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My mind had a habit of wandering. It raced off on a tangent and I had no idea where my thoughts would lead me. I would think of what I had to do, I wondered if I was doing what I was supposed to, and I remembered things of the past. My brain was like that, it never shut up.

  What I worried about most was the future and my role in it. I had a big job to do but I’d known that since I was born. My life existed for one purpose and I had to fulfill my duties, my entire race depended on it.

  But who was stupid enough to put a bunch of kids in charge of their people’s future? We were just babies when we were chosen, how did they know what we would grow into? Why did they have to choose us and not some other group of babies? I wished I could find the answers but I guessed I never would. It’s not like I could go back, not now when we were so close.

  “Amery Jones and Lochlan Mercury.” The teacher’s voice brought me crashing back to reality. I looked around in a panic, why did he say my name and why did he say it in the same sentence as Lochie’s? Was I dreaming it?

  “No, I want a reassignment.” Lochie’s eyes were just as wide and fearful as my own as he begged Mr. Moore to turn back time and undo our pairing.

  “I second that,” I added. Surely out of the twenty people in the classroom, I didn’t have to be paired with that arrogant jerk. Anyone else, seriously.

  “I said Amery Jones and Lochlan Mercury,” Mr. Moore repeated, staring at both of us in turn. “I’m not changing anything. Perhaps you two working together will help you overcome your differences. See it as a life learning experience and grasp it with both hands.”

  He liked to be overly dramatic, but he did teach English so I guessed he had a reason to. Perhaps he had read too much Shakespeare in his career. I slumped back into my seat, ignoring the stormy look I got from Lochie. Like it was my fault we had to do our project together – I wasn’t even paying attention so I did nothing to bring this unpleasantness upon us.

  I tried to pay attention to the rest of the lesson, I knew I needed to know the particulars of the project but it was hard to imagine doing it with Lochie. We had known each other since we were little, we started school on the same day and had been in most classes together ever since.

  I think my hatred started for him that first day. He pushed me into the sandpit where I landed with a decisive thud. All of his newly acquired friends laughed at me. I didn’t have any friends to come to my aid so I just had to push myself out of the pit and dust off the sand. I think I’ve been dusting off that sand every day ever since. And it was all because of Lochie.

  I was supposed to be nice to everyone, that was part of the deal. I had to be kind, friendly, and lovable. If I was anything but, then I could potentially be removed from the project. When I was little I might have been okay with being pulled, but not now. Not after I’d spent seventeen years here.

  To lose my placing just because of Lochie would be like rubbing salt into my wounds – except a thousand times worse. So while I knew how I should act toward him, I still couldn’t. Not when one look at him made me want to pull my own eyeballs out of their sockets.

  When the bell rang, it was like a sweet symphony to my ears. I gathered up my stuff before I had to speak with Lochie, fearing he would come my way to discuss the project.

  But there was little chance of that as he scurried from the room. Typical. Whenever there was work to be done, Lochie Mercury was nowhere to be found. I would probably end up doing the entire project on my own. At least it would be right then.

  I caught up with Lola in the corridor as I got the rest of the books from my locker. My mind was already racing ahead to how much homework I had to do that night.

  “Good luck with your project pairing,” Lola teased me. I could only roll my eyes in response. She knew how much I couldn’t stand the guy. “I can’t wait to see what you two come up with.”

  “You mean me, when I have to do it all by myself at the last minute.”

  She laughed, a bit of a rare event. Lola liked to consider herself emo, which meant she was always moody and dark. At least that was the latest anyway. In the five years since I had known her, she’d tried her hand at gothic, retro, nerdy, and oddly enough, preppy. She’d tried all the sub-cultures, trying to find one that stuck. Emo was only the latest. If only she would work out that she was fantastic the way she was, I’m sure she’d be happier. Still, as a supportive best friend, I just accepted whatever she decided to be on any given day.

  “Why do you hate him so much, anyway?” She asked as she slammed her locker door. I did the same and we continued walking down the corridor. Other students bustled around us, everyone eager to get out the doors and go home.

  “Because he’s Lochie and he’s annoying,” I replied. Wasn’t that a good enough reason?

  “Nobody else finds him that annoying.”

  “Well, I guess they don’t know him like I do.”

  “But what specifically is it about him?” Lola continued, she never liked to give up on something that made me squirm. “There’s got to be something.”

