FRIDAY, 5.15 P.M.
‘Hello, Mike,’ said Loser.
Mike felt his heart expand through his whole body. ‘Los … Lance!’ he corrected. ‘Where are you?’
There was a giggle in the dimness. ‘Down here,’ said Loser.
Mike squinted through the shadow. ‘Where? What are you doing down there?’
Loser giggled again from under the dusty shelves and pushed his glasses back up his nose. It was a strange giggle, thought Mike. A little kid’s sound, like Loser wanted somehow to be back in the time when they were small and safe.
‘No one can find me here,’ said Loser seriously, as he huddled under the shelves.
‘Well, I just did,’ pointed out Mike.
‘You’re different,’ said Loser, still in that strange, childlike voice. ‘We used to play together, didn’t we Mike? Dad said I had to be best friends with you. He said if we were friends your mum would have to give him a job. Dad said he could look after your place and your mum would pay him because she didn’t have anyone else to help her. But I liked you anyway, Mike.’
Mike didn’t know how to answer. Maybe there was no answer.
‘How many people have died?’ asked Loser, in his new small voice.
‘I don’t know,’ said Mike honestly. ‘Some are pretty sick.’
‘I thought you all would die,’ said Loser vaguely, as though he inhabited a different reality to the one where his school companions were dying. ‘Hasn’t anyone died at all?’
‘No,’ said Mike. His eyes searched the shelves, one by one. No small bottle there, or there … it had been on the second shelf, surely, towards the back …
‘Oh,’ said Loser. He seemed to think for a moment. ‘They have to die,’ he said seriously. ‘If they don’t die I won’t be on television, will I? Do you think they’ll die, Mike?’
Mike didn’t answer. That was the shelf! It had to be …
‘I’m glad you didn’t die, Mike,’ said Loser matter-of-factly. ‘I wanted you to die this morning. But not now. Are you looking for the bottle, Mike?’
‘Yes,’ said Mike. ‘Where is it, Lance?’
Another giggle. ‘I’ve got it here,’ said Loser. ‘I’m not going to let it go.’
‘Is that what you used to poison them with, Lance?’ asked Mike quietly.
‘You guessed!’ said Loser proudly. ‘I thought you might guess. You used to be my friend. You’re not dumb like the rest of them. They might do well at school but they’re still dumb, that’s what Dad says. Dad says I have to show everyone how clever I really am. It was a clever idea, wasn’t it?’
‘How did you do it?’ whispered Mike.
‘I bet you can’t guess that!’ said Loser. ‘I’m cleverer than all of you! I said I’d show you and I did! Are the TV cameras out there yet?’
‘Lance, please,’ cried Mike. ‘You’ve got to tell me what’s in that bottle! People are sick! Jazz … Jazz’s dying …’
Loser’s eyes were wide and white in the darkness. ‘She deserves it,’ he whispered.
‘Lance … she did invite you to her party. Really, she did! Caitlin just didn’t give you the envelope. Jazz was really angry when she found out you hadn’t got it. She was going to come up and invite you especially at recess, but … but …’
The small huddle that was Loser was silent under the shelves.
‘Please!’ pleaded Mike. ‘Please don’t let her die! Tell me what you did!’
Loser said something too low to hear.
‘What did you say?’ cried Mike. ‘Please, Lance!’
‘I said I snuck in to the classroom at recess and dipped the tops of the pens on the desks in the poison,’ whispered Loser. ‘I took the top bit of the pens out and dipped them in.’
Mike thought back. There’d been a pen in Mr Simpson’s hand as he collapsed. He must have chewed it absent-mindedly. Caitlin had been writing her will.
Jazz had written out the instructions from over the phone. He remembered her small white teeth nibbling on the pen. Then she’d made a face and stopped.
‘She said there was a funny taste in her mouth …’ he muttered. So that was how he’d done it. But it still didn’t answer the most important question.
‘Lance!’ he said sharply. ‘What’s in that bottle?’
‘Poison,’ whispered Loser.
‘What sort of poison?’
‘I don’t know. It killed the dog though. It killed the foxes too. I thought you’d all die quickly like the foxes. You’d all be in class holding your pens and one by one you’d all be dead. Then the TV cameras would come and …’
‘Lance,’ said Mike very carefully. ‘Hand me the bottle.’
‘No,’ said Loser.
‘I have to read the label!’
‘No,’ said Loser. ‘You won’t give it back to me.’
‘Why do you want it back?’
Loser giggled again. But they weren’t giggles, Mike realised. They were sobs. ‘Dad …’ he sobbed. ‘Everyone … I can’t go back there, can I? I can’t go back to school now. They’re going to put me in prison and send me to the electric chair.’
‘They won’t do that, Lance,’ said Mike helplessly. ‘We don’t have the electric chair in Australia. We don’t even kill people here. You’re thinking of the movies. This isn’t a movie, Lance.’
