Sleepless nights compound. Life had gone from alert hours ticking by to a monotonous flatline of activity. The only respite: the brief moments where he slipped into a waking coma, wandering through an endless labyrinth deep within his mind, his feet freezing against the bone-cold cement. Though with that respite came silence. The overwhelming sound of silence, echoing around the spiralling concrete hallways, growing the further you looked, bouncing, fading into the minute cracks along the ground. Blaring louder than a symphony orchestra and thick like a heavy blanket over his head. And somehow, within its placidity and the closing walls around, it built more chaotic and worrisome by the second until… Nothing.

The cooling temperature sets back in, the evening breeze rolls across a tiny courtyard, hidden away behind an old grey box of a boarding house. He leaned into the bench, hands clasped together in his lap, the blackouts had become more frequent. Compared to Carnale, this time of day lit up the sky in a radiant display of orange and gold as the sun’s rays shone their last shine behind the faraway mountains. Less glamorously, the ground was littered with cigarette butts and empty chewing gum wrappers, he didn’t need to check under the bench for he knew exactly what he would find. Behind his view of the golden countryside, the chattering of teenagers emanated from the many open windows covering the grey building’s wall, their voices floated through the chilling wind.

Whenever he tried to recount the last seven months, he was met with that seemingly never-ending concrete maze, trudging through foreign rooms devoid of personality and often waking someplace unfamiliar. He went numb in those moments, unable to comprehend his surroundings or form a competent thought, allowing himself to be tugged along in the never-resting current. And now he was wound up in Silverleaf of all places – an expansive rural landscape with little else to offer. Brief flashes of documents, serious conversations and vague images of temporary dorm rooms were sparse amongst his memory, he relegated them into the overflowing compartments where he assumed all his thoughts would rest, only to be uncovered when he deemed the time right. All he had left was the backpack resting between his legs, his lifelong belongings loosely fit into a small black canvas bag. He took a long breath, there was no need to dwell on it. This was where he was and he had to deal with that, maybe it would be better than the last home he’d been in. At least that’s what he told himself.

An increase in murmurs caught his attention, a girl stormed out of a side door and jabbed her finger at a disembodied voice inside.

“You’re an ugly cunt James. Fuck off,” she spat.

Her shoulder length bleached hair jostled in the breeze as she slammed the door shut and cursed again. She buried her head in the inner pockets of her baggy brown leather jacket and rifled for a cigarette. She was short and decked head to toe in grunge. Winged eyeliner and silver piercings clung to her nose and ears for it seemed the only impression she wanted to give was an intense one. He took note of the red laces snaking their way through her black combat boots, it was an interesting touch.

“Hey.” He gave an awkward wave, not usually one to strike conversation.

Her head snapped towards him, the pissed off look plastered across her face faded once she properly took in the frail, sullen looking boy with his shaved head and mismatched clothes. Judging from the deep set black around his eyes, he hadn’t had a wink of sleep. “You’re Jonah right?” She sighed, her shoulders followed suit. The front desk lady – Andrea – had told her to expect him. Usually, the seniors rotated with introducing new kids to the house, it’s not like it mattered, new kids were always shipped out of here within the month. Only the worst of the worst (the shitè de la shitè as she liked to call it) got to call Silverleaf home.   

“Yeah. Lady at the front told me to meet you here,” he said.

“Righto. I’m Paige.” She plopped down next to him and folded one leg over the other, her focus directed toward the end of the cigarette hanging from her mouth. Two metallic clicks protected by the wind later and she was taking a long drag while looking him up and down. His face was rough, but strangely pretty – in an unconventional way, she couldn’t tell if it was his crooked lips or the gleaming golden green iris sunken beneath the bags around his eyes. No – on second thought, it was definitely the eyes. Though his physical traits certainly betrayed his fashion, like a supermodel with a blind stylist. “You dress like shit,” she said.

Jonah instinctively glanced down at himself. His daily assortment of outfits were a mix match of random finds from the local Vinnies. The insult didn’t particularly bother him, he never quite understood the reasoning behind having a sense of style. An indifferent “thanks” was all he managed.

