The Sky So Heavy Read online

  Claire Zorn lives on the south coast of New South Wales with her husband and two small children. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Post Graduate Diploma in writing. She is a music lover, retro furniture collector and amateur swim-club enthusiast.

  For Nathan, always.

  One

  There are two things I know right now: one is that a guy is holding a gun to my head, the other is that I don’t want to die. I guess I could try to look at it from the positive side: I’ve made it seventeen years without anyone trying to kill me. But it’s hard to maintain a sunny outlook when there’s a guy threatening to shoot you.

  He yells at me in a foreign language and the only word I recognise is my brother’s name. I don’t know where Max is. I feel utterly responsible for him. I am utterly responsible for him. When I think about that I automatically think of my mum and it’s not helpful to think of your mum in a situation like this. It makes you want to cry.

  I’m not the kind of person people normally want to shoot in the head. I didn’t used to be. But a lot of things are different now; the need for food makes people do crazy things. I don’t mean crazy like my step-mum used to get when she’d only eaten one rice cracker all day and couldn’t remember our names or where she parked the car. No, not that sort of crazy. It’s a raw, blind sort of crazy that’d make you throw your step-mum off the car park roof if you thought it would mean an extra bowl of rice in your belly.

  To understand how I got here, we have to go back to the start. And it’s going to hurt. Thinking about those last days – before this all began – always hurts.

  But it’s all I have.

  Three months ago I woke up in the morning and it was the same as any other day. I had slept in and if I didn’t get my arse out the door soon I was going to miss the bus. I got out of bed and rescued my school pants and shirt from the pile of clothes that lived at the foot of my bed.

  You can probably imagine the morning routine stuff; Kara, my step-mum, was there, making some sort of guava and wheatgrass concoction. (People often used to mistake Kara for my sister, if you get my drift.) My little brother Max was eating toast, and there was no sign of my dad. He had recently taken up jogging in an effort to prove to the world he wasn’t too old for Kara. It was like a feel-good cereal commercial, except there was no smiling and there was no cereal. I didn’t have time to eat; I skolled a glass of juice and bolted out the door.

  I lived in the Blue Mountains, about an hour’s drive west of Sydney. Between here and the city there were acres and acres of suburbia. The main difference between this place and the suburbs used to be that we had a national park instead of housing estates. Plus it was whiter up here than a loaf of Tip Top – still is, I guess. There’s a highway that snakes up through the mountains with townships most of the way along it. Tourist brochures used to really push the whole ‘village atmosphere’ thing, which really only meant that the trains came less often and there was only one McDonald’s. My town wasn’t high enough up to be a touristy place though; it was the place you drove through to get somewhere else, somewhere with better views and more kangaroo key rings.

  I’ve lived here my whole life, even stayed in the same house after my parents split two years ago. My mum left to live in the city. She’s an advisor to the government and had to travel to Canberra a lot. It made sense for her to be near the airport. That was her reasoning anyway. It was probably also pretty convenient that her boyfriend had a shiny inner-city pad.

  I had been working pretty hard at trying to guilt either of my parents into buying me a car, post divorce is the optimum time for that sort of thing. It hadn’t worked and I was forced to catch the school bus. The bus did have its perks, namely Lucy Tenningworth.

  My bus stop was right near where I am now – at the top of my street. There’s a strip of five shops, one was a little supermarket (there wasn’t a whole lot of ‘super’ about it), three other shops that had been empty for years and the last one was a Chinese restaurant; the kind where you could pick up a packet of weed with your chicken chow mein. It’s not like my town was some sort of seedy crack-hole, it was more that, other than bushwalking, there wasn’t a whole lot for the ‘young people’ to do. So a side business in recreational drugs was a pretty smart move.

  When I got to the top of the hill I saw that I hadn’t missed the bus. There were about five kids standing in the drizzle, waiting. The rain wasn’t heavy enough for an umbrella, but heavy enough to make you blink continuously like a moron.

  Lucy wasn’t waiting in the rain. She was a bit away from the bus stop, leaning against the wall of the supermarket, under the awning with her ankles crossed. (I don’t know what it is about girls’ ankles; they make me crazy.) She was reading a book and looked up when I came toward the bus stop. I pretended I hadn’t noticed her at first – I didn’t want to appear too keen.

  I noticed Lucy Tenningworth on the first day of year eleven, the same time as every other male in the school. She had come from a girls’ school that only went to year ten, and instantly eclipsed every other girl I had ever had a thing for. Lucy turned up with her chipped black nail polish and a well-thumbed copy of A Clockwork Orange. She was allocated the seat next to mine in modern history. She had clear, pale skin and legs that I knew would cause me some serious concentration issues. Mrs Bryan, our teacher, announced to Lucy that I was her ‘star pupil’, at which point I think I actually physically shrank with embarrassment. Mrs Bryan went back to the lesson and Lucy leaned across and wrote something across the page of my textbook. Number one? I’m going to kick your arse. She raised an eyebrow and gave me a little smirk. I somehow managed to collect myself and wrote I’d like to see you try on her book. Her response? Game on. Her smile was ridiculous.

