Mum was skipping about like a kindy kid when I got home. ‘Hello, daaahling,’ she said before planting a big wet one on me. ‘Put your bag away, don’t leave anything out here at all. I’ve tidied the entire house and you will not mess it up. Not that you would.’

‘Hi Mum,’ I said, dropping my bag and heading for the pantry.

Mum picked it up and took it to my room, with a huge, overacted sigh. ‘Just this once.’ She smiled. Then she came up behind me and gave me a big hug and whispered, ‘Sorry about this morning. I feel so stupid. You definitely didn’t say anything to anyone, did you?’

‘Why would I? What would I say, anyway?’

‘Well, nothing. That’s the point, right? Because there’s nothing to say. Come and help me outside for a minute.’ She dipped her head towards Ronnie who was camped on the couch watching some kid-stuff on ABC3.

‘Are you okay?’ she said, as she pulled me into the garage.

‘Yeah, fine. Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘Well, you know. When you left this morning your mum and dad were splitting up, so, I dunno? You were facing a pretty different world, right? At least there would have been some new jokes. Like, what do you do if your mum misses your cheating arsehole dad? Tell her to take better aim. Funny? Or, when he gets home and I say to him, “Oh, honey, I want you to whisper dirty things in my ear,” there’s no way he’s going to say, “Kitchen, bathroom, laundry, living room.” Get it? Anyway, it’s all good. It wasn’t his phone.’

‘The jokes are bad, news is good.’

‘Tough crowd. So, what happened, because you deserve to know, was this. I called Dad and told him I knew about the phone and he nearly wet himself laughing and said he understood but it was ridiculous. He said it wasn’t his phone, but his friend’s phone. He took it off him when they were playing golf because he wouldn’t get off it, and we all know phones on the golf course drives your beautiful dad nuts. You know what he’s like with his golf. Then Dad had to leave in a hurry and he forgot to give the phone back. So his friend has this new girlfriend and it’s all very exciting and they text all the time and she’d put the “oh baby” ring tone on for when she texted him. That’s what that was all about. It’s stupid, but it’s pretty funny, too. I might do it for Dad – bit sexy, right?’

Mum was talking fast, as if she was making it all clear in her own head as much as anything else.

‘Like, deep down, I didn’t think it was his phone. It couldn’t be. I mean, it could be, but it wouldn’t be. Right? Why would it be when he’s got this to come home to?’ She had her mouth open and her hands out and was pointing at herself. ‘He’s all right, your dad. He works hard, and I know he’s away a lot, but he does it for us, so we can have nice things. It’s the price we have to pay, right? But he is a good man. He’s got a good heart and he’s good to me. He’s good to all of us, even though he’s a bit of a grouch sometimes. Sorry to drag you into it, Dylan, but at least we know there was nothing to it, right? And for the first time in years, I know what to get him for his birthday – new clubs.’

‘Yep,’ I said. ‘That’s good, Mum. Can we get out of the garage now?’ I said. ‘Secret squirrel over for today?’

She laughed and gave me a gentle clip across the ear. ‘Anything interesting happen to you today?’

‘Well, yes, actually. It did. No one took Sampson’s lunch, so we reckon it’s either Lurch or Hamish Banning who are knocking it off. They got suspended, by the way. And . . . I’ve been invited to a party this Saturday night.’

‘You’ve been invited to a party?’ But it came out like, Yooooooooooooooou’ve been invited to a party? As if exactly the last person on the planet who would ever be invited to a party was me. As if I was a contestant in Beauty and the Geek, as if I had a mono-brow and high pants and cold sores all over my mouth.

‘Yeah, Mum. Me.’

‘I didn’t mean it like that, I just –’

‘It’s okay, Mum. I know how you meant it, it’s pretty obvious.’ My mum has the ability to slaughter me without knowing it. ‘Yooooooou’ve been invited to a party?’ Why not me? I thought as I went back into the house. What’s wrong with me?

‘Dylan? Dylan! Don’t be silly,’ she called after me. ‘I didn’t mean anything. It’s so exciting. Whose party? Dylan? Why did Lurch and Hamish get suspended? Dylan?’

‘Fuck you very much,’ I muttered to myself as I passed through the kitchen.

‘Swear jar,’ said Ronnie from the couch. She heard everything.

I went to my room and shut the door. ‘Two days to the par-tay!’ I’d wanted to tell Mum about how Gracie asked me. I’d wanted to set the scene for her, how I was at my locker and had my head in there looking for something. When I pulled it out, there she was, she practically scared the crap out of me. Mum would have laughed. She would have asked what kind of expression Gracie was wearing and told me what it meant. Like, if she was beaming it’d mean she was definitely rapt to be asking me, and if she was giggling she was nervous about it, but kind of happy, too. Definitely happy, but in a cautious way. And if she was mumbling into her collar or looking about at everything but me, she wasn’t really sure about it, but was asking anyway. Mum was great at understanding other people’s body language.

I didn’t need Mum to tell me what Gracie was thinking, because I already knew. She’d used the same smile when we were in assembly, the cheeky one, the one she made when the principal was talking and she called him a wanker, if that’s what she was doing.

Isabella and Hannah had been further up the corridor, watching. I don’t think they could believe she was asking me. But she did. It must have been what she’d been going to ask me the other day. ‘Do you wanna come to a party on Saturday?’ she’d said at my locker. Then she looked behind at the other two who were nodding and smiling. Isabella was definitely back from the Facebook brink. ‘It’s at my place,’ said Gracie from behind her fringe. ‘Do you wanna?’

