3

Remember when you were a kid and all you really needed from someone to be their friend was for them to be there? And I don’t mean ‘there’ like all supportive and shit; I mean ‘there’ as in ‘close’. Back in the day friendship was as easy as proximity. If someone was in your class, or lived on your street, they were your mate. Bonus if they were in your class and lived on your street. Best mates forever.

Then when you get a little older you start to break off into groups. People you hang with are interested in the same shit you’re interested in. Or that you say you’re interested in, anyway.

And then those groups are split into smaller groups within groups, like everyone is a card in that game Memory and we’re just trying to find our match. Not like in a love way, just someone you can be totally real with, you know? Someone that is worth the time you spend with them.

You get more picky the older you get. You get, what’s the word? Discerning.

Mum reckons at her age it’s hard to make friends – What with work, the house, and looking after you, Bugs – but maybe she’s just too damn discerning. Maybe she should just hang with some random from work; have a coffee, have a wine and see what happens. Leave Picky Nikki at home for the night.

Although, maybe she has a point. Maybe I should start being a little more discerning myself. Maybe proximity is just not enough.

‘Charmaine. Char-MAINE. What kind of name is that?’

Stone Cold is standing in front of her fridge looking for something to eat and going on and on about her name.

‘Charmaine. It’s like the name of a hooker …’

‘Or a porn star …’

‘Exactly. Who would name their kid Charmaine?’

Right on cue – as if Stone Cold’s life wasn’t script-perfect enough – enter Mrs Fox, carrying bags of groceries.

‘Finally.’ Stone Cold looks through the bags. ‘Something decent to eat.’

‘There’s plenty of good food in the fridge. Can you help me put these away instead of just rooting around like a pig?’

‘A pig, mother? Way to embarrass me in front of my friend …’

Wait, friend?

Me and Mrs Fox are both startled. Mrs Fox didn’t clock me as she walked in; she has a sort of dazed look like she’s just survived one tour of duty only to find that she’s been signed up for another.

‘Oh, hello Bee … tle?’

‘BUGS, Mum. Jeez, you’re totally useless when it comes to names.’

‘What do you mean, Char?’

‘That’s what I mean. Charmaine. It’s a whore name. Bugs said it was a porn name.’

I shrink down, wishing that Mrs Fox was still unaware of my existence. But she locks me with her eyes and I know for sure that she ought to have her daughter’s nickname because those eyes, man, are cold.

‘It is not a porn name. I knew a girl called Charmaine who was pretty and smart.’ She fixes on Stone Cold, who meets her mother’s eyes with that annoying chin tilt of hers – so it’s not only me she looks down on. ‘… And I wanted you to be the same. For God’s sake, your father wanted to call you Samantha.’

She looks at Stone Cold and me as if we should react.

‘Samantha Fox? Ah, forget it.’

The kitchen is quiet. No one is sure if anyone has won the … it wasn’t even an argument, not really. Has power shifted? Something has; Mrs Fox has sort of pulled into herself as if she is far away from this time, this place. She cradles a loaf of bread as if it was the baby that would not be called Samantha.

Stone Cold grabs a packet of baby carrots – yuck. ‘OK, whatever, Mum, we’re going to my room.’

I follow behind. Something about Mrs Fox reminds me of my mum. I don’t know what it is; a sort of yearning, I guess. Whatever it is it makes me feel … it makes me feel, and I gladly follow Stone Cold just to get away.

Duke is on the deck and greets us with a wag of his little stump of a tail. Poor Duke, your tail snipped off because it didn’t meet with some stupid ideal of what you should look like.

‘I think he likes you. He doesn’t like anyone.’ It is an accusation, not a statement.

Me and Duke bonded, I guess. I’m the girl who pukes out marshmallow for Duke to enjoy. He chomped on it the way that Blue eats horse shit, knowing that he’d have to get it down fast before he was told off. The worst part was when Duke licked my cheek after he’d munched out on it. Thanks Duke, nothing like bile and dog breath to settle your stomach.

Duke follows us from the house to the sleep-out and whimpers as Stone Cold shuts the door.

‘You’re not allowed in, you dumb dog.’

Maybe Duke doesn’t have a problem with humanity; maybe he has a problem with you.

‘Fuck it’s cold in here.’ Stone Cold switches on a fan heater and we’re blasted by the smell of burning dust. I sit down on her bed, which is kind of awkward in a skirt.