  ‘Hello,’ I said after a bit.

  ‘Hello yourself.’ She gave me a smile and turned back to her book.

  I waited a few moments. ‘Beautiful weather.’

  ‘Isn’t it just. I loathe winter.’

  ‘Hey, aren’t we supposed to be going to the library this arvo? Research?’

  ‘Indeed.’ Her long dark hair was pinned in elaborate coils behind her ears. She tilted her face up to look at me. ‘Still free? Or are you otherwise engaged – rugby practice or something?’

  I laughed. ‘No, they still won’t let me on the team. I’m too intimidating for the other guys.’

  ‘Well, let’s do it then. Although I really think you’re wasting your time. We both know I’m going to kick your skinny arse.’

  ‘You keep saying these things, but I’m yet to see the evidence.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll see the evidence, my friend.’

  The bus came over the hill. Lucy closed her book and tucked it into her satchel with a sigh.

  ‘How many more days of this do we have to endure?’ she asked.

  ‘Too many.’

  The bus pulled to a stop. We watched as the year sevens scrambled for their bags, as if the bus leaving them behind would be a bad thing. At the last possible moment we made our way over. I stood aside and let Lucy get on before me. She took one of the last free seats and I sat next to her. The bus shuddered and pulled away from the kerb.

  ‘So, do you think the world’s going to end?’ I said.

  ‘Beg yours?’

  ‘The nuke testing. Was on the news last night.’

  ‘How could I forget; our impending doom! I wonder when it will occur to everyone that the best way to solve differences might not be to annihilate each other. I’m taking comfort in the knowledge that we are on the other side of the world.’

  ‘Depends what you class as the other side of the world. It’s a bit too close for comfort in my book.�
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  ‘If the world is going to end I don’t want to spend my last days writing a history essay. Although . . .’ she paused, ‘if I don’t do it and the world doesn’t end then I will fail and you will be at the top of the class. And we can’t have that, can we?’ She glanced at me and the corner of her mouth curved up a little.

  ‘I would be honoured if you would spend your last moments researching with me,’ I said.

  ‘Hmm? And what would we be researching exactly?’

  I nearly fell off my seat. She looked casually out the window with a little smirk. I had absolutely nothing to say. I cleared my throat. The bus pulled up at another stop and more kids got on. It was standing room only except for the one seat next to Arnold Wong. Kids crammed on and swayed in the aisles but no one sat next to Arnold Wong. No one ever did.

  Arnold Wong had been at my primary school; he joined my class in year three. I don’t know if it was because he had a funny name or because he had skin a few shades darker than everyone else and thick black hair that stood straight up like a Chia Pet’s, but everyone took to hating Arnold Wong from that very first day he arrived. Arnold was the carrier of Arnold-germs that could be transmitted by standing behind him in the canteen line, talking to him in a non-hostile way or touching any of his stuff. Once you got Arnold-germs you were considered almost as bad as Arnold himself and subjected to taunts for a few days afterwards. Arnold seemed to take all of this pretty well for a few years. He was even considerate enough to step off a bit of pavement if you happened to step onto it, so that you’d be spared the burden of carrying his germs. But one day in year six, as he was walking down the corridor, someone must have said something – added a final straw to his load – and he put two palms against the plate-glass window and rammed his head through it. He stood there in a pool of shards, blood dripping from his scalp and no one said anything until Alex Loke yelled out, ‘Hey, it’s Wong King Kong!’ Alex Loke wasn’t a dickhead in my book, he was my mate (aka Lokey) and he was no different to any of us. We laughed nervously and then a teacher came running down the corridor and questions were asked and Arnold was sent to the principal’s office via the sick bay. Afterwards, everything carried on like it always had, except with the occasional yell of ‘Hey Wong King Kong, there’s a window – why don’t you put your head through it?’ I’m not going to pretend I was any different. I said crap to him. I pelted him with spitballs. It was dangerous not to.

  It would be nice to say that we hit high school and things changed for Arnold. But traditions stuck, rituals stuck. No one ever sat next to Arnold on the bus. It was bullshit and it was pathetic but I was also part of it.

  The bus rounded a corner and my knee touched Lucy’s. (She was wearing black tights; she wore them every day of the school year, no matter what the weather was like. She once said no girl over the age of fourteen should wear ankle socks.) We were approaching the school and I didn’t want to get off the bus.

  ‘Is this nuclear missile fiasco actually something we have to worry about?’ Lucy asked. ‘Haven’t loads of countries tested nuclear weapons?’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s who’s doing the testing that’s the worry, apparently. My mum’s a bit paranoid about it. Disasters are her speciality.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘Yeah, she has a PhD in disaster response management or something. Works with the government and the defence force on strategies to stop human extinction if there’s a natural disaster. Or nuclear disaster. She’s a real light-hearted sort of person.’

  ‘Sounds like it. Not a job I’d envy. What would you do anyway? In the event that the whole human population faces extinction?’

  ‘Are there zombies involved?’

  ‘No zombies.’

  ‘Is Will Smith there?’

  ‘No Will Smith.’

  ‘Bear Grylls?’