For a moment they sat there, listening to crows caw into the sunset. Individually, they tracked groups of birds flying between trees amongst the rolling hills. The moment dragged until Jonah recalled what the front desk lady had told him. “I think you’re supposed to uh, show me around or something.”

“Fuck that.” Paige scoffed, as if the very notion offended her. “What is there to know? Shit in the toilet, piss in the sink, it’s real simple stuff mate.” Her gaze locked onto the distance, a billowing cloud of smoke dispersed into the air, the cancer stick responsible hung lazily between her chipped black fingernails. “Trust me, there’s not much to this place, you’ll figure it out.”

“Brilliant.” He lowered his head into his hands, eyes wide open as he reflected on the circumstance, another titbit of lucid negativity, it seemed like he was better off getting lost within his own head at times. His life had been dissected with a surgical level of care, not that there was much of a life to begin with. There were no remnants of Jonah Hart in Carnale, his old home in the city. No family. No friends. And now, he was sat in an equally remote part of the state with nothing to look at but acres upon acres of farmland and a boarding school packed with troubled kids like the one beside him, he’d been through it all before and now he was doing it again. Would the cycle ever end? Or was his fate tied to this perpetual limbo?

“You’re in final year, right?” She nudged him from his thoughts. “What horrible shit did you do to end up here?”

“My mum died.”

“Shit.” She slumped into the bench, the usual. She took another drag, allowing the smell of burnt tobacco to taint the fresh air, though she was known for not knowing when to shut up, she never knew what to say at a time like this.

“It’s fine.” They sat for a moment, an antagonisingly long moment for Jonah. “She was a cunt.” That didn’t even begin to cover it. He stared into the last shining precipice of the sun behind the landscape, his knuckles clenched. He had never disclosed the true nature of his relationship with his mother to anyone, so he was unsure why it had partially slipped now, as small as that slip was, perhaps it was because he’d never had a genuine chance to. The closest he had come was early last year, when he stood outside his school’s counsellor office – he had to take advantage of the resources available and as he grew older he was finding it increasingly difficult to keep these things to himself. Much to his dismay, it became another waste of time, the duration of their conversation consisted of Jonah’s death stare and the clearly uneducated counsellor babbling on about a man’s duty and pushing him to try and act more like a regular 17-year-old should, it was part of the reason he’d hated that school and its all-boys jerk off. He halted. The longer he dwelled on it, the more grotesque and unnatural the labyrinth would become, drowning out all else until he was cornered in those concrete halls, its misshapen claws wrapped around his eyes. A glance at Paige brought him back, her very presence enough to remind him of where he was. He was a real person having a conversation with another real person.

The sprawling golden fields slowly turned to their grey selves as the colour faded from the sky, the sun far beyond the horizon now, introducing a slight bite to the gathering breeze. Paige’s lips were pursed and her eyes narrow, a slow nod following Jonah’s words. The last crinkling whisper from her exhausted cigarette diffused into the night, she tossed the butt with the rest of them and ground it beneath her boot.

“Want a dart?” Paige asked, presenting Jonah with a half empty pack of Marlboros, seven cigarettes bounced about in the small cardboard box.

“Nah. I don’t smoke,” he said.

She shrugged and lit another one, it always helped cheer her up at least. The caws that echoed across the field had been replaced by the constant buzzing of grasshoppers and crickets. Together, Paige and Jonah soaked their eyes in the moonlight, the occasional crinkle of burning paper was their only topic of conversation.

“They tell you which room you’re in?” Paige was the first to break the silence and softly grunted to her feet.

“Seven, I think.”

“Bullshit. Really?” Her eyes widened.

Had she noticed it too? “Yeah. Why?” Jonah prodded.

“Nah, it’s not-.”

“Dinner ready in ten!” A young brunette girl shouted from the door Paige had slammed shut earlier. Easily spooked, Paige waved her off and flicked another browned filter into the cemetery below.

