Box Page 13

  And so with one person after another speaking up, adding their small bit, we made our plan, not knowing if it was just a crazy last-ditch effort, or if it was perfect.

  We all slept in the attic that night. As he’d promised, Mr Nemeyeva played The Flight of the Bumblebee with its fizzing, dizzying tune, as we climbed up the stairs and chose our beds. The attic space had been split with ropes and blankets — into guys’ and girls’ sections. It was like school camp with the younger kids rolling onto each other, girls giggling and scrapping about who’d sleep next to the dividing screen. Mr Nemeyeva and Mirri came around with a big neon torch since the single bare light bulb couldn’t pierce the corners of the sleeping space. We’d shoved the beds close so more could fit and some of us were two to a mattress.

  ‘Is there room for one more with you girls?’ Mirri asked. The blankets had been tugged away by a kid hyped on asthma medication. Mirri straightened the duvet on someone already asleep. A figure appeared in the doorway, then picked her way uncertainly through the beds. Becka! No longer in black, she’d had to scrape the bottom of the op-shop barrel and was wearing a blue flowery blouse with a pair of hospital striped pyjama pants. She didn’t look at all tough as she went and lay down next to Marti.

  Mr Nemeyeva hung the curtain back in place. The giggling and wriggling eventually ended. Pretty soon the first quiet snores rippled across the sleepers and I could feel the tide dragging me out … I woke to hear doors and talking down below but I drifted back to sleep …

  … then there were heavy feet, loud adult voices, bars of light stabbing across our faces. A kid screamed, another babbled. We were sitting up, struggling to know where we were, let alone what the fuss was about.

  ‘Sitting please, everyone, with your hands out on your laps.’

  People groaned and turned over but the voice insisted.

  ‘Everyone sitting. Look this way.’

  The place was floodlit by half a dozen huge torches while police and Endorsement officers tried to find places for their feet between the beds. The blanket curtain was down again. Mr Nemeyeva and Mirri stood in the doorway.

  The policewoman’s face was in darkness behind her torch. ‘Now, you have a choice. You can go with your parents or come with us. We’ve got forty mothers and fathers arriving here now, worried sick about their kids. Have a little think before you go downstairs, about what you owe them.’

  ‘We owe them nothing.’ It was Becka. ‘Except to do what we have to do.’

  ‘Silence, thank you. We will conduct this in silence. Stand up silently and come downstairs. Not a word from anyone unless you’re spoken to by me or Constable Sharpe.’

  Down in the piano room I looked round for familiar faces — with the crazy hope that my parents had got wind and come home … but, no. I saw Disco talking hard to a ginger-haired older model of himself, then he turned and looked at me. What was he trying to say? It wasn’t an angry look. It was a what-the-hell-now look, asking, is this really the end of it all? Would we all give in, go home, get endorsed, eat and sleep and carry on as if nothing had happened? That was the easy option. What we’d been doing couldn’t have lasted anyway. But Disco winked, and I winked back.

  The police were checking off names, addresses, linking adults to children. Marti and I hung at the back of the crowd. ‘Yours here?’ I asked.

  She shook her head, lips pursed, whether in relief or pain, I couldn’t tell.

  ‘All right, listen everyone, please,’ the policewoman was saying. ‘Your parents have protocols regarding this situation. I want you all to go home now and read through those with them.

  ‘Consider your situation carefully. Consider your parents’ input into your lives until now. Endorsement offers — if I may put it this way — this same individualised care of the person. Endorsement stations are open tomorrow.’

  Behind her Disco was twisting his finger in his throat.

  His fidgeting figure was bracketed by the policewoman and her colleague. Who knew if they’d been endorsed — but it hardly mattered. They obviously had no questions about how their lives might turn out. In this room full of girls and guys wired by the tension, they looked like they’d already been turned to stone.

  ‘We’ll see you all tomorrow,’ the woman said and she motioned for her colleague to open the door and begin letting us out.

  ‘Yes, tomorrow!’ I shouted over the heads. Everyone had to hear this, and hear it the way I meant it. ‘You’ll see us all tomorrow.’

