I take Mum’s breakfast to her. She says she needs a sleep-in, so she’s taking a sick day. I’ve made it my mission to nurse her back to full health this year, even though she says she’s always been in full health and I shouldn’t worry.

She’s collected some stuffing around her stomach since last Christmas, but her face has got thinner—I’m sure of it. Her skin looks like tissue paper stretched out.

She doesn’t look as sickly today as she usually does when she stays home. But that’s probably because she had her hair done last night with my voucher. It’s back to being shimmery blonde and it’s not wonky at all.

She places her warm hand on my face as I lay down the tray with Sultana Bran, a glass of orange juice and raisin toast on it.

‘Oh, thanks so much.’

‘Maybe this will help you feel better.’

‘I really am all right, darlin’. I just want a rest today. I’ve been burning the candle at both ends. Just want a day to recharge.’

‘Do you want me to call up Jane and tell her you can’t come in?’

‘No, that’s okay. I already texted her, she’s got Shanelle to cover me. It’s no worries. But it would be great if you could get yourself to school on the bus?’

‘Sure, Mum.’

I go into the hallway and elbow Trav’s door open. The stale stench of a night’s production of breath seizes my nostrils. I pull my shirt up over my mouth and nose and find Trav in bed swiping across his phone screen.

‘Mum’s sick,’ I say, muffled through the shirt. ‘We’ve got to take the bus. We’re going to leave in—’

‘Rack off, queef biscuit. I’ll get there my own way.’

‘Fine, but don’t disturb Mum, please. I think her coming to pick me up last night from Tyson’s when she should have been sleeping has knocked her around.’

‘Not everything’s your fault,’ he says. ‘I could beat myself up as much as you too, but I don’t. Get over yourself.’

‘All right, announcements, announcements.’ Catling kneads his forehead as he reads from the blue bulletin sheet. ‘Here’s one of import: there will be a road-safety speech tomorrow at Middle School assembly. Who here has obtained their Learner Driver Permit or intends to in their lifetime?’ Catling peers over his glasses as all hands limply rise.

‘Did you know,’ he raises his pitch, ‘that by the time everyone in this class is thirty years old…one of you… will be dead?’

Catling pauses for effect as a room of petrified faces stare back at him.

‘Statistically speaking, of course,’ he says. ‘It could be none of you. Or it could be several.’ His lips curl into a smirk. ‘Don’t believe me? Look up the statistics yourself.’

Leon pulls out his phone and starts typing.

‘No, not now, Leon. Phones away.’ He rubs his forehead again and paces from one side of the room to the other, eyeballing a different student with each word. ‘It might be cancer, it might be suicide, but it might also be your own fault.’ He waves his finger. ‘Because you are risk-takers! If it’s not a car crash, it will be a drunken coward’s punch. You put yourselves in irresponsible situations!’

‘I’ll be thirty-one!’ Shitty blurts out, and appeals to the room for laughs. A few kids force nervous giggles.

‘What?’ Catling says.

‘It’s a joke,’ Raj explains. ‘Cos he’s older. When everyone else is thirty, he’ll be thirty-one.’

‘Oh. With your lifestyle, Mr Barnes, I somehow doubt that.’

Owned! And by Catling—maybe he’s not so bad. Leon’s smiling too. But Naya doesn’t get it at all—she still hasn’t worked out what an arsehole Shitty is. She’s ogling him like he’s a poor puppy that just got stepped on. It’s the same look I didn’t want, but now I’d pay to have it back.

He doesn’t deserve her compassion. Not that I really care or anything, but it’s the principle of it that pisses me off. Naya needs to be schooled on Shitty and the concept of karma.

After the smackdown, Catling sits at his desk and holds up a bundle of paper.

‘The “My Life Right Now” short stories you worked on over the break have been marked.’

‘Finally,’ Leon whispers to me. ‘Every other class got theirs back a week ago.’

