Life in Outer Space Read online

  ‘Hey, Mum. Biology quiz. Think I did okay.’

  ‘Well, that’s great! Sam, you remember Kelly?’

  ‘Hi, Sam,’ Kelly whispers. She kicks her shoes along the peach carpet, her cheeks turning scarlet.

  I’m trying to think of something suitably insipid to say when I notice Mum is wearing her favourite necklace, the expensive one that she only wears when she’s feeling particularly miserable. My eyes wander across the lounge. They land on a pile of DVDs that Mum has set aside near the TV. I see Beaches on top.

  This is not a good sign. This is a sign that my mother will shortly be descending into a blubbery mess as she sits in the dark watching movies where women die of various diseases while looking vulnerable and attractive.

  Mum steers Kelly back to her lesson. I wander into the lounge and covertly hide Beaches behind The Thing in the bookshelves. I scan through my DVD collection until I find my box set of 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later.

  ‘Mum? Zombie-movie marathon later?’

  Mum turns around. The relief on her face makes me itchy. ‘Classic?’

  ‘Nah. Danny Boyle?’

  Mum smiles. ‘Sounds great, Sam.’

  Mum and Kelly are now both looking at me with watery eyes, so I back out of the room quickly.

  Dad sticks his head out of the kitchen just as I attempt to sneak past. His face is set in that expression he always seems to wear lately: a little bit vague and a whole lot baffled.

  ‘Dad,’ I mumble.

  Dad clears his throat. ‘Sam,’ he mumbles back.

  We stare at each other for five more seconds. If my dad’s skin suddenly slipped off his body to reveal that he was in fact a lost, man-sized alien cockroach like that one from Men in Black, I’m not sure I would really be surprised.

  I don’t mean to be completely rude about my father. Being mediocre is probably not a crime. But I do believe in reducing things to their component elements. And Dad is, unfortunately, really easy to reduce:

  My father likes Harvey Norman, the Discovery Channel, and, for some reason, lizards. He last smiled sometime in 2008, which is one of the few thing we have in common. I think that was also about the time of his last proper conversation with Mum.

  My dad also looks like me – i.e. sort of like a stormtrooper. And not the cool Star Wars kind. We’re both tall and blond and our facial hair is so useless it might as well not even bother to make an appearance.

  I take the stairs two at a time and then close my door, exhaling the breath that’s been stuck in my throat all day. I clear a space on my desk and turn on my laptop, and I run a search for Yu Kan-do It Karate. Their latest newsletter has just been posted; there’s a training weekend coming up, and someone is selling raffle tickets. They have a new instructor from Queensland, and the DVDs of their last tournament are on sale. I can’t see anything that could shed light on the Mike situation. Apparently, I also suck at detective work.

  I turn off my computer with a sigh. I should probably start on some homework. Instead, I open my desk drawer. I reach underneath my Empire and Total Film magazines, and Dad’s vintage porn that for some reason is still wedged between my stuff, and dig out my latest red notebook.

  Killer Cats from the Third Moon of Jupiter is a screenplay idea I had while Mum was cat-sitting Aunt Jenny’s psychotic tabby. It’s supposed to be a combination of a classic invasion movie, with a bit of werewolf mythology, and a nod to Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead films. It’s still a working title – I did want to just call it Cats, but Mike pointed out that someone might have used that already. Anyway, the KCftTMoJ project is in serious danger of ending up in the same place as the rest of my notebooks – buried in the back of my wardrobe.

  Thing is, I know what it’s supposed to be – a sleek sci-fi/horror with Tarantino-worthy dialogue and a kick-arse opening sequence. But right now, basically all I have is an unwieldy title, and a sketch of a giant cat.

  I fight back a growing sense of doom as I stare at the page. Nothing in my wardrobe is good enough for my uni folio. And everything depends on The Plan. I will move to Sydney to study film, and Mike will move there to study law, and we’ll share a dodgy flat in a cool neighbourhood and it’ll be fine because high school will be nothing but a tedious, vague memory and I’ll never have to see Justin Zigoni or anyone from Bowen Lakes Secondary ever again.

