355 Days
To Go
I woke in a cavernous, cream-walled house with a chandelier and a polished staircase and double glazed windows.
'Mumshine?'
I was 99.9 per cent sure that she wasn't in here, that this whole thing wasn't a dream – but there was still a ghost of hope. If it weren't for the howls of some wolf or dog or coyote that were still ringing in my ears from the middle of last night, I could have denied this was real and waited for my mum to come in with my trim macchiato.
Two days previous, we'd dared Fatima to cross the river and bust outta here and – I guess because she had shitty self-esteem and wanted to be popular – she went to the far side of the river to check if the walls were glass.
We'd stood on the turf and watched Fatti doggy paddle and wade through the slow brown river while Watson narrated, lecturing us about how the edge of the dome has these silica particles that are a gas, at first, layered increasingly dense so it becomes glass, and if you inhale it it's like having crystals in your lungs and you can't breathe, except Fatti must've breathed some as she emerged on the far side of the river because she swiped and swatted like she was stuck in a spiderweb we couldn't see, clawing at her throat, then finally she rolled back into the river and everyone started panicking. Fatti had spent the rest of the day all wired and jittery like she had too much electricity in her. She wasn't burned and her breathing was fine. She'd got stuck in invisible jelly, and we, her friends, had just gawped.
I couldn't pretend I'd dreamed it, dreamed Fatti's shrieks. I couldn't pretend Omar led us to the water, lured fish and eels with pop can tabs, caught them and hung them and smoked them – and I especially couldn't pretend he didn't bully all of us til we agreed to pounce on a duck, each, strangle it til its eyes closed and boil it til its feathers were soft then put our fingers in its cloaca and tear it open to pull the guts out. My week was ugly.
My bulging bladder was real, and my gurgling tummy was real, and so was the way my starved brain complained as I put my feet on the floor, woozy, and stood. It felt like there was a little person growing in my bladder, kicking and punching the walls of my stomach.
'You in here?' I called, roaming the house, trying to remember how many days we'd been inside. I'd catalogued the days by their mood. Overjoyed, at first, then frustrated, then I'd strolled to the edge of a cliff of ecstasy before seeing a horrifying plunge ahead. Out of seven days, we'd only eaten real food on the first day. The rest was water and fruit and the snotty tears I'd choked down.
'MAEVE. I need you.'
I made it up to the fourth floor where I saw out the window a botanic garden, in the middle of Mahonyland, just a few houses over, if we could figure out how to get there. There were citrus trees there with little coloured specks that had to be –
'MAEVE!' I called out the window, 'FRUIT! WHERE ARE YOU?!'
Finally Maeve came into the room with her arms folded. She didn't say anything suck-uppy as she joined me at the window. I was lucky she'd come over during the night at all, after the awkwardness of lowering myself by begging her to come away from Adam. I wanted her to talk about the whole Adam thing, to say sorry, or ask ME to say sorry – I wanted her to say ANYTHING, but the cold, suspicious resentful Maeve was all I was gonna get for now. We'd been besties since we were, like, 3. She'd always admired me so much that she wasn't supposed to stay mad. Something had shifted in her.
Omar had built an igloo of couch cushions on the furry soft artificial lawn. He was still sleeping when I walked out of the house, kicked the roof off his place and watched it wake him as the walls toppled. I told him we might've spotted grapefruit or oranges and he blinked a few times, went 'BREAKFAST!' and bolted.
Maeve kept glancing around as we followed, uneasy about taking her eyes off me. It was pathetic.
'There totally needs to be a Wendy's,' I said, 'Like even just a tiny one with like rude-as staff. I'd do Carl's Junior, even. Taco Bell. Anything.'
Fatti came out of her place and joined us. 'I was just sayin, feels weird not to buy stuff. You know? Fatima? Hey, c'mon, can't you hurry your ass up a bit? Aren't you hungry?'
'Hungry, sure… .' Fatti walked up on the grass verge then down on the road again, scraping her toes in the gutter. We turned I think West, where it looked like Omar had gone. 'D'you member when you called me fat, Eden?'
'What? Who cares about that right now. Not that I – I'm not having this conversation. We gotta go hunt 'n gather.'
That was our new thing, this kind of pride in collecting food. Any nuts or shoots or gingerbread houses we found, we brought to the fort and shared half and banked half in a little minibar fridge. No, it wasn't technically hunting, but stumbling upon old candy or pouncing on a mound of peanuts felt like we'd achieved something.
'It was in the changing rooms. We were about to have swimming. You said, 'Fatima, you're going to make a biiiig splash today," and alllll the girls laughed.'
'Jeez you're moody, Fats. Why are you… so what? Big splash means big splash. It's a pool. Everyone splashes.'
We hopped the gate of this gated street with real fancy places and a guard booth and palm trees.
'What did you mean big splash? Did you mean I was big?'
'I literally do not have time for you to have a mental breakdown right now. Can we just hurry and catch up those guys? What if they make Hawaiian cocktails without us?' I rolled my eyes, took her elbow. 'Bae, serious, you're a size 14. It's not that big a deal. Some people are just born like that.'
'But you wrote an editorial about healthy eating. In the school zine. You said if your BMI says you're overweight you're disrespecting your body.'
'You did, she��s right.' There was disrespect in Maeve's tone now. I would've slapped her if I didn't need her. 'You should think about that, Ede.'
'Seriously, I need to respect MY body WITH SOMETHING TO EAT so hurry up and come with us, would you?'
Fatima did move, but she'd changed and she wasn't going to change back to the reasonable person I had before. 'You spent any of your million?' she said, from nowhere, dragging her feet across the lawn of another disposable house.
'Course not,' I snapped.
'How come I haven't seen you counting it?'