  I tried to recall one event other than the sandpit incident. I came up short, despite how much I really wanted to find something in my memory I could latch onto.

  “I don’t know, I guess it’s a combination of everything.” Was that vague enough to get her off my back? I hoped so.

  “Well no-one else finds him that intolerable so perhaps he just knows how to press all your buttons.” Lola looked me up and down, like she was assessing all my buttons. I didn’t entirely know what she was implying but I didn’t like it.

  There was only one way to avoid the whole conversation and that was to divert her attention. I changed the subject.

  “So who’d you get paired with?” I asked.

  “Christina Young.” Damn it, she had scored in the partner lottery. Christina was smart and diligent, she wouldn’t accept anything other than a top mark.

  “I guess you’ll be acing the project then,” I sighed. How was it that Lola, who didn’t like anything, could get the perfect partner and I was paired with the loser of the year? There was something wonky about my luck, perhaps I broke a mirror sometime and forgot about it. It was very possible.

  We walked to the parking lot together and Lola got a ride with her father. He was already waiting for her, unlike my mother. She was nearly always late to pick me up. I offered thousands of time to walk home or take the bus, but she wouldn’t let me. Or perhaps the deal was that she wasn’t allowed to let me. I never knew what was required and what my parents decided by themselves.

  One person I did see in the parking lot was Lochie. He drove himself to school, his parents had bought him a car for his sixteenth birthday. I quite often felt like torching it while he was in class. I never would of course, but nobody could stop me fantasizing about it. Sometimes it was all that got me through class.

  He looked my way so I poked my tongue out at him. I knew it was childish but I didn’t care. Like Lola said, he pushed all my buttons – at the same time and they were all marked danger. He returned my look with one of his own, using his fingers to open his mouth wide and stick out his tongue. I shook my head at him, hoping he got my eyes rolling too.

  A horn beeping took my attention away from Lochie. My mother had arrived, and was apparently impatiently awaiting my presence in the car. I climbed in.

  “What was that all about?” She asked with none of the usual pleasantries. She usually waited at least a few minutes before interrogating me.

  “What was what all about?” I tried to remain innocent, hoping she would drop it.

  She pulled out onto the road, her eyes fixated on the street. “You know what I’m talking about – the face. Tell me you were just joking with someone.”

  Would it even work if I lied to her? I doubted it, she was trained to detect lies and I was probably one of the worst liars around. “It’s just a guy I have to do my English project with. We don’t exactly get along. But it’s only one guy in the entire school.”

  �
�You have to make friends, Amery, you know the deal. We can’t have even one person not liking you,” my mother reminded me, for the one billionth time. I thought for sure I could recite the entire lecture word for word off the top of my head. I had only been hearing it since I could talk. She probably told me even before that but I didn’t remember, it was probably my lullaby.

  “I have made lots of friends,” I defended myself. “It’s just one guy, surely they don’t expect everyone to like me? That would be impossible.”

  We drove in silence, which I knew was a ploy to make me think about my actions and feel regretful. I wondered if my mom was aware I knew all her tricks? Probably not or she wouldn’t still use them, she would have felt compelled to try new ways to manipulate me. My father was a bit harder to read, he was more experienced at handling people. But still, I could find ways around him too.

  Finally, Mom let out a sigh. “I’m sorry, Amery. I didn’t mean to come down on you so hard like that. I’m just on edge a bit.”

  An admission from her was rare, even rarer than seeing Lola laugh. Instantly, I went into panic mode. “What happened? Is something wrong?”

  She stole a glance at me before turning her attention back to the road. “We got a letter from the Department today.”

  “What did it say?”

  “I don’t know, we haven’t opened it. It’s addressed to you.”

  I forgave her the entire conversation, I knew what a letter from the Department could mean. Inside the envelope could be something horrible, or just something standard. Every time we received one of the non-descript white envelopes it put us all on edge. I didn’t know why, we never did anything wrong – unless you counted my on-going war with Lochie, which I didn’t. But they were still something dreaded anyway.

  We got home and I threw my bag on the floor so I could open the letter. There was nothing on the envelope that said it was from the Department, they didn’t like to advertise their presence. But if you got these letters your entire life, you know exactly what they looked like.

  “Good day at school?” My dad asked as he joined us. He was nervous too, I could tell by the strain in his voice. It was like I was holding an explosive device that could detonate at any moment.

