I WATCHED my friends head into the bush, sliding at first on the mud, then they pushed and pulled each other up a bank and disappeared — off to link up with other abstainers. What if I lost them? Other boys would fall for Marti and, anyway, she’d probably rather be with someone who didn’t embarrass her by stealing Panty-pads for her, someone who wasn’t so attached to his parents. Someone whose voice had broken properly. I kicked an empty drink bottle onto the road. I hated people who littered but I didn’t see why I should pick up after them.

Mr Nemeyeva was the last person I felt like visiting. He was so nice and I felt so angry. But there had to be a reason for Mum’s hint. The Nemeyevas lived in part of a huge old brick house covered in ivy, with a garden almost as wild as the green belt. They were looking after it for the owner who lived overseas. Mr Nemeyeva’s wife, Mirri, let me in. She had a shiny face that seemed to be always smiling even if she wasn’t really. It was tricky, because sometimes she was actually about to take you apart for coming in with muddy feet, or if you hadn’t done enough practice, she was the one to nobble you later as you tried to sneak out the door. ‘You think he have to put up with that kind of not-music? You show respect, you do your work!’

Mr Nemeyeva was from some eastern European country, I could never remember which. In Dunedin he spent his time teaching musical klutzes like me to play the piano. I’m not all that bad but I don’t have a single gene of the musical x-factor that came off my teacher’s hands like smoke the moment he sat down to play. My sister Caro was a child prodigy, so I guess he hoped that would rub off on me, even though she’s younger. But I hadn’t touched the piano since Mum and Dad left.

After I’d heeled off my shoes, Mirri let me into the kitchen where she had her English study notes spread out on the table with a pot of tea and plates of toast scraps and cut-out apple cores. The kitchen always smelt of ripe apples.

‘How are your parents getting on?’ Her words were slow and careful and perfect.

I always found myself talking back the same way. ‘I had an e-mail from them. They say things are going well but that I should listen to The Flight of the Bumblebee.’

She gave me a real, shiny smile. ‘Yes, I like that one too. I’m sure Jan will play it for you. What is it about the bomblebee?’

‘Bumble … It’s fast … oh, you don’t mean the music … the bee. Um, I don’t know a lot. The sting hurts more than a honey bee’s.’ I knew that much; I once rolled onto one with a bare arm, on the lawn. Agony, then it itched for weeks.

The door behind Mirri opened and Mr Nemeyeva came through, wearing his woollen coat and scarf. His indoor coat. He had an even bigger one he put over it when he went out. He stood stretching his fingers and smiling.

‘Hello Derik, you’ve been pointed in my direction, I see. Or did you want an early lesson with me this week?’

‘Maybe a lesson about the bees.’ Mirri was tidying the table. Gold clips glinted in her hair.

‘Ah, the birds and the bees? Or just the bees?’

‘Bumblebees?’ I said. ‘Is that code for something?’

‘I wonder. I’ve got something here.’ Mr Nemeyeva went and found a heavy book on the hall shelf then came and sat down. It was an old encyclopaedia. He thumbed through and lay it open between us. ‘Here we are. Genus Bombus.’

We pored over the photo of a nest unearthed from under a garage. It was a mixture of messy grass and leaves and tidy eggs — home for several hundred bees — but nothing like as precise as a beehive. … used for just one season, the caption told us.

‘Perhaps your parents wanted to be sure you knew that ours is an open house if it’s needed. Underground.’ He looked at me carefully, as if inspecting for signs of neglect. ‘I’m not going to ask what you’re up to although I see …’ He flipped his own wrist over and we looked at mine too — unblemished.

‘You were hoping I’d play that piece? But I haven’t warmed up sufficiently. My hands wouldn’t manage it yet today — not to my satisfaction. Perhaps next time you visit.’ Mr Nemeyeva patted my shoulder.

‘Will you have some lunch before you go?’ Mirri asked.

I was tempted but I could only think of Disco and Marti, getting further from me with every passing minute. I said yes to a slice of her strange, malty pumpernickel bread and even though we’d just eaten, an apple to eat on the way.

Back on the road I looked up into the trees. There was no-one anywhere. I could head straight back to the school by road, or go through the bush the way the others had — although they could be miles off by now. I felt spooked on my own. If I got caught I had no way of getting a message to them.