  I will write my cult classic. It will be full of quote-worthy lines. But until then, I will endure the status quo, and I will suffer the Domestic Routine.

  I kill an hour on my screenplay and then face dinner with my parents – Dad’s orange chicken, which tastes like marmalade slathered on KFC. No-one says anything remotely memorable.

  Dad disappears into his study like he does most nights. For all I know, he’s attempting to invent an alternative fuel source down there. I don’t bother checking in with him.

  I watch two zombie movies with Mum, who makes popcorn and doesn’t cry once, which is as successful a night as I can hope for.

  It’s partway through the second movie – about the time the pretty doctor chick shows up – that a thought starts prickling the back of my brain. I try to concentrate on the flesh-eating hordes on the screen, shoving the irritating thought aside.

  It shoves back.

  The second movie finishes and Mum goes to bed. Dad is still confined to his study. Perhaps my father is secretly Batman. Bruce Wayne is a bit of an arse as well. It would explain a lot of things.

  I shower and throw on my trackpants and the old Superman T-shirt that passes for pyjamas. I stick a random Supernatural DVD on.

  The school diary is still sitting on top of my book pile. I open it, planning only to sort through the worksheets and other junk that has become lodged in there.

  A yellow Post-it flashes at me. AltheaZorg.

  What does it mean?

  It means nothing. It belongs to a minion, an A-group hell-spawn, which cannot, in any universe, be a good thing.

  But if the knob-jockeys were plotting some new evil, surely they would have given up and gone home by now?

  I turn on my computer.

  I go downstairs to make a sandwich.

  I return to my room.

  I drink a can of Red Bull from the stash under my bed.

  I stare at my Halloween and Evil Dead and Star Wars posters for three minutes.

  I log on to Warcraft.

  I haven’t played in a while. I only get caught in the game when my brain feels drained of movie ideas. And my friends aren’t really into it; Adrian has the attention span of a concussed fish, and Mike has training eight times a week so won’t engage in anything else that requires commitment. Or he did until recently, anyway. Allison occasionally plays, with a level-twelve gnome named ‘Mizuno’, but she is slow and hesitant and always seems to be facing the wrong way in Battlegrounds.

  I connect to the server where my level-eighty night elf has been waiting since the last time I played. And then I do nothing. This is stupid. Besides, the whole point of Warcraft, like the best movies, is to sink into another world with zero reminder of my own pathetic one. There is no logic to this course of action.

  I stare at my night elf. I open a chat window. I type ‘AltheaZorg’. I click enter.

  A line of text appears on my screen. ‘Hey there, level 80. Cool name. DexGrifnor?’

  I have a minor freak-out and consider logging off. My hands are frozen onto my desk.

  ‘Sam?’

  My fingers somehow manage to find the keyboard. ‘Hey – you knew it was me?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know anyone else on here. Been playing on US servers till last week.’

  ‘Oh.’

  I actually type ‘Oh’. So now, apparently, I am both verbally challenged and borderline illiterate.

  AltheaZorg writes back anyway. ‘Sam, wanna help with a quest? I could use a hand.’

  I check out the map. She’s not that far from me.

  I picture the A-group gathered around her MacBook, Justin laughing his supervillain la
ugh. I think about KCftTMoJ. I really should be working on my screenplay.

  I consider logging off. And then I look at the map again.

  ‘K. Can help. On my way.’

  ‘Cool,’ Camilla types. ‘Was about to give up. I’m wiped. First days are killers.’

  It’s going to take me at least a couple of minutes to find her. I think for a moment as I watch my night elf fly. ‘You’ve had more than one?’

  ‘First days? Ha, yup. Lost count.’

  Well, at least she didn’t type ‘lol’. I crack open another can of Red Bull.

  ‘How does Bowen Lakes compare?’ It seems like a reasonable thing to ask.

  ‘First glance? Same as every other school in this dimension. School is school. Unless it’s secretly training X-Men. I live in hope.’

  I snort and some Red Bull comes out of my nose. I don’t know what to say. I type a smiley face. And then I feel like an idiot. I am not a user of emoticons.

  She types a winking face back.

