and reaches for my hand.
She doesn’t let go
until we get to our lockers.
Black and white
After school,
Ella sits next to me and Rachel
at the bus stop.
Manx rides his bike
in slow circles
pulling tricks.
A black BMW pulls up.
The door flings open.
Patrick’s dad takes off his sunglasses
and calls,
‘Hey, can someone get my son.’
None of us know where Patrick is.
Angelo jumps up
and reaches into the car,
offering to shake Mr Lloyd-Davis’s hand.
‘My name’s Angelo,’ he says.
‘That’s great, kid.
Now go get my son.’
He looks past Angelo
and sees Patrick running along the footpath,
then sounds the horn long and loud.
Patrick walks past Angelo to hop in,
and, for a moment,
I’m scared Angelo will slap him on the back again.
We all watch the BMW
do a U-turn over the zebra crossing.
‘Nice way to greet your son,’ Rachel comments.
Everyone knows exactly what she means.
The best places
In the late afternoon,
Ella and I hop off the bus
and walk along Lake Road.
‘If I get home too early,’
Ella says, ‘it’s homework,
or helping Mum cook dinner. Yuck.’
‘I … I know where we can go,’ I say.
She smiles. ‘Is it a secret hideout?’
‘Kind of,’ I say,
‘but only because no-one wants to go there.’
‘Until now,’ Ella says.
We walk away from the lake
to the outskirts of Turon
where Dad’s truck workshop
is surrounded by a high wire fence.
I show Ella where the wire pulls away
from the post
and squeeze through,
holding it open for her to follow.
I call to Peachy, Dad’s guard dog.
She barks, then wags her tail in recognition
and bounds over the gravel
to nuzzle my outstretched hand,
nearly knocking me over.
Every afternoon when Dad’s away,
I stop here to feed Peachy.
A blinking neon sign illuminates
a few empty trailers
and a badly painted front door.
I find the key under the ornamental frog.
I swing the door wide open
and step back,
letting Ella go first.
‘You take a girl to the best places,’ she says.
The workshop
I turn on the light
in the workshop
and close the door.
I can’t believe I’m alone here with Ella.
I take two beers from the fridge
and offer her one.
She smiles. ‘Toss it, Jonah.’
She catches it with one hand
and sits up on the desk
before opening the bottle.
We survey the workshop
of a slowly failing future.
Peachy whines as if she understands.
Ella looks at a photo on the wall.
‘Mum and Dad,’ I say.
They’re standing in front of
a freshly painted rig with a full load.
Dad’s much younger;
his curly hair is bleached with sun and sand
and the chance of a wave
before the evening fades,
before he drives all night
still high on the barrels of Balarang Bay
and his love for Mum.
Mum’s wearing a summer dress
and is barefoot and pregnant.
They look so happy,
so certain about the future
where Dad has enough time for waves
and a proper job –
making surfboards
or at the council –
clocking off
with a few hours of daylight left.
Truck driving …
it’s only temporary.
‘Your dad looks handsome,’ Ella says,
‘like his son.’
Flowers
Ella finishes her beer
and holds the bottle up to the light.
‘We used to live in a town out west,’ she says.
‘The only thing they cared about
was football in winter
and whether the river
was running in summer.’
She makes to throw the empty
at the wastebasket near the wall,
but instead places it
on the desk between the
tape dispenser and the stack of bills.
‘One night, the elder brother
of a boy in my class
took his mates out for a drive
with the prettiest girl in town.’
Ella looks at me.
I don’t know if either of us
want her to keep talking.
‘He had too much to drink.’
She sighs
and stares at the bottle on the desk.
‘The boys died;
the girl ended up in a wheelchair.’
She shakes her head at the memory.
‘The town tied flowers to the tree,’ she whispers.
Her lower lip starts to quiver.
‘They should have cut it down with a chainsaw.’
I hop up from the chair
and put my hand on her shoulder.
She wraps her arms around me
and we stay like that
until the tree, the flowers
and her old town
disappear from view.
Faraway stars
After saying goodbye to Ella
at her street corner,
I walk past the lake.
Manx sits on a wooden chair on the verandah
with his feet up on the railing.