I chose the bush. The ground was slippery from last night’s rain, and I got wet as I ducked and dodged through the foliage, looking for a track. There are proper walking paths from one street to another, but there are others, used by school kids and dogs and — if you believe the stories — perverts and druggies. These tracks grow from mud chutes spilling off parks and from hidden entrances at the edges of schools. They skid away to nothing, then reappear if you just keep on the way you’re going.

I found one and trotted and slithered along, stopping now and then to listen. A couple of times I thought I saw movement — once a flash of dark blue — but I wasn’t completely sure. I crossed streets, cheated with a bit of road walking, then headed back into the trees. I came upon little pockets of scented air like a paper trail: a boys’ locker-room smell, one like cheap aftershave, one that smelt more like girls’ deodorant. I wondered if living outside made your nose more sensitive to the smells that are usually so crammed into every house that you don’t notice them.

Then up ahead was the girl I’d seen fixing her lace. She was doing it again, one foot on a fallen log. She didn’t move until I was right behind her.

‘Did you know flat laces don’t come undone the way round laces do?’

‘Is that so?’ She stood up and turned round. Her spiked black hair was streaked with blue, her face was white but her eyebrows and lashes were as dark as her hair. She was small and slim but the bulldog studs on her belt, wrist straps, and the tops of her boots let you know she was the sort of girl you didn’t try and tell how to wear her shoe laces.

But she didn’t seem to mind. ‘Remind me to hammer them flat when we catch up with the others. You on your way to the meeting?’

‘Mee …?’ I didn’t say it. I said, ‘You bet. I’m right behind you.’ And I was, but I was raging inside as I clambered after her. What meeting was this and who’d set it up?

‘Mind the blackberry!’ the girl called out. She was way ahead. Just because she wore a short skirt and stockings (or they might have been black polyprops) didn’t mean she couldn’t hoof it. She climbed easily, silently, and stopped at the top of a rise to look around. ‘Becka, by the way.’ Her dark blue nails, black half-gloves and all the gear made her look mean but she had nice eyes.

‘Derik,’ I said, smiling. It might be fun, after all, turning up on the others with Becka beside me. ‘You know how to get there?’ I tested her.

She looked hard at me a moment. ‘I reckon. You go first though, eh?’

I should have kept my mouth shut. I went the way she’d just glanced and pretty soon I was back on those little pockets of smell — cigarette smoke now too. Then suddenly we ran out of ground. We were on the edge of a landslip where below us yellow mud curtained a theatre of empty air. On the far side upended trees had crashed like pickup-sticks into a heap. I scanned the mud. There were no footprints that I could see, but the slip wasn’t so fresh it’d just happened; you could see where the rain had smoothed off the surface. I could skirt it above or below. I glanced at Becka. She looked suddenly bored, like she didn’t have a thought in her head.

‘Down, d’you reckon?’ I said.

Becka snapped to full alert. ‘You haven’t got a clue where you’re going have you?’

I sucked in through my teeth. She was right of course and it occurred to me for the first time that this could be some kind of trap. I’d just assumed the meeting was for abstainers. What if it was for something else completely?

I decided to keep bluffing. I’d make for the tree heap. ‘Let’s slide, eh? I strode out onto the mud, set the edge of my shoes into it and slid down and across. It clutched like dough onto my soles, but barely slowed me. I ran to keep up with my falling body — down, across — and every step skidded from under me. With two final giant leaps, I threw myself into the mass of wet, dying leaves at the end of a fallen tree.

The landing was soft enough. I stood up in the waist-deep green and wiped my face. I heard a catcall and the slow clap of a dozen hands. When I looked up, there was Becka picking her way nimbly down the now-so-obvious track on the very edge of the slip. She shook her head at me.

The clapping came from inside the tangle of trees and I picked out first one face, then another, then another: a whole bunch of guys and girls perched, squatting, lounging amongst the branches. Someone whistled and there was Disco nodding and grinning, still clapping.

‘What’s going on?’ I hunkered down beside him and sneaked a look around for Marti. I couldn’t see her.

‘Big meeting. A hundred or more, apparently.’ He handed me a stick of chewing gum. ‘I did my first trade. These for a mandarin from home.’

There were voices coming from all over now. Heads appeared above us at the top of the slip, others were picking their way through the debris towards our cluster.

Who’d organised it? I wondered again. What could they know, anyway. Whoever it was, I probably knew more. I’d just wait till the cracks appeared in their story then I’d quietly fill them in. I took out my bottle and drank.

