Edsel Grizzler (15 page)

A
s the days in Verdada passed, each one similar to the last but different enough to never become boring, Edsel began to find it harder to keep track of how long he'd been there. By the time he thought of keeping some kind of record, like marks on a doorpost or lines in a book, he realised that it was too late. Even if he did start keeping a record, he knew that it would always be that many days plus however many it had been before he thought to take any notice.

He tried asking Jacq one afternoon, as they sat on the grass between the Domus and the skate park. ‘How long have I been here now?' he asked.

She shrugged. ‘How would I know? I don't even know how long
I've
been here.'

‘But has it been a couple of weeks? A month? A couple of months?'

‘I honestly wouldn't know, Robert. I told you at the very beginning, the days run together. But that's okay, isn't it? Because it's fun here.'

‘Yeah, it is,' he agreed. He plucked a couple of blades of grass and tossed them in the air, watching them drift away on the soft breeze. ‘And I haven't really felt all that homesick yet.'

‘Or Heresick?'

‘I don't think so.'

‘Do you even remember what your house or your family was like?'

He screwed up his face and thought. ‘Not really.'

‘So you're glad you stayed?'

He smiled at her, his first real, proper, best friend. ‘Yeah, I think so,' he replied. ‘I wouldn't have met you or Ben or anyone else. And I wouldn't be able to skate or bodysurf or go on roller-coasters or anything. Or play the guitar. I can play the guitar – did you know that?'

Jacq shook her head.

‘Well I can. I'll show you later. I'm not good, but I'm better than I thought I'd be. And this afternoon I'm going to play golf.'

‘I've never tried golf,' Jacq said. ‘Looks like a stupid game, though.'

‘I've never played it either. But I'm pretty sure I've always wanted to.'

‘What stopped you?'

Edsel smiled. ‘I don't think I was ever allowed to.' Then he frowned as he thought. ‘Yeah, that's right, I wasn't allowed.'

‘Why not? Too expensive?'

‘No, too dangerous. My parents were always worried I'd get hit on the head or something. I mean, it's blurry, but I'm pretty sure that was the reason.'

‘Can I play golf with you?' Jacq asked. She tapped her helmet. ‘It's not dangerous for me.'

‘I thought you said it was a stupid game.'

‘Still, I'll give it a bash.'

Later on, they met at the clubhouse. Edsel had seen a few golf courses over the years, but they'd always been on TV, being featured on his dad's travel shows. They were nice to look at and all that, and now, as they stood at the top of the first fairway, he began to truly understand why people spent so much money on golfing holidays.

‘Looks nice, huh?' he said.

Jacq whistled. ‘It's amazing. Beautiful.'

Edsel rested the ball on the tee – he was pretty sure that was how you did it – then took the biggest club out of his bag. He swung it back and forth a couple of times, feeling the weight, enjoying the
swish
of the shaft through the air.

‘You ever swung one of those before?' Jacq asked.

‘Only a couple of times,' he replied. ‘Sometimes there'd be golf clubs at the shop.'

‘Which shop?'

‘The … the junk shop. It was run by this guy and his mum.' He pushed his cap back on his head and frowned. ‘I should remember his name. Phil or Pedro or something … Nuh, I can't remember,' he said after a while.

‘It'll come back to you.'

‘What if it doesn't?'

Jacq sighed. ‘You're right. It might not. But that's just how it is. So, you going to hit that ball or not?'

‘Yep. Let's do this.' And shaking the tension out of his shoulders, Edsel stepped up to the ball, rested the head of the club on the ground behind it, and prepared to swing. Somehow it felt right – the grip, the stance, everything – and as he took the club into its backswing, he felt that familiar feeling of relaxation spread through him. He'd experienced it when he tried pretty much anything new in this place.

He swung, the head of the driver met the ball with a satisfying smack, and the ball flew down the fairway, a small white dot high against the clear, impossibly blue sky, then falling, bouncing, rolling along the carpet of grass between the stands of trees.

‘How did that feel?' Jacq asked.

Edsel grinned. ‘Amazing. Your turn.'

Edsel wasn't sure what he enjoyed more – the planning of each shot, the hitting of the ball, or the driving of the golf cart. But he decided very quickly that this golf thing was actually a lot of fun, and that he'd definitely do it more from now on.

Not that he was doing it perfectly, and that was partly what he found appealing – that no matter how well he hit the ball, or how close to his target he made it land, there was always the chance to do better next time.

Jacq wasn't as good at golf as Edsel, and for a while he wondered if that was getting her down, but he kept telling her that he wasn't as good at skating or surfing as she was, and that it was obvious to him that in Verdada different people still did things differently.

‘I know all that, but just once I'd like it to go where I aimed it,' she said, after trying to hit the ball towards the green, but mis-hitting horribly and sending it crashing through the undergrowth to the left of the fairway instead. ‘Aargh!'

‘I think that maybe you need to relax,' Edsel suggested.

Jacq put her hands on her hips and turned to face him. ‘So, one game of golf – sorry,
half
a game of golf, and suddenly you're the expert?'

‘No, I'm just saying—'

‘Well don't, all right? Don't. Just stay here and mind the cart while I go and find my ball.'

‘I'll help if you like.'

‘No, don't even bother. Stay here and think about how relaxed you need to be for your next shot.' And she stomped off towards the shadowy undergrowth beneath the trees.

After five or six minutes of listening to her muttering and stomping and crashing around, Edsel decided that it was time to help. He drove the cart towards the edge of the fairway, and parked it. ‘Jacq?' he called. ‘Found it yet?'