‘I can’t believe she called me a pig.’ Stone Cold looks at herself in the mirror – front on, side on, from the back. She faces the mirror again and shrugs. She strips off her uniform with her back to me and I think of lining up those clean pork bones on my plate – click, click, click. She pulls on jeans so tight it makes her legs look like pipe cleaners, a long T-shirt that skims over her non-existent bum, and over that a cardie hoodie thing. Last she puts on some Ugg boots so she looks like some sort of wannabe celebrity or something. She pulls the hair tie from her plait and runs her fingers through her hair, making it boof up around her head. She’s ready to get snapped by paparazzi while out shopping and I’m still in my scratchy kilt and jersey. Awesome. Stone Cold chews on a carrot that hangs out of the corner of her mouth like a cigarette, and offers me the bag.

‘Nah, I’m all right.’

She chucks the bag on the desk and a couple of carrots fall on the floor – ‘Open the window, Bugs’ – and with one swoop of her skinny arm she scoops them up and throws them out. Duke munches on the carrots – noisy, wet bites with his mouth open.

Stone Cold looks for music to play on her computer. You might think that it is the easiest thing in the world to pick music, but I reckon that’s how we sort ourselves into tribes these days. Last time we were here Jez took over the sounds. He put on the slow jam beats that suit him. Even without music on he moves around the world with a heavy bass line and a Jamaican lilt – Jez is island time personified.

Me, I’m a little more … all over the place. I like a lot of things and nothing. Sometimes I need a song that I can just go hard out on, use up the energy that seems to burn inside me. I lock my door, close the curtains and dance and dance until the white hot flame consumes itself.

I don’t really get into hip hop. And not just because everyone else does. If the break is good you can’t help but move to it, head nodding, fingers tapping, feet shuffling – whatever. But listen, really listen to the lyrics. Do I really need that shit in my head? Most of the world hates me – why would I find refuge in the arms of men who clearly hate girls?

Stone Cold looks to me like a girl who will put on the latest boy band and expect me to screech along, pretending our hairbrushes are microphones in a pastel-coloured, airbrushed, sitcom fantasy of what a teenager’s life is like. All lip gloss and prom dresses and … boys.

But she surprises me.

‘You know The Smiths?’ She asks because it is impossible that some small-town hick has heard of a band that’s been around for like thirty years. We’re not that behind here. But instead of gushing about the contrast between the happy riffs and the sad-arse lyrics, instead of connecting over a shared love of a band long gone, instead of saying Yes, I’m part of your tribe, I say: ‘Yeah, my mum listens to them.’

She deserved it. She’s playing ‘Some Girls are Bigger than Others’, and if that isn’t passive aggressive then I don’t know what is.

I open my chem notes. ‘Should we just get started?’

‘Oh.’ Stone Cold munches on a carrot. It is crushed between her teeth, and little bits of carrot fly out when she talks. ‘You want to actually study?’

‘I thought that’s why you invited me here, so you can catch up?’

‘Oh no, that will be fine. The olds will get me a tutor or whatever if I need it. I thought we should just hang. Get to know each other because of you and Jez … and me and Jez.’

‘You and Jez?’

‘Well, not me and Jez exactly, but y’know there’s …’

Do not say it, do not say it …

‘Chemistry.’

She seriously just said it. Like she’s on a lame sitcom and she’s waiting for the laugh track to crank up. God, I wish this was a TV show, then I could groan and throw something at the screen before I switched channels; but there she is, that stone cold cliché, looking at me thinking that we’ll bond because of our X chromosomes or something.

‘So what’s the deal with you and Jez?’ Stone Cold says.

‘What do you mean “the deal”?’

‘Are you together?’

‘Together?’

‘Because if you are together, I won’t go there, because you know, chicks before dicks or whatever … Why are you laughing?’

‘If you think about a word enough it sounds weird.’

Stone Cold looks straight at me. ‘You think about being together with Jez. A lot?’

