And I can tell without asking that he doesn’t know. It’s so obvious by the way he sits down on the arm of the chair and puts his hand on my leg. Something he’d never do if he knew I’d killed my own brother.
‘How come you’re dressed like Alex?’ I ask, and it comes out all choked.
Blaze stays quiet. He lets me fill in the blanks for myself.
‘You’re leaving?’
‘And you’re coming.’
He gives me this
look
that’s so tender and sweet it makes me feel prehealthy to see it.
Scratch that. I find it physically painful.
He even offers me his hand, to help me up from the chair I guess, but I don’t take it.
His words come faster now, all urgent and practical and everything. I guess he realises for the moment this thing between us has stalled.
‘It has to be now. They’re going to notice his pass is missing pretty soon.’
I shake my head.
‘It isn’t optional, you know. Being chosen.’
‘You said no to the new implant?’
‘I tried. They didn’t like that idea much.’
I want to explain to him how leaving seemed like the best thing to me too, until I found out about Julius. Now nothing seems like a good idea. All I want to do is forget. Forget what I did, and believe someone loves me unconditionally.
‘They’re going to launch this drug soon, you know. Even after what it did to Gil,’ Blaze says.
I lower my eyes. ‘Gil’s just one example. It worked fine for pretty much everyone else.’
‘They’re testing it on kids next.’
‘Heaps of people decide what their kids should believe,’ I mumble at the floor. ‘Ever heard of a christening?’
Blake’s hand is kneading my knee. Hard. Like he’s trying to wake me up from one of those deep, numbing sleeps.
‘What about Dennis then? Don’t you want to find him and make sure he’s –’
‘I can’t help Dennis. I wouldn’t trust myself.’
‘Why not?’
I have to tell him now. I have to close off the way I feel and just let the whole story about Julius unfold.
So I do. I try to imagine Blaze is someone I’ve only just met, someone I don’t have any kind of history with. When I get to the part about Hunter Keogh I go on talking like the information’s irrelevant to Blaze. I figure it’s going to be soon enough anyway. After tomorrow I’m not going to remember anything about Hunter and his cigarette and the capsules that I guess made me forget to put the cigarette out properly.
I get to the part where I’m on the stairs and there’s that little voice and the pictures curling on the wall. Blaze tries to touch me then.
He says, ‘Viva, I’m really –’ but I shake him off and tell him that my name is Wren.
‘I’m not calling you that.’
‘Why not? That’s my name. At least, after tomorrow it will be again.’
‘Viva’s more you.’
How would Blaze have any idea what’s me and what isn’t?
‘It’s okay for you. You didn’t find out what I found out.’
‘No,’ he says. ‘Not exactly that.’
‘What, something even bigger?’
I mean, as if.
There couldn’t be anything bigger than Julius. That’s about the biggest thing anyone could ever need to forget.
‘Alex told me how they recruited the trial participants. Rich kids from fancy mental hospitals whose parents agreed because they were basically willing to try anything.’
He stops. He won’t look at me. In the blue room, lights buzz and equipment beep. Every sound is made by machines instead of people or animals or Dot herself.
Between me and Blaze though, there’s a heavy, thick silence.
‘Except with me, it was different.’
Blaze takes a folded piece of paper from the pocket of his blue-printed sungarb and hands it to me.
Teen Found Guilty of Chilling Murder
Local student Luke Beaufort was today sentenced to a 25-year minimum jail term for the vicious killing of a priest, Father Michael Repton.
‘Father Mike’ Repton was a long-serving staff member at St Joseph’s College, where he both befriended and mentored disadvantaged boys. The unconventional priest was a passionate surfer who organised regular surfing trips and an annual beach camp for his charges.
The court heard Beaufort entered the school on a scholarship and quickly became one of Repton’s protégés.
The prosecution maintained Beaufort went to Repton’s residence out of school hours and killed him in a jealous rage when he discovered Repton had a younger boy visiting. Throughout the trial, the defence admitted Beaufort beat Repton several times with a shovel, fatally wounding him.
By his own account, the youth ‘snapped and went mental’ when he discovered Repton sexually abusing the younger boy, who cannot be named.