  “It was good,” I replied, using the extra few seconds to delay. Once I opened the envelope, there was no way of unknowing the contents. I was dying to know and dreading it all at the same time. It was torturous.

  “Open it already,” Mom demanded, losing patience. I guess they had all day to worry about it, not just the few minutes like I did. I was sort of surprised they hadn’t opened it without me, they weren’t always so considerate of my privacy.

  “Okay, okay.” I slid my finger underneath the sheath and slid it open. Pulling out the paper, my eyes scanned it quickly. “It’s just an appointment, it’s nothing.”

  Mom snatched the letter from my hands and read it herself. She showed it to my dad. “Just the regular appointment, thank God.”

  “I can’t believe it’s that time already,” I said, so relieved I could have done a happy dance. Not that my regular appointment with the Department was a fun thing, but at least it was just normal business. I had been going there every year for seventeen years, it was nothing to fear but not exactly pleasant either.

  “A year goes by fast,” Dad commented. “They’ll want to see you every six months soon, now that you’re almost an adult.”

  “Every six months?” That sounded like way more meetings than I ever wanted to attend in a lifetime.

  “When you’re an adult, you can make more of an impact on people. They’ll want to ensure you are keeping up your end of the bargain and not becoming a liability,” Mom explained. “It’s important you are monitored.”

  “So I guess they couldn’t just trust me then?” I looked at them both hopefully but they just shook their heads. Apparently trusting someone like me was never going to happen. The thought was depressing. “I’m going to do my homework.”

  I left my parents and retreated to the safety of my room. I pinned the letter to my corkboard and tried to put it out of my head. It was a problem for another day, I shouldn’t let it get to me. Not when I had stupid Lochie and our stupid project to worry about.

  By the time dinner rolled around, I was ready to have a break. I wondered if I would have been such a diligent student if I wasn’t ordered to be one? Would I still have cared so much about getting good grades? I guessed I would never know.

  My parents were already at the table by the time I got there. I think the letter had got to them too because no-one really said much. We just chewed and swallowed, going through the motions like robots.

  When my father spoke, it startled me. “Amery, your mother told me about the incident today at school.”

  “The incident?” I trawled through my memory bank, trying to recall what warranted such a somber voice. The only thing I could think of was my encounter with Lochie. All I did was pull a face, but thinking it through, it was probably a big deal in their eyes. Damn Lochie.

  “You’re having trouble with a boy?”

  I rolled my eyes, unable to stop myself. “Not really, he just annoys me. But, rest assured, I will do everything I can to make sure he likes me.” I was lying, probably terribly, but I couldn’t deal with a big lecture that night.

  “Your role is so important to the future, Amery. You have to take it seriously. You can’t do that with people not liking you. It’s important you fit in.”

  I wanted to laugh. How could I possibly fit in when I was so obviously different? No other seventeen year old had constant lectures about duties and responsibilities. They didn’t have to attend meetings with the Department every year and they certainly didn’t have to make sure everyone liked them.

  I was getting angry and trying so hard not to. I was normally better at handling my emotions but the letter had shaken me more than I first realized. I was just so tired of the whole thing, I would have done anything to avoid it all and just be a normal teenager for once. A normal anything for once.

  “Amery, are you listening to your father?” My mother piped up when I was silent for too long.

  I pushed my plate away, no longer hungry. “Yes, I heard everything he said.”

  “You need to take note. We love you but not everyone else will without some effort on your part.” My mother spoke gently but every syllable was grating on my last nerve. “What will we tell the Department when we meet with them? You know we can’t lie.”

  “I don’t know, how about what a failure I am?” I stood up, unable to stop myself. But then again, that’s what normal teenagers did, right? Perhaps I was just following orders and fitting in.

  “Don’t get upset, we’re just trying to help you. That’s what parents do,” my dad said, trying to placate me. It wasn’t working.

  “You’re not my parents so how about you lay off it?” I stomped away and didn’t stop until I slammed my bedroom door closed so hard it made my pictures rattle on the wall.

  UNITE – Out Now

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  Jamie Campbell grew up in the New South Wales town of Port Macquarie as the youngest of six children. A qualified Chartered Accountant, she now resides on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia.

  Writing since she could hold a pencil, Jamie’s passion for storytelling and wild imagination were often a cause for concern with her school teachers. Now that imagination is used for good instead of mischief.

  Visit www.jamiecampbell.com.au now for exclusive website only content.

 
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