‘That’s not what I mean.’ I flick through my chem notes so I don’t have to look at her. ‘It really shouldn’t take too long for you to catch up in chem …’

Stone Cold groans and flops down on the bed beside me. ‘Chem, chem, chem. Seriously? That’s all you want to talk about?’ She pulls a ‘bored-as-fuck’ face at me, and for a second I know what it’s like to be a teacher. Then Stone Cold smiles; it’s weird how quickly her face can change. ‘Speaking of chem, give me those test tubes.’ I was hoping she’d forgotten them so I could sneak at least my two back tomorrow. Stone Cold pushes herself off the bed and goes to her bookcase. She pulls out a little bottle of vodka, hidden behind her books.
‘I thought we should christen them.’

‘I’d clean them out first. Who knows what’s stuck in them?’

She fills them up anyway. ‘Maybe we’ll get lucky and get some P or something. C’mon.’

She stares down at me. Everything with this bitch is a challenge. So I nod, forget that I might die or might go blind, forget that I have no idea what she’s actually given me, forget that I actually have nothing to prove to her, and I take a test tube and we clink them together before skulling them.

God it’s harsh. It’s weird how it feels like ice carving through you but then it suddenly flips and the chill turns to heat. I manage to not cough even though it burns my throat. I can feel it pool in my stomach, setting the acid on fire. I should eat something – I haven’t eaten anything since lunch but all we have in here is carrots. I frickin’ hate carrots.

Stone Cold looks kind of queasy; it looks like something is working its way up from her stomach. Maybe this time she’ll be the one outside retching. Her cheeks puff out like she’s a cartoon, but she doesn’t go green and projectile vomit. Instead she just burps. And when I say ‘just’ I mean she lets it rip – it’s louder than anything I’ve ever heard Jez or even Uncle do.

‘Carrots and vodka don’t mix.’ Stone Cold stashes the bottle again. ‘Please don’t tell my mum.’

Like I’m the kind of person that would narc. ‘Nah, it’s sweet.’

She smiles at me. No wonder she has a big-arse mouth: it’s to house all those big-arse teeth.

‘I think we could be good friends, Bugs. Don’t you?’

Friends? More like an accessory or an accomplice. That’s what some friendships are: an understanding that you could totally fuck each other’s shit up if the world knew what you have on each other. A kind of stalemate, me and Stone Cold, politicians in expensive suits making nicety-nice for the media, gripping each other’s hands a little too tightly and a little too long.

A cold war.

There’s a knock at the door. ‘Girls? I made you some sandwiches.’

‘Shit, hide the test tubes.’

It’s a good thing we stole test tubes, not boiling tubes, because they’re so slim they slip easily down the spines of Stone Cold’s hard-cover reference books. She’s got one of those huge New Zealand Oxford dictionaries and a Roget. Man, if they weren’t at her house maybe I’d just spend some time with them, getting my geek on.

Stone Cold opens the door and kinda slouches across the door frame so she takes up the whole width. She’s like that tape that they put up in cop shows – a diagonal slash of ‘Do not pass’.

‘I thought you two would be hungry with all your …’

‘Studying, Mother. We’re studying.’

‘Well, of course you are.’

‘You don’t have to check up on us.’

‘I’m not …’ Mrs Fox sounds like she’s counting to ten in her head – deep breath, Shelley. ‘They’re just sandwiches …’

‘Thank you Mrs …’ They both look at me. Stone Cold because I dared to speak, Mrs Fox because I’ve forgotten that she’s just one of the girls. ‘Thank you, Shelley.’

Stone Cold takes the plate from her mother and closes the door. She looks at me as if I have just pushed the button and nuked Siberia.

‘What was that about?’

‘I don’t know, I thought it was nice.’

‘Nice? She calls me a pig and then she feeds me these?’ Stone Cold waves a sandwich in my face – it’s cream cheese and cucumber on brown bread. It looks nice. They all do – little sandwich triangles standing in rows on a white china plate. These aren’t half a bag of chips chucked in a plastic bowl – she’s taken care. She wanted it to be nice. I grab a sandwich and bite and it is nice – it is creamy and crunchy and just a little bit salty. But Stone Cold is immune to nice; she can’t see it for what it is.

‘She just wants me to get fat so she can have yet another thing to nag me about, y’know?’ She opens up the window and tips out the sandwiches before I have a chance to grab another. I hope Duke eats them all before Shelley sees what Stone Cold has done. I think of how sad she’d be if she saw her carefully cut triangles scattered across her neat garden.

‘She’s such a bitch,’ Stone Cold says as she snaps the window shut.

