Augustine's Lunch
Date: 2021-07-15 06:45:04+00:00
Description: Fourteen-year-old Gus goes from being one of popular kids to a victim on the lowest rung, all thanks to the new boy Steve. And as if that’s not bad enough, Gus’s big brother Luke develops an interest in the one girl Gus has his heart set on—and expects Gus to help him get her! What’s a tender-hearted, budding gourmet to do? Lie down and take it—or take action? ‘ Augustine’s Lunch may not do much for sausage rolls, but as a novel about friendship, it’s funny, breezy, wise and satisfying, and goes down a treat.’ Garry Disher ‘This is a funny, gentle, mischievous book, and it made me very hungry.
Publisher: Ligature

LAURA BLOOM

AUGUSTINE’S LUNCH

About Untapped

Most Australian books ever written have fallen out of print and become unavailable for purchase or loan from libraries. This includes important local and national histories, biographies and memoirs, beloved children’s titles, and even winners of glittering literary prizes such as the Miles Franklin Literary Award.

Supported by funding from state and territory libraries, philanthropists and the Australian Research Council, Untapped is identifying Australia’s culturally important lost books, digitising them, and promoting them to new generations of readers. As well as providing access to lost books and a new source of revenue for their writers, the Untapped collaboration is supporting new research into the economic value of authors’ reversion rights and book promotion by libraries, and the relationship between library lending and digital book sales. The results will feed into public policy discussions about how we can better support Australian authors, readers and culture.

See untapped.org.au for more information, including a full list of project partners and rediscovered books.

Readers are reminded that these books are products of their time. Some may contain language or reflect views that might now be found offensive or inappropriate.

for Melita

Contents

1. A Hairy Chunk Of Meat

2. Traditional Australian

3. Life Drawing

4. Falling In

5. Pure Instinct

6. Chicken

7. A Technical Virgin

8. The Invisible Man

9. As If

10. The Promise

11. Hot Tamale!

12. Sleeping Dogs

13. Serve Cold

14. Blood And Beer

15. The Ride To Oblivion

16. Unhygienic

17. Blood Brothers

18. An Oasis In The Wilderness

19. D-Day

18. Psychomania

21. Shake

22. Some Chocolate And A Fork In The Road

23. In Deep … Bush

24. The Hunger

23. Augustine’s Lunch

26. Gus’s Lunch

Epilogue

1. A Hairy Chunk Of Meat

‘Eat it!’

It was grey, not brown the way sausage meat should be.

‘Go on! Eat it!’

The flecks of orange were much brighter than any carrot Gus had seen. The pastry sat around the meat like a soggy paper bag instead of hugging it softly, like pastry is supposed to. But pastry is only butter and water and flour, and that can’t hurt you … can it? Cautiously Gus turned it over. The bottom was charred and dark with grease. He took a deep breath.

‘Augustine.’ Steven’s tone was foreboding.

‘Gus,’ corrected Gus, trying to keep his voice steady.

Steve put a hand on his shoulder. A meaty, hairy, ugly hand. Probably better not to have said that.

‘Augustine! Are you with me now?’

Gus swallowed. ‘Yes, Steve.’

‘Only friends call each other by their nicknames—don’t you know that?’

Gus nodded, avoiding the curious eyes of a kid in the year below him who was standing to the side of the bench. The other guys in the quadrangle had looked away when Steve first started hassling, but now they were slowly gathering. Any moment they would reach the critical mass of people needed to make a crowd, Gus calculated. After that people would start coming over just to see what the commotion was about.

‘We’re not friends, are we, Augustine?’

Steve’s tone was polite, but there was a glint in his eye Gus mistrusted. It was becoming increasingly obvious to Gus that Steve was a very strange person. Yet for some reason no one else seemed to have realised it yet. Cautiously Gus shook his head.

‘This is why I call you by your proper name. Your friends call you Gus, right?’

Who knew what they’d call him now? Wussbag maybe, or Loser.

‘Let’s see …’ Steve was aware of the crowd too, and Gus realised with a sinking heart he was playing to it. He wanted as big an audience as he could find before dealing Gus the death blow.

‘Is anybody here friends with this boy?’

Silence.

Well, of course there was silence. Anyone could see that Steve was crazed and cruel and very big. These factors counted for a lot round here, especially the last one, especially among Gus’s friends, all of whom were a year younger than Steve and none of whom was anywhere near as big. Steve was the oldest and biggest boy in their form by far, and the only thing Gus could see to be grateful for right now was that at least they didn’t share any of the same classes.

‘So everybody calls him Augustine from now on, got it?’

Gus hated his full name. It was long and pretentious and a mystery to him why his parents had named him that. No one called him Augustine, they never had.

‘This boy is Gus only to his friends, okay? And if he has a friend, I want to know about it!’

Could this kind of thing happen in this day and age? wondered Gus incredulously. Post Nazism, post fascism, post cold war, post primary school—could he be bullied by an overheated fathead like Steve? Gus looked up. The faces surrounding him were blankly curious. Evidently, yes. They weren’t on Steve’s side, but they weren’t on Gus’s, either.

You had to admit, Steve was taking an original approach to being the new boy in school. You also couldn’t argue with the fact that it was proving to be an effective way of raising his profile—look how many people were turning out for this performance. The only thing Gus couldn’t work out was why Steve had chosen him as his only victim.

‘Now, that’s a fine looking sausage roll you have being offered to you here, Augustine. I love ’em. Eat ’em every day, and look at me.’

Gus didn’t need to look to know that, at fifteen years old, Steve had the muscled, hard body of a grown man. The whole school knew it because every chance he got—swimming, wrestling, water fights in the playground—Steve would strip off and show everyone. By contrast Gus thought of himself as somehow weedy and pudgy at the same time. His growth spurt hadn’t begun yet. Or perhaps it had passed and he was, in fact, a dwarf.

‘Let me go,’ he said quietly, but loud enough for people in the front row to hear. He wanted them to know he was being held against his will.

‘Not before you apologise for insulting my lunch. You really have to learn about manners, Augustine.’

‘I didn’t insult your lunch!’

‘You insulted the canteen food, am I right?’

Obviously no one was going to help him. Gus resolved to get this over with quickly. ‘Sorry for whatever I did, okay?’

‘Whatever you did? Whatever you did?’ whispered Steve dramatically. ‘What you do, every day, is you get out your pansy little lunch box and eat your homemade pansy little lunch. Where I come from, in the country, we wouldn’t stand for it!’

‘But what’s wrong with it?’ asked Gus. Now seemed as good a time as any to get to the bottom of this.

‘What’s wrong is that you think you’re better than everyone else, don’t you? You think the rest of us, who eat what the canteen has to offer, are meatheads.’

