‘Not since he brought this around.’
I guess Blaze thought Dennis should have the knife with him, just in case.
It’s then I think of one other place Blaze might be. I’m hoping he’s there, because it could be sort of significant.
‘If he comes here, can you tell him I’ve gone to the pond?’
Dennis spins a finger in one ear while he thinks about that. ‘Aren’t there heaps of ponds in this place?’
‘Tell him the one that glows.’
As soon as I say this, Dennis wants to know all about the glowing pond and exactly where it is and everything. I start telling him, but it comes out sort of blurty and I’m not totally sure Dennis even gets what I’m talking about.
So in the end I just say, ‘Blaze knows which pond, okay?’
Out on the path again, I run-walk past Fern’s hut and Gil’s, both empty. I pass the blackened patch of grass still there from the bonfire we had forever ago.
Then I’m off the path, heading into that one particular clump of magnolia trees. I keep getting glimpses of the pond through the trees. Not the water but the pale green glow coming off it as two long, solid legs kick the surface.
It’s hardly any distance through the trees to the pond, but on the way I still manage to think up a million things I could blurt.
I could remind Blaze what Jasper’s like, how it wasn’t really a kiss. Or tell him it was, but not one that mattered because it only went one way.
I could even ask him why he cares so much.
If
he cares, that is. But when I get to the pond and there he is, guess what? I’m not the one who starts talking.
‘I worked something out.’
I sit down. I put my legs into the water.
‘There’s no Dot.’
I frown. As far as I can tell, Blaze had that figured out a long time ago. He pauses for ages, but I don’t get that precalm feeling I usually do, the one that makes me want to fill in any kind of silence. Instead I just wait for him to keep talking.
‘But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a point. Going to the beach. Waiting for the waves to break. Eating ice-cream. Everything we talked about, it’s all good. But the point is doing it with someone else.’
‘Someone like who?’
‘Maybe your someone is Julius.’ He kicks his legs and the pond brightens, fades, then brightens again. ‘My someone is …’ Blaze stops.
He shifts on the edge of the pond.
‘Just say it. Whatever you’re thinking, you can say it. It’s only me.’
But Blaze is literally squirming, so I tell him, ‘You know what? Turn around if it’s easier. That way you don’t have to say it straight to my face.’
‘I suck at this,’ he mutters, just as I hear people coming through the trees towards us.
Their voices are way too loud and way too familiar to ignore.
‘I thought you were showing me something.’
‘Let’s kiss first.’
‘I don’t want to though. I don’t –’
‘How do you know you don’t like guys if you haven’t ever tried?’
‘I just know. Really. It’s how Dot made –’
Gil interrupts. ‘I know you took them. We found one of your garlands under the pillow in the hut.’
‘I didn’t,’ Fern pleads. ‘You know I’d never eat a newfruit.’
‘Here, let me help you take this off.’
‘No!’
‘It’ll make you dotly again. It’s what Dot wants.’
‘You’re all mixed up, Gil. You only think you can hear Dot.’
These are my words coming from Fern’s mouth.
Then there’s this sharp little intake of breath followed by a single word.
‘No!’
She starts to cry out, then her high, wavering voice stops altogether, replaced completely by Gil’s.
‘You’ll make Dot cry if you scream.’
____________________
I know exactly how it feels to have Gil’s hands creep and slither all over you because you think it’s what Dot wants you to do. And now those same cool hands are touching Fern.
‘Relax,’ says Gil as Fern whimpers. ‘This is going to be so dotly.’
I’m going into those trees. I’m going to stop Gil before anything actually happens, tell Fern about Shepherd. Make her listen this time.
I’m about to do it too, when I hear this howling coming from the trees. Or maybe screeching’s a better word.
It’s Dennis. Dennis with his wilted garland still on his head.
‘You’re hurting her!’
I’m crashing through the trees now, Blaze close behind me. Gil still has Fern around the waist. Her sungarb’s on the ground, all shredded and dirty. And in Dennis’s hand the coconut knife gleams as it catches the glow from the pond.
‘I’m going to get you,’ he stammers.
But Dennis is shaking and crying so hard, he can’t even swing the knife where he wants to. All he manages to do is nick Gil’s forearm with the flat, sharp blade. He might be bigger than Julius, but in that moment, they’re like the same person.
