Carousel (13 page)

‘There are Tim Tams on the shelf behind you,' radioed Taylor at one point.

‘Oh my god. You can see us,' replied Lizzy looking upward for a camera.

‘That's the idea,' said Taylor.

‘So creepy,' said Lizzy.

I checked the Tim Tams. They were soft to touch and out of code.

When we rejoined Taylor and Rocky they were quickly becoming tired of the static vision.

‘I can't believe they haven't even moved yet,' said Taylor. ‘Rocky says they could have redirected a camera.'

‘Or maybe they just sit around most of the time, like us,' I said.

The others nodded.

‘Should we run shifts?' said Lizzy.

‘Good idea,' said Taylor and pulled away from the desk. ‘Come on, Rock. You and I are on break.'

Rocky padded over to join her on the sprawling bed we had assembled on the floor.

Lizzy and I dragged ourselves up to sit at the screens. There was no reason why we couldn't return to JB's or
our own beds when we were off shift, but it didn't seem like the right thing to do. At the same time I hated leaving our stuff unattended. Not that we really owned any of it. But it felt like we'd gone out and left the house wide open. My eyes gravitated immediately to the cameras on JB's and Myer, scanning for any hint of movement.

Lizzy and I took up watch as night closed in on the centre. We chatted to Taylor and Rocky for a while before they drifted into sleep and their soft breathing asked for silence. Eventually Lizzy broke this.

‘The boy that takes the wrong bus, why doesn't he get off at the first stop when he realises?' she whispered.

The question caught me out. It was the first time Lizzy had mentioned the stories I had been slipping in with her cards on Sundays. I glanced over my shoulder at our sleeping roommates.

‘I think he's too embarrassed to do anything. So he just sits there and acts like he's on the right one,' I replied softly.

Lizzy nodded and pondered for a moment.

‘But he has a pretty awesome adventure. Seeing all that stuff for the first time,' she said.

She was looking at me seriously. I felt under pressure to have an answer.

‘Does it seem like he did it on purpose?' I asked.

‘Maybe not, initially. But the bus stops for a while at that first station. While that homeless dude is screwing around. I mean, he knew what was happening by that stage, and he could have gotten off, yeah,' she replied.

‘I guess so,' I replied.

‘So he decides to stay on and have an adventure?' she asked.

I had no idea and started to sweat, despite the cold. I silently pleaded for some demented lunatic to run onto the screens and save me from answering.

They remained static and empty.

‘Yeah,' I said.

Lizzy nodded but I could see that she wasn't satisfied. I wished I'd never written the story, let alone given it to her to read. What was I thinking? She was Lizzy Finn. Just because we happened to be trapped in a shopping centre together didn't change that.

‘How is the studio going?' I asked.

‘Fine,' she replied.

The room was deadly silent but for the breath of our sleeping housemates. I focused on the screens. Lizzy flicked through a magazine. Nothing happened.

It wasn't until the end of our second shift that Rocky saw the woman.

For some reason we were all exhausted after a solitary night of watching the screens. When Lizzy and I clocked on for our second stint, the idea of remaining awake for another four hours seemed impossible. But somehow we ground our way through, chewing Hubba Bubba and sipping Ribena juices. We watched as lights timed on across the centre and it prepared for an opening that never arrived. Conversely the car park lights flickered out as daylight crept across the centre. For a while a tiny bird hopped about on the pavement giving us a window into something we hadn't seen for a long time.

Taylor and Rocky woke a little while before we were due to finish and volunteered to make coffees at the Muffin Break down the hall. They returned with four jumbo cups and a packet of Pop-Tarts.

‘Oh, wow. Thank you so much,' said Lizzy as they passed us the coffees.

‘Cold?' I asked of the Pop-Tarts.

Taylor nodded to Rocky who was unpacking a toaster, fresh off the shelf.

We sipped and chewed and gradually swapped shifts. My back felt balled up and tense from my conversation with Lizzy so I tried to remember some yoga on the floor. Taylor and Lizzy joined me and the three of us put on a pretty amateur display. Rocky sat attentively at the screens, sipping his giant mocha through a straw.