‘Say “cream cheese”, Bugs.’ Stone Cold takes a photo of me with her phone. She doesn’t show me, even though I might have my eyes half closed or some shit on my face. She just looks at it and smiles. ‘Douche, what’s your number?’

‘Why?’

‘So I can text you later. What is it?’

‘I don’t have a phone.’

‘Everyone has a phone.’

‘Well, I don’t.’

‘That’s so weird. Why?’ She’s like Duke with a ball, she won’t let it go.

‘I can’t …’ God I hate her for making me say this. ‘I can’t afford it.’

‘Afford?’ She rolls the word around in her mouth as if it is the first time she’s ever tasted it. ‘What do you mean?’

‘My mum says if I want a phone I have to pay for it, and since I don’t have a job … no phone.’ I may as well be speaking, I don’t know, German or something – she has no way of understanding. Not the girl sitting in front of a couple of grand worth of stuff.

‘She wants you to pay for it yourself? Seriously? That’s child abuse.’

I shrug. It’s easy to make fun of abuse when you haven’t seen it. I want to defend Mum because I kind of get what she’s trying to do – if I had to work for it I would appreciate it more. Just look at this silly bitch sitting pretty, and she doesn’t even see it. On the other hand, I just want a phone.

‘Please tell me you at least have internet?’

‘There’s a laptop I can use. But that’s different, that’s for school. A phone isn’t necessary.’

‘But your mum has one, right?’

‘Yeah she has one.’ But I think she wishes she didn’t. She says that work can follow her around all the time, after her shift and on her days off. I thought being indispensable would mean they’d never get rid of me, Bugs, but it turns out it means I can never be rid of them.

Stone Cold opens her desk drawer and starts digging through her things – nail polish and notebooks and pens. ‘Here …’ She throws me a phone. ‘I knew I still had my old one.’ She opens another drawer. ‘The charger has got to be in here somewhere …’

So this is life as lived by Stone Cold. What you wish for just lands in your lap. I hold the phone in my hand. It is cool, as in temperature, and smooth. It looks like obsidian – deep black and glassy. Me and Jez stole an obsidian boulder once – some fulla had a whole bunch standing sentry around his freshly sown front lawn. We skated past once, twice, again. The plan was that Jez was going to put it under his top and we’d skate away, but it was heavier than we thought. So we put it on his skateboard and he had to push it along with his foot like a soccer ball. Man, I wish I had a scooter. And then we both laughed because kids on scooters are dumb grommets.

‘Does it still have some juice?’ I just look at Stone Cold. She takes the phone from my hand. ‘You haven’t even turned it on, you noob.’

Stone Cold plays with my phone. My phone. I’ve had it in my hands for like a minute and already I’m territorial.

‘I got this last year and it’s still cool and everything but a new one came out around my birthday.’ She holds her phone against mine. ‘See? Once this one came out I couldn’t have this old one any more. So it was around my birthday and my mum said it could be one of my presents …’

One. One. Of. Her. Presents.

‘So you can have it, I guess.’ Stone Cold flicks through deleting all her old contacts. I wonder if one of them has her last hand-me-down phone? Click, they’re gone – she’s found herself a new model.

It’s weird that she doesn’t even talk about her old friends. You know I’d be talking about Jez. Rabbiting on, as Nan would say. But Stone Cold hasn’t said anything. It’s like she’s shut them up in a drawer and forgotten about them. Maybe one day she’ll look for them, saying I thought I left them here somewhere. How long before that’s me? And Jez?

Stone Cold takes some photos of herself with the phone. She holds the phone slightly up and tilts her chin slightly down, working her angles like a webcam pro. Maybe her mum chose the right name after all – it wouldn’t surprise me if some dude in Ohio has forked over his credit card number for some choice shots of little Miss Charmaine. She picks the photo she likes best and saves it with her number.

‘First contact.’

I want to say Take me to your leader, but I don’t think she’ll get it. Yeah, she has all this stuff; but a sense of humour? Debatable.

‘So all you need now is a SIM and some credit. Please tell me you at least have enough money for that.’

‘I’ve got about 20 bucks at home …’

‘God, you’re useless. C’mon.’

‘Where?’

‘To your place,’ she says really slow, because she thinks I am, ‘and then into town.’

