27
‘DID THAT SIGN say what I think it said?’ I ask Ben, wondering if I’ve lost my mind. Because there’s no way he would bring me here.
We’d merged onto the highway and driven a couple of kilometres before pulling off again, driving down a few suburban streets, then out onto a stretch of road with long grass on either side, the tops of roadside gums swallowed by night, then into an entranceway with a sign. The Flannelette Futons are playing on the ute speakers and the windows are down, letting in the night and filling the car with a slightly strange smell that’s not un pleasant but not exactly pleasant either.
‘What do you think it said?’ Ben asks me, trying and failing to keep the amusement out of his voice as we keep driving. His tone tells me I read the sign right.
We pull up in front of a locked gate, tyres crunching on gravel.
‘Okay, why are we at Franklin Sewage Treatment Plant ? I think you’re taking the shit obsession too far. This is like a 9.2 on the weird scale, Ben.’
Even though it’s almost completely dark I can see him smile. He pulls on the handbrake, grabs some keys from the centre console and jumps out. It’s hard to fully make out, but behind the gate it looks like there’s a large stretch of empty land with some huge, squat, round shapes in the distance. When I narrow my eyes I think I see something sparkling on the ground ahead, like glow worms or fairy lights.
Ben unlocks the gate and when he climbs back in the ute, he’s laughing.
‘Okay, let me explain.’
I cross my arms. ‘This better be good.’
‘Ever heard of orange-bellied parrots?’ he asks, turning his body towards me.
I shake my head, wondering what a bird has to do with sewage treatment.
Ben pulls out his phone and brings up a photo of a tiny parrot with—unsurprisingly—an orange-feathered belly. ‘They migrate,’ he says, ‘between here and southwest Tassie every year. I mean, literally to the grassy land inside this sewage treatment plant. That’s why I have a key. I help monitor their numbers. They’re really endangered.’
‘Okay,’ I say, getting used to the fact that basically every tiny bird in Australia is ‘really endangered’. I look at the glowing screen and picture this little fluff ball battling a Bass Strait crossing twice a year. It looks like some old lady’s pet. I’m surprised they don’t get blown out of the sky.
‘That’s actually really cool,’ I say.
‘I know.’ Ben grins wildly. ‘You’re the only girl I’ve ever met that would appreciate that.’
‘Hold on,’ I say, biting back my own grin. ‘I still don’t get why we’re here. Like, no offence but birdwatching at night feels a little…pointless. Or, wait—do you have night-vision goggles? ’
Ben releases the handbrake and drives slowly through the gate. ‘Just wait.’
He closes the gate again, then we keep driving along the same gravel road for a hundred metres or so. The sparkling on the ground becomes more vivid. It’s broken up by car-width lines of black, like a giant game of noughts and crosses with twinkling diamonds scattered across the squares. A few seconds later I realise the sparkling isn’t on the ground—it’s a reflection in water , perfectly still like it’s made of ink and glass. The entire night sky is shining back from a series of massive ponds with narrow roads running in between them.
‘Aerobic lagoons,’ Ben says. ‘They help break down the…well…you know. It’s mostly a natural process, which is why it doesn’t smell that bad.’
‘Woah,’ I say, soaking in the scene before me. It all stretches for as far as I can see. ‘This place is huge!’
‘Right? Same size as Disney World, apparently. And it gets better.’
We drive up to one of the narrow roads and go over a little hump, then we’re driving on it. Star-filled water stretches out ahead and on each side of us. Something expands inside me as we drive: pure, undiluted awe.
Then Ben turns the headlights off and I gasp. We’re in a world of pitch black, a thin strip of velvet night in front of us, and an endless twinkling universe above and below as if we’re driving, floating, inside the sky. It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.
‘Do you like it?’ Ben asks, still driving so the universe moves past us, so we move through the universe. He presses the buttons to wind the windows down further but mine seems to be jammed halfway.
‘It’s…it’s…’ I try, but I can’t get the words out because for some reason a fist has gripped my chest and it’s starting to squeeze.
