Skylight (Arcadium, #2) (25 page)

“I didn’t even
wash it.” Kean grins.

Trouble leans
in to have a look and I hold it out for him.

Kean hovers,
waiting for me to say something.

“Thank you,” I
say. “Really. This is just…”

“Overwhelming,
I know. I think I just have that kind of affect on people.”

“Ha, ha,” I
say, watching Kean walk away. When he’s gone I turn to Trouble.

His head is in
hands. The visible corner of his lips is curled into a grimace. I’d
been so focused on telling Kean everything that I hadn’t really
noticed Trouble.

I touch his
shoulder and his head snaps up. “What is it?” I ask, knowing it’s
pointless. Maybe the tattoo is making him think about Liss and his
daughter. Maybe he’s just in pain.

Trouble shakes
his head. He stares straight ahead. His dark eyes are heavy, his
shoulders tense.

“I have to tell
you something,” he says.

I’m so shocked
that I skittle backwards along the tiles. I stare at Trouble. He
doesn’t say anything. Did I just image the whole thing?

Trouble looks
over at me with a torn expression. “I am a liar,” he says.

I twist around
onto my knees and stare at Trouble like he might disappear any
second. “You can speak English?”

“I am terrible.
I should have told you. I know I betray you.”

I just keep
staring. I’m so confused. Slowly his words sink in. And I rush
forward, strangling him with a hug. Trouble blinks back his
shock.

“I am so
happy!” I hug Trouble as tight as I can. After all the bad stuff
we’ve been through, it’s about time we had a good surprise. And I
don’t care that he’s kept it from us for so long. I just don’t
care. I don’t even want to know why.

“What’s gotten
into you two?” Kean asks, stepping off the escalator. He walks
toward us, absorbing my happiness. By the time he reaches us he’s
smiling.

“I don’t think
you are reacting right,” Trouble says to me. “I shame you.”

“You so do
not,” I say, loosening my grip.

Kean’s face is
swept with shock. He looks from Trouble to me like we’re pranking
him.

“I shame him,”
Trouble says.

I raise my
eyebrows at Kean.

“Is this real?”
Kean asks. Belief waterfalls through his expression.

I grin.

“Trouble! You
can speak!” Kean fist pumps the air then runs and slides up to
Trouble on his knees. He collapses on Trouble with the most
triumphant hug. And we laugh and laugh and laugh.

And Trouble
looks at us, concerned that we might be crazy.

“Tell us
everything,” I say. “What’s your real name?”

“In China we
say family name first. My name is Trouble Wu Li Wei.”

Kean and I grin
at each other. Liss would have loved that. And I feel honoured to
finally know something about Trouble.

“Should we call
you Li Wei now?” Kean asks.

“No. I didn’t
tell you because I am not him now. I am Trouble.”

“Alright then.
Wait… so you’ve understood everything we’ve said?”

Trouble hangs
his head. I share a worried glance with Kean, trying to remember
anything I said in front of Trouble before, thinking that he
wouldn’t understand.

“Yes. Most
things. When I met you, I was to give up. Let them eat me, I
thought. I will do normal things and let fate be decided by not me.
I didn’t want to scare you, so I stay quiet. I stay quiet for so
long I almost forget how to speak. It make me peaceful… and I not
want to ruin everything, so I say nothing.”

“And all that
time I thought I was just really good at signing,” I say with a
smile. “I think this is a good thing. It’s like meeting you all
over again, Trouble.”

Finally Trouble
grins. Even though I want to, I don’t ask him anymore questions
because I don’t want to push him. His name is enough for now. And
later I’ll find out about his family and what he did for a living
and where he lived in China. And probably a million more
things.

We sit in the
same spot all afternoon because we don’t have anything to do or
anywhere to go. No one has any work commitments and it’s nice to
sit here, now that we’ve cleared the air.

“Trouble got a
tattoo today,” I say, flicking through one of the journals Kean
brought along.

Trouble pulls
up his t-shirt sleeve for Kean. The skin around the numbers is red
raw.

“Nice tribute.
Doesn’t that hurt?”

Trouble frowns.
“Yes. Very much.”

