Titus let the faint roar of the motors drown out his thoughts as the train accelerated, whatever other noises permeated into a tread brake Comeng trailer car, which by his reckoning was the second-quietest possible place to be on the entire train network. Third if you counted the secret entrance to Flinders St from Degraves St.

It smelled faintly of disinfectant and the perfume of the lady sitting next to him, framed by the bracing burnt undertone of ozone. He was sitting on the closest seat he could find to the first door of the fifth carriage. The last door of the fourth carriage was actually the closest to the escalator on Platform 5 on Flinders Street, but it lined up a bit too well; you often got caught in the congestion from the all-too-orderly queue for the escalators. He found it was often easier to slip into the queue sideways from an adjoining door. Maybe it would be like that today, but you never knew for sure.

He hoped that Fraser had understood somewhat what he had tried to explain the night before. He wasn't sure if what he had said had made sense. Come to think of it, he wasn't really ever sure whether what he was saying made sense. Nothing made sense. To be fair, nothing had ever made sense, but before it was less of a problem as he could just muddle through stuff with no discernible consequences. Now there were actual stakes with actual consequences and he wasn't sure if he liked it or not.

He was still wrapping his head around the fact that he was going to his birthday party. A younger him would have balked at the idea but now the curiosity far outweighed any reluctance on his part. Most of the people wouldn't know him and he would most likely never run into them again, so there was basically no long-term repercussions. Goddammit, he was overthinking this. Better not to think about it at all. In with the Other Things That He Refused To Understand, which were too numerous to list properly.

There was the clunk as the circuit breaker in the neighbouring carriage cut in, a burst of static as the next station was announced, and the roar of rheostatic brakes kicking in as the train slowed down on the approach to Anstey.

The rusty conduits had been replaced with shiny new metal channels. A lot of the sleepers were still ancient and wooden, though the concrete replacements had already been dumped en masse on the sides, ready to be side inserted. Once you got used to the usual things you could see things change day by day. Ditches would fill with the murky rainwater and evaporate to mud and bloom with green algae and dry into cracked dirt, whereupon the cycle would repeat. The creeks would swell with rain and dry down to a trickle in the summer. Buds would bloom into flowers which would be pollinated and grow into fruits which would ripen and wither and drop off the tree.

He wanted to ride on forever, until he felt he had seen enough, until he had reached some sort of absolution, until he had decided he had seen enough of the outside world from the distance of a railway embankment. He liked that feeling, the feeling of not exactly knowing where you were going, but also safe in the reassurance that you would be able to find your way. He liked the feeling of speed, of always being on the move.

But he had no choice but to get off now, otherwise he would be late to school. It was not a compulsion any more, it was an uphill battle to resist the urge every day, the routine was weathering away. He stepped from his spot leaning against the doorwell, prepared himself for the impending scramble for the escalators, the rush across the concourse to the tram stop, if he was lucky...

***

"Hey. Wait up."

It was Nolan. They hung out at the same group but never really interacted, different lobes of a friendship group Venn diagram. He had seen him walk this way but they had never really had the reason to talk.

After his personal Őszöd speech the day before yesterday, he would be fine with not talking to another person for the next six months. He hadn't spoken directly to a single person since arriving at school. Even the idea of someone giving him some sort of basic compliment provoked knots of dread in his stomach. Like so many times before it felt like the only thing stopping everything from falling apart was the tightness at the edges of his mouth. Mercifully there was no English class, or he might have genuinely come undone.

He was aware this apprehension might be interpreted as feeling intimidated. He was very tall. "I always see you walking this way." The smile was starting to grate on him. Like that feeling you got in your sinuses when you stuck a landing slightly wrong. "I just noticed that you haven't been showing up as much during recess." He actually seemed concerned. Disproportionately so given his relationship was peripheral at best.

"Really?" He said. He managed to stop himself from saying the second part. You noticed? Finally?

"Really. How was your weekend?"