‘No, I haven't. And I'm about to give up. I'm working in sporting tomorrow – I'll probably find it then, at the bottom of my crate.'

Edsel laughed. ‘Can I come in and help you look yet, or are you going to shout at me some more?'

‘You can help, so long as you say sorry,' Jacq replied, but he could tell from her tone that she wasn't angry anymore.

‘Okay, I'm coming in. And I'm sorry for being such a know-it-all.' He picked up a club and headed into the undergrowth, pushing branches and leaves aside, looking for a glimpse of a small white ball.

‘It came in a little further this way,' Jacq said, and Edsel adjusted his course slightly, working up through the shadows towards where he could see the red of his friend's helmet in amongst the foliage.

Then, to his left, further in, he saw something promising. It was a pale spot, perhaps a white golf ball, perhaps something else, but definitely lighter than shadow. Ducking his head under an overhanging bough, he pushed further in. There was more undergrowth ahead, more trees, and yet they didn't seem to have the spaces between them, or the detail that he might have expected. In fact, as he came even closer he saw that part of the forest for what it really was – a wall, with forest painted on it like a mural.

He reached out one hand. The wall didn't feel like anything. Well, maybe it felt like very fine cotton, or maybe paper. But it wasn't cold or warm like he might have expected a wall to be. It just
was.
He couldn't put his hand through it, and yet it seemed as if the paint of the mural was hanging in the air.

The detail of the trees wasn't terribly good. It was chunky, as if it had been pixelated, but from the fairway, through the real trees and shrubs and grass that stood in front of it, the mural, which rose from the ground at a perfect right-angle, gave the illusion of being very real.

He glanced back towards where he'd parked the cart, which was still bathed in sunshine at the edge of the fairway, and that was when he noticed that one or two of the plants closer to the back were like the mural – two dimensional, and simply standing up, as if they were made of cardboard, except these he could pass his hand through.

He leaned down to take a better look at the cut-out plant closest to him. At its base, where it met the ground, he saw a glimpse of dimply white plastic, and as he bent even closer he saw that the ball was lodged there, in a gap. And as he reached in, gripped the ball with thumb and forefinger and lifted it out, he saw that the gap was exactly that – a hole in the ground through which he saw the same blue as the sky above.

Dropping the ball, he put his head against the ground and looked through the gap. It was similar to what you might find in a piece of paper that has been folded too often, with a small triangular opening developing right near the main crease. It seemed that the ground wasn't deep, heavy soil like he might have expected, but a flat, paper-thin surface laid out over nothing.

‘Have you found it yet?' he heard Jacq call.

‘Um … yeah, I have.'

‘Was it hard to find?'

‘Only a bit,' he said absently. ‘Hey Jacq, do you remember what Ben said about the other side of the mountains?'

‘Of course – that there might be more mountains, or maybe nothing.' She'd arrived at Edsel's side, and she bent down to pick up her ball. ‘What about it?'

‘What do you think?'

‘I don't know, really. Why?'

‘Look down here,' he said, pointing at the gap near his feet.

She shrugged, barely glancing down. ‘What is it?'

‘No, you'll have to get closer than that. Get right down on your knees and look through there, behind that log.'

‘If I must,' she muttered, kneeling down.

‘Lower. See it yet?'

‘See what? I don't see … Oh!'

‘You see it now?'

‘It's … nothing.'

‘I know.' He turned to face the flat, pixelated backdrop further into the forest. The shrubs and smaller plants standing between him and the backdrop appeared real and perfect, but as he peered back towards the golf cart, he saw even more gaps at the base of bushes, logs, rocks. They were small, too small for him to see without knowing what he was looking for, but once he saw the first couple, he saw them everywhere – careless little faults in the surface of the ground.

He began to walk towards the pixelated wall, stepping around the undergrowth, and when he reached it, he rested his hand against the surface, feeling its flimsy nothingness. ‘This isn't very strong, I bet.'

‘What are you doing?' Jacq asked as Edsel took the plastic golf tee from his pocket and pushed the tip against the wall. The image on the surface bowed inwards like canvas as the sharp tip stretched it.

‘I'm going to see through. I want to see what's on the other side.'

‘You can't just go poking holes in Verdada whenever you feel like … Oh, you did,' Jacq said as the tip of the tee popped through.

‘I just need to see, so I know for sure,' Edsel said, and as he pulled down on the tee, the wall tore with a satisfying ripping sound that was perhaps a little louder than he'd expected.

‘I think that was a mistake,' Jacq said.

‘I think the mistake was expecting us to never find out,' Edsel said, still working at the ragged, three-sided hole that was soon big enough to fit his head through. He gasped. With the emptiness beneath it, this wall was as thin as paper. He looked around on the other side. The wall appeared impossibly long both left and right, and beyond its base, level with Edsel's feet, was even more nothing. It seemed terribly – and frighteningly – clear that Verdada was suspended in space, floating over an endless, every-direction expanse of sky-blue nothing.

‘It's not a real place,' he said, after he'd pulled his head back through. He barely believed his own words. ‘Verdada's not real.'

‘What are you talking about? It must be real – we're
in
it.'

‘No, it's just a … it's like a map in a computer game, with these walls to make it look real no matter which direction you look in. But I think that if you got in a helicopter or an aeroplane you'd see that it's just a big square fake world hanging in the middle of nothing.'

Jacq shook her head. ‘That can't be right. There are other places like Verdada. There must be.'

‘In that case, why can't I go skydiving?'

Jacq seemed confused. ‘What's that got to do with it? What's that got to do with anything?'