Kill Baxter Page 5

  ‘This Bone Kraal you were telling me about,’ he says. ‘I found a video on their YouTube account.’

  ‘THE REVENGE OF THE DOWNTRODDEN,’ intones one of those robotic computer voices. ‘WE CANNOT STAND BY WHILE THE HIDDEN ARE OPPRESSED …’

  I hit the space bar. ‘OK, I think we get it.’

  ‘A secret revolutionary organisation fighting against the system,’ Kyle says. ‘You think they’d let you join?’

  ‘Goblins tried to pull the teeth from my skull and then decapitate me for them. So no, I don’t think they’d let me join. You’re forgetting I’m going to Hexpoort and training to be the system.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ Kyle says. ‘That kinda sucks.’

  I’ve started packing my stuff into a pair of battered borrowed suitcases. I consider taking some of my book collection but then realise that it’s no longer really appropriate to my new life path. Ayn Rand, Niccolò Machiavelli, Sun Tzu. None of them have much to say about the value of listening to your inner good guy.

  I put the books back on to the shelf. I take my school books. This is what I need to be reading now. I look through them. The Essence of Magic. Some of it makes sense in an abstract sort of way. Some of it is complete gibberish.

  ‘You’re going to tell me what you learn at this Poort place, though, right?’ Kyle says.

  ‘I’m going to do even better. I’m going to write you regular emails describing the stuff I find out.’

  Harold is right: maybe focusing on writing about this magical stuff will be a new hobby for me. It’ll help me purge my urge to tickle the strings of strategy and caress the keys of corruption. It’s like I’ve been involved in a major car accident and I’m learning to walk again.

  Kyle nods. ‘That’s good. Because I’m probably magic too. I mean, I’ve always been a late developer; my voice only broke like six months ago. I’m probably heir to this incredible magical lineage too.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, and try to sound as neutral as possible.

  He looks up from the laptop. ‘You don’t believe that?’

  ‘I do, I do,’ I say. ‘I just … you know … I don’t really know how this stuff works and I don’t want you getting your hopes up …’

  He stands up. ‘It’s always like this, Bax. You never believe I can do anything.’ He has that hurt expression he gets that makes him look like an oversized puppy.

  ‘It’s not always like that.’

  I know what to say but it would be manipulative, so it’s the wrong thing to do.

  ‘I’ll speak to them about getting you into Hexpoort,’ I say. ‘I’m pretty sure all you need is a little bump and your magical ability will sprout like your late-forming pubes.’

  ‘Really?’ His face brightens so much that I just nod and smile. ‘Thanks, Bax,’ he says.

  When he leaves two hours later, I sit in my room and feel guilty. I’ve lied to my best friend. I have no intention of speaking to anyone at Hexpoort about him. It’s the old keep-on-putting-it-off-and-get-him-to-focus-on-something-else strategy. I’ve used it a thousand times. This is the only time I’ve ever felt bad about it.

  CrowBax: All communication is persuasive. We just happen to be good at it.

  SienerBax: We agreed. We’re going to try to treat people fairly. We’re not going to exploit weaknesses.

  CrowBax: Just cut off my fucking hand. I’m already missing a finger, just take the whole thing. Please. Take an eye, take a kidney, but please don’t take my beautiful manipulations …

  I’ve fallen off the wagon already. I’ve manipulated Kyle and I hate myself for it. I realise it’s not just the big manipulations I have to stop. It’s the small ones too. I have to go completely cold turkey. I have to end this bullshit.

  The depression leech is sucking all the happy juices out of my brain so I shove some more clothes into a bag and then stomp downstairs to get a coffee.

  My mother is in the kitchen, playing a game on her phone. She swears and paws viciously at the screen. ‘Fucking cocksucking aliens,’ she shouts. My mom can swear like a sailor when she gets riled up.

  ‘Hey, Mom,’ I say and turn the kettle on. ‘I thought games turned you into a psycho?’ It’s one of her theories. My mother is convinced that me dealing porn is either down to a vaccination I had as a kid, the gluten in my food, or video games. She’s not sure which, but definitely one of those.

