After the tenth time, the entire thing turns blue and a question scrolls across it.
Help?
And straightaway I think
yes
.
I’ve probably never needed help more than I do right now. The thing turns white. Another message. Select from favourites. Mail. Settings. Contacts. Chat. Lood.
Lood. What’s that?
The thing is familiar, I have to admit.
A
dohicky
?
No, a
device
, that’s what it’s called. But I’ve never heard of Lood before. That I’m sure of.
The device changes again, only this time not to a solid colour. Instead it shows a picture of this girl with the most ginormous tatas ever created. She’s kind of cupping them with her hands at the same time as she licks her lips, which aren’t the proper colour but a bright, frosted pink. She lowers her eyelids.
‘I’m waiting for you.’
In a slightly different voice, not quite matched with her lips, she adds, ‘Nathan.’
She opens her mouth and makes a little moan and the entire strip starts to quiver and buzz. Then her picture goes still and grey and some new words appear.
Want more Celia? Buy credit now!
But then, just as I’m sort of puzzling over what
Celia
and
credit
are, something new appears. A little square with a whole lot more words inside.
New chats waiting. Read now?
As soon as I think
yes
, the device is covered with words, tinier even than the ones on a screen of the Books. The boy (Dennis? Nathan? I guess the words are names, though I can’t be sure which one belongs to the boy) grunts and rolls over, throwing the hand with the device on it across my lap. You know, sort of like he’s inviting me to read it.
Stumpy00 - Joined 2/3/16
NatheMan, r u there?
That’s what I read when the
new chat
opens. But I don’t understand it at all, so I keep on reading all the earlier chats too.
FancyVividBlue - Joined 4/6/17
check this out please :)
bit.ly/clubnaturelle
Stumpy00 - Joined 2/3/16
wtf is this real??
FancyVividBlue - Joined 4/6/17
New ‘clothes optional’ resort. Club Naturelle. The little red head kills it. Up for it imo.
Stumpy00 - Joined 2/3/16
Can I go stay? Where is it?
FancyVividBlue - Joined 4/6/17
Outside of Woodend.
NatheMan - Joined 16/3/18
Stumpy u cant afford it!!!
FancyVividBlue - Joined 4/6/17
haha break in. Free to perve last time I checked. Look out for big guy with dreads if u go. He’s a choofer for sure if u want to get on it.
Stumpy00 - Joined 2/3/16
Are u full serious? U see the gate?
FancyVividBlue - Joined 4/6/17
I cld pick that lock any day.
NatheMan - Joined 16/3/18
I’m there.
Stumpy00 - Joined 2/3/16
U r a horny beast
FancyVividBlue - Joined 4/6/17
Niceeee!
Stumpy00 - Joined 2/3/16 - Posts 76
U r never going to get in NatheMan.
That’s when the device starts to make a noise, a shrill, screeching sound that splits the air inside the empty hut. The tiny words disappear, replaced by new, bigger ones:
Mum calling
.
I don’t know how to stop the noise. I mean, I don’t know if I know. And if I do know, I don’t want to think about how.
The longer the sound goes on, the louder it gets. I grab a pillow and shove it over Dennis’s arm but the device goes on making the noise, a piercing scream in the prelight. So loud someone’s definitely going to hear if I don’t stop it pretty much immediately.
So I do the first thing I can think of. I yank the device from Dennis’s wrist and throw it on the floor. Then I stomp my heel down on top of it until it’s totally crushed and completely silent.
My mouth is dry but my hands are wet, like all the moisture from my body’s collected there instead of staying where it should be.
I have to get out of the hut. Right now, I want to be anywhere but here.
I
NEED TO
be somewhere quiet. The orchard is about the only place in creation anyone would roam all by herself this early in the day, when there’s hardly any light at all. So that’s where I go.
Although the device is crushed and gone, the sound it made still rings in my ears. Plus, I have to find something to do with my hands, which just won’t stay still.
I end up stuffing my pockets with fruit. Pretty soon my sungarb’s so full of peaches and lychees and mangos and melons that it’s dragging around my shoulders. There’s way more fruit here than a person could ever eat. So much of it that if anyone else sees me they’re definitely going to want to know what I’m doing picking so much and why I look so precalm.
