and slinks off towards the lake.
Mrs Lloyd-Davis wipes her ankle with a napkin
as I wonder which planet
these people come from.
All the fun
I hear footsteps
and turn to see Ella
walking towards me.
She’s smiling.
She sits beside me
and glances across at Patrick’s parents.
‘They’re wearing matching white shirts,’ she observes.
I look at Mrs Lloyd-Davis
with her immaculately dyed blonde hair
and high heels
and her husband hiding behind his Ray-Bans
and fondling his iPhone.
I reach into the pocket of my shirt
and pull out two five dollar notes
from cleaning Mr Lloyd-Davis’s window.
‘Come on. I’ll buy you a gelato, Ella.’
She smiles and says,
‘Rich people shouldn’t have all the fun.’
Gelato
Ella and I walk
up the hill to the museum
and sit against the wall
looking out to sea.
She offers me her gelato.
‘A lick of lemon?’ She smiles.
I shake my head,
lift my cone towards her mouth
and try to think of an alliteration
with pistachio.
‘A piece of—’
Ella leans forward
and takes a bite from my cone.
She suppresses a giggle.
‘What?’ I ask.
She looks down towards the cafe.
‘When we lined up
to choose the gelato,
I made a promise to myself
that if you chose any of the pretentious flavours,
like salted caramel
or poached figs in marsala –
whatever the hell that is –
I wouldn’t let you kiss me.’
She smiles and takes another bite.
‘Is pistachio normal enough?’ I ask.
She moves closer and we kiss.
Her lips are soft, yet cold from the gelato.
‘You taste of lemon,’ I say.
We kiss again.
‘Lemon and pistachio,’ Ella says.
‘I could get used to that.’
Someone takes
They knew Mr Huth fished from the rocks
on Sunday morning.
It gave them an hour of quiet
to pick the lock on the caravan
and turn it inside out
as if they were pirates
searching for the buried treasure
of an old man’s savings.
No-one heard a thing
until Mr Huth returned
and set to shouting the place down.
The cops were called
more to control the old fisherman
than to look for his money.
No-one was sure
how much they stole
because Mr Huth wasn’t saying.
The snarky neighbours joked a few dollars
wasn’t worth the trouble,
and reckoned Mr Huth
should learn what a bank was for.
Manx’s dad
passed a hat around at the Balarang Pub
and everyone put in something
more in respect of Mr Gunn
than in sympathy.
The publican dropped twenty
even though Mr Huth
hardly ever made it to the bay for a drink.
On Sunday afternoon, Manx and I
fished from the rocks at the point
and reeled in eight whiting.
In the evening we knocked on Mr Huth’s van
and left the fish in a bucket of ice on his step.
In our town, when someone takes,
someone gives.
Secret
At Monday lunch,
Angelo and a bunch of boys
bounce a basketball
and take up more space
than they’re worth.
Angelo whistles
when Rachel walks past.
‘Patrick reckons you’re a lucky girl,’ Angelo says.
‘Maybe it’ll be my turn next Friday.’
Rachel flashes a look that could maim.
‘Don’t you get tired
of playing with balls, Angelo,’ she says.
The boys laugh.
Angelo pretends not to hear.
He skips out of the group
and aims a set shot at the ring.
It misses by a mile.
Rachel walks away.
Angelo calls after her,
‘Come on, Rach,
Friday night in the caravan.
It’ll be our secret.’
On the way home
After school,
Patrick’s mum waits in the BMW.
She has gold-framed sunglasses
and, when Patrick opens the door,
we see she’s wearing a swimsuit
and a silk blouse.
She gives him a takeaway coffee
as he flings his bag in the back seat.
Angelo sits in the bus shelter
and, no matter how hard he looks,
Patrick isn’t offering a lift.
He’s ignored,
like a fart at a funeral.
After Patrick leaves,
Angelo tells everyone who cares to listen
what he reckons Rachel and Patrick did
in his parent’s caravan
parked in the back garden.
The crowd of boys
laugh and hang on every word.
Every bullshit word.
Ella and the other girls move away.
They sit in a quiet group
and wonder where Rachel is,
knowing it’s a long walk home.
Angelo says he’s taking offers
to rent the caravan.
He doesn’t notice Manx walking up
behind him.
‘I reckon I could go—’ Angelo starts.
‘And I reckon you’re full of shit,’ Manx interrupts.
The bus pulls up
and Angelo scrambles aboard.
