Tim Te Maro and the Subterranean Heartsick Blues Read online

  Dedicated to my wives, Corie, Elise and Q

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1: SUPALONELY

  CHAPTER 2: SITTING INSIDE MY HEAD

  CHAPTER 3: ANCHOR ME

  CHAPTER 4: EVERYTHING IS GOOD FOR YOU IF IT DOESN’T KILL YOU

  CHAPTER 5: PACIFIER

  CHAPTER 6: JESUS I WAS EVIL

  CHAPTER 7: MISTY FREQUENCIES

  CHAPTER 8: ALL FAKE EVERYTHING

  CHAPTER 9: LIKE SHE SAID

  CHAPTER 10: IT’S ONLY NATURAL

  CHAPTER 11: INTO TEMPTATION

  CHAPTER 12: IT’S ON

  CHAPTER 13: CAN’T GET ENOUGH

  CHAPTER 14: GREEN LIGHT

  CHAPTER 15: YOU GOTTA KNOW

  CHAPTER 16: BE MINE TONIGHT

  CHAPTER 17: KNOW YOUR OWN HEART

  CHAPTER 18: SETTLE DOWN

  CHAPTER 19: FALL AT YOUR FEET

  CHAPTER 20: BETTER BE HOME SOON

  CHAPTER 21: SILVER & GOLD

  CHAPTER 22: ONWARD

  CHAPTER 23: BUSINESS TIME

  CHAPTER 24: EVERYBODY KNOWS

  CHAPTER 25: MY DELIRIUM

  CHAPTER 26: DON’T FORGET YOUR ROOTS

  CHAPTER 27: NEXT TO YOU

  CHAPTER 28: VICIOUS TRADITIONS

  CHAPTER 29: SEE WHAT LOVE CAN DO

  CHAPTER 30: GOOD INTENT

  CHAPTER 31: QUIET GIRL

  CHAPTER 32: TEEN HEAT

  CHAPTER 33: HOME AGAIN

  CHAPTER 34: MIDNIGHT MARAUDERS

  CHAPTER 35: THE UNKNOWN AND THE INFINITE

  CHAPTER 36: THE LOVE CLUB

  EPILOGUE: SOMETHING GOOD

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  CHAPTER 1

  SUPALONELY

  You’d think a place like Fox Glacier High School for the Magically Adept – which has taught magic for decades – might’ve found a way to heat its super-secret underground compound, or at least the sick bay. Especially since it’s under a river of ice. The ceilings are low, the walls are thick, and there’s an air-circulation system anyway – it could surely have been a warm air-circulation system. If not with magic, then with a solar-powered something; the glacier is pretty reflective. And cold. The sick bay shouldn’t be cold. It’s unhealthy.

  This wet mess the nurse has put on my head isn’t helping. And it smells. She’s gone off somewhere, maybe to make a note in her ledger about what’s happened this time, Mr Te Maro? I bet she has a tally. To be fair, us Defensives are probably winning for the highest number of avoidable injuries. At least they’re usually only to ourselves, and not to others – unlike the Minders.

  Theirs isn’t a bad Specialty – the things they study do a lot towards mental health care and law and stuff – it just seems to have attracted shitty people in my year. And one group in particular has been making the whole lot look bad lately. Last time I was in here it was because one of them had decided it would be hilarious to make me hallucinate that my custard was full of spiders. I’d ended up with a broken dessert bowl, a five-centimetre cut on my shin and no more custard. Come to think of it, the time before was their fault as well, and I have a scar from that, too.

  I’m still thinking about it when their poster boy, Elliott Parker, walks in; I’m pretty sure he was the one who found out I don’t like spiders. I feel my shoulders bunch up – he doesn’t look injured enough to be here legitimately. He’s still in full uniform, even though it’s after eight. He probably likes the way the blue stripe brings out his eyes or something. Or maybe the contrast of dark, scholarly grey and his floofy blond hair sparks joy. Who the hell knows with him.

  He stares at me for a second as I lie on the only occupied bed, and I wonder if the nurse’s proximity is enough to keep him from being a dickhead. Though, I would like to practise some of my new Advanced Defence magic on him. Disembowelling, perhaps. Maybe that’s technically Advanced Offensive magic. Maybe I don’t care.

  ‘Te Maro,’ he says.

  ‘Dickhead,’ I reply.

