Small World

By James McLean

"It raises the question though. What happens when something happens in a town where nothing happens? And what happens when you’re the cause?"

That’s two questions, genius. Though Heather Muse is more history buff than mathlete, that’s the least of her problems. Growing up in a town with the population and modernity of a record store, you can forgive Heather for living in the past and yearning for a future. As for her actions in the present, that’s what this collage of her thoughts, explanations and tangents is defending. Sorry, I’m just a blurb, I have to stay impartial. I probably shouldn’t have even made that snarky remark at the start. I’m going to have to write 24 conceited blogs excusing it now, aren’t I? I’d call this a ridiculous cycle but I’ve seen those penny-farthings. What? I like old photographs. I can’t have interests outside this particular book now? Wow, people really are judgmental. I’d be more empathetic to Heather’s mundane plight now but I have my own concerns.

Readers are calling Small World “what passes for literature these days” and “even with a knife to my neck and a guillotine to my groin, this would have to be the...thing I’d recommend”. A third reader wouldn’t go unnoticed if you’re so inclined.

• Language: English
• Publisher: James McLean
• Release date: Mar 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005407292

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Small World by James McLean

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© 2022 James McLean

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Cover Art by Hannah Arnold

SMALL WORLD

BY

JAMES MCLEAN

For Forty Forest Fauna Fondly Fornicating Forever

Nobody reads blogs. They’re as dead as print media. Which is to say they inexplicably still exist. But that’s exactly what I need right now. A way to vent without anyone really finding out how my life became a half-baked pretzel. So to you, imaginary reader, thank-you for not hearing my thoughts as I get them off my chest. I don’t know what my thoughts are doing on my chest but who am I to delve into my own psychosis?

Now people throughout history from Libanius to Fidel Castro have written a blog in some form or another. You can’t tell me even the earliest cave paintings weren’t just quasi-artistic Neanderthals bragging about their conquests. Fish-Club-Skeleton indeed. In fact, it was Benjamin Franklin who said ‘Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.’ And given that I’ve spent two paragraphs waffling on about the history of autobiographies, I’ll get on with the arguable content that is my life and we’ll see if I accomplish either.

There’s a town you’ve never heard of called… well, for the sake of anonymity, let’s call it Anonymity. There are small towns, there are obscure towns and then there’s us. I’d say we were in the middle of nowhere, but that would imply we were at the centre of something. We have a low population, is what I’m getting at. And while the adults of Anonymity lead fascinatingly dull lives, the majority of my life revolves around the adolescents of the town so I’ll start there.

Eight hundred and forty seven students attend Fortitude High. Two hundred and something kilometres to the west, a whopping ten students attend Anonymity High School. Yet we still fill all the clichés in the niche. Did you pronounce ‘niche’ wrong in your head just then? Good, just checking.

If we’re going in order of importance, Chelsea Manning is the head and only cheerleader. You know the one, that air-headed, laconic-intolerant gossip who says ‘totally’ like it hadn’t gone out of fashion two decades ago. She’s the self-centred head and only member of a dozen committees, as well as having the prestigious honour of being our default popular girl.

Not big enough to create a sporting team of our own, she cheers on our only jock, Brian Keating, when he joins the Calen football team every fortnight. The team is made up of several schools in the pitter-patter of drive-through towns between Fortitude and our capital, and it shows on the scoreboard. To be fair, it’s always an ‘away’ game for them and while I’ve only bothered attending one match, Brian looked like he was one of the star players, getting upwards of three possessions.

In terms of nerds, Mary Fowler is the Hypatia of Anonymity, as the only person in the history of our little school to receive an A. She may even have gotten two. I’d say she was the teacher’s pet, but that would imply our teachers aren’t preoccupied with where their own careers had come to die.

