War/Peace. Matthew Vandenberg

spin the bottle, my fingers moving at the speed of elastic snapping back, and the bottle spins like a tooth snapping shut, so that eventually the neck is pointing at the tender neck of Shelly, and I smile.

      'My choice,' I say.

      Shelly nods, slowly, cautiously. She smiles with the left half of her mouth. I'm stare at her, intently, for a good five, six, seven seconds, and she lets her gaze pass through mine just once, very quickly, breaking the speed limit for this house no doubt.

      'Shelly,' I say, bending forward. 'I'm an expert.'

      'I know,' Shelly says. She nods again, slowly.

      'I'm an expert at caring for people, in a special way, but I'm also an expert at reading signs. Do you really think that I'm going to force you to kiss me, Shell? When I can see you don't want to.'

      'You can tell? Sorry.'

      'Don't be. I understand. Look: I've got another question, so I'm gonna go with truth.'

      'Ok. Sure.'

      'Shelly, what's your goal? Why did you come here?'

      'Shouldn't Shelly be asking the question?' Chloe whispers.

      'Ha ha. Jackson's a therapist,' Shaun whispers. 'He knows how to probe.'

      'To have fun,' Shelly says. 'That's why we're all here, right? We have no idea what's going down outside so we've all taken refuge in this safe-house.'

      'Yeah, true,' Chloe says. 'But you're a south-sider. This is your side. You're safe. So why did you decide to come inside?'

      'We wanna keep the communication open between the north and south,' Jerri says. 'You've heard of Aung San Suu Kyi right?'

      'The Burmese woman?' I say. 'Yeah. Back in high.'

      'We really just wanna relax,' Shelly says. 'I don't know how it is in the north but everyone on our side is so damn serious. It's crazy. And we got pastors telling us that north-siders are neanderthals who will soon be wiped out at the hands of God.'

      'Really?' I say. 'And people are buying this?'

      'Like it's Twilight,' Shelly says.

      'Not us though,' Jerri says. 'But heaps of people are keeping quiet, too afraid to object, to afraid to voice their opinions.'

      'Worse on our side,' I say. 'They say we're fighting for freedom of speech while the cops chase Moslems and Catholics through the streets like they're graffiti artists.'

      'While letting the graffiti artists like me to do our work,' Shaun says. 'so long as we're writing shit like U S Aus, liberty, justice, and all that.'

      'Shaun, those mushrooms I gave you, have you got them?' Shelly asks.

      Shaun places the bag on the table.

      'I bought these in coz I felt they might help us to relax,' Shelly says. 'Look at these lines on the underside of the mushroom.' - Shelly rubs the plastic bag with her middle finger – 'Like mattresses lining the soft skin. They're called gills. And they're lined with cells – you can only just make them out if you look real close . . . maybe . . . or maybe you just think you see them. But they're there. They're called basidia. And these tiny appendages eventually form at the end that look like . . .'

      'Tiny ball sacks,' Shaun interrupts. 'Yeah. I read about this in Bio. And these ball sacks, they soon fall off once they've become basidiospores. These basidiospores grow into mycelia and those of opposite mating types twist around one another and mate, long after having left the mushroom. It's almost like one strand of my hair mating with a strand of yours: loose, free, like two fairies caught in a spring breeze.'

      'Yeah,' Shelly says. 'Nice, right? My pastor gave me these . . .'

      'Your pastor knows you're here?!' Shaun asks, shocked. 'Shit!' He stands up.

      'No,' Shelly says. 'He doesn't have the faintest. But I told him the other day that I was in the north recently because I was trying to spread the good word. My family had to pretend we never actually lived in the north, you see. So my pastor gave me these. He told me that should I enter the north again I should hand these out to north-siders and also eat some myself. Apparently if you eat magic mushrooms you have spiritual experiences. You can supposedly get in touch with God. Perhaps maybe I thought that we could do this here, just for fun.'

      'Shelly,' Shaun says, picking up the bag of mushrooms. 'I've climbed the magic mountain before, a couple times. Have you?'

      'No,' Shelly says. 'Not yet.'

      'Well, you're right about one thing: you start to think strange thoughts, to see things differently. But what really freaked me out was that you lose your fear of death.'

      'But that wouldn't worry you, would it?' Chloe says. 'Those who are very religious don't fear the reaper now, do they?'

      'I fear death,' Shelly retorts.

      'Shelly, you're really sweet,' Shaun says. 'And I know – we all know, even Chloe – that you're a really good person. But, do you think it's maybe possible that your pastor wanted you to feed mushrooms to north-siders so that these people would no longer fear death? Did he even tell you how to make it back south? Because I'm sure you know that south-siders are not treated well in the north, they're locked up, inside prisons not to different to the one we're in now, thought probably a lot worse. We saw a few Guantanamo Bays there before we left, didn't we J?'

      'I didn't wanna look,' I say. 'But yeah.'

      'Are you saying her pastor could have been sending her on a suicide mission?' Chloe asks.

      'I don't know,' Shaun says. 'I hope not.'

      'No,' Shelly says. 'Look: I don't believe everything my pastor says but he ain't a killer.'

      'I hope you're right,' I say. 'Because there are many north-siders who want the south-siders wiped out, straight off the face of New Wales. The cops there are like Nazis.'

      'Really?' Jerri asks. 'So what's school like?'

      'We don't go anymore,' Shaun says. 'We go to rallies. We don't have to, but everyone sort of ends up at them. Jay Z was at the last one we want to. And this guy is – dead set – the biggest Nazi of all. He was telling us to rage war against the south, the pure-bred Aussies, the Catholics, the Moslems . . .'

      'It's still Shelly's turn,' I say. 'Look, Shelly: are you glad you came?'

      'Yeah,' Shelly says, nodding. 'Thanks for letting me in.'

      'Spin the bottle,' Chloe says.

      Shelly smiles. She wraps her fingers around the bottle as though they're flexible haploid mycelia and then spins the thing. I think the neck passes me about five times before the bottle stops. It's pointing at the space between Shaun and I.

      'Spin again?' Chloe asks.

      'Wait,' I say, as Shelly reaches out a hand. 'Let's get creative. Why don't you question a guy who ain't even here? Do you remember . . .?, Shelly, Shaun, that party we all went to, when we were playing spin the bottle? And Jamie's there. And all of a sudden he stands up and he says . . . and he's totally pissed . . . he says: “Like, none of you girls is gonna fuck me tonight, yeah? So why the fuck am I playing this game for?” And he sounded totally cockney, like someone from the Green Street Elite starvin' for a fight, or sex I guess. And he just walks off. Let's pretend he's fucked off, just now. Ask him why, Shelly.'

      'What?' Shelly says. 'That's stupid.'

      'That's why he went overseas,' Shaun says. 'Adrian, Jamie, and I , we all tried to help him plan the trip. His goal: to taste the pussy of as many girls as possible. Can't get in touch with him now, so we got no clue how he's going.'

      'He went overseas to find girls?' Chloe says. 'Why didn't he just transfer to Macquarie University, or the University of Sydney. Those joints are totally full of Asian chicks, real easy, like you wouldn't believe. Koreans, Japanese, Chinese . . .'

      'Chloe!' Shelly says. 'That's so racist . . .'

      'Racist?'