  He’s looking at me like my being here is suspicious, which is ridiculous since I’m obviously actually injured and he’s just swanning around like he normally does. Plus, the other Tim got expelled last year so he could probably afford to use my first name now. Maybe he’s still sulking over it. They were friends, or whatever passes for it when you’re low-key evil.

  ‘I see whoever did that didn’t manage to knock some manners into you,’ he says, eyes flicking up to my hairline.

  ‘Would you prefer Sir Dickhead?’

  The nurse comes out to find out what the noise is about. ‘What brings you here, Mr Parker?’

  He shoots me another look, wary this time. ‘Things I’d rather remained private,’ he says, and blushes, his pale skin giving him away. Mine never betrays me like that. Thanks for the melanin, Dad. Shame you buggered off somewhere and left me and Mum alone.

  The nurse sighs and beckons Elliott into her office. I close my eyes and try out a hearing-enhancement spell, even though I don’t have a mea to help me focus my magic. I stop breathing so I can hear better, but it doesn’t seem to work; they’re too quiet. I bet he’s got an STI.

  I compile a list of horrific things he might be infected with while I wait for whatever the nurse has put on my head to do its thing. It was a tiny cut, but apparently ‘the real danger with exploding snow globes is the unsanitary water inside them’ and she’s worried about infection. Nobody sees the irony in my girlfriend (ex-girlfriend, now) owning a snowglobe when we live under a glacier. Or that it’s that particular piece of crap which landed me here and not the river of actual ice a couple of metres above our heads. Or that it’s her fault I’m here; she’s a Healer and they’re meant to be the good guys.

  Elliott slinks out of the office a few minutes later, looking shifty. Maybe I was right. Maybe the imagined ‘Parker’s Pustules’ are real and his crotch truly is encrusted with weeping purple sores. The nurse wanders off to rummage in a cabinet. Elliott comes closer and with the way he’s looking at me, I wonder if the carving around my neck will be enough to protect me. Perhaps a full-body condom would be more appropriate, considering what might be wrong with him.

  ‘So,’ he says, and sits on the bed next to mine like we don’t dislike each other all of a sudden.

  ‘What do you want?’ I reply, making sure to keep the hostility out of my voice lest he think I’m trying to start something when I’m actually just trying to stay still enough that the goop on my head doesn’t slide into my eyes. It’s been hard enough lying here with my hair in a bun, the hair tie’s digging into my head and it hurts.

  ‘I want to know if you’re going to do anything about the situation we’re in.’

  I fight the urge to turn and get a better look at his expression. My eyes hurt from glaring sideways. ‘What situation?’

  He sighs. ‘The one where my ex-friend has run off with your ex-girlfriend.’

  I was under the impression she’d run off alone after I exploded a snow globe all over her homework, but hell, when is life ever simple or painless or not a complete and utter mess? ‘Since when?’

  ‘By the looks of your manuka poultice, about half an hour ago,’ he says – accurately, which is a bit suspect. ‘I must say, I didn’t expect she’d have clobbered you.’

  ‘She didn’t.’ I want to scowl at him, but I have to keep my eyebrows still. ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘Blake – roommate, ex-friend – very kindly informed me that our own arrangement was at its natural end and he was taking up with your girlfriend.’ He sighs again and, in the blur of my periphery, I see his gaze drop to
his hands, clenched in his lap. ‘Apparently they’re in love.’

  ‘They’re in love?’

  Thinking back, less than an hour ago, Lizzie was trying to explain something when I really wanted her to stop talking altogether – everything she said felt like another brick on my chest, and I lost control of my magic for a second. Picture frames rattled on the wall, a magazine shivered and slid off her bed and then one lone snow globe shattered outwards, glass flying and its tiny penguin inhabitant suddenly exposed for the first time in its life. It’s been years since I lost my shit like that – I would’ve been a kid the last time, maybe twelve, my magic just starting to manifest. Now I guess the unbridled joy of Dad walking out and my girlfriend leaving me is enough to render me a hazard.

  ‘Tim,’ Lizzie had said, her voice so concerned, so careful … I saw a thousand patronising words in her eyes. Look at you, losing control. What’s wrong with you? Get yourself together, Tim. Cheer up. Get a haircut. What if what she really wanted to say was, And by the way, I’m in love with Blake Hutton.

  ‘Apparently.’

