In the morning, I get up around 7.30 and stumble into the kitchen. Steph’s showering. Mum and Dad are already at work – they would’ve left at 5.00 to get to the office buildings they clean. I make and eat breakfast, then jump in the bathroom after Steph comes out to make her breakfast. I get dressed – no uniform for school; they encourage us to express our individuality (within reason) – and come back into the kitchen just as Steph’s putting away dishes. We always finish about the same time. Steph will offer me a lift to school, but I only accept when it’s raining.
Usually, I’ll meet Ash at the corner of Manning Street (my street) and Arbuckle Avenue (where he lives). Sometimes he’s first, other times it’s me. A handful of times we miss each other, but that’s not often.
Ash isn’t much different to me in height (about normal for our age), but he’s bigger across the shoulders and chest and so plain-faced he’s unremarkable. He has three younger brothers and his parents are prone to big arguments – not like mine, who shout because that’s the way they talk. Sometimes, Ash can be quiet, like something’s wrong, so I wonder if his parents do more than argue. He doesn’t say much about them.
‘I miss anything?’ I ask him, when I meet him at the corner.
‘Some stupid Legal homework from Ms Grady,’ Ash says. ‘She was bitchy yesterday. Kept Riley all through recess because he was talking in class. He wasn’t happy.’
Riley’s not often happy, though. He makes trouble and can never understand when the teachers pull him up on it.
‘What about the counsellor?’ I say.
‘Asked me what I wanted to do when I left school – like I know,’ he says. ‘She also brought up the Boland Fellowship – said I should go for it.’
The Boland Fellowship is awarded to one Year 10 student from schools in our area for academic excellence. Later in the year, they’ll announce a longlist of the students who’ve been selected. Then it’s the shortlist. Then, in the last week of school, they announce the winner.
The prize is one thousand dollars, and mentoring from somebody applicable to a field you might want to pursue. Steph won it in Year 10 and got mentored by a lawyer for a year, although the relationship tapered off as the year went on. I’m not surprised the school’s brought it up with Ash – he’s smart, although he doesn’t always push himself.
‘You should,’ I say.
Ash snorts. ‘They’ll mention it to you, too.’
‘They mention it to Riley?’
‘He hasn’t said anything.’
Riley’s smart, but doesn’t try, so it’s hard to guess what they might’ve done.
‘How was the funeral?’ Ash says.
I want to tell him about the thought, but it’s stupid and trivial now. Ash never worries about stuff like that.
‘It was a funeral,’ I tell him, like that sums it all up.
‘Can’t believe anybody would want to be buried. It’s gonna be only a matter of time before we run out of space.’
‘What’re you gonna do?’
‘Stuff me and leave me on the couch. It’s not going to make much difference to me.’
‘You’ll smell, though. Well, worse.’
Ash chuckles.
The walk to school isn’t long: down onto Highlands Road, then onto Curtis Street, a dead end that feeds into the car park for the Meadow Soccer Club. Meadow shares their soccer ground with one of the semi-professional teams, so the ground’s lush. The stands are little, although they’re always talking about expanding. The most impressive things are the light towers so they can train at night. The scoreboard’s a towering, rickety, decrepit rectangular box standing on a framework of corroding stilts that you can hear screech in the wind. We always joke about it toppling into the creek behind it. The clubroom – with its change rooms, reception, function room, and bar – is this convoluted, snake-shaped building that they’ve kept adding onto with no real plan. It’s also where couples from the school go to make out, using the building as cover.
The creek separates the soccer ground from the Meadow High Football Oval, although the water comes from this concrete aqueduct that cuts right through Meadow. Ash and me followed it once, winding away under the Main Street bridge until it went underground into Greenhills. We didn’t go any further, although Ash did walk in about twenty feet, using his disposable lighter as a torch until it got too hot to hold.
Walking down the bank to the plank bridge that crosses the creek is also when Ash takes his cigarettes out of his jacket. He opens the pack. I pop a cigarette into my mouth and we huddle around his disposable lighter, hands up to shield the wind. Then we sit on the opposite bank, smoke with a sophistication that would look cool if we weren’t fifteen, and talk about stuff that’s important to us.
‘Yesterday?’ Ash says. ‘Kat. Tight faded jeans.’
Kat is Katrina Byers, the it girl in Year 10. Conversations are filled with how her arse sits pear-shaped in tight pants, or how rounded her boobs look in tight tops, or the glimpse you might get of her cleavage if her blouse is a little bit low. There are pretty girls, and then there’s Kat. And, yes, this is the way guys talk – at least, the way teenagers who don’t know any better do.
‘She’s still going out with that private school prat, isn’t she?’ I say.
‘As far as I know.’ Ash lies on the bank and blows out a stream of smoke. ‘I wonder what she’d be like.’
Like? I stop myself from asking, belatedly getting what Ash means.
‘What about Samantha?’ he asks.
Samantha Mrakov. She’s had a thing for me since primary school.
‘You gonna make a move on her or something?’
‘Or something,’ I say.
‘What’s that mean?’
‘I don’t feel anything for her.’
‘I’m not asking you to marry her. Have some fun. See how far she’d go.’
I see Samantha in my head: cute, with a broad face, high cheekbones, her chin the point of a triangle, looking at me with unquestioning trust, like a puppy waiting to be fed. It doesn’t seem right to take advantage of her.
‘I bet she’d go all the way with you,’ Ash says.
‘No way.’
‘Easy. What’re you looking for?’
I see someone in my head: pretty, but in a cute way; somebody I can talk to like a friend; somebody who’ll be supportive and nurturing and pick me up and push me in the right directions. It’s stupid. At fifteen. Too much thought. But it’s there all the same.
I shrug. ‘What about you?’
‘I don’t care. As long as she’s not prudish.’
‘Classy.’
‘You worry too much about stuff like that.’
‘If you had a choice of any of the girls–’
‘Not counting Kat?’
‘Whoever.’
‘Rachel.’
Rachel’s one of Kat’s friends – small like a pixie, and the quietest of the group, except when she’s laughing. Then she’s this shrill trumpet that’s too undignified for the popular girls, although she’s a lot more approachable – I’ve joked around with her a few times in class. And it can almost go without saying that she’s pretty – it’s natural selection, as high school goes on.
‘She’s been looking at me – I think.’ Ash finishes his cigarette and flicks it into the stream, although he does it violently, dismissively. ‘But who wouldn’t? Come on.’
I drop what’s left of my cigarette and grind it out with my foot.