I chuck my notes back into my bag and follow her. She’s left on her computer, the lights and the heater but she doesn’t even notice, just walks out like she’s never been told off about wasting power and how much the bill is this month.

Duke is still eating the sandwiches on the lawn. I think the sticky cream cheese has slowed him down a little. Stone Cold steps towards him, pretending that she’ll take the sandwiches, and he growls at her.

‘You’re so frickin’ dumb, dog.’

Inside, Stone Cold takes a twenty from Shelley’s purse – she doesn’t sneak it or anything, she just takes it like it’s hers.

‘Mum. We’re going into town.’

‘I thought you were studying.’

‘We are. Bugs needs something from her place, OK?’

‘Will you be back in time for dinner?’

‘I don’t know. I’ll grab Maccas or something in town.’

‘Char. You know we like to eat together.’ There’s something in Shelley’s tone. Is it a warning, a plea or a negotiation?

‘Fine. I’ll be back for dinner then.’

‘Do you need a lift into …’

‘BYE.’ Stone Cold shuts the door on her mother’s voice. ‘Sorry about that.’

‘It’s OK.’

It’s cold outside. The air has that icy feel, chilled by the mountains and the lake. Stone Cold wraps her hoodie thing around her tightly. It is lightweight, like merino or something, not enough to keep winter out.

‘You should grab a jacket or something.’

‘God, Bugs.’ Stone Cold pulls the hood up. ‘I thought I left my mum inside. Let’s just walk fast.’

So we do, which is good because at this pace it’s not easy to talk so I don’t have to listen to her blah, blah, blah about how hard she has it. We walk down the walkway past the park and head to Ngamotu Road.

‘We should have taken the lift from your mum. You live ages from town.’

‘Where’s your place?’

‘Right next to school.’

‘God, Bugs. Why didn’t we just go there after school instead of walking all the way to my place and all the way back again?’

I pick up my pace, striding ahead of her. Whose idea was this in the first place? Who had a stupid little fight with their mum that meant we had to walk instead of getting a lift into town?

Stone Cold has stopped. She’s looking at the street sign across the road.

‘When I was little I thought that if I walked all the way down Gillies Ave I’d end up in Auckland. I thought that because there was a Gillies Ave there too, they were the same road.’

‘Did you live in Auckland?’

‘For a while. We’re never in one place very long.’ Maybe that’s why she doesn’t talk about her old friends; there are too many that have been lost in her moves. ‘But Dad reckons we’re here to stay now.’

She’s sort of quiet, not just because we’re out of breath but sort of quiet in herself.

‘Can I ask you something?’

Stone Cold steels herself as if I’m going to ask her something super personal here on Gillies Ave. ‘OK.’

‘You guys know that you live close to Tauhara, right? Why did you enrol in town?’

‘Dad wanted me to, he went there too.’

I guess that’s as good a reason to pick a school as any.

‘Besides, I totally rock that kilt.’

I laugh, just a little, because that was sort of funny.

We keep walking, walking fast to keep the cold away. We cruise up Rifle Range – past the roundabout, left up Duncan, then Tonga and home to Rāwhiti.

‘This is your place?’

I hate it when she says shit like that – it makes me, I don’t know, defensive. And that pisses me off because I shouldn’t have to defend my place, not to her, not to anyone, because there isn’t anything wrong with it. It is just a house. So our weatherboards are made to look like wood – not made with proper timber – and under our carpets there’s probably chipboard instead of floorboards. It’s a cottage, not much bigger than her sleep-out – two bedrooms, a kitchen, bathroom and lounge squeezed in, but I have my own bedroom. Our house is at the front – another house is built behind, like they are houses on a Monopoly board squished together to make as much rent as possible from those who land here. Mum reckons when she was my age there was this really cool old house here, like a villa or something – We used to call it the murder house – but that place is long gone. Why have one house when you can have two? We have a little patch of garden out the front, a few flowers, a bit of lawn. If Mum had the time Shelley has it would be primo, but in the middle of winter it just looks sad and uncared for.

‘Yeah, this is it.’ I lead her around to the back gate. It’s a big wooden gate, taller than me. I stick my hands through the hole and unlock the padlock on the other side. I let Stone Cold through and the rottie next door starts up.