  I don’t have enough faith in her right now to not believe Elliott, and my eyes start to prickle so I focus on him instead. It’s better than crying. ‘What arrangement?’ I ask, even though I think I know what him and Blake might’ve been up to. Maybe marvelling at the fact we might have certain interests in common will distract me from my misery for a second. Then again, maybe I’m projecting.

  ‘Have a little imagination, Te Maro, won’t you?’ he says with a tilt of his head and a smirk that’s interrupted by the nurse. Right, not imagining that, then.

  ‘You’re lucky I found this, we were almost cleared out last month,’ the nurse says, appearing at the foot of the bed with a tiny glass jar in her hand. ‘After – well. You know.’

  ‘Sadly, yes, I do know,’ Elliott says with a pained look and I have a sneaking suspicion that my imaginings regarding his crotch problems might not be completely unfounded.

  ‘How are you, there, Mr Te Maro? All absorbed?’ she asks. I don’t know how she expects me to know – I can’t see it.

  ‘I think he needs another minute, Ma’am. I’ll stay with him,’ Elliott says, and I twitch with the urge to gape openly at him. We’ve never been friendly, to put it mildly. To be less mild, I hate him and I’m a hundred per cent sure the feeling’s mutual, so I don’t know why he’s offering to keep an eye on me.

  But the nurse just says, ‘Very well, give me a shout,’ and disappears again into her office. Maybe she’s adding to the Minder ledger this time: another case of purple sex-boils, order more ointment. I’m mildly horrified she’s leaving me alone with him.

  ‘So, Te Maro. My ex, your ex, both terrible people – what say we mess with them a bit?’

  There it is. I could’ve guessed this would be a mostly selfish endeavour. Dick.

  I wave my hand at the little jar in his hand and take a punt. ‘Perhaps a bit less messing around with them would’ve done you some good?’

  ‘Or in your case, perhaps a bit more?’ He cocks his head to the side and I want to belt him, sod the bloody goop on my head. Let it fall in my eyes, I can fight blind.

  ‘I hate you,’ is all I say though, focusing on the low, grey concrete ceiling and the dusty metallic criss-cross of ducting.

  ‘That’s irrelevant and not remotely surprising,’ he huffs. ‘The question is, will you stand for your little girlfriend running off with a big, bad, nasty Minder?’

  ‘That’s stereotyping,’ I say, even though I usually call them something far worse. Usually when they’re trying to practise on us without permission.

  ‘Just because it’s a stereotype, doesn’t mean it’s not true,’ he says, pointedly adjusting the expensive-looking silver ring on his middle finger. ‘He really is quite big.’

  My mind goes places with that statement, and it takes me a second to realise Elliott might be causing it, trying to push my thoughts towards jealousy. I don’t know who decided it was a good idea to teach a bunch of teenagers how to manipulate people’s brains. I wish they hadn’t. Even though I kind of want to be able to do it too. Becoming a Minder was, admittedly, my second choice, since it’s the second most versatile Specialty, but I’d rather have quit school altogether than commit to hanging out with any of that lot on purpose. Elliott’s not even the worst of them. At least there are three less Minders now after last year’s fiasco and the Principal’s zero-tolerance attitude towards people actively setting the school on fire. I like to think she doesn’t like Minders either, anymore.

  ‘I don’t care,’ I say, forcing my mind clear. ‘You said you wanted to know if I was going to do anything about it – I’m not. What else do you want?’

  ‘Well, you know … proper central heating, not living underground for most of the year, a flat white that doesn’t make me cry a little inside, an entire tray of apple crumble, maybe my parents sending me a postcard once in a while …’ His voice trails off like maybe he didn’t mean to say that, and I wonder if he has anyone else to talk to. Only him and Manaia are left from his little group of Aucklanders after last year, and I doubt the other Minders are any good to confide in. I wouldn’t tell them shit. ‘Anyway. I’ll settle for petty revenge.’

  ‘I’m not dating you to piss off Blake, if that’s what you’re getting at.’

  ‘Interesting that’s where your brain went.’

  ‘Pretend that wasn’t your aim.’

  ‘My aim is to annoy him, not confuse him.’

  ‘So what do you need me for?’

  He huffs out a breath. ‘I want you to help me come up with something so they both suffer, since if it wasn’t for Elizabeth I’d still have a perfectly good friend with perfectly good benefits, and absolutely no need to talk to you.’

  ‘Sucks to be you. Sadly, I don’t feel super motivated to help you with anything, since I don’t actually like you.’

