HELLO, KIA ORA!
This short gives you a preview of the world of The Paradise Generation, including excerpts from the novel and some extra deleted scene material. It dives into Kieran’s life four years before the events of The Paradise Generation, and can be read before or after you read the novel.
Hope you enjoy!
Sanna
1: Now
MIRA PICKED OUT TWO strawberries, gave one to me and settled beside me, our backs against the sea wall. The dam stretched away to our left and right, running from Seatoun’s craggy rocks to curve into the Pencarrow foreshore on the far coast, protecting the city from Raukawa Cook Strait. The Strait surged behind the sea wall, while Te Whanganui-a-Tara – the Great Harbour of Tara – spread before us, frilly waves pushed around by the wind, and beyond that the Tararua and Remutaka Ranges in layers of green and brown and dusky blue.
“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but… what happened when you were twelve?”
I stiffened.
She didn’t know about Lucas. Of course she didn’t. I hadn’t told her.
I opened my mouth, and shut it again. The silence lengthened.
“It doesn’t matter, really,” Mira said. “Sorry, I’m always too curious for my own good.”
I pulled my arm out from behind her. She straightened, her brow creasing as she watched me.
She should know. If we were going to do this properly, she had to know.
I hardly even mentioned Lucas to my best friend, let alone anyone else. And I didn’t think I’d ever told this story in full.
“When I was twelve,” I said at last, “I was in a car crash. Near Mākara.” I pulled up my hair to show the thin scar along my hairline, hearing the whump and crunch of car versus tree, the shower of crystallised glass. Seeing the chaos of green and brown in the sharp-shadowed light. “I got a bad concussion and a few stitches, spent a week or so in hospital. My cousin Lucas was in the car too. He wasn’t so lucky. He lived, but… he never really woke up. He’s in the long-term ward at Wellington Hospital.”
“Oh.” Mira glanced down. “I’m sorry.”
The ranges were darkening in the twilight, layers of deeper blue against the slate sky. “He’s okay, physically. Not on life support or anything. But… we weren’t supposed to be out there.” I swallowed, seeing Lucas’s blank eyes.
“Go on.”
2: Then
THE DOORBELL RINGS. I’M twelve, tossing a cricket ball at the ceiling in my room. Bang. Bang. I’ve been doing it for twenty-two minutes – I’m trying to see how long I can go before Dad tells me to stop. He’s quiet today. Normally it doesn’t take more than three minutes before he starts yelling.
My room is almost above the front door, and I can hear the door open with a click.
“Lucas!” Dad says, and I miss the ball on its way down. It thwacks me in the chest and rolls to the floor with a muffled thunk. The carpet’s thick, but you can still hear the rimu floorboards underneath. “How’ve you been? Didn’t expect you–”
I don’t hear the rest of his sentence because I’m already off the bed and skidding down the stairs. Lucas’s bike helmet is hanging from his wrist, his hands in the pockets of his jeans. His hair is all sweaty from the ride, and his nose is sunburnt. I’m sure he’s taller.
I’m never gonna catch up.
“Yo, my man,” Lucas says, interrupting Dad and holding out his fist. I bump his fist too hard cos I don’t stop fast enough. “What you been up to?”
“Testing my patience.” Dad turns to me. “So no dinner.”
I can’t tell if he’s joking. “But you didn’t give a warning.” My voice sounds whiny and I wince. I don’t want to be just some stupid kid in front of Lucas.
“I gave you plenty of warnings. Remember all those other times I’ve told you to stop leaving red marks on the ceiling?”
“Orange marks,” I mutter. “It was a basketball.” Basketballs don’t actually leave marks, so I changed to a cricket ball. Louder, and this way I’m actually making the marks I’m getting told off for.
Lucas is biting his lip to hold back laughter. “How about I take him off your hands for a night, then?” He sounds as if he’s only just thought of this. “We could go camping.”
Lucas started taking me camping when he stayed with us last year. I try not to look too interested, in case Dad swings around to “if you really want to, then no”. “Aww, yeah, I guess.”
Lucas smiles his responsible-sixteen-year-old smile, and Dad caves in about two seconds. The weekend stretches out full of possibility, instead of thousands of red marks on my ceiling. Andrew’s gone to visit his rellies for the weekend, Xiao’s stuck in doing the chores he didn’t do last week, and Wiremu’s got his sister’s wedding. Even Verity’s got a soccer tournament, and Mum’s gone to be supportive.
