11

The next day at school is a drag and I’m contemplating heading home when the siren sounds for lunchtime. I leave my PDHPE classroom and head through the corridors.

‘Mr King,’ I hear. Across the corridor, walking towards me, is Mr Addison. ‘How are you settling in here? Have you made some friends yet?’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘It’s been all right.’

‘Good, good,’ he says. ‘You know where my office is if you need anything.’

‘Yep. Thanks.’

Mr Addison starts walking away and I leave the PDHPE block. Across the pathway, I see Tegan. Our paths converge as we turn out to the seniors’ area. She smiles at me.

‘I heard you had a bit of fun after I left the party on Saturday,’ I say.

‘Umm, what did you hear?’ she asks, lowering her voice.

‘Well, I think the exact words were she knows her way around a dick.’

‘Oh, that fucking arsehole.’ Tegan sighs. ‘What else did he say?’

‘Uh, I think that was it. So, do you like him? Why didn’t you tell me?’ I ask.

‘Because he’s a dick. He’s the dickiest dick in this school. At least three times a week, I get a message in the middle of the night. I had a feeling he’d try to sleep with me at the party, but you were meant to be my cockblock for the night.’

We follow the path into the seniors’ area, approaching our table where Zoey and Gordon are waiting for us.

‘Why don’t you just end it, if you’re so ashamed of it?’ I ask.

‘I don’t know.’ Tegan sighs again. ‘Because I’m an idiot who has a hard time saying no. What can I say? I’m a people pleaser. Did he tell you that? Are you, like, friends with him?’

‘I dunno. Kind of. Not really.’

We join our friends on the bench. Gordon and Zoey are arguing about Star Wars, of all things.

‘I’m telling you,’ Zoey says. ‘The thing that makes The Last Jedi the best one is how it doesn’t do anything we expect as fans. They completely blindsided us with Luke’s change, and watching it the first time, you had no idea what was gonna happen. Right from the start, when Luke throws the lightsabre over his shoulder, you have no idea how the story is gonna go.’

‘You’re so wrong,’ Gordon says, like Zoey’s saying the earth is flat or something. ‘Revenge of the Sith is obviously the best, if for no other reason than Obi Wan versus Anakin. That battle was the single greatest scene in all of Star Wars.’

‘Tegan, tell him,’ Zoey says.

Tegan pulls out her usual tuna salad. ‘You know Empire Strikes Back shits on both of them,’ she says.

My phone vibrates in my pocket. It’s a text from Dad.

Dad: Gonna be home late, son. Can you please put all school clothes in the wash when you get home? There’s pizza in the freezer. Should be home by 8.

Miss Tate and her brimmed hat are waiting for me when I arrive at the primary school to pick up Zeke and Luke.

‘Hey, Jonah,’ she says.

‘Hey.’ Zeke and Luke both have red faces and their school hats on. ‘How was school?’

‘It was okay,’ Luke says.

‘We did so much running,’ Zeke exclaims.

‘We had sport all afternoon,’ Miss Tate says. ‘The boys are really fast runners.’

‘I’m faster, though,’ Zeke says.

‘Thanks,’ I say to Miss Tate. I walk with Zeke and Luke out of the grounds and we begin the twenty-minute walk home. It’s a warm day, but it’s not scorching. Nevertheless, there is a growing stream of sweat along my spine, shielded by my backpack. Luke is dragging his feet, but Zeke has a lot of energy.

As we walk past the takeaway shop, Zeke kicks rocks from the nature strip onto the road. I miss those days, when something as simple as kicking rocks cured my boredom. I wish I had never grown out of that.

Luke looks like he’s struggling to carry the weight of his backpack. His shoulders are low and he’s watching his shoes as he walks.

‘You okay, Lukey?’ I ask.

He shakes his head. I take his backpack from his shoulders and carry it myself.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Someone pushed me over at sport,’ he says. He shows me his elbow. It’s red with a scrape, and dirt has gathered on the skin.

‘Where was Zeke when this happened?’

‘He was tipping other people,’ Luke says. ‘It was Barry. He said I was overcooked in the toaster.’

‘What?’

‘He said God left me in the toaster too long and that’s why my skin’s brown.’

I feel heat rising from the pit of my stomach. It moves into my chest, into my throat, along my arms and down to my hands.

‘Well, that’s bullshit,’ I say. ‘Remember what Dad said? Sometimes, white people get jealous of us and they say mean things.’

‘Why would Barry be jealous of me?’

‘Because Barry’s parents don’t love him.’