  ‘What do you want, then?’ He tosses his hands up in the air. ‘Do you want me to pay you?’

  ‘I don’t need your money, Elliott.’

  ‘OK, one, from the state of that hoodie, I think you probably do. But, two, if you’re this stubborn, then surely you at least want to get your own back on that heartless praying mantis of a woman who just left you for someone else? Apparently without even telling you that was the case.’ He stands to leave. ‘I’ll think of something and let you know.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t.’

  ‘And yet, I will. Spend a night alone with your thoughts and see how you feel.’ He comes to stand over me. It’s unnerving; I still don’t trust him.

  ‘He looks about ready, Nurse Hiatt,’ he calls out, then, ‘ta-ta.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  Twat. Unimaginable, unspeakable twat. Who the hell says ‘ta-ta’? Is he an eighty-year-old woman? Why would I ever help him? What could he ever do for me? And why, after four and a half years, can he not just leave me alone?

  CHAPTER 2

  SITTING INSIDE MY HEAD

  A night alone with my thoughts is not what I need. Especially when some bastard has drawn attention to the fact that that’s what I’m having. And that I’m no longer having anything else. Nothing even resembling sex, a sex dream, or even a spirited wank, since every time I think of getting myself off, I think one of two things: either Lizzie saying, ‘It just wasn’t very good for either of us, was it?’ or Elliott saying, ‘Interesting that’s where your brain went.’ The overwhelming curiosity about being with another guy – the itch that’s been growing in the back of my throat for months now – is far too much to deal with this late at night. I’m going to look wrecked tomorrow and Lizzie will think I’ve been up all night crying over her.

  I need to not be awake. I have some of Silvia’s sleep drops in with my toiletries for emergencies. Is this an emergency? Trying not to look pathetic in front of your newly ex-girlfriend? Let’s say it is. I fish them out, drop a half dose on my tongue and screw the lid back on. I can hear Sam in the back of my head saying
it’s a waste of resources, and Silv will probably give me a lecture tomorrow about overusing them, but I know she wouldn’t have made them for me if they were actually dangerous. She knows me too well. That happens when you grow up with someone.

  When my parents got jobs here – about a year after hers and Sam’s – Silvia’s mum was the Deputy Principal and Sam’s dad was teaching English. It was the beginning of summer and I’d had to leave my old primary school in Wellington to move to a frozen nowhere with no friends. Except those two were here, and it ended up not being as bad as ten-year-old me expected. The images of those first months come back with the smell of hot apple and damp stone and the sense that time was completely irrelevant; a constant drifting cycle of food and books and board games. We were too young for proper classes but stuck here regardless, always together, exploring all the old tunnels and consuming our weight in Milo and scones in between random sessions of homeschooling. It feels so vivid I wonder if Silvia’s potion is messing with me or if I’m getting extra nostalgic at the ripe old age of seventeen. I fall asleep and dream of being ten. I wake up feeling a hundred and drag myself through the cold concrete corridors to breakfast.

  ‘Te Maro, you look like shit, don’t you sleep?’

  Elliott is looming over me, putting my Weet-Bix in shadow. It’s gone from a boring, slightly sad bowl of mush to fully grim and depressing mush. I’ve barely sat down and he’s in my face, ruining my breakfast. What a cock-widget.

  ‘What do you want, Elliott?’

  ‘Acquiescence. I have an idea, and it’s excellent.’ He grins, a hell of a difference from his usual smirk, and it’s startlingly evil-seeming this early in the morning.

  ‘Go on, then,’ I sigh, since I expect telling him to piss off will be less effective than half-ignoring him.

  ‘We’re starting our new topic in Life Skills today.’

  Ugh. Yes. Life Skills. Our collective punishment for surviving adolescence. A class dedicated to teaching us how to act like normal adults, supported by hundreds of painfully upbeat video presentations from the International Magical Education Council. They claim to promote ‘cooperation and emotional wellbeing among the young magical adept in a potentially hostile outside world’, but my being would be a lot weller without it. They’ve even managed to knit it together with the national curriculum so that we can’t claim it’s completely useless. The only helpful thing they’ve taught us all year, though, is how to deal with family and friends who didn’t win the genetic lottery and end up with magic, and that wasn’t even for credits. Currently, we’re in the middle of ‘Family, Relationships and Reproduction’, so –