Art by Alison Berry
1. Nada Tall
She sat at her desk with her pen at her lips. She kissed the pen and looked through the bit of window not covered by flowered drapes: the night was a familiar black, with the artificial stars of airplanes becoming beacons in the sky. Beyond them was the pale egg of the moon. Ah, now this was inspiring. With her slender brown hand she wielded her inky scepter, brandishing it with a twirl of her fingers before striking the tattered notebook in front of her.
This was the night when Nada Tall wrote the very first sentence of her very first story written outside of school; she was fourteen years old when she began and would be fifteen when she finished.
Nada used her toes to turn around in her swivel chair and then bit her pen.
‘One sentence may not seem like much, but I always feel that the first sentence of a story is the most difficult to write,’ she said. ‘It’s like an invisible wall that I have to somehow break through and then painstakingly rebuild. It can set the tone for the rest of the story. I mean, every time you read “Once upon a time” you know you’re in for a fairy tale. That just goes without saying. So whenever I read or hear that line my mind adjusts accordingly. I guess it’s psychological. Oh, am I sounding too smart now? Oh well. Anyway, this is the first story that I’m writing for myself. I read quite a bit since we don’t have a tv here; outside of my dad’s business notebook, we don’t even have a computer. We get the newspaper which is just as good as either.
‘Anyway, as I was going to say, I think what inspired me to write was not necessarily all of the good books that I’ve read but a lack of any that really feel like they were made for me. I want to write something personal but magical, close but far away – something like the glowing white ghost of a faraway star. I enjoy the fantasy elements in stories but I could never bring myself to read a fantasy book, let alone write one. The same goes for science fiction. We’re already living in a science fiction world, anyway.
‘Because of my finicky tastes, which I can be very vocal of, my teacher at school last year recommended some books of magical realism, but I found them kind of boring and could never really make it past the first forty pages. So I guessed it was up to me to write but I’m not really sure how.
‘After spending the last few hours thinking over what the first sentence of my story should be, I now have a lot more respect for the authors of the books I’ve read. Well, I should say the dead authors of the dead books I’ve read.’
Nada left her chair and then proceeded to take great care in setting the pen on her notebook, positioning it so that it would underline the first sentence of her story without rolling away.
Her alarm clock flashed midnight, two hours past her bedtime, and the only light in her room came from the dim bulb of an antiquated desk lamp.
‘This is my room,’ she said. ‘It’s pretty cramped, but so is the rest of the apartment. We don’t have a separate storage so everything keeps piling up. Here are my books in the corner and here are my stuffed animals on my bed. The books all smell like the library and I like that.
‘In case you were wondering, I don’t really have a favourite book. Not yet, anyway.
‘This is the bed where I sleep: it has a comforter that has all of these deep sea creatures on it. I like counting the repeating fish in the pattern, the pairs and triplets and Siamese twins, before I fall asleep. When I go to bed I’m usually surrounded by and buried under my stuffed animals. Some of them are hungry bears that gaze longingly at the fish on my comforter, but as long as I keep counting the fish correctly then I can be certain that none will go missing.’
She traced the dotted treasure map seams of her comforter with her finger until she came to an empty island of fabric.
‘Wait – what happened to the third anglerfish?’
She swept over her stuffed animals with an interrogatory glare. Their expressions were very hard to read.
‘Anyway, I painted the walls of my room myself – that’s why they’re all different colours. I like this pink bit here. Some people say they see faces and other strange things in the splashes, and I’ll admit that creeps me out a little, but all I ever see is just paint. Maybe my imagination simply isn’t as good as theirs. I sure hope not.
‘Covering up the bits of wall that didn’t turn out too well are a couple of posters of bands I like. While I may not have immediate access to a tv or computer, I do have a stereo in my room; the only other stereo in the apartment is owned by my brother, but he leaves it over on the kitchen counter so that my parents can listen to the radio whenever they want. Mine’s just a cheap kinda thing but it plays music all right. Since my room is so close to the kitchen we never have both stereos going on at the same time, because otherwise it’d get annoying fast. We found that out the loud way.’