At some point a few years ago the running joke about his lack of a social life had ceased to be a joke and people had simply stopped asking this particular question. That was the way it went. He would always be slightly out of the loop. Things would trickle down slowly from above. He felt like he was on the periphery of some great joke everyone was in on, and even the nice people couldn't do anything but stare at him bemusedly. He couldn't exactly blame them for excluding him, though. How were you meant to include someone when you didn't even know their phone number? He had told so many people that "he didn't have a phone" that they had long stopped asking. And now that he did have a phone they didn't seem to be interested, to be honest. Which suited him, but also didn't.

"My religion doesn't celebrate weekends. Every day, I fold myself into one of the drawers in the Chaplin House room, and I fold myself out just before everyone arrives. On weekends I go into a torpor state for 48 hours."

Nolan looked at him quizzically. "Is everything going alright?" The concern really was genuine. 

"If you've read any amount of history," Titus said, putting his years of perfecting the art of tactical infodumping into practice, "you'd know that things going alright is very much the exception rather than the norm, as many people seem to think. Do you have any idea how much shit goes wrong behind the scenes? Just read the bio of any person who was involved in any major event in the 20th century. Just the amount of major events where they basically had to start from scratch three weeks before the big day. People just see the photos and think it's all smooth sailing because of all those photos. Think about it. If you were in that situation and you had the opportunity to take a happy photo with your mates, you'd fucking take it."

"You didn't answer my question." Nolan looked genuinely hurt. Suddenly, Titus felt bad for not just giving him a straight answer.

"Everything's fine." He decided to give the most boilerplate answer possible. If Nolan wanted to look further into it that was his choice. "I'm just kinda busy."

"During recess?" So he was not born yesterday. "What have you got on then?"

Titus was briefly tempted to actually explain to Nolan exactly what he had been doing during his recesses, just to shut him up, then he realised that he might talk to De Silva at some point and that was too much for him to think about. He also knew people who were higher up than him in the science committee, who he had told, to their faces, that he was turning the lights off, who might cotton onto what he was doing and that was also too much to think about.

"Uh... not much, actually. But I have to be there." In his mind, Nolan was one of those people who fancied himself as everybody's friend. It was time to put an end to this misconception. "Hey Nolan. You ever heard of this ancient Greek philosopher called Diogenes?"

The look on Nolan suggested he didn't know where this was going. A dark recess of his mind blossomed with unbridled glee. "Um... he sounds familiar?"

"He was a weird bloke. He lived in a pot and he begged for a living."

"Uh-hum. Interesting."

"Anyway, one day, the story goes, Alexander the Great was in the area and, uh, decided to check in on him. And he asked Diogenes if he could do anything for him. And he said, to Alexander the Great's face, "get out of my way. You're blocking my sun."

"And the moral of the story is?"

"You're blocking my sun." He took this opportunity to take a left through a throng of lower years, leaving Nolan in the dust.

See? Look at all that sweet Vitamin D you were trying to deny me," he said to no-one.

"The sun isn't even out," Nolan said, on the other side of the yard.

***

Mrs Vassilikou had truly outdone herself this time. Two whole trays of galaktoboureko. Kevin and Titus stood in the petrol-scented cavern of the staff parking lot, helping her to get the trays of still-warm pastry out of the backseat of her Mazda. They had been the only two to volunteer. "This De Silva guy is lighting a fire under my arse. Efficiency, efficiency, efficiency," she muttered, "We're trying to give you a well-rounded education here, not turn this place into a ATAR mill."

Kevin had been telling him the usual stuff. The usual complaints. He had been talking about the same thing at recess. And a few days ago. They were fixated on something for a few weeks then they moved on.

He could not bring himself to be interested in these things. He could immerse himself in the in-and-outs of every topic but with no enthusiasm.

There was the noise of an engine behind them. A black BMW. De Silva's. He was aiming for the final parking spot.

Darvall's old Volvo 245 pulled nimbly into the parking spot first, right in front of De Silva's BMW. De Silva poked his head out of the window. "Hey! That was my spot."

Darvall got out and calmly opened the tailgate, pulling out his briefcase. "You should have turned on your indicator. I thought you were just going straight ahead."

"Excuse me." De Silva stepped out of the car, intending to confront his nemesis. This was foiled by Darvall's simple act of striding past him. He tipped his hat at De Silva. "And a good day to you too, sir."