‘General notes: I gave you all a lot of time on this—and no word limit—and still the longest piece was not even eight hundred words. Disheartening, to say the least. And even worse, most of them were absolute bores. I’m going to make you rewrite and resubmit them in two weeks. But first, so you can all learn, who would like to volunteer their story for public post-partum? We need to get to the meat and bone of what you all can improve.’

No one says a word.

‘Okay. Mr Carter it is then.’ My eyes drop to my lap. My cheeks burn. I check my peripheries. Naya seems chuffed about it and Shitty’s devil grin is back. They both love my suffering.

Catling punches my paper into the air. There’s a ‘C’ circled in red texta.

He starts pacing again.

‘The observations are interesting enough, but the problem is there is very little happenstance, meaning that nothing really happens, it’s all thoughts.’

That’s bullshit. Plenty of things happen, they’re just more internal. Like life. Crazy things don’t happen every day in real life, so why pretend?

‘I want more,’ Catling says. ‘Your lives are not as mundane as you think. It’s all there—if you excoriate enough, you shall discover. I want betrayal! I want suspense! I want death!’

I look around. Almost all heads are down, directed squarely at phones in laps. Only Naya is watching.

‘I disagree,’ she says. ‘Great stories don’t always have violence. There doesn’t have to be a death.’

Catling looks like a shark about to feed. ‘There’s always a death, Miss Kajang.’

When the bell finally rings, Catling makes me stay back. I watch Naya leave with Shitty. Catling says he expects more from me in particular, and gives me a sheet of writing tips. I have no idea why.

When I make it out to our benches, it’s just the old crew—no Naya.

‘Catling is nuts, bruz,’ Leon says.

‘No shit,’ Jimmy says. ‘Where you been the whole year?’

‘He’s on another level now. And what he said to Shitty was actually cold.’

‘Nah bruh, Catling knows that Shitty don’t care.’

‘Did you see the way that Naya was looking at him?’ I say.

‘Nuh. She looking thirsty? Panties dripping? I ain’t surprised.’

‘Jimmy, for fuck’s sake!’ Leon says.

‘What I say?! He came over the other day to “work on homework” with her’—Jimmy makes air-quotes with his fingers—‘if you get me. I swear she plays up the whole being smart thing. She’s simple. All she wants is a bad-boy boyfriend, like every other thot at school. She’s got posters of tatted-up six-pack motherfuckers on her walls, and she’s always writing in this stupid yellow book too—no doubt scribbling about her crush on Shitty. Point is, she spits big game, but under it she’s just like every other basic bitch.’

‘I’ve got to go, guys,’ I say. ‘I’ve got a migraine.’

‘Oh, shit, mate, well get better soon,’ Leon says. ‘Let me know if you need Dad to write you another a script or something.’

‘Thanks. Will do.’

I can’t take a minute more of this place today. Mum’s sick, and I should be there to care for her, not wasting my time here. I crawl through the hole in the fence and start jogging to her temporary house. I try to clear my mind. Try to think about nothing but the black bitumen beneath me and the grey sky above me.

But everything feels dramatic right now.

Mum’s rental is right on the outskirts of Banarang, in the last residential street before the highway. I can jog there in exactly twenty-four minutes.

I can’t be bothered getting the key from the garage, so I knock on the front door three times.

No answer. She must be asleep.

I knock again and the door clicks open.

Huh? Trav always locks the door. It’s one of the only things he does right every time. Someone must have broken in. I can feel it—there’s been a robbery.

‘Mum. You there?’ I call out. I tiptoe across the lounge room carpet. My stomach’s churning. I look down the hallway. It’s empty.

Then I hear some murmurings and the floor creaks.

The robber must still be here.

There may be a hostage situation in Mum’s bedroom.

I scurry into the kitchen and slam my back against the wall. No point being quiet: he knows I’m inside. I need to work fast.

I hear the drip of the tap in the kitchen sink. I step towards it. There’s an extra mug in there, along with cutlery and a couple of plates. Trav must have cleaned up for once, or at least dumped the dishes in the sink. It’s a nice gesture. And a pity Mum won’t see it—since she’s dead. Or soon will be.

