Free Zac and Mia by A.J. Betts Page B

walls were,’ Nina says, reluctantly switching off the TV. ‘You want me to ask her to turn the music down?’
    ‘You feel that brave?’
    ‘Not really.’
    ‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘Let her be.’

10
ZAC
    The breath is faint on my neck when I register it. A hand is on my shoulder. Too soft to be real.
    Am I dreaming? Has a spirit come for me, after all?
    Behind me, a chest rises and falls. I draw out my own breaths to match. I’m not afraid. If it’s a spirit, it’s a kind one. A spirit with small hands.
    But do spirits wear socks?
    Fabric is pressed against my heels. Knees nestle into the backs of mine. I open my eyes in the darkness.
    ‘Mum?’ Perhaps my anxious mother’s come a day early. But I doubt she’d crawl into bed beside me.
    The hand is smaller than my mum’s. The breath reminds me of a vanilla milkshake.
    I feel a pulse in my foot. Why does the body do that? Why, sometimes, does a body part remind youthat blood’s beating under the skin in places other than the heart?
    Then I realise it’s hers. Her pulse beats through the sock and tells me she’s alive too.
    The blankets cover us both. There are two blankets. How long has she been here?
    ‘Mia?’
    But she’s sleeping deeply, too distant to reach. I’m aware of all the parts of her that rest against me.
    I lengthen my breaths, making them slow and full.
    And that’s all I know.
    I stretch by the window and check out the cloudless sky that I’ll soon be under. I scan the horizon with the knowledge that Mum is on her way and in five hours I’ll be heading to that southerly point in the distance, leaving all this brick behind. Soon there’ll be no more bed that reclines in three ways, no call button, and no blue blankets.
    Blankets. There are two of them. And long hair on my pillow.
    A current forks through me.
    It
happened
. It was her. With her milky breath and fingers curled around my shoulder. It was real.
    I grip my door handle for the first time in forty-seven days and turn it clockwise. I pull it towards me then poke my head into the corridor. The length of it makes me giddy. I lean further out with a shoulder, then my chest.
    Nina spots me. ‘Zac! Go back in. You need your final obs.’
    ‘Oh, come on, I’m going home soon.’
    ‘Then you can wait.’ She’s trying to hide the card they’ve been signing for me.
    I send a bare foot onto the lino and shift my weight onto it. The corridor is wider and shinier than I remember. I smell fruit toast. There are trolleys along the walls and framed paintings I’d never noticed.
    ‘Zac.’
    But I’m scampering along the wall, past the curtained windows, to the door with a ‘2’ on it.
    Knock
.
    ‘Zac!’
    ‘I just want to say goodbye.’ The door whooshes open when I push it.
    Room 2 might be a mirror image of mine but it’s cold and empty. Even the bed’s gone. There’s nothing but an iPod dock on the bedhead and the word Fasting on the whiteboard above.
    Nina’s voice is behind me. ‘She’s gone, Zac.’
    ‘Gone?’
    ‘We wheeled her to 6A. Now get back to your prison cell for the final countdown.’ She tries manoeuvring me around but I hold tight to the doorframe.
    ‘What’s that?’ I ask.
    Nina’s eyes sweep the room before settling on the object. She walks across, picks it up and turns it over. A plastic ladybird has come free of its hairclip. In Nina’s palm it’s just a cheap, silly beetle with six indented blackspots. I see she’s too tired, too kind, too young for this.
    ‘I didn’t hear her go,’ I say.
    Nina lets the ladybird drop into the lined bin, then hooks her arm through mine.
    ‘Come on, Zac. Let’s get you home.’

11
ZAC
    ‘… and this year it goes to … Zac Meier.’
    I stop chewing. Was that my name?
    ‘Go on,’ says Mum. ‘Shake a leg.’
    Evan kicks me under the table. ‘You got an award, dickhead.’
    Sure enough, two hundred eyeballs are zeroing in on me. From the makeshift stage, Macka’s calling me up like I’m a prize