Days Like This (3 page)

Lily had barely been at her computer screen an hour the next day when the study door swung open. Daniel stood there with a cheeky grin on his face.

‘Tryhard,’ he teased, squinting at her screen. She might be the runty twin, but at English comprehension she was working well above his level.

Lily leaned back in her chair and rubbed her eyes. ‘You know how shitty Dad gets when we don’t finish our work.’

‘Stuff him,’ Daniel said. ‘What’s the point, anyway? Who cares if we finish our levels? This isn’t bloody school.’ He flicked her screen hard with his fingernail. ‘It’s a screen full of bullshit! Where are the other kids? Where are the teachers?’ He went to look under Lily’s chair. ‘Nup, no one there.’

Lily nodded glumly. Even twelve years later, they both still remembered how great their school had been before it was shut down along with all the other schools in the city. Still, she tried to make a joke of it. She was worried Daniel’s anger would trigger another of his headaches.

‘It’s the rules, you know, Daniel,’ she said, imitating Megan’s high-pitched voice.

They both laughed.

‘Screw the rules,’ Daniel said, grabbing a box off the shelf by the door. ‘It’s Scrabble time.’

‘You know I’ll cane you,’ Lily said. It was good to see Daniel back to normal. He hadn’t had another headache since the Friday before when the Blacktroopers had killed Sherbet.

Maybe the headaches won’t return
, she thought, though she didn’t really believe it.

Lily tapped her keyboard and her screen went black. ‘I’ll finish it later,’ she said.

They sat opposite one another, Lily delving into the Scrabble bag for a letter.

‘A,’ she crowed. ‘I’m up first.’

‘Dumb luck as usual.’ Daniel racked up his letters with a flourish. ‘Bloody hell! A whole bunch of vowels. Who needs vowels in life? They’re completely pointless,’ he said.

‘Just remember, there’s no such word as
mimble
,’ Lily said.

‘’Course there is.’ Dan frowned at his letters. ‘It means nimble, only with an “m”. Any idiot knows that.’

‘Well, this idiot is scoring nineteen. Actually, it’s a double-word score for first player so it’s thirty-eight.’ Lily plonked down ‘zombie’ in the centre of the board.

‘Whatever,’ Daniel grumbled. ‘There you go.’ He attached two letters to the ‘m’ of zombie. ‘Moo. How good is that?’

He glanced over his shoulder, got up carefully and swung open the door. There was no one there.

‘You can never be too careful,’ he said. ‘Listen, Lil, I’ve got something important to tell you. I was serious about what I said yesterday, you know.’

‘What?’ Lily was studying her letters.

‘About trying to find out what the Committee’s up to,’ he said. ‘And listen, Lil, about the freak –’

Lily frowned. ‘He’s still our father, Dan.’

‘Well, there’s something weird about him, about both of them. They’re looking younger every day. Have you noticed? Fat Max, too.’

Lily nodded slowly. As soon as Daniel said it she realised that was what had been making her skin crawl whenever her parents or Max were around. All three of them had started to look different. Smoother or something. Lily tried to remember when she’d first noticed this, but Daniel interrupted her thoughts.

‘I’ve been working on hacking into the Committee’s central data system,’ he whispered, glancing over his shoulder again. Lily looked up quickly. Hacking was forbidden. Their parents had lectured them about it three years ago, around the time they’d been confined to the house and their computer access had been cut back to just the educational programs.

Ever since then, the educational program automatically opened when they switched on their screens every weekday morning at ten. This was all there was; everything else was blocked. They didn’t try to search beyond the educational programs. Not ever.

‘Hacking?’ Lily was whispering now, too.

‘Yup,’ Daniel said.

‘But how?’ she said.

Dan leaned towards her. ‘It’s difficult, but I think I might be close to making a breakthrough. I’ve found a few documents, but I can’t get into the central system. I’m being blocked by the Committee’s security firewall. I’m trying some codes. I’m close!’ His eyes were sparkling. ‘I’m really close, Lily. I don’t want to talk too much about it in case I jinx myself.’

Lily stared.

Dan nodded, happy with her reaction. ‘What do you reckon “serum enhanced” means?’ he whispered. ‘I read about it on the Committee site that I got into.’

‘No idea,’ Lily said, her Scrabble letters forgotten.

‘I think it’s what’s happening to Mum and Dad. I think they’re serum enhanced, Lil, that’s why they’re looking younger rather than older.’

Lily thought about her parents and what Dan had said earlier. They did seem to be growing younger. She was an idiot for not seeing it earlier, but now that she thought about it, from side-on, Pym could easily have been a man in his late twenties or thirties.

‘Have you noticed the Blacktroopers?’ Lily said. ‘They look kind of stretched and shiny, too.’

Daniel nodded. ‘And listen to this, Lily. I haven’t learned much from the Committee documents, but what I have seen is pretty weird. There was something about people being “hormonally lucrative”. I don’t like the sound of it. I think it all somehow ties in with the pills and my headaches –’

‘Your headaches?’ Lily said, alarmed.

The door burst open. Alice stood there, her mouth a small, outraged ‘o’. ‘But it’s school time,’ she said, pointing at the Scrabble board.

‘Get over it, Alice,’ Daniel said wearily. ‘And anyway, why aren’t you at your baby screen?’

‘It is not a baby screen. Its’s a screen exactly like yours.’

‘He’s just teasing, ignore him,’ Lily said.

‘You can put down yak.’ Alice pointed over Daniel’s shoulder.

‘Only if yak’s spelt
y-a-c
, dummy,’ Daniel said.

‘I’m going to tell Mum and Dad you’re playing instead of learning.’ Alice glared at Daniel, and then stuck out her tongue for good measure.