‘Hey Sarge, it’s just me.’ Sarge looks pretty scary – he has a scar running down his face and one eye is missing – but he’s a big softy really. When Kēhua was a kitten she got herself stuck between the railings in the fence. All we heard inside was barking, so I ran outside and I could only see the cat’s fluffy little bum and Sarge’s head down. He was shaking his head side to side – Shit, he’s taken her head off, he’s eaten my kitten – and I got there and there’s Kēhua: claws out on one of her tiny front paws, swiping at poor Sarge’s nose. I twisted her out of the fence, – all the time she’s still spitting and swiping – and I pulled her out and she legged it and there’s Sarge and me covered in tiny little scratches. So he’s cool, Sarge.

But he’s not cool with Stone Cold. It’s like he’s trying to warn me with his grumbling little barks. I want to say She’s cool, she’s with me – but dogs, they see through all that bullshit.

I let Stone Cold go in first when I open the back door. She walks through the ‘laundry’, which is just really a tub and a washer-dryer tucked behind a door into the kitchen, and into the lounge in all of about five steps. She stands next to the table in the lounge and moves her head slowly around, taking in the panorama like she’s walked into somewhere that can’t exist in the ‘real’ world.

Yeah, this is it.

‘My bedroom’s through there.’ We skim past the couch, which looks too big all of a sudden, into the hall … can you call it a ‘way’ when it’s about a metre square? And suddenly I’m a tour guide: ‘Bathroom, Mum’s room, my room.’

My room. I have a big window that looks out the back. Poor Sarge is still pacing up and down, still on active duty. I kneel on my bed and draw the curtains. I told Mum that I like sleeping with my head near the window because it keeps me cool, but that’s a whole lot of bullshit. A bed under the window is a soft landing, if you get what I mean.

Stone Cold’s doing that annoying chin tilt thing. She looks like she should have those white gloves on that posh ladies probably wear when they’re checking if their servants have dusted sufficiently – Tut, tut. This really will not do, Jeeves. I feel kind of ashamed that I haven’t made my bed, so I try to pull up my duvet. Kēhua has made herself a nest in my bed, sleeping under the covers like she’s a person.

‘Out, cat.’

‘You have a cat? Cats love me.’

Stone Cold is on the bed patting Kēhua so hard I think she might snap her spine. Kēhua meows in protest, which is strange; she never meows – that’s why we called her Kēhua, because she’s silent and it’s like she’s haunting our house. Stone Cold is talking to her like she’s a baby, and when she tries to hold Kēhua like one the cat twists out of her grip and is gone.

Yeah. Cats love you about the same as dogs do.

Stone Cold lies on my bed while I look for something to wear. I kind of hoped that she’d leave the room, but I guess I have to get changed in front of her. I pull some trackies up over my tights and under my skirt and then take off the skirt. I chuck a hoodie over my school shirt and some sneaks on my feet and I’m ready.

‘Is that a stereo?’

I put together my stereo. It’s a couple of old speakers and an amp that I’ve plugged an old Discman into.

‘You can use that phone as an MP3 player,’ she says, like I’m some sort of refugee from the eighties who thinks that CDs are the shit. She picks up the Discman. ‘So you can give this back to your Grandma.’

I grab my twenty from a wooden box on my bookcase – a ‘jewellery’ box, I guess it would be if I had any. ‘C’mon, let’s go.’

Stone Cold walks ahead of me; I close and lock doors as I go. I’m fiddling with the lock on the back door when she says ‘It’s like they’re staring at me. Creepy,’ and there’s Sarge sitting directly opposite us and Kēhua is sitting on top of the fence and they are; they’re staring us down, staking claim to their territory.

I open the back gate for Stone Cold: ‘Bye, creeps.’ Awesome, she doesn’t have the sense to shut up; that’s gonna be handy.

It’s already getting dark when we walk into town. I mean the shops, because our place is pretty much in town already. We’re walking down Scannell Street and a voice behind us goes: ‘Step you out for those shoes,’ and I’m thinking Oh great, now big mouth over here will say something stupid and we will actually have to fight. But Stone Cold looks pretty freaked out; she’s closed her eyes and is whispering, ‘Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.’

It looks like I’ll have to be the hero, so I turn around …

‘Fuck you, Jez.’

‘You were shitting yourself.’

‘I was not.’ I hit his arm hard because I was. Stone Cold is just a giggling mess. Jez puts his arms around us, but I shrug it off because I’m pissed with his dumb joke.

