‘Ah,’ says Tom. ‘You’re smart.’
‘Pays to take notice,’ she says and then cringes because it’s something her mother would say. It’s something her mother would want her to do. Always look out for opportunities. As she gets older, is she transforming into her mother? This possibility is more terrifying for her than for most children, considering who her mother is. ‘Are you going to tell me about her?’
‘She’s really nice,’ he says. ‘I was patting this dog—a German Shepherd—tied up out the front of a shop. It was her dog, and she came out of the shop for it. So I just chatted to her for a bit, about the dog.’
‘What’s her name?’ asks Nina. She resists the urge (her mother would act on it) to tell him off for speaking to strangers—surely talking to a kid his own age can’t hurt?
He shakes his head. ‘I don’t know. The dog’s name is Chance. She had this whole story about how the dog was going to get put down by the vet but then her family decided to take it home. She wanted to call it Lucky. Her mum said that was overused and suggested Chance.’
‘How old was she?’
‘The dog or the girl?’
‘Both.’
‘The dog was six, and I don’t know how old she was…maybe my age. A bit older. She was wearing that uniform, so I knew what school she was from.’ He turns and looks at Nina again. ‘Do you reckon I’m being ridiculous? Going to a school just because of her?’
‘It’s only four months,’ Nina says. ‘You could have flipped a coin if you wanted. It’s the same for me wherever I go.’
She feels bad being so negative. She shouldn’t be bitter and jaded this young. She really shouldn’t be. But even if she is, she should make an effort with her brother. Be positive. Not make him resent his parents and then have to live with them for years.
‘It might be different this time,’ he says. ‘You never know.’
He has hope. He wants to make friends, do the things twelve-year-olds do. She wants him to keep that. She kind of resents him for what he has—such unawareness, such innocence. She must have once had that herself. She wishes she could have it again, but she’s also glad that she is aware, that she knows robbing banks is wrong. She doesn’t want her brother growing up without a conscience, but neither does she want him hating their parents. No matter what happens, he’ll lose either way.
Soon Tom is snoring softly, and the murmuring of her parents in the next room stops. It’s late, but she doesn’t fall asleep easily, and hasn’t for years. Too nervous. Too worried.
She looks out the open window. Bats are rustling in the trees and the wind is howling. She can smell the sea, and she wants to go there, go swimming, right now. The streetlights glow beneath her, and a hill dotted with houses rises behind the apartment building. She can see into living rooms where lights have been left on, flashing images on TVs. What would it be like if she were one of those people, if she had another life? Would she be happy?
There are four hundred and fifty-two days until she’s eighteen and can escape. Grinning and bearing it—‘it’ being bank-robbing, constant fear and half-crazy parents—for the next four hundred and fifty-two days.
What she expects is four uneventful months at a school with a Cadbury-purple uniform. Boring classes and lunchtimes in the library. She expects to remain friendless, to be as disconnected from everyone else as she can possibly be—to protect them, to protect her. For the greater good.
Nina
Two days later, Nina sits on the fourth-floor balcony of the apartment, a book in her hands, her legs poking through the railings, dangling below, her face tipped up to the sun. Cars whistle past, the growl of their wheels and engines intensifying as they approach, then fading as they disappear. Nina listens to magpies warble, a cacophony of crow calls, and the rustle of the leaves on the potted palm her mother bought as a balcony decoration.
There are butcher birds sitting on the power-lines, glancing around. She knows they’re butcher birds because she got a book on birds from the library last night. Occasionally one or two swoop over and Nina flinches. One digs through the dirt of the potted palm, making a mess of the balcony. Its body is white, its head black, and its wings a patchwork of both. The eyes, like those on a stuffed toy, stare at Nina, as if daring her to be the first one to look away.
Is this all just an interlude? She’s not sure whether what she’s waiting for is real life, her life, that great unknown thing in front of her, or whether she’s just killing time until the next bank robbery. She’s almost certain that this peacefulness, this ease she sometimes feels, will not last.
Tom refuses to be so daggy as to let his dad drive him to school, and he is reluctant to catch the same bus as Nina. But, as Sophia points out, since he and his sister both look so different, no one will be able to tell they’re related. Nina isn’t sure whether this is a good or a bad thing.