Then there’s her adventurous, in every definition of the term, sister, Bree who, to make a morally dubious comparison, is the only student to receive an O from our little school. The bedrooms of Anonymity are like the proverbial cheese factory explosion, de Bree goes everywhere. By far the hottest person in school, she is also, for lack of a better word, the sluttiest. Out of the six available males that set foot in the school every day, she’s slept with five, which included our ex-English teacher, Mr Matthews (he still speaks English, to my knowledge, but writing English ex-teacher would give you a wrong impression of his teeth), and unfortunately my boyfriend, Steve Jackson.

It was before we started dating but knowing he’s been there is very intimidating. Steve’s the daydreamer of the bunch, always lost in his own mind, reading fantasy novels or doodling on a textbook. I’m always curious what he’s thinking but it always turns out to be about fictional scenarios like luck dragons or us having a threesome with a celebrity.

The only male Bree hasn’t soiled is my best friend, Joey Taylor, mainly because he’s dating Mary and hooking up with a sibling’s partner doesn’t happen nearly as often as your browser history implies. For those of you keeping score, Joey is the class clown. He may not have started out that way but once he came out of his shell and became disillusioned with school and the world in general, he decided disrupting class was the only way to pass the time, and I have to say from a biased point of view, his antics were much more entertaining than the content of most of our subjects.

Vince Anchorage would know this if he showed up for more than two classes a week. He is the closest thing to a bad boy we have at Anonymity High. He can usually be seen smoking at the edge of the school gates. It’s not a particularly big perimeter. The school only has the faculty office, an eating area, a unisex toilet, two classrooms, the bare minimum definition of a library and an oval the size of a backyard. The toilet is heavily decorated with slogans and crude drawings, and Vince is the only suspect. He’s committed a few misdemeanours but nothing that would get him the death penalty in any ‘sensible country’, if such a phrase isn’t a default oxymoron.

Akala Aranda would be the antithesis of Vince. While Vince ignores anything resembling the norm, Akala takes the ‘original’ out of ‘Aboriginal’. She’s best described as a copycat, immediately jumping on any trend Chelsea starts in a misguided attempt to become popular. Chelsea loves her, of course, but more because she loves herself and any friend of fashion is a clone of hers. Of course, it must be difficult to start trends in the first place with the aptly-titled Fowlers’ Clothing being the only fashion store in the area and their idea of range being ‘selling shoes and shirts’.

That brings us to the biggest cliché of all, Lisa Gardener, the outcast. Do you know how difficult it is to blend into a crowd of ten people and go unnoticed? She’s the youngest of all of us by far, but still has to take the same subjects. There’s no point in having a class for one person. That’s why all of us are on the same class schedule, regardless of intelligence, age and hair colour and it’s the primary reason Lisa became emo. If you can’t fit in, you may as well show it. But since she won’t cut her wrists and we have a mandatory uniform, the only real weapon she has is sitting alone, not wearing makeup, which was what she did to begin with. Still, she does hold the accomplishment of being the only person in the school to not appear in the yearbook three years running. To be fair, it’s less a book than it is a photo album of Brian and Chelsea with a page of local advertisements on the back.

And that leaves me. Heather Muse. There’s not quite enough about me to fill a book but you’ll get to know me. And that’s our little school.

Or should I say it was until last month, when we were first introduced to Callum Jennings. Now he wasn’t the new, brooding kid with a complex past and a mysterious aura or the shy boy who sat in the corner and waited for the day to be over. However, he was from the Big City so he was immediately more worldly and experienced than even the eldest resident of Anonymity. So everyone flocked around him that first day and made him recount tales of living in the real world. His life wasn’t spectacularly interesting but even I was hooked on every word. He was known as CJ by his friends, something that amazed us more than it should have, as none of us had even considered nicknames before, probably because it was already easy to differentiate between the dozen of us. Callum, on the other hand, attended an overcrowded school, with a high rotation of teachers, and a lot more diversity than one aboriginal kid.

