I’m King

5) Get Going

They all stood looking into the dark pool of water.

“Well?” Gia directed her question to Jared, “What now?”

“I have no idea,” The Grade 11 replied. After last night they all felt a lot closer to each other. Speaking about so much and nothing in particular. Turns out Jared was only 16, turning 17 in 2 months. “But I will figure it out.”

Aly had managed to set up a sign-up sheet for everything so Jared had a team here to help him figure out what to do with the water plant. Gia could at least tick ‘start at the water plant’ off of her checklist.

“Then I will leave you too it,” she squeezed his arm before climbing down and heading towards the kombi where Kiki waited for her.

“And?” Kiki asked while shielding her face from the sun.

“He has no idea. But he’s at least got an extra day. You have today to figure out how to keep the power on today.”

“I did not sign on for this.” Kiki rolled her eyes with a cheeky tone. and got into the van. Gia laughed and did the same.

~

The power plants were f****d. But they expected nothing less. Loadshedding was definitely a thing but they wanted to make it a thing of the past.

“I can get it going again,” Kiki wiped her hands on an old rag. Thank God her dad worked at a power plant and had taught her how to work things. On the qt of course. Kids were not supposed to be in the power plant. “But I’m have to shut some zones off. And we’ll need to either find an alternative power source or start mining coal.”

“We’re sending people into the universities tomorrow, you included, to start looking through all of the engineering things. Maybe we can find a way to get solar power up and running?” Gia bit the inside of her cheek as she thought.

“I don’t know how we’ll get there but I'll try, G.” Kiki bumped her shoulder which made Gia give her a tight smile in response. Her confidence from yesterday had worn off. How were they going to do this? “Now off you go! It’s Conrad’s turn with you now.”

Gia started to walk away and shouted a Thank You over her shoulder.

~

Gia arrived at the police station to find Conrad and a couple others outside.

“You’re late.” Conrad said in way of a greeting.

“There was traffic.” Gia shot back.

The lot of them headed into the police station. Lucky for them there were a lot of guns and other very useful things.

“It’s not enough.” Conrad said as he came down the corridor from looking in the last room.

“Aren’t there shops that sell guns and walkie-talkie radios?” Gia asked.

“A walkie-talkie?” Conrad looked down at her with amusement as he took up a spot next to her against the wall. “It’s a handheld-receiver. And we actually need long range ones.”

“Can we get those?” she asked optimistically.

“I will see what I can do.”

“Thank you.” Gia pushed off the wall. “I now have to go back to the school and see how things are going there.”

“Drive safe.” he called as she walked away.

“You too.” she called back.

~

Gia arrived to a bit of a mess at the school. Seren had ambushed her when she’d driven into the front drive. They had rushed over to Aly who was arguing with a bunch of what looked to be Grade 10’s.

“What is going on here?” Gia asked as she jogged down the path.

“They are refusing to sign up for anything other than university.” Aly all but snarled. It was a little strange to see this side of him.

“Why?” Gia asked the boys. They all started speaking over each other and she couldn't hear a thing.

“AH LA LA LA LA!” she shouted over them and they all quieted down. She had certainly been blessed with her shouting lungs for a reason.

“You,” Gia pointed at the one boy, “Speak.”

“We refuse to do girls chores or demeaning manual labour.” He very rudely stated. She understood Aly’s anger now.

“Excuse me?” Gia asked in complete disbelief that anyone could say that. Was this or was this not 2019? Weren't they passed this?

“We were raised to go to university and become highly educated. Not do some silly manual labour job.” Gia could not believe that this entitled brat was saying this.

“Listen to me carefully,” she said in the teachers voice she had picked up from her mom, “you will do whatever job Aly needs you to do. Do you know why?” silence. “Because we will do whatever needs to be done to keep everyone afloat. You do not get to act like entitled brats. And just for that, you have signed yourselves up to either wash dishes, work at the water treatment plant or do refuse removal for the rest of the week.”

They all started arguing with her.

“HEY!” she shouted and they all quieted down again. “If you don’t like it, you can leave. I would like to see how you deal with finding and cooking your own food.”

They all glared at her but Gia just gave them a pen and they started writing their names on the sign-up sheets.

“When the week is up you are welcome to sign-up for other things but for now these are your 3 options. There is no space for brats here.” she said softly to them. “We all need to pitch in and help.”