‘I don’t think that!’ howled Gus, although he did think Steve was a meathead.

‘Eat it!’

This was more than humiliating, it was anxiety producing. ‘Steve, look, I can’t.’ Gus had a delicate digestive system and could never eat when his stomach was all clenched up the way it was now.

‘Augustine, look, you can. Prove right now what you think of canteen food or everyone here who’s bought canteen food today or yesterday or at any time in their days at St Patrick’s is insulted.’

Although it was all too ridiculous, Gus couldn’t help wondering what a crowd like this would do if they all felt insulted. He took a deep breath and bit into the sausage roll, trying to think of something else, anything, apart from blood and guts on the abattoir floor being swept up after each slaughter and put into the barrels marked ‘sausage rolls’.

‘There!’ Steve looked pleased. ‘And what do you think of it?’

Gus chewed busily, willing himself not to notice the texture of it in his mouth. ‘Delicious.’

He stuffed another huge mouthful in as soon as he’d swallowed the first. He wanted this sausage roll gone and all these guys interested in something else, somewhere else, as soon as possible.

‘I want you to say something more … interesting than that.’

Gus rolled his eyes. He was so stuffed with sausage roll he couldn’t speak But they were waiting. ‘It’s … hearty and … honest.’

Steve nodded. The circle of boys round Gus was so quiet he could hear the cricket score being called out from the oval on the other side of the grounds.

‘It’s … unpretentious food that is both traditional and …’ Swallow. Just one more bite to go. ‘Um …’ He chewed vigorously. They made the pastry for these sausage rolls out of lowest quality hydrogenated oil. It was carcinogenic. And the meat! After the abattoir the meat was put into huge vats to wait for the bacteria levels to go down. Then they put colouring through it and processed it so you couldn’t tell an eyeball from a …

‘Both traditional and … what, Augustine?’ Steve insisted. ‘We’re waiting.’

… from a … brain from a foot or a nose. ‘I’m going to be sick.’

‘This is good, traditional, unpretentious, honest food and he’s going to be sick?’ Steve shouted to the crowd, who laughed for the first time.

But Gus was past caring. He felt the masticated meat come crowding back up his throat. The boys parted in front of him. He reached the garbage bin just in time and threw up the sausage roll, his orange drink, his Florentine biscuit from morning tea, his homemade Bircher muesli from breakfast, and even some black shreds of squid-ink pasta from dinner the night before. He kept retching until there was nothing more left in his stomach.

Gus stayed bent over the stinking garbage bin, gasping, figuring out his next move, unwilling to leave the revolting sight of regurgitated sausage roll for the even more revolting one of Steve. A hand touched his neck and he flinched.

‘Gus.’

It was Brother Nicholas. Most of the Brothers were nice enough, but to Gus they were unapproachable, just like any other teacher. Brother Nicholas was different. He was young and good at cricket. Better than that, he was friendly and relaxed and could talk to young people without making it seem like it was some huge effort or big achievement. Now, though, leaning over a bin full of his own vomit, Gus didn’t even want to see Brother Nicholas.

‘Gus, are you finished? Can you stand up?’

Gus took a deep breath. Brother Nicholas’s face appeared in front of him on the other side of the bin. He mimed revelation. ‘Oh, I get it! You’re watching the bin!’

Gus stood up just so he wouldn’t be subjected to another joke as poor as that one. Brother Nicholas put a hand on his arm and drew him away from the bin. A crowd of kids were still staring at him, probably wondering what it was about Gus that had made Steve pick on him, so they could make sure they didn’t catch it too.

Brother Nicholas casually guided Gus round to the back of the toilet block, to a tap that was set into the wall. Gus washed his face. Brother Nicholas handed him a tissue and Gus used it to wipe his mouth and his eyes.

‘Vomiting brings tears to my eyes,’ he hastened to explain.

‘Would you rather I didn’t ask?’

Gus nodded. The biggest criminals at St Patrick’s were dobbers, and Gus was relieved that he wouldn’t have to lie on Steve’s behalf.

Brother Nicholas walked them back to the main playground. Gus noticed kids noticing them together and he felt as proud now as he had felt embarrassed ten minutes ago. Everyone liked Brother Nicholas.

‘What’s on the menu today?’ This was a question Brother Nicholas regularly asked Gus.

‘Mushrooms.’

‘Of course.’ He was well acquainted with Gus’s passion for mushrooms, because they appeared in just about everything he made.

‘Ricotta, roast capsicum, olive tapenade and mixed salad greens on bread.’

Brother Nicholas nodded seriously. ‘Corn bread or sourdough?’

‘Sourdough.’ Gus reached into his blazer pocket and pulled out a thick package wrapped in brown paper. ‘You better have it.’

‘Oh, Gus, thank you, but I couldn’t!’

‘You may as well. I can’t eat anything now. Anxiety makes my stomach clench.’

‘All the same, Gus, it would be most inappropriate to take a student’s lunch.’

For some reason Gus felt as bad as he had ten minutes ago when Steve had been threatening to kill him with half the school looking on.

‘Gus? Do you want to tell me what it is?’

‘What’s the point of all this effort if no one can appreciate it?’

‘But you appreciate it, don’t you, Gus? Isn’t that enough?’

Gus shook his head. He knew it should be, but it wasn’t.

Brother Nicholas smiled warmly. ‘You have a gift for cooking and you want to give it. That’s wonderful.’

Gus scowled. ‘It’s not wonderful when nobody wants it. It’s f …’ He stopped himself just in time. ‘It’s terrible. Terrible!’

Brother Nicholas was still smiling at him.

‘What?’ asked Gus self-consciously.

‘I know it’s not easy round here, but if you keep developing and working on your gift you’ll be appreciated one day soon, I promise you.’

‘Not around here,’ sighed Gus.

‘I wouldn’t be so sure.’

‘Do you know something that I don’t?’ asked Gus.

‘I know that every challenge contains the seed of its own solution, Gus.’

‘Oh, right,’ said Gus, disappointed.

‘This is an opportunity for growth.’

‘Half a metre and an extra twenty kilos would be good,’ muttered Gus darkly.

‘I mean spiritual growth. In the meantime, as a token of my recognition of your talent and hard work …’

Gus grinned.

‘I’ll take the sandwich.’

Gus handed it over, much comforted. The bell went for fifth period. Brother Nicholas patted him on the shoulder and gave him a push.

‘If anyone asks, will you say you confiscated it?’ Gus teased.

Brother Nicholas raised his hand in farewell as he walked away and Gus climbed the stairs to his locker feeling a little better.