I was kind of jealous. I’d never really considered living anywhere but Anonymity, but even if he didn’t have the intellect, Callum was more cultured than the rest of us combined. So it was I who naively asked why he’d want to leave all that. I got the obvious answer. It wasn’t his choice. His father lost his job and the first available paycheque was in our fair town, taking over Mr Matthews’ English class. I offered to show him the things to do in town and, while there were admittedly few, it was quite a fun afternoon. Steve and I took him down to the creek and filled him in on what passed for entertainment in our parts. Evidently, there was a pub in the Big City that also served minors, and we were surprised to hear there was more than one and they served a lot more variety than two brands of beer, boxed wine and an annual shipment of spirits. I listened in wonder as he explained the ups and downs of Jägerbombs.

Now don’t get me wrong. Anonymity is not completely in the dark. We’re not cut off from the rest of the world and our jaws don’t drop when we see a car roll past with no livestock guiding it forward. We have the internet, even if it is of the dial-up variety. That is, after all, the tool I’m using to vent my frustration. But it’s one thing to watch the news and read about adventure and it’s another to have living proof of this magical outside land in front of you, introducing insignificant details that have you on the edge of your seat. For all I knew, my dad could be off in that land, right now, making a life for himself. That gave me hope. It seems silly but since he drove off, I’d always imagined his car continuing to drive, onward forever into nothingness. There is a world outside Anonymity and from the look on Steve’s face, he too was filled with childlike wonder during our conversation.

That’s what I love about Steve. He doesn’t like everything but what he does like, he’s fascinated by. And as long as he was fascinated by me, I knew he genuinely felt something.

The only thing that fascinates me is history. It’s my favourite subject by far and not just because Miss Ferrero lets us chew gum in class. I’d rather hear about Robert Menzies’ past than this month’s prime minister any day. I suppose that’s why I’m writing this. A historical source if you will. Sure, it’s heavily subjective but like Anaïs Nin said, ‘We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.’ All history is subjective and I need to even the playing field or, at the very least, tell my side. Cave paintings not included.

Back in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII, in an effort to fix the Julian Calendar, straight up eliminated ten days from the year. When the clock struck midnight on the evening of October 4th, everyone jumped to the 15th of the month. Literally nothing happened between those two dates, which meant the people worried that their lives were being shortened by ten days were less on the ball than Harraby Athletic, an idiom Brian has been trying to make catch on for some time.

That period of timelessness is a lot like growing up in Anonymity. Nothing happens and it’s a fairly forgettable experience. Though while days tend to bleed together, I’m relatively sure our lack of existence has lasted for more than ten days, considering I alone have had seventeen birthdays, each one less eventful than the last.

Of course, the phrase ‘nothing lasts forever’ clearly isn’t meant to be taken literally, because one fine day in February, things started happening. Practically all of us were in Ms Eyre’s maths class, with the exception of Vince. He had the right idea. I don’t know why any of us bothered showing up. Ms Eyre has been teaching at Anonymity High for five decades and I don’t think she’s ever passed a single student. She also set designated seating so I couldn’t even swap spit with Steve while she droned on about the angles of whatever equestrian triangles are. Horseshoes, I suppose.

But in order to split up the couples of the school, Mary and Steve were on one side of the room, which meant I was seated next to Joey. So while Ms Eyre talked to herself and wrote on the blackboard that was as old and cracked as she was, I tried to strike up a conversation with my closest friend.

‘You think the grey hair brings out the deadness in her eyes?’ I posturised.

Joey didn’t respond. He had the tendency to go quiet when he wasn’t amusing himself or others. It probably also had something to do with the latest warning he’d gotten about disrupting class. Joey had been to the principal’s office more than any of us and it usually took him upwards of two days before he forgot about the lecture and went back to his quasi-charismatic self. Or it could be that I’d already spun that fun fact every maths period for two years and Joey was sick of flashing me a pity grin with those yellowed teeth of his.

‘You get your assignment back yet?’

Joey grunted, though whether it was at the question or the assignment, I wasn’t sure. Ms Eyre had given us the unreasonable task of gathering data from a minimum of eighty people on their consumer habits. Some people had just posted the survey on the internet. Others copied and pasted the responses from the webpage one of the other students set up. I personally just made up the numbers and worked from there.

