walk.

And so I walk.


Out into the corridor, out amongst the gathering throng of pre and post-lecture students, all chattering wildly, all seeming so much younger and more enthusiastic than I.


Outside the thick sunlight tears at my eyes and face. We’re meeting at a café back near the train station. It had made sense when we’d planned it, drunk and disorderly at Katie’s house on Sunday night, but I realise now that I can’t possibly make it on time. I must have forgotten about class, or more likely assumed that I’d simply choose to skip it. Exactly why I hadn’t was becoming less and less clear.


Walking through uni unaccompanied is its own special kind of isolation. There is so much activity, so much noise and colour, and yet I snake through it all without a sideways glance. It’s the same reason I hate shopping malls: there is simply too much going on without me. A surplus of distraction – of choice – is the enemy of efficiency.


I swear in silence at the thought of Katie and Clark. I’ve always liked Katie, and I think Clark knows it, and so every moment they spend alone together is another over which I have no control. I trust Clark – he is, after all, my oldest friend – but when it comes to inadvertent cock-blocking of erectile proportions he has a very questionable track record. Best I move quickly.


After some expert people-dodging I find myself at the back of a long line of fellow pedestrians all waiting to cross Grattan Street. We’re like unwanted puppets left to dangle limply with bags slung on shoulders and heads angled down. We each look the same and yet I feel so disconnected to all of them. It’s as though they’re somehow all in on a joke at my expense, as though this whole morning was pre-planned.


The tram thunders past and I make eye contact with the sole puppet on board. Am I mistaken, or did he just give me a nod?


Fucking Myki.


The dull clicking of the traffic lights returns to occupy my thoughts as the tram moves away. In between clicks I can just make out the fuzzy base of a pop song whispering out of a pair of headphones next to me. A not-unattractive Asian girl is listening to the music, and the slight bobbing of her head is the only sign that she is alive.


“Steven!”


It comes out of nowhere, a call from the Almighty – directionless and immediately gone – and it takes me a few uncomfortable moments to locate its source. I turn around, and there he is, calling out again, so unlike the rest of us, and I am more certain than ever that I should have skipped this morning’s class.

Meet Callan Holmes, aka “Greedo”, a specimen of humanity’s most undesirable characteristics. I honestly thought he was dead.


We called him Greedo at school (my proudest legacy); a combination of traits, one seen and one suspected. We saw the greed in his tuckshop raids, a real-life Augustus Gloop one chocolate river short of heart failure. The paedophile we imagined, or perhaps assumed, a fitting future for one so failed by genetics. It was nasty, yes, and I’d regretted it in recent years, but standing here now I remember why the name had stuck.


I’m caught between two men: one tiny, red, and stationary, the other huge, pale, and lumbering, emerging now from the shadow of the Science Building like some corpulent comic-book villain. Greedo, the fat fuck. God, how I loathe thee!


“Steven!”


He’s collapsing in on himself, rising and falling like a wave and yet somehow remaining, unbroken, on his feet. He calls my name again, a desperate howl that seems to snap the fingers of our grand puppeteer into action, drawing the eyes of a hundred onlookers, all tracing now to me, the clear target of Greedo’s uninvited attention. It’s embarrassment by association, and there’s no escape.


He reaches me at last, just as the lights change, and as the horde moves on I realise with slight panic that I myself cannot; Greedo is clasping my shoulder for support, wheezing pathetically like a lung-cancer patient, and his strength has me rooted to the spot. He drops his bag, looks at me, and smiles.


“S…Ste…Steven…”


It’s a half cough, half greeting, but enough to confirm my resurfaced hatred. First there’s the smell, emanating from deep in his great gut, climbing his throat, escaping between those rotten teeth and poisoning the cool noon air. He’s revolting and rude, invading the space between us, cancelling light like Satan in the Genesis of Hell.


And it’s that face too, laced in dripping sweat, cheeks inhabited by clans of throbbing boils that seem tempted to erupt with each passing second he stares. I try desperately to picture the hammock and that most fortunate of men, but in vain – all I can see is Greedo, a creature as alien as the Star Wars character with whom he shares his name.


“Great class, eh Steven?!”


The repeated name – that classic attempt to bridge separate histories – only works to intensify my disgust. I have only myself to blame. Choices, the theme of the day – of each day really – circling around to spit, just like Greedo himself, right in my face. I should have stayed in bed.


