needs to stop watching the news. The media, man. I don’t know whether to love or hate them. When those scary cops have their guns out, I couldn’t be happier to see a journalist – at least then you know the bullets are rubber. But other times they’re just waiting on the sidelines to take photos of the scariest-looking motherfucker, the stereotypical ‘angry black male’ whom they know they’ll make their money from, just like everyone else. The journalists allow everyone to think we’re crazy, but they’re the crazy ones. Numb to everything or living vicariously through us.
I put my backup pair of sneakers on the window ledge to dry and dust off the pair I’m wearing. I choose a white shirt, and my darkest blue jeans. Melusi’s right – I should be on campus by now. Only thing holding me back is these feelings I’m catching about the students I have to take care of. Sindiwe especially. I need to get my head straight.
There’s no turning back now. Asijiki.
CHAPTER 2
Thuli
‘In a week Hector will be dead. I saw it in a glitch.’
‘A glitch?’
I look around the alleyway we’re standing in to make sure nobody else can hear us. Although the Jammie Plaza is busy, it’s quieter over here away from the crowds. This journalist and I should be safe from prying ears. Her mousy hair is tied up with an actual elastic band in an old-school ponytail. Her black jeans are faded, and definitely haven’t been washed recently, because I can see the smear of something yellow on her right thigh. There’s a pair of cigarettes in a soft packet sticking out of her pocket. Her shoes are nineties hiker-style, high at the sides to protect the ankles, and as for her faded blue T-shirt … well. This is someone who my mother might say ‘is not taking care of herself’.
She’s here and she’s listening to me, though. I can’t waste this opportunity.
‘I just call it a glitch. I don’t know what its real name is, but it’s like a quick look at the future.’
‘And you do this how?’
‘The trick is to hold your breath until what once was breath turns into something else. ’Til the point where you feel if something fresh doesn’t enter your body you will explode. Your lungs should ache, burn even. Scream for you to breathe. Eventually, at the point when you feel like you’re about to die, your vision should start to feel hypersensitive, like you can see the movements before they’re happening. It’s because you can.
‘Now, if you’re there, and if you concentrate, and you hold that breath a bit more, then as you exhale, the particles of you that were once here go elsewhere.’
I see her subtly trying to hold her breath, wondering if she’ll get there. For a moment I kind of hope she will, that someone else will know what this is like.
‘You see?’
She shakes her head, eyebrow raised, mouth sceptical.
Just because she can’t get there doesn’t mean what I know isn’t real. It just means she’s not different like me. I should have known that from looking at her.
‘Well, it’s probably because you haven’t … because something bad enough hasn’t happened to you. Anyway—’
She interrupts, her face turning quickly from bemused to angry: ‘Look, I’ve had plenty of things happen to me, trust me, and the last time someone told me they could time travel, they were off their face on LSD, so I think that’s about all I need from you right now.’
She starts packing her things away.
‘Wait. I mean, I’ve only been able to glitch since … Well, I mean … The point is, I’m not on drugs. I’m not shitting you. This thing that I can do, I can move out of my body and into somewhere else. Another time. Sometimes I just escape from here.’
I don’t tell her that it feels like my body blames itself for getting me into trouble and tries to escape. I’ve tried to unlearn that type of mental bullshit, but it’s hard to shake the voices that say that women are to blame for everything. Especially when those voices are repeated all around me so damn often.
The world would have you believe that women invite things on them – the bad things at least. The good things count as ‘luck’ or ‘exceptions’. Fuck it. She’s losing interest while I’m replaying lessons from childhood church in my mind.
‘What I’m about to tell you is important. Just listen for a little longer.’
‘Look, this all sounds a bit …’
She shakes her head and shoulders side to side, making a circle around her ear with her finger.
‘Crazy? I know it sounds crazy, but if you’d just fucking listen …’
‘If that’s your attitude, I’m sure there are thousands of other students here who would like their version of #FeesMustFall told, so …’ She continues packing her things, but I can’t let her go. I have to get this off my chest before someone dies.
‘Don’t go. I didn’t mean it. I know you do your job right. I’ve seen you doing it. Asking the questions that need to be asked. I know I can trust you because I’ve been watching you for a while – in real time and in my glitches. Going back and forth, checking where you’d been and what you’d been up to.
‘I’ve seen you before today, walking around on campus, watching the scuffles, crouching down with that hot piece of DSLR you have, snapping away like our pain is going to make you famous. Don’t get defensive. At least someone’s here trying to tell our side of the story. They wouldn’t believe it if we fucking told it. The realer the real is, the harder it is to make people trust it these days. They’re more comfortable with the glossed-up version. Am I right?’
She just shrugs, but she’s still here, so I guess that means I can keep talking. I know something that will convince her I’m telling the truth.
‘Do you remember that feeling last Friday like you were about to land on that rock the police had just thrown back at the students?’ Her eyes widen as if I’ve told her that I know all her secrets. I continue before her brain has space to doubt me. ‘I moved it. Before you landed. The glitching allows me to do that type of thing, but only if it’s in the future. You see, I saw all of that last Monday. I thought there wouldn’t be any benefit to letting our only committed storyteller break her arm, and so I took a bit of covert action.’
I’m not surprised that she looks both confused and dubious. I would too if someone started telling me something like this. I wouldn’t have believed any of it if it weren’t happening to me. I’m not crazy.
She narrows her eyes at me before she speaks and I notice dark circles line them. Girl is not getting enough sleep.
‘So what you’re asking me to believe is that you’ve been to the future and you moved a rock that I was about to fall on?’
‘Yup.’
‘Right. And so, if that were true, and you could move through time, how far might you be able to go, do you think?’
‘I know. It’s seven days at most – I can’t get any further than that. That’s why what I have to tell you is so urgent, why you’ve got to move quickly.’
‘And how long have you been doing this “glitching”?’
‘That’s not important.’
‘It is to me. So how long?’
‘About six months.’
I don’t want her to ask what started it. I said about six months, but my body knows down to the second what started all of this. That’s not for her, though. That’s not for now.
‘What’s important is what I saw today. It’s going to change everything. Are you ready?’
She nods, looks at the stone buildings