No-one says a word about Rachel
all the way home.
Clean again
Under the swamp oak
I lie on my back
in the cool sand
and watch the sun drift behind Sattlers Hill.
As if on cue
the cicadas go silent,
egrets fly to the swamp
and the streetlights flicker on.
I close my eyes
and picture my dad
rubbing his face to stay awake,
the rumble of wheels
and the bitterness of distant miles,
while my mum scrubs her hands
with Solvol in Auntie Trish’s sink
to remove the stink of dead fish
and the curse of eight factory hours a day.
I think of what Angelo said about Rachel.
He’s a liar, but I didn’t have the guts to call him that.
I remember Rachel asking Manx
to swim with her.
The evening light turns dull blue.
I pull myself up
and take one deliberate step after another
into the lake
until I can no longer stand.
I roll on my back and float
looking up at the fading sky
and wonder how long
I have to stay like this
until I feel whole again.
Rachel
On the way home
I pass Rachel’s house.
She’s sitting on the verandah
and waves for me to join her.
I jump the fence
and sit on the stairs.
She’s wearing jeans and black riding boots.
She pulls her chair towards me,
and pokes her boot forward.
‘You could clean my boots
while you’re down there.’ She smiles.
‘Are you okay?’ I ask.
‘I’m thinking of killing Angelo,
but apart from that I’m fine,’ she replies.
‘I’m sorry.’
Rachel bites her lip.
‘I might leave school and get a job.
Mum could use the extra cash,’ she says.
‘Don’t,’ I say.
She flashes me a sad smile.
‘Why not?’
‘No-one believes Angelo,’ I say.
‘He can go fuck himself,’ she says
and sighs.
‘I only walked away with Patrick
because Manx …’
She laughs bitterly.
‘We sat in the caravan,’ Rachel explains.
‘I wanted to talk.
He wanted something else.’
She looks at me.
‘I’m not that desperate.’
Rachel’s brother calls from inside.
‘I’ve gotta go,’ she says.
I walk to the gate
but, before I open it, I call,
‘See you at school tomorrow.’
Rachel smiles.
‘I’ll be the one wearing trousers.’
My reflection
I’m woken in the morning
by noises on the roof:
a thump and skittering roll.
I quickly pull on my school clothes
and run barefoot to the verandah.
Manx is bent over in the driveway
picking up another rock.
‘Hey,’ I yell.
He smiles and tosses the rock anyway.
It pings off the iron
and lands somewhere in the backyard.
He leans his bike on the fence and comes up the stairs.
‘I reckon we should visit Tipping Point tonight
with a handful of smooth rocks.’
‘I know just the house to hit,’ I answer.
He follows me inside
and I look for my shoes,
while Manx bangs around in the kitchen.
When I walk in,
he’s set the table with two bowls,
a carton of milk
and a packet of Weet-Bix.
‘Other people’s food always tastes better.’ He smirks.
I fill my bowl and spend the next ten minutes
calling him a freeloader,
even though I’m grateful he’s here
and I’m sharing breakfast with someone
other than my reflection.
Waiting
Manx and I
sit behind the counter of his dad’s servo
and wait for something to happen.
We’ve got an hour
before school and we’re
in charge of the pumps,
the liquid gas tank out back
and the cash register,
while Manx’s dad
visits the hardware in town.
The highway motorists speed by
with barely a glance;
no matter how low
Mr Gunn sets the price
the all-nighter in Balarang Bay goes lower
and offers clean washrooms,
a restaurant and espresso coffee –
even if they spell it expresso.
I look at the percolator
on the hotplate in the corner
and wonder how long it’s been brewing.
The cups stacked above
are chipped and old.
A calendar on the wall
is of a semi-naked woman
leaning across the bonnet
of a Ford Mustang.
In one hand she holds a can of petrol,
in the other a pistol.
‘I can’t work out whether she wants
to shoot the photographer
or douse him in fuel and light a match,’ Manx says.
He leans back
against the shuttered display of cigarettes
and closes his eyes
singing a tuneless refrain:
‘Ain’t nobody stopping today.
Ain’t nobody stopping,
no matter what we say.
Ain’t nobody stopping today.’
An advertising sign bangs in the breeze.
Jonah thinks smart
I’m sitting against the paperbark tree
overlooking the school oval
when I hear a voice behind me.
‘Jonah sits quietly.’
Ella walks from the shadows
and sits beside me.