Beaufort’s defence rested on the claim that Repton had also forced him to perform oral sex on a number of occasions during 2010 and 2011 while the priest recorded the alleged acts.
However, the defence was unable to substantiate these allegations to the satisfaction of the Supreme Court, with Justice Gemmell directing that the jury note the impeccable character witnesses for Father Repton provided by St Joseph’s and the local church authorities.
Due to the severity of his crime, 17-year-old Beaufort is expected to serve his sentence in a maximum-security adult facility.
I fold the paper. I open it and refold it a few more times, which it doesn’t remotely need.
I start to say, ‘Oh my Dot,’ but I stop myself in time, and instead I just say, ‘Oh Blaze. I’m so sorry.’
He looks away. ‘Not your fault.’
It isn’t, but that doesn’t stop my cheeks colouring pink the way Blaze’s always do. I guess I thought I had some exclusive claim to misery because of Julius. But the whole time there was Blaze, with his own terrible things going on.
It’s then I remember yanking Blaze’s sungarb by the lagoon, and going on and on about hooking up. And how he just stood there, all weird and still.
Did he already remember that man back then? Did he know what happened?
Because if he did, the way I was acting must have made the whole thing way, way worse.
‘You’ve seen it? That … stuff happened?’
‘Father Mike was the first thing to break through.’
I don’t think I can stand hearing anymore. I feel like I’m going to implode or something, just collapse in on myself, knowing how that man must have made Blaze feel.
Knowing how I must have made him feel.
All quietly, Blaze says, ‘He said I couldn’t go on surfing trips if I didn’t do what he said. He told me God would get mad. I was so young, I believed him.’
I want to smother Blaze with sorries then, but I don’t. I figure out that would be more for my benefit than his. So the two of us sit there together. We just absorb it all.
It’s Blaze who starts talking first. ‘Now you know. I killed someone.’
You had your reasons. Anyone would, in your position.
I can think of plenty of things to say but none of them seems quite right. Basically, I just don’t want to think about it, let alone talk about it.
I want us both to forget.
But Blaze goes on. ‘They couldn’t wait to hand over their youngest violent offender for the Grace trial.’
He takes the paper and puts it back in his pocket.
‘Alex says the police love Lainie Shepherd. Imagine all the criminals on Grace,’ Blaze snaps his fingers. ‘A lot of problems would go away.’
He starts talking about the helicopter.
‘Remember how it suddenly flew off? Lainie basically offered the police a subsidised supply of Grace if they stopped what they were doing: searching for Dennis.’
Blaze doesn’t have to say anything for me to know what he thinks of this. Why should one person have all that power? How does she know what’s best? Who says she should be the ruler of everything?
Except I don’t feel like that. I’m not all outraged the way I’m pretty sure Blaze wants me to be.
All I know is, both of us are hurt. One thing can take that away, so why wouldn’t we use it? We don’t have to worry about the not-so-good parts of Grace anymore. Not after tomorrow.
‘Stay,’ I say. ‘We’ll get the new implants and make everything okay again. Let’s be happy.’
‘If we leave,’ Blaze shrugs, suddenly uncomfortable, exactly like he was by the pond on completion night, ‘we could be happy anyway.’
‘How could we be, with everything we know? Give me one possible way.’
‘Bad things happened to us. But that doesn’t mean good things can’t too.’
He grabs my hand. Then he drops it. He goes for it again, but he ends up pulling away.
‘Between the two of us, I think we could … you know …’
‘No, actually, I don’t know.’
Suddenly, I’m all precalm.
Mad
.
‘Because to me it looks like life without Dot is just a whole lot of … I don’t know … grey days, one after the other. Then at the end of it all, guess what? Hooray! We die.’
Blaze stands, and a folded pile of blue material lands in my lap.
‘Alex got you these,’ he says. ‘If you’re coming, put them on and we’ll go. Right now, down this corridor, across the carpark to the side gate. Then we run.’
I take the material from Blaze and shake it out. It’s a full set of Shepherd clothes, small enough to fit me.
‘There’s this group, the Circle. Alex’s a member, that’s the only reason he works here. There’s more of them too, here and outside. They want to stop Grace launching Phase 2 of the trial.’