2. Traditional Australian

‘The guy’s obviously a dickhead,’ said Gus’s older brother, Luke, that night at the dinner table, out of the blue. ‘Everyone knows that, Gus. Try not to worry about it. Just lie low until he gets bored.’

‘Who?’ asked Gus’s mother, Dior.

‘No one,’ said Gus quickly.

‘This dickhead at school who’s been giving Gus a hard time,’ replied Luke.

‘How would you know, anyway?’ asked Gus hotly.

‘We go to the same school, remember?’

That meant even the Year Twelves had heard about his sausage-roll humiliation.

‘It’s none of your business.’

‘It’s just boring, seeing you so down,’ said Luke.

‘I’m not down!’

They all paused in their eating to give him a look. Gus rolled his eyes and fell to buttering his bread with great concentration.

‘How about if I ask Groink to have a word with him?’ asked Luke.

‘No!’ shouted Gus, terrified. Getting his big brother’s friends to sort out his problems for him would only make him look worse.

‘Okay! Okay!’ soothed Luke. ‘It was just an idea.’

‘Well, I can put a contract out on him any time you want,’ said his dad, Mark. ‘Whammo! And we’ll be laying pipes over him in Pittwater Road.’

‘Thanks, Dad.’

Mark was a plumber and liked to joke that he had Mafia connections because their family name happened to be Italian. The D’Agostinos had arrived in Australia from Italy over eighty years ago, and Gus often wondered how so little of their Italian-ness could have percolated through to his father or any of their relatives. Gus was the first D’Agostino in living memory to have had a clue about cooking. The only vaguely Italian thing about the D’Agostinos apart from their name was that they were all Catholic—like his mother’s family, who had come to Australia from Ireland. Apart from that Gus couldn’t detect even a hint of European-ness about them: they liked football, not soccer; they’d been the last people Gus knew to switch from blankets to doonas; and they never went to films with subtitles. ‘If I wanted to read I’d stay home with the paper,’ Mark would say. The food they ate at home certainly wasn’t Italian. Mark’s appreciation of food was minimal, while Dior’s culinary skills didn’t even stretch as far as spaghetti bolognese.

‘Lovely dinner, Ma,’ said Mark, scrunching up his napkin and pushing his chair back from the table.

Work in the D’Agostino household was strictly divided along traditional gender lines: Dior did everything inside, and Mark and the boys did everything outside. Unfortunately for Dior their house was large and their garden was small. Gus knew Dior and Mark had discussed his invasion of the kitchen a number of times.

Dior smiled in response to Mark’s compliment. ‘Gus cooked it.’

Gus also knew that Mark wasn’t happy about it.

‘Don’t waste too much of your time cooking, son. It’s not practical.’

But that was typical of Mark—whose idea of practical was a state-of-the-art lawnmower for their six-square-metre patch of lawn—and Gus ignored it.

Mark looked Gus in the eyes. ‘It did taste bloody good.’

It was nothing really. Gus had just discovered that chops retain their moisture if you turn them once, rather than over and over as Dior did because she was always busy and distracted when she was cooking dinner and would forget where she was up to. He had also discovered that potatoes can be delicious if you cut them all to the same size so they cook at the same rate, and it you take them off when they’re soft but still firm—not way before or way after as Dior always seemed to do. That went for veggies too. Gus put them on after the potatoes so they could soften, but took them off in time for them to retain their crunch and flavour. This made quite a change from Dior’s method of putting everything to boil on the stove when she got home and taking it off when Mark was ready to eat. It was easy for Gus’s efforts to attract praise following cooking like Dior’s, but satisfying all the same.

Now Gus looked down at his plate and the anxiety he’d been feeling since the sausage-roll incident at lunchtime lifted away. His stomach unclenched and he felt hungry. Hunger was such a good, uncomplicated feeling. There could be no doubts or second thoughts about hunger. He started to eat.

Mark took his empty plate into the kitchen.

‘You’re not leaving, are you?’ asked Dior. Although not much interested in cooking, she loved ‘meal culture’ as she called it. She liked them to sit around and ‘be together, as a family’.

‘Course not,’ said Mark, opening a bottle of beer at the kitchen counter. ‘Want a beer, son?’

‘Sure,’ said Luke.

Mark took two more glasses out of the cupboard and came over to the table. Gus watched the golden foam swirling to the top of Dior’s glass. That must be how Ambrosia, the food of the gods, would look, he thought.

‘Son?’ Mark offered him one.

‘He’s only fourteen,’ protested Dior.

Luke winked at Gus. Their parents had this conversation all the time. ‘But he’s only five. But he’s only ten …’ His dad pushed his sons and his mother protected them Gus imagined them at eighty: ‘But he’s only sixty …’

‘Nah, thanks,’ said Gus. The truth was he didn’t really like beer, and the whole idea of beer and meat together was about as attractive as a sausage roll. Luke called him picky, but Gus thought he was just discriminating. They all clinked glasses.

‘Where to tonight, Luke?’ asked Mark after they’d all had a long slurp of beer.

Luke always went out on Friday nights.

‘And who with?’ asked Dior.

Luke hesitated. ‘I don’t think you’ll be letting me go anywhere.’

Mark slowly put his drink down on the table. ‘Well?’

‘I’ve lost my bus pass and I’m banned from the school special for three months.’

‘What did you do this time?’ wailed Dior.

Luke was exceptional at two things: attracting women and attracting trouble. He’d been suspended twice from school and banned from the local swimming pool all last year.

‘I’m just not allowed on the bus, okay?’ Luke put his beer down on the table and looked at them defiantly.

‘And who’s supposed to pay your fares, then?’ shouted Mark.

‘I will, won’t I!’ shouted Luke.

If Luke had been waiting until this time because he’d thought they’d take it better on a full stomach, it didn’t do him much good. Dior and Mark worked on him until he admitted what he’d done. ‘Me and Groink hassled a girl on the bus.’

‘That all?’ said Mark suspiciously. ‘Do you know anything about this, Gus?’

‘He wasn’t on that bus,’ said Luke scornfully.

‘They’re taking your pass away just for that?’

Luke wriggled in his seat. ‘We also did a bit of damage to the bus.’

‘What?’ Mark roared, and they were off again.

Gus had to stop himself from laughing. They were a very dramatic family. Perhaps that was something they’d inherited from their Italian ancestors. Even Gus, although he never got in trouble, always enjoyed the energy of these occasions.

‘You’re grounded for a month!’ shouted Mark.

‘I know I am!’ Luke shouted back, denying him the satisfaction.

‘Then we may as well have another beer,’ said Mark, subsiding, and that was the end of that.

Or it would have been, if Gus hadn’t asked Luke later, ‘Which girl was it?’