“It’s kind of
fitting actually,” I say. “Liss is the one who came up with his
name.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yep.” I hand
Kean a new journal.

Trouble has
melted back into his quietness, but now I know it’s not
forever.

We’ve been
reading through the pile, glutting ourselves on other people’s
survival stories. Some horrific, some hopeful, but all of them are
sad. Everyone tells their stories differently but they’re all the
about the same thing. Loss and death and luck.

“Out loud?”
Kean asks.

Trouble and I
nod.

He clears his
throat. “I pushed the door shut against him. My hands were shaking
so much. I was trapped in my room, our bedroom, alone, with his
howls and growls coming from the other side of the door. I could
hear his fists banging on the wood, the door rattled like it would
explode. I ran to the window and saw the chaos on the road below.
People were everywhere, infected and not, running and diving and
screaming and being pulled back. Blood on the road, sitting in
pools; abandoned bodies, lifeless in the gutters. I don’t know why
I did, how I knew to do it, but I grabbed a backpack and filled it
with stuff — a thin jacket, a hat, a book, my phone, a picture of
us together on the beach in Bali, surrounded by the golden
sunlight, staring into each other’s eyes. I try to remember him
like that, instead of the infected mess that tried to break down
the door and get me too.

It all happened
so fast, before I knew it I was opening the window and crawling out
onto the verandah roof. The sounds were the worst thing. Cries of
fear and horror, sobbing, running, shouting, despair. There was no
organisation. I could have sat on the roof forever, but I couldn’t
stay with him trying to break into the bedroom, couldn’t risk
seeing his beautiful tormented face and me falling apart.

I dropped down
and ran for it, using the parked cars as a blockade. The previous
night I couldn’t find a close enough spot and had to park halfway
down the street.”

Kean turns the
page slowly. “I just ran for it, taking my chances, as people wove
around me, infected grabbed for anything that moved. It was pure
luck that I made it to the car. I still don’t understand why I made
it and others didn’t. Why I was spared and my boyfriend taken.

A woman runs
into my bonnet and pushes an infected off her. That’s when we lock
eyes and I can see she’s a survivor. I unlock the door and she’s
inside in a heartbeat, grabbing my arm and thanking me and asking
me what the hell is going on all at the same time. She says we can
save more. Hangs out the window yelling and waving as I pull the
car out into the middle of the road. It still smelled like the
peppermint chewing gum he always kept in the console. And there I
was driving through Armageddon, trying to save anyone left
alive.

And we found
some. Another woman and her eleven-year-old son (which I won’t name
because I’m not supposed to). A young skinny man and a bearded man
with half his face covered in blood.

Five people I
picked up.

Another two on
the roads further out. All piled in on each other, strangers
helping strangers. That’s when we heard the news about the
government safe zones. Two of them we couldn’t get near enough
because they were surrounded by infected. So we drove to the city
and tried our luck at the biggest centre.

And I didn’t
realise until later, when I was talking to the woman who first
jumped in my car that day, when she said I’d saved seven people’s
lives. And that had I not been there at those exact same times,
seven more people would have died.

That’s probably
the only way I can face living now. Wondering if I could save
anyone else’s life.” Kean closes the journal.

“It makes me
feel good and bad,” I say. “Mostly good, I guess.”

“You saved four
lives, you know.”

I think about
that. “Technically I saved Liss, Trouble saved us, and we all saved
you. I didn’t want to let you guys in the car.”

Kean smiles,
remembering how we met on the freeway. “You didn’t even want to
talk to us.”

“Yeah, but I
did eventually.”

Kean gently
lobs the journal toward the finished pile.

“Okay, my
turn.” The first few pages of this journal are empty, so I flick
through until I find the writing. “My name is not important to this
story. Well, perhaps it is, but you don’t need to know it. Maybe
it’s classified, maybe it’s not.

My father got
me to safety early on. The rest of my family parted ways, my
brother heading to the city with Grandpa. My therapist now requests
that I speak of my mother, but she has nothing to do with any of
this, she has no role. Dead by the time I was eight. I don’t see
the relevance in that so I’ll continue.”