‘Mary do your assignment for you?’

‘No, that was a one-time thing. Apparently it’s not fair to everyone else.’ Joey gave me a look. I didn’t understand what it meant so he motioned his fingers in an air quotes fashion.

‘Mr Matthews figured out it was her and told her off, huh?’

‘Yeah, not enough spilling auras.’

Somebody cleared their throat at that spectacular use of wordplay and we faced the direction the attempted teaching was coming from for the first time. Ms Eyre stood in front of Joey’s desk, holding a sheet of paper with a red F written in the top corner. Joey’s name was barely legible underneath all the negative markings. This was a tactic of Ms Eyre’s. If a student was talking in class, she publicly shamed them, under the misguided notion that any of us cared about another student’s grades.

‘Joseph Taylor,’ Ms Eyre said, with a shake of her mothballed hair. ‘It was Emile Borel who first posturised-’ (That’s where I got that word from before. Sorry, I was wondering where I picked that up) ‘-that a million monkeys sitting at a million typewriters could eventually churn out a given text. One monkey typing on a broken laptop for half an hour could submit a more coherent report than yours.’

‘That’s a roundabout way of saying it was too smart for you, right?’ Joey smirked. See, I told you his true self was never too far away.

Our decrepit teacher scoffed. ‘Is this your plan? Are you just going to continue to be a delinquent until I decide to pass you?’

‘Call me an abacus because you can count on it,’ Joey winked. This was the Joey I loved hanging out with. Unfortunately, I must have chuckled because Ms Eyre turned on me.

‘Heather Muse.’ She had a tendency to call us by our full names, either as a way to patronise us or a rope to stop herself falling into senility. ‘Don’t think I haven’t noticed you encouraging him. Maybe if you spent more time paying attention, you wouldn’t have been so careless with your target audience continuity.’

Ms Eyre started ranting on about something or other, and when I looked at Joey to give a mocking glance, I noticed he was staring across the room at his girlfriend. I followed his gaze. Mary was looking at him and shaking her head. You believe that? That’s why I don’t date smart people. They expect too much from you. At least that’s what 100% of the nerds at our school were like. We don’t really have any smart guys our age to base this statistic off, which is another minor thing that prevents me dating them. Okay, I’m starting to see Ms Eyre’s point.

I looked back at Joey. The question of why he’d been restraining himself had an obvious answer now. His girlfriend was ashamed of him. He wanted to prove to her that he could take school seriously, even if that pretty much went against his entire personality. To be fair, he’d held out for at least five minutes before he started chatting to me, though I don’t think he’d grasped any of the knowledge Ms Eyre had been throwing about.

I looked over at Steve. He hadn’t noticed anything was going on. He was busy drawing something in his exercise book. I couldn’t see it from where I was so I’ll just use artistic license and say he was writing my initials over and over with love hearts interspersed. Yeah, I get that it was probably dicks, no need to leave that comment.

‘Think she’ll ever get any and leave us alone?’ Joey remarked and I looked back to realise Ms Eyre was back at the front of the classroom and had stopped her mid-lecture lecture.

‘I’m sure she’ll make a gargoyle very miserable one day,’ I responded. ‘So what’s with Mary?’

‘If you’re going to call me whipped again, I’m not going to talk about it,’ Joey said.

‘Okay.’ I shrugged.

‘She wants me to recognise my potential.’ Joey didn’t shy from using air quotes this time.

‘Wa-tschhh!’ I hissed, flipping my hand forward.

Ms Eyre twisted her head around 180 degrees to stare at us. It would be a lot like The Exorcist if her body hadn’t twisted with it. She seemed to be waiting for an excuse.

‘You’re really whipping those triangles into shape, Miss,’ Joey covered.

Ms Eyre glowered at him and turned back around. Meanwhile, Chelsea had spent the entire class painting her nails and chatting to Akala about herself, but the cheerleading chatterbox was something of a teacher’s pet, possibly because she was the only one who ever came to class with a smile on her face. Even Mary always had a serious, ready-to-learn expression that nobody could take seriously. Joey had been guilty on several occasions of snorting at her game show-like responses to a teacher’s questions. At that moment, though, he was too busy firing a paper wasp at Chelsea’s neck.