‘It’s incredible, huh?’ Ben says. ‘It’s one of my favourite places in the world on a clear night like this.’
I nod, but the fist is getting tighter and a memory is trying to come back to me. Charlie. Something to do with the universe. I try to shake it off. ‘Yeah,’ I say.
Ben speeds up a little, making the stars twinkle and blur, and vertigo spins in my brain. I dig my nails into my legs and try to breathe, try not to feel like I’m standing on the edge of a bottomless chasm.
How can Ben see where we’re going? The road’s so narrow. If one tyre slips we’ll tip into the water and I don’t think I could fit through my jammed, half-open window. The water would rush in, and I wouldn’t be able to fight it. I would drown.
I stare out my window, trying to find the horizon, but it’s all black, and then I can’t stop it coming and I’m back there. Lost in the memory. Charlie and me in the living room with the curtains drawn, watching that YouTube video. Billions of humans, billions of years, the Milky Way in hazy blues and pinks pinpricked with glittering starburst. Zooming out and out and out and out and out and out and out. Earth was nowhere to be seen; it was too small. Charlie looking half-fascinated and half-terrified. And then I had to push my feelings away.
Why? What was I so scared of? I don’t know, but I can feel it now again. The panic .
‘Stop,’ I tell Ben, or at least I think I tell Ben, but my voice is so quiet and shaky I’m not sure it’s even real. One of the tyres loses traction for a moment and I grip my seat hard, but I can’t breathe. I can’t get air in. I’m drowning in my own mind.
‘Stop driving,’ I say a little louder, scrunching my eyes against the swirling universe.
Ben hears me this time, but he doesn’t stop. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve done this before.’ He puts a hand out to hold my wrist but his touch feels so distant because I’m falling now, I’m finally falling into the black hole, faster than I thought I would, and I know I’m going to lose myself in here forever this time.
‘Please stop driving, Ben,’ I groan.
But he doesn’t. ‘Hey. You can trust me, okay?’ he says.
But I’m light-years away now. I’m so dizzy I think I’m going to throw up and I have to—
‘STOP!’ I scream in a voice I barely recognise, one that shreds my throat, and Ben slams on the brakes, throwing me forward so the seatbelt pulls tight. Ben yanks on the handbrake and I grope to release my seatbelt, leaning forward with my head between my knees, sobbing with my entire body.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Ben says, hand on my back. ‘I didn’t realise…I…What happened? What’s going on?’
But I can barely hear him because I’m plummeting into the abyss and there’s no way to stop it, no way to slow it down, and I’m terrified I’ll be all alone, falling forever. Finally, I give words to the thought that’s been haunting me.
‘I’m scared ,’ I moan into the space between my knees. ‘I’m so scared of dying.’ Images of my brother flash before my eyes, images I try so hard to stop from appearing. Slip . Crack . Gone . And this indisputable knowledge that the end of your life can come hurtling at you any day or any time and there is nothing you can do about it. The ever-present certainty that we’re all going to die. Some of us in one hour. Some of us tomorrow. Some of us next week. ‘It could have been anyone,’ I say between sobs. ‘It could have been me . And every time I feel a little bit okay, I remember how something really bad can just… happen any time .’ The voice coming out of me sounds like a stranger’s but also like the true version of myself I’ve been hiding from. ‘And everyone is walking around pretending that it’s not even bothering them !’
Ben is rubbing my back and he’s saying something, but I can’t make his words out because now there’s another voice talking to me as well. A voice I miss more than I knew it was possible to miss anything. Charlie. ‘No, Lucky,’ he says, as if he’s right here in the ute next to me. ‘That’s not quite it. But you’re close. You’re so close now. It’s more than that though, isn’t it? Go deeper .’
No , I think. I can’t.
I look into the black hole, into the void that’s swallowing me, and I can barely believe how deep it is. How small I am. I’m just one tiny human in a ute, in this boundless universe, surrounded by infinity. I’m on the edge of everything. An everything so big it’s nothing.
I can’t.
‘Well, you have to,’ Charlie says, harshly. ‘You’ve come too far now, Lucky. You don’t have a choice.’