‘You wouldn’t, would you, Alice?’ Lily said.

‘Well, I might just,’ Alice said, tossing her thick dark-blonde hair, which she admired whenever she passed a mirror.

‘So you’re a suck-up
and
a dobber,’ Daniel said.

‘It’s not my fault they like me best,’ Alice said, flouncing from the room.

‘Now you’ve done it,’ Lily said to Daniel.

The fact was that Alice
was
given special treatment. She was the only one of them allowed into their parents’ wing of the house. Like many other things, the reason for this had never been explained.

Before Lily could question Daniel any more about his hacking attempts, their mother came in.

‘Max is coming for dinner tonight,’ Megan said, frowning slightly.

Lily opened her mouth, but her mother got in first, holding up her hands.

‘There’s no point arguing. He’s coming and that’s that. Be ready at six,’ Megan said.

‘Mum, you don’t even like him, why do you keep inviting him here?’ Lily said.

But her mother was already halfway out of the door.

Lily was surreptitiously rubbing her hand on the tablecloth, trying to wipe away the lingering sensation of Max’s oily handshake. As usual, he’d held on too long and trapped her by encircling her shoulders with his other arm. His breath smelled like chemicals. At least now he was seated at the other end of the table – the head of the table. He always sat there, without being invited. He’d made Alice sit on one side of him and her father on the other. Max kept reaching out to pat Alice’s hand, oblivious to her continued attempts to snatch it away.

He’s drinking a lot
, Lily thought uneasily.
Even more than usual
.

Max was horrible sober, but he was a really disgusting drunk. The alcohol not only fed his temper, it fed his putridness. Was there even such a word? There should be – it was a good way to describe Max.

‘Mm, very tasty,’ Max was saying, leaning forward to survey the contents of a large platter that Megan had set in front of him. Max liked tidbits. That was his word. He didn’t eat food served normally. Still holding his drink with one hand, Max now reached out and swept up a handful of sweet pastries, some grapes and a selection of small sandwiches. He shovelled them onto his plate and began to hoover them up.

‘Ah, tidbits,’ Max said. He fingered the remains of a pastry before inserting it into his mouth and taking another gigantic slurp of alcohol.

Lily glanced at Dan, who was balanced on the edge of his chair next to her, looking thunderous. He was stabbing his own tidbits with his fork and scowling at Max, who was either blissfully unaware or pretending not to notice.

‘Time to enjoy the fruits of our labour,’ Max was saying, waving his arms expansively. Lily saw with interest that her father was looking at Max with distaste.

Why do we have to have him around all the time?
she wanted to say.

Was it duty, because Pym had grown up with Max? Or Maximilian, as he preferred to be called (although no one in this house obliged him). To Dan, Lily and Alice, he was plain Max, said like you were spitting or swearing.

Pym and Max had lived on the same street as boys and attended the same school. Their families were members of the city’s elite. Lily and Dan had heard that word a lot from their father. All their lives, Pym had told Dan, Lily and Alice how fortunate they were to have parents with such elite backgrounds. Backgrounds which included private schools, wealthy parents, affluent neighbourhoods, substantial homes and beach houses. And now it meant they were allowed to live inside the Wall and receive special food and water moon deliveries. It also meant putting up with having Max to dinner.

Max reached out a finger and touched Alice on her cheek. ‘Growing up, beautiful,’ he said. His lips glistened and he was slurring his words.

Lily saw that her parents had gone very still. A light sheen stood out on her father’s forehead.

‘Leave her alone,’ Dan said loudly.

Max glared at Dan, but took his hand away.

‘Almost harvest time,’ Max said cryptically, giving Dan a long hard look.

‘Max!’ Pym said.

Megan looked stricken.

‘What do you mean, harvest time?’ Lily said. She could hear her heart beating in her ears. Dan had dropped his fork. She could feel tension radiating from him.

‘He means the food production, of course,’ Pym said quickly.

‘Don’t you tell me what I mean –’ Max began.

‘Max, shut up!’ Pym said loudly.

‘How dare you,’ Max spluttered. ‘You don’t tell
me
what to do. And you don’t interrupt me. Do you hear me?’

Pym sat stiff as a post, staring down at his plate.

‘Answer me,’ Max shouted. ‘Have you forgotten I have the power? I have power over all of you.’

He was yelling, waving his arms about. Vivid red circles had appeared on each of his cheeks. He’d knocked his plate sideways and his fork fell to the ground with a loud clatter. He stopped, took a deep breath, emptied the dregs of the wine into his glass and shook it at Megan, who jumped up and ran from the room.

‘I’m calm now,’ Max said eventually. ‘Lucky for you, Pym, I’m so damn calm.’ He paused, glaring at Pym. ‘And lucky for you the money runs in your family, otherwise you’d be out there, too.’

Max pointed with his chin and Lily knew that ‘out there’ was the unknown land beyond the glittering line of the Wall.

‘Can I be excused?’ Alice whispered, her face red and her voice shaking.

‘Yes, go, all of you,’ Pym said.

Lily, Dan and Alice jumped up and ran, passing their mother coming back into the room with another bottle of wine.

‘Do you think Max is Committee?’ Lily said to Dan when they’d finally calmed Alice and got her into bed.

Dan nodded soberly. ‘Most likely. It would explain a few things.’

Lily shivered, remembering the last horrible visit from the Blacktroopers. If Max was Committee, then he was partly responsible for the behaviour of those monsters, who were Committee employees.

But Lily and Dan couldn’t be entirely sure if Max really was Committee. Like a lot of things in their world, the composition and real purpose of the Committee and the Blacktroopers remained unexplained. Dan often joked to Lily that their parents gave them information on a need-to-
not-
know basis.