The bus stop is right outside their apartment building, and she can see Sophia standing on the balcony, resisting the urge to wave. Tom immediately walks towards the back of the bus, very confident in his own coolness, and claims one of the remaining seats. Nina avoids eye contact with him—she doesn’t want to embarrass him.
The bus isn’t a dedicated school bus, so it’s overflowing with people. As well as students, there are chatty old ladies on their way to the shops, businessmen and women typing away on laptops, and a very intense-looking woman in workout gear. Nina clutches her messenger bag—when you’re a criminal yourself, you are very aware that there are other bad people out there, and you become distrustful of everyone. There are a number of inividuals on the bus who look more than a little bit suspicious. Nina imagines it as one of those crappy chain emails, like:
You know you’re a nineties kid when…
and:
You know you’ve been playing too many video games when…
Hers would be:
You know you’re a criminal when…
…you think that everyone you meet is a potential mugger.
…you can look at a wad of cash and correctly estimate the amount.
…every time you leave home, you fully expect to find your parents arrested, all the cash torn out of your mattress and a bunch of police dogs inside when you come back.
She knows it wouldn’t catch on. Definitely a niche audience.
Nina is sitting on the aisle, next to a lady digging through a massive handbag on her lap. She’s never spent much time on public transport—what with the weird people and the potential to be robbed—she’s either walked or her parents have wanted to drive her. This time Sophia insisted that Nina keep an eye on Tom. Of course Tom has no idea about this.
Nina avoids looking at the other students. What if they spoke to her? What would she say? What if she just mumbled incoherently and they all thought she was a moron? What if she tried to speak to them and no one spoke to her? Why does she care so much about people and things that will mean nothing in four months’ time? She knows it’s stupid to be so worried about this, but it doesn’t stop her from worrying.
She worries all the way to the next stop, where four people get on. She glances around the bus, making sure no one’s looking at her. No one is, thank God. She barely notices the first three new passengers but the fourth is wearing the purple uniform too, and he’s walking like he knows that if he wears it with enough confidence, it won’t matter that he’s dressed like the Cadbury chocolate bunny. She can see something drawn on the back of his hand, but he moves before she can figure out what it is.
His hair is black and short and messy, and his eyes bright, bright blue, unnaturally blue. He’s beautiful, but what is it exactly that makes him so beautiful? She looks away before he notices her looking. He takes the seat across the aisle from her and the bus takes off with a shudder again.
How old is he? What year is he in? She’s never been good at judging age, so he could be anywhere between fifteen and eighteen. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him texting, and wonders if he’s popular, if he has a lot of friends always texting him. She’s tempted to pull out her own phone, to pretend to text and make it look as if she has friends too. But other people wouldn’t care, would they? They wouldn’t even notice. She’s the only one who obsesses over these things.
As she gets up to stand in the aisle, so the woman beside her can get off at the next stop, Nina accidentally knocks the boy’s foot. She murmurs ‘Sorry’ and he glances up from his phone for a second. It feels like she looks at him a moment too long.
She sits back down and glances around the back of the bus to see Tom chatting to a girl from the school. He has Sophia’s ease with people. He isn’t old enough yet to be worrying about the police catching up with them, and being sent to prison. Even if they did get caught, Tom would probably just be put into foster care. Everyone would sigh and feel sorry for him and evening news stories would talk about the failings of social security in not rescuing him earlier.
Nina wants to look more closely at the boy across the aisle, maybe even say something to him, but she doesn’t want him to think she’s a freak. She shuffles across the seat to the window side and stares out at the ocean gliding past. She feels so alone, so invisible. But that’s what you have to be when you’re a criminal (even an unwilling one)—as long as you’re alone, as long as you’re invisible, you’re safe. You won’t get caught. You don’t exactly feel alive, but at least you’re not in prison.
If she had a choice, she would not choose this. She would choose another life.