“Wait, but why?”

“Nah, it’s nothing. It was just my friend’s room.” Paige shrunk into her collar, shuddering under the biting temperature. She paced inside, ushering Jonah to follow, leaving no time for him to compute her messy topic change, hoping he relegated it to a sleep-induced delusion if anything. They entered an incandescent lit hallway, one boy with puffy red eyes shuffled past them – an odd herby smell in his wake, he was following the wafting scent of Japanese curry towards the dining hall, where the chatter of the boarding house now centralised.

Turning the other way, they passed through the vacant hall, a window broke the beige wall, it showed the darkened recreational room, a shadowed couch housed two silhouettes passionately compressed together, their affairs uninterrupted by Jonah’s investigative gaze. “So, how long have you been here?” He questioned with a touch of wondrous curiosity. Though he was merely making conversation, he lingered on Paige’s earlier reaction, there were more questions to ask.

Paige pursed her lips, she’d rather put a bullet through her skull than reminisce on the brain-numbing time spent here, especially now. Especially with all that had happened over the last seven months, her hatred for the place was reaching new highs. “Seven fuckin’ years. I got a major case of Stockholm syndrome.” As she said it she stiffened.

There was a confused expression riddled over Jonah’s face as he too stiffened. There it was again. The number seven. His eyes glanced downwards, running his thumb over the bandage that hid seven stitches in his forefinger. His mind pointed towards the bag on his back, hidden inside was an envelope sent from a previously unknown address, Seven Farrell Avenue. He couldn’t shake it from his head, the number seven. There it was again, a bold bronze seven, staring at him in the face.

“Bro, are you good?” Paige’s waving hand obscured his vision, she had to stop him before he walked straight into the number on his room’s door.

He stopped and blinked twice, his surroundings set back in. Weathered door. Cramped hall. Confused Paige. Another blackout. “Sorry, I spaced out. I don’t sleep much.” He nervously laughed and gave her what he assumed was a reassuring smile, though her concern didn’t fade.

“Yeah okay.” She briefly flashed a return smile and turned the doorknob for him, bit fuckin’ weird but okay. “When you’ve dumped your shit, just head back down the hall.” Across from him she cracked open an identical door with the number seven on its face, the only two rooms in the whole building that shared a number due to construction errors (which only furthered Jonah’s curiosity and piqued Paige’s). After carelessly tossing her bag inside with a depleted sigh, her boots clacked loudly against the floor as she disappeared back around the corner.

Recovering from his momentary daze, Jonah creaked into the confined, but furnished dorm room. A single bed that looked like it would screech and groan with every sleepless toss and turn sat tucked away in the corner and the off-white blinds covering the singular window didn’t allow for much light to sneak in. He flipped the switch and after a few moments of dim flickering, the lights buzzed to life. There was a small desk crammed in the opposite corner to his bed where he placed his backpack. A clock sat above the desk, its hour hand pointing to the seven.

Again, another seven. He had to find Paige, she saw it too, he could tell. Why else would she have reacted in such an odd way to their earlier conversation? Though it may have just been in reaction to the odd coincidence of their shared room number, he had to make sure. Seven had become an inevitable over the last week. It meant something – it had to. He hurriedly switched the lights off and exited.

The weathered walls and creaking floorboards that constituted the hall connecting the dorm rooms expanded into a comparatively spacious room, teeming with teenagers spooning their way through hot curry and chatting whatever heinous banter came to mind. The rich scent of turmeric and cumin wafted from big silver pots that housed litres of curry and rice along one side of the room, the food was perhaps the only silver lining Silverleaf offered. Jonah spotted Paige in line ahead of a similarly-aged boy with a glorious mullet running over his scalp, their bickering gradually came into focus.

“Please Paige, I promise things’ll be different this time. I swear.” He said, reaching to grab her arm.

“Like I said before. Fuck. Off.” She knocked him away, spooning a lump of curry on her plate. She was getting real sick and tired of this routine. After a surprisingly relaxing afternoon with that new kid, Jonah, she’d managed to calm herself down, but now she could feel her anger bubbling back to the surface.