  ‘Baxter! Sorry, was just replying to an email.’ She places her phone face down on the counter.

  ‘Right,’ I say.

  ‘What you been doing?’ she asks, patting the stool next to her. ‘Spending time with Rafe, I hope. He’s been really anti-social lately. I wish he wouldn’t spend so much time reading his history book and living in his head.’

  ‘Getting school books,’ I say, dutifully sitting down. ‘And yeah, I’ve spent some time with Rafe.’

  ‘Good. This is a second chance for you. You don’t have to do things like you did at Westridge, you know? There’s no shame in trying to change, trying to be good.’ She’s right, I guess. Unfortunately there’s no money, power or prestige either.

  My inner change is not the only shifting of paradigms that has happened in our house. My mother used to think I was a normal teenager. But the kind of things she’s seen and heard since I was busted have convinced her otherwise. Unfortunately there is nothing in glossy magazines entitled ‘So your son is a maimed porn dealer with mental issues? Our experts weigh in.’

  ‘I know things haven’t always been easy for you,’ she starts.

  ‘Wait, Mom,’ I say. I know she wants to understand, to probe the depths of my dysfunction to understand where she went wrong, but I just can’t handle it today. ‘Our family household income means we’re in the top two per cent of the world’s population. I was enrolled in one of the top schools in South Africa, which offered an education on a par with the best in the world. I’ve never wanted for anything. I didn’t deal porn because I was repressing some deep psychological issues to do with Rafe. I didn’t do it because there was anything wrong. I did it because I wanted to do it, because I chose to do it. And it may have been ethically unsound, antisocial and bordering on the sociopathic, but it was mine, OK? It was mine.’

  It’s not what my mom wants to hear. Her face crinkles into a mixture of disgust, fear and disappointment. Disfearpointment is an ugly beast that latches on and tugs at her eyebrows and lips. Having your parents experience an overwhelming feeling of disappointment and revulsion at the monster you’ve become is a really unpleasant thing, no matter how cool you think you are. Trust me.

  ‘And now?’ is all she manages to croak.

  ‘Now I’m trying to be better,’ I say.

  She nods. ‘Are you ready for tomorrow?’

  I shrug.

  ‘Oh Baxter,’ she says, pulling me into a hug that squashes my face against her cheek. ‘You really are a strange child. I suppose I always knew that.’

  ‘Thanks, Mom,’ I murmur into her neck. ‘I think.’

  My dad is no longer unemployed. He has recently landed a job as a viral brand activation specialist at an agency, so when he pops his head into my room later, he has swapped his dressing gown for chinos and a loud shirt.

  ‘How’s work?’ I say.

  ‘Don’t ask.’ He sighs and sits down on my bed. ‘I organised a synchronised twerking flash mob for a car insurance company. But only four of the twerkers showed up and I had to fill in so that I didn’t look like an idiot in front of the client.’

  I laugh. ‘And how’d that work out?’

  He sighs again. ‘Well, it went viral. But not the way we wanted.’

  I laugh and he takes this as his cue to start on why he’s really in my room.

  ‘Listen, Bax,’ he says.

  My dad has never been the most communicative. He hasn’t really hit any of the major teenage milestones, so now he tries to get the sex talk, the drug talk, and the you-shouldn’t-deal-porn-and-do-whatever-you-did-to-lose-a-finger talk all done in one go.


  ‘When you reach a certain age, you want to experiment; that’s natural.’ I know I’m going to have to stop him, but part of me is kinda interested to see where he’s going to go with this. ‘You kids are bombarded with so many images these days, it’s understandable that you’d have some strange ideas about the way the world works.’ That’s right, Dad, all that inter-dimensional mantis reality TV has really screwed me up.

  ‘It’s OK, Dad,’ I say. ‘Now that Grandpa Zev is gone, it’s up to me to be the lizard-tongued, devil-horned black sheep of the family.’

  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 f
ace.

  ‘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?’