‘Your friend Trinity Prakash.’

‘I don’t know if we’re friends,’ said Gus quickly. ‘We just talk on the bus sometimes, that’s all.’ The idea of anyone giving Trinity a hard time made him feel sick. ‘What did you do to her?’

‘Just mucked around a bit. I thought she was enjoying it, to tell you the truth. We wouldn’t have carried on like that otherwise. But her mum rang the school today and Winter had us up on the mat about it. Must have changed her mind.’

‘No one likes being picked on, you moron!’

‘Actually, Gus,’ said Luke, gazing at the flickering TV, ‘sometimes they do.’

Gus balled his hand into a fist and, aiming it at Luke’s stomach, punched as hard as he could. Luke blocked it expertly and got him in a half-nelson.

‘Whoa, little brother! I have to teach you how to punch.’

‘What did you do that for, Lu?’

‘Stupid.’ Luke shrugged. ‘I thought I liked her.’

‘What about now?’ asked Gus carefully.

Luke scowled. At St Patrick’s there was nothing worse than a dobber. At St Patrick’s, even a bully was better than a dobber, but the fact that Trinity disliked Luke enough to get him reported made Gus like her more than ever.

3. Life Drawing

The big art room was cluttered with easels going back in rows, and a little stage had been set up at the front. For the next few weeks they’d be doing Life Drawing, Brother Nicholas explained. Usually in Life Drawing a model poses nude, so that artists can learn about the anatomy of the body. But in this class, the students would take it in turns to pose. ‘In their uniforms,’ added Brother Nicholas. Gus’s friend Simon burst out laughing and for that he was sent up to pose first.

Gus stood in front of his easel enjoying the creaminess of the paper and the soft smudginess of his charcoal.

Brother Nicholas was touring around the classroom looking over people’s shoulders at their work. ‘What happened?’ he asked, when he got to Gus. ‘Is that food?’

Gus squinted at his scribble. It certainly looked more like spaghetti than Simon, that was for sure.

‘By the way, what was the slight tanginess in that sandwich the other day, Gus?’

‘Capsicum. I marinated it in chilli.’

Brother Nicholas shook his head in admiration. Gus fumbled in his bag and drew out his lunch box. ‘Try this. It’s the same idea but with zucchini and aubergine.’

Brother Nicholas pretended to be studying Gus’s drawing and shook his head.

‘What will lunch be in the priory?’ asked Gus, resorting to cunning.

Brother Nicholas grimaced. ‘Meat and three veg. Sliced white bread. Fanta and Coke.’ As he spoke he seemed to lose all resistance to the contents of Gus’s proffered lunch box. He picked up the sandwich carefully from its throne of lettuce and sniffed deeply before taking a little bite. He chewed slowly, his eyes dreamy. ‘You have a gift, Gus. Simple as that.’

He handed the box back to Gus who stepped away from it smartly. ‘Don’t you want it?’ Gus asked.

‘We’re not meant to eat our students’ lunches, Gus.’

‘But I made it for you.’ That was a lie. Gus just wanted some appreciation from somewhere.

Without needing to be told, Brother Nicholas seemed to understand. He tucked the lunch box under his arm. ‘I’ll have it with a cup of tea in the staffroom.’

When Simon tired of posing, Brother Nicholas volunteered Gus. Gus stood with his arms crossed and his legs splayed, looking at the class down his nose as though from a great height.

‘Terminator!’ someone yelled appreciatively, but everyone else complained.

‘The old masters in Holland or Italy didn’t learn anatomy from painting clothes,’ said Bas.

‘Why not just stick a uniform on a hanger and put that up the front?’

‘What about doing an exchange with St Mary’s?’ suggested Gus. He always felt more outgoing and confident after talking with Brother Nicholas.

There were cries of agreement. St Mary’s was the sister school of St Patrick’s, and most of the boys had a crush on someone who went to St Mary’s, including Gus. Trinity went there.

Gus watched the heads of his classmates bobbing up and down behind their easels as they drew. His feet hurt in a way he’d never felt before. His need to move was like a thirst, or an itch.

‘He moved!’ someone moaned.

Brother Nicholas looked up. ‘Another five minutes.’

Gus’s legs were killing him but he nodded. ‘No problem.’

‘He moved again!’

Gus tried to distract himself. He thought about St Mary’s … and then he thought about crushes … These were promoted by the two schools, who were great at organising debates and musicals and special events. What wasn’t well organised was the distribution of the crushes. Most of the boys liked the same small group of girls, and this state of affairs was reciprocated—most of the girls at St Mary’s had a crush on Luke.

It was a mystery to Gus the way he and Luke looked similar, yet Luke’s features were arranged to equal handsome and Gus’s were arranged to equal … Gus. Not handsome or ugly, just … unresolved. Luke had curly brown hair with blond bits in it, whereas Gus’s hair was a lanky sandy colour that went almost white in summer. Luke was tall and thin but strong-looking from surfing. He never spent more than five minutes getting dressed and yet somehow he always managed to look cool in a careless, grungy sort of way. Dior said Luke had bone structure that was wasted on a boy, but Gus couldn’t see how it was wasted. Girls from Year Seven to Year Twelve—and over—pursued him, ringing him, sending him letters.

Gus acted as Luke’s personal assistant, answering the phone, reading the letters when Luke couldn’t be bothered. They wrote things like ‘I love you’ and ‘you’re my fantasy’. One girl wrote, ‘I’ll do anything you want me to do. Tell me what you want.’ To Gus that was exciting. To Luke it was boring. ‘No more letters,’ he made Gus write in his reply. Gus tried to soften the harshness of these words with some observations about the weather and best wishes at the end. Anyway, she was lucky to get a response. Mostly Luke didn’t even bother to reply.

‘Why don’t you tell them where they stand?’ Gus would ask.

‘Because I can’t decide,’ Luke replied.

For Gus, Trinity hadn’t felt like a decision. He had known he liked her before they’d even spoken. He had first seen her when she came to their school for a debate as part of the St Mary’s team. With attraction like that, there was nothing to decide. Suddenly it was just there, a new fact about him like the fuzzy patch on his chin.

Perhaps that was how Luke felt about Judy—in a twisted way. Judy had been Luke’s official girlfriend for almost two years. Gus liked Judy, a lot. All his family did. The only thing wrong with her that Gus could make out was that she put up with Luke.

There was nothing wrong with Trinity. As far as Gus could tell, she was perfect. She wore her school uniform like a model. She had brown skin and glossy black hair that hung in a swinging curtain just above her shoulders. Her eyes were large and brown, shaped like big fish lying on their sides. During the debate she had argued without notes, demolishing the opposition and winning the debate for her team calmly and efficiently in her clipped English accent.