Ten minutes later, I’ve stuffed my rucksack with clothes and a sleeping bag and strapped the tent on the back of my bike. Lucas is filling a bag with food nicked from the kitchen, and since Dad never really knows what’s there, he won’t be able to tell we’ve only taken chips and chocolate. It’s just past lunchtime and the sun is at its hottest. Dad throws a bottle of sunscreen at my head and stands with crossed arms as we slather it on.
“You know the drill,” Dad tells Lucas, rubbing sunscreen into my cheek where I’d missed. I bat his hand away. “Stay on the trails inside the Consolidation Line, keep your phone on and call straight away if you get into trouble. Back by sundown tomorrow.”
“Of course, Uncle Martin,” Lucas says, shaking Dad’s hand. “No worries.”
3: Kaharore
WE DON’T STAY ON the trails. We never stay on the trails. What’s the fun in that, Lucas reckons, when there’s so much more to explore?
If you’re game to drag your bike through a bit of bush, you can get to some of the old suburban roads and it’s easier going along there. Not great, with tree roots pushing through the asphalt and sixty years’ worth of dead leaves, but better than straight bush. Today we go out towards Kaharore and Mākara, circling through the bush to avoid the Consolidation Line checkpoints. Lucas does something to our phones so it looks like we’re still up in the hills near Brooklyn.
There are a few houses with faded quarantine paint across their doors, and we don’t go anywhere near them. It’s no fun coming face to face with skeletons. The road winds up and up, and when the bush flattens out you can see the whole Kaharore valley.
“Here, this one,” Lucas says at last, hopping off his bike and wheeling towards a house that was probably nice, ages ago. “What do you reckon?”
“Yeah, awesome.” I let my bike roll to a stop. “If the top floor’s still there, it’ll have a mean view.”
“Camping” with Lucas actually means “staying in houses outside the Consolidation Line”. Lucas is making a map of good “camping” houses, but he won’t let me see it.
“Can’t have you knowing all my secrets,” he says, grinning.
I guess that’s okay. He doesn’t have to take me, after all, and he still does. Andrew’s really jealous, cos his dad loves talking about the adventures he had outside the Consolidation Line as a kid. The stories always finish “but don’t you sneak off! Not until you’re big enough to fight the peevs!”.
Lucas burst out laughing when I asked if he’d ever fought peevs, the wild people who won’t join the cities. “Nah, don’t worry about peevs. They don’t come this far south, and if they do, I’ll protect you.”
Vines sprawl across the house’s walls and cling to the roof, faded paint curling in the gaps. The driveway has a tī kōuka tree growing in it.
“Doesn’t look like any windows are broken,” Lucas says. Sometimes the weather has slowly worn away at them, or vandals have got here before us. “It’s in great nick. Look! It’s even got an old-school lock!”
I drop my bike and sasquatch-step my way to the front door to examine it. “How do you open these? You need a metal key, right?”
“Well,” Lucas says with a grin, like he’s about to let me in on something. “When you don’t have a key, you pick it with wire. Like this.” He brings two wires out of his pocket with a flourish, and digs around in his backpack for a small bottle of what looks like greyish dust. “Graphite,” he explains, blowing some off his palm into the lock. Then he pushes the wires in and fiddles them around. It takes about two minutes, and then–
“Done!” Lucas says triumphantly. The hinges are rusted almost solid, but with some wiggling and swearing and running shoulder shoves, we’re in.
The place smells old. Really old. Dust covers every surface, coats the carpet beneath our feet and puffs up in small clouds. The house gets a lot of sun so it isn’t too damp. The curtains are drawn, and cast dim blue or green glows over the furniture. There are still cans in the kitchen cupboard, and jars of strawberry jam.
“Check it out!” Lucas whispers. He’s shoved open a door off the kitchen, and a smudged square of light falls over concrete floor, bits of bird’s nest and then the curve of a car. He pulls out a torch. Its beam slices up the darkness and glints on spider-webbed windows, dust and green paint.
With the help of a hammer and shears to clear away the weeds, we get the garage door screeching open. In daylight, the car’s in pretty good condition. The electronic locks have given up, and when I pull a handle the door comes open easily, releasing a cloud of dust. I sneeze.