‘I missed you at lunch,’ he says,
and grins.
‘We played force-em-backs on the oval.
Every time we kicked the ball over the fence
that turd Patrick
would tell Angelo to fetch it.’
I look at the swarm of bugs
shimmering on the lake.
‘We should be fishing,’ I say.
‘Nah, I’m hungry now.
And Dad’s left me a pot of stew,’ Manx says.
I think of Mum in Balarang Bay,
Dad on the road
and the empty kitchen waiting for me.
Manx jumps off the chair
and opens the screen door.
As he walks down the hallway, he calls,
‘I’ll bring a bowl for both of us.’
I hear the clatter of cutlery
and the sound of an empty saucepan
tossed in the sink.
He returns with two steaming bowls
and hands me one with a spoon.
The stew tastes rich and salty.
‘I was going to make Vegemite sandwiches,’ I say.
Manx laughs.
‘You should’ve invited Ella over,’ he winks,
‘to show her your skills in the kitchen.’
We both stare across the lake
to the lights of Tipping Point twinkling
like faraway stars.
Bluster
The next day,
we line up for an excursion
to the planetarium
on the north side of Balarang Bay.
Thirty students crowd
onto the bus in a finely choreographed
pecking order:
nerds and dweebs at the front,
try-hards and wannabes in the middle,
loudmouths and dudes up the back.
I’m last on the bus.
Angelo holds a spot for Patrick
in the back row
behind Rachel and Harriet.
Ella sits alone
a few rows in front of them.
Surely I can slink in beside Ella
and no-one will notice?
She moves over to give me room.
I grip the handrail
but, just as I’m about to casually
slide beside her,
Manx whistles and calls me down the back.
Ella looks up.
I avert my eyes, walk past her seat
and take my place beside Manx
in the sweat-soaked bluster
at the back of the bus.
Daylight robbery
With all of year ten crowded
into the planetarium shop
there’s too many people
for the person behind the counter
to keep watch.
Patrick and Angelo
stuff as many chocolate bars
as they dare into bulging pockets
and confidently walk out.
If there was a law against smirking
they’d be caught immediately
but no-one notices
except me and Manx.
He follows them to the cafe
where they scatter their bounty on the table.
I watch Manx sit down beside them
and see their faces change.
No matter how many times
they shake their heads
nothing persuades Manx.
His dad is friends with the owner.
Patrick slides the chocolates
across the table to Angelo
before walking away
to buy a coffee.
Angelo packs his pockets again
and returns to the shop
where he refills the racks
without anyone noticing.
Patrick sips his coffee
and talks to all the other boys
before we return to the bus.
On the trip back to school
it’s just Manx and me in the back row.
All of the usual suspects
gather around Angelo
and the rich boy
a few seats in front of us
and, when Manx isn’t looking,
Patrick turns
and waves a handful of chocolate bars
in my direction.
Cowards
The next day,
Angelo and Patrick don’t have the guts
to face Manx and call him out
about the chocolates,
so they target me instead.
Patrick spits at my feet
as I walk past the basketball court,
and Angelo says he saw my mum in town
and wouldn’t mind having a go himself,
even if she is old.
I want to punch Angelo
but what good would that do?
Patrick hurls the basketball at me.
I duck and it bounces off the wall.
Angelo catches it
and stands in front of me,
holding the ball close to my face.
My heart is thumping.
‘Careful, Angelo,
Joany might cry,’ says Patrick.
Angelo feigns to toss the ball at me.
I knock it from his hands
and he reacts by throwing a punch
that bounces off my shoulder
and hits me on the lip.
I put up my hands
expecting a volley of fists,
but Mr Drake’s voice interrupts
from the top of the stairs.
Angelo sneers and
calls me a coward
before we’re both hauled off
to the principal’s office,
to sit in uneasy silence
outside her door.
I taste blood on my lip
and wait for the inevitable questions,
wondering if I’m any good at telling lies.
A misunderstanding
If you can’t tell the truth
it’s better not to say anything,
so in Ms Wilson’s office
I play dumb
and shrug my shoulders
time and time again
like I have a nervous tick,
while Angelo bullshits
about a misunderstanding.
