3. Elliot and Zack

Elliot and Zack
*
Luciel
*
Jenny


“Aww, she ruined Sylvia’s work” says Elliot, from the ground. They have been playing hide and seek for the last half an hour. Zack was seeking, but knowing Zack, who has the attention span of a decapitated mollusc, he’s probably off doing something else. Elliot himself is pretty good at hiding; he has a lot of experience in that area. Sylvia has apparently rewritten the rules of the game, to make it a bit more challenging. It looks like she is attempting to paint the whole roof blue before either Zack or Lindel catch her, although Lindel has just inadvertently helped her by painting half the roof blue herself.

Elliot was wandering round the garden looking for Zack, to see what he’s up to now. He’s already checked the kitchen, so Zack isn’t trying another chemistry experiment, and he won’t try escaping the grounds in broad daylight, that’s just suicidal. Elliot wanders round the outside of the house. Suddenly there is a loud discordant crash, like someone sitting on a piano. That’ll be Zack then.

Elliot taps on the door and walks into the music room. Zack is lying there on the floor, surrounded by shredded pieces of paper. "What's up?" Elliot asks casually. The paper appears to be the remains of Zack’s last piano composition attempt. Zack sits up with a jolt.

"This is a box," Zack says, making an aggravated motion with his hands to indicate the sides of a cube, "and this is me," he says, pointing to a place right where he was making the hand movements, "inside the box."

"Uh-huh" says Elliot, rather neutral.

"And I'm trying to get out of this box...” Zack says agitatedly, “but no matter how hard I try, I can't." Elliot gazes dreamily at the dark sky out the window, is silent for a few seconds, then, seeing that Zack isn't saying any more, speaks.

"What colour's the box then?" he asks. Zack looks at Elliot as if he's just suggested the earth revolves round the planet Jupiter, and then looks at his feet for a moment.

"That's deep." Zack confesses. He pauses a minute. "Beige." he answers. Elliot nods wisely. There is a flash of lightning outside. Zack doesn’t move, Elliot carries on staring out the window. Eventually the thunder comes.

“Fifteen seconds, that’s five kilometres away, do you think we’ll get another power surge?” asks Elliot, still looking out the window.

“Who knows…? If we have to eat with those polystyrene plates again though, I’m just going to skip supper. I cut straight through them last time, they’re insane.” Replies Zack. He begins to pick up the pieces of paper, and then once all gathered together again, throws them up into the air. They scatter around his feet. “Do you think if I arrange these pieces randomly I’ll get a better piece?”

“No harm in trying I guess.” Says Elliot, he knows he’ll come to regret it though. Zack begins to pick up the paper, and sticks it to the yellow wallpaper in the new order. There is another flash, thunder, and then the rain starts.

“Looks like Lindel won’t need a cleaner for the roof then,” says Zack, the pieces now firmly affixed in their new order, and smiles at his work.

“Yeah, shame really, I thought Sylvia’s blue stripe was an improvement.” Says Elliot in a melancholy tone.

“Sylvia’s blue what?” Asks Zack

“Oh, you didn’t see?” Says Elliot, mildly surprised, “She got bored playing hide and seek, you hadn’t found her in ages, so she decided to make it a little more of a challenge by trying to paint the whole roof blue whilst simultaneously avoiding being caught by you or Lindel.”

“Hide and seek, were we playing that?” asks Zack, sincerely not remembering, “Guess I got a little preoccupied - sudden flash of creative genius.” Elliot rolls his eyes, Zack blames everything on sudden flashes of creative genius, and if they weren’t so frequent, he might actually believe him. If the lightning was as frequent as his “flashes”, the country’s energy crisis would have been solved long ago. Zack looks out the window. The rain is falling very hard now. There is a light on in one of the trees, where the older children who left built a tree house last year. “Do you think we should tell her we’ve finished playing now?” says Zack

“Do you think she’d believe us?” smirks Elliot

“Probably not…” says Zack. He has encountered this situation before. Sylvia doesn’t believe in there being any distinct boundaries between games and real life. Where’s the fun in that? She’ll just interpret their request as a tactic to catch her off guard.

The thunder rumbles again.

*

“Besides, she’ll be OK,” muses Elliot, “she’s done it before, and unlike the likelihood of one of your flashes of creative genius, the chance of lightning striking that tree and her going up in flames is very low.” Zack shudders. Elliot can be a little too direct sometimes.

“Plus she’s got her special friend Luciel to talk to” Zack adds.

“Since when did it have a name, Luciel, what kind of a name is that?” Asks Elliot.

“You obviously haven’t been talking to her much recently; you really should try and talk to her about these things, Luciel’s important to her.” Says Zack in a reproachful tone.

“That thing creeps me out,” says Elliot, “you’re just obsessed with it anyway, and it’s like all you ever talk about with her.”

“I think you’re just jealous that anything else spends more time with her than you.” Smirks Zack. Elliot is on the verge of kicking the stool away from where he’s sitting, when there is a knock at the door.

*

Jenny walks in. Jenny is 16, just, due to leave Samjays at the end of summer, and needs something to write on her CV to demonstrate that she has leadership qualities, so Lindel made her a monitor. Jenny isn’t convinced how this will help her become a mechanic, which was her dream job ever since she was six years old, hid underneath one of the orphanage vehicles and found a spanner lying there. There’s just something about the smell of engine oil and petrol which just, clicks. Needless to say, the car she stayed under for three hours never worked again.

Jenny eyes Zack’s papers on the wall with suspicion, spots Elliot next to him, and assumes it must be another conceptual art piece of his. Elliot is forever leaving these little mementos around the house. Their artistic merit is always questionable, but generally, it’s best not to argue. Elliot’s ‘philosophy of art’ debates are infamous. There’s a rumour he’s planning on writing them all down and sending them off for publication, but it’s just a rumour.

“Just you two in here then?” she asks.

“Yeah,” says Zack, “well, unless you count the piano” he adds cheekily

“The piano is not on my list of targets,” Jenny says authoritatively, “yet. I don’t suppose you’ve seen Sylvia? She’s the only one still missing from the house, not that that’s a surprise.”

“She’s probably hiding.” Says Elliot.

“Yeah, I would be if I’d painted the roof blue,” remarks Jenny, “Lindel’s furious, not that that’s anything new.” She adds.

“Nah, she won’t be worried about that,” says Zack “we were playing hide and seek though…”

“Oh no, not this again…” says Jenny disheartened

“And we still haven’t found her,” adds Elliot. Jenny groans.

“I swear Lindel’s going to ban that game if this keeps happening…” Mutters Jenny.

“As if that would stop anything…” Remarks Zack.

“True.” Jenny says, pausing. “She’s not hiding in the house is she? I mean she would have heard the piano then so she’d know the game was finished”

“She wouldn’t fall for such an easy trick,” says Elliot. Jenny sighs, staring out the French windows.

“Well she’s going to be under the trees or somewhere sheltered if she’d still outside, so that limits the options.” Jenny says, “I guess Lindel will be sending out Brian to go look for her if she doesn’t turn up in the house.” Jenny turns to go and closes the door behind her.

Zack sits down at the piano and begins to play the new tune on the wall. Elliot winces. The discordant harmonies are painful. He manages to endure a whole 38 seconds of it; he was counting, until a suitable distraction occurrs. There is a movement across the grass outside.

“Oh look, there goes Brian.” He remarks. The comment has the desired effect; Zack stands up from the piano stool and walks over to the window. It’s getting dark, so all they can make out clearly is the light in the tree. Elliot guesses that’s what Brian’s spotted. Sylvia is pretty good at hiding; there won’t be much else to go on.