Gus had accidentally hit her on the head with his bag two months ago while they were getting on the bus. He couldn’t let such a perfect opportunity for meeting her pass him by, and he’d sat next to her on the pretext of checking she was all right. After that they’d become friendly. Gus had learned that her father had been born in India, that the Prakashes had lived in England before coming to Australia a year ago, that she didn’t have a boyfriend, and that it was impossible to talk with her about food without having to discuss the calorie content of everything.

‘Brother Nicholas? Could we really do an exchange with St Mary’s? Not in the nude, of course,’ Gus added hastily.

‘Then what do you suggest, Gus?’ asked Brother Nicholas.

‘Swimming costumes,’ yelled Simon.

‘It could be a different girl each week if you want, we don’t mind,’ cried Andy.

‘What about your girlfriend?’ asked Liam.

‘It’s for Art, isn’t it?’ grinned Andy. ‘She’ll understand.’

‘And who’d volunteer to pose for them in return?’ asked Brother Nicholas. ‘Fair’s fair.’

‘Gus … I mean, Augustine,’ said Bas, and everyone laughed.

Augustine! Gus couldn’t believe it. Augustine! He’d been called by his wrong name in front of the whole class, by his best friend, and everyone was treating it as a joke. Bas had caved in, Steve was getting his own way, and Gus had to stand here, grinning like a maniac, pretending nothing was wrong.

The bell rang and Gus jumped down from the dais. He collected his bag and ran after Bas, who had sprinted from the room.

‘What do you mean, Augustine?’ he panted, catching up with him near the stairs.

Bas stopped walking and turned around to face Gus. His cheeks were flushed. ‘Come on, Gus, what difference does it make?’

‘What do you think? A big difference!’

‘Keep it down!’

Boys and teachers were thronging past them up the stairs, and a few turned to look at the immobile pair as they went past.

‘Steve’s a psycho, Gus.’

‘I know that! You think I don’t know that?’

‘Shhh!’ hissed Bas. ‘Do you want to attract even more attention than you already have?’

‘What do you mean, attract attention?’ Gus hissed back. ‘Do you mean eat-my-lunch-not-bothering-anyone-just-sitting-there-in-the-quadrangle kind of attention attracting?’

‘It looks funny, this whole cooking thing, don’t you realise that? It creates a funny impression.’

‘Funny peculiar or funny ha-ha?’

‘You know exactly what I mean.’

They glared at each other.

‘Your mum’s not too busy to have visitors after school, is she?’ said Gus finally. ‘You just don’t want me coining round anymore.’

Bas shrugged. His cheeks were redder than ever.

‘You don’t just abandon your friends when a moron like Steve comes on the scene.’

‘It’s not just that,’ muttered Bas.

‘Well, what is it?’

Bas stared at the floor. His cheeks were flaming. ‘I have to put more time into study now,’ he said lamely. ‘You know what a high mark you need to get into Law.’

‘The exams are three years away,’ said Gus. The fight had left him. He felt terrible, shaky and unsteady on his feet.

He started walking down the hall and Bas came hurrying after him. They stood side by side opening their lockers without a word. The silence between them grew bigger and heavier until Gus couldn’t stand it.

‘How would you like to be called Sebastian?’

Bas smiled weakly. ‘I’d be lunch meat. Ha ha.’

‘Ha ha,’ said Gus. He couldn’t think of a thing more to say.

‘See you at lunch?’ asked Bas casually, as though they hadn’t been talking about anything particularly important at all.

‘Yeah, maybe,’ said Gus, as though everything was normal, boring and everyday. He didn’t want to make it any harder for Bas to be his friend than it evidently already was.

‘Good,’ said Bas, turning away.

‘See ya … Sebastian,’ Gus called out after him.

Bas went down the stairs, holding one finger in an ‘up yours’ to Gus as he went.

4. Falling In

‘Hey, Gus! Wait here.’

Luke was leaning against the warm bricks of the school building just around the corner from the school gates, sunbathing. His eyes were closed, his tie was off and the first three buttons of his shirt were undone.

‘What for?’

‘Judy’s waiting for me at the bus stop. She’ll ask about me if she sees you, and you know how bad you are at lying.’

‘Don’t stand her up again, Luke!’

‘What can I do? Surf’s up.’

‘Oh well then. Of course,’ muttered Gus, giving up.

It was so hot out here because there weren’t any trees. The last thing Gus felt like doing was hanging around to be boiled to death. He dropped his bag and sat down on it. ‘Maybe Judy will find out about this afternoon and drop you,’ he said hopefully.

‘Nah. Been doing a lot of thinking about Judy actually.’ Luke scratched at his stomach and then stretched his arms above his head. Gus stared at the hairs on Luke’s stomach making a snail’s trail down past his belt buckle. ‘I’ve decided I really like her.’

‘You just decided that you like your own girlfriend?’

‘Really like her,’ corrected Luke. ‘They’re very different things.’

‘Wow,’ said Gus.

‘Wow is right,’ Luke replied, refusing to see the joke.

‘And it’s taken you this long to work that out?’

‘Hasn’t been that long.’

‘It’s your second anniversary this weekend.’

‘Damn! I forgot! How do you know?’

‘How do you think? She told me.’

‘Listen, Gus. You have to lend me some money.’

‘You still haven’t paid me back from last time.’

‘But I need it. I want to buy her something really special.’ Luke peered around the corner again. ‘All clear. Let’s go.’

They set off down the street together, stopping at the automatic teller machine for Gus to withdraw some money.

‘That makes three hundred dollars that you owe me now,’ said Gus, handing Luke a wad of notes.

‘Rest easy, brother, it’s all in a good cause.’

Gus flashed his bus pass at the driver and saw Trinity sitting next to the window three seats away. Did she see him? He put his hand to his chest—his heart was actually beating faster. The hair on his scalp really did prickle and he was slightly dizzy. The next moment he felt his utter irrelevance to her, lighter than air. He was just some guy she talked to on the bus. She probably forgot his existence from one meeting to the next. Nevertheless he felt stiff with self-consciousness. Act natural, he told himself. That was an oxymoron, wasn’t it? Like military intelligence, or Steve the human being.

Her head was turned towards the window. She didn’t look round as he sidled up the aisle, so he took a chance and sat down next to her.

‘Hi,’ he croaked.

She mustn’t have heard.

He cleared his throat loudly. ‘Hi, Trinity.’

She jumped and looked around. ‘Oh. Hi, Gus.’ She turned to face him properly. ‘You’re related to Luke D’Agostino, aren’t you?’