Joey Taylor is unlike anyone I know. And I know over a dozen people. He’s quiet when you first meet him, and he’s a little awkward at the best of times, but once he knows you, he’s a lot of fun, and a decent listener, provided you’re not trying to teach him anything. I’d tell you the short story of our friendship, but then you’re liable to judge me, so I’ll tell the slightly longer story. Our friendship began as any other would. We met in first grade. That is the very short version, and in my opinion, the best of all. But it’s not that simple. We bonded over a mutual hatred for blue crayons and have been inseparable ever since.

Two years ago, we almost simultaneously hit puberty. We both started talking about sex and I had the bright idea that we should practice on each other so that we at least knew what we were doing when we entered the dating world. We went to our usual cafe, the only one in town, for dinner, but instead of walking straight home, we stopped off at the park. It wasn’t bad. Everyone always says that you never forget your first time. Well, I’ll never forget the moment thirty minutes later.

When I dropped off Joey, my mother was waiting in the living room with his father. This was not unusual. Our parents were very good friends. However, their much better halves were not present in this instance. So they sat us down and my mother said that they wanted to let us know before we got too close that there was a one hundred percent chance that Joey might be my half-brother. This was a day I really needed to tell someone about, but the only therapist in town happened to be Joey’s mother. With a small town like ours, you tend to expect there’s incest somewhere. I just never thought I would be the perpetrator.

My dad left shortly after that. Like I said, it’s a small town. Word spreads faster than herpes. It was an awkward goodbye. The movies like to tell you that it doesn’t matter if you’re the biological parent, but finding out your child isn’t yours does make a difference. Look at me and Joey. The second I found out we were related, I didn’t find the idea of him licking my breasts so arousing. As for me and Joey, we haven’t mentioned either event since. There’s an unspoken rule between us that as far as we’re concerned we’re friends that have never crossed that line, rather than half-siblings who rooted under a pine tree.

‘Joseph Taylor,’ Ms Eyre said for the fifth time that lesson, interrupting our game of coin footy.

‘What? I haven’t said anything for five minutes,’ Joey said in exasperation as he flicked the twenty-cent coin past my left index finger. ‘Dammit.’

‘Care to answer the problem on the board?’

‘Sure, in my experience, if you erase the numbers you wrote up there, the problem disappears on its own.’

‘Heather Muse. Do you want to show the class how it’s done?’

‘Not particularly,’ I replied, leaning down and picking up the coin.

‘Fine. I’ll see you both after school in detention.’

Of course, we didn’t show up. The only thing we’d ever learned from Ms Eyre’s class was that she forgot punishments as quickly as she doled them out. Even if she did turn up to meet us in the classroom, by the next morning, she would have forgotten we didn’t return the favour.

Instead, after school, Joey got to be lectured by his girlfriend and I got to lecture my boyfriend, wearing a professional pantsuit and seductive pose. While I loved history class because of its content, Steve loved it because of the messenger. It was no secret and I teased him about it constantly, but he’d had a crush on Miss Ferrero since she started at our school. She was Anonymity-born as well, and only a university degree older than us, so she actually managed to make history come alive, as opposed to Ms Eyre, who confirmed the stereotype that all accountants are depressed and she was going to ensure they stayed that way. Of course, Steve was more interested in something else springing to life in history class but I couldn’t really blame him. Hormones make fools of us all. That didn’t mean I wasn’t concerned when Steve slipped into daydream mode during that particular period, but fortunately Mr Matthews was the only faculty member desperate enough to go out of his age bracket for his extra-curricular activities, and Bree was the only student eager enough to actually go for anyone who grew up in a different millennium than her. Even Steve knew how to separate fantasy from reality, and I was happy to indulge his fantasy, especially if it meant showing off my knowledge of the Crimean War as part of our foreplay.