  I remove my hands from the keyboard in case I’m tempted to type something else asinine. The chat window blinks at me. It’s just a couple of lines of flashing text. It’s not a real conversation. Is it?

  I find her white-haired girl dwarf in a tavern. I jog alongside it, and Camilla makes it perform a few seconds of a dwarf-dance, its fat legs bouncing in an uncoordinated jig. It looks ridiculous. I feel my face tug into a smile. I type the dance command for my night elf, but then backspace over it. I can’t bring myself to make even a virtual me dance.

  ‘Hi,’ I type instead.

  ‘Hi,’ she types back. ‘Thanks for the assist.’

  I take a deep breath. ‘What do you need?’

  ‘Trying to complete this stupid quest. I need to steal a sword. But I can’t get close enough without dying. Help?’

  ‘K. You lead, I’ll follow.’

  ‘Cool. Maybe this time I won’t end up in a graveyard. It’s becoming embarrassing.’ Her dwarf trots out of the tavern. My night elf scrambles behind her.

  I steer my character with one hand and crack open the window above my desk with the other. The warm night breeze circles around my room. I can’t quite shake the image of Camilla surrounded by Justin and those guys, though I’m starting to accept that I might be somewhat, slightly, paranoid. Still, I can’t form a picture at all of where she might be. Mike would be perched on his black bedspread with his laptop on his knees. Adrian would be stomach-down somewhere beneath his piles of clothes and mouldy coffee cups, his computer on the floor in front of him. Allison would be stuck in front of the Mac in her parents’ study, since they won’t let her have a computer in her bedroom. Having a person I don’t know on the other end of the chat window is disconcerting – like speaking to someone who’s floating in a vacuum.

  And then we reach the caverns and we don’t have much time for typing, which is probably a good thing since I’ve already used up the four sentences of polite conversation that I know.

  Camilla is fast, and skilled with her weapons. Occasionally she will throw a question at me, and I will respond with a suggestion or comment, but mostly our characters fight side by side in silence.

  We reach the heart of the lair. We shoot our way through the mobs, and Camilla grabs the sword. Her dwarf performs another dance. I make my night elf bow.

  ‘Nice work, Dex,’ she types. ‘I’m impressed by your crossbow action.’

  I don’t know what to say. I type another smiley face. I feel like a moron.

  She types a smiley face back. ‘Time for bed. Thanks again. See you later!’

  AltheaZorg logs off.

  See you later? What does that mean?

  I glance at my phone. It is almost 1 a.m. I sweep the empty Red Bulls from the desk into my bin. Somehow, I have consumed five cans.

  I think I may be experiencing a caffeine-induced heart arrhythmia.

  In total, I manage approximately eight minutes of sleep.

  The unforeseen consequences of eggplant casserole

  I’m standing near my locker waiting for Mike and, even though I’ve checked my timetable three times now, I can’t seem to remember which class we have this morning. I’m feeling fuzzy from lack of sleep and twitchy from the remnants of the energy drinks still circling through my blood. I also have a headache that is working its way from my brain through to my eyeballs.

  After some deliberation, I have decided that five cans of Red Bull at midnight is not a great idea.

  Mike appears next to me. He frowns at the English textbook in my hands. ‘We have maths.’

  ‘Maths. Right. Thanks.’

  ‘Might want to hurry,’ he says.

  I follow his eyes down the corridor.

  Justin Zigoni and Sharni Vane are walking towards us, like royalty surveying their subjects. Steve Stanton is behind them with his arm around Michelle Argus, as if he’s worried she’ll do a runner if he doesn’t keep her attached to his hip. They’re surrounded by a bunch of girls who I’ve gone to school with for years but whose names I keep mixing up.

  It’s normally about this point that I would make a run for it, but before I can slam my locker closed, something catches my eye. Right in the centre of their group is Camilla. She’s wearing red jeans, a faded Mickey Mouse T-shirt and a yellow cardigan that reaches her knees. She should look ridiculous. She doesn’t.

  Sharni is whispering something in Camilla’s ear. My stomach knots but I can’t get my feet to move. I brace myself to end up – literally or otherwise – on my arse again.

  Camilla untangles herself from Sharni. She raises her hand and gives me a short, sharp salute.

