Cats.

Chapter Six

The Summer Hill to Bondi train trip took 40 minutes and involved switching trains at Central Station. Just two stops away from reaching Bondi Junction the train suddenly came to a halt in the middle of a tunnel. 

For the first few minutes people just kept staring at their books or papers or iPads like nothing had happened, but I started freaking out internally almost immediately. Sweat immediately prickled all over my body and I was thankful I was wearing all black.

It was worst case scenario time: we were all gonna be stuck on this train forever. This is it, this is our lives now. I looked around and became resigned: we now live on the train. I didn’t know what this new life would be like, but I knew that in time we would all adjust to our new world, we would even become a sort of society, maybe form our own government, and currency. Maybe a new language would evolve... 

Suddenly the train started moving and we were back on track to reach Bondi within five minutes. I realised that I was almost disappointed. I guess I would have preferred to live on that disgusting train forever rather than try to force Jake Nitro to talk to me.

***

“Jake!” I yelled, banging on his door. There was no response, which is always the risk you take when you just show up to someone’s apartment unannounced. Back when I was a kid, before everyone had a mobile phone, you were always taking a gamble by just showing up at someone’s house and knocking on their door to see if they were home and wanted to form a vigilante crew with the rest of the neighbourhood kids to make sure that everyone on the street was wearing bike helmets, or whatever.

But there was every chance Jake was not at home and would not be coming back any time soon. I slid down against his door and sat on the ground as three very pink English guys came bounding down the hall, jumping over my legs.

Hmmm, I thought, looking around at the building. As it was a backpacker slum for the most part it was not exactly secure. After all, I had managed to get access to Jake’s floor without a key pass or a pin number or anything. 

I glanced up at the lock on the door. It was the basic sort of wire door that could pretty easily be snapped off, if you knew what you were doing. Or even if you just simply pulled on it hard enough. I stood back up and started shaking it. If worse came to worse I could probably just cut into the wire and reach in and unlock the door. Why had Jake ever moved into such a crappy place? I mean, the kitchen was so tiny that a basic time machine filled up the entire room. This was probably not something he had considered at inspection, admittedly.

Still it would be wrong to break his door down for no reason, so I decided to wait.

When two hours had passed and there was still no sign of Jake I was getting pretty antsy. For one thing, I was busting for the toilet. If I could just get inside his apartment I could at least take a wee. He would probably be perfectly understanding if I broke the door down to use the toilet? He was only human. 

And anyway– we were in this thing together now. Two peas in a pod. And yeah, maybe he would be angry if anyone ELSE broke into his flat, but I was his trusted confidant and great friend now. Even though– admittedly - he had told me to go away and to never see him again. Oh, he probably didn’t mean it, I thought, justifying my actions to myself.