She opened her door to the stubby hallway which joined all of the bedrooms of her family together, and which also led directly into the kitchen.
The kitchen was most notable for its large, oval dining room table that had five creaking chairs set around it; there was an unspoken agreement that, outside of meals, the table was the personal domain of Mr. Tall’s notebook. The notebook was sometimes referred to as Mr. Tall’s fourth child.
The kitchen acted as the dining, sitting and living rooms in addition to being the miniature foodstuffs factory that it was intended to be; the Tall family once had an actual, honest-to-God living room before it was gradually turned into a jungle of business equipment and various bits of odds and ends. The kitchen led straight into the nonliving room, but the only soul brave enough to enter it was Mr. Tall.
The green door in the kitchen that appeared to be barricaded by junk mail and old newspapers was actually the entrance to the apartment.
Curtailing this tour of the kitchen, Nada Tall opened the door to her parents’ room and followed the bursts of snoring to her father’s side of the rumbling bed.
‘Dad, are you awake?’
There was a short, flat pause followed by the low murmur of her father: ‘Go to sleep, eh?’
‘This is my father. Most people call him Mr. Big, like the chocolate bar. He really is pretty big, while I’m not a tall Tall at all. I guess it’s because I get my jeans from my mother. I mean my genes. Anyway, he works in a plant. What type of plant do you work in, Daddy?’
‘Dandelion.’
‘A dandelion plant. My mother works with him at the plant as well but in a different department. Right, Mom?’
‘Mmf.’
‘She’s still sleeping. I’m going to go look in on my brother now. Dad, what are you doing?’
‘Puttin’ on my slippers.’ He already had his slippers on and was now adjusting the red-rimmed glasses that magnified his red-rimmed eyes.
‘Where you goin’, Daddy?’
‘Gonna put on some coffee.’
Nada stomped the hardwood floor in an attempt to bring him to his senses. ‘But it’s not time to wake up yet! Oh well.’
Nada left the room as her father shuffled after. She went into her brother’s room while her father’s slippered feet carried him into the kitchen.
From the kitchen came the sounds of clinking and scraping as Nada kneeled down beside her brother’s bunk bed, bringing herself level with his peacefully sleeping form. His deep breaths vacuumed in all of the innocent molecules that danced before him.
‘This is my brother. When he’s awake he tries to be what the Nineties used to call a “tough guy”.
‘He wears cologne even when he sleeps. I think you’d have to smell pretty bad to have to wear that much cologne. I never really found the smell of it attractive. Generally speaking, I mean; I would never, ever find my brother attractive. Anyway, this is probably the only state that he’s reasonable in. Luckily I rarely get to see him except at night. Don’t tell his friends that he always obeys his curfew.
‘I have another brother which is why this one is sleeping in a bunk bed. My other brother is the oldest and is currently living on campus over at the university; we don’t really see him anymore except when he needs money from our parents. He has a part-time job, but I guess sometimes it just isn’t enough. He’s pretty smart but can also be pretty cold sometimes as well; if it wasn’t for the fact that he’s my brother then I probably wouldn’t miss him all that much.’
She left her brother’s room and gently closed the door behind her. She then looked into the kitchen and saw her father sitting down at the dining room table with a steaming cup of coffee set before him. Beside the coffee was a deck of cards.
‘Hey, Dad. You awake now or still on autopilot?’
Mr. Tall nudged his mug as though trying to startle it into cooling down. A single drop of the brown liquid escaped onto the table but was quickly wiped it away by a coffee-coloured thumb. ‘I dunno. How about poker?’
On a school night, past her bedtime? Well, it was probably best if she kept the illusion of whatever he was dreaming about, at least for a few hands. So:
‘Sure,’ said Nada. She pulled out the chair opposite her father and sat herself down. He had already dealt out three hands of cards.
