Kill Baxter (7 page)

He smiles at that. ‘You and he are very alike.’

‘Genetics is a bitch,’ I say.

‘No matter what trouble you get into, you can always tell us,’ he says, and then gives me an awkward shoulder hug.

I really wish that were true, Dad.

He’s about to launch into another little monologue when Esmé climbs up the side of the house and wriggles through my window. She’s wearing a black leather jacket, a weird stoner rock T-shirt, a black beanie, black leggings and bright green boots. My dad nods at her and adopts the cool, hip-and-happening dad persona he uses on all my friends. I’ve long since stopped being embarrassed by it.

‘You’re welcome to use the door, Esmé,’ he says.

‘Thanks, Mr Zee,’ she replies through a mouthful of gum.

‘Well, I’ll leave you two alone. And I won’t tell your mother.’

‘You’re always so cool, Mr Zee,’ Esmé says.

‘Well …’ My dad adjusts his shirt. ‘Working in the media industry I—’

‘Thanks, Dad,’ I say.

He nods and closes the door behind him.

‘Hey, magic boy,’ Esmé says, flopping down on to my bed.

‘Hey. Where you been lately?’

‘Oh, I was just hanging out with my friend Troy.’

‘Troy?’ I say, and wince as a couple of rounds of armour-piercing jealousy are fired into my chest.

‘Aww, are you jealous? Cute. He’s just a friend, dummy.’

‘I’m not jealous,’ I say with a sneer.

‘Good. Ready for your big day at special school?’

‘I prefer “differently gifted”,’ I say with a laugh.

‘Oh, you’re different all right. So they’re going to teach you how to be a sangoma and shit?’

‘I have no idea what they’re going to teach me. I’m just going to keep my head down, graduate, have my criminal record cleared and then get the hell away from this supernatural shit for ever.’

‘Once you go quack, you never go back,’ she says, popping another stick of gum into her mouth.

‘Cute.’ I lie down next to her. ‘How was your day?’

‘Someone called me a manic pixie dream girl at school,’ she says.

‘What did you do?’

‘Put her in a headlock and carved “I heart Zooey Deschanel” into her arm with a compass.’

‘Nice,’ I say.

‘I thought so.’

We share a set of headphones and she runs her fingers up and down my arm as we listen to some of the tracks that are in the centre of our musical-taste Venn diagram.

‘Did you really believe you were a murderer? That all this shit wasn’t real?’ she says.

‘It seemed pretty believable at the time.’

‘And now?’

‘No.’

‘Really?’

‘OK. I don’t know. It’s weird. I still have moments where I think my life is just made up. Like everything I know is just an illusion.’

‘I think everyone has that sometimes, don’t they?’

‘Yeah, maybe. I’m going to miss you,’ I say.

‘Me too, magic boy,’ she says and leans across to kiss me.

The next morning I get up and pack the last of my stuff. I sit on each of the cases in turn, jiggling their zips and bouncing up and down until they’re mostly closed. I start to drag them out of my room, but Rafe stands in the doorway clutching a notebook. His new thing is to wear an orange onesie around the house, which, combined with his wild red hair, makes him look like some kind of demented flaming Pokémon.

‘What’s up?’ I ask.

He shrugs.

‘I’m going to miss you. But we’ll still talk, OK?’ I say.

He scribbles something furiously in his notebook and hands it to me.

In your dreams
, it says.

I laugh. ‘Asshole.’ I give him a hug, which he squirms and wriggles to avoid.

My parents help me carry my bags to the platform. Kyle, Zikhona and the Inhalant Kid are slouching against a pillar waiting for me. Zikhona grabs me and squashes me against her gold bomber jacket. She smells of bubblegum and expensive perfume. I get Kyle and the Inhalant Kid in a group hug that smells of cigarettes, glue and the horrible pheromone deodorant that Kyle bought off the Internet (months later and he swears it’s on the brink of actually working).

Kyle sniffles a bit, and I see tears in his eyes.

‘I can’t believe you’re going to magic school,’ he says. ‘I should be going too.’

‘I know,’ I say. ‘I wish you could.’

‘Remember what you promised.’

I feel the guilt throb in my chest.

‘I remember,’ I say.

‘What are we supposed to do during term time?’ the Inhalant Kid asks. ‘I can’t just do schoolwork. I’ll go crazy.’

I stand in front of them and give my last speech as head of the brief, beautiful organisation that was the Spider.

‘The Spider is gone,’ I say seriously. ‘You have to stay out of school politics completely or Anwar will crush you.’

Zikhona pounds her fist in her palm. ‘Let the fucker try.’

‘I mean it. It’s the end of an era. I’m trying to be a better person. I suggest you do the same.’

It crushes me the way they look at me. It’s like I’ve reneged on every promise I’ve ever made. I want to throw stones at them and tell them to ‘git’.

‘We’ll miss you, Bax,’ says Kyle.

A terrible lonely feeling descends as I walk away from them, my coven of freaks.

‘Do you want us to wait with you?’ asks my dad, putting a hand on my shoulder.

‘No,’ I say. ‘It’s OK.’

I hug them both and wave and smile as they leave. My mom turns back and fixes me with a look. The meaning is understood:
You promised to be good, Baxter.
I give her a little nod.

I sit down on my cases to wait for the train. I’m preparing myself to belly-flop into a pool of self-pity when a commotion at the far end of the platform interrupts me. A familiar red-bearded shape blunders through the crowd muttering like a madman.

His face is purple around the ugly line of stitches that hold it together. He has his coat clutched about him and he’s shivering uncontrollably. He sways, stumbles into a pillar, holds on to it like it’s a life raft in stormy seas, and then pushes off and careens towards me.

He collapses on the platform next to me and gives me a thumbs-up. ‘Found you,’ he mutters.

