Pasha Malla - People Park

Belly! Heads up, here comes the We-TV crew.

A Recruit sidled up with a camera. Starx hauled Olpert under his arm, displayed him with paternal pride, and beamed into the lens. Me and my man Belly here, Raven, if you end up watching this, we’re gonna make this the best weekend you ever had. Welcome to our fair city! He squeezed Olpert roughly. Anything to add, Belly?

Olpert Bailie looked at his hands. His fingernails dug ridges into his palms. Bailie, he whispered. My name’s Olpert Bailie.

Best weekend you ever had, Raven, repeated Starx, through a teeth-gritted smile.

The Recruit moved off to shoot a pair of Helpers by the Citypass cache playing tug-of-war with a lanyard. Starx fixed Olpert with a stare. Hey, dingledink, I know you’ve been away awhile but we use patronyms in this here outfit. Everyone’s first name Gregory, last name whatever — in your case, Belly. Got it?

Olpert tried to meet Starx’s eyes. But they were hard eyes to meet, twitching over everything but settling nowhere. What did they see?

CALUM WATCHED the gingery man highstepping his way through the mud to the bottom of the hill, where he did a salute sort of thing over his eyes, squinted, and, in a voice like a feebly blown flugelhorn, told them they needed to leave the park. School time! he said.

From the top of the hill one of Calum’s friends said, We’ve got the morning off.

Well the morning’s over, right? said the man. He wore a nametag: Belly.

Grumblings, mild protest, but there had already been talk of going to school. Calum felt apart from them, from everything, standing there alone at the edge of the orchard.

He looked past Belly, into the sun, high above the treetops now. When he’d been little, Cora had told him never to look at it directly, it could blind you. So now he stared not just at but into the sun. He wouldn’t go blind. Nothing would happen to him. But after a few seconds Calum looked away, blinking and queasy.

THE NIGHT AFTER being suspended for skipping class Calum lay awake in bed until his mother’s gentle snores came wisping down the hallway. He tiptoed out the door, slid his shoes on in the stairwell, and, ducking in and out of shadows to evade Helper patrols, ran all the way to Whitehall, where he waited by the loading dock. Past one a.m., past two, to that nothing hour when the moon sagged and dimmed and the night became infinite. It was only then they appeared from underground, a faceless hoodied mob toting cans of paint and rollers.

From behind someone grabbed his shoulders and Calum tensed — but the Hand was leaning in, the soft warmth of her cheek upon his cheek. So you’re with us? she whispered in his ear, and Calum told her, Yes.

He’d been delirious with it, the silent stealthy rigour of the herd slipping through the streets, so many of them, he stayed at the Hand’s side. It was random yet purposeful: someone picked a window and someone else unfolded a stepladder and up Calum went, taping the top of the frame and around its upper corners while someone else did the bottom. Then the painters stepped forward with their rollers and the quiet filled with the zipping sound of acrylic pasted over glass, and when they were done Calum tore off the tape and there it was: a blackup. And on to the next window, wherever it might be.

Time disappeared. Calum lost count of the blackups. He felt giddy. At some point the night began fading, he’d just finished taping the vitrines that fronted a pretentious hardware store. When he came down the Hand told him, This’ll be the last one, and pressed close and her breast was against his arm and she said, Fun, right? and he said, Yes, and she laughed and went off to gather the troops.

Calum admired their final piece, the big bright window negated into a dead black thing. He patted the wet paint and transferred a handprint to the wall. Stepping back he saw himself in the five-fingered outline on the bricks and thought how being a person was at once such a big incomprehensible thing and so, so small.

But the Hand had returned to curse him: What are you doing, that’s not how we do it. She spat. You think you’re special? You don’t get it, we’re all part of this, no one’s above anyone else.

She turned her back on him. Everything withered. The group tramped away and so did the Hand and Calum stood there deserted in the middle of D Street while the sky lightened into morning, his handprint growing more stark and black and stupid as the bricks around it blanched, and knew he was a fool.

YOU TOO, OKAY? said the man, Belly, to Calum. Time to go to school.

At the top of the hill Edie and everyone else were waiting for him. Above them, rising out of Orchard Parkway towered the Redline Station. But why go? Being suspended had been liberating, all that time alone with his thoughts.

Hey? said Belly.

He was about Calum’s mother’s age. He was struggling to be brave, something he wasn’t. He couldn’t meet Calum’s eyes. You could tell he was no one.

Calum moved out of the shade. Belly wavered. From up the hill Edie called, Cal, hey, we’re going, let’s go.

Belly still wouldn’t look at him, he cast a sidelong glance over the common, muttered, Okay now, thanks a lot.

Calum took another step downhill, turned his head, hawked from deep in his throat, then spat a jiggling gob that landed at the man’s feet.

Hey, said Belly. But his voice was weak.

One of his classmates said, Did Calum just spit at that guy? and Edie called: Calum, hey! Calum, what are you doing?

Belly watched the spit foaming on the grass, the little bubbles popped one by one. For some reason, he closed his eyes. He swayed.

Calum hawked again and spat. Belly flinched as it struck him in the cheek, but his eyes stayed shut. Edie screamed. Yet she didn’t come running down the slope. In fact there was a sudden emptiness to the air that suggested she and the rest of their friends had fled. How did Calum feel? He couldn’t feel anything.

His spit wiggled down Belly’s face.

And then from somewhere came a sudden rush of something swift and huge. A second figure in the same beige shirt was steaming up the slope, and Calum barely had time to cringe before a fist caught him in the face. A sparkle of lights, his legs gave way, the earth swam up to catch him, cool and damp. An enormous pair of legs stood over him — black sneakers and khaki trousers — and from high above a deep godlike voice boomed: You fug with my man Belly? You’re nothing, you hear me? You’re nothing, nothing, nothing, you’re fuggin nothing.

ITH JEREMIAH nuzzling her feet, Adine channel-upped past people showing off their musical skills, giving hotplate cooking lessons and walking tours of their neighbourhoods, hawking used electronics, performing standup routines, etc., all those endless lonely voices, each one calling into We-TV’s echoless ether, all the way to 73, where the woman, Faye Rowan-Morganson, drained and draining and tragically fascinating, the lure of a stranger’s tragedy, was just beginning her daily introduction.

Well it’s Monday, she sighed, welcome to The Fate of Faye Rowan-Morganson . Though if anyone’s even watching, for you it’s Thursday by now. I hope you’re having a better Thursday than my Monday anyway. I’m having a hard day.

A pause, which Adine, seeing nothing, had to fill with her imagination. Maybe Faye Rowan-Morganson was just staring into the camera, at herself reflected in the lens. Maybe she had stepped out of frame for a moment, maybe she was getting a drink. Adine raised the volume a couple clicks and listened for the knock of a mug or glass placed back on the kitchen table.