  Silence hung over the room a moment, then dissolved. Some kids, wrecked by tiredness and stress, had cried on seeing their parents; they gathered up their things and left. Others went angrily, or wistfully, looking back, as though things might yet change at the last minute. A few went with the police.

  Fifteen minutes after they woke us, the place was cleared out.

  ‘NOW, WHO ARE you two?’ The policewoman barred the door with her clipboard. ‘We don’t have names for you yet. Nor do we have any spare parents.’ She lifted her eyebrows at Mr Nemeyeva. ‘Do you know these ones?’

  ‘Enough to know that they can speak for themselves.’

  Marti and I were the last ones left. I knew we hadn’t seen the last of Disco, but Becka had disappeared. We could hear the police and the Endorsement officers, though, fanning out through the house, opening cupboards, shifting furniture, looking for any skinny kid stuck in any tiny corner. The Nemeyevas didn’t have much furniture. The search wouldn’t take long.

  ‘Your names?’

  ‘Marti Donald.’

  ‘Donald. Do we have a record here?’ She looked through her sheaf of lists. ‘Address?’

  ‘Ah, we just got a new address. Easter Place. 44.’

  ‘Why can’t I find it?’

  ‘Might be getting processed still.’

  ‘I’ll have to contact Central Filing.’ The woman moved on to the next item — me. ‘Your name?’

  ‘Derik Love.’ I was pretty sure Marti’s surname wasn’t Donald but I could see no point in lying about mine at this stage. ‘My parents are in Berlin researching patient compliance for the scheme.’

  ‘Ah. But you are not compliant. Why is that?’

  ‘I wanted to wait for my parents to be here.’

  ‘No-one should wait for the benefits of Endorsement. Silly boy. I’m sure your parents will be disappointed.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I muttered.

  ‘I am prepared to act in place of a parent until this matter is sorted out,’ offered Mr Nemeyeva. ‘Derik is a pianoforte pupil of mine.’

  ‘I also will be responsible,’ said Mirri in her careful way.

  ‘That would be highly irregular,’ said the woman, ‘as you yourselves are abstainers, harbouring abstainers.’

  But after a couple of phone calls, she reluctantly admitted that it would be way simpler if we stayed there. Our small-city detention centres weren’t set up with mass arrests in mind. ‘I will leave these two with you under house arrest. You will need to sign some papers guaranteeing that you will deliver them up when we return at nine a.m. tomorrow.’

  Marti and I went back to the emptied attic, where we adjusted our beds so they were a little closer to the dividing curtain. When I touched on the subject of parents, Marti refused to go there, so we talked about the plan for the next day, but it was hard to feel convinced in the dark, with just the two of us. I stared at the place where she lay, and wriggled to the edge of my mattress, wondering what would happen if I reached beneath the curtain.

  It took a long time to fall asleep.

  In the morning heaps of the beds were occupied again.

  I sat up and rubbed my face, wondering if I’d dreamt the night raid, the exodus. But the blanket was down, and there was Becka smiling at me from the heap of bedding beside Marti’s.

  ‘What’s up?’ I whispered. ‘Who are these?’

  We wriggled closer so our voices wouldn’t disturb the sleepers. ‘Another safe house got raided last night. We managed to get all the kids who were out
in the garage and bring them here.’

  ‘So how did you leave here last night?’

  ‘Drainpipe, veranda posts.’

  Marti was awake, watching us from her pillow. I felt a clutch in my stomach, recalling her last night in that red top, and lying awake together — alone.

  She rolled onto her elbow. ‘I thought we were smart, Derik,’ she said, ‘you, me and Disco, but you should see what Becka’s had going.’

  ‘Really?’ I hoped she’d catch the sarcasm. I didn’t want to hear about it right now. Obviously we’d been playing games, camping out, while Becka had been onto the real thing.

  ‘It’s not a competition,’ said Becka. ‘You’ve done great, you guys. You did everything you could. Derik, you should have seen Marti whipping out those wands yesterday. How many was it? Fifteen?’

  Marti shrugged.

  ‘And Derik got those kids here last night.’

  I pulled a face.

  ‘And got us that info we needed.’

  I looked at Marti. She nodded. ‘We recited the whole list to these two guys who are organising abstainers.’