‘I thought, I thought I’d be on TV. I’d be on the news all over the world,’ said Loser. The edge of his glasses gleamed in a stray beam of light. ‘I thought people would be afraid of me then. I didn’t have a choice! You see that, don’t you Mike? I had to do it! No one would believe me if I hadn’t done it. I had to show them that I was … I was … Have they put me on the news yet, Mike?’
‘No,’ said Mike. He had no idea if anything had been on the news. But he knew with every millimetre of his being that he had to drag Loser back to reality. ‘Everyone is upset, that’s all.’
‘I thought, I thought there’d be lots of cameras and things. They’d all be talking about me and why I’d done it and I could tell them how everyone was mean, how they deserved to die. I thought, I thought Dad would be proud of me if I’m on the news,’ said Loser.
Proud that his son is a killer, thought Mike. Even Mr Loosley wasn’t as bad as that. But he didn’t say anything. ‘Please let me see the bottle,’ he said instead.
‘No,’ said Loser. ‘I need it now.’ All at once Mike realised that the lid was off the bottle.
‘No!’ he cried.
Loser clung more tightly to the bottle. ‘They don’t think I’m a hero, do they?’ he whispered. ‘They just think I’m dumb.’
‘Give it to me!’ ordered Mike.
Loser lifted the bottle towards his lips. Mike flung himself down, over to Loser, but there was no need. Loser dropped the bottle without drinking. He began to cry.
The bottle rolled over and over on the dirt floor, a small pool of white spilling on the ground. Loser covered his face with his hands as Mike grabbed the bottle.
‘I didn’t mean to hurt anyone,’ gasped Loser between his sobs. ‘I didn’t mean to do it!’
The words were meaningless. Mike jerked himself back across the damp floor of the shed. He gazed at the label frantically. ‘Strychnine,’ he whispered.
Loser was suddenly still. He wrapped his arms around himself again. ‘What are they going to do to me?’ he whispered. ‘What will happen now, Mike?’
‘I don’t know!’ Mike fumbled urgently with the phone in his pocket. His fingers almost shook too much to press the numbers. One ring, two rings, three … please, please let her answer, he prayed. Please … not the answering service … please …
‘Hello?’
‘Dr Fallerton, it’s Mike, it’s strychnine, I think that’s how it’s pronounced. It wasn’t the stuff in the test tube at all. Loser put strychnine on the ends of the pens. Does that help?’
Dr Fallerton’s voice choked. ‘Yes. Oh, yes, it helps,’ she said. ‘Mike, I have to go. I have to tell them …’
‘She’s still alive, isn’t she?’ demanded Mike desperately.
‘Yes. Yes. I know what to do now. I’ll call back, Mike. I’ll call you back.’
The phone went dead.
Lance stared at him, his face white in the dimness of the shed. ‘Mike? Mike, will you help me run away? Please, Mike, I can’t stay here! I can’t!’
Mike dialled again. It was hard to see the numbers. 000. His eyes were blurred, but he wasn’t sure if it was sweat or tears.
‘Police,’ he whispered when they answered. ‘Put me onto the police.’
‘Please, Mike!’
Mike ignored him. He tried to keep his voice steady as he spoke into the phone. ‘Hello? Is that the police? My name is Michael Hammersley. I’m at 15 Waratah Road, Elbow Creek.’
‘Mike, you’re my friend! You can’t tell on me!’
I’m not your friend, thought Mike. I never had the guts to be your friend. But I’m doing the right thing now.
‘I’m with Lance Loosley.’ His voice sounded like a stranger’s, even to him. ‘The kid you’re looking for. Yeah, the kid with the test tube at the school. But it was poison, not a virus.’
Looser scrabbled over the floor towards him. Mike backed away slowly, cradling the phone. ‘Mike, say I didn’t mean to do it! Please, Mike!’
‘We’re around the back in the shed. Please come soon. Please.’ He wondered vaguely what else he needed to say, but his mind had gone dead. It was suddenly as though too much had been crammed in it, all through this terrible day.
The mobile phone fell from his fingers. Dimly he could hear a tinny phone voice chattering on the other end, but he ignored it. He leant against the door of the shed, breathing hard, as though he had run a long way.
‘Mike?’ whispered Loser. He was still inside the shed, away from the light in the doorway. He was shivering, as though the cloak of pretence had fallen away, leaving him in cold reality.
‘Yes, Lance,’ said Mike.
‘Will you stay with me till they come?’
‘I’ll stay with you,’ said Mike. He pushed himself off the door and stepped back into the dimness. He wondered if he should put an arm around Lance’s shoulders. But it seemed soppy to do that. So he sat beside him on the cold dirt floor as they listened for the faint sound of the siren in the distance.