He strode for the exit. He tipped his hat at Mrs Vassilikou at the two boys as well as he went past. De Silva was staring at them, as if expecting them to share his outrage. "Did you see that? The cheek. The utter cheek."

"He's getting worse," she said. If De Silva had been a little closer, he could have seen the sarcasm dripping from her voice, as Kevin and Titus did. "About time someone got him to pull his head in."

He shook his head, slamming the door as he got back in his car. The sound reverberated around the concrete walls. The engine started. He drove off.

As soon as De Silva was out of earshot, she turned around and looked at Titus and Kevin, making a throat-cutting motion with her free hand. "What a tosser. Come on. Let's go."

"I saw them once in English class," he said. "They were shooting daggers at each other with their eyes."

"They hate each other. You should see them in the staff common room. It's beyond toxic." She swiped her card and opened the door with her free hand.

"Why?"

"I'm not sure." She bore a look of utter innocence. "Could be a lot of reasons. He doesn't agree with his ideas. And he has sway with the school board, which he doesn't, yet. Maybe they just don't like each other."

***

He crouched on the dirt floor of the basement, careful not to get his school uniform dirty. He was carefully picking every shred of evidence that they had been here off the floor, trying to draw as little attention as possible to the new cardboard boxes that had sprung up in the furthermost corner. After the announcement the week before he could only be careful. He could have just told them to eat outside, but that seemed a bit unnecessary. He didn't want them to go hungry while working on their pride and joy, and loitering around the entrance was bound to attract attention. They'd already had enough setbacks.

He froze at the sound of creaking hinges, the door being pushed open. A solitary ray of sunlight pierced the darkness. He ducked behind the boxes.

The crouching figure that entered did not match with anyone who worked in the science building that he was aware of. was familiar, but he couldn't be entirely sure. There was a new science teacher. But he had seen him around a few times. He had just assumed that they were working on a project and left them alone. But it didn't feel like it was him. He could feel it in his bones. The footsteps were too heavy. The shadow was too large.

The harsh white light of a phone torch. He tried to hold his breaths in. He was sure that it was De Silva now.

The white light was heading in the opposite direction; he let out a breath in relief. But sooner or later he would be turning around. And he would be coming over to his corner. And there would the moment of awkward silence...

It was clear he was looking for something else entirely. He was poking at the ceiling, looking for something. Flakes of paint, dust clouds, catching in the thin rays of light thrown by the crack in the door.

He held it in. Why was he doing this? What was he doing here? He wanted someone by his side. He listened to the footsteps heading upward, gently receding. He waited until he was sure that he was gone, then crept out of his hiding place. His gut had still yet to unknot; the queasy feeling still curdled his stomach. He was struck by the absurdity of it all. He felt like laughing. What was his life coming to?

He headed to where De Silva had been searching. In the small sliver of light from the open door he could see there was an shaft in the ceiling. He guessed that there had been a goods lift here many decades ago. Now it was just an empty brick shaft, the base filled with dust-covered rubble. He shone the light of his phone up it. There was nothing. It was empty save for dust and cobwebs. What had he been searching for?

As he emerged from the underground he found himself laughing. Peals of laughter. It was so ridiculous, this whole situation. The geographic smallness of it. The stakes. It was so utterly absurd. Just metres away, sharing the same air, there was a world that was completely oblivious to the melodrama going on mere metres away. And yet he was stuck here in this well-insulated madhouse.

He passed some younger years on their way home from training. They were looking weirdly at him. he stopped and avoided their gaze as he walked past them. He could feel their curious gazes sear the side of his face. He took one furtive look back. They had forgotten about him.

The orange light of the sunset. The faint smell of cut grass, the muted chit-chit-chit of the sprinklers. On the other side of the oval, the boarders were filing into the dining hall. There were still a few lights on in the maths building offices. The peppercorn trees were whistling ever so slightly in the breeze. This was the last few months that this would be a reality to him.

***

On the margins of the oval, the bin-chicken helped itself to the day's food scraps. It was almost too fat to fly now.