  ‘Dex.’

  The volume of conversation dims. I can just about hear the gears cranking inside Justin’s thick head, but I can tell he hasn’t made up his mind how to react yet. I think this might be a good thing.

  So I ignore him. I nod back at her. And I say the only word my mouth is capable of forming.

  ‘Zorg.’

  Camilla winks at me and continues down the corridor with the Vessels in tow.

  There is a scene in the very first Alien movie, where the alien spawn bursts out of the guy’s chest and scarpers off inside the spaceship. Everyone else just stands around, mouths hanging open, brains unable to process what has taken place in front of them.

  I have a feeling that Camilla Carter has just created her very own alien-exploding-out-of-a-chest-cavity moment.

  I’m not entirely sure how I figure into this scenario. I’ve always imagined myself as that disposable member of the crew who gets killed first and who no-one remembers anyway. Judging by the look Justin gives me as he walks away, I have just been upgraded to the guy who later has his entrails smeared all over the corridor walls.

  Mike nudges my shoulder. ‘Explain?’

  I swallow a couple of times. ‘She’s a dwarf.’

  Mike considers this. ‘Okay then.’ He is looking closely at my face. That questioning look of Mike’s is never a good thing.

  I clear my throat. ‘So. Maths?’

  Mike nods at my hands. I am now holding my history textbook. I close my eyes for a moment. ‘Can it please be Friday already?’

  Mike opens my locker and swaps my books. ‘If you could speed up time, would you really just skip one week?’

  ‘You mean if I was gifted with a talisman like the Time-Turner from Harry Potter? Do I have the option of fast-forwarding to thirty?’

  Mike grunts as he slams my locker closed. ‘Why thirty?’

  ‘Well, I figure by then I’ll be living in LA, in a cool house with views of the Hollywood sign, and my first two indie movies will be on their way to achieving cult status. Oh, and I’ll have a dog.’

  Mike pauses in the classroom doorway. ‘So you’ll have the sign and the dog – are you also planning on meeting any actresses?’

  I think about this as we take our seats. I try to imagine myself surrounded by a bunch of blonde girls, but I can’t exactly see it. I try again. Now they’re in the picture
, in bikinis and stuff like in all those dumb comedies Adrian makes us watch. They’re standing around my swimming pool. They aren’t doing anything much. I think I’m supposed to do something, only I have no idea what that might be. The blonde girls all seem to be staring at me now. One of them points and laughs.

  I focus on Mrs Chow’s varicose veins. ‘I dunno,’ I whisper. ‘Do you think I can find some that look like Princess Leia?’

  Mike shrugs. ‘It’s Hollywood,’ he whispers back. ‘And you’ll be in the movies. Probably.’

  I think about Princess Leia sitting on a banana lounge by the side of my pool. She doesn’t look at all happy about this situation.

  ‘Maybe I should just skip to forty?’

  •

  I am not a complete moron. I know that movies, especially the movies I love, do not reflect the real world. Those films that try – the Eastern European ones about life on the farm or gulag or whatever – tend to be as depressing as my own life, which I think kind of defeats the purpose of film. However, everything useful I do know about real life I know from movies.

  Through an intense study of the characters who live and those that die gruesomely in final scenes, I have narrowed down three basic approaches to dealing with the world:

  Keep your head down and your face out of anyone’s line of fire.

  Charge headfirst into the fray and hope the enemy is too confused to aim straight.

  Cry and hide in the toilets.

  From as far back as I can remember, Mike, Allison and I knew the first option was the rational one. Adrian, for as long as I have known him, has attempted the second option. Unfortunately, Adrian’s weaponry consists of the equivalent of a backfiring pistol and plastic Viking helmet. The enemy is usually in no way confused. Often, the third option is hastily implemented as a fallback plan.

  Camilla Carter, clearly, selects option number two. In her first week she joins the volleyball team and the chess club. She also joins the Spring Dance Committee, which I guess was inevitable. Details about her filter through the grapevine: her mum runs a modelling agency in Singapore. Camilla has a boyfriend named Dave who still lives in New York. There is much speculation over the identity of Dave the Boyfriend but, as yet, no-one is sure who he might be.