Both of them too young to look after themselves properly.
Both of them needing my help.
‘Who’s this?’ Gil asks, not even flinching as he presses a finger over the cut on his arm.
‘It’s nothing to do with you.’ Fern’s voice comes out tight and shrill. ‘It’s between me and Dot.’
Dennis is frozen. He’s gawking at Gil’s arm.
‘I’m in trouble, aren’t I?’
That’s when Gil takes the coconut knife from Dennis. It’s easy. Dennis is so spun out he just uncurls his grip and lets Gil wrap his own fingers around the handle. The blade arcs through the air.
A split-second before it happens, I realise what he’s about to do. Gil drives the blade into Dennis’s neck. Dennis stumbles back, so the blade doesn’t go in as far as Gil would’ve wanted.
At first, Dennis doesn’t doing anything. It’s like he doesn’t even realise. It’s only when Gil allows his arm to return to his side that Dennis yowls and blood starts pumping out of the yawning red slash in his neck.
Dennis’s hand goes up to the wound. While it’s there, the gushing stops. But then he pulls his hand away and blood keeps flowing. Fern screams as Dennis’s chin tucks into his chest. He wobbles on his feet, gasps for air and then crumples.
He hits the ground and stays there.
Fern starts beating on Gil’s chest with balled-up fists. Somehow though, Gil’s speaking quite clearly. He even sounds happy.
‘Anything predotly must be crushed.’
‘He isn’t predotly. You don’t get it!
I
was looking after him. Dot wanted me to. She told Wren.’
Wham, wham, wham.
Gil sounds hollow where Fern hits him. His hand lifts, fingers firming up their grip on the coconut knife.
‘Get back, Fern.’ I’m kind of surprised to hear my own voice.
She turns to me. Sweet, round face, half a garland on her head and a butterfly dipping and fluttering around her.
‘I’m going to be chosen. Dot’s coming down and she’s going to choose me.’ She says it firmly, like that will make it true.
‘You’re not. No-one is,’ I tell her. ‘Look around. It’s completion night and Dot’s not here.’
Softly, I say, ‘Why not? Because there is no Dot.’
On the ground, Dennis makes a rasping, gurgling sound. I want to kneel down and scoop him up, run off with him and Blaze.
Save him.
But I can’t do that until Fern knows, really understands, the truth.
I work hard at sounding calm.
‘The Books are written by someone called Shepherd. It even says so on the last screen. I can show you.’
Fern’s face is just totally uncomprehending.
‘Me and Blaze are leaving. With Dennis. We’re going right now.’
It’s the most serious blurt I ever had and now that I need to make the most sense, I feel like I’m making the least.
‘You need to come too.’
I grab Fern and I can feel my fingernails gouging her soft skin.
‘You can’t stay. Obviously. Not after what Gil just tried to do.’
It seems like Fern’s working hard to sort her thoughts into something resembling sense.
‘Oh my Dot,’ she says to me. ‘
You’re
the one who’s predotly. How come I didn’t get that? I should have … I just never thought my own best friend would –’
Blaze says, ‘We need to go.’
‘Fern’s coming. She has to.’
Gil turns towards me. The coconut knife is pointed right at my chest.
‘Fern, come on,’ I plead. ‘Come with us.’
And then my best friend says, ‘Anything predotly must be crushed.’
‘W
REN!
’ B
LAZE YELLS
. ‘Leave her! We have to go.’
No!’ I practically spit it at him.
‘Fern isn’t coming.’
I know that. Something inside me accepts I’m going to have to work on helping Fern later, from the outside. But there’s a bigger problem.
‘Dennis. We’re not leaving him.’
Not again. I can’t let it happen again.
Blaze grabs me and tries to yank me away. Doesn’t he get it? Dennis is small. Dennis is hurt. He needs me. But at that exact moment, I feel cold metal on my skin. The knife.
I scream. My arms wheel towards Gil. My hands make fists and then …
If you’ve never felt your knuckles driving into someone’s eyes, then seriously, I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s not the best. I don’t mean that it doesn’t work, because it does. For me, at least.
