Lifespan of Starlight Read online

  Life can only be understood backwards;

  but it has to be lived forwards.

  Søren Kierkegaard

  To Campbell

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  JUST STEPPING OFF the curb takes all the courage I have. An intake of air and I bail out, my toes gripping the soles of my boots for all I’m worth and the rest of me teetering over the edge. A car flashes past and I jump back. That was close.

  From a distance comes the high-pitched hum of another one. But from which direction? These stupid smartcars are so fast; you’re still registering that one is coming when it’s already on top of you. The hum rises in pitch until, voom. A flash of metal and the rush of air. Right to left.

  I make a note. That’s the sound I’ll need to recognise if I’m going to make it across. But then, another. Voom. The same hum, except this one is left to right. I didn’t pick the difference.

  Come on, Scout. You can do it. But still I don’t move. Instead I check over my shoulder in case someone’s coming who will trigger the crossing point for me. During the day that’s all it would take. Just hang around until someone walks up. But it’s late now, after ten, and who would be heading over to the park at this hour? For a start, it’s locked.

  My fists clench, trying to muster the strength, a barrier maybe against those speeding metal bullets. Another car zooms past. This is so stupid.

  I’m going to die.

  I could make it across easy if I had my compad, though by ‘my’ I really mean Mum’s old one. Calling it my lifeline is no understatement. I’ve set up a shortcut that triggers a crossing point the same as if I were chipped, complete with a cleanup bot that removes any trace of me hacking into the system.

  But the compad is still sitting in a dock next to the door at home. In my anger, I didn’t grab it on my way out like I normally do automatically. But even when I realised I didn’t have it, I couldn’t go back. Not after what I’d said to Mum.

  I don’t need your help anymore, all right? I can handle it on my own …

  Even the memory of it makes me cringe. She actually did a double-take when I said that, she was so surprised. Disappointed, maybe, too. But even after all that Mum’s done for me, all that she’s given up, I still wasn’t expecting her to suggest what she did.

  The memory of our argument lifts my resolve, as if crossing the road is a way to prove that I can handle it all on my own. To Mum, but also to myself.

  There’s just the small matter of working out how.

  When I next pick a car in the distance, I count under my breath until it flashes past. Three cats-and-dogs. That means three seconds is the time I’ll have to bolt across two lanes to the centre of the road. Could I do that? Maybe.

  I just have to go for it, I decide.

  One foot in front of the other, arms ready, a sprinter at the starting line: my eyes focus on the raised median strip in the middle of the road. It seems so close.

  Another car flashes past, left to right. As soon as it’s out of earshot, my ears buzz with the strain of listening for more hums.

  None.

  So I bolt. Across two empty lanes to my island refuge in the centre of the road. Panting, but safe. Too easy. I feel stupid to have waited so long.

  An alarm sounds, and I realise my mistake. It must have a movement sensor set up to detect stray dogs that might wander onto the road. The screech of it fills my mind with blind panic. This is bad. Can’t let them see I’m not a dog. The next thing I know I’m sprinting across the final two lanes, my only thought to escape any traffic cameras.

  At the back of it all, I also hear another sound – a high-pitched hum drawing closer. A smartcar is coming straight at me.

  I turn to see the approaching lights as I run, and in that split second the whole world seems to stall. Each moment feels like a million, everything happening in slow motion.

  As soon as my foot touches the curb, everything snaps back to normal. The alarm goes quiet, but as the car passes, I get this flash of some guy who’s just glanced up from his screen, his mouth in a zero as he sees that it was me on the road. This basically sums up the story of my life: stuck on the outside, looking in. A stray on the edge of society.

  I cringe and do this awkward wave that’s meant to mean: my mistake … But the car is gone before the guy has time to react. I don’t hang around, just head straight for my gap in the fence and slip through into Footscray Park. Made it.

  Here at least, there’s somewhere I can relax. If you cut across the garden bed near the main entrance you’ll come to a section of retaining wall that has crumbled, collapsing in on itself to form a broad cave. Inside, the walls are damp from the trickle of an underground spring that must have washed away soil and mortar over the years. Lucky for me you can’t see a thing from the path because the whole lot is hidden behind spiky bushes and the thick trunk of a ghost gum.

  I discovered the cave years ago when I was hiding from a park council worker after scooping a bucket of water from the Maribyrnong Canal. He didn’t bother chasing me, of course. He didn’t need to. He just triggered an alarm on his compad to alert the police. Then he looked for my chip on the grid so he could tag it with a crim suspect stamp.

  What the park council worker didn’t know, unhappily for him, is that I’m illegal which means I’m not chipped. My wrist is as smooth as the day I was born. The only reason I’m alive is that Mum bribed her GP into signing a form saying that she’d had an abortion. So all I had to do when the council worker triggered the alarm was find a half-decent hiding place and I was totally off-grid.

