CHAPTER 6 — BOOK II
The Debate Room
(Mid–late November 2001, Sydney)
The notice went up on a Monday.
It was pinned to the board outside the library, printed in the school’s standard font, as if that alone could make the topic neutral.
Inter-School Debate — Training Session
Motion: This House would trade civil liberties for national security.
Beneath it, a list of names had been handwritten in tidy capitals.
Geoffrey’s was there.
Embong’s was not.
Geoffrey saw the list and felt the same small tightening he’d come to recognise in himself—the reflex that arrived whenever the world tried to turn grief into an argument.
He stood in front of the notice for a moment longer than necessary.
Behind him, boys moved past with books under their arms, shoulder-bumping, laughing at something that would not survive the afternoon. A teacher walked by and nodded at the page with approval, as if debate itself was always virtuous.
Embong stopped beside Geoffrey without looking at the board.
“I’m not doing that,” he said.
Geoffrey glanced at him. “I didn’t ask you to.”
Embong’s eyes remained forward. “You also didn’t say no.”
Geoffrey held the paper in his gaze as if he could change the words by staring at them.
“It’s training,” he said finally. “Not Parliament.”
Embong’s mouth tightened slightly.
“That’s what makes it worse,” he replied.
Geoffrey didn’t answer.
He knew what Embong meant.
A motion like that in the wrong room wasn’t practice. It was permission.
That afternoon, Geoffrey went anyway.
The debate room was one of the older classrooms, too narrow for the number of chairs they’d dragged in. The blinds were half-drawn, letting stripes of sun cut across the floorboards. A fan clicked overhead, doing its best and failing.
The teacher in charge—Mr Carlisle—stood at the front with a clipboard and the satisfaction of a man who believed the world could be improved by structure.
“Today,” he said, “we’ll practice arguing both sides of a motion. I don’t want personal opinions. I want reason. Clarity. Persuasion.”
Boys nodded as if this was a relief.
Geoffrey sat near the back, his notebook open in front of him. His pen was in his hand, but he hadn’t written anything yet.
Across the room, two Year 11s were already performing seriousness—leaning forward, speaking in low tones, testing phrases that sounded like they’d been borrowed from newspapers.
“Liberties are a luxury,” one of them said quietly, as if tasting the sentence.
Geoffrey looked down at the page.
The teacher began assigning roles.
“This side will propose.”
“This side will oppose.”
“You’ll have five minutes to prepare.”
Names were called. Chairs scraped. Boys shifted into their assigned factions with the ease of people who believed safety came from being placed on the correct side of a line.
Geoffrey’s name was called early.
“Opposition,” Mr Carlisle said. “You’ll be first speaker.”
A few students glanced over. Not hostile. Not friendly. Just curious—watching to see what kind of person grief turned you into.
Geoffrey nodded once.
His hands were steady.
His thoughts were not.
Mr Carlisle continued.
“And—” he glanced down at the list again, frowning slightly, “Embong Awan? You’ll be on proposition.”
There was a brief pause as the room tried to place the name. Some faces blank. Some faces knowing.
Geoffrey’s head lifted.
Embong wasn’t there.
Mr Carlisle blinked once, then looked up again, as if Embong might appear simply by being called.
Silence held for a beat too long.
A boy in the second row—one Geoffrey recognised from cadets—raised his hand half-heartedly.
“He’s not coming,” the boy said, not unkindly. “He’s got… other stuff.”
The teacher’s mouth tightened.
“Well,” he said, after a moment, “that’s unfortunate.”
He wrote a replacement name without looking up.
The training moved on.
The proposition team began to prepare with visible enthusiasm. They drew lines on paper. They circled words like threat and risk and protection.
Geoffrey watched them build their case.
He knew they weren’t thinking about Embong when they did it.
That was the problem.
They didn’t need to.
The motion allowed them to speak as if the world was abstract.
Mr Carlisle clapped his hands.
“Right,” he said. “We’ll begin. Proposition first speaker.”
A boy stood—tall, confident, well-liked, the kind of boy who looked like he belonged in a blazer. He smiled politely at the room.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “we live in unprecedented times. The world has changed. We must respond with realism, not sentimentality.”
Geoffrey felt the word settle into the room like dust.
Realism.
The boy continued.
“In exchange for safety, we may need to accept certain limitations. Some sacrifices. This is not oppression—it is responsibility.”
He used the right tone. Calm. Reasonable. Slightly disappointed in anyone who might disagree.
He spoke of airports, surveillance, border control. He spoke of “certain communities” without naming them, as if vagueness itself was moral.
He concluded with a practiced line:
“Freedom is meaningless if you are not alive to enjoy it.”
Polite applause followed, the kind given in classrooms because silence felt too personal.
Geoffrey stood when it was his turn.
He did not begin with “ladies and gentlemen.”
He did not smile.
He looked at the teacher, then at the room.
“The motion assumes,” he said, “that the people asked to surrender liberties are the same people being protected.”
A few faces shifted.
Geoffrey continued, voice even.
“But that isn’t what happens. What happens is that power doesn’t spread equally. It gathers. It concentrates. And it always chooses a target that is easy to justify.”
Mr Carlisle watched him with mild interest, as if Geoffrey was a promising student rather than a boy whose parents had died on a screen.