Nada looked at hers and immediately knew that there was no chance that she might win: one of the cards was blank and another had the rules for draw and stud poker. ‘Well, I guess that wraps it up for me,’ she said. ‘Now, let’s see what you have.’ She flipped over the third hand of cards, revealing a colour-blind rainbow of four aces and a king. Her father was carefully inspecting his own cards, completely oblivious of the happenings around him.
Nada placed a finger on the king and made it bounce. ‘What do you want to do?’ she asked.
If you wish to keep your king, please proceed to Chapter 1a; if you wish to trade in your king, please proceed to Chapter 1b.
1a.
With magisterial flourish Mr. Tall subjected the table to a royal flush. He was about to light a celebratory cigar when Nada reminded him that there was to be no smoking in the apartment; this rule was put into effect not just for the usual reasons of health but also because the family did not wish for their highly flammable collection of everything to go up in flames.
While Mr. Tall was putting away his unlit but slightly moistened cigar, Nada inspected his impossibly great hand.
So where had the fifth ace come from?
‘Dad, what’s this? It has holes punched into the corners.’
Mr. Tall absently stirred his coffee as he looked her in the eye. ‘You know what it is,’ he said.
The ace of holes.
‘Dad! No matter how many times we try to hide it from you, you always manage to find it.’
‘It’s a good card.’
‘But!’
‘Now, dear; didn’t you know that choice is an illusion? No matter what you do, things are always going to end up the exact same way.’
Nada stared down her father’s poker face as only she could, with a stare so venomous that it shot poison.
‘That’s the worst apology for cheating I’ve ever heard,’ she said.
1b.
You trade in your king for a joker, which acts as a fifth ace, giving you five of a kind; it is the best possible hand in the game.
Mr. Tall refused to reveal his hand and instead called it a draw. Nada cleared the cards from the table on behalf of her father and placed the deck on top of the microwave.
‘You’re up late, pumpkin,’ Mr. Tall said to his daughter.
‘I was working on a story.’
‘For school?’
‘Yeah,’ lied Nada. She knew that there was no chance of getting into trouble if her father thought she was up because of her schooling. Mr. Tall was utterly determined to see all of his children make it into university because he had dropped out of high school when he was a teenager and had regretted it ever since. He would bring it up as a trump card to completely guilt-trip his children whenever the need arose.
‘You should get some sleep,’ he said.
Nada nodded. She rose from her chair to follow her father’s suggestion, and as she was heading to her room Mr. Tall went up to her and kissed her on the forehead.
‘Choice is an illusion,’ he said. ‘No matter what you do, things are always going to end up the exact same way.’
2.
‘Mama, why do we only ever wear black and brown clothing?’
Her mother paused midway through folding a pair of her daughter’s cords and gave this question some consideration.
‘It complements the skin, dear.’
‘What about red? I see red sweaters sometimes, on people walking down the street and people on the bus.’
‘Red is a black colour too, dear.’
‘Orange?’
‘Orange is a black colour too.’
‘What about–’
‘All colours are black, dear.’
‘Blue?’
‘Except for blue.’
3. The Black Space God
Find a six-sided die and roll it.
If you throw a 1, then Nada was out getting some milk for her family one night, as her father had noticed that there was no freshly squeezed cow to put into his nightly coffee, and thus there would be none for everyone’s coffee and cereal in the morning.
As she was coming back from the store, Nada noticed her friend Mary from behind; she was going up the hill to the recently-built neighbourhood where she lived. Nada called out to her and clumsily rushed up the stairs, the bag swinging wildly in her hand; once she had finally caught up to her friend she was too out of breath to say a single word, and instead panted heavily while smiling an unabashed smile of chance recognition and friendliness.
‘Hey!’ said Mary softly, shyly, a spike of girlish glee. ‘I was just thinkin’ about you. I was wonderin’ how your story was coming along.’
‘It’s doin’ okay,’ Nada said, swallowing the rest of her run.
‘Are you gonna show it to me?’
‘Yeah, one day.’
‘You got milk?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You’re gonna make milk one day.’
Nada lifted the bag to her chest. The girls laughed.
