Sleepless nights
compound. Life had gone from alert hours ticking by to a monotonous flatline of
activity. The only respite: the brief moments where he slipped into a waking
coma, wandering through an endless labyrinth deep within his mind, his feet
freezing against the bone-cold cement. Though with that respite came silence. The
overwhelming sound of silence, echoing around the spiralling concrete hallways,
growing the further you looked, bouncing, fading into the minute cracks along
the ground. Blaring louder than a symphony orchestra and thick like a heavy
blanket over his head. And somehow, within its placidity and the closing walls
around, it built more chaotic and worrisome by the second until… Nothing.
The cooling
temperature sets back in, the evening breeze rolls across a tiny courtyard,
hidden away behind an old grey box of a boarding house. He leaned into the bench,
hands clasped together in his lap, the blackouts had become more frequent. Compared
to Carnale, this time of day lit up the sky in a radiant display of orange and
gold as the sun’s rays shone their last shine behind the faraway mountains. Less
glamorously, the ground was littered with cigarette butts and empty chewing gum
wrappers, he didn’t need to check under the bench for he knew exactly what he
would find. Behind his view of the golden countryside, the chattering of
teenagers emanated from the many open windows covering the grey building’s wall,
their voices floated through the chilling wind.
Whenever he
tried to recount the last seven months, he was met with that seemingly
never-ending concrete maze, trudging through foreign rooms devoid of
personality and often waking someplace unfamiliar. He went numb in those
moments, unable to comprehend his surroundings or form a competent thought,
allowing himself to be tugged along in the never-resting current. And now he
was wound up in Silverleaf of all places – an expansive rural landscape with
little else to offer. Brief flashes of documents, serious conversations and
vague images of temporary dorm rooms were sparse amongst his memory, he
relegated them into the overflowing compartments where he assumed all his
thoughts would rest, only to be uncovered when he deemed the time right. All he
had left was the backpack resting between his legs, his lifelong belongings loosely
fit into a small black canvas bag. He took a long breath, there was no need to
dwell on it. This was where he was and he had to deal with that, maybe it would
be better than the last home he’d been in. At least that’s what he told
himself.
An increase in
murmurs caught his attention, a girl stormed out of a side door and jabbed her
finger at a disembodied voice inside.
“You’re an ugly
cunt James. Fuck off,” she spat.
Her shoulder
length bleached hair jostled in the breeze as she slammed the door shut and
cursed again. She buried her head in the inner pockets of her baggy brown
leather jacket and rifled for a cigarette. She was short and decked head to toe
in grunge. Winged eyeliner and silver piercings clung to her nose and ears for
it seemed the only impression she wanted to give was an intense one. He took
note of the red laces snaking their way through her black combat boots, it was
an interesting touch.
“Hey.” He gave
an awkward wave, not usually one to strike conversation.
Her head snapped
towards him, the pissed off look plastered across her face faded once she
properly took in the frail, sullen looking boy with his shaved head and
mismatched clothes. Judging from the deep set black around his eyes, he hadn’t
had a wink of sleep. “You’re Jonah right?” She sighed, her shoulders followed
suit. The front desk lady – Andrea – had told her to expect him. Usually, the
seniors rotated with introducing new kids to the house, it’s not like it
mattered, new kids were always shipped out of here within the month. Only the
worst of the worst (the shitè de la shitè as she liked to call it) got to call
Silverleaf home.
“Yeah. Lady at
the front told me to meet you here,” he said.
“Righto. I’m
Paige.” She plopped down next to him and folded one leg over the other, her
focus directed toward the end of the cigarette hanging from her mouth. Two
metallic clicks protected by the wind later and she was taking a long drag
while looking him up and down. His face was rough, but strangely pretty – in an
unconventional way, she couldn’t tell if it was his crooked lips or the gleaming
golden green iris sunken beneath the bags around his eyes. No – on second
thought, it was definitely the eyes. Though his physical traits certainly
betrayed his fashion, like a supermodel with a blind stylist. “You dress like
shit,” she said.
Jonah
instinctively glanced down at himself. His daily assortment of outfits were a
mix match of random finds from the local Vinnies. The insult didn’t
particularly bother him, he never quite understood the reasoning behind having
a sense of style. An indifferent “thanks” was all he managed.