  I didn’t want to lose any water from the bucket by running so I did this weird sort of speed walk, taking care to hold the bucket high and in both hands. I even remember glancing over my shoulder and calling ‘sorry’ as I escaped up the path because, you know, even though I’m illegal I’m not a bad person.

  The guy didn’t even look up though. He just kept frowning at his compad, not getting it at all, wasting time tapping at his screen before he realised that in order to catch me he had to actually watch where I went. I was only planning to crouch behind those spiky bushes but once I did, I discovered the cave, complete with underground spring.

  I haven’t had to steal from the canal since then. The water is achingly cold and tastes faintly of moss, way better than anything that comes out of the potable tap in our room. But it’s not just thirst that draws me to the cave tonight.

  I need space to think.

  The first thing I notice as I duck into the cave is that my picnic blanket has been moved. Lately I’ve been spending more time in here and I’ve stashed a few things away. Blanket. Water container. Pocket
knife and hand shovel from when I tried to grow potatoes and failed.

  There’s not much moonlight to see by, but my eyes adjust quickly. As they do, I freeze. The blanket has been moved because someone is lying under it.

  Slowly I back away, ready to run. For all I know, the woman under the blanket is a council worker in disguise. I’m almost out of the cave when something changes about the woman. Maybe it’s a play of shadows, but her frame appears to flicker, as if she’s a hologram or something. Even though I’m not sure what just happened, it’s enough to make me stop.

  When she comes into focus again, the woman breathes in quickly, her cracked lips lifting gently at the corners. Her face is so far out of step with the state of her body that still I just stare. She’s little more than a bag of bones, way skinnier than I am. One cheek is cracked and bleeding. And yet, her expression …

  It’s complete and utter bliss.

  I stumble forwards and drop to my knees, reaching for her hand and then pulling back when I see two of its fingers are swollen and black. My hand lands on a bony shoulder instead.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I ask, which is about the dumbest thing anyone could say because clearly she is anything but all right.

  Her eyes shift my way but her only response is to pant.

  ‘I’ll call for help. Where’s your compad?’ I lift the blanket to search then drop it after an eyeful of skin and a whole face full of stale sweat stink. Fantastic. The woman is naked and the number of compads between the two of us is a sum total of zero.

  ‘Listen,’ I lean closer, trying not to breathe in her stench. How do I explain to her that I don’t have my compad? It’s like trying to tell her that I forgot to bring my left arm. ‘I have to go and get help, okay? I’ll come back …’ I say it loudly, as if making the words clear will somehow help her understand.

  She turns my way slowly as if only now aware I’m here, so I try again. ‘I’ll go and get help, okay?’

  Her smile – that strange expression of bliss – fades slightly and her lips part to let out the faintest breath. ‘No.’

  ‘Listen, I left my compad at home. I have no way to get help. I have to go –’

  ‘No,’ she manages again, firmer this time. Then, still weak, ‘Please. Stay.’

  Every cell in my brain is telling me this woman needs to be in hospital. Even the smell about her is wrong. The stench of death. But she keeps her eyes on me as if waiting for my response, a promise. And so I tuck one foot under my butt, terrified of what I’m saying. ‘Okay. I’m here.’

  Her eyes track away from me once I say that. She seems to concentrate on something, her breathing slow and deliberate. I hold onto the sound.

  I’m not sure how long we stay that way but it feels like ages. Each second draws out longer than the last. We reach a point when her breathing changes, seems to fade and almost stop, and I find myself watching her chest for movement.

  After a while I begin to wonder whether she’s even aware that I’m here. Maybe I could sneak away and call for help. But something keeps me. She wanted me to stay, and even though there’s a difference between what she wants and what she needs, I keep my promise. Maybe because I know better than anyone how it feels to be alone. Or maybe because part of me knows I wouldn’t make it back in time.

  At one point I think I hear a sigh, though perhaps it’s just a gust of wind.

  I don’t pick the exact moment, but there comes a time when I realise that she isn’t breathing anymore. We barely shared more than a few sentences but the sense of loss settles around me like a mist. The woman asked me to stay; now she’s the one who has gone.

  For a long time I stay like that, by her side. It’s only when dawn light starts to shine dimly through the mouth of the cave that I move stiffly, reaching out to lift the blanket over her face. One arm is resting across her stomach on top of the blanket so I hesitate, deciding whether to move the arm beneath the blanket as well or leave her as she is.

  In the early morning light I can clearly see a single line about a centimetre long on the back of her wrist – the telltale scar where a chip was inserted, the mark of a citizen.

  I find myself staring at it as an idea snakes inside me. If I hadn’t argued with Mum last night, I might never have thought of this. Part of me is shocked at myself for even considering it.