My knuckles find Gil’s eyes and there’s this squelching feeling. The coconut knife falls blade-first to the ground. Gil’s yelling and Fern’s screaming. Dennis is still slumped on the ground but I can’t stop or do anything apart from run.
Me and Blaze head for the escarpment. If I semi-closed my eyes and shut off everything inside my head I could almost believe it’s Fern beside me instead of Blaze. We could be running from the huts to the lagoon back on the day that everything changed.
Only Fern’s not beside me. I’ve left her behind, with Gil and Dennis. I’m running away and nothing is right. Nothing is fixed.
The whole way across the lawn, me and Blaze seem to be collecting butterflies. I hardly register them at first, but soon there’s a lot of them. As in, masses, moving together in one great big cloud exactly like they did that time in the hut.
From the completion-night party comes the sound of more voices, people yelling and their feet hammering the ground as they run towards us.
Everything predotly must be crushed.
The words echo all around us. I don’t stop or turn around to look. I don’t need to. I can already imagine Luna’s and Jasper’s and Brook’s faces, lit by the flaming torches they’ve ripped from the ground beside the paths. It’s like I can read their actual thoughts.
Tonight’s completion night
.
Catch the two predotly ones and it could be me who’s chosen
.
I could be the one!
Every tree shivers with birds lifting off the branches as we run past. Deer and mice scatter, eyes catching the moonlight, giving them a split-second glow. The first rocks begin to pound into our backs as we reach the lagoon, exploding around us as our feet slap the rocky ground.
We start climbing the face of the escarpment. Me first, with Blaze behind me, just as the pale shape of Gil comes hurtling through the avocado trees. I haul myself up. I try to anyway, but clinging to the rock my fingers feel too spindly-weak.
I suddenly imagine my body sprawled on the ground, blood pooling around me. It’s just like when I froze on the rocks by the side of the lagoon forever ago.
Fall from the escarpment now, and that’s what’s going to happen. And now I know for sure my head won’t repair itself. Dot won’t lift me up and carry me off to everlasting happiness beyond the trees.
My skull will be split and that will be the end of it. As in, the end. Nothingsville. That’s it.
A hunk of rock spins by me and clips my ear. I yelp as it smashes on the escarpment beside me.
I look down to see shards of rock showering Blaze’s head.
He yells, ‘Keep going. You can’t stop.’
His face is straining, his whole body sweating, fingers and toes white with the effort of heaving his big body up the escarpment. More rocks explode around us. I turn and see it’s Fern throwing them.
Luna’s beside her and Jasper too now, his white teeth flashing like an animal’s in the moonlight.
I don’t see Brook but I guess he’s somewhere close by since, Gil’s directly below us now, reaching out for a handhold in the face of the escarpment.
‘Move,’ Blaze yells, and so I do.
I have to. There’s no choice but to climb faster and not think about falling.
I reach the ledge with its scrappy bushes and loose stones. But as fast as we climb, Gil climbs faster. His silver head is just below Blaze’s feet now. Gil’s hands are almost grazing his heels. So I grab a rock from the ledge.
Just like Fern, I pitch it. The rock makes contact with Gil’s head and he grunts but hangs on all the same. I guess Gil thinks he has Dot on his side. The idea of it makes him strong.
____________________
Gil has Dot, but I have other things pushing me forward. The instinct to survive this, obviously.
Come back for Dennis.
Then there’s Blaze and there’s Fern. We have to help her. We have to get out and help them. All of them.
There’s strength in my arms and legs as I propel myself up the rockface. I’m a good climber not because Dot created me that way. I can climb because that’s what I’ve worked at. Climbing is what I’ve chosen for myself.
It’s all these things that get me up the rockface. Then I’m over the lip of the escarpment and on my feet, hurling rocks at Gil. One smashes into his cheekbone. He makes this barking sound and loses his footing. He slips. At least I think he does.
He yells out for Brook, who for once is nowhere around as far as I can see. It’s hard to tell exactly because it’s prelight and there’s still that cloud of butterflies circling around my head.
I slap the butterflies away and my hand brushes this purple one. My fingers close around it and its glowing eye shines a green light through my bunched fist. Its wings buzz and whirr against my skin.
I open my hand and just before the thing flies away I see there are words on its hard body, raised up so I can make out the letters with my fingers.
Shepherd Corporation
.