‘Where are you ladies off to?’

‘Bugs needs a SIM card for her phone.’

‘You got a phone?’ I give Jez the phone. ‘Far …’

‘I gave it to her.’

‘You got one for me too?’

Stone Cold looks at me and then the phone like she’s dying to let him keep it. I take the phone from Jez. ‘You already have one.’ Stone Cold looks relieved.

‘But not as flash as that.’

‘You’d just lose it anyway.’

‘No I wouldn’t. I’m careful with my shit.’

‘Oh, like your skateboard, your school books, your shoes …’

And suddenly we’re not all jokey jokey ha ha any more. ‘I didn’t lose them, B.’

It’s cold. I shove my hands into my pockets and Stone Cold wraps her arms tighter around her chest.

‘You should have a jacket,’ Jez says to her.

‘I’m OK.’ She’s sort of shivering but I can’t tell if it’s real or if she’s milking it. Whatever it is, it works: Jez takes off his jacket, his Second XV jacket that he worked so hard to fundraise for, and gives it to her.

‘I’m hot from practice anyway.’

‘Thanks.’ And she’s one of those simpering girls from high school romances – bleugh.

Thank God we’re in town; the bright lights make romance difficult. I duck into the nearest dairy while the two of them talk outside. I grab a SIM and a top–up, handing my twenty over, and I look at them laughing together, like they have a real connection.

Outside, Stone Cold takes the phone and SIM from me and sets it up. She texts herself and Jez so they’ve got my number.

Jez looks at his phone and laughs with her. I try to join in, but Stone Cold has deleted the sent message.

‘Ladies, I’ve gotta go.’ Jez is jogging on the spot; I bet he regrets giving her that jacket now.

‘See ya.’ Stone Cold checks out his butt as he jogs away. ‘What are you doing now?’

‘Home. I’ve got to finish my homework.’

‘I didn’t think you’d be such a swot, Bugs. Ha! Bug swat!’

God she’s annoying.

‘Since you’re no fun I guess I’ll ring Mum and have her pick me up.’

‘OK. Bye.’

‘What? You’re just going to leave me out here alone? I could get raped.’

‘Outside a dairy? You’ll be fine.’ I wave the phone at her. ‘Text me if you get in trouble.’

‘Oh yeah, great plan, I’ll just ask the rapist to wait while I text my friend.’

Damn. She said it again, and now I feel kind of obligated, kind of like if she says it enough it must be true. So I wait with her and listen to her wonder what it means that Jez gave her his jacket – you were cold and he’s cool – and what her next move should be and if she should keep the jacket – no, it’s his jacket – and blah, blah, blah until thank God Shelley pulls up in a big fuck-off four-wheel drive.

‘Can I drive you home, Bugs?’

‘It’s OK, I’m not far away.’ For some reason I don’t want her to see my house.

‘Get in, Bugs. What kind of mother would I be if I let you walk home in the dark?’

I hop in the back and Stone Cold navigates her mum through the mean streets of home. We pull up outside my house with a jerk, as if the car doesn’t believe that people actually live here either. But Shelley doesn’t say anything but goodbye, and I say thanks and shut the car door with a heavy clunk and vroom! They’ve gone.

Shit. Mum’s home. Her car is in the driveway. I put my hand on the bonnet like they do in crime shows – Still warm; she must have just got in.

Sarge greets me with a little bark as I open the back gate, as if to ask Are you alone?

‘Yup. All by myself, Sarge, all by myself.’

I open the back door. The kitchen is full of steam from the big pot of boiling water on the stove. Mum’s cooking pasta or something. There mustn’t have been any leftovers from the hotel’s restaurant today. Mum’s still got her uniform on – a crisp white shirt tucked into a straight, black skirt. She’s taken off her jacket and the colourful scarf that she usually has tied in a bow around her neck – With a Suzanne Clip! – she always says, and laughs even though I can’t see a joke in it. Her black hair is still in the twist she put it in this morning and the fake pearl earrings are still in her ears. She’s still got her pantyhose on but her black leather heels have been kicked off on the floor in the lounge. I pick them up and take them to her room. I pull her slippers from her wardrobe and give them to her before she ruins her pantyhose on the strip of metal that separates the kitchen lino from the carpet in the lounge.

‘You’re home late for a school night. What about your homework?’

