Claire Zorn - The Sky So Heavy

‘Depends what you class as the other side of the world. It’s a bit too close for comfort in my book.’

‘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.’