too late. ‘Sorry. I bet she’s glad you’re home to take care of her.’ I got up and steadied the swing. To hide the heat in my face I said, nastily, ‘Nice chatting with you.’
Jeremiah took the longest breath. I started walking as he began talking, fast, like he couldn’t stop.
‘Home,’ he repeated. ‘I kicked dirt into that hole two years, two hundred and twelve days ago. Yes, I’m counting. Did you have Mrs Denton at school? I liked her. When I was ten, she told the class to write three hundred words about Mobius. Easy enough. At that time, our population was nine hundred and seventy-two. Also, a week before that, Mrs Denton put her hand on my shoulder. I shrugged her off because I can’t stand people touching me, and since then she’d been giving me these wounded looks. I felt bad. She was nice.’
‘She was nice,’ I murmured but he kept on, drawling, staring ahead like he was reading from a teleprompter.
‘I wrote three whole pages, which was above and beyond the requirement, except I never mentioned our town’s name. I wrote a lot about sheep tails…well, lamb tails, because sheep don’t have them. When the lambs are a few days old, the farmer puts a small rubbery band around the tail, about four or five centimetres from its base. A few minutes later, the lambs take off on a crazy lap around the paddock trying to shake this thing off. Eventually, the tail goes numb, and after about ten days it dies. The tail, not the lamb. It sounds barbaric, but if you don’t dock them, they get flyblown, which is—apparently—infinitely more distressing than having your tail drop off in a paddock. I wrote about Mercy Loop, except—and again, maybe I was too obtuse here—I didn’t mention the name. I wrote about how Mercy Loop folds back onto itself, so you come and go the same way, and then it diverts back onto the main highway. I detailed the impact the bypass road had on Mobius, but I may have veered into even deeper allegorical territory by likening it to a drip-feeding tube that keeps a brain-dead person alive. I even drew pictures.’
I slid back into the tyre swing and nodded politely, wanting it to be over, wishing I could end a conversation abruptly the way Trudy could. Or Astrid. Jeremiah had a mind like the White Rabbit—I couldn’t keep up.
‘You know, I still remember the look on Mrs Denton’s face when she read it. I knew I’d done something that couldn’t be undone. Mrs Denton called my mother and we waited for her on those sticky vinyl chairs outside Principal O’Malley’s office. I was terrified—it was the first time I’d ever been in there. Mrs Denton kept letting out these shaky sighs and shuffling the pages. Eventually, she said, “So, the part when you…you’re saying…cut off the road and the town will die and…?”. I was so proud. She’d got it. My stupid ten-year-old self beamed at her and said, “Yes! It would be kinder to the sheep!”’
‘I don’t get it,’ I said.
‘I was shunted forward a year at school. Then another. I was unable to say or write anything without scrutiny. My mother had been told that something wondrous—not plain old weird, as she suspected—had sprung from the murky Jolley gene pool, and so began my re-education. Expensive, fruitless music lessons, summer school, maths extensions, tutoring, even way-out-of-town appointments with a psychiatrist who slurped Cup-a-Soup between puerile questions and licked his beard like a cat.
‘When I was twelve, I had a continuing bout of diarrhoea and stomach cramps accompanied by fatigue and weight loss. Dr Ames said my symptoms were typical of a child with a nervous disposition. He told me it was all in my head. That afternoon I stole a toaster from his clinic’s staffroom and turned it into a defibrillator. I didn’t allow for the probability that his receptionist would be the toast-eater. She was okay, just shaken. I never claimed responsibility but somehow my mother knew, so she made
Jeremiah took the longest breath. I started walking as he began talking, fast, like he couldn’t stop.
‘Home,’ he repeated. ‘I kicked dirt into that hole two years, two hundred and twelve days ago. Yes, I’m counting. Did you have Mrs Denton at school? I liked her. When I was ten, she told the class to write three hundred words about Mobius. Easy enough. At that time, our population was nine hundred and seventy-two. Also, a week before that, Mrs Denton put her hand on my shoulder. I shrugged her off because I can’t stand people touching me, and since then she’d been giving me these wounded looks. I felt bad. She was nice.’
‘She was nice,’ I murmured but he kept on, drawling, staring ahead like he was reading from a teleprompter.
‘I wrote three whole pages, which was above and beyond the requirement, except I never mentioned our town’s name. I wrote a lot about sheep tails…well, lamb tails, because sheep don’t have them. When the lambs are a few days old, the farmer puts a small rubbery band around the tail, about four or five centimetres from its base. A few minutes later, the lambs take off on a crazy lap around the paddock trying to shake this thing off. Eventually, the tail goes numb, and after about ten days it dies. The tail, not the lamb. It sounds barbaric, but if you don’t dock them, they get flyblown, which is—apparently—infinitely more distressing than having your tail drop off in a paddock. I wrote about Mercy Loop, except—and again, maybe I was too obtuse here—I didn’t mention the name. I wrote about how Mercy Loop folds back onto itself, so you come and go the same way, and then it diverts back onto the main highway. I detailed the impact the bypass road had on Mobius, but I may have veered into even deeper allegorical territory by likening it to a drip-feeding tube that keeps a brain-dead person alive. I even drew pictures.’
I slid back into the tyre swing and nodded politely, wanting it to be over, wishing I could end a conversation abruptly the way Trudy could. Or Astrid. Jeremiah had a mind like the White Rabbit—I couldn’t keep up.
‘You know, I still remember the look on Mrs Denton’s face when she read it. I knew I’d done something that couldn’t be undone. Mrs Denton called my mother and we waited for her on those sticky vinyl chairs outside Principal O’Malley’s office. I was terrified—it was the first time I’d ever been in there. Mrs Denton kept letting out these shaky sighs and shuffling the pages. Eventually, she said, “So, the part when you…you’re saying…cut off the road and the town will die and…?”. I was so proud. She’d got it. My stupid ten-year-old self beamed at her and said, “Yes! It would be kinder to the sheep!”’
‘I don’t get it,’ I said.
‘I was shunted forward a year at school. Then another. I was unable to say or write anything without scrutiny. My mother had been told that something wondrous—not plain old weird, as she suspected—had sprung from the murky Jolley gene pool, and so began my re-education. Expensive, fruitless music lessons, summer school, maths extensions, tutoring, even way-out-of-town appointments with a psychiatrist who slurped Cup-a-Soup between puerile questions and licked his beard like a cat.
‘When I was twelve, I had a continuing bout of diarrhoea and stomach cramps accompanied by fatigue and weight loss. Dr Ames said my symptoms were typical of a child with a nervous disposition. He told me it was all in my head. That afternoon I stole a toaster from his clinic’s staffroom and turned it into a defibrillator. I didn’t allow for the probability that his receptionist would be the toast-eater. She was okay, just shaken. I never claimed responsibility but somehow my mother knew, so she made
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