Gus gaped at her. He hadn’t expected this.

‘Sort of. Distantly.’ He knew Luke wouldn’t mind when it was for a good cause. The bus started with a lurch and Gus heroically resisted gravity as it tried to throw him against her.

‘Exactly how distantly?’

He realised she already knew. ‘My brother.’

‘Your brother’s a pig,’ she remarked conversationally. ‘An attractive pig.’

‘I’m not a pig.’

‘Of course not.’ She laughed, and turned to look out the window again.

What was that supposed to mean? wondered Gus. Conversation with Trinity was never easy, and today she seemed to be especially tense. So he looked out the window too, on the other side. He saw industrial sites and houses and four lanes of traffic and a cinema and shops and bush and more shops again. On her side he knew she was looking at beaches and sky and water, and he wished they were looking at that view together. Still, he comforted himself, they were sitting together and that was great.

A few stops before Collaroy she suddenly spoke, making him jump. ‘D’Agostino, is that Italian?’

Gus told her about his ancestors and the way his father pretended to have Mafia connections whenever they were fooling around.

‘How interesting,’ she said calmly. ‘Look, can I come over sometime?’

‘I guess.’ Gus felt disoriented, dizzy with the speed of their progress. ‘Sure, I mean.’ He didn’t want to appear unwelcoming. ‘That’d be great.’

As the bus swung into Collaroy, she stood up to get off. Gus scrunched his knees in to let her pass and looked up at her, breathlessly awaiting whatever was to happen next.

‘Thursday?’

He nodded, too amazed to speak.

She walked down the bus, her movements precise and graceful. The thick mass of silver bangles on her wrist clunked up her thin arm almost to the elbow as she reached up to steady herself. Her childish blue uniform and white blouse hung loosely. Her eyes gazed into the distance as she stood on the step of the bus waiting for it to stop, one foot dangling into space. Her ankles looked too fine and delicate for the coarse black shoes she wore. She stepped out into the street, flicking her short ponytail like the tip of a cat’s tail. As the bus carried him away from her, Gus craned his head to follow her until she disappeared.

The shoulders of Trinity’s dark-blue school blazer had been immaculate, reflected Gus, sitting at his desk that night. His own jacket shoulders were covered in everything at the end of a day—dead skin, hair, fluff, dust … How did she manage to remain so perfect?

The D’Agostinos’ house was built on the slope of a steep hill. Gus’s bedroom was at the bottom of the house, and his window looked out over the houses below theirs and along the coastline towards the city. All he could see tonight were the lights of the houses along the shore. He tried to work out where Collaroy would be. Trinity was out there somewhere. There was no swell tonight so the waves reflected no light. With no moon the ocean was utterly dark.

As Gus’s head began to nod over his homework, he imagined the sea was a huge black hole, sucking all light and life into itself. Collaroy road was about to be sucked into it. Trinity! And now the bottom of Newport hill. The newsagent’s! And now his street. His house! Mum! Dad! Luke! Now Gus! About to be sucked into the abyss of nothingness. He resisted at first, jerking his head back up and forcing his eyes open, but then he gave himself up to the pull. Sliding into the nothingness. Goodbye school. Goodbye Bas, Steve, Brother Nicholas. Goodbye Newport. Groping his way through the water, searching for Trinity with his special sixth sense.

Gus woke up in his tent, groggy and shivering with the cold. He could hear voices and laughter somewhere nearby. As he emerged from his tent, he saw the flickering light of a campfire twenty metres away in the communal clearing. A group of twenty or thirty boys were sitting in a circle round the fire, and Gus thought he could smell marshmallows burning. He walked towards them, looking on the ground for a stick to roast marshmallows. A boy turned his head away from the light and peered into the darkness in Gus’s direction.

‘Jonesy? Is that you?’

‘No. It’s Gus,’ he replied and the enquirer grunted and turned back to the light. Gus found a perfect stick, quite long for good placement above the flames, with a fork at the end so two could be toasted at the same time.

‘Augustine?’ someone on the other side of the circle asked. ‘Did you say Augustine’s here?’ That was Steve’s voice. ‘Get lost, Gus!’ he cried.

Faces flushed with heat turned to look at him, and to his surprise he saw Simon’s and Andy’s among them.

‘Get lost Gus! Get lost Gus!’ Steve chanted, clapping in time. Gus wondered how much of him they could see.

Gus took a hesitant step backwards. Someone laughed and a few other people joined in. He stepped forward, unsure if the laughter was friendly or hostile, searching for Brother Nicholas or Luke. But they must have gone to bed. This was just a big circle of boys. They could see him now, he was sure of it. His face was burning with the strength of his blush and he hoped they’d think it was from the campfire light.

‘Get lost Gus!’ Clap. ‘Get lost Gus!’ Clap.

Others were joining in. It was like a wave he was drowning in. He looked into the faces of the boys, trying to find one who would open the circle for him and let him sit down but the faces looking up to him were jeering and delighted. Then Gus saw a shape leaning forward into the fire and pulling out a hot lump of flame. The shape turned to Gus. It was Bas, staring at him with eyes like gleaming hot coals.

‘Get lost Gus,’ he whispered.

Gus started backing away, unwilling to turn round, to expose his back to these laughing faces. He saw Bas throwing the burning object he’d just taken out of the fire. Something soft landed on his arm; he went to brush it away and it burned his fingers. Then Steve threw something at him, this one trailing flames. He stepped sideways smartly and it landed on the ground next to him, a burning marshmallow. Liam, Andy, Simon, all the boys in his class were standing up and pelting him with flaming marshmallows, coming at him from all directions. They were going to set him on fire!

He stepped first to one side, then the other, trying to dodge the missiles. Two came at him from different directions. His feet were leaden and he couldn’t move them fast enough to get his body out of the way. A flaming marshmallow hit him on the chin as he fell, and a burning shot of pain snaked up his leg from his ankle.

A burst of laughter broke out. ‘Get lost Gus!’ The shouts were gathering in intensity.

Gus brushed the burning sugar off his face and scrambled to his feet, ignoring the pain in his ankle. He ran, pushing through bushes and scrub until he reached the waterhole. His face was on fire, and his clothes. He dived in without pausing, sinking down into the water, opening his mouth to let the water put out the fire that was in his chest and lungs, searing him with every liquid breath.

I’m going to die, he realised. I’m going to die!

‘Gussy! Gus!’

The current was pulling at him. Dragging him up to the surface.

‘Gus.’

Mark’s face loomed at him.

‘Ooogh,’ sighed Gus, waking slowly. ‘Hi, Dad.’

‘It’s almost midnight. Let’s get you into bed.’