'Shut up about that. We're not getting enough to EAT. Honest, my dad'll get us some food delivered if we get desperate enough. He has to. He wouldn't let any bad stuff happen. I just… I just don't know why it hasn't happened already.'
The three of us walked directly north up a road called Broadway, which seemed to be the centre of the whole of Mahonyland, dividing the place in two. We stared at house 1004, Scene of the Crime. We'd discovered about a hundred eggs on the fifth morning, plus three chickens, complaining that we'd invaded their privacy and we'd devoured the eggs and grilled the chickens on a bonfire within three days. Eight eggs each and a few nibbles of meat. Then no more eggs for the rest of the year. It sickened us to see bloody feathers scattered on the grass and footpath and the road, no breeze to blow our guilt away.
Finally we hit a smallish botanic garden with a stone wall and areas of dry garden and sheltered vegetable garden and rocky garden, just a couple of acres, but with some benches to rest our tired bodies on.
Omar burst out of a bamboo grove with green round fruits of some kind. It turned out to be an armload of small, hard pumpkins. I was disappointed, they would be no good for jack o'lanterns. Omar would probably try to make us eat them. Yuck. Pumpkin spiced latte yes please, but actual hard pumpkin?! Like what if it had dirt on it?
'Think fast.' Omar tossed three tiny pumpkins at me. They were green and knobbly with big horns on the top. Their colour wasn't even uniform, with big clusters of white spreading out of the bottom. 'That's about it for these gardens right now. In a few weeks I think I can pull some of the carrots, though. Radishes, lettuce – not quite the season yet, girls. And before you ask: no hot dog plants, girls.'
'Bananas, though? Pineapple? Anything?'
He shook his head. 'It's not that easy. The trees are here, but none with fruit ready to eat. They've got to cross-pollinate and stuff. Didn't your 'rentals get you into growing fruit and veg?'
I heard myself screaming. DON'T GIVE MAEVE'S MUM ANY MORE SEEDLINGS AND CUTTINGS AND SHIT. It's not… normal.
NO ONE WHO'S NORMAL EATS FRUIT, MUM
NORMAL.
FRUIT. NORMAL.
' …become a cornfed people, yesss, I love this,' Omar was saying as I returned to reality, rubbing his palms together while he schemed. 'It's gonna be all about the corn this year, yo. D'you know a corn-based diet gave Indians, like, the best teeth of any igneous population in history? It's true, man. And there's Vitamin C in corn, how cool is –
'WHO. CARES. WE. ARE. HUNGRY.'
'There's some fat-ass koi carp in the river. Let's go spear 'em.'
'I'd rather eat lichen.'
'Lichen's nutritious, yo. People ate lichen in the Darien Expedition when they got lost exploring the Panama Canal. Or before the canal, or something. Watson told me. You can eat just about anything. Got no flour, chuck sawdust in your bread instead, concentration camp-styles.'
'Please don't call this a… Just bring the pumpkins. We'll check out the cornfields. Race ya.'
Me and Fat and Maeve struggled to keep up with Omar as he left the botanic garden and went down Broadway a little then began to sprint east along Champs-Élysées. Finally he stopped at Montreal Street. There were cornfields on the far side.
Omar ran into these rows of plants seven feet tall with soft, thick leaves that ate us, big green things like a crowd of people at a train station thick and high enough to make us lose our direction and vision when we ran in. I stopped somewhere, couldn't see the road. I opened a husk and sniffed the corn and prodded the kernels. They were hard and lots of the kernels were brown.
'Forget corn. I'd rather starve.' I plopped my butt into the dirt. Maeve looked around to see if there was anyone more influential she should copy then gave up and plopped down beside me. 'I have to ask you something,' I whispered.
'What?'
'How much money you spent so far?'
'Nowhere to spend it that I know of – apart from supporting Heart of Darkness. It's like a bank. You put in to help Adam and he looks after you. See, you should totally come over with us, Ede. You put in a little bit of money for the community and –
'Heart of what? Is that what he calls his little gas station gang?'
'Yah. It's from an e-book or something?'
���He thinks he's that guy from that old-school Apocalypse movie, he honestly does. Maeve, you can tell me: did he pay you to hang out there with him?'
She crumpled her neck and covered her chest with her arms and knees. 'I have undiscovered potential. He discovered me.' She turned her chin away.
'Tell me why Anya's working for him. How much did he pay her?'
'I'm not allowed.'
'Don't say no to me, Maeve. Remember who I am. Tell me how much he makes you pay him.'
'You're mean.' Maeve shifted across the dirt. 'Omar? OOOO-MAAAAR!'
I shook her shoulders. 'Tell me or I will slap you, Maeve Simpson.'
'Half his money.'
'But half a million dollars is five hundred thousand… ? Why would anyone… ?'
Maeve banged her head against her knees like a mental patient. Then she tsked and rolled her eyes at me. 'I said the same thing eh! And y'know, Ede, he just turned to me and he said, 'What is your life worth?' It was like poetry. I mean, no one's ever been that nice to me. Like, don't you think that's profound?'
'Life worth? What is your LIFE worth?! Babe, your life's perfect with Edie.'
I squeezed her shoulder. She pulled her shoulder away and pouted. 'Adam's a lot deeper than you give him credit for.'
'Yeah, balls deeper. Your brain's not the organ he wants.'
'Maybe I will tonight.'
'You will do no such thing.'
'Quit trying to be in charge of people, Eden! God! Keep your leadership where it belongs: in your dreams.'
I stood over her, shaking, my face sunburned with rage. 'JUST TELL ME WHY YOU WENT TO THAT STUPID HEART OF DARKNESS PLACE.'
'BECAUSE I NEED PROTECTING.'
'PROTECTING FROM WHO?'
'From my friends.'
'Get the hell out – what friends?'
'From YOU, Ede.'