  I winced. Becka had the whole bit, now.

  ‘Listen, you guys,’ said Becka, holding out her floral sleeve and looking at it strangely. ‘I’ve been linked up with this really sharp network — mostly adults. They trained me up, watched out for me, fed me. I’ve even had a bodyguard for some jobs. You’ve had none of that. Every other kid who’s opposed Endorsement is heroic, if you ask me.’

  ‘But now it’s over.’ Marti said.

  ‘Looks like that part of it is. Yeah.’ Becka pulled at the flower-shaped button on her pyjama top. She laughed. ‘Look at these. They are so not me, but I wore them all over Dunedin last night.’ Then her face turned serious again. ‘Don’t give up yet. Your idea, Derik. It’s great. Let’s see how that turns out, eh?’

  I looked at my watch. ‘They’ll be here for me and Marti at nine.’

  ‘That’s means we all need to move.’ Becka stood and lifted her arms high and bent over, side to side, then went to the little attic window overlooking the city. She put her feet one after the other on the sill, limbering up with leg stretches. ‘At least it’s fine.’

  Marti sat and started sorting her hair out. ‘I think we should get going before Mr N. and Mirri are up. The less they know, the less they have to lie about.’ She yanked together a plait behind one ear.

  ‘Yeah, wake up you lot.’ Becka went round poking each sleeper with her toe.

  I went to find my own clothes on the ropes in the landing.

  We’d planned to go without eating — Becka assured us she’d get food to us later in the day — but we found Weetbix, stewed apple and milk out on the kitchen table. There were seventeen of us by the time everyone had straggled downstairs. The Nemeyevas stayed out of sight and we ate standing up, glancing at each other, but all too uptight or tired or distracted to do the small talk and find out who was who. We rinsed our plates, scribbled our thanks on a flap off the cereal box and went out into the cold bright morning.

  On the bush track we took down the hill, the ground squished and leaked under our feet. Water tipped off leaves as we brushed by.

  ‘What if it’s a trap?’ one girl asked.

  ‘How could it be?’ said a boy holding back a branch for the rest of us. ‘It was our own idea.’

  But the sense of dread grew as we emerged onto the streets above town.

  At the museum reserve we hung around on a tiny lawn edged by bushes. Becka, back in her own black clothes, made a couple of phone calls. I wondered how hers could really be an untraceable phone — but she had her important contacts, after all. A couple of the kids curled up on the damp park bench and tried to go back to sleep while we waited.

  ‘Okay, here’s our car,’ Becka said as a late model Ford pulled up by the entrance. A man in a yellow jersey went briskly to the opened boot and hefted out a package that stretched his arms wide. He brought it into the reserve and propped it against the wall. He went back to the boot and brought out garden stakes taped into a bundle, then threw a full supermarket bag after them, slid back into his car and drove away.

  ‘Now, could a couple of you walk casually over and collect those?’ asked Becka.

  ‘Placards! Becka, you’re a genius,’ said Marti when she’d pulled the brown paper from around the slab of cardboard sheets.

  ‘Not placards yet.’ Becka rummaged in the plastic bag. ‘Got no words. That’s the fun part. We’ve got an hour.’ She tossed a handful of fat felt markers on the grass, and we played. Some time in the first few minutes, Disco slid in beside us as if he’d never left.

  ‘How’d you manage that?’ Marti asked.

  ‘Dad had to go to work, didn’t he?’ He sat back on his heels, chewing the end of his marker. ‘How about, Nu-Skin Sucks. Real Skin Rocks?’

  ‘Yeah, just make it fast. We’ve got about fifty of these to do.’ Marti was making her black pen squeak as she wrote, Born Perfect.

  Teenage Rulz. One of the others was on her knees, using the bench for a desk.

  Wipe out the Wand. Cancel Calibration. Down with Endorsement. Make Up Your Own Mind. Wake Up! Save Our Souls. DARE to be Drug-Free. We stacked the placards one on the other. At this rate we’d have to carry about six each; Marti said we could just keep rotating the messages. One of the kids started stapling them to the garden stakes.