‘It did it in my free period.’ Lies.

‘Where have you been?’

‘At a friend’s …’ Double lies.

‘With Jez? You know I don’t like you walking across the control gate bridge at night.’

‘No, you know he had practice. I have other friends, you know …’ She kind of snorts at me like I’ve told a joke. Loser. Nice, that’s what Mum thinks of me.

‘Anyway, you don’t have to worry.’ I hold up the phone. ‘You can call me.’

‘Where did you get this from?’

‘I told you, a friend.’

‘Who is this friend?’

‘Char-MAINE.’ God, I’ve been hanging with her too long – I’m beginning to sound like her.

‘Charmaine who?’

‘Fox.’

Mum looks at me. ‘What’s with the attitude Bugs?’

Oh, that’s rich. ‘I don’t have the attitude. You do.’

‘What?’ It’s funny how much can be said in one syllable; she says what but she means: Be careful girl, I’ve had a long day and the last thing I need is this.

But I’m pissed too, so fuck what happens next. ‘Accusing me. A friend gave me a present.’

‘A girl you’ve known for what? Five minutes, gives you a phone worth hundreds …’

‘She didn’t need it any more.’

‘So she just gives it away? Really, Bugs?’

‘Just say it.’

‘I didn’t bring you up to lie and steal …’

‘I didn’t steal … I’ve never stolen anything in my life.’ Those other things don’t count at this moment, OK? ‘I may have fucked up your life, Mum, but I’m not a fuck-up.’

She looks at me and I decide that I’ll try one of Stone Cold’s chin tilts, which is kind of hard to pull off when you’re the same height as your opponent.

BRIIING!

It could be the start of Round 2 but in reality it’s just the kitchen timer. Mum turns away, picks up the pot of boiling pasta and dumps it into a colander in the sink. The steam gathers on the ceiling like storm clouds do in the movies. Mum stirs the pasta into a tomato sauce, scoops some onto a plate and slides it to me.

‘Eat.’

Like she can shut me up with food. ‘I’m not hungry.’ I’m starving.

‘You didn’t fuck up my life, Bugs.’ Like working six days a week in a hotel to pay for a shoebox house isn’t fucked up. ‘But I won’t let you ruin yours. Give me the phone.’

She doesn’t believe me, and I’m just so frustrated and angry and upset that I can’t say anything. She holds out her hand for the phone and I’m powerless. I’m a five-year-old kid who doesn’t want to share, so her mother takes her toy and gives it away to teach her a lesson. I give her the phone, and I don’t want to give her the satisfaction of seeing me cry, so I go to my room and flop on the bed.

But she won’t let me get away. She stands outside my door going through my contacts, and calls Stone Cold.

‘No, this isn’t Bugs, Charmaine. It’s her mother. I was hoping to speak to your mother, please.’ Mum has her ‘top-of-the-KiwiHost-course-for-customer-service’ voice on. ‘Hello, Mrs Fox? Shelley. This is Bugs’ mum, Nikki. It’s nice talk to you too. Yes, she did get in safely. I’m just calling to ask about the phone Bugs brought home. She says that Charmaine gave it to her …’

I can tell from the mmmms and the uh-huhs that my mum is pissed that she’s wrong. So wrong. I reckon she wishes I had stolen it just so she could be right, so she wouldn’t have to apologise.

Kēhua crawls down from my windowsill and licks my face. I try to push her away, but she loves the taste of salt on my cheeks. I put her on the floor and she runs out of the room. Lucky cat.

‘OK, sorry to disturb you. Yes, we should meet up sometime. Thank you.’

Mum hangs up the phone and leans in my door frame. I turn over and face the wall.

She comes in and sits on my bed. I shuffle over; not to give her room, just to get away from her. I don’t want her to touch me, to try and hug me like everything is OK. Because it’s not.

She keeps her distance though. She talks, but it’s like it’s not to me but the room. ‘You know I’m trying to do the best for you Bugs, eh?’

Then she puts the phone on my pillow and stands up.

Nothing. No – I’m sorry Bugs, I should’ve believed you Bugs – just a lame excuse.

‘Mum?’

‘Yes?’ She sounds, I don’t know, hopeful.

‘Shut the door.’

She leaves and the door shuts out the light from the rest of the house. And I’m hungry, and angry, and empty, and alone.