Lucas is standing with sunlight pouring on his shoulders, giving the car a calculating look. I climb into the driver’s seat – I can barely see over the steering wheel – and hit the horn. It wheezes faintly.
“What do you reckon? Do you think we can get it up and running?” Lucas says.
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
4: Car
LUCAS COMES OUT EVERY second weekend. My parents ask pointed questions about his homework, but Lucas tells me he can ace his exams without studying, so what’s the point? It’s hard to argue with him – he’s so sure of himself, and he does actually do really well at school. Whenever Aunty Pascale is over for dinner she goes on and on about it and Lucas looks embarrassed and drags me up to my room to play Conquesterra.
We’ve been working on the car for weeks now. It needs a few replacement parts, and I find most of them in my dad’s workshop among the screws and bits of gear. I don’t think he’ll miss them, but I do my best to cover my tracks. We drag out the weeds and trees that have grown up in the driveway to make a path for the car to get to the road. By the third trip out, we’ve charged the car with the help of one of my dad’s pedal-to-power converters and when Lucas gets into the driver’s seat the screen lights up, welcoming him to the Windspeed 267. The lack of power’s caused a master reset, and the car thinks it’s new off the assembly line.
Lucas grins. “We just gotta reset the chip locks.” But we can’t find the chip lock reset, and when I look closely I find it’s so old it has fingerprint locks. We set fingerprint maps for each of us and Lucas hits the ignition, fingers crossed. The engine starts with a coughing fit that graduates to humming, and then a low steady purr. He punches the air and pats the steering wheel, then eases very, very slowly forward. The wheels creak and groan and half the air we so very carefully pumped in comes rushing out.
“Shit,” says Lucas, and rests his head on the steering wheel, eyes closed. We’ve already patched at least eight holes in the tyres, and it’s unlikely that more patching will give us tyres that actually work.
“I could see if any of Dad’s tyres–” I begin, but Lucas shakes his head without lifting it from the steering wheel.
“You won’t find a bike tyre that fits a car in a million years. No, we’re screwed.”
I slump, disappointed at how he’s so suddenly given up. “What about just trying it with flat tyres?” I know what it’s like to ride a bike with flat tyres, but this is a car and I don’t have to pedal. The engine can do all the extra work.
Lucas leans back in his seat and stares at the roof. He puts up a finger to slowly trace a tear in the fabric. “If we’re lucky, we’ll just destroy the engine and the wheel rims. If we’re not, we’ll careen off some cliff and destroy ourselves.”
“They must have spare tyres somewhere,” I mutter. “Like, used tyres that are better than these ones and that no one would miss. Then we wouldn’t have to ask Allocations for them. Or I bet there are people out there who hoard tyres, and who wouldn’t notice a few gone.” It’s not really stealing, right? It’s just reassigning Allocated goods, and goods belong to everybody. Sort of.
Lucas sighs and runs a hand through his hair, then suddenly stiffens.
“What?” I ask. “You’ve thought of something.”
But he won’t commit to anything, and he won’t tell me what he’s thought of. It’s probably dodgy. It starts to rain early in the afternoon, and with nothing more to do on the car we head back to my house. By the time we get there we’re absolutely soaked and Lucas has to borrow some of my Dad’s clothes and huddle in front of the heater before he heads off to see his Pōneke friends.
“I’ll see you in a fortnight,” he tells me.
5: Mākara
LUCAS SAYS HE’LL COME one Friday, but then something comes up and it’ll have to be Saturday. When he arrives he’s three hours late, sweat dripping into his eyes, and he doesn’t meet my eyes.
“So?” I ask. “Did you manage to get tyres?”
He swigs water before he answers. “Yeah. I stashed them in the valley, we can get them on the way. Just gotta check in with your parents and then we’re good to go.”
His voice is strangely flat. My bag’s already packed and waiting by the door, but apparently checking in means more than just shouting “see ya!”. Lucas wants to know where Mum is, and then he wants carrots and sends me into the garden to pull a few up.
When I return, Mum’s in the kitchen, tablet against her chest. She looks pale, and neither Lucas nor Mum say anything as I wash the carrots and stuff them in our food bag. Their eyes watch me. I don’t know whether I should be angry or worried. But we’re going, aren’t we?