I pull the kitchen drawer open.

No steak knives.

No bread knives.

Nothing with a serrated edge.

I grab a butter knife, dart into the toilet and pull the door shut. I turn the lock and dial triple zero on my phone. Time is of the essence. I should barge into Mum’s room and launch myself at him with my knife right now. But it might be Wayno, the homeless guy who lives in the park, and he’s too dirty to get close to. Maybe he just came in to use the shower and didn’t know Mum was home, so he freaked out and attacked her. A lot of homicides happen that way.

On the phone, I hear the familiar message about how triple zero is for emergencies only. Yes, this is a fucking emergency. My mum’s dead and the house she’s staying in is being ransacked.

I hear footsteps coming up the hall.

He’s coming for me, I know it.

This triple zero message is stupidly long for something that is meant to be a ‘rapid response’.

Footsteps pad closer still.

The knob in front of me turns, then jams.

My call finally gets through. ‘Hello you’ve called Emergency Services—’

‘Bones? Is that you in there?’

It’s Mum’s voice. But I’m not surprised. The thief will have a knife to her throat. It’s a trap. At least the call-centre girl is going to hear all of this, even if we die.

‘Armed burglary,’ I hiss into the phone, ‘twenty-seven Sutton Crescent, Banarang.’

‘Bones! Open up now!’

I raise the butter knife above my shoulder. Time to attack. I whip open the door and find Mum there, looking unimpressed and holding her hand out.

‘Hand me the phone.’

I look to either side of her. I peek behind her, into the kitchen. Nothing. He’s crafty, I’ll give him that.

‘Now!’

I pass Mum the phone so she can report the crime in detail.

‘Hi, hi, I’m very sorry,’ she says. ‘There’s nothing wrong here, it’s my son. He’s a bit overzealous…no, yes, I’m definitely sure, thank you…Yes, cancel it please…I appreciate that.’

But then the front door clicks shut.

The burglar is still at large.

I try to bolt out of the toilet, but Mum’s body blocks my exit. I go to weave around, but she spreads her arms and legs across the door frame.

‘What are you doing, Bones?’

‘I’m trying to catch the thief, please move.’

‘There is no thief, and you know it. He’s my friend. And he’s leaving now.’

‘Did he hurt you? You’re sick. Do you need to go to the hospital?’

‘I told you, I’m not sick. Please stop this.’ Her voice cracks. ‘I just didn’t think it was right for you to meet him yet. But we can’t do this anymore. You can’t do this anymore. You have to enter the real world. Now!’

An engine rumbles outside.

I’m going to find out just what he is. And who he is.

I limbo under Mum’s arms and sprint through the kitchen into the lounge room and out onto the verandah. My knife is still gripped in my fist.

There’s a blue Hyundai sedan parked across the street. The windows are tinted but I make out a man with glasses inside. I stampede down the driveway. I raise the knife, but the car rockets off the curb.

I chase it up the street, copping mouthfuls of exhaust. I throw the butter knife at it like a javelin. It soars high then clinks off the boot and falls to the road. The car brakes and the window winds down.

‘Seriously, Kate?’ A gruff voice. ‘Is this really happening?’

Mum scurries up behind me.

‘I’m sorry!’ she shouts. ‘So sorry.’

The car concedes defeat and retreats around the corner.

He is a thief. He’s trying to steal my mum from my dad. And his license plate is GOC-369.

Mum sighs and puts her arms on my shoulders.

‘I don’t need you to protect me, Bones. I need you to just be a kid.’

‘Are you safe now, Mum?’

Her chest deflates.

‘You know I am.’

‘Good. I’ve got to get back to class.’

For the first time in my life I run away from her.

My eyes sting trying to stop the tears. Eventually I let them come. I slow down and walk, wiping my face then wailing again. Why would you ever stop crying once you’ve started? There’s so much to be sad about.

I suppose it all makes me a pussy.

No, even worse.

I’m a soft pair of testicles.