I hadn’t heard anything about a party from anyone else, so I was pretty surprised. There was always talk about a gathering or something on one of the beaches, but house parties were different.

‘Sure, who’s going?’ I’d said, like it mattered.

‘Well. You, I hope. And Hannah and Isabella and a few others. Not many, and don’t tell anyone, you know? It’s intimate. We don’t want any dickheads.’

Obviously it was my turn to say something, because Gracie had stopped talking and was looking at me expectantly, but I was fresh out of logical thought. So, like a goon, I blurted out the first thing that came into my mind. ‘Yeah, right. Okay. Got it. Just normal clothes and stuff? It’s not like a dress-up thing?’

It was probably because we’d just had Halloween, so it kind of made sense, but as the words came out I started wishing I’d gently placed my head in the locker and smashed the door on it, over and over and over.

I had no idea what we’d do at Gracie’s party. It’d have to be different from the gatherings at the beach where everyone hung out in their normal groups and half the kids got wasted. Mum’d know, she’d be all over it. And it’d be kind of fun to watch her work it out in her head because she’d be, like, ‘Who’s going?’ But it’d be more like, Oooooooooh, who’s goooing? And I’d say, ‘Not sure, but not many because it’s just a small party’ and Mum’d go, ‘Ooooooooooooo, a small party? You know what that means, don’t you?’

It would’ve been good to tell her about it because I could only imagine what a ‘small, no-dickhead’ party would be like. Mum’d probably want to talk to the parents and make sure they were going to be there, and if that ‘arse’ Hamish Banning was going and all the boring stuff.

Gracie had cocked her head to one side and frowned. ‘Dress ups? Like costumes? That’s a cool idea.’ She turned towards Hannah and Isabella and mouthed, Dress-ups?

‘What?’

They did a bit of sign language before she wrote them off. ‘Nah, there’s no theme,’ she’d said. ‘Buuuut if you want you could come as Superman, that’d be kind of cool. You could be my superhero.’

I was dying.

She turned back to the girls, gave another nod and turned back to me with a big flick of her hair. ‘Just come as you are. And if you can bring something, that would be cool.’

‘Like?’

‘Bring something to drink, I suppose, but that’s about it. All good.’

Then she went back to the others, and they walked down that end of the corridor and I stayed at my locker and whispered into it, ‘You fucking beauty!’

Maybe that was why I was so pissed at Mum for giving me the ‘Yooooooooooou’ve been invited to a party?’ because it was so awesome and I wanted so much to talk to her about it and share it and she just murdered the vibe, making me feel like it was a miracle to be part of something cool.

Maybe it’d be easier if it was a superhero party. What the hell was I supposed to wear, anyway? What’s normal depended on who was going, and as far as I knew, it was just a few of us and no dickheads.

Who wasn’t a dickhead?

Who was a dickhead?

Before I left home this morning I thought I was the biggest dickhead going around, so what did I know? Ronnie came into my room and jumped on the bed. ‘Dinner’s ready,’ she said. ‘Mum says it’s your favourite. Avacodo and tuna sushi.’

‘I hate avocado with anything.’

‘That’s what she said you’d say.’

The whole kitchen and lounge room was full of the best smell ever: cutlets. Mum’d made peas and mash on the side, too. ‘Sorry,’ she said when I came in. ‘I didn’t mean that, you know.’

‘Orright,’ I grunted. ‘How many are we allowed to have?’

‘Didn’t mean what?’ asked Hayley.

‘None of your business.’ Mum smirked. ‘It’s between me and Dylan, isn’t it, darling?’ She had her hand on the dish holding the cutlets. ‘You still love your mummy, Dylan?’

‘Yes, Mum,’ I said. She was talking to me like I was a baby and it was funny and nice and a bit of a surprise.

‘Then you can have three cutlets. Do you love your mummy, Hayley?’

‘You know I do, Mumma,’ simpered Hayley, plunging her fork into one cutlet but getting the one underneath as well.

‘Then you can have three cutlets, too.’

‘I love you, Mumma,’ said Ronnie. ‘But I only want one.’

‘Then one it is.’ Mum took two for herself and left at least half a dozen in the dish.

‘Is Dad coming home?’ I said. ‘I thought he was at a conference for a few days.’

‘Conference Schmonference,’ said Mum with a sadder smile on her face. ‘Too bad, so sad. More for us. It’s a special occasion, isn’t it, Dylan?’

Hayley swiveled her head like she was out of some horror movie. ‘Special occasion? For Dylan? What special occasion’s he got?’

‘Can I say?’ asked Mum. And before I had a chance to share my own news, Mum was, like, ‘Dylan’s got a big party this weekend.’

‘Who’s party?’ said Hayley.

‘Gracie Chilcott,’ I said, in as offhanded a way as I knew how. ‘It’s not like it’s a party, it’s just a little-’

‘Gracie Chilcott? Are you kidding? She’s like one of the queen bi-atches of Year Nine. Why would you want to go to a party at her place?’

‘You don’t even know her.’

‘Is she?’ went Mum. ‘Is Gracie Chilcott a bi-atch? I thought she was lovely. Is it her birthday? Is she fifteen or sixteen? Oh my God, if she’s sixteen she’ll be driving soon. She’s fifteen. Will her parents be home?’

I thought it was impossible to dull the joy of cutlets.

‘All I did was get asked to a party. That’s all I know, orright. And she might be a bitch to you, but she’s nice to me.’