And I don’t have an answer. Or not one that I want to tell anyone, anyway.
I should get going, I know that. Drag myself back to the hut, clean up the broken device, check whether the test boy has disappeared or at least start figuring out how to make that happen. But the orchard backs onto the fringe and now, in the weak, pearly light, something makes me walk over to the treeline. I stand with my toes curling into the grass that divides the garden from the beyond.
Where Dot lives.
Or, if I listen to the boy, the grass that separates us from a place called
Woodend.
Not that I ever would listen, obviously. There’s no such thing as Woodend. The fringe is just trees, endless trees, and the only way you can get through to the other side is when you’re soaring through the air on your way to meet Dot at the end of your life.
That’s what I believe.
Scratch that.
It’s what I
know
.
But no matter how many times I remind myself of that, I guess the boy even being here has done something to me. As in, it’s lodged the teeniest, tiniest question mark in my head.
What if the trees aren’t endless? What if there really is a Woodend on the other side?
There isn’t.
But maybe …
Then an idea comes to me, already perfectly formed.
Find out
.
Right here, from where I’m standing, it’d only be one more little step into the fringe. I could take that one step, then another and another and another until I knew for certain.
Put like that, it sort of sounds easy. I mean, it’s only
walking
.
I swear I’m trying, really trying hard, to shut those thoughts off. But when I look down, I see my right foot lifting off the ground all by itself. Slowly, slowly it moves downwards into the fringe like the ground is pulling it. I try telling it to stop but apparently my foot isn’t even slightly listening because now it’s almost there, almost in the fringe …
No!
I practically scream the word out loud.
This
is what the boy wants.
This
is the whole point of the test!
If I walk into the fringe now, it’d be an instant fail. I’d be going against Dot’s word. I’d only be proving I really am as predotly as she seems to think.
I yank my foot back and plant it on the ground. I won’t do it. I will not fail.
I want to love Dot, maybe even be chosen on completion night. I want to be Fern’s best friend and Jasper’s latest hookup and even just ordinary Wren with the red hair who likes to climb, who everyone approves of. I want to fit in and be just like everyone else. I don’t want to be alone. I …
‘You’re up early.’
Brook. Right there behind me, a coconut under one arm and the knife in the other hand.
‘Oh my Dot! Don’t do that.’
I check my foot. On the ground. Good. Very, very good.
‘Don’t say hello to you? That’s a bit predotly.’
He’s been talking to Gil. Do they know? About the boy and the test, I mean? Is that even possible so fast? They must know. Why else would Brook choose the word
predotly
out of nowhere like that?
‘Of course
speak
to me. Don’t sneak up behind me, that’s all I meant.’
‘You’re the one sneaking.’ Brook looks around. ‘All by yourself in the orchard so early.’
Me and Brook just stand there. There’s hardly any sound, just this little ping-ping-ping as Brook gouges the dirt from under his fingernails with the tip of the coconut knife.
Eventually I say, ‘Okay, so neither of us is
sneaking
. I came for something to eat, the same as you.’
‘Way over here?’ Brook looks down at my feet and I can see him noticing they’re almost, but not quite, in the fringe. ‘Interesting place to pick fruit.’
Brook’s already tall but now he kind of draws himself up so that his shadow swallows me. I try stepping around him, but when I move so does Brook until it ends up like some completion-night dance that’s really, really not working out. So finally I stop.
I can’t help myself blurting, ‘Is everything okay? Are you prehappy with me about something?’
That gets Brook’s attention.
‘Why?’ he asks. ‘Should I be?’
I can’t answer him quickly enough. ‘No. No way. It’s just … in the gazebo … when me and Gil –’
Brook laughs a single note. ‘I don’t want to hook up with Gil, if that’s what you mean.’
Relief pumps through me. I guess he doesn’t know about the boy or Dot’s test or anything.
‘With
Gil
?’ I laugh, all shrill and prenormal. ‘Gil’s into girls.’
‘I’m aware.’ Brook’s jaws are set together so his chin juts forward and two knotted bunches appear on either side of his cheeks. ‘I don’t think Gil should be going off with anyone at the moment, that’s all.’