‘Hey, what were you doing out?’ Nada asked.
‘I was looking for the Black Space God,’ Mary said.
‘The Black Space God?’
‘Yeah. Somebody said that they saw a man last night made out of stars and the sky, and they said that they saw him over by the road, so I decided to check it out. They said that the man kept pausing to look up at the buildings but never really did anything else; the kind of scary part was when they said that somebody rode a bike right through him, right through him, and then he vanished into thin air. Well, that’s what they said, anyway. I was waiting for a chance all night to see him but I guess he didn’t feel like coming out.’
Nada was dumbfounded. ‘Mary, it sounds like you were tricked again. Who told you all of that, anyway?’
Mary shrugged. ‘I heard it on the radio,’ she said. ‘You probably think I’m stupid now.’
‘No, I’d do the same thing.’
After they said their goodbyes, Nada watched as Mary climbed the rest of the stairs. Once she reached the top of the hill, Mary turned, tugging on a strand of blonde hair. Her fingers became pale green in the light of a flickering street lamp; a flash of concern crossed her face and she looked like a harmless ghost who had just seen a malicious one. Nada waved.
‘I see the Black Space God,’ Mary said.
But if you roll a 2, then Nada was out one night with her best friend Mary, the two of them wishing to confirm the legend of the Black Space God. Every week they listened to a local radio programme that featured listeners’ stories about the mysterious being, which seemed to only appear in the area of the city where Nada and Mary lived. But while they always followed the programme intently, they never actually actively sought out the Black Space God until Mary thought she spotted him one night as she was looking out her window.
Mary described the Black Space God in much the same way as everyone on the radio had before her, which was as follows: ‘He’s about seven feet tall and walks very slowly. I mean, when he lifts his leg to take a step it lingers in the air for a little bit. He seems very patient because of it. I couldn’t tell by looking at his face because it seems like he doesn’t have a face. His body really is pitch black, except for the bright starry lights that fade in and out all around him. I think I saw some planets in there too. When he walks into a really dark area you can still kind of see him, because he’s so black that he’s blacker than everything else, any kind of shadow and darker than the sky. At one point he turned his head towards me, slowly, so I got scared and hid my head under my pillow until I fell asleep; even though I couldn’t see his eyes I could still feel his eyes on me. I never thought I would actually see him.’
Nada believed her – that was why they were patrolling the road with a pair of flashlights. Their mix of curiosity and fear made them timid detectives: for them, every single movement of shadow and rustle of wind was the Black Space God, and every single time they would jump behind some bushes or trip over each other as they sprinted in some random direction.
The flashlights made the girls look completely out of place. The pair shone their lights into dark alleys and up and down steep hills, into the faces of stray businessmen and onto the backs of a group of teenagers. Their beams were never steady; although they would not admit it to each other, they were absolutely frightened by the prospect of witnessing the Black Space God. He was like a horror movie, harmless to everything but what their imaginations could come up with.
Mary flashed her light on a boy they knew from school. ‘Are you the Black Space God?’
‘Ha! What? Get out of here with that,’ the boy said. He looked Nada up and down before walking away.
‘I guess that means he’s attracted to you,’ Mary said.
‘I guess that means he’s completely rude,’ Nada said. ‘But you were kind of rude too.’
Mary turned off her flashlight. ‘Yeah, you’re right,’ she said. ‘I was just trying to be funny.’
‘Ah well.’
‘Ah well.’
‘Hey, turn your flashlight back on. I think I see him.’
‘What? Really? Where?’
‘Over there.’
Mary turned her flashlight back on.
‘Oh, wait, it’s just him again,’ Nada said. They watched as the boy disappeared over the hill. ‘Nevermind. Let’s just go to my place and listen to some music.’
If you roll a 3, then try again.
If you roll a 4, then Nada had a dream in which she met the Black Space God. In the dream she was sitting at her desk like she normally did, with blank notebook pages awaiting orders from her imagination. But she was feeling more unsure of herself than normal and could not even bring herself to pick up the pen.