Mark put his arm around Gus and helped him to his feet. In a daze, Gus cleaned his teeth and went to the toilet. When he came back, Mark had puffed up the pillows and made the bed, pulling one side of the doona down invitingly. Gus was so tired, Mark had to hold him steady while he put his feet into the legs of his pyjamas. He fell into bed and Mark tucked his doona round him.

‘Gussy,’ said Mark, sitting down on the end of his bed and smoothing Gus’s hair back.

Gus couldn’t hold his eyes open. ‘Mmmm.’

‘Are you going okay, son?’ His voice was soft and low. ‘Is everything all right?’

‘Mmm.’

Mark’s hands felt so nice on his head, like weights that were pushing him down. Gus fell back into the darkness again, plunging deeper and deeper into sleep.

5. Pure Instinct

Pears are pure. They taste like creamy pale yellow daffodils. They give under your teeth like your pillow against your cheek. Gus bit his lip and gripped his pen harder. What else is pure? Vanilla is sweet and pure. A good taste. Vanilla milkshakes and ice creams are always white, even though vanilla extract is dark. White rice is pure, and soybean curd is pure too—Gus felt like a monk whenever he ate them.

‘Okay, pens down,’ said Brother Andrew. He was sitting opposite Gus on the other side of the room, his bald head reflecting light from the windows. For Religious Studies, Brother Andrew always made them push the desks back against the wall and form a circle with their chairs.

‘Lilies are pure,’ read out Toby.

‘Very good,’ said Brother Andrew. ‘Can anyone give me a Bible reference for that?’

That drew a blank.

‘Lilies of the meadow?’ hazarded Bas.

‘Close. The field. Lilies of the field—they toil not, neither do they spin. Toby, pick someone to read next, would you?’

‘Mothers are pure,’ read Jeremy.

Brother Andrew grimaced. ‘Impossible to generalise about such a large group of people. Next?’

If teachers knew what agony they cause by getting students to do the choosing for them they would never suggest it. Or only if they want an explicit portrait of the caste system operating in their class. Jeremy chose Mark who chose Geoffrey who chose Ben. Gus began feeling anxious. Ben chose Mish who chose Adrian. What if no one chose him? He had never worried about things like this before and now he had to all the time. It gave the whole prospect of school a different, and ugly, complexion. Adrian chose Jason who chose Bruce who chose Tom. For Gus, homework, assessment tasks, exams—the things you were supposed to worry about—had faded to insignificance against this constant tension. Each day he felt himself slipping slowly down, rung by rung, into the social twilight zone. Paul chose Grahame who chose Martin. Now he was in with a chance.

‘Flowers are pure,’ offered Andy.

‘We’ve already covered that with lilies,’ said Brother Andrew. ‘Unless you can give me some reason why?’

Andy shrugged, and chose Simon who chose Bas. Surely Gus would be picked soon. Bas chose Liam who at last chose Gus.

‘Gus.’

It seemed to Gus as though Liam said it defiantly, but perhaps he was being paranoid. He read out his list proudly; no one else had thought of four things.

‘Pears. Vanilla. White rice. Bean curd.’

Brother Andrew laughed. ‘They’re all food.’

Gus didn’t join in laughing with the other boys because he didn’t get the joke. He’d lost his sense of humour while he was waiting to be chosen.

‘Did you think of anything that wasn’t food?’

Gus shook his head.

‘In that case, I’ll have to disqualify those examples,’ said Brother Andrew kindly. ‘Hunger, like lust, is an appetite, and appetites make us impure. A definition of purity is freedom from base appetites.’

‘But if we didn’t have an appetite we’d forget to eat. If we didn’t eat, the whole human race would go kaput. It’s the same with lust, isn’t it?’

‘Gus!’ Brother Andrew’s forehead had become quite pink. ‘What is your point?’

‘Why would God have given us our appetites if we weren’t meant to enjoy them?’

‘That is quite enough, thank you.’

‘Fine,’ muttered Gus, aware of the eyes of the class on him.

Brother Andrew left his seat in the circle to stand on the dais in front of the blackboard, as plump and shiny as a cherub.

‘The reason I wanted to talk about purity today is because tomorrow you’re going to start sex education in Science.’

A few people clapped and cheered.

Simon nudged Gus in the ribs. ‘How’s your appetite?’ he whispered. Gus grinned.

Brother Andrew held up his hands, commanding silence. ‘The school has to teach this subject because it’s the law. However, by also talking about it in Religious Studies we hope to give you a moral context for your sex education that will provide you with a defence against the strong, seemingly irresistible natures of your own appetites.’

The whole class was staring at him blankly.

‘Let me put it another way. One of the ten commandments is that you shall not commit adultery. What this means is that sex is only holy when it’s a part of marriage. At any other time it’s merely a product of our baser appetites. Isn’t that right, Gus?’

Gus jumped. ‘Right.’

‘The pure man must be suspicious of all the appetites. Appetites tie a man to the mortal and material point of view. The pure man looks up, heavenward, to a spiritual view of things.’

No wonder the food for the Brothers was so terrible when a man with this view of things was in charge of the catering, thought Gus. He pitied Brother Nicholas more than ever.

Gus tried to hold to a spiritual view of things at lunch that day when Steve turned up in the quadrangle. Gus had been about to take a bite of his sandwich. On seeing Steve he quickly put it back into the bag.

‘What is it today?’

The other guys magically melted away, getting up to start a new game of handball or going over to the bins, leaving Steve and Gus to talk alone as though they were special friends!

‘Sardines, avocado, fresh bean sprouts and chilli sauce.’

‘Nah, I don’t like sardines. Make a chicken one for tomorrow, okay?’

Now he was being ordered to make Steve his lunch! Gus swallowed nervously and looked around at the others. Had anyone else heard this fresh humiliation? Steve was looking at the other guys too.

‘Which one of them is Liam?’

Gus stared. What did he want with Liam?

‘Don’t answer me then,’ said Steve, and walked over to where Liam was returning a dive shot, leaping forward to save the tennis ball just before it skimmed the ground.

‘Liam, right?’

Startled, Liam lost his balance and missed the shot.

‘I hear you’ve been breaking the rules,’ said Steve loudly.

Obviously he was out to set an example.

‘What rules?’

‘What rules?’ mocked Steve. ‘I told you to call him,’ he pointed to where Gus was sitting on the bench, paralysed with horror, ‘Augustine. Didn’t you hear me the first time?’

Liam just stood there, looking at Steve.

‘Now I hear that in Religion today you called him Gus.’

‘Get stuffed,’ said Liam quietly, and reached down to retrieve the ball.

Gus gaped. So did Steve.

‘What?’