Geoffrey forced his hands to stay still.
“National security,” he said, “is a phrase that sounds clean. It’s not clean. It’s a tool. And tools can build or break.”
Someone in the room snorted softly, but not loudly enough to own it.
Geoffrey didn’t look at them.
He spoke about precedent. About emergency measures becoming permanent. About how fear changed what people accepted.
Then he stopped.
Not because he ran out of arguments.
Because he felt the boundary in himself—the line between persuasion and confession.
He could have said: My parents are dead and you’re turning it into policy practice.
He didn’t.
He finished with the only sentence he trusted.
“If you trade liberty for security,” he said, “you don’t end up with both.”
He sat down.
The second speakers rose. The room warmed to itself. Boys leaned into their assigned sides as if the performance itself was proof of sophistication.
Someone made a joke about “privacy being overrated.”
Someone else laughed.
Geoffrey stared at his notebook until the lines blurred.
At the end, Mr Carlisle offered feedback.
“Good,” he said. “Strong structure. Strong rhetoric. But remember—we’re not here to moralise. We’re here to argue.”
Geoffrey nodded as if he agreed.
He didn’t.
Afterwards, as they filed out, a boy fell into step beside him.
“You were good,” the boy said. “Like—actually good.”
Geoffrey didn’t slow. “Thanks.”
The boy hesitated.
“But you’re taking it personally,” he added, as if this was an observation rather than a warning.
Geoffrey stopped walking.
He turned.
The corridor behind them was full of chatter. Ahead, the air felt thinner.
“My parents died,” Geoffrey said, quietly. “How would you like me to take it?”
The boy’s face flushed.
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know what you meant,” Geoffrey replied. Not cruelly. Just precisely. “You meant I’m making it uncomfortable.”
The boy swallowed.
Geoffrey let him off the hook anyway.
“Good,” he said. “It should be.”
He kept walking.
Outside, the light was too bright, the afternoon too normal. Students crossed the quad, laughing, shouting, throwing a ball back and forth as if joy could be kept separate from consequence.
Geoffrey found Embong by the far edge of the oval, where the grass dipped slightly and the noise from the main paths didn’t reach as cleanly.
Embong stood with his hands in his pockets, watching nothing in particular.
Geoffrey approached and stopped beside him.
“You skipped,” Geoffrey said.
Embong didn’t glance at him. “Yes.”
“Mr Carlisle called your name.”
Embong nodded once, as if confirming a detail in a report.
Geoffrey waited.
Embong’s voice stayed calm.
“I’m not doing debates about whether people like me deserve rights,” he said.
Geoffrey looked down at the grass.
“You would’ve been on proposition,” he said.
Embong gave a quiet, humourless exhale.
“Of course I would.”
Geoffrey felt anger rise—not at Embong, not even at Carlisle exactly. At the ease of it. At the inevitability.
“They’re treating it like a game,” Geoffrey said.
Embong’s gaze finally shifted to him.
“They need it to be a game,” Embong replied. “Because if it isn’t, then they have to admit what they’re really doing.”
Geoffrey swallowed.
“And what are they really doing?”
Embong’s expression didn’t harden.
It didn’t need to.
“Deciding who counts,” he said.
The words sat between them—quiet, accurate, too old to belong to two boys standing on school grass.
Geoffrey’s throat tightened.
“I argued against it,” he said, as if that should fix something.
“I know,” Embong replied. “I’m not mad.”
Geoffrey’s voice dropped.
“I hate that you had to choose not to go.”
Embong’s gaze held.
“I didn’t choose not to go,” he said. “I chose not to lend them my presence.”
Geoffrey blinked.
Embong continued, steady.
“They can argue about security all day. They can practice sounding reasonable. But they don’t get to use me as a prop in a room where everyone leaves feeling clever.”
Geoffrey nodded slowly.
He understood.
Embong’s refusal wasn’t avoidance.
It was control.
They stood there for a moment longer, the wind moving lightly over the oval.
Then Geoffrey said, quieter, “I wanted you there.”
Embong’s mouth softened—only slightly.
“I know,” he replied. “But you don’t need me in every room.”
Geoffrey looked at him, not convinced.
Embong added, “You already know where you stand.”
Geoffrey exhaled.
He did.
That was the problem.
He knew too clearly now.
They started walking back toward the buildings. The noise of the school returned gradually, as if someone had been raising the volume while they weren’t looking.
At the main path, Embong stopped.
Geoffrey stopped too.
Embong reached out and adjusted the edge of Geoffrey’s blazer collar—small, practical, almost careless.
Then, without looking at him, he said, “You were right.”
Geoffrey frowned. “About what?”
Embong’s eyes stayed ahead.
“If you trade liberty for security,” he said, “you don’t end up with both.”
Geoffrey stared at him.
Embong turned slightly, just enough to meet his gaze.
“Context matters,” Embong added, and this time there was the faintest trace of amusement.
Geoffrey let out a small breath that might have been a laugh.
They continued walking.
The world did not become kinder that day.
But something inside Geoffrey steadied.
Because now he understood that standing up was only one kind of refusal.
Sometimes, the stronger refusal was simply not entering the room at all.
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