She tensed her body in an attempt to force some ideas out of her system, but none would come; she closed her eyes and clenched her teeth, but it only served to push her further away from thoughts of the story. It was beginning to seem entirely hopeless that she would ever be able to write again.
So instead of thinking about it, she decided to let her mind go blank. She looked around her room.
Her dream room was generally the same as her real room, with the notable exception of the view outside her window: beyond the glass was blackness purer than infinity, as though a void had come and swallowed up the night sky. Nada looked through the window in a daze.
The blackness made her feel claustrophobic: outside the window there were no stars, no planes, no apartment buildings, no nothing; only blackness that went beyond nothing to become an absolute something. The enormity of it was overwhelming; Nada felt utterly alone, as though she was the only person who existed beyond the blackness, as though the only things left in the universe were her, her notebook and her room. She wanted to close the drapes.
Do you want to be a writer? a deep voice asked her. The voice seemed to come from everywhere at once, but Nada looked around her room, under her bed, in her closet, behind her stacks of books, and could not find anyone. She was completely alone.
She could only assume that the voice was emanating from the blackness outside.
Do you want to be a writer? it asked again.
Nada felt pressured to respond. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. She felt completely naked despite being fully clothed. ‘Not really, I guess. I just want to write.’
Why?
‘Because I want to write something cool that I know I’ll enjoy,’ Nada said. ‘Why are you asking me these questions? Are you lonely?’
Do you write because you want people to think that you are more interesting than you really are?
‘You’re asking me these questions because you’re lonely and you need somebody to talk to.’
The voice did not respond. Nada closed the drapes and went to bed.
If you roll a 5, then Nada woke up one morning after having dreamt about the Black Space God. She went into the kitchen where her father was reading the newspaper and her mother was slicing a grapefruit.
‘I saw God last night,’ Nada said to them.
Both of her parents stopped what they were doing and looked at her.
‘Really?’ her father asked.
‘God?’ her mother asked.
‘Yeah, the Black Space God,’ she said. The Black Space God was a legend in the area, a being made out of stars and darkness. He was only ever sighted at night and only by local sources; some thought of him as a neighbourhood mascot, their own personal Sasquatch or leprechaun.
‘Well, what happened?’ her father asked. ‘Did he say anything?’
‘He told me how it’s going to end,’ Nada said.
‘Do you mean–’ her mother began.
‘–the end of the world?’ her father finished, on the verge of concern.
‘No, the ending of my story,’ Nada said.
Her father went back to reading the newspaper and her mother went back to slicing the grapefruit.
And if you roll a 6, then this is the story of the Black Space God. In the early Sixties there was an autistic young gentleman named Jimmy Jackson who had the ambition of becoming an astronaut. He would spend his days lost in a world of science fiction novels and comic books, and spend the nights imagining himself as the hero of them as he lay in bed, staring up at the black ceiling. He rarely talked to anybody, including his family, and when he did it was usually in snippets of dialogue from his pulp futurity lessons. Everyone mostly left him alone because of it.
One night Jimmy was out on his own, wandering the neighbourhood in search of the best spots to see all of the stars and planets in the sky. He wondered how many cosmonauts were already up there, and the thought of even one made him fume with jealousy. Oh, if only he had been born in another country, then he would be sailing the stars right now! He wrestled with his inner turmoil as he walked the streets slowly, stiffly, wearing an invisible space suit.
While walking back to his apartment building, Jimmy heard his mother’s voice calling him from up on the balcony. She was yelling at him to get off the road. He stopped and lifted his head to look up at her, which was when he was hit by a car, and he saw stars, and he saw blackness, and he saw rockets, and he saw the planets, and he saw space.
If you roll a 7, then you have achieved enlightenment.
4. B-Rad’s Dream
Bradford was the name of the brother who still lived with the family; he was so named because Mr. and Mrs. Tall felt that it afforded a sense of English dignity. Bradford always thought it sounded a touch too white, so starting in public school he took to calling himself B-Rad; this was back in the Nineties when a name like B-Rad sounded cool. That pretty much summed up his childhood.