I look up at
Kean, eyebrow raised. Trouble watches me as I keep read. “I won’t
name the facility we moved too, as per the anonymity request. We
set up our new lives. Safe. With food and water and electricity.
Survivors poured in, demanding refuge, and our numbers swelled.
After a short time the number of arrivals dropped, until no more
came at all.

Then I met a
tragic girl, both broken and still tightly wound together.”

“It’s about
time we had a love story.” Kean smiles.

“Quickly she
wormed her way into my system, until I thought of nothing but her.
I fed her. Tended to her requests. I kept her safe and happy.

And how did she
repay me? How did she return my kindness?

By destroying
my home. By trying to kill me. By murdering my father. Not to
mention countless other lives.”

“Or not,” Kean
says.

I frown and
read on. “She left me for dead and ran. Ran away from me with
another man. Left me trapped. I watched her run, watched her
progress on the perimeter cameras as I cut myself loose from the
chains she’d provided me. I escaped of course, not a moment too
soon. The explosion flung me along the road, dragging the right
side of my face over the bitumen. As I rushed to contain my
sustained injuries I heard her shouting—his name. Not mine. That’s
how I know she survives.”

I go cold. The
hair on the back of my neck rises. The story is so familiar because
I’m pretty sure I’m in it. I stare at Kean for an uncomfortable
second.

“Adrian’s
alive,” he says. “How is that possible?”

Trouble sits up
straight.

I shake my head
and stare at the journal. “This is proof he’s alive and somewhere
in Skylight.”

“Could it be
someone else with a similar story?”

I level my eyes
at Kean. “No one else knows this story, Kean, just him and us. That
was about me. He’d bring me food and show me around, and when I
wanted to see the lab he got me in. And we left him tied up.
Arcadium self-destructed. There are too many similarities. I know
it’s him.”

“But how have
we not seen him yet? Surely he knows we’re here.”

“Maybe he
doesn’t want to be found. We did leave him for dead, after all. Or
maybe he left? Read the last bit.” I hold out the book, letting
Kean read it for himself, because I can’t bring myself to say the
lines out loud. But I’ve already read the words, and they circle in
my mind, like a deep and dirty whirlpool.

I will find her.

If it’s the last thing
I ever do.

I will find her.

Kean passes the
journal to Trouble and looks up slowly. “Oh my God, Flo. We have to
leave. There’s no telling what he’ll do.”

I try to blink
away my shock. “I can’t believe he survived. It’s not fair.”

Kean grabs my
hand and squeezes it. “We’ll be okay. We’ll leave tomorrow. Early.
And Adrian will never even know we were here. He won’t find
us.”

I nod, wanting
to believe Kean, but we’ve been here for days already. How could
Adrian not know?

KEAN AND I lie
awake on our camp beds, while Trouble sits on the floor, flicking
through one of Jessie’s arty magazines.

“I’m going to
miss being a train driver,” Kean says.

“You’ll always
have the hat though.”

Kean laughs.
“I’m going to give it to Henry.” His smile quickly fades because he
thinks anything to do with Henry will make me think of Liss. He
thinks he’s caused me pain. “When do you want to leave?” he
says.

I stare up at
the ceiling. “I just want to say goodbye to Jessie first, then
maybe we can go after breakfast?”

“Are you doing
anything with your credits? I want to get something from the store.
Something I actually worked for. Something Henry will…” Kean stops,
his eyes wide and guilty.

“No, you can
use mine.” I pull the little paper tickets from my jeans pocket and
hand them over.

“Thanks. I’ll
take Trouble with me, if you want. I’ll try and explain it to him
on the way. Unless you want him to go with you… if you think Jacob
or Adrian might be problems.”

“They are
problems, but not mine. I’ll find Jessie quickly.”

“Meet back
here? And then we’ll go home.”

I nod. And
that’s when it hits me. I’ve been safe in hiding all this time but
now I’m going back. Facing her, facing it. All my worst nightmares
are waiting for me, and I’m about to crash their party.

Jessie is
already at the medical station. I knew she would be. She’s the only
one around, since breakfast is about to be served, and she never
seems to stop working. She wheels an empty laundry basket trolley,
big enough for me to hide in, across the tiles.