I grip my knees with sweat-slicked hands but I’m too tired to fight it and I don’t even want to stop it anymore. Because what’s the point? Because we go through all this aching and longing and wanting and suffering, and we try to make friends and we try to figure out what we want and we try to be good enough and we try to be okay and then we’re happy, we’re happy for moments in time, but in the end…in the end…
In the end we’re all so tiny and insignificant, and the universe is huge and random and uncaring and indifferent to us, and you’re not special, and then you can just die , suddenly, for no reason, at a pool party or in a car accident or something else, and then you’ll be dead forever , and in the long run no one will even remember you and nothing you do will have made a difference.
What if I can’t find my meaning? What if my life doesn’t have a meaning? What if, no matter what I achieve or how hard I try, nothing actually matters ?
And then something happens. Something that shocks me completely. Like a spell being broken, my feet touch a floor I didn’t know existed. Because there is a bottom, there’s a limit to the black hole, and I’m here. I made it. To the place Charlie found years before me. A place he was probably born being drawn to, fascinated by, even though it scared him enough that he had to anchor himself to the world with theories of transcendence and footy goals and good marks and debating trophies. A place that made him need to matter, maybe on some cosmic scale, so that he wouldn’t be afraid that nothing did. And in a weird way I feel closer to him in this moment than ever, even though it was his death that forced me to eventually give in and let myself tumble down here next to him.
‘ Finally , Lucky!’ Charlie says, rolling his eyes. ‘I mean, wow. It took you almost an entire year after me dying to question if life is completely meaningless? I’m kind of offended, to be honest. All it took me was a random YouTube about the size of the universe. But I guess I am a geniu—’
‘Shut up, dickhead,’ I say in my mind. ‘Are you going to help me get out of here or what?’
Charlie shrugs. ‘What do you want me to do? Throw you a ghost rope? I’m dead, remember?’
And then he’s gone again. That’s as far as my memory of him can take me.
An ache yawns in my chest. In my mind, I slump down on the ground in the black hole. It’s so dark, so dense, that I can’t see a way out, but at least I’ve stopped falling.
Breath by breath my heart rate slows until I can lift my head from between my knees and lean back into the passenger seat. I’m almost surprised to find myself still in Ben’s ute. At some point he’d turned off the engine and the night is now silent. I wipe my cheeks and open my eyes. There are stars all around us.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Ben says after a moment, his voice clear and solid. ‘I didn’t mean to freak you out. I should have stopped.’
I look across at him, hardly able to see him in the darkness. ‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘Sorry I ruined your magical universe tour. I promise I actually think it’s really beautiful and romantic.’
There’s a silence between us.
‘I get it, by the way,’ Ben says after a bit. ‘The fear of dying thing.’
‘Yeah?’ I want him to tell me everything. I want him to explain his deepest, darkest thoughts and feelings so I know I’m not alone.
‘Mum’s car hit a pothole that just appeared after heaps of rain. She wasn’t speeding or anything, but the car rolled when she skidded. The whole front was completely crushed.’
‘That’s awful,’ I say. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘I was meant to be with her, going to pick up feed, but I had a cold. I would have died too.’
I reach across the gap between us and put my hand on his forearm. It’s warm and solid. ‘And it’s like, now you’re always waiting for something else really bad to happen. The next random freak accident.’
‘But you just want to go back to living in a world where you didn’t really believe stuff like this could just happen . Like, it should have been obvious that it could but it just… wasn’t .’
‘Yep. Pretty much,’ I say.
He sighs. ‘Yeah. I miss naive Ben. He was a chiller.’
I hesitate, worried about how weird I might sound, but then I have to say it. ‘Doesn’t that make you question if any of this even matters?’ I ask, wiping my nose with my hoodie sleeve. ‘Like, do you ever wonder what the point of anything is if we’re all just going to die?’
I’m suddenly positive that was way too morbid, but then, for some reason, Ben laughs.