Fast-forward to the Zeroes, when B-Rad was playing cards with his friend Kevin at the dining room table. Nada sat with them, elbows on her homework assignment and head propped in her hand, humming in harmony with Mr. Tall’s notebook.
Bradford told Nada to stop annoying him, ‘Because you’ve been humming and humming like you’re retarded or something.’
‘Oh, am I breaking your concentration on your losing, B-Brad?’
‘I told you not to call me B-Brad.’
‘I fold,’ Kevin said, and he folded.
‘Do your homework,’ Bradford said to Nada.
‘I am,’ Nada said. ‘I have to do an assignment on a family member of my choosing, and I chose you.’
‘Well, why did you choose me, then? Dad would’ve been up for it.’
Nada shrugged. ‘But I don’t know anything about you,’ she explained.
‘That’s because you’re nothing like me,’ Bradford said.
‘You say it like it’s a bad thing.’
More cards were dealt. Kevin swallowed an entire glass of orange juice in one gulp and belched.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, visibly proud of his accomplishment with a smile that reached both sides of his face.
‘You’re a pig,’ Bradford said.
‘Swine,’ Nada said.
Kevin snorted.
‘So what do you want to know?’ asked Bradford.
Nada readied her pen. ‘Where do you go after school?’ she asked.
‘None of your business,’ Bradford said.
The pen went limp.
‘I go see friends,’ Bradford said after a moment, ‘Like buddy boy Kevin here.’
Nada sighed. ‘There goes my A,’ she said.
Bradford shrugged. The hum of the notebook died away.
‘I fold,’ Kevin said, and he folded up into a telescope.
‘Wow!’ exclaimed Nada, clapping her hands. ‘Look at that! Kevin did something cool for a change.’
Kevin rolled off the chair and fell to the floor with a clatter, but Bradford paid it no mind as he collected the cards back into a deck and set it in the middle of the table. He then took the Kevinscope and set it up by the window in his room; Nada followed her brother with her assignment sheet and pen, ready to take down any findings she might stumble upon. However, for the moment she was far more interested with what had happened to Kevin.
‘That orange juice came from Dad’s factory,’ Bradford admitted as he pressed his eye to the Kevinscope’s lens. ‘Kevin wanted to drink something and it was the only thing I could find in the apartment. Here, look through this and you should be able find whatever you want to know.’
Nada hesitated but did as her brother said: she looked through the Kevinscope and saw the world through Kevin’s eyes.
Everything was distorted ever so slightly, but she could make out a scene unfolding in which her brother was walking with a group of friends down an unfamiliar street, passing large houses to reach an even larger one.
One of the gang knocked on the front door of the apparent mansion and three sisters answered, giggling and leading them inside. The boys were brought to the living room, where they were treated to snack trays, a black leather couch, a big screen tv, the most recent game system, a love seat and a lamp shaped like an angel. Everyone sat down, some on the couch and some on the floor, and Bradford sat with the fullest-figured sister on the love seat.
While everyone else was either playing, watching the tv, or cracking jokes, Bradford was putting his tongue inside of the heavy sister’s mouth and grabbing at the folds of her body; she dug her claws into his shoulders and gasped for breath. They never went any further.
This type of situation repeated itself ad nauseam, and Nada turned away from the Kevinscope in disgust. Her tongue shot out like an angry strawberry.
‘So what do you think of me now?’ Bradford asked, all cocky smirking and folded arms.
‘I think it was none of my business, B-Brad, but thanks for the C all the same.’
5. The Reach of Children
As she was eager to let someone in on her world in progress, Nada invited Mary up to her room so that she could read her story so far. There was a lot of silence as the actual reading took place; Nada sat anxiously on the side of her bed, clutching the sheets, while Mary sat at the desk, sitting on her hands to keep them warm in the chill of the apartment.
A light bulb popped loudly in an adjoining room when Mary finished reading the three pages that had been set before her, welcoming other sounds such as:
‘I think it’s funny.’