As soon as the words leave my mouth, I know it’s an awful sentence I’ve just said. I don’t even know Barry. The kid’s only eight years old but I hate him and his whole family.

‘Why don’t his parents love him?’ Luke asks.

‘Ummmmmm, because he’s even meaner at home. Anyway, what else did you do at school today?’ I ask, hoping to dig myself out of this hole.

‘Well, we learned our four times tables.’

‘Oooo, go, tell me.’

‘One times four is four, two times four is eight …’

I’m still hating on eight-year-old Barry when we get home. Zeke starts taking off his school uniform as soon as he gets in the door, and leaves it scattered along the hallway floor. I take his and Luke’s uniforms to the laundry by the back door. In my room, I change out of my own school clothes, then put them all in the washing machine together.

Zeke and Luke plant themselves on the couch, sipping from the juice boxes they didn’t drink at school, watching the afternoon cartoons. The sun’s still out and there’s a nice breeze rolling through the open kitchen window.

‘Why don’t you guys go out the back and play a game or something?’

‘This is what we always do,’ Zeke says.

‘Fine.’

I head into the kitchen, wash last night’s dishes and stack them on the dish rack. Back in my room, I leave the door open and fall onto my bed. There’s a message from Tegan.

Tegan: Okay. What else did Jack say about me?

Me: Umm nothing really. Just that you guys see each other secretly.

Tegan: Okay.

Me: Whys that

Tegan: No reason.

At five-thirty, I go to the kitchen and pull the frozen pizzas out of the freezer – one Hawaiian, one margarita. I slide them onto baking trays and load them into the oven.

It’s so warm in the kitchen that I decide to get the pedestal fan from Dad’s room.

In Dad’s room, the first thing I see is the framed photo of Mum on his chest of drawers. She’s smiling, with red cheeks, the veil over the back of her hair from their wedding day. She was so beautiful – I don’t think I ever really thought she was, when she was alive.

I don’t like thinking about this.

I unplug the pedestal fan and take it to the living room. I turn it on and join Zeke and Luke on the couch. Before long, Luke’s snoring with his head on the armrest. The cartoons end and Zeke heads to his room. I let Luke stay on the couch. I switch over to the news and turn the volume down as the smell of pizza begins to fill the room.

I’m wondering what Dad is doing tonight, why he’s going to be out late. Maybe he’s gone to the pub with his new workmates. Maybe he’s working late because of some national park emergency. Maybe he’s driving around to give himself a few hours of relief from being a father raising three children on his own.

I wake Luke up when the pizza is ready and the three of us eat on the couch, watching Home and Away. After dinner, Zeke and Luke shower and they’re both asleep by eight o’clock. The house becomes quiet and peaceful.

I sit at my desk, plop down my Maths homework beside my schoolbooks. I slide open my bottom drawer. It’s heavy with all the old books and artworks I’ve stored inside.

I dig through the papers. There’s a blue serviette that one of my friends in Year Six passed to me in class one day. In pen, she had written Sorry bout your mum Jonah x.

There’s an artwork I made with crayons of a submarine. It’s coloured blue and yellow and is travelling along the dark ocean floor. I think I made this in Year One or Two.

I find an exercise book from Year Three. The cover is tattered and barely clinging to the staples that hold the pages together. On the front, it says Creative Writing. I flick through the pages. A smile comes to my face when I find a story I wrote for a Halloween writing task. It’s called BAD CAMP. I remember my teacher loved this story. It was about me and my classmates on a school camp in the bush, where we get chased by zombies and werewolves, and all my friends died in horrible ways. My teacher asked me to read it in front of the class. All my classmates were howling with laughter as I read, and I remember feeling special, like I had some kind of superpower and could make people feel things. I think it was actually this story that my teacher told Dad about, and he became all proud and began telling everyone I was a budding writer.

I read through the story and it’s pretty bad – I can hardly read my handwriting. I mean, a nine-year-old did write it, but it’s creative and wild and fun. I miss writing stories like that. I haven’t really written a story for fun since Mum died.

I wanted to be a writer, then. I still do want to be a writer, I just haven’t been working at it.

I tear a blank page from my Maths book and take a pen from the holder. I gaze down at the whiteness of the page, the empty space waiting to be filled with words.

Okay, time to think. A story. A good opening line. Something to write about.

After about ten minutes, I decide that the reason there are no ideas coming to me is because I’m tired. I can’t write something wild and fun when I’m tired. Maybe I’ll try again tomorrow.

I drop my pen on the paper and climb into my bed. I wonder where those ideas came from when I was younger. I wonder if I could write like that again. I want to write again, like I did when I was nine.