“Don’t you miss our trips to Byron?” He said it in a harsh whisper, making sure to duck into her ear so no one heard a squeak of his sensitivity as his hand snaked over her hips.

Paige span to face him, holding her fist back from splintering his front teeth. Fury seethed from the deadpan look she gave him. She swore she’d never met someone so fucking stupid in her life.

“You’re dumb as dogshit James. Get the fuck out of my way.”

James stood his ground for as long as he could withstand the oppressive glare Paige held. Concluding he’d get no further with her, he threw in the towel. “You’re fuckin’ impossible.” An emphatic sigh followed as he stepped aside.

Paige stormed past, even Jonah had to take a step back to avoid her war path. She paced down the hall and barged through the door they had used earlier. The constant chatter of the room drowned out the heated exchange as James moped past muttering a string of defeated curses, taking a seat at the nearest table. Jonah took his chance.

The courtyard was solely populated and dark cloud cover spanned the sky, the frostbitten wind caught the end of his nose in a stabbing cold. Paige – the only inhabitant – hunched over an untouched dinner, her figure dully illuminated by a lamp above the bench. Sensing Jonah’s approach, the hairs on her neck stood on end, didn’t this kid know what privacy was?

“Fuck do you want?” She mumbled like a child yet to receive their portion of cake.

“Sorry, I didn’t really know where else to sit.” Jonah unsurely took a seat next to her, leaving a substantial gap of space. That was only the partial truth.

Paige said nothing, teeth clenched behind closed lips, too fixated on the darkness before her to even light a cigarette. Blonde strands of hair danced across her vision with every gust of cold wind. Ever since the year started she had been in a self-inflicted spiral, her best friend – Bonnie – fucked off and graduated without a word spoken since, leaving her to wander the halls alone amongst an entirely foreign cohort. Simply because Paige didn’t have the smarts to pass Year 12. Ha, yeah. That’s what she was going with these days. No matter how desperately she tried to romanticise her life, it didn’t change the fact she had been trapped in a three by two metre dorm room for the better part of seven years, with no idea of what was expected out of her future, she pretended to take solace in the fact there were no expectations. But the encroaching unknown always struck her during the early hours of the morning while she lay in her shitty metal bed trying to prolong the beginning of a new day with a downward swirl of self-deprecating thoughts and tears.

“Maybe if we neck ourselves we’ll end up somewhere nicer than Silverleaf.” Her and Bonnie would always say. Then they’d discuss if they were going to heaven or hell, and then if god or satan was hotter.

“The thing is, god is definitely husky as fuck,” Paige would say.

“Cunt, how many times do I have to say it? Demon. Energy.” Bonnie clapped with her final words.

Fuckin’ demon energy, you were such a dickhead Bonnie. Whatever.

In the past, she sought distractions. Her father’s 2002 caramel Les Paul had been the first to occupy her time. The long-forgotten chords came back in a matter of weeks and coupled with her airy alto-soprano voice which when fused amongst her usual smoky tone, created a strikingly unique blend. But as she grew older, the reality checks grew more numerous, unique was the norm for artists and musicians alike. Talent existed in everyone, and unfortunately, she lived in Silverleaf where there was no music program and there was nowhere outside of Silverleaf to take her talent where she wouldn’t be surrounded by equally gifted musicians with more technical knowledge and funding behind them. There was no competing with money she found out. End of story, case closed, fuckin’ forget about it Paige.

And like the many before them, she turned to drugs and alcohol with the rest of her peers, because that was the norm if you found yourself in Silverleaf’s boarding house. She used to joke with Bonnie that their school – Silverleaf State High – was leading the world globally in bongs ripped in a maths classroom. And once they reached a certain age and their hormones properly started firing, it was no shock that sex became the new hot topic. And just like that, like a moth to a flame, after her very first taste in a dank disabled bathroom with an equally curious girl, sex became an insatiable urge for Paige, an addiction with an effortlessly prescribed cure. It was a burden that began to plague her mind during all hours of the day, often causing her thoughts to be consumed with nothing but cravings for lust as her eyes bore into whatever eye candy they could find (or in her words: she was horny as fuck). Despite the detrimental effects that were plainly obvious to her, she liked to frame it in a positive light, because going to sleep knowing what the next day would entail made life in Silverleaf bearable.