  But another, more determined part of me knows that when the time comes, I’ll do it.

  * * *

  Our argument last night began with yet another dance around the last chunk of bread.

  Mum started it. ‘You have it, Scout.’

  ‘No, no. It’s all yours.’ My usual response.

  We were sitting in front of the comscreen, plates in our laps, picking through news segments that wouldn’t put us off our food. Already I’d scrolled past a famine crisis overseas, as well as a massive fire in central New South Wales. I skipped over two war reports without pausing. There’s always loads of stuff on about the war in East Asia.

  ‘Please. I want you to have it.’ Mum placed the chunk on my plate but I shook my head and dropped it back on hers without taking my eyes off the screen.

  Mum’s a federal citizen, chipped and everything. She’s tertiary qualified too, which means she gets full C-grade rations – more than enough food for a woman her size and enough second-level water for a shower every other day. It’s the sort of lifestyle that many people would envy I guess, especially if you compare it to someone on school leaver’s rations. But split Mum’s rations in two, for her and her illegal teenage daughter, and suddenly there’s barely enough. Water used to be our main problem, but since I found the underground spring, food has taken over as our scarcest resource.

  ‘Coutlyn, please. Take it,’ Mum said, her voice rising.

  I glanced over at her and shook my head, the insistence in her tone only making me more determined.

  ‘You’re not hungry?’ she asked incredulously.

  Of course I was hungry. I always am. I don’t care what anyone says, you never get used to it. The deep hollowness that is never filled, and the constant tiredness, nobody could get used to that. But our conversation wasn’t really about hunger; it wasn’t even about food.

  As if it’s not enough to know how much Mum had to give up in order to keep me, every day I also have to see her fade a little more because she shares her food rations with me. The older I’ve grown, the skinnier she’s become. Seeing that does strange things to your mind.

  When Mum finally realised I wasn’t going to take the last chunk of bread, she let out a long sigh and clicked her fingers to switch the comscreen channel.

  Of all things to bring up, it was an ad about treatments that speed the recovery of chip scars on the wrists of newborns.

  I couldn’t help a snort at one of the words they kept repeating: unsightly. Where do they get off?

  ‘What do you think?’ Mum asked once the ad was over.

  A shrug. ‘Each to their own.’

  ‘I’ve been saving up.’

  ‘You’re worried about your chip scar?’ I didn’t get her meaning at first.

  ‘No.’ And she said it so bluntly, so cleanly, that I knew what she was going to say before she’d even said it, knew it like a freight train charging right at me:

  ‘I’ve been saving up for you.’

  Now that I thought about it, I realised she’d been dropping hints for weeks. Scary stuff about the way adult illegals are treated, and how important it is for me to register in the education system if I’m to have any chance of landing a job. But honestly, despite the looming registration date for the select-entry test, I hadn’t seen this coming.

  Mum wanted to give me her chip, transfer her citizenship
to me, so I could finally go to school.

  ‘You can’t have a fresh scar as a fourteen-year-old,’ said Mum.

  Already I was shaking my head.‘No way.’

  ‘Listen.’ Mum flicked off the comscreen and leaned forward in her chair. ‘We already survive on one person’s rations. Nothing has to change except you’ll be the one who’s chipped.’

  ‘No, Mum.’

  ‘It’s your turn now, understand? I’ve been reading up, it’s a simple procedure. Nothing has to change.’

  ‘No.’ How many times did I have to say it? ‘You can’t even get to work without your chip. That’s not even an option. I can sort it out some other way.’

  ‘How, Scout? Registration for the test closes in five days.’

  ‘I’ll still register with your chip, okay? There is no difference because it’s going to stay in your wrist. Where it belongs.’

  ‘And then they’ll map me going to work when you’re meant to be going to school?’

  ‘No. I’m going to fix that.’

  ‘How, Scout? How? You really want to risk them finding out you’re illegal? Once you register in the school system you won’t be off-grid anymore. You realise how much more dangerous that will be?’

  ‘You want to start lecturing me about being off-grid?’ I yelled. The tone in her voice was scaring me. ‘I’m the one who has to live with it every day, okay? I’m the one who knows what it’s like. Not you!’

  Thinking back, I hate the way that must have sounded. How ungrateful must she think I am? I tried to soften my tone. ‘Even something as simple as crossing the street is hard. You realise that?’ I said carefully.

  ‘Okay,’ Mum was already nodding. ‘Then teach me. What do I have to do? I’m going to have to learn –’

  But the idea of Mum out there without a chip stuck right in my heart. Before I could stop myself, I stood up and let the frustration fly.

  ‘No you won’t, because I won’t take your chip! Never! I don’t need your help anymore, all right? I can handle it on my own.’