“I suppose…” It’s all I can bring myself to say.


“It’s all so interesting,” he responds. “I never knew you were a braniac.” And he gives an involuntary snort, as if to reassert for us both the memory of high school – a better time – when I sat in peace at the back of the classroom, breathing clean air.


“Um, yeah. Whatever…”


We’re moving at last, and with each laboured step he takes I manage to create a slight gap between us. It’s imperative that this is only a short exchange.


But he grabs my arm again and almost drags himself to the opposite footpath. “Wait…” he manages, and leans against the wall of the Grattan Street KFC. “Just give me a second…”


I glance down at my broken watch. Greedo’s personal musk mingles with wafts of fried chicken – simultaneously pleasant and revolting – and the combination makes me feel sick. I picture that hammock again.


“Sorry, Gre- I mean…sorry Callan. I’ve got to go. I’m meeting some people for lunch.”


He raises himself up, given strength by the promise of that final word. The Colonel looks over us with a wink and a smile. In every way Greedo has the upper hand.


“May I…do you think I could come?”


In the sudden purity of a gust of wind I find myself recalling that morning’s lecture. Choice, free will, cause and effect – questions of a life worth living or futile misinterpretations of what is really preordained? All I know is this: I want, more than anything else I can ever remember wanting, to tell Greedo to get fucked.


“Look…Callan…” But I can’t. “Mate…”


“Please?” Greedo wipes a layer of dirty sweat from his brown. Other beads fall like tears down his fat cheeks. “I’m all alone.”


He clears his throat – and that, it appears, is that.


The transition is immediate and deflating; Katie turns, smiling at first, lifting a hand to wave, and then drops it quickly, her face strikingly confused. Clark looks almost worried, his eyebrows raised at first and now narrowed. I imagine it’s how I must have looked when I saw with soul-crushing disappointment Greedo running towards me at the lights. If only the professor had taught us how to communicate via telekinesis – I’d be apologising to my friends even as I brought this curse upon them. Being twenty minutes late seems trivial in comparison to this evil.


“Hey guys, sorry I’m late.” I’m doing my best to be calm and casual but my voice sounds too high-pitched. “You guys remember Callan?”


It’s a statement, really. No one forgets Greedo.


Neither Kate nor Clark seems tuned to my adlibbed frequency. I had hoped for any kind of greeting, a nod of recollection, a handshake, but they are frustratingly unmoved. This is a problem I must solve by myself.


Greedo appears immune to the persistence of his legacy. He wears a giant grin and sits between Katie and me. She leans away without subtlety. Nobody liked him at school, and he knew it, and stayed away, but for some reason now he seems to be under the impression that we have all moved on.


“So…” I offer, fishing for an interjection. None arrives, however, and the word simply vanishes into the embarrassing silence.


This silence lingers for a minute or two, during which Greedo proceeds to gulp down three glasses of water, revealing with each raise of his elbow an enormous dark patch of perspiration beneath his armpit.


Finally, Clark speaks. “So, Greedo. How are you?”


There is an irony here that goes unrecognised by the object of the question. Clark has not bothered to hide his true feelings with Greedo’s real name, and yet in talking to him he has willingly acknowledged the latter’s presence and thus voided my sole responsibility over the direction of the conversation from now on. I feel like Frankenstein unleashing his monster on the world.


“Good,” says Greedo. “Steven invited me to lunch.”


Katie gives me a cold look. She has giant, dark eyes that I have memorised to the last detail, and I feel ashamed and upset that she’s using them like this on me now.


“We’re in the same class,” I say. It’s an attempt at some sort of explanation, an excuse for what I have done, but even as the words leave my mouth I recognise how feeble they will sound. There is no defence for a decision as poor as this.


“What class?” Kate is looking at Greedo now. It’s a calamitous intersection of beauty and ugliness. Neither should be exposed to something so alien.


Unsurprisingly, Greedo is keen to answer her, and slowly the dialogue evolves. I lean back like an artist critiquing his work. Perhaps this won’t be so bad after all. If nothing else we have uni in common, and that is enough to sustain us through chicken toasties and coffee, and in my head I’m already planning my expert clean-up of the situation after Greedo has left. There will be plenty of lunches on other days, plenty of times to sit next to Katie and talk about something else.


“Steven?” It’s that voice again, calling me like it did before, from just as far away. This time, however, it’s in a completely different tone – softer and almost friendly – and as I return to the moment I see Greedo smiling at me. “Well,” he says. “What do you think?”