‘Get stuffed,’ repeated Liam slowly.

Everyone—the handball players, the guys on the benches eating their lunch—froze. Gus held his breath, praying for God to give Liam strength. Finally Steve reached forward and roughly knocked the ball out of Liam’s hand.

‘You better watch it,’ said Steve quietly, and then he turned on his heel and walked away.

For a moment everyone remained motionless, and then it seemed to Gus as though they all simultaneously exhaled. Some people started talking quietly and resumed eating their lunch. Liam looked down at his hands, as if wondering what had happened to his ball. Then someone called ‘service please’ and a new ball came bouncing up to Liam, who grabbed it and expertly served up a spin ball.

Gus just sat there. How had Liam done that? How had he stood up to Steve without getting slaughtered? And why hadn’t Steve threatened him? Or visited some terrible humiliation on his head the way he did with Gus? It was a relief to see that someone could stand up to Steve and survive. But in a peculiar way it made Gus feel even worse. The worst of Steve seemed to be reserved for him.

6. Chicken

The next morning, as Gus was making Steve’s chicken sandwich, he fantasised about filling it with millions of chillies, or washing powder, or rat poison. But in the end he just put in chicken and pesto sauce and rocket, in the likelihood that Steve would kill Gus before the sandwich killed Steve.

A good decision, because Steve didn’t show, and Gus ended up having to eat the sandwich himself. He couldn’t afford to buy a whole free-range organic chicken just to make one sandwich, so he’d been forced to buy a single battery-chicken breast from the butcher’s. Now, with each tiny mouthful, he couldn’t help picturing the chicken, living its whole life in a little cage pressed up against thousands of other little cages, eating pellets made of mashed-up bits of other chickens. Chicken feet, chicken beaks … Gus gagged and put the rest of his sandwich back in the bag.

‘Hey! Don’t you want that?’ asked Liam, his mouth full of hot chips.

Gus shook his head and handed over the sandwich, grateful for a chance to thank Liam for what he’d done yesterday. Liam ate fast, taking another bite before swallowing the previous one.

‘This is good!’ he exclaimed, his mouth bulging. He finished off the sandwich in two more huge bites. ‘That was excellent. I can see why Steve makes such a fuss of your lunches.’

Gus shrugged modestly, relieved to hear someone in his circle of friends acknowledging what was happening. ‘It was great how you told him to get stuffed yesterday.’

‘Well, it’s easy, isn’t it?’ said Liam, watching the handball game. ‘It’s not me he’s got it in for. He can’t pick on everyone.’

‘Right,’ said Gus unhappily.

‘Look …’ Liam shifted in his seat uncomfortably. ‘I better not do it again for a bit—call you Gus, I mean. That’s okay, right? I mean, you get why, right?’

‘Sure,’ said Gus miserably. So even Liam was giving in!

‘You brought that sandwich in for Steve today, didn’t you?’ said Liam.

Gus nodded dumbly, not trusting himself to speak.

‘Not a good idea. You shouldn’t encourage him.’

‘You saw him that time he made me eat the sausage roll!’

‘Why not forget about bringing your lunch in for a bit, and just eat normal food, like everyone else?’

‘You mean from the canteen?’

Liam rolled his eyes. ‘That’s exactly what I mean. All that cooking creates a funny impression.’

The skin on Gus’s forearms prickled. Those were the exact same words Bas had used. They’d probably been talking about what a loser he was and how they all wished he’d leave them alone.

‘Just give the cooking a rest for a while. Lie low and wait it out.’ Liam shrugged awkwardly. ‘Anyway.’

‘Right,’ agreed Gus, relieved that this conversation was over.

‘You up for a game?’

The last thing Gus felt like doing was playing handball. ‘Maybe later,’ he said, and he walked away from his old friends in the quadrangle to the canteen.

‘White bread no butter with mushrooms, carrot and lettuce please.’ It was the plainest thing he could think of.

So this was to be his new lifestyle, thought Gus bitterly, watching anxiously as his sandwich was hastily assembled. Low profile, picked upon, the subject of whispered conversations among his ex-friends, without even his own cooking to console him.

He paid, and, nibbling on his sandwich, walked quickly across the playground with his head lowered, past the handball courts where Liam and Simon were loudly arguing over a line ball, past Luke who was picking up rubbish on lunchtime detention again. He had almost reached the steps to his locker when he ran into Brother Nicholas.

‘A bought sandwich from the canteen? I’m astonished.’

Gus didn’t want to explain about Steve and Liam and the chicken sandwich, so he just shrugged and fell into step with Brother Nicholas’s steady pace.

‘I’ve been thinking about spiritual growth,’ said Gus.

‘Excellent.’

‘I think the problem is I’m already too spiritual.’

Brother Nicholas bit his lip. ‘It’s not something I’ve had much experience with, Gus.’

‘Maybe I should become a priest,’ mused Gus. ‘No one picks on priests, do they? It would be un-Christian.’

‘Vows of poverty and chastity, Gus?’

‘I’ve got chastity all sewn up.’

‘It’s early days. Besides, I don’t think you could cope with the food,’ said Brother Nicholas morosely. ‘I don’t know what vow it was I took, or which prayer I neglected to make, that condemns me to the garbage they make us eat in that priory!’

Gus had never heard him be so critical. ‘Why don’t you have nicer food?’

‘The ideal reason is that by turning down the senses you can turn up the spirit, the way a blind person can develop a better sense of hearing than a sighted one, for example. Brother Andrew just takes it a little too far.’

‘What have they been serving you?’

‘The same, that’s the main trouble. Every week the same. Brother Andrew likes to buy in bulk, it’s cheaper that way. He draws up a menu for six months at a time, and we’re expected to eat the same quantity day-in, day-out for six months so that his calculations are accurate. That means no snacking outside his calculations. No meals he hasn’t ordered for.’

‘Like a war!’ breathed Gus. He had known priests suffered, but he had never imagined suffering such as this. ‘Brother Nicholas, I’m going to make something fresh for you every day.’

‘No, Gus, that’s very kind, but you mustn’t. It wouldn’t be at all proper. I’d be exploiting you.’

‘But I have to! You can’t eat like that!’ Gus saw Brother Nicholas in his mind’s eye, yellow with jaundice, his teeth falling out from scurvy. ‘I’ll make you delicious sandwiches with this special chilli sauce I’ve been thinking about. I could also bring in dinner leftovers sometimes. You should try my Moroccan chickpea couscous, or my wild mushroom polenta. It’ll all be very nutritious, I promise.’

Brother Nicholas was smiling beatifically, as though lost in prayer.

‘Please, Brother Nicholas. It’d be my good deed.’

‘I’m sorely tