This is Shyness (15 page)

‘Did they do something to your family? Is that why your parents left?'

It's only once the words are out of my mouth that I realise I could be skating way too close to the Gram issue. Maybe the Kidds had something to do with his death. Wolfboy stops snipping the fence for a moment but doesn't look at me.

‘My family left—well, they left for lots of reasons. They said it was because all their friends were leaving, and businesses were shutting down, and property values were diving. But it wasn't that. Do you know how places can turn bad? Like the things that happen there get so tangled up with the place itself, that you can't…' Wolfboy trails off, as if he's not quite saying what he means.

‘I know what you mean.' I knot my fingers together and try hard not to interrupt. Finally, he's talking again. I do know what he means. They don't have to be places with bad memories. Mike and I used to hide in this shed on the rooftop of our building. We turned it into a clubhouse, even though we didn't actually have a club. But it was the place where we'd tell our secrets and smoke. Or Mike would smoke and I'd watch because I hated the taste. Mike's secrets were always bigger than mine. Since Mike moved away, I don't go there anymore. I can't even go onto the roof without feeling a tightness in my chest.

I haven't thought about Mike for years, so it's strange that I've thought about him twice in one hour. He left Plexus one day without leaving a phone number or a new address. When you're twelve there's not much you can do to track someone down. At the time I thought I'd never forgive him for abandoning me. But now I find myself wondering what happened to him. Would we become friends again if we ran into each other in the street?

Wolfboy has gone so quiet I figure that's the end of our conversation. Still, it was a start. He's almost finished cutting a flap in the wire. His hair gathers in dark curls against the pale skin of his neck. A breeze hisses over us and the pliers go snip, snip, snip. I look up and the moon is there, full and round like a big eye.

When Wolfboy's voice creeps into the moment it's barely a whisper above the rustling grass.

‘If you want to know the truth, something bad did happen to my family, but it was nothing to do with the

Darkness. My brother. Gram. He was five years older than me. About four years ago, he killed himself.'

Wolfboy has stopped working on the fence, but he's still facing it, kneeling in a position of utter defeat. This is the truth that I've wanted him to tell, but now that I've heard it I wish I hadn't.

‘Things had been bad for a while. With my family, with Gram. He hadn't spoken to my dad in years and he only spoke to my mum on the phone every couple of months. He didn't see eye to eye with them on anything. He broke up with his girlfriend and she moved away, overseas. They'd been together since they were sixteen and no one knew what they'd fought about, why she'd left.'

Wolfboy turns towards me. There are no tears in his eyes; they look dark and bottomless and empty.

The first question I want to ask is: how did he do it? That's always the first thing people want to know, but it's also the stupidest. I stop the words before they escape my mouth. ‘It's Gram's lighter, isn't it?' I ask instead, and Wolfboy nods.

‘Gram took the breakup hard. He wasn't doing well. We knew he was drinking too much and kept to himself. He was angry all the time. But no one saw it coming. Things were bad, but they didn't seem that bad.'

It doesn't sound like the end of the story, but Wolfboy looks spent. This is where I say something comforting, or wise, or even acknowledge how fucked up the whole thing is. But what can I say? I just sit there with him, the breeze fussing around us. I hope he feels my sympathy, even though I don't touch him or say anything. I feel unbearably sad. Now I understand why he was holding the full story back.

Wolfboy chose to live among the memories of his brother, and his parents chose to run away from them. I doubt they've left them behind, though. You could travel halfway across the world and the pain would still be inside you.

After a while Wolfboy reaches forward and pushes the flap of wire upwards, using both hands to bend it as high as it will go.

‘It's done,' he says.

nineteen

Beyond the second fence there's fifty metres of open ground to cover before the first building. I crawl commando-style, my bag an unwelcome bulge on my back. Wildgirl lags behind. I pause for a second to make sure she's following me. She creeps forward, but rolls her eyes, letting me know she's not happy with the situation. The ukulele keeps slipping around to her front, and she keeps pushing it back irritably.

My feet drag. I feel disconnected from the task ahead of me. I want to kick myself for all the things I've told her. Adults always say: get it off your chest. Talk about it. You'll feel much better afterwards. But in my experience that's not true. I feel heavier than ever.

It takes a few minutes to reach cover. Blake warned us about booby traps, so every time I move forward I examine the dirt ahead for anything out of the ordinary. I reach the first building and squat against its breezeblock walls. There are no windows or doors on this side. The nearest light is at the foot of the closest main tower, still a long way off. This building is a small shed, barely four metres long. I listen intently. Somewhere, far off, a dog barks. Closer to us a door or a gate swings back and forth in the wind.

Wildgirl eventually makes it to where I'm sitting and crouches next to me, rubbing her elbows and grimacing. Pieces of dried grass cling to her jumper and hair. Her hands are filthy like mine.

‘Absolutely no more crawling tonight, and that's a rule. I'm not a slug.'

I want to tell Wildgirl her ukulele is a liability and has to go, but I'm pretty sure she'll tell me where to get off. I creep to the corner of the building. There are four other shed-like structures around us, then a tarmac expanse that looks like a car park. We've done it. We're in Orphanville. I don't know anyone who's been inside these fences. It's time to concentrate, but— ‘I'm confused,' I say. I'm confused by the way things turned bad between us. I'm confused by the fact I told her a bunch of personal information and she hasn't said anything about it.

‘What about?' Wildgirl presses her chin over my shoulder, trying to see what I'm seeing.

‘Do I call you Nia or Wildgirl?'

‘Wildgirl, of course. I'm not calling you Jethro, am I?'

I glance back at her. Her lipstick is gone and her eyeshadow is smudged. There's a little crease between her eyebrows that wasn't there before. I did that to her. At the most she was hoping to go to some cool clubs tonight, and maybe see some night-time freaks. Instead I gave her my sob story.

It hurts not having the familiar weight of Gram's lighter in my pocket. It's still a comfort for me to touch something that he so often held. Mum would be so upset if she knew I'd lost it.

I can see the edge of one of the towers at the end of the car park, and beyond it the other towers rising straight in the night. The towers are striped across with windows, and down with a central pillar of light that must be a stairwell or elevator shaft. You can tell from the pattern of lights which buildings are more occupied and more dangerous. Less than a quarter of the lights are on in the closest tower.

It must seem so cool to the Kidds, getting to live together with no parents and no adults and no one telling you what to do. If I'd been younger when the Darkness fell, I wonder if I would have joined them.

‘So what was the plan again?' asks Wildgirl.

It took guts to crawl through that fence. I search for my anger but it's gone. She doesn't have to do this, and she doesn't have a gun to my head making me do this either. I owe it to her to make it as easy as possible. It's a pity we haven't thought past ‘break in to Orphanville'.

I pull Blake's map from my pocket. It's already wearing thin along the folds. I try to match it up with what lies in front of us, but it morphs into a mess of random writing and scribbles. I sigh. ‘I suppose we find Building Six.'

‘That's Building Ten, I think.' Wildgirl points at the closest tower. ‘The buildings are laid out in two semicircles. One through to Five are on the inside, Six to Ten on the outside.' She pauses, her brow crinkling, her mouth open as if she's about to continue. She takes the map from my hands.

‘What is it?' I ask.

‘Nothing,' she replies. ‘I thought…the placement of the buildings. It's hard to tell.'

‘Well, if that's number Ten, the one diagonally behind it is One. Which means Six will be on the left-hand side, right at the end. I think we should go through the middle of the two rows. That way we can go either left or right for cover.'

I stand up and take a few steps away from the shed, so I can see better. The closest towers are mostly dark. Wildgirl was right. We need to work together on this. Maybe it will be easier than we've anticipated. It won't take us long to get to Building Six. We could be in and out in fifteen minutes. ‘Careful,' says Wildgirl.

‘It's fine,' I say, just as a bright beam of light cuts across my arm and sweeps across my torso. I drop to the ground, half blinded, my vision full of sparkles.

20

Wolfboy ducks with lightning speed. I flatten myself against the wall, and hold my breath as if it will make a difference to my visibility.

The light sweeps back across the same spot, above where Wolfboy is pressed to the ground, and is gone. I glimpse the tail end of a black car. A narrow driveway, almost invisible from this position, runs behind the car park and in front of the first row of towers. I squint after the car but all I can see is the reflective flash of the number plate. Across to the right is a set of automatic gates closing between two brick pillars. How come we didn't see those before?

When I look back to where Wolfboy was lying just seconds ago there's nothing but fuzzy darkness. He's gone. I'm on the verge of full-blown panic when I see him crouched even further away against Building Ten, waving for me to come over.

Shit. To get there I have to cross the car park and the driveway. I have no idea how Wolfboy covered that distance so fast. The black car is beyond the car park now, but if the driver looks in his rear-vision mirror at the wrong moment he'll see me for sure.

I take a breath then I'm pounding over faded foursquare courts painted on the bitumen and dodging a broken soccer net lying on its side. I skid to my knees, scraping against tanbark as I reach Building Ten. It's newer and flashier than the buildings in Plexus Commons, with reflective windows like an office block.

‘Do you think they saw us?' I gasp. But we're already away.

Wolfboy drags me by the cuff of my jumper across the narrow gap to the next building. At first I try to resist, but then I just go with him, trying not to fall over or behind. My breath is ragged; white noise fills my ears. The world is a concrete blur. Another tower flashes by. We pass a scrapheap of firewood and mangled bikes. At Building Eight we stop and resume our creeping again.

‘What are you doing?' I manage to say. I can't draw enough air into my lungs.

‘Come on. I thought I saw something.'

‘What?'

I grab his arm and try to hold him back, but he's too strong and I'm forced to follow him to the far corner of the building.

Wolfboy peeks around the corner and then motions for me to come forward. It's not as dark here as I expected. The hazy orange light from the few lampposts dotted around softens the night.

Behind Eight the ribbon of tarmac curves around to the right, running between buildings until it ends in the middle of four towers. A single metal dumpster, five metres away, stands between the road and us. The black car is parked in the dead end with its headlights still on. The doors open, one in the front and one behind, and two men get out. I squint at the buildings beyond the car. I'm not certain yet, but they look— Wolfboy sneaks even closer to the corner.

‘Stop!' I whisper as loudly as I dare. ‘Where are you going?'

He slips away, around the corner, where there's barely anything between him and the car and being seen and us being busted and having god knows what done to us. Shit.

I stick my head around the corner, expecting to see Wolfboy sheltering behind the dumpster. But he's not there. Beyond the dumpster the two men circle to the front of the car. They wear suits and look like secret-service agents, not that I've ever seen one in the flesh.

I take several steps backwards. There's no way I'm following Wolfboy, and I'm not hanging around to see if he's stupid enough to approach the car. I keep backing away until I've rounded another corner. It's possible I'm about to hurl. My head is a messy ball of thoughts, with threads unravelling everywhere. I'm not sure I should have pushed Wolfboy so hard. His family has already lost someone, and let it blow them apart. What if something happens to Wolfboy tonight?

On the other side of Building Eight I stumble across a shallow recess made for a fuse box. The metal box is bolted to the wall, leaving enough room to sit underneath it. It's not the best hiding place but it will do for a few minutes.

I slide into the gap and cuddle my knees to my chest, trying to still my breath and my heart and my hands. This is my punishment for wanting a night that would erase the day, a night with dark secrets and alley chases and passwords. Be careful what you wish for. I close my eyes.

Orphanville feels too real, and at the same time completely unreal, like a dream. There are things going on in this place that I barely understand. Those men could have anything in their boot: guns, or blindfolds, or ropes or bricks. This is not a Kidds' game anymore. We could die here in Orphanville and no one will know what happened to us.

And then the least of my worries will be the girls at school.