Footprints in Your Heart

Kai: L'esprit de l'escalier

'I don't know,' Milo whispers. He makes a comically furtive grab for his bag before lifting it one-handed with the concentration of my sister about to throw her shot put in athletics regionals. 'Haven't heard any news on Stone-on-Cone visitors being routinely eaten by bears, though.'

My breathing has slowed, but I'm still scanning for danger at the edges of my vision. 'You'd be perfect for the first one. Milo Reyes, fifteen, is tragically eaten after angering a Melbourne bear, secretly cricket enthusiast, with cringeworthy bag throw.'

'Sounds about right,' a voice comes from the bushes, just before they part and Sofia steps out, picking bits of spider web from where they've become entangled with her long dark hair. She grins and bows to us. 'The bear in question, at your service.'

'Fia.' Milo flops back onto the ground, clutching at his chest. 'Here I was, ready to be sacrificed.' He looks at me, then back at his cousin before tossing his bag at her. She catches it at her feet easily. 'We're getting you back next time.'

'You won't see it coming,' I nod, trying to look confident, but the vice of dread is back. It never really left. Next time. Pressure around my chest, around this neighbourhood, around the world.

'If that's what makes you feel better.' Sofia tosses Milo's bag from hand to hand. I follow her eyes to the mural, where our half-coloured tree sits in a field which is missing all the yellow highlights where the sun meets grass. 'We should get started. I, personally, am not planning on visiting the Cone during retirement to finish this with you slowcoaches.'

Milo, somewhat uncharacteristically, murmurs his agreement, picks up an orange-yellow piece of chalk, and joins Sofia at the wall.

I hesitate for what feels like an hour before I strengthen my resolve. I have to do it. 'Actually...there's something I need to say.'

It takes a few seconds of silence for the two of them to clock that this is possibly more momentous than the random philosophical would-you-rathers I tend to pose during our mural sessions. I don't think it's clocking.

'Hmm?' Milo eventually says, squinting in concentration at the border of a sun ray he's filling in. He sets down the chalk and turns to me.

I wait for Sofia to do the same before I take a deep breath and stare at my feet. 'I'm moving.' There. It's done. I feel an anticlimactic sense of having dropped underground and come out on the other side, facing the right way up. Maybe the world is upside down.

'You what?' I risk a glance back up just as Sofia appears in front of me. She shakes my shoulders only a little, but since I'm completely caught off guard, my head wobbles back and forth for a second like that solar-powered Usain Bolt bobblehead Isla keeps on her desk. 'Kai.'

'Fernsworth. Dad's work. Tuesday.' My breath catches on the last word, and I finally summon the courage to look at Milo. He's looking straight at me, eyes wide. Without exchanging a word, I can sense the depth of emotion he's feeling. I still don't know what to say to him.

'The Tuesday that's tomorrow?' Sofia says in disbelief. 'The Fernsworth that's in Perth? Why didn't you tell us?' She releases my shoulders and starts pacing, sending tiny clouds of dust and a couple of dried maple leaves flying and scattering back down into the dirt.

'I only just found out. My dad -'

'There must,' she interrupts, jaw set in resolve, 'be a way to stop this. We find your dad a new job here. We – we persuade him to wait until after the next Moonnic. Fernsworth won't have anything like Klento's midnight picnic, it's literally got nothing going for it. Or...we find him a new wife?' Sofia claps a hand over her mouth as Milo shifts his gaze from me to give her a fierce, significant glance. 'No, I take that back. Gone too far. Again.' She looks at me. 'Sorry.'