Of course, twenty minutes later, if I’m being generous, I was bored again and we had to find something else to do. That’s when Steve had the bright idea to race Coke cans. Say what you will about Steve’s borderline attention deficit disorder, his imagination comes in handy sometimes.

We went down to the creek. Here’s all you need to know about the geography of our little town. We’re not much bigger than five blocks long, with a few scarcely-filled shops, a school, a few side-streets of houses and the rare point of what passes for entertainment around here, but 90% of the town is situated on the barely-used highway. On one edge of town is the Runaway House. On the other edge is the two-metre bridge, signifying the start of the 80km/hr zone and the end of civilisation for a good stretch of road. To call it a bridge is giving it a little too much credit. It’s the exact same highway, with a small railing on either side. Beneath that is the creek and that’s where Steve and I brought our empty soft drink cans. The plan was to walk up to the edge of the creek, drop our litter on one end and let the current take them as far as they were willing to go. Whoever’s can made it further was awarded bragging rights. It was something to do to kill time is what I’m saying.

‘On your marks,’ Steve said, lowering his can onto the water. I did likewise.

‘Get set,’ I said, loosening my grip on the can and feeling the water rush through my shins.

‘Spoon,’ Steve said quickly, and before I realised what he’d said I’d let go of the can. It sped forward. ‘False start. I win,’ Steve stuck his tongue out. Trust me, it looks even less classy when the dude’s hair grows blonder at the top. But every time I mention that frosted tips went out with Tazos and yo mama jokes, they seem to end up even brighter.

‘That’s mature,’ I said. ‘But I demand a rematch.’

‘Bring your participant back to the starting line then,’ Steve grinned.

I grumbled and walked down the bridge. The can was caught behind a rock about sixty metres downstream, which probably meant I would have lost the first race anyway.

By the time the second race had started, I’d attempted to calculate a better starting angle but my mind isn’t equipped for anything mathematically-inclined so I just moved one step closer to my opponent and hoped that would work. This time, I did the entire countdown and we both released at the same time.

‘Go, Tin-tin!’ Steve called, as we chased after them.

‘You can do it, Can-I-have-too-much-self-respect-to-name!’ I said and immediately lost faith in my player when it hit the exact same rock it had earlier. Tin-tin was granted a much bigger lead but fortunately Cihtmsrtn didn’t get snagged this time and slowly started rolling around the rock and began ping-ponging between stones and reeds as it tried abysmally to catch up.

‘There’s no way you can win now,’ Steve said. His can could be seen exiting the other side of the bridge while mine was still lagging behind the checkpoint. ‘Yes, go you good tin!’ Steve called. It was almost out of sight. We were jogging along the embankment and my heart leapt when I saw a figure on the other side of the bridge bend down and pick up the can. ‘No!’ Steve yelled as Cihtmsrtn picked up speed and with great courage plunged under the bridge. Tin-tin was disqualified because of human interaction. I could still win this thing.

‘Yes!’ I said as my cantestant exited the bridge unmolested. We ran across the highway with no regard for the lack of traffic and I raised my fist victoriously when Cihtmsrtn hobbled past the figure in the creek, who was still studying Tin-tin, and finally gave up, getting caught in the moss on the left side of the creek. It was enough. I’d won by three metres.

‘What the hell was that?’ Steve said, storming half-seriously to the figure. ‘Did Heather pay you off? Oh, hey, CJ. What’s up?’ Steve and Callum slapped hands and clicked their fingers back.

‘Twiggy. Fancy seeing you in this one-kilometre radius,’ Callum greeted. ‘Hey, Freckles,’ he nodded as I joined them.

‘You kind of ruined our game, man,’ Steve said.

‘Racing garbage, huh? Looks like tons of fun.’

‘You actually kind of do get caught up in the moment,’ I said. ‘And thanks. Steve owes me a portrait now.’

‘That was not part of the deal,’ Steve scoffed, splashing me with water.

‘I would have drawn a caricature of you,’ I said, splashing him back.

‘All of