  Amid wind gusts and traffic noise, we caught some chimes from the town hall clock. ‘Nine o’clock.’ Disco was trying to wipe red felt off his hands on the grass. ‘Here come some kids.’ Before the nine rings were up, about twenty more teenagers were converging on our corner of the reserve.

  ‘Is this it?’ a boy my age asked.

  ‘Sure, this is it,’ Disco grinned. ‘And it’s huge. Grab yourselves a poster and let’s get going.’

  ‘Remember,’ said Becka, stepping up onto an ornamental rock so we could see her, ‘our one demand if they try to stop us: let us get to the Octagon. Pass it on to any new kids turning up. I’m pretty sure lots more will be joining us. Walk as close together as you can, looking out for those around the edges. Link arms if you have to. I’ll stay near the back and a couple of you could help me distribute placards to newcomers. Derik, you’re our leader.’

  There was no point arguing; I doubt it was a job anyone else wanted. I held my placard in front of my face. Pure-Blooded. (Becka had laughed and said, ‘Not very P.C. but I like it.’) But by the time we reached the first set of lights, Marti was on one side of me, Disco on the other, with the others all pressed up close behind so we could get across in one burst.

  At first we all fitted on the footpath as we stepped out along George Street. We were a nuisance to people coming the other way but every time I looked round I saw our crowd swelling as guys emerged from shops, alleyways, side streets. There were older teenagers appearing too, some who looked like students, and after a bit some adults joined us. I recognised the man from the Turkish Kebabery, a couple from up our street. There was Mrs Wong who’d given us the moon balls and, I was pretty sure, some parents from last night.

  We had to move out onto the street, leaving one lane free for the cars to play dodgems with each other.

  ‘Uh, here’s trouble.’ Disco was facing backwards, bouncing high to see over the crowd.

  ‘What?’ I couldn’t see a thing.

  ‘Police. Marching up beside us.’

  We saw them soon enough, and heard them. Their boots were slamming down on the road as they marched into position, a strip of blue alongside us.

  ‘Woah, here they come up the other side.’ Marti jostled closer to me.

  We slid glances to left and right. Their faces were almost bored; they were making no attempt to do more than contain us. Some of the kids looked scared, and linked elbows. Between us an ominous feeling grew, the feeling that we were no longer entirely in control. The police might be sheepdogs and we the sheep trotting nose-to-tail towards the pens.

  ‘Remind me why
we’re doing this?’ Disco did his best to look puzzled.

  ‘Because it’s over but we have to make a final protest?’ As if sheep were making any kind of statement when they climbed into the truck bound for the freezing works. In spite of my words I hung onto a tiny hope — that something might still happen to change the minds of the dutiful men and women filing along beside us. Couldn’t they feel the shivers of excitement that ran between us marchers, or was it possible they were already calibrated — and stuck now with their strange new absence of feeling?

  ‘We’re doing this because we still can,’ said Marti, eyes flashing. ‘Because tomorrow we probably won’t be able to. In an hour, even, our chance will be gone.’

  I turned and began to shuffle backwards. I gathered up my voice and shouted:

  ‘One, two, three, four!

  Endorsement is against the law.

  Two, four, six, eight!

  Free New Zealand from this fate!’

  Marti and Disco joined me the second time, then other voices came in and we could hear the lines being echoed away down the street. ‘One two, three, four …!’ We held up our heads. We met the eyes of people dithering on the footpaths, we felt strength running into us and it seemed for a few intoxicating minutes that we were doing something magnificent and we didn’t care if we were carted off to prison and tortured; didn’t care if we lived or died. Just then it seemed as if we were shouting out from our bones or from somewhere even deeper.

  Nobody tried to stop us. The police marched beside us, keeping their faces to the front. They probably wished they had ear plugs. When I spun around, there seemed to be hundreds of us — teenagers, adults, children even. Where did the others come from and how did they find out about the rally? We’d told only those in the house last night. It had to be Becka.

  We were entering the Octagon, the eight-sided city ‘square’. People in business suits hovered outside their offices, others looked out from windows and buses as our chanting crowd spilled and spread over the steps and paving. I felt a catch in my throat. We’d made it. We hadn’t quite planned this bit but Becka assured me her contacts were supplying a speaker system where we could talk to each other about our solidarity and resolve.