‘You mean…do I ever think about the fact that when our sun eventually boils our oceans and the earth explodes, there’ll be no trace of us ever having existed? And that, like, no matter what we get as an ATAR or how many animals we save from extinction, in the end we’re all just…space compost for future worlds we can’t even imagine?’
‘Um…yeah,’ I say, kind of shocked. ‘That. Do you…do you think about that?’
‘At least three or four times a week.’
And somehow this makes me feel lighter, loosening some tension. Because he’s managed to make the fear of death and infinity and our overwhelming insignificance in the enormous scheme of things sound normal. Like something it’s possible to live with. Maybe his black hole isn’t such a terrifying place. And maybe these types of feelings are more common than I realised. I think about how even Bella seems to be having some kind of crisis of meaning.
‘Cool. Good. Fun,’ I say. ‘And it doesn’t freak you out?’
‘Oh for sure it does,’ he says. ‘But then I try to explain it all to the koalas, like, ‘This salt and vinegar chip packet will outlast your entire species,’ and they’re like, ‘Holy shit, dude, we’re all just a collection of particles arranged in a temporary and particular order. Maybe chill out and try to enjoy it?’
I laugh so hard I almost snort. ‘Koalas are smarter than us.’
‘They really are.’
Ben shuffles in his seat a little so he’s closer to me. ‘I started thinking about all this stuff after Mum died. You know how I said she was into astrology?’
I nod in the darkness.
‘Right, so, I used to wonder why, given she was technically a scientist and astrology is pretty much bullshit. But I realised I think she just wanted to believe in…some kind of order of things. That some things are meant to be because you were born on a certain day. That’s comforting, you know? Otherwise everything is random and therefore probably meaningless, which can be kinda terrifying.’
I nod, thinking about Dad. ‘It’s like religion.’
‘Yeah, except religion is even more comforting,’ Ben says. ‘Like, you were born mattering because God loves you. There’s a reason for everything, including your existence, and it’s cool that we’re all going to die because the meaning of life is actually that we’ll all meet up in heaven and live forever as angels.’
I laugh again. ‘Okay. That sounds great. I get it. I’m officially becoming a Christian.’
Ben laughs. ‘I think you’re way too sceptical about Noah’s Ark for that.’
‘Hm. True.’
‘Yeah. But, I dunno. I reckon you can probably find something to believe in.’
I smile then, because he makes it sound kind of easy—or at least possible. And he also makes it sound like that thing could be us. And because finally talking about all the dark, previously unnameable stuff that’s been building up inside me is causing something small but important to happen in my chest. It breaks me open slightly, letting a trickle of something bright shine in.
Then, in the night, with the stars around us, Ben leans in and kisses me. So gently at first, lips slightly open, the smell of sugary drinks on his breath, the softest moan. He’s so good at this, every movement of his mouth confident and deliberate, and I want nothing more than to give in to him. We keep kissing, heat building between my thighs as he runs a hand over my arm, brushing the side of my breast through my hoodie and trailing down to my leg, thumb gently rubbing the skin where it meets my shorts. When we can’t hold back anymore, we kiss faster, faces pressed close, my hand on his jaw, his hand reaching behind my lower back to pull me towards him. My body races with a very different aching, longing, wanting. I’m falling again but this is different, blissful, and I want to keep doing this forever and ever.
We’re trying to find a way to bring our bodies closer, somehow, across the centre console. Ben mumbles something only half-coherent into my mouth about moving to the back seat and I nod, yes . But then his phone starts ringing. We ignore it, but as soon as it stops ringing, a message buzzes through.
‘Sorry,’ he says, pulling away but keeping one hand on my waist. He’s almost completely out of breath. ‘I’m turning this off.’
He looks at his screen, and I can see his face in the phone’s light. He frowns, hesitates, and swipes it open.
Then his expression makes my stomach drop.
‘What?’ I say, praying to a god I wish I believed in that my fear is misplaced. That I was being superstitious. That I was wrong about tonight.
But when Ben looks up at me, I know I wasn’t.
‘It’s Dinesh,’ he says, voice empty like an echo. ‘Something bad’s happened. He’s taking Jacinta to the hospital.’