The boys all slunk away once the last one wrote his name.

“That was impressive,” Aly said to her.

“Thanks. I learnt from my mom shouting at us as kids.” the two of them laughed at that.

~

Dinner time finally arrived and Gia was more than happy for the tomatoey smelling food in the massive pots. The hall was lined with tables that had pots of all shapes and sizes on them. It was also filled with very hungry kids. Thanks to her new found status, and skipping lunch, Gia was able to sneak in with the junior school kids for dinner. The rest of the small council was somewhere in the hall filling their bowls as well.

Gia had a big heap of pasta placed in her bowl and decided on some weird looking tofu as well as extra salad for dinner. She had barley sat on The Tea Lawns to eat before she had a whole circle of people sitting around her or walking over to join. The chatter started immediately and Gia stayed quiet for the most part. She was so hungry that she didn’t acknowledge the crowd around her until someone called her name.

“Gia?” someone called. Gia was caught completely off guard, face full of pasta and a piece of lettuce sticking out her mouth. In the moment she looked up from her bowl, she realised someone had asked her a question and she had not been paying attention. She quickly covered her mouth, fork still in her hand and nearly stabbed her eye out.

“What?” she started to laugh with embarrassment.

“What’s for dinner?” The someone spoke again. This time she linked the voice to Jen.

“Pasta.”

“Is it good?” Jen asked again.

“Hell yes!” Kiki answered for her as she plopped down right next to Gia.

“I think it’s ridiculous that the junior school kids get to eat first,” Jen piped up again. What was her problem this evening?

“Well,” Thando had that fight tone in her voice, “Do you want to eat at 6 and go to bed at 8? Of course, they should east first!"

Jen went bright red shrunk into herself.

“Gia,” Thando turned her attention to Gia, “We just want to apologise for yesterday. We shouldn’t have doubted you because clearly you do have a plan in place.”

“don’t apologise,” Gia said quickly, “No one could have seen this coming and you had no reason to trust me. I owe everyone a big thank you for trusting me despite your better judgement.”

“We do trust you, Gia.” Thando said and everyone agreed with her.

~

Once dinner was over, everyone started heading ‘home’. Gia caught sight of her brother who she hadn’t seen all day. Kat had been in charge of the housing assignments and Gia had convinced her to put Matteo in the same house as her.

“Oh hi,” Gia said to her brother as she shoved her arm through his bent one. Arms linked they started to walk up the hill. “How was your day?”

“It was fine.” His deepening voice always caught her off guard.

“Just fine?” she pestered.

“Pretty much.”

“What did you get up to today?” trying to get an answer out of him was like trying to pull teeth. At least he hadn't brushed her off to be with his friends. It was strange actually. He hadn’t been with his friends. “Where you waiting for me?" she butted in before he could answer her previous question.

“No,” he dragged the word out sarcastically, “I was just going to stand outside by myself for the rest of the night.”

“You are such a gentleman.” she squeezed his arm tightly. “Your future girlfriend is a very lucky woman.” she could feel his eyes rolling without even looking at him. “Speaking of, how is your girlfriend-not-girlfriend.”

“She’s fine.” he grumbled back.

“Have you seen her?”

“I actually spoke to her today.”

“And?” she pushed for more information. For this moment everything felt normal.

“She’s fine.”

“Are you kidding me? We are literally in an apocalypse and Polly is fine?" Gia faked disbelief. “You are useless with information; you know that right?”

“I know.” she said with a smile.

They made it into the very loud house. All of Matt’s friends were inside as well as the whole council and people Gia had never seen before in her entire life. Everyone was chatting in the living room. Gia spotted Kat and went to ask where her room was. Kat gave vague directions.

Gia walked back to Matt and shouted over the noise, “Love you lots.” she kissed his cheek like she always did before bed. “Night.”

Gia headed up the steps of the mansion. She managed to find the room Kat had described and headed inside. The room was huge and Kat had given Gia her own king bed room. Gia headed into the bathroom to brush her teeth. It had 3 sinks and 2 shower heads. A little extra but okay. She grabbed the new toothbrush Kat had left for her on the sink. Once clean and in the jammies Kat left on the bed, Gia was asleep the minute her head hit the soft pillow.