‘There's a lady,' he said abruptly.

The three of us looked up.

‘There's a lady,' he said again, pointing at a monitor.

We scrambled up and plastered our heads to the screens.

‘Where?' asked Taylor.

Rocky pointed again. It was one of the exterior cameras. A figure, most likely female, was holding a cup of coffee and fumbling through her pockets. We watched in stunned silence as she found a swipe card and disappeared from view.

‘Shit. Shit. She's coming inside!' said Lizzy.

‘Shhhh,' said Taylor harshly.

‘Where is she?' I said.

We scanned the other screens, frantically trying to locate the lady's position.

‘Coles,' said Rocky, pointing to one of the screens to our left.

‘Oh my god,' said Taylor.

There she was. Without the high angle we could see her clearly. A middle-aged lady in jeans and a polo shirt. Light hair pulled back from a suntanned face. A thermal coffee cup in one hand, a handbag in the other. We stared in awe at the perfectly normal looking human walking through Carousel.

‘She knows where she's going,' said Taylor softly.

We watched her closely as she traversed the corridor adjacent to Coles. It was true. She didn't have the walk of a shopper or a visitor to the centre. She knew where she was going, and seemed eager to get there.

‘What do we do?' asked Lizzy.

‘Watch,' I replied.

We followed her as she moved away from Coles and took a turn down a narrow corridor beside Kitchen Witch.

‘Where did she go?' said Taylor as she disappeared from one screen and didn't surface on another. We scanned the monitors.

‘Stick to one corner,' I suggested, concentrating on
the screens to the top right.

Again Rocky's video game prowess came to the fore.

‘There. She has a bucket,' he said.

We scuttled over to find her on-screen. She had emerged from a storeroom and was pushing a trolley, holding a mop bucket and some spray bottles, across the floor toward some bathrooms.

‘Holy shit. She's a fucking cleaning lady,' said Lizzy. ‘Isn't she?'

None of us answered. But it was true. The lady wheeled her bucket over to the Mens, propped the first door open and disappeared inside. Around ten minutes later she surfaced and moved along to the Ladies. The four of us watched in silence.

After she finished the Ladies she left the bucket and walked back out into the main corridor to take a seat on a couch. She took out what looked like a muesli bar and sipped on the remains of her coffee.

‘Oh my god. She's taking a break,' said Lizzy.

The rest of us nodded, transfixed. She finished the muesli bar and looked at a smartphone for a while.

‘You think she has a network?' asked Taylor.

As if to answer the lady held her phone upward and moved it around, searching for reception.

‘Doesn't look like it,' I said.

She checked the time on her watch and hauled herself back over to the bucket. We followed her as she wheeled it back into the storeroom and resurfaced with some additional products. She wheeled away from us, toward the dome.

‘Where's she going now?' asked Lizzy.

‘Toilets near the Apple Store?' suggested Rocky.

He was right. The lady trudged down the corridor and pulled up outside the next set of toilets. She was in there for quite a while. From memory they were pretty big. The four of us watched the process silently. At one point the lady strolled out into the corridor and over to the Coffee Club island. She looked around, then reached over the counter and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. The fact that only a scattering of bottles remained didn't appear to bother her.

She seemed to take less time on the toilets as she went, only spending a few minutes in the Mens at the end of the corridor. Then she wheeled the bucket out and trudged back towards us. She glanced at her watch and wiped her forehead. She had gotten through a lot of cleaning in just over an hour.

We watched her closely as she returned to the storeroom and disappeared inside. Where would she go next? If she ventured much further down the corridor
past the dome she would close in on JB's and our sprawled out living areas. Luckily there weren't any toilets right by JB's. Still, I think it was on all of our minds. But we weren't just apprehensive. The room buzzed with a weird sense of excitement too.

A few minutes later she shuffled back out of the storeroom.

‘No bucket,' said Rocky.

‘She's carrying something,' said Taylor, her face up to the screen.

‘Looks like her coffee cup,' I said.

We watched her moving away from the storeroom and back towards Coles.