He’s happy to apologise –
right now,
in front of the principal –
where no-one else can hear him.
Wilson buys his bluff.
Angelo even has the gall
to offer me an outstretched hand.
It takes me longer than it should
to shake,
even with Wilson’s prompting,
so I look like the guilty one.
We walk out of her office.
I remember when Angelo asked me
over to his place
all those years ago,
before Patrick arrived.
‘You’re nothing
without your stupid mate,’ Angelo sneers.
I fake a smile.
‘I’ll ask Manx about that,’ I say.
His cockiness disappears in an instant.
I shrug and stroll away
protected by Manx,
yet again,
without him being anywhere in sight.
Two particles
I spend all of Science
trying to work out how to apologise
to Ella for not sitting beside her on the bus.
Mr Drake drones on about chemical reaction
and the possibility of fusion,
while I think about the chance
of Ella and me coming together,
like two particles
in the test tube
of Balarang Bay High School.
I wonder how long Drake
can balance those glasses
on the bridge of his nose?
Is he defying gravity
I laugh, despite myself.
Everyone looks at me
and Drake asks,
‘What’s so funny about hydrogen sulphide?’
He waits for my answer,
still looking over his glasses.
Manx says, ‘Something that smelly
is no laughing matter.’
Ella wags a finger at me
as if I’ve been caught doing something I shouldn’t.
I’m forgiven.
I hope.
Before I speak
I get home from school
and Auntie Trish’s car is parked outside.
Mum’s in the kitchen
washing lettuce at the sink.
I can smell roast chicken in the oven.
‘I thought we’d have a treat, Jonah,’ she says.
I toss my bag in the lounge room
and help set the table.
‘How’s things?’ she asks.
Got into a fight with Angelo,
talked to the girl of my dreams,
stole some of Dad’s beer,
lied to the principal at school.
But I can’t tell her any of that.
‘I’ve been doing overtime,’ she says,
‘to pay off the car
and keep out of Trish’s way.
The sooner the Magna’s fixed,
the quicker I can come home.’
No matter how much Mum talks
I can’t bring myself to answer.
She places the salad bowl
in the centre of the table
and, with a tea towel and oven mitt,
she removes the chicken
and puts it on a serving plate.
Handing me the knife, she asks,
‘You want to carve, Jonah?’
I shake my head
and wonder how long I can last
before I speak.
Stories
After dinner,
we sit together on the verandah
listening to the seagulls
and watching the bugs satellite
around the streetlights.
Mum goes inside
and brings out two bowls
of strawberries and ice-cream.
‘I could sprinkle icing sugar
over them, if you want?’ she asks.
‘It’s sweet enough,’ I say.
I imagine Dad is eating
a hamburger and chips right now
in a dingy roadhouse
with a line of trucks parked outside
and another three hundred kilometres to drive
before he can sleep.
Every spoonful
makes me want Dad here, beside us,
with nowhere to go
but back to our kitchen
for another helping of ice-cream.
‘What are you thinking, Jonah?’ Mum asks.
I swallow hard.
‘Tell me again
how you and Dad met,’ I say.
Mum looks pained.
‘It’s just a story, son,’ she answers.
I shake my head.
‘It’s our story,’ I reply.
The invasion of the hyphens
Friday morning on the bus,
Manx says his dad
is taking on a tyre repair franchise,
which amounts to a few dozen spares
stacked behind the besser-block toilet
with a billboard out front
advertising four tyres for $500.
Bargain.
Manx’s dad says it’ll give him
something to do
instead of scratching his arse,
while sitting behind the counter.
He reckons business might improve
with people moving here
from the city.
He calls it, The invasion of the hyphens:
too many last names,
too much money
and no sense of value.
Manx reckons we should
take a fishing knife to the rubber
of every BMW in town.
Those tyres cost a bomb.
For that sort of cash,
Manx’s dad would do house calls.
I’m not great with a fishing knife,
but I’ll keep watch for Manx
to help the Gunn family business.
Shaking
Manx and I hop off the bus
and walk to our lockers.
Rachel runs up from behind,
throws an arm around each of our shoulders
and swings between us.
‘Friday is my favourite day,’ she says.