From somewhere out there came voices, a silent pause, an explosion (of glass?) followed by laughter, cheers, hoots.
Calum unballed the hoodie he’d used as a pillow, pulled it on, then jeans, then sneakers. From beyond the closet came another crash and delighted whoops. He opened the door, light came searing in, he squinted, the swollen eyesocket ached. Everything was quiet. He felt himself being observed.
His eyes adjusted. Sitting on stools in the middle of the silo were two small figures in sunglasses. Near them, on the floor, was a pile of fluorescent tubes, frosted glass pipettes the length and width of saplings. Through the loading dock’s open doors poured water-coloured light, a choir of hoodies lined the threshold. On a couch against the far wall lounged a shirtless guy in a welding mask, the visor reflected the room. Someone lying with their head in his lap sat up — the Hand. Calum waited for a greeting. She yawned and lay back down.
The welding mask leaned in, seemed to whisper in the Hand’s ear.
The Hand laughed, sat up again. With her eyes locked on Calum’s she snuggled close to this shirtless, faceless person. Her fingers splayed around his bellybutton. The thumb snuck into the waistband of his pants.
Calum watched.
From within the mask a voice said, You want to play?
This prompted from the hoodies a squawk of sharp, mean laughter.
The Hand looped her arms around the masked guy’s neck, swung her legs onto his lap. In front of the couch was a table littered with papers and bottles and cans and packs of Redapples, a tin of corn-in-a-can overflowed with butts, burn marks pocked the tabletop. From a paper bag the masked character produced a flat, which he fed to the Hand: her lips caressed his knuckles, her tongue flicked and curled, all wetly pink. She giggled.
Calum looked away.
The kids on the stools seemed about Rupe’s age, faces expressionless behind those sunglasses. They perched with perfect, crisp posture, hands on their knees — ducktaped to their knees. At their feet was broken glass, a few glossy red dots that had to be blood.
The masked guy spread his arms, indicating a space into which Calum was now welcome — or implicated. Ready to take on my sister?
A bout of laughter, brief and dreary, lifted from the figures at the door and dispersed among the rafters like smoke.
The Hand came over, scooped up a fluorescent tube, smacked it into her palm, something inside rattled and tinked. She held another out to Calum, who took it but couldn’t meet her eyes.
The figures by the door crowded in. Their shadows stretched into the room, the light went patchy and sinister. From the couch the guy said, You think you can beat my sister? You know what she did? Last year? You know what this kid did?
Whooping from the hoodies.
This kid right here? She gets up on the struts under the tracks at UOT Station and waits for the night’s last train, it comes through slow, right, because of the construction, and when it comes she, get this, grabs one of the bars underneath the train! And rides it like that all the way to the Barns, just hanging there, we’re all running along underneath, and when it lowers she jumps off and is just like, What. My sister, man.
The Hand twirled the fluorescent, laughed a shrugging sort of laugh.
Calum had heard this story, everyone had. It existed in his imagination as a movie. Walking underneath the Yellowline he’d often look up and imagine the weightless thrill of being zipped along, how it might feel to pass through airspace that no other human body had ever troubled, parted, touched.
Now the story had a hero, and here she was: Let’s go, said the Hand. You versus me.
Terse, ironic applause.
You want to go first?
First?
The rules are this, said the Hand. You call a twin and hit it, you get to sit down. You call one and hit the other, you got to take their spot. You miss three lights in a row, you take the spot of the kid you called last. You hit the kid and the light doesn’t break, you got to break the light over your own head. Got it?
The shirtless guy called, Good luck! in a cheery, chilling way.
Everyone laughed again, a rhythmic swell and ebb that felt rehearsed, artificial. It left behind a vaporous sort of silence that swelled and pulsed in the still air of the silo.
I’ll go first, said the Hand. Watch me, I’m the best. She had barely prophesied, Left, before her tube was flying from her hand in spinning flashes of light — and exploded on the kid on the left’s forehead. He crumpled from the chair, sunglasses skittering across the floor. Everyone went crazy.
The kid rose to his knees with a spidery wound opening on his temples. He shook his head, droplets of blood scattered in a little arc, and in a gargly voice choked, Hit.
More cheers.
The boy took his spot back on the stool, swaying slightly. One of the figures behind Calum came forward with the stray sunglasses, slid them back onto his face, and retreated. The kid hawked a thick, gory splat of blood onto the floor.
Your turn, said the Hand.
The tube felt heavier now.
The Hand said, Which one.
Beneath all that blood the left one’s face was pale. The other kid waited in silence.
Right thinks she’s tough, said the Hand. Hit her. Now!
Calum lobbed the tube weakly — it landed a foot short of the stools, skidded, stopped unbroken. Amid boos the girl kicked it back at Calum.
I’m done, I won, said the Hand. Two more for you though or it’s you on the stool.
Come on, son, called the shirtless guy from the couch. The Hand went to him, he folded her into his arms. The visor was blank but Calum sensed a sneer beneath it, he felt mocked. And the way he was holding her, it was familiar. .
And he was back down below the night before, the darkness full of screaming, grabbed by those big strong hands, that humid skin against his own, the suffocation, Calum had felt so feeble — and the sense that whoever it was had no face: here he was now, in his mask, holding the Hand, who dreamily stroked his chest. He placed one hand atop her head, onto the pattern of hair, and confirmed what Calum feared: a perfect fit.
Calum’s next throw went pinwheeling wide and high. The intended target watched it sail overhead: the light landed, popped, loosed a dusty puff up from the warehouse floor.
Jeers, screeches, catcalls, whistles. Someone cawed. Someone mooed.
Calum took his final tube from the pile. His reflection warped in the cloudy glass. He could hear the Hand taunting him and the guy — her brother? — taunting him too. But he wouldn’t look at them. His thoughts blurred, their words became noise.
Behind the girl’s sunglasses were the faint shadows of eyes. But they were dead eyes. There was nothing in them. They were nothing Calum could understand.
Calum cocked his arm. From the depths of Whitehall came the rumble of a train pulling out of the Barns, clacking up onto the tracks, heading south into the city. As its sound faded the boy on the other stool collapsed, hitting the floor with a dull thud. Blood trickled from his headwound, drastic and crimson on the cement. Calum lowered the tube, waited. But nobody moved. If anything, the air went rigid with impatience.
Come on, said the Hand. Throw!
Calum tried not to register the kid passed out and bleeding on the ground.
Throw! roared a dozen voices.
So he threw.
IV
HE 10:30 MEMORIAL unveiling would not be covered by In the Know, or any We-TV correspondents. A small crowd gathered in a clearing in the southeast corner of People Park known as Circle Square. Surrounded by poplars, in its centre was an inactive fountain clotted with dead leaves and bounded by the Community Gardens, the Hedge Maze, and Friendly Farm Automatic Zoo, where, when activated, mechanical beasts (animaltronics) lurched into educational couplings.