Drawing close to the camp now, Samantha thought about that terrible night. She’d sprung from her bed, ignoring Lala’s number one rule: never disobey Milosh. She’d launched herself, fists flying, at the only man who fit the definition of ‘father’, in that she’d lived under his roof for as long as she’d been conscious of anything at all. That night, though, he’d been her enemy. One of her blows connected, but it had merely landed harmlessly on his hairy chest.
He’d punched her to the ground, where she cowered next to Lala, and suddenly it had seemed as if the air in the van had become hot and blood-red, seared to boiling point by Milosh’s anger. It sprayed from his scalp, shoulders and eyeballs in a fine crimson mist, smearing all surfaces in fury. She had learned early on, when she was only four or five, that others didn’t see such things, but for her that red haze had been as real as Lala’s tears. And it had grown thicker as Milosh reached for her. Lala had wailed, clutching at Samantha, and her son had kicked out at Lala’s ribs, her cries ceasing with a woof of pain as the air was booted from her lungs. Then he’d reached for Samantha…
Right now, remembering, Samantha stumbled in the grass near the horses as she realised something.
She’d done it then too!
The buttery light, the honeyed energy, the glow through her skin. She had pushed. She’d been terrified for Lala and suddenly the red wash in the van became watery, as though someone stood with a hose at the door, jetting it away. Milosh had stared at her in astonishment and then terror; he’d dropped her and run from the caravan. Now his eyes hooded when they met, and he glanced away quickly.
And he’d never touched her again.
Samantha’s heart raced. So I made Milosh put me down, she thought. And I did the same thing yesterday with that psycho with the sword.
She tiptoed back through the sleeping bundles at the campsite. Only Nuri was awake, the old woman prodding expertly at the fire. Thank Gaia she hadn’t yet put the big black coffee kettle onto the coals – the scent of Nuri’s coffee could wake the dead.
What exactly did I do? she wondered. How does it work? Can I do it again?
As she approached the fire, Nuri caught her eye, gave her a wide, toothless grin, and winked.
Dwight Juvenile Justice Detention Centre, Sydney, Australia
Although every surface of the huge industrial kitchen in the Dwight Complex was polished to a gleaming shine, Luke always thought it smelled funny. Lurking beneath the soap and disinfectant was a very faint, dank aroma, something dark and dirty, like an old onion had rolled under a cabinet and was moulding and rotting away, reminding him that nothing in here was ever really clean.
Facing him, across the shining tiles of the kitchen, stood a less subtle example of this fact. Chef Nick. One elbow leaning against the handle of the giant upright dishwasher, the other hand, as always, holding a cigarette, Chef Nick looked like no one you wanted around your food.
‘He’s the head of the kitchen?’ whispered Zac.
Luke raised his eyebrows. Grinned.
During his second week here, when he’d first laid eyes on Chef Nick, Luke had determined to eat nothing that wasn’t sealed in a package. Nick had long, grey, greasy hair, and the top of his head was usually wrapped in a faded bandana darkened with sweat at the brow line. Luke had never seen him without a cigarette between his yellowed fingers, and he’d quickly joined Dorm Four’s obsession with watching and waiting for the inevitable long cylinder of ash to tumble from the end. Nick’s face was always glossy with sweat. Luke figured that the grease was doing a great job of feeding the twin patches of acne that pocked his cheeks. The white-tipped pustules were always plump and angry-looking.
But Luke had quickly learned that he didn’t have to worry about Chef Nick dropping ash into the food. Chef Nick did none of the cooking or cleaning in Dwight. That was what Catering Studies Lab was for. From week two on, every inmate of Dwight had CSL once a day, and if you were put on punishment, you got two or three CSL ‘lessons’ a day.
CSL stood for Child Slave Labour as far as Luke was concerned. He figured he’d peeled a thousand potatoes in here, scrubbed the gunk from two hundred twenty-litre pots, and had rubbed his hands raw at least thirty times making these tiles gleam.
Now that Zac had been here for a week, Luke thought, he had a lot to look forward to each day in CSL.
Chef Nick took a deep drag of his cigarette. Luke watched the ash. It held.
‘Bread today, maggots,’ Chef Nick said.
Kitkat groaned. Making the bread was heavy work and seemed to take forever. The eight members of Section Six, Dorm Four, moved towards the two massive mixmasters down near the ovens.
‘Black, Nguyen, take the flour down with you,’ said Nick. ‘Two bags.’
Luke sighed and led Zac over to the coolroom, stopping at a stack of sacks resembling large white pillows. Luke wished they weighed the same as a pillow. He bent his knees and grabbed one of them. ‘You get on the other end,’ he said to Zac. ‘And make sure you bend your knees or you’ll be on sick report tomorrow with a bad back.’
He and Zac hefted the twenty-kilo sack of white flour and began to shuffle their way down the kitchen towards the ovens.
‘Did you bring the Yellow Stainers?’ said Zac quietly, as they passed Chef Nick.
‘Yep,’ said Luke. ‘What’s your plan?’
‘We need to dehydrate them,’ said Zac. ‘I was thinking of using the clothes dryer in the laundry, but I figure that if we put them in an oven on low, it’ll work just as well.’
‘So are you sure these are going to make people sick?’ said Luke.
‘Sick as,’ said Zac. ‘I told you I know what I’m doing with plants. You wouldn’t even be questioning me, though, if you’d been using the aloe plant I gave you for those bruises. Your face still looks like a dropped pie.’
‘Charming,’ said Luke.
The sides of the sack were dusty with flour and thicker than a phonebook and Luke and Zac had to stop to reposition.
‘Here, pass me your Stainers,’ said Zac when they paused.
Luke pulled the handful of mushrooms from his pocket and quickly passed them over to Zac, who shoved them down the front of his sweatshirt.
Luke would bet his life they were harmless.
Hefting the heavy bag again, he said, ‘Anyway, supposing it works, I know who I want to use them on.’
‘Toad?’ said Zac.
Luke smiled.
‘Well, when we get there with this bag, you turn the oven on low. Real low. The lowest you can get it, okay? We don’t want roast mushrooms.’
‘And what’ll you be doing?’ said Luke.
‘When we get back with the second bag, I’ll slip them in. They’ll take a few hours to dry, though. We’ll have to find a way to get back in here this arvo.’
‘Oh, I can find us a way,’ said Luke.
By the time they’d joined the others with the second bag of flour, it looked like Kitkat and Barry had already sifted their flour into the mixer. Jonas was scooping up the pre-mix bread ingredients from a big bucket next to one of the mixers, while Hong Lo filled a two-litre jug of water.
Great, thought Luke. Looks like I’m on the losing team again.
Whoever got the job done first got to sample a slice of the finished product. In here, fresh, hot bread with real butter was as good as McDonald’s, especially when cold cereal was something worth fantasising over in this place. Luke didn’t make an effort in most competitions, but his stomach was flip-flopping now.