  ‘No Bear Grylls either, my friend. Just your sorry skinny arse. I’m serious. What would you do?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’d try to help my family, I guess. Beyond that? I really don’t know. You’re putting a kind of dampener on my morning with this stuff, you know that?’

  ‘I’d say your morning was already on the damp side.’

  ‘Very clever. What would you do? Mass destruction, you’ve only got a screwdriver and a box of sultanas on hand. Go.’

  ‘Sultanas? Eeeew. I would stab the nearest person with the screwdriver and eat them instead of the sultanas.’

  ‘You don’t really do things by halves.’

  She laughed and I liked that I could make her do that. ‘Precisely, my friend. Seriously, should we be worried? And would the government even tell us if we should be? I think they’d put on a smiley face just to avoid panic.’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

  ‘Are you going to the march tomorrow?’

  There was a march planned for the city. The idea being that if enough people turned up with placards our government would impose trade sanctions against the offending country.

  ‘Dunno. It’s not as if the government’s going to notice. And as if they’d stop testing missiles just because Australia doesn’t want to play any more.’

  ‘You don’t think there’s any point.’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Right. What do you think would happen if everyone had that attitude? Apathy is what leads to this stuff in the first place.’ She wasn’t smiling any more.

  ‘I take it you’re going?’

  ‘Yes I am.’

  ‘And your opinion of me has just plummeted.’

  She narrowed her eyes and gave me a half smile. ‘Yes, but not beyond repair.’

  The bus pulled up at the school. We got off and started to walk in together.

  Lucy nodded toward my sketchbook. I carried it under my arm in the hope it made me look thoughtful.

  ‘Give me a look,’ she said.

  ‘What? Nah. It’s boring as.’

  Her mouth again curved into that mischievous smile. It was a total turn-on and she knew it. ‘Come on, a peek.’

  ‘Nah. Hey, did we have homework for English?’

  ‘You’re trying to change the subject.’

  ‘I’m not, I––’

  She reached over, snatched the sketchbook away and skipped a few metres ahead. She opened it up and my heart ended up somewhere near my tonsils.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, trying to laugh convincingly. ‘Come on, hand it over. You don’t want to see it, it’s crap.’

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that, thank you very much.’

  ‘It’s just roughs for my major work – a graphic novel. The characters are based on people I know.’

  ‘Is that guy our bus driver?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Wow. You’re right, it is crap.’

  ‘Hey!’ I elbowed her and she laughed.

  ‘I’m joking. It’s really good.’

  She kept leafing through the pages, they were dog-eared and almost etched through with ink where I’d reworked stuff over and over. I tried to get the book back but she dodged away and kept looking. I swallowed hard.

  ‘That’s all really, there’s nothing else . . .’

  And then she got to the page. She stopped walking. I felt myself melting with embarrassment. I wanted to seep into the ground. She looked at the drawing without speaking. I’d sketched her one day when I was sitting behind her on the bus. It was of the side of her face and neck. My breath felt all boxed up and tight in my chest.

  She turned her lovely eyes up to me and bit her lip.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m not stalking you, really. There’s this famous drawing by a French guy, Toulouse-Lautrec. It’s a profile of a woman called Madame Lucy. I was thinking about it once when I was sitting behind you and . . . I’m sorry.’

  She smiled slowly. ‘Well, it’s not very good,’ she said. ‘I’m
not that pretty.’

  I gently took the book from her. ‘I’ll be the judge of that.’

  She grinned and looked away. Then she elbowed me in the ribs. We walked in silence until we got to her homeroom for roll call.

  ‘If your mum calls and tells you that chaos is going to break out, will you let me know?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ll let you know. Bring your screwdriver.’

  She smiled.

  ‘See you after homeroom?’ I asked.

  ‘Indeed.’

  Our school was one of those classy places built in the seventies: brick buildings with tiny windows and ceiling fans instead of air conditioning. The rooms smelt of pee and mildew, and were carpeted in industrial polyester carpet the colour of baby vomit. What the place lacked in style it made up for in location: the grounds were carved into the top of a mountain ridge and overlooked a valley of bush. Instead of the standard tree-less bitumen grounds of most schools, we had acres of grass and trees. (Too many trees – the science block fried in a bushfire three years ago.) The room I was in for homeroom was right on the edge of the bush. In summer it was a sweatbox and the air was so shrill with cicadas Mr Effrez would swear at them and shut the windows. In winter it was quiet and we were lucky each period was only forty-five minutes because any longer sitting in one spot and you’d freeze your arse off.

  Lokey was already inside when I got to homeroom. He was in the back row, his usual position. His feet were up on the desk, which meant Effrez was nowhere to be seen, yet.

  ‘Hey,’ he said.

  I dropped my bag and took a seat next to him.

  ‘Hey.’ I tried to appear casual.

  ‘What’s up? Your grin is freakin’ me out, man.’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Oh, come on.’ Lokey jabbed me in the arm. ‘Is it a chick? Who? What have you done?’

  ‘A gentleman never tells,’ I said.

  ‘Serious?’

  ‘Serious.’

  ‘You are a total wanker,’ Lokey said and took his feet off the desk as Effrez walked in the room.