‘That’d be it,’ Dad said. ‘Wasting police resources over a bloody suicide.’
‘How do you know that’s what he did?’ Cassie asked.
‘SES find dozens of bodies a year like that,’ Dad said. ‘Car abandoned, and they’re dangling by their necks from a tree a few yards away.’
We chewed in silence, and when the ads came on Dad turned back to the table. ‘So how do you know this Ian, then?’ he said to Cassie.
‘I dunno,’ Cassie said. ‘I just met him.’
‘Where?
‘At the park.’
‘At the park?’ asked Dad.
‘Yeah.’
‘What, you just saw him and thought you’d say hello?’
‘Something like that,’ Cassie said. ‘I dunno.’
‘Speak up, mate,’ Dad said. ‘Can’t hear you when you mumble.’
‘I guess.’
‘It’s nice you’ve made a friend, Cass,’ Mum said, smiling. ‘He seems like a nice boy. Very polite when I met him.’
‘I s’pose.’
‘And he’s new to town then, is he?’
Cassie sat up straighter. ‘He lives in your old house, Mum. On Daley Street. They just moved in.’
‘Bit of a coincidence,’ said Dad. His eyes squinted just a fraction.
‘Invite him around for tea one night,’ Mum said. ‘His parents too.’
The news came back on and we stopped talking. There was something strange moving through the air, like Ian had left behind some of his skin dust and it hadn’t quite settled yet. Dad took a sip of his beer and burped. I could smell it from across the table. He picked up his chop and sucked the bone.
3.
AT THE END OF JANUARY we started back at school. On Monday morning, the first day back, I emptied my bag on the kitchen floor. Pencil shavings sprinkled the lino, and a mouldy sandwich thumped onto the floor, straining through the Glad Wrap. We cobbled together our stationery, and as Cassie made our lunch I peeked into Mum and Dad’s room. Dad had left for work already, but Mum was fast asleep. There were coloured teacups beside her bed in a cluster, as though the table had sprouted mushrooms.
‘Bye, Mum,’ I whispered, and clicked the door shut.
When we got to school we chained up our bikes and found our classroom. Our new teacher, Mrs Raymond, was standing at the door, saying hello to the parents who’d dropped off their kids. Dad always said the kids in town were ferals. He said when he first moved here everyone had been respectable, but now they were all on the dole, only renting out here because the land was cheap. He said they popped out babies to get welfare money and then let their kids run wild. All the normal kids who live on the farms travelled an hour to schools in the city, and some of the kids Cassie’s age even went to boarding school and only came home on weekends and holidays. Cassie once asked if he could go there as well, but Dad said it was too expensive and Mum said he’d get lonely, so far from home.
We dumped our bags on the port rack and went into the classroom. The first thing I noticed about Mrs Raymond were her fingers, tight gold rings on most of them that made her fingers look sore. Her eyebrows were drawn on with pencil in thin black lines. She’d been Cassie’s teacher as well, and he told us not to tell her he was our brother, told us to be quiet and polite and try to get on her good side. I smiled at her when she looked at us. Wally kept his head down and barged into the room.
Mrs Raymond had set nametags on the desks. Wally found his at the back of the room and sat down. I went to sit next to him but someone else’s nametag was at the desk beside his. It must have been a mistake. Wally and me always sat together. ‘Just find yours and switch them if you care so much,’ Wally said.
I found my desk at the other side of the room. I switched the nametag, sat down next to Wally and emptied my things into my tidy tray.
When the bell rang Mrs Raymond went over the class rules that she’d laminated and tacked to a wall. We went around the room and had to say our names and hobbies and what we did on the holidays. When it was my turn, before I even opened my mouth Mrs Raymond put her hand up to stop me speaking.
‘That’s not where I put you,’ she said.
‘But I always sit next to Wally.’
‘Stand up,’ she said.
‘We sat next to each other last year,’ I said.
‘I don’t care what you did last year,’ she said. ‘Now stand up.’
Mrs Raymond made a boy across the room switch desks with me, stared at us from the blackboard while we gathered up our things. I could feel everyone else watching me too. Mrs Raymond stood in front of me as I dumped everything into my new tidy tray. Her neck was splotchy and the smell of her made my nose tingle. She picked up a Wizz Fizz from my tray.
‘Did you bring enough for the whole class?’ she asked.
‘No,’ I said.
‘No sweets unless there’s enough to share around,’ she said. ‘It’s bad manners.’
‘But it’s my little lunch,’ I said. I wanted to tell her it was bad manners to touch people’s things without asking, but I remembered what Cassie had said.
She held the Wizz Fizz with pinched fingers, like she was holding something grubby. I’d been saving it from Christmas, a treat for the first day of school. She dropped it in her desk drawer and started handing out a worksheet. I felt prickles behind my eyes but I zapped them away with my mind, like Cassie had taught me to do.
‘We didn’t get to say what we did on our holiday,’ Wally called out, even though we hadn’t done anything.
‘Put your hand up,’ Mrs Raymond said, putting the spare sheets on her desk.
Wally raised his hand. ‘We didn’t get to say anything.’
‘No need,’ Mrs Raymond said. ‘I know who you are.’
We were supposed to peel the nametags from their papers and stick them to the front of our uniforms. I put my nametag at the bottom of my dress, where no one could see it. Wally peeled his off and scrunched it into a sticky ball, pinged it across the room. Wally never cared about getting in trouble.
I knew everyone in my class from last year, except for the boy I had to switch desks with. I’d seen him around, but he’d been kept down and was doing year six again because he had a brain the size of a pea. He had scabby lips and a bubbly mole on his ear that was so big it looked stuffed with pus. His name was Brendan and Wally said he was a little bit spastic.
At little lunch he followed Wally and me from the port racks to the bubblers.
‘I know you,’ he said, jamming his empty water bottle under a bubbler.
I stared at his mole.
‘So what?’ Wally said.
‘Your granddad painted our house,’ Brendan said. ‘My dad kept all the clippings from the paper.’
‘What clippings?’ I asked.
‘He keeps them in a scrapbook. Hundreds of them. Thousands, I bet.’
I looked at Wally, who was staring at Brendan’s ear as well. ‘What are you on about?’ I said.
‘Dad said to watch out for you two.’ Brendan pointed at me, and then at Wally. ‘He said I’m not allowed to be your friend.’
‘Why not?’ I asked.
‘He said the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.’ He opened his mouth to keep talking, but Wally stepped towards the bubblers.
‘Shove,’ Wally said, elbowing Brendan in the ribs.
‘Hey!’ Brendan stumbled a bit, grabbed hold of the side of the trough. ‘Get off.’
‘I said shove.’ Wally flicked Brendan’s mole. ‘Are you a dummy or something?’
Brendan’s water bottle overflowed into the sink. He held on to his ear and looked like he was going to cry, even though he towered over us and Wally was skinny as a twig. Wally bumped Brendan with his hip, and he dropped his water bottle into the bubbler. When he picked it up his hand was shaking. He turned and lurched across the oval.