I shuffle across to give her room
against the tree trunk.
Ella leans her head back
against the trunk and looks down
at the boys playing force-em-backs on the oval.
Manx takes a long run
and boots the ball
clear over the school fence.
Everyone groans.
‘Why do boys always measure themselves?’
Ella looks from the oval to me.
I could answer that in a thousand words
and be talking for the rest of lunchtime.
Instead, I hold up one little finger
and wiggle it around.
Ella giggles.
‘Because we don’t know what’s enough,’ I say.
I hold my breath, waiting for Ella to answer.
Angelo climbs the fence
to retrieve the ball.
‘Jonah thinks smart,’ Ella says.
We both smile at her flawed English.
‘Jonah big chicken,’ I reply.
Ella shakes her head
and I notice a small piece of bark
lodged in her ponytail.
I gently pull it through the strands of her hair.
I flick the bark away
and, for a long time,
to look at each other
or say a single word.
The sex life of caterpillars
The bell sounds
for the end of the best lunchtime
I’ve ever spent
saying little
but sitting close to Ella.
She stands first
and reaches down,
offering her hand
to help me to my feet.
She pulls me up
and we hold hands
for a few seconds.
Her skin is soft
and I feel the cool metal
of a ring on her middle finger.
We walk back to class
ignoring the mess of year nine boys
pushing each other at the canteen,
begging for free leftovers
from Mrs Ainsworth
who’s known as an easy mark.
Ella and I have Science next period.
As we take our books from our lockers,
I say, ‘The mystery of biology,’
thinking of Mr Drake
and his enthusiasm for bugs.
‘Better the sex life of caterpillars
than stink bombs in the laboratory,’ Ella replies.
I drop my textbook.
Ella reaches down to pick it up and says,
‘Jonah is nervous with the word “sex”?’
‘Not only with the word,’ I admit.
‘We’ll have to work on that.’ She smiles.
I follow Ella into Science
my mind a million miles
away from caterpillars.
The irony of beer
On Friday afternoon,
Angelo gives Manx
double the usual amount of money for beer.
‘Where did this come from?’ Manx asks.
‘Pat … Patrick gave it to me,’ Angelo says.
Manx looks at Patrick
standing beside Angelo.
‘Bullshit,’ he says.
Manx counts off half the money
and stuffs it in his pocket.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Angelo asks.
Manx grabs Angelo by the shirt.
Angelo looks to Patrick for help.
‘Your mate’s too gutless to do anything,’ Manx says.
Angelo pushes Manx away.
‘I’ll buy the usual amount of beer,’ says Manx.
‘The rest of the money is going back to Mr Huth.’
‘You can’t—’ Angelo starts.
‘I can. Regard it as a …’
Manx tries to think of the right word.
‘A donation,’ I finish.
Manx laughs and looks deliberately at Patrick.
‘At least someone here has a brain,’ Manx says.
Patrick shrugs and walks away
leaving Angelo to swear at us
as if all that bad language
will convince Manx to change his mind.
In the bottle shop,
I walk up to the stack of Peroni beer
and tap the case.
Angelo is an Italian name, isn’t it?
Maybe he’ll enjoy the irony.
Payback
In the late afternoon,
Manx winds in the fishing line
and tosses the rod on the sand.
We look across the lake to Tipping Point.
Two men in fluoro vests are working
in Mr Beattie’s yard.
One of them holds a surveyor’s reflector,
while the other
maps the distance to each boundary.
‘Either Beattie died without anyone knowing,
or Patrick’s dad offered him
more than he could resist,’ I say.
‘Bastard,’ is all Manx says in reply.
A familiar BMW pulls up on Lake Road.
Mr Lloyd-Davis winds down the window.
‘Hey, I want a word with you two.’
Manx and I stand
but, as I’m about to walk towards the road,
Manx grabs my arm.
‘Make him come to us,’ he says.
Mr Lloyd-Davis strides down the bank,
pointing at Manx.
‘My son’s friend just told me
you’re the idiot who graffitied on my window.’
I can feel Manx tense beside me.
‘Angelo is a liar,’ I say.
Mr Lloyd-Davis remembers who I am.
‘You owe me thirty dollars,’ he says.
Then he steps up to Manx.
‘And you owe me the cost of a new door.’
He grabs Manx’s arm and says,
‘You’re coming with me.
We’ll see what your father has to say about this.’
Manx wriggles out of his grasp.