Once we’re on the road, four beautiful black tyres balanced on our bikes, I try bringing it up.
“What was all that about?”
“All what?”
“You and Mum.”
Lucas glances at me, eyes sharp. “Did you hear?”
“From the garden? Sure, Lucas, I heard from the garden. Mum’s the one with the cyborg hearing aids, not me.” Whoops. Mum doesn’t like people to know she needs hearing aids, and I can’t remember if Lucas already knows.
But he doesn’t blink. If anything, he seems more relaxed. He shrugs. “Just saying hi.”
It’s really, really hard to ask why he had to do it in private. So I don’t ask.
The car’s sitting just as we left it, the battery still fully charged. We toss our things in the back, I jack it up and Lucas fiddles about changing the tyres, muttering that it looked so easy on the instruction vid. At last he sits back on his heels and grins. “I think it’s ready.”
When the car starts, it rolls forward with barely a shudder. Way better than the other few times we’ve tried. Lucas is going slow – like me, he’s only ever driven in games – but we’re moving. Lucas jabs a thumb at the off-road button just to be safe, and we turn onto the road.
The speedo shows ten, twenty, thirty kilometres an hour on the straight stretches. The bush speeds past and my seat’s juddering as we careen over branches and flatten small trees. I let out a whoop.
Lucas is laughing low and breathless. “I never thought I’d actually get to drive one of these.” And then, after we’ve been driving a while, making for the rumoured beach at Mākara, “You want a go?”
This is why Lucas is awesome. He doesn’t mention that I’m only twelve and, even when everyone drove cars, would have been too young. He doesn’t ever treat me like I’m some kind of second-class citizen because of my age.
He gets out and I monkey into the driver’s seat. The car’s still running so I’m worried it’ll shoot forward, but Lucas tells me the handbrake is locked and the car won’t move without my say-so.
“Ease down gently on the accelerator,” he says, taking the passenger seat and releasing the handbrake.
I ease down and the car rolls slowly forward, then faster as I press more. I lift my foot and we slow. I am in control of this car. Even crawling like this, my heart’s thumping like crazy. I take a deep breath, stare out the windscreen, and bring us up to speed.
Lucas pulls some biscuits out of the food bag, but he doesn’t touch the carrots.
Mākara Road turns off to the right. It would have been narrow even when people lived out here, but now it’s just a strip of black asphalt between two armies of trees, only used to get out to the wind farms. At first I slow and drive carefully, but the sun’s past the hills now and its light doesn’t reach far through the tunnel of trees. I don’t want to be stuck on this road in the dark, and the driving isn’t hard at all, once you get used to it. I press down on the accelerator.
The road winds back and forth. I catch glimpses of a stream to our right. We pass an old sign but it’s so overgrown with moss and dirt that you can’t see what it says.
And then… something beeps, and dials light up all over the dashboard. “Error,” says a cool female voice, and the wheel locks in my hands.
“Luc–”
“Shit,” he says, clutching at his seatbelt and grabbing the wheel with one hand. “Foot off the accel–”
“It IS off the accelerator!” I yell, and I’m pressing down on the brake as hard as I can but we’re still going so fast and a corner’s coming up and oh-shit-oh-shit–
Lucas yanks on the handbrake but it makes no difference.
There’s nothing ahead, just trees and dead trees and open air and it’s coming up so fast–
Then we’re falling and trees are hitting the windscreen, breaking through. The glass shatters in tiny glinting pieces and green leaves slap bloody streaks across my face and my arms are up to cover my eyes but they’re not helping.
A tree hits Lucas’s side of the car and Lucas isn’t shouting anymore and then we hit ground, the car crumpling in the front, my head knocking hard against the window, but Lucas, Lucas has blood pouring out of his head and his eyes are closed and I don’t even know if he’s breathing.
The wheels are still turning, their faint hum breaking through the silence of the forest. Soon the night birds will start their calls again, the wind will rustle through the trees, and I will be alone in this dark forest, trapped in this car with Lucas, motionless, as the car runs and runs and finally, around three a.m. according to the glowing digits of the cracked dashboard clock, runs out of power and stops.
They won’t find us until morning.
Thanks for reading!
IF YOU LIKED THIS and would like to read more, you can order The Paradise Generation at www.bookhub.co.nz or at mybook.to/TheParadiseGeneration.