“About what?”

“Cheating,” says Katie. “Together.”


I glance at Clark. Cheating? What exactly had I missed? I’d fantasised all year about a relationship with Katie – had I mastered telekinesis after all?


“Um…” I’m careering through my own thoughts, scratching for any semblance of context.


Katie is enthusiastic, eager for an answer. “Do you want to?”


Or am I dreaming now, back home in that rich bastard’s hammock? Was this all some kind of sordid nightmare? Had I slept through class after all?


Greedo punches me in the arm. This is no dream.


“Okay,” I say, with no idea to what it is I’m agreeing. “But…Katie…do you mean you have a boyfriend?”


The response is brutal in its shock. Clark bursts out laughing, slamming his palm against the table. Greedo snorts, dribbling a marble of snot onto his shirt, which only makes Clark laugh harder. And Katie just stares, those incredible eyes wider than I’d ever thought possible.


“What are you talking about?” she exclaims. “Boyfriend?”


I can feel my face growing red. There is a sudden emptiness in my brain. I literally have no idea what is going on.


“You’re a fucking idiot, mate!” says Clark, still slamming the table. “Oh, man…”


Greedo leans in to whisper in my ear. “The other cheating,” he says, and then reaches into his pocket for his wallet as the waiter comes to clear away out plates.


Night-time. Thin clouds hover in front of the near-full moon. It’s a starless city sky, deep purple and pocked with orange streetlamps. There is no breeze, but I am bitterly cold.


It is the strangest team to which I have ever belonged: Katie, Clark, and Greedo. They appear now like shadows, dressed dark as the night, like I am, head to toe. So this is what it feels like to cheat.


Greedo, it turns out, has been breaking into the Science Faculty every fortnight for the entire semester, to alter his grades. He saw me this morning arriving late to class, fumbling for a seat in my Myki-fuelled rage. He took pity on me. He wanted to help.


I’d spent the evening thinking that it really should be the other way around. I’d bullied Greedo for six long years, looked down at him like he carried some disease. I’d told people he was a paedophile, for Christ’s sake!


“Ready?” he says, handing me a torch.


Clark is chuckling, probably nerves. We were troublemakers, maybe, but we’d never done anything like this.

“Clark!”


It’s Katie, and although I can’t see her face, covered as it is by a balaclava, I can tell by her tone that she’s in no mood for jokes.


“Sorry,” says Clark, but there’s still the tinge of laughter in his voice.


I can guess what he’s laughing at too, and I am immediately grateful of the protection of the darkness of night. I had agreed, pointlessly it had turned out, to a pretend-unfaithful relationship with the girl of my dreams. This fact cannot have escaped her.


“Quiet,” whispers Greedo. He sounds confident, controlled, and any doubt that I had about his true intentions is subdued as I await instruction.


Huddled behind a rubbish bin, swamped by bushes, heads bowed together, we are, in this moment, on edge. The edge of a knife, or a cliff, or of time itself, and I can’t help but look back at my day. I’d gone home after lunch, bought a hammock, spent an hour lying in it thinking over what we were about to do. It’s not as comfortable as it looks.


“Alright,” says Greedo. “This is the plan.”


I still can’t believe we’re doing this.


Had Greedo wanted to sleep in this morning, too? Had he lay in bed, staring at his own poster, finger hovering over the snooze button, daring himself to press it?


He’d asked us to cheat, and we’d all agreed, and now here we were, on this edge, and he’d got it all planned out. Four students with scores to settle, or at least to make up, and it was to be as simple as following orders. No choices necessary, it seemed.


“I’ll go in,” he says. “I know this building back to front. That means we’ll need two people out here to keep guard. Katie, you’re a cool head. You stay.” She nods in assent. “I just need one person to come with me.”


Even through the balaclava I can smell his breath, but it’s mixed this time with anticipation, the thrill of the unknown.


I want to impress Katie, to show her how daring I can be. I should go with Greedo. He chose me, today, after all.


But what if we get caught? Guard duty is the safer option. And I’d get to spend time with Katie, just the two of us, talking…


The sound of distant traffic blurs into nothingness as the bushes brush against my hand and Greedo speaks again.


“Steven, what’s it going to be?”



So do I keep watch with Katie or break into the Science Faculty building with Greedo?