For a moment they
sat there, listening to crows caw into the sunset. Individually, they tracked
groups of birds flying between trees amongst the rolling hills. The moment
dragged until Jonah recalled what the front desk lady had told him. “I think
you’re supposed to uh, show me around or something.”
“Fuck that.”
Paige scoffed, as if the very notion offended her. “What is there to know? Shit
in the toilet, piss in the sink, it’s real simple stuff mate.” Her gaze locked
onto the distance, a billowing cloud of smoke dispersed into the air, the
cancer stick responsible hung lazily between her chipped black fingernails. “Trust
me, there’s not much to this place, you’ll figure it out.”
“Brilliant.” He
lowered his head into his hands, eyes wide open as he reflected on the
circumstance, another titbit of lucid negativity, it seemed like he was better
off getting lost within his own head at times. His life had been dissected with
a surgical level of care, not that there was much of a life to begin with.
There were no remnants of Jonah Hart in Carnale, his old home in the city. No
family. No friends. And now, he was sat in an equally remote part of the state
with nothing to look at but acres upon acres of farmland and a boarding school
packed with troubled kids like the one beside him, he’d been through it all
before and now he was doing it again. Would the cycle ever end? Or was his fate
tied to this perpetual limbo?
“You’re in
final year, right?” She nudged him from his thoughts. “What horrible shit did
you do to end up here?”
“My mum died.”
“Shit.” She slumped
into the bench, the usual. She took another drag, allowing the smell of
burnt tobacco to taint the fresh air, though she was known for not knowing when
to shut up, she never knew what to say at a time like this.
“It’s fine.”
They sat for a moment, an antagonisingly long moment for Jonah. “She was a
cunt.” That didn’t even begin to cover it. He stared into the last shining
precipice of the sun behind the landscape, his knuckles clenched. He had never
disclosed the true nature of his relationship with his mother to anyone, so he
was unsure why it had partially slipped now, as small as that slip was, perhaps
it was because he’d never had a genuine chance to. The closest he had come was early
last year, when he stood outside his school’s counsellor office – he had to
take advantage of the resources available and as he grew older he was finding
it increasingly difficult to keep these things to himself. Much to his dismay,
it became another waste of time, the duration of their conversation consisted
of Jonah’s death stare and the clearly uneducated counsellor babbling on about
a man’s duty and pushing him to try and act more like a regular 17-year-old
should, it was part of the reason he’d hated that school and its all-boys jerk
off. He halted. The longer he dwelled on it, the more grotesque and unnatural
the labyrinth would become, drowning out all else until he was cornered in
those concrete halls, its misshapen claws wrapped around his eyes. A glance at
Paige brought him back, her very presence enough to remind him of where he was.
He was a real person having a conversation with another real person.
The sprawling
golden fields slowly turned to their grey selves as the colour faded from the
sky, the sun far beyond the horizon now, introducing a slight bite to the
gathering breeze. Paige’s lips were pursed and her eyes narrow, a slow nod
following Jonah’s words. The last crinkling whisper from her exhausted cigarette
diffused into the night, she tossed the butt with the rest of them and ground it
beneath her boot.
“Want a dart?” Paige
asked, presenting Jonah with a half empty pack of Marlboros, seven cigarettes
bounced about in the small cardboard box.
“Nah. I don’t
smoke,” he said.
She shrugged and
lit another one, it always helped cheer her up at least. The caws that echoed
across the field had been replaced by the constant buzzing of grasshoppers and
crickets. Together, Paige and Jonah soaked their eyes in the moonlight, the
occasional crinkle of burning paper was their only topic of conversation.
“They tell you
which room you’re in?” Paige was the first to break the silence and softly
grunted to her feet.
“Seven, I think.”
“Bullshit.
Really?” Her eyes widened.
Had she noticed
it too? “Yeah. Why?” Jonah prodded.
“Nah, it’s not-.”
“Dinner ready in
ten!” A young brunette girl shouted from the door Paige had slammed shut
earlier. Easily spooked, Paige waved her off and flicked another browned filter
into the cemetery below.
“Wait, but why?”
“Nah, it’s
nothing. It was just my friend’s room.” Paige shrunk into her collar, shuddering
under the biting temperature. She paced inside, ushering Jonah to follow,
leaving no time for him to compute her messy topic change, hoping he relegated
it to a sleep-induced delusion if anything. They entered an incandescent lit
hallway, one boy with puffy red eyes shuffled past them – an odd herby smell in
his wake, he was following the wafting scent of Japanese curry towards the
dining hall, where the chatter of the boarding house now centralised.
Turning the
other way, they passed through the vacant hall, a window broke the beige wall,
it showed the darkened recreational room, a shadowed couch housed two
silhouettes passionately compressed together, their affairs uninterrupted by
Jonah’s investigative gaze. “So, how long have you been here?” He questioned
with a touch of wondrous curiosity. Though he was merely making conversation,
he lingered on Paige’s earlier reaction, there were more questions to ask.
Paige pursed
her lips, she’d rather put a bullet through her skull than reminisce on the
brain-numbing time spent here, especially now. Especially with all that had
happened over the last seven months, her hatred for the place was reaching new
highs. “Seven fuckin’ years. I got a major case of Stockholm syndrome.” As she
said it she stiffened.
There was a
confused expression riddled over Jonah’s face as he too stiffened. There it was
again. The number seven. His eyes glanced downwards, running his thumb over the
bandage that hid seven stitches in his forefinger. His mind pointed towards the
bag on his back, hidden inside was an envelope sent from a previously unknown
address, Seven Farrell Avenue. He couldn’t shake it from his head, the number
seven. There it was again, a bold bronze seven, staring at him in the face.
“Bro, are you
good?” Paige’s waving hand obscured his vision, she had to stop him before he
walked straight into the number on his room’s door.
He stopped and
blinked twice, his surroundings set back in. Weathered door. Cramped hall.
Confused Paige. Another blackout. “Sorry, I spaced out. I don’t sleep much.” He
nervously laughed and gave her what he assumed was a reassuring smile, though
her concern didn’t fade.
“Yeah okay.”
She briefly flashed a return smile and turned the doorknob for him, bit fuckin’
weird but okay. “When you’ve dumped your shit, just head back down the hall.”
Across from him she cracked open an identical door with the number seven on its
face, the only two rooms in the whole building that shared a number due to
construction errors (which only furthered Jonah’s curiosity and piqued Paige’s).
After carelessly tossing her bag inside with a depleted sigh, her boots clacked
loudly against the floor as she disappeared back around the corner.
Recovering from
his momentary daze, Jonah creaked into the confined, but furnished dorm room. A
single bed that looked like it would screech and groan with every sleepless
toss and turn sat tucked away in the corner and the off-white blinds covering
the singular window didn’t allow for much light to sneak in. He flipped the
switch and after a few moments of dim flickering, the lights buzzed to life.
There was a small desk crammed in the opposite corner to his bed where he
placed his backpack. A clock sat above the desk, its hour hand pointing to the
seven.
Again, another
seven. He had to find Paige, she saw it too, he could tell. Why else would she
have reacted in such an odd way to their earlier conversation? Though it may
have just been in reaction to the odd coincidence of their shared room number,
he had to make sure. Seven had become an inevitable over the last week. It meant
something – it had to. He hurriedly switched the lights off and exited.
The weathered
walls and creaking floorboards that constituted the hall connecting the dorm
rooms expanded into a comparatively spacious room, teeming with teenagers
spooning their way through hot curry and chatting whatever heinous banter came
to mind. The rich scent of turmeric and cumin wafted from big silver pots
that housed litres of curry and rice along one side of the room, the food was
perhaps the only silver lining Silverleaf offered. Jonah spotted Paige in line ahead
of a similarly-aged boy with a glorious mullet running over his scalp, their
bickering gradually came into focus.
“Please Paige,
I promise things’ll be different this time. I swear.” He said, reaching to grab
her arm.
“Like I said
before. Fuck. Off.” She knocked him away, spooning a lump of curry on her
plate. She was getting real sick and tired of this routine. After a
surprisingly relaxing afternoon with that new kid, Jonah, she’d managed to calm
herself down, but now she could feel her anger bubbling back to the surface.
“Don’t you miss
our trips to Byron?” He said it in a harsh whisper, making sure to duck into
her ear so no one heard a squeak of his sensitivity as his hand snaked over her
hips.
Paige span to
face him, holding her fist back from splintering his front teeth. Fury seethed
from the deadpan look she gave him. She swore she’d never met someone so
fucking stupid in her life.
“You’re dumb as
dogshit James. Get the fuck out of my way.”
James stood his
ground for as long as he could withstand the oppressive glare Paige held.
Concluding he’d get no further with her, he threw in the towel. “You’re fuckin’
impossible.” An emphatic sigh followed as he stepped aside.
Paige stormed
past, even Jonah had to take a step back to avoid her war path. She paced down
the hall and barged through the door they had used earlier. The constant
chatter of the room drowned out the heated exchange as James moped past
muttering a string of defeated curses, taking a seat at the nearest table. Jonah
took his chance.
The courtyard
was solely populated and dark cloud cover spanned the sky, the frostbitten wind
caught the end of his nose in a stabbing cold. Paige – the only inhabitant – hunched
over an untouched dinner, her figure dully illuminated by a lamp above the
bench. Sensing Jonah’s approach, the hairs on her neck stood on end, didn’t
this kid know what privacy was?
“Fuck do you
want?” She mumbled like a child yet to receive their portion of cake.
“Sorry, I
didn’t really know where else to sit.” Jonah unsurely took a seat next to her,
leaving a substantial gap of space. That was only the partial truth.
Paige said
nothing, teeth clenched behind closed lips, too fixated on the darkness before
her to even light a cigarette. Blonde strands of hair danced across her vision with
every gust of cold wind. Ever since the year started she had been in a
self-inflicted spiral, her best friend – Bonnie – fucked off and graduated
without a word spoken since, leaving her to wander the halls alone amongst an
entirely foreign cohort. Simply because Paige didn’t have the smarts to pass
Year 12. Ha, yeah. That’s what she was going with these days. No matter
how desperately she tried to romanticise her life, it didn’t change the fact
she had been trapped in a three by two metre dorm room for the better part of
seven years, with no idea of what was expected out of her future, she pretended
to take solace in the fact there were no expectations. But the encroaching
unknown always struck her during the early hours of the morning while she lay
in her shitty metal bed trying to prolong the beginning of a new day with a
downward swirl of self-deprecating thoughts and tears.
“Maybe if we neck
ourselves we’ll end up somewhere nicer than Silverleaf.” Her and Bonnie would
always say. Then they’d discuss if they were going to heaven or hell, and then
if god or satan was hotter.
“The thing is,
god is definitely husky as fuck,” Paige would say.
“Cunt, how many
times do I have to say it? Demon. Energy.” Bonnie clapped with her final words.
Fuckin’
demon energy, you were such a dickhead Bonnie. Whatever.
In the past,
she sought distractions. Her father’s 2002 caramel Les Paul had been the first
to occupy her time. The long-forgotten chords came back in a matter of weeks
and coupled with her airy alto-soprano voice which when fused amongst her usual
smoky tone, created a strikingly unique blend. But as she grew older, the
reality checks grew more numerous, unique was the norm for artists and
musicians alike. Talent existed in everyone, and unfortunately, she lived in
Silverleaf where there was no music program and there was nowhere outside of
Silverleaf to take her talent where she wouldn’t be surrounded by equally gifted
musicians with more technical knowledge and funding behind them. There was no competing
with money she found out. End of story, case closed, fuckin’ forget about it
Paige.
And like the
many before them, she turned to drugs and alcohol with the rest of her peers, because
that was the norm if you found yourself in Silverleaf’s boarding house. She
used to joke with Bonnie that their school – Silverleaf State High – was leading
the world globally in bongs ripped in a maths classroom. And once they reached
a certain age and their hormones properly started firing, it was no shock that
sex became the new hot topic. And just like that, like a moth to a flame, after
her very first taste in a dank disabled bathroom with an equally curious girl, sex
became an insatiable urge for Paige, an addiction with an effortlessly
prescribed cure. It was a burden that began to plague her mind during all hours
of the day, often causing her thoughts to be consumed with nothing but cravings
for lust as her eyes bore into whatever eye candy they could find (or in her
words: she was horny as fuck). Despite the detrimental effects that were
plainly obvious to her, she liked to frame it in a positive light, because going
to sleep knowing what the next day would entail made life in Silverleaf
bearable.
The sex was the
only reason she was with James in the first place. Unfortunately no prowess in
bed could salvage his cardboard box personality. The concept of having a surfer
boyfriend seemed appealing to her at first, but the many early mornings driving
to the beach before school in his shitty Holden Commodore with nothing but
Triple J to soothe the ears grew to agitate her (who knew radio hosts could be
so insufferable). Then she’d have to sit on the dunes and watch him surf for
hours on end, pretending that she had paid attention when he finally came back
to shore. What a fuckin’ bore that was. Outside of surfing, it felt like a
marathon to converse with his remaining brain cells, not to mention his
complete lack of emotional intelligence, their arguments usually ended with his
confusion as to what was even wrong in the first place, and then to make it all
even worse, he cheated on her with some faux artsy bitch from school. She’d
come to realise, James was a man-child that only wanted her back because he was
a fucking baby who liked sucking on her tit. But when she sat at this bench –
her favourite place in the world, enjoying the sensation of wind buffeting
against her, everything seemed to make a little more sense. So, she took a
moment to properly appreciate how refreshing the week had been since they broke
up.
Huh. A week.
“Have you been
seeing a lot of sevens in your life recently?” Jonah asked and watched her
expectantly, shuffling closer as if their conversation was confidential,
unaware that the gusting winter breeze could mask even a boisterous yell from a
distance.
Paige had. A
lot. In fact, now that it was said aloud, the absurdity of it all struck her. “Fuckin’
everywhere,” she said. Not always the number though, sometimes a period of
time. Seven years since she moved to Silverleaf. Seven months since she had ruined
everything. Seven days since she broke up with James.
“I started
noticing it a week ago.”
“Same here. I thought
I was going fuckin’ insane.”
Jonah remained
unsatisfied with the lack of clarity Paige provided. But, deep down, he knew it
to be futile, to expect her to have the answer for him, to give him a meaning
beyond an abundance of sevens and blackouts, she was no holy messiah but a mere
grungy, explicit teenager. And he who receded into silence with his hands
clasped together in his lap (as he always did when unsure of what to think or
say), was destined to fizzle into a memory held by none.
Admittedly,
when she put some more thought into it, Paige found the situation strange.
Mostly, she’d been ignoring the sevens that popped up in day-to-day life but
now that she was faced with Jonah, it suddenly felt a bit too real. Two
previously unacquainted individuals both dealing with such bizarre coincidence
at the exact same time, in the exact same place. Was Jonah a government agent
trying to communicate through code? Or was he some kind of conspiracy theorist
convinced she was someone she wasn’t? Or was he given to her by fate, earned
compensation for putting up with James for seven weeks? She certainly wasn’t
complaining, she could use a pretty little gift from fate, especially one as
goddamn smoking as he was.
“What the fuck does
it mean?” He said, utterly bewildered.
“Maybe we’re
soulmates.”
“Huh?”
She turned to
him with a suggestive look, her brow cocked and the corner of her lip tugged. “I’m
takin’ the piss.” Though she did believe it to be a possibility. And judging by
the flustered look on Jonah’s face and the lack of speech flapping from his
lips, the idea had been planted in his head. Maybe she didn’t have to brush
this new guy aside, maybe she could have a little fun with him. Besides, it would
be nice to spend some time with someone lacking the context of her reputation
in Silverleaf, someone she didn’t have to maintain appearances for. She held their
eye contact, staring deep into his darkened pits, trying to decide on her next
course of action. Those greenish hazel eyes and their magnificent flecks of
gold were hypnotising, there was a mystery hidden behind them, but also an
ignorant youth looking for guidance. Fuck. The heat between her legs
involuntarily rose.
“You ever eaten
pussy before Jonah?”