there. Compared with the silent streets of two days ago, town was almost back to usual. Teenagers were dotted amongst the students and adults. My watch said 4:37. I wondered if all these kids were prowling for food as they headed north along George Street towards the block full of ethnic restaurants: Turkish, Vietnamese, Thai, Indian. There were too many of us, all at one time. Like me, they were probably too hungry to care. I imagined clamping onto a fat buttery piece of garlic naan. Still, I hung a right towards The Styx. Sure enough, at the end of the block a couple of kids were doing a little pantomime outside the black window, then sauntering on. They couldn’t have made themselves more conspicuous if they were on stilts. I waited; one minute should do it.

  Then I noticed the man in the window of the hairdresser over the road from the café. He was looking out through the loop in the second d of Dreadlocked, talking on his cell phone in his white shirt and navy pants. I froze while my hands found and gripped the wrought iron fence behind me. As I watched, the teenagers up the street wheeled around and headed back. So obvious. But I couldn’t just stand there and watch them trot into the café like sheep into a pen, while Dreadface closed in on them like a hunting dog.

  I ran. I dodged a couple of oldies and sprinted past the guys, tagging them as I went — slap! snick! swat! I yelled, ‘Stop! Go back! Hide!’ then I ducked round the first corner and behind a hedge where I rolled onto a scurfy student lawn. The wind rattled an empty can up the driveway as I waited to catch my breath.

  There was shouting from the street — kids and men — and car doors slamming and the sound of glass splintering and raining onto the asphalt. Two girls’ feet ran right past me. What about the rest of them? When I could breathe properly, I crept back to the corner. It was the Styx window broken. The black glass made a shattered shadow on the footpath while in the doorway over the road three young women, one with her hair wound up in pink plastic, looked out from the hairdresser’s. Outside the café was a police car with a wrestling mass of people in the back. The café door opened; the doorbell’s machine gun fire whacked out into the street, followed by the ferryman, linked by the wrist to a policeman. Ferryman kicked the car door and got a vicious yank of the handcuffs. The car was rocking by the time those two were in. As it took off with a snarl of rubber, I saw Squint’s face pressed hard against the window. He recognised me; his mouth made a big round wail that fugged the glass up to his eyes.

  DUNEDIN WAS suddenly a place I didn’t know: where kids could be swept away by police — probabl
y the same officers who came to school and taught ‘Keeping Ourselves Safe’. What a joke.

  It was giddying, as if, after a jolt or two, the pavements, the town, the whole country had suddenly tilted and things were sliding past. How could you tell what was safe to grab onto any more?

  The main street looked like a sped-up movie. Kids were scattering everywhere, slipping back into the city’s cracks. There were more police cars in the main café strip. If they’d been tipped off about the tides, it was easy for them to catch abstainers and feeders. Way, way too easy. I had to hope that this was a one-off, fluke catch: too many teenagers on the street at once. My parents had always supposed there would be just a few abstainers. But it looked as if there might be hundreds of teenagers doing it, not to mention adults, and only two feeding times each day.

  The wind funnelled along the road, carrying thin cold rain. I crossed fast and ploughed up the steps and alleyways towards the green belt. I took a curving route that led me towards the Nemeyevas’ place with its warm kitchen full of the smell of apples. I climbed the cracked asphalt drive, hearing snatches of piano music from the upstairs window.

  I entered the sheltered courtyard where Mirri sometimes sat in the doorway reading or sewing. But of course today it was shut, although the kitchen light was on and I could hear tapping. I took a step or two closer. She was in there, head bent over the table, studying. A small knife and a mound of apple parings lay beside her arm.

  On the floor behind her, a small heater radiated orange warmth. Then behind me I heard voices: a man and a woman dressed in blue, like police, were walking up the drive. I dropped behind the mini-hedge and crawled into the back garden. By the time I heard them rap on the door, I was over the fence and dropping into the lane that led up to the trees.

  The fear and that small effort made my heart pound. I ate the handful of parsley I’d snatched on my way through the garden, holding its stringy tang in my mouth as long as I could. Then I plodded the long route back to the school, into the wind that thrashed the trees about and brought rain, heavier now and flecked with ice. Twice I saw kids dissolve into the bush as I drew near. Arguing voices came from under the fallen trees by the mudslide. I kept on walking, without aim now, except to see if Marti and Disco had returned. I’d make up the box, jam it into the most sheltered corner of the bike shed and climb in with my sleeping bag.