‘Oh shit, she's going home,' said Taylor.

For some reason none of us had considered this possibility.

‘Can she get out?' asked Lizzy.

‘She can't be,' I said.

‘Why not?' said Taylor.

‘Shit. What do we do?' said Lizzy.

We stood up. Suddenly things were urgent.

‘We need to speak to her,' said Taylor.

‘Too far,' said Rocky.

He was right. The lady was already turning down the corridor towards the door she entered earlier. By the
time we reached it, she would be outside.

‘Fuck. We're so stupid!' said Taylor.

The four of us stood in silent, dejected limbo as she disappeared from our screens, then reappeared outside. She put her coffee cup down on the ground, pulled the door shut, and disappeared off the screens completely.

There was a heavy silence.

None of us wanted to look at each other.

‘I'm going to check that door,' said Taylor.

She picked up a few tools and took off down the stairs. The rest of us followed.

Carousel felt different. It had been breached by reality, or some weird version of it. The corridors felt like part of an empty shopping complex again. Foreign and unwelcoming. Not somewhere we had been living for months on end.

We passed the corridor with the storeroom and glanced cautiously sideways. It was as empty and boring as always. I looked up to find the cameras we had been viewing it through. Once I started looking I noticed them everywhere. Small glass domes that didn't give away the direction. Larger rectangular versions that were designed to stand out and shout that you're being watched. We had been under twenty-four-seven surveillance since the morning we arrived.

Taylor disappeared around a corner into a small cul-de-sac. We followed her to a regular looking door at the end that must have been the lady's entry point. There was the usual small tagging mechanism with a red light on the wall. Taylor pulled on the door. Without a card it was fixed shut like any other.

We gathered around as Taylor put her tools down on the floor. To our surprise she calmly took a hold of the heaviest mallet and began viscously pounding the door. Large round dents appeared all over the timber. The door didn't shift but Taylor continued. Lizzy sighed and said something that I didn't hear. I turned to look at her but she was already walking back out into the foyer. Taylor took a breather, then continued. Rocky stood behind her, watching sheepishly. The door held firm like the hundreds before it.

I surfaced from the cul-de-sac to find Lizzy on a couch near Coffee Club. She was cross-legged and as serious as she was when I'd first seen her. I sat beside her and we listened to the dull thumping on the door continue from behind us.

‘Hello! It's not going to open!' yelled Lizzy over her shoulder. ‘Idiot,' she said to herself.

I glanced across at the toilets the lady had cleaned. I rose and walked toward them.

‘What are you doing?' asked Lizzy.

‘Checking something,' I replied.

I opened the door to the Ladies and gazed inside. Lizzy appeared at my shoulder. The place smelt like bleach and had definitely been cleaned. All of the cubicles remained open and gnomed.

‘So weird,' whispered Lizzy.

We checked the Disabled. It was similarly clean and open. In the Mens, one of the cubicles was closed. Lizzy and I shared a glance and ventured over to the door. It was the final cubicle at the far end of the room. I pushed it open and we found the gnome standing inside. He was close to where we would have expected. By the right-hand side of the toilet, back enough to let the door open. I edged him forward an inch until he propped the door once again.

‘You think she just knocked him back a little as she left?' asked Lizzy.

‘Probably. She's left everything else gnomed. For some fucking reason,' I replied.

‘So weird,' Lizzy repeated.

We surfaced from the bathrooms to find the thumping noise stopped and Taylor seated on a couch down the corridor. She was curled up with her head hidden in her knees. Rocky stood awkwardly beside her, tracing
imaginary words on the floor with his sneakers. Lizzy looked at her sister and sighed. I put a hand on her shoulder.

‘Can you take Rocky back to play some video games?' Lizzy asked.

I nodded and watched her move over to sit beside Taylor. She said some things that I couldn't hear. Taylor lifted her head slightly to reply. She was crying pretty bad.

Rocky padded over to me with his head down. I gave him a brief one-armed hug that didn't feel too awkward and we left Taylor and Lizzy Finn alone in the giant, messed-up centre we made our home.