He pauses. ‘They might even help us find Dennis.’
I’m kind of stroking the unfamiliar fabric in my hand, thinking about Julius and Dennis and everyone else. But the fabric feels stiff compared to the soft, colourful silk I’m used to wearing. Too stiff to ever imagine putting it on.
‘Millions of people are going to buy this drug, you know.’
Blaze corrects himself. ‘Millions of consumers.’
‘Who’ll end up feeling a whole lot better about themselves than they ever did before.’
Blaze shifts his weight. ‘I get it. You’re not coming. You won’t even try.’
He reaches out again but before he touches me he lets his arms fall back down by his sides. Everything inside me tightens. My chest feels too small for my heart.
Blaze turns, opens the door and closes it behind him. He doesn’t shut it properly, I notice. Just leaves it resting closed.
Sit down
, I tell myself.
Even better, lie down and close your eyes. Think about Dot and happiness and newfruit and swimming and fun. Think about how you’ve been chosen to do Dot’s work
.
And I try, I really do. I even hum ‘We Belong 2 Dot’ while I’m lying there. It’s just there’s a part of me that wants to take another look at Blaze. You know, one last time.
So I get up, go to the door and push it open. It makes that wheezing sound. Outside there’s the long, bright corridor.
The screens on the walls are still flashing. All the doors are closed. Is Dennis behind one of them? Are all the others?
I notice there’s a rounded thing further along the corridor.
Desk
.
There are two women behind it and a bank of smaller screens showing pictures of the building we’re in. I figure they’re meant to be keeping watch. But what they’re actually doing is showing each other the devices around their wrists.
‘This is him with his soccer team. They didn’t win a game all season. Do you know, I don’t think he even noticed? He loves it that much.’
‘What a sweetheart. Do you go to the matches?’
‘Do I
go
? I’m the biggest soccer tragic granny there is!’
The women break into laughter, which is when Blaze goes past the desk. He has his head turned away, just enough so it isn’t easy to tell who he is but not so much that it’s obvious he’s trying to not to get noticed.
All the women do is glance up at him then they’re right back to their conversation.
In all that bright, shiny whiteness it isn’t long before Blaze turns into just a tall, solid shape in the distance.
I keep on watching until he reaches the double doors leading to the outside. I’m pretty sure I even hear the bleep as he swipes Alex’s pass. Then the doors open and Blaze disappears through them.
That leaves me with nothing to do except shut my own door. This time it clicks closed properly.
D
URING THE NIGHT
, someone delivers a brand new Books of Dot unit and a folded sungarb for me to wear during the procedure. The sungarb’s the bright, shimmering blue-green of a Shepherd butterfly’s wings. All over it are teeny-tiny coral beads in a starburst pattern. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, easily the dotliest sungarb ever created.
That must be why I end up bawling when I put it on. In relief, probably. Happiness.
The entire morning there’s people checking me over and others with papers to sign. I’m told Shepherd’s been in touch with my mum to let her know what’s going on.
No-one tells me what she said, but I can guess. She didn’t approve of it the first time around so why would she the second? She thought counselling could fix me. As if. Mum has no idea what it’s like to live with what I did.
The next visitor is Alex. When he blips open my door and comes into the room, I see he’s holding a tiny clear cup with two capsules inside.
‘Something to help you relax,’ he says as he offers me the cup.
But he yanks it away when I reach out for it.
‘Not that you need it. It’s all blue skies and dotliness ahead of you now. No reason to be uptight.’
Alex’s pass is swinging around his neck, where it should be. I guess that means Blaze made it out.
‘Have you heard from him?’
‘You should forget about all that.’
‘Is he okay though? Just tell me.’
‘We both are,’Alex says. ‘So far. But they’re investigating.’
Alex digs in his pocket and comes out with a rectangular box. He taps out a cigarette and puts it in his mouth. Then he takes a smaller box, which slides open.
Matches
.
Alex takes one out, strikes it and a flame flares on the end. There’s no window in the room, naturally, so he fiddles with a switch on the wall, until the duct in the roof starts humming louder than before.