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“You’ve already used it. Anyway, as a consequence of how I was treated I have chosen to act in the exact opposite way, so I’m sticking by ‘consequently.’”
“If I send Raffaela over to help these kids, then will you come?”
“Raffaela’s probably sitting there helping your year eights.”
“Naturally.”
More silence. Humility now has to give way to begging.
“Ben, my first seven days on this job are over and I have nothing to show for it. In the past, our leaders have always made contact with the Cadets and succeeded in at least re-establishing boundaries. I don’t even know what to say to these guys. I’m admitting that to you, and I don’t know why I’m admitting it to you.”
“Because you have no respect for me and you don’t care whether I think you’re weak or not.”
I resign myself to the fact that I’m down to one ally: Raffaela. But Raffaela isn’t a House leader, she’s my second-in-charge, and there’s no way she can save me from defeat at the hands of Richard and his five signatures.
“Fine,” I say, turning away. I make it to the bottom stair and turn to find him still there at the door. “And for your own information, I don’t know whether I have respect for you. But I chose you over Richard and the others because I trust you. That’s my motive and at this moment, trust is beating anything else in my life and if it’s not good enough for you then I don’t know what to say.” I begin walking.
“What’s in it for me?” he calls out.
“Nothing,” I call back to him. “I’m not even going to pretend there is.”
He catches up with me. “No. That’s what you have to say to them when you negotiate. I always used to hear the leader say it. ‘What’s in it for me?’”
He keeps on walking farther away from his House and I experience a sense of relief when we reach the clearing and he’s still with me. My stomach begins to twitch and I realise I’m nervous about the prospect of the Cadets.
“We could be lucky,” Ben says, sensing my nervousness. “They might be carving up a pig they’ve just slaughtered for di
“—as a consequence?”
“—Won’t be interested in us lurking around.”
I’m unconvinced.
We’re out there for quite a while, marking the map with all the important checkpoints. For most of the year we don’t have to worry about boundaries, but come September the map is our bible. I follow its instructions and I don’t realise how close I am to the edge of the ridge until Ben grabs my shirt and pulls me back. But I like being this close. Just one step and those cauliflower trees below could bounce me right back up again.
Ben is staring at me. “Are you blind? You almost went over.”
I’m about to tell him not to be ridiculous when he holds up a hand.
“Did you hear that?” he whispers.
“What?”
“That?”
He looks at me and I open my mouth to say something but he puts two taped fingers to his lips. “I think we’ve crossed the boundary without realising,” he continues, whispering.
“According to the map, this eucalyptus tree is the boundary.”
“According to the map there are two trees this size and we passed the other one about ten minutes ago.”
I stand still for a moment. Birds sing, trees rustle in the wind, but there’s something else. The feeling of being crowded in, despite one hundred acres of bush around us, stretching as far as the eye can see.
I hold up one finger, then two, then three, and we bolt. But not even one step later I’m flying through the air. I make contact with the ground in no time, face first in an exfoliation of dirt, leaving my face feeling scratched and bruised.
I try to kneel but I realise that some kind of trap has grabbed hold of my foot and then I see the boot in front of me. Big, black, laced-up, army regular, polished clean, with the ability to wipe out a whole universe of ants in one step. I look a tiny bit farther up and I see the khaki pants tucked in but I stop there. This is not the position I want to be in for this meeting. So I keep my eyes forward as I slowly raise myself, and then we’re eye to eye, give or take the ten centimetres he has on me.
Jonah Griggs is a tank. His face is blunter, meaner than I remember. Hair cropped. Eyes cold. Arms folded. He has perfected the art of looking straight at someone while avoiding eye contact.
Two of his Cadets have Ben by the arm and I can tell by the look on Ben’s face and the angle of their strongholds that he’s in pain.
“Let him go,” I say.
Jonah Griggs looks over my head, as though he’s contemplating my request. As if. He ponders for a moment, placing his thumb and finger on his chin, and then shakes his head.
“Maybe another time,” he says, his voice so unlike the one about to break three years ago.
“We might just take him around for a tour of the boundaries and when he comes back, he can pass them on to you,” his second-in-command says.
“I’d prefer you took me for that tour.”
Jonah Griggs feigns contemplation again and leans forward as if he didn’t hear but still there’s no eye contact.
So I grab his face and look straight in his eyes and it’s like a punch in the gut holding that stare. “You want to make this personal, Jonah? Then let him go.”
I don’t know what possesses me to say his name but it slips off my tongue easily and I watch him flinch.
“No deal,” Ben calls out. “I don’t go without you.”
“That is very touching,” Jonah Griggs says, shaking free of my hand. “There is so much love in this space.”
Ben blows him a kiss and all hell breaks loose. The impact of boots on fingers makes it clear what happened the night before. I jump on Jonah Griggs’s back but I can’t even pull his hair because Cadet regulation haircut doesn’t allow for it. He shrugs me off easily and I land on the ground for the second time in less than five minutes.
“What happened to the scary folk that we were warned about?” he mocks, looking down at me. “You and the Townies are making this too easy for us.”
“You want scary? We can do scary.” I pick myself up. “Let’s go,” I say to Ben, who is almost speechless from the pain.
“Scare me, then,” I hear Jonah Griggs say.
I turn around to face him. “The treaty? The one that says we control any access with water? The one that you guys have been able to violate for the last four years because there has been no water? Well, while you were away it rained. That means there’s a river. That means you have no access unless we give it to you. That means you are restricted to a tenth of the land you’ve been used to using in the past.”
“So what are you saying?”
“This is war.”
Griggs shrugs arrogantly. “Well, I guess we’re better dressed for it.”
Chapter 8
She stood at Webb’s door: Tate, with the wild hair and the grin that went on forever. Sometimes Webb believed that he would never experience a better feeling than when he was looking at her, would never see anything or anybody bursting with more life and spirit. Sometimes he felt he needed to inhale it and place it in a storage area in his soul. Just in case.
When he said that to Tate she’d be perplexed. “But Webb, I’m like this because of you. You’re everything to me.”
On Narnie’s sad days, he wished he could be all that to her, too.
“Is that what you want?” his sister had asked once while they sat dangling their feet in the river.
“In a different way because you’re my sister but yeah. If it keeps you happy…or wanting to live, yeah, I’d want to be everything to you.”
“You do all the work, Webb,” she said tiredly. “Don’t you get sick of that?”
He shook his head. “Not if you and Tate are okay.”
“But what happens to all of us when you’re not okay? What then? We’ll become pathetic. Even more than I am now. So why would I want someone to be my everything when one day they might not be around? What will be left of me then?”