The sex was the only reason she was with James in the first place. Unfortunately no prowess in bed could salvage his cardboard box personality. The concept of having a surfer boyfriend seemed appealing to her at first, but the many early mornings driving to the beach before school in his shitty Holden Commodore with nothing but Triple J to soothe the ears grew to agitate her (who knew radio hosts could be so insufferable). Then she’d have to sit on the dunes and watch him surf for hours on end, pretending that she had paid attention when he finally came back to shore. What a fuckin’ bore that was. Outside of surfing, it felt like a marathon to converse with his remaining brain cells, not to mention his complete lack of emotional intelligence, their arguments usually ended with his confusion as to what was even wrong in the first place, and then to make it all even worse, he cheated on her with some faux artsy bitch from school. She’d come to realise, James was a man-child that only wanted her back because he was a fucking baby who liked sucking on her tit. But when she sat at this bench – her favourite place in the world, enjoying the sensation of wind buffeting against her, everything seemed to make a little more sense. So, she took a moment to properly appreciate how refreshing the week had been since they broke up.

Huh. A week.

“Have you been seeing a lot of sevens in your life recently?” Jonah asked and watched her expectantly, shuffling closer as if their conversation was confidential, unaware that the gusting winter breeze could mask even a boisterous yell from a distance.

Paige had. A lot. In fact, now that it was said aloud, the absurdity of it all struck her. “Fuckin’ everywhere,” she said. Not always the number though, sometimes a period of time. Seven years since she moved to Silverleaf. Seven months since she had ruined everything. Seven days since she broke up with James.

“I started noticing it a week ago.”

“Same here. I thought I was going fuckin’ insane.”

Jonah remained unsatisfied with the lack of clarity Paige provided. But, deep down, he knew it to be futile, to expect her to have the answer for him, to give him a meaning beyond an abundance of sevens and blackouts, she was no holy messiah but a mere grungy, explicit teenager. And he who receded into silence with his hands clasped together in his lap (as he always did when unsure of what to think or say), was destined to fizzle into a memory held by none.

Admittedly, when she put some more thought into it, Paige found the situation strange. Mostly, she’d been ignoring the sevens that popped up in day-to-day life but now that she was faced with Jonah, it suddenly felt a bit too real. Two previously unacquainted individuals both dealing with such bizarre coincidence at the exact same time, in the exact same place. Was Jonah a government agent trying to communicate through code? Or was he some kind of conspiracy theorist convinced she was someone she wasn’t? Or was he given to her by fate, earned compensation for putting up with James for seven weeks? She certainly wasn’t complaining, she could use a pretty little gift from fate, especially one as goddamn smoking as he was.  

“What the fuck does it mean?” He said, utterly bewildered.

“Maybe we’re soulmates.”

“Huh?”

She turned to him with a suggestive look, her brow cocked and the corner of her lip tugged. “I’m takin’ the piss.” Though she did believe it to be a possibility. And judging by the flustered look on Jonah’s face and the lack of speech flapping from his lips, the idea had been planted in his head. Maybe she didn’t have to brush this new guy aside, maybe she could have a little fun with him. Besides, it would be nice to spend some time with someone lacking the context of her reputation in Silverleaf, someone she didn’t have to maintain appearances for. She held their eye contact, staring deep into his darkened pits, trying to decide on her next course of action. Those greenish hazel eyes and their magnificent flecks of gold were hypnotising, there was a mystery hidden behind them, but also an ignorant youth looking for guidance. Fuck. The heat between her legs involuntarily rose.

“You ever eaten pussy before Jonah?”