‘You don’t look so good,’ I tell him. Which is saying a lot considering his appearance is always on a sliding scale from escaped psycho to homeless Viking.

‘I need a drink,’ he says and lies back on the concrete, his fingers twined in his hair like he’s holding the top of his head on.

‘I thought you had it beat?’ I say a little smugly.

‘Almost there.’ He smiles wanly.

‘Uh-uh.’

‘Positive thinking, that’s what Dr Femowaqui says in the book. My new self is blossoming like a thousand-petalled lotus.’ He is consumed by a racking cough and spits out an oozing wad of black phlegm on to the concrete.

‘Yeah, you’re blossoming all right,’ I say, turning away with a grimace.

‘So, you ready for the Poort?’ he asks.

‘I don’t know. Any words of wisdom about your alma mater?’

Even through the alcohol jitters I can see the grimace on his face.

‘You need to play the game, build alliances, be savvy, be smart,’ he wheezes.

‘Well, I’m done with that,’ I say.

He laughs and it turns into another round of coughing. ‘The problem with you, sparky, is that you always do the wrong thing at the wrong time. You’re an asshole when you need to be an angel and an angel when you need to be an asshole.’

‘Thanks, Deepak,’ I say. ‘But this is what I’m doing now.’

He nods. ‘One thing I can say about you is that yours is a type of stupidity that I can respect. My only advice is to try and not get fucked up too badly.’

‘Thanks,’ I say.

Ronin waits with me for a few minutes and then slaps me on the back and stumbles away, sweating like a marathon runner. I’m placing imaginary wagers on how long he’ll stay on the wagon when my train arrives.

It’s old, rusted and completely trashed, covered in peeling black paint with a thick line of dirty pink down the centre.

I sigh and stand up. A guy my age jogs across the platform towards me. His head is shaved, he has full-sleeve Japanese tattoos on both arms, and he’s wearing camo shorts. He’s good-looking, except for a crescent-moon scar beneath his left eye.

‘Hi, I’m Hekka,’ he says. He gives me a warm smile but there’s something about him that makes me wary. Easy now, Baxter. You’re suspicious of everybody. This guy is just trying to be friendly.

‘Hi,’ I reply. ‘Baxter.’

‘Baxter Zevcenko?’ he says.

‘Um, yeah. How did you …’

‘You’re a hero, man. Well, I mean, kinda. I heard about Basson.’

‘Well, that wasn’t only—’

‘Are you kidding? That’s some heroic shit right there.’ He extends his hand. ‘I just want to thank you for saving the world.’

I take his hand and shake. I was completely wrong about this guy. He’s actually quite cool.

‘Wow,’ I say. ‘Well, that’s … I mean, no problem.’

‘Always good to meet new people. It can be hard here. Particularly for us …’ He touches the scar under his eye.

‘Us?’

‘Heroes, man,’ he says. ‘I’m prophesied to be the Chosen One, so I know how it goes. The pressure, am I right?’

‘Yeah, I guess …’

‘I mean, my parents were both killed in sinister circumstances when I was little. That forges character, right?’

‘Shit. I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘But I wouldn’t know. My parents are both still fine. My dad’s into viral marketing, so I suppose that’s something …’

He raises his eyebrows. ‘Your parents are both fine? Well, that sucks for you. But I guess we all have our life-defining challenges.’

‘All Hexpoort students please board the train,’ a smoothly robotic voice announces.

I grab my cases.

‘So what’s the deal?’ I say. ‘Do we just get on the train?’

Hekka drops his voice. ‘I know you’re new, but you must be somewhat acquainted with … you know …’

‘Magic?’ I say.

‘Uh-uh.’ He smiles.

‘A little,’ I say.

He points to a pillar. ‘In order to get to the registration desk, you need to run at that pillar.’

‘You’re kidding me.’

He laughs and puts a hand on my shoulder. ‘I know, I know. Lame, isn’t it? It’s just a stupid little gimmick that they use to impress new students. There’s a lot of stuff they just blatantly copy from books and movies. If I’m honest about it, they’re really not very creative.’

‘So it’s kinda like the veil around the Freak Quarter?’ I look at the pillar.

He clicks and points a finger at me. ‘Exactly, man. Just run at it,’ he says with a smile. ‘Trust me.’

Alarms are going off in my head.
Look at the way he’s leaning in
, a part of my mind screams.
He’s too enthusiastic. He’s not just casually giving you information.
I suppress it viciously, like a riot cop pepper-spraying a crowd. ‘Sometimes you’ve got to trust people, Baxter,’ I whisper under my breath.

I hold a case in each hand and begin to run. The pillar grows in my vision.

‘Faster,’ Hekka shouts from behind me. ‘It won’t work unless it’s fast.’

I pick up speed and hurtle towards the pillar, the wheels of the cases thunking on the concrete.

It’s at the last moment that I consciously realise what I’ve known all along. But by then it’s too late. I slam into the pillar, ricochet off at an angle, trip over my own feet and fall hard on to the platform.

Laughter explodes from Hekka and a group of cronies who have gathered around him. He saunters over and leans down next to my ear. ‘I’m the hero at Hexpoort, Zevcenko,’ he says. ‘You’re a fucking Crow. Did you really think you were going to waltz in here and take over?’

I lie there on the concrete, breathing hard.

A figure looms over me and I ball my fists up involuntarily. But it grips my arm and pulls me to my feet.

‘Don’t worry. Those fuckwits got me with that last term.’

‘Thanks,’ I say and look at him.

He’s a young black guy in a trilby, tweed suit and bow tie, with a fat set of headphones around his neck. There’s a restless energy about him that seems familiar. He bounces on his heels as he helps me up. I look over to where Hekka is re-enacting my stupidity, miming hitting the pillar and falling backwards in slow-mo.