Nina
It was a hot, dry summer, Nina was twelve and it was the first time she had been involved in robbing a bank. The air conditioner was broken in the bungalow where they were staying. With the window and blinds shut to keep the heat out, the room was stuffy and dark. Nina padded across to the window, the soles of her feet sticking to the peeling lino, and pulled the blind aside. The sun was scorching, even through the window, but she wrenched it open. It was not an improvement.
Tom, eight years old and an amateur inventor, had fashioned an ineffective fan for himself out of takeaway menus and serviettes. He flicked through channels on the TV until he found cartoons. Between the heat and the feeling of dread creeping up her throat, Nina was unable to focus on the TV.
‘If we were at home,’ Tom yelled to his mother, who was getting dressed in the next room, ‘we’d be able to watch telly with the fan on.’ By ‘home’ he meant their most recent house, a little one-bedroom cottage on a hill up north. In fact not much bigger than the bungalow in this caravan park. He sighed dramatically. Tom was always big on sighing and eye-rolling and melodrama.
Sophia came in and sat on the edge of the bed where Tom had thrown himself. She smiled. ‘It’ll only be a couple of hours. Then I’ll take you to the beach. I promise.’ She glanced up at Nina. ‘Ready to rock and roll?’
‘It’s so hot,’ said Nina. ‘And you haven’t needed me before.’
‘You’re old enough now. I want you to come along.’
‘I’m only twelve, Mum. Maybe I’m not old enough.’
‘You underestimate yourself, Nina.’ She reached over and tucked a stray bit of hair behind Nina’s ear.
‘What about me, Mum?’ asked Tom.
‘Not yet, my sweet,’ she said. ‘We’ll be back so soon you’ll hardly notice we were gone.’
‘Do we have to do it today?’ asked Nina.
‘Do you have to do it at all?’ piped up Tom.
Sophia stretched out beside Tom on the bed. ‘Look, Tom, here’s the thing. Banks are always ripping people off. We’re not stealing from individual people—really, what’s a few thousand dollars in the grand scheme of things? We’re taking a stand against these institutions. You can’t have a few people at the top earning millions and getting bailed out by the government at the expense of the rest of the people working hard in this country. We need to make a living, so we might as well try and resettle the balance in the process.’
‘He’s eight, Mum, he doesn’t care.’ Nina had heard this spiel a million times before. Even at twelve she knew her mother didn’t really believe in these rationalisations.
‘I care!’ squealed Tom, although he was already distracted by an episode of
The Simpsons
.
Sophia kissed him on the head. ‘Come on, Nina, we have to go.’
There’d been a power outage, so the bank was also hot and stuffy, and the customers were already tetchy by the time Nina and her parents arrived. The appearance of people wielding weapons and dressed head-to-toe in black (and on a day like that), did not help their collective moods.
Sophia had been preparing Nina for months, if not years, selling her the idea. Conversations over dinner about how and why they did what they did. Establishing that they were a family of anarchists, but still good people.
‘A bank hold-up is outdated. It’s almost quaint! It was happening in the eighties. It’s something they think only desperate, unprepared people do. Bank theft is all online stuff now.’ Sophia had lectured them a few weeks earlier, through a mouthful of parmigiana made by Paul. She waved her fork about to emphasise her point. ‘Has the element of surprise every time.’
She had plenty of these speeches prepared. Nina had heard all of them and could recite them word for word. Sophia could have been a great public speaker, a politician, if she’d wanted to (she made waving a gun at people and stuffing paper money into a bag sound like an art form, so it would have been a breeze for her to sell nations of people on the ultimate benefit of taxes). The words of advice a normal mother would impart to her children were not the same as Sophia’s maxims. There was ‘Always look both ways before you cross the road’ and ‘Respect your elders’. But there was also ‘Trust no one’, like their life was some episode of
The X-Files
.
And yet despite her training, as soon as Nina was in that bank, it all felt wrong. She wanted to pull the itchy, hot balaclava from her face. She felt as if she were melting. Her mother’s encouraging nod, reminding her to spray-paint over the security cameras, did not make her feel any better. Her hands shook uncontrollably.
It didn’t occur to her until years later that someone who was truly good, who truly loved her children, would not put them in such a situation. But then again, it’s a miracle Nina ever reached a place in her mind where she could realise that at all.