And:
‘It’s a good start. But why does this and this happen?’
‘Oh, that? Well . . . wait, I can answer that. I think what I’m mostly interested in doing is applying unbelievable magic to a believable world, so that when something really strange happens it seems like it should be normal. I don’t really know how to put it.’
‘Oh, I think I know what you mean.’
‘Like if I snap my fingers and say you’re a vampire–’
‘–then I become a vampire.’
‘But it’s believable since it’s happening in the story. You don’t really have a choice but to believe that it’s happening, since it’s written down and you’re reading it and your mind is imagining that this is really happening, that Mary is a vampire now because Nada Tall snapped her fingers.’
She snapped her fingers. The girls laughed.
‘So is that what they mean by magical realism?’
Nada shrugged. ‘I think so. Anyway, it’s taking me forever to write the story. I never realised that writing could be so hard!’
Mary nodded, smiling, and Nada hit her with a pillow.
6. Thank You For Your Attention
‘I like your scarf, Nada.’
‘Really? Oh, thanks. I got it at the mall not too long ago but hadn’t really had a chance to wear it.’
‘Yeah? Well, it looks good on you. I don’t think I’ve seen you wear blue before.’
It was already dark out at six in the evening. Nada and Mary were following their breath down the street and soon came to the point where their paths usually diverged; they stood at the fork for a few moments, deciding on what to do next.
‘Hey, actually, I was thinking you should come to my house and listen to the Black Space God sightings on the radio. We haven’t done that together in a while.’ Mary seemed particularly eager about this idea, and Nada saw no real reason to decline, so they ascended the hill and took to the sidewalk that led to Mary’s house.
Mary’s parents greeted Nada as they always did, with overwhelming good cheer. The girls quickly ran away from them before they could offer snacks, racing up the stairs and barricading themselves in Mary’s room. Once there Nada asked if she should turn the radio on but Mary shook her head.
‘No, I tricked you,’ Mary said happily. ‘I actually wanted you to see something.’ She went to her desk and pulled open the top drawer.
Nada let go of the radio. ‘Whatever you want to show me must be pretty important, then,’ she said.
‘Oh, it’s not really important,’ Mary said as she pulled out a short stack of paper, ‘But I’ve been working on it for a while now. See? After you let me read the beginning of your story I started having my own ideas about what happened next, so I decided to write them down. I got a little carried away and it turned into a story of my own. I’ve been working on it for months! Here.’
Nada took the papers from Mary’s trembling hands. ‘Ah! I should sit down,’ Mary said. ‘I’m too excited.’
‘Should I start reading it?’ Nada asked.
‘If you want to,’ Mary said. ‘It’d be like when you let me read the beginning of your story. It’ll be like an alternate history, maybe; I wonder if there’ll be any similarities. In the story, I mean.’
‘Yeah. Let’s see.’
Nada ended up sitting cross-legged on the floor to read while Mary sprawled out on her bed and looked out the window at the blinking stars. There were quite a lot of pages and Nada found herself skimming through some of them to save time. She also skimmed through them because they seemed startlingly familiar.
‘You know, Mary, I actually finished my story last night. I was going to wait until the right time to show you.’
Mary sat up on her bed, eyes wide. ‘What? Really? Seriously, Nada? Oh, wow! Congratulations! I can’t believe it, that’s amazing! Oh, I’m so happy for you.’
‘Yeah, but . . .’
‘What is it?’
‘You wrote the exact same thing that I did. I mean, the middle is a bit different, but it ends exactly the same way that my story does.’
They sat in silence for a while, staring into nothing and lost in thought.
‘Well, maybe–’ Mary began.
‘No, there is no maybe. You wrote the exact same thing that I did.’
Mary looked about as confused as Nada felt. Tears were welling up in her eyes.
‘Oh, don’t cry, Mary. I’m not angry or anything. I think what this is is something special, just for us. I mean, you should be happy – we should be happy. Right? We finished the story and we did it together, without even realising it. Look at the choices we’ve made.’