Brook swaps the knife to the other hand and goes on scraping away at his fingernails. ‘He’s the only one who can hear her. Right now, he needs to be listening.’
Brook’s watching for my reaction. I wonder if he can hear the ringing, whistling sound inside my head.
I feel my lips moving and my voice asking, ‘How do you mean,
right now
? What’s Gil supposed to be listening for?’
Brook fixes me with a look that I can’t read. Part of me thinks he’s wondering how one of Dot’s creations could possibly be so presmart. Another part thinks maybe it’s something else completely.
But all he says is, ‘More signs.’ Like that much should be obvious to anyone.
‘There’s going to be more?’
Signs like, say, a crushed wren? Signs that will let everyone know exactly who Dot is testing?
‘Gil thinks so.’
‘Signs of … signs of what, though?’
‘You hooked up with Gil. He told you, I’m sure. You know what the signs are telling us.’
I swallow. I try to act like I’m not sure exactly what he’s talking about.
‘You mean … the stuff about people turning predotly?’
‘Exactly.’ Brook folds his arms and smiles. ‘Gil believes Dot’s trying to tell us who they are. Do you think so too?’
‘Um … if you guys say so.’
Brook doesn’t know about the test.
Correction: he doesn’t know
yet
. And for one wild moment I think maybe I should tell him. I even get the idea that Brook and Gil could help me make the boy disappear and pass the test. They’re close friends of mine, after all. It’s just possible they’d understand. And maybe … maybe that’s even what Dot wants! She wants to see how much I trust the others and how much they care about me. It could be she’s waiting for me to throw myself onto the ground or against Brook’s chest and just blurt everything out right now. Then Brook would tell Gil and then
he
would …
An image jumps into my head.
The wren.
Its mangled wing.
Gil’s white hands crushing it.
That flare as its little body hit the flames.
When I stop and think about it, I realise I literally have no idea what Gil would do if he knew about the boy. I decide I’d better stick with my original plan. I have to fix things before anyone finds out. All by myself.
‘So, are you eating that coconut or what?’
Brook looks at the coconut like he doesn’t even know how it got under his arm. ‘It’s for Gil. He likes fresh coconut water in the morning.’
‘He can’t get out of bed and get it himself?’
I’m careful to say it like Wren would. Wren the way I always was, before the boy and the prenormal dreams or whatever they are appeared.
‘Gil’s busy.’
‘What, sleeping?’
‘Watching,’ Brook’s eyes skate up to the sky. There’s a heaviness to it, like it’s full or weighed down or something.
The sun’s climbing. It’s almost over the fringe now but the clouds are low and so the air’s only getting hotter, steamier, thicker.
‘Better go give it to him then.’
‘What?’ Brook’s sort of staring into my eyes, and definitely not in a hooking-up kind of way.
‘Um, the coconut? Didn’t you say Gil was waiting for it?’
Brook’s staring
at
my eyes, I realise now. Taking in the shrinking circles at the centre, I’m sure. But he doesn’t say so.
He just goes, ‘Tell me if you notice anything predotly. Any signs.’
‘Me? I haven’t seen anything.’ The whole time, I’m looking carefully away.
‘Sure,’ Brook says. He’s smiling, but I’m not sure he believes me.
____________________
There’s this banging sound coming from inside the empty hut. It’s loud enough to hear from the path and so’s the voice saying, ‘Work, you stupid thing.’ Around the back of the hut I can still hear it.
The boy is awake. Dot’s biggest ever test is crashing and banging around and if I don’t go in right now, someone’s going to find him.
I use the window around the back of the hut instead of the door, which obviously is right on the path. You know, where anyone could see me going into the empty hut, now that it’s light. I guess the boy doesn’t hear me hauling myself inside because he stays where he is, down on the floor picking up the scattered pieces of the device. It’s only when my feet hit the floorboards that he gets up. With just one set of shutters open, it’s pretty prelight in the hut. I can see the purple mound on the boy’s head though, oozing in places, but also now crusted with black.
‘I’m going to make you disappear,’ I inform him. Like I know exactly how to do that or something.