Everyone was drawing closer, clambering over branches, crawling under them. I saw a few faces from school but none I knew well. Everyone seemed to be about year nine to eleven — no-one older, though with girls it’s hard to tell. A few of the guys looked younger. A couple of them dragged logs together, laid branches between them, then sticks and ferns on top to make a kind of platform. They retreated into the crowd and sat, facing the ‘stage’. Who was it for?

People fell silent. I looked again for Marti. When I saw her my ears began to burn. She was squeezed between two guys on a fallen log and one of them was teasing a twig from her hair. The only thing that stopped me getting up and leaving was her impatient swipe at his hand, the way she flung the stick away and pulled her jacket close around her. But what chance did I have when she was such a boy-magnet?

I spat Disco’s chewing gum away and fixed my eyes ahead like everyone else was doing. Someone was coming up behind us. Kids twisted away to make room; branches jostled and bounced. Disco almost toppled me, leaning back, tucking in his legs like we were in the movie theatre. Someone was brushing past us, touching my shoulder, sweeping through the foliage with her black leggings.

Becka stepped onto the platform, found firm places for her feet, tugged at her gloves. Then she looked up and took us all in. She seemed to fix briefly on each kid, as if she was counting, assessing, communicating with each. But it took her only seconds. This girl had power. I’d expected a guy to get up there, someone I could go head-to-head with if I had to. Becka was another kind of force altogether.

Her voice was clear as water. ‘Apparently I’m wearing the wrong kind of shoe-laces today, but I hope that won’t stop you listening up.’

She glanced at me as people muttered and looked down at their own shoes. Then their eyes snapped back to Becka. Even though she was holding a card, and reading from the inside, something about her poise and stance, the way she held her head and took us all in, had everyone riveted, in spite of the instinct alive in each of us to pull down anyone who put themselves out there like that. ‘Sorry I have to use notes here, but I don’t want to forget anything. Thanks for all coming, and especially those who’ve networked so hard to find fellow abstainers. Some of you have taken big risks, hanging out at Endorsement stations to make contacts, phoning round, taking responsibility for younger kids and the ones that’ve needed help getting here.’

I followed the flick of her eyes and saw a girl in a neck brace, a boy with his leg in a half-plaster. I began to feel like a worm. It seemed like Marti, Disco and I had been playing, just having fun, while there were all these other serious abstainers out here. We’d hardly given a thought yet to other people. At least, I hadn’t.

‘But we can’t rest here,’ Becka was saying. ‘It’s imperative that we pull in every single abstaining, or yet-to-be endorsed college student. Tomorrow’s the government deadline to so-called ‘choose’. We need to step up our stake-out of Endorsement stations — here, in Mosgiel, at Anderson’s Bay, Waitati if we can, so no kid is left struggling on their own. If you want to be part of that operation see Michael after — stand up, Mike — see him up here later.’

I glanced round at the guy in the red beanie, saw the rapt attention on every face. I was less than a worm. Nothing.

Becka held the card in her teeth while she pulled off her gloves and stuck them in her belt. ‘Meanwhile every one of you please rake through your memory for all your friends, relatives our age, anyone turning thirteen soon. Make contact. Don’t assume someone’s done that already, and don’t assume just ’cause a person’s been done means they want to stay done. We’ve heard now of kids being strapped down, tranquillised, whatever it takes, and lots of those ones want to get rid of their wands. And we have to help them do that before their first stage two, or calibration.

‘We’ve got a medical team forming up now. We think we can remove the wands safely but want to hear from anyone with skills.’

‘That’ll be Marti,’ Disco said quietly. He was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, hanging on every word. ‘This girl’s onto it, eh? Did you find out about her on the way here?’

‘Nah.’ I avoided his eyes. Of course I should have quizzed her, got the who, what and how. But I knew why I hadn’t. Because I hadn’t wanted to look stupid, to find out I knew less than she — or any kid — did, when it came to Endorsement.

After a quick conference with Michael, Becka clapped a couple of times and everyone went silent again. I gritted my teeth.

‘Now, a major issue for us all. Food. You’ll get a chance soon to tell us how you’re getting on but first I’ll outline the basics for those who don’t know them yet. Since Internet communication is going to be too risky very soon, we’ve simplified things. For anyone’s first feed, they can find where to go by checking the bottom left of any Fresh ’n’ Fast notice board. We’ll have someone changing that first venue every couple of hours. Tell people not to linger when they look. It’ll be like an ad to eat there.’ I watched a group on the far edge. They were sneering among themselves, working hard not to look at Becka, not to be drawn in. But she only had to stop and stare to hook their faces back her way, scowling but silent.

‘Everyone needs to follow instructions from feeder to feeder. If any of you cheat and try to go back to a place you’ve already been, you’ll ruin it for us all. Don’t forget, people are risking their jobs, incomes and freedom to do this for us.

‘If you’re checking tide charts, keep it hidden. Don’t mess up that page or do what some fool did already, tear it out of the paper. Memorise everything. We can’t leave clues lying around.’ Becka moved and the branches beneath her slid apart. As she went down, her feet juggled, one hand touched the ground, the other grasped the air and instantly she was back upright. No-one had time even to laugh — only to blink and wonder if it had really happened.

‘Now, lots of you are worried about parents. See me if you’ve got urgent messages for them. Don’t carry or use phones — if you don’t know that already. I happen to know that police are reassuring parents that they’re onto us all. Endorsement officers are out looking for us already, mostly students wearing navy and white,’ — Disco nudged me — ‘and you can bet they’re being paid a bomb for every kid they bring in. They’ll really step it up from tomorrow.

‘Hideouts. We’re gonna get a team going who’ll be checking them out for safety, finding new ones. After today, hiding starts for real and this kind of big meeting is too risky except for an emergency. See Hamish there with the glasses to register your hideout, or if you think you should be part of his team.’

There was plenty more: questions and answers; stuff about moving in small groups; keeping safe; where to find, and how to spread, information; how to get help from trustworthy adults in an emergency. And this was all by word of mouth or hidden messages. It seemed like none of my precious computer knowledge was any good any more — Becka and her mates had moved beyond that; they were setting new rules and, I had to admit, rolling with the changes.

Finally Becka pulled a watch on a chain from her pocket and said, ‘Forty minutes to high tide so could those of you who know where you’re going move off in small groups in as many directions as possible. If you don’t know about feeding yet come and see Crystal— with the green jacket — by this log.’

Suddenly Marti was between me and Disco, pulling us up, one on each arm. ‘Some lady, eh?’ she laughed. ‘She’s only a year older than me, believe it or not. Goes to my school.’

I took a last admiring, envious glance at Becka as we threaded our way through the foliage, planning to circle towards the Tui Café.

A piercing whistle stopped us in our tracks: Becka, with a red dog whistle between her teeth, was waving us back.

When we reached her, she beckoned us a little way down the track.

‘You’re Derik Love, aren’t you?’ she fixed me with her dark brown eyes. ‘And your parents are in this deep, eh?’

I waggled my head, feeling the colour rise in my face. So she knew.

‘You probably know computer systems are going to be tagged and used to hunt us, eh? We need all the information you can get, Derik.’ Becka explained how she wanted all the names of adults and venues sympathetic to abstainers. She knew a good number of them but needed all the Dunedin contacts.

‘You guys are valuable,’ she said, nodding, too, at Disco and Marti. ‘Can you get into a PC and between you memorise all the info? Before tomorrow when things’ll really crack down. Can you access one?’

Disco, Marti and I looked at one another. I wondered how Becka knew about me and my parents, but the truth of her statements rolled aside the questions for now. As for finding a computer, my home seemed too dangerous, and the library would close at five.

‘You mustn’t use one in an abstainer’s home,’ Becka said. ‘Preferably somewhere neutral. Failing all else, we know of two or three empty places.’ She scanned our faces. ‘Do what you can this afternoon then be on the steps of the King Edward barracks at eight tonight. Don’t expect to get a lot of sleep.’

I stared down at Becka’s muddy boots restlessly moving. For some reason I recalled Pops’s slippers, and the careful way he’d slid his feet in as he’d come in from the garden, then bent to flick from one a piece of fluff.

‘Wait,’ I said, as Becka turned to go. ‘Have you met any kids who’ve been calibrated yet?’

She looked hard at me then Marti said, ‘It’s what you wonder every time you get hungry, or you want to go home — what it actually does to you.’

‘No-one our age has been calibrated yet — that starts in a few days — and only a few adults so far, but I’ve heard that they’ll get kind of … even. They’ll have enough hormones to get through the physical changes, but not enough to have mood swings and that.’

‘And that?’ said Marti. ‘And what exactly?’

‘Anger, strong sexual feelings, depression. Cynics say maybe even love.’

Disco and I glanced at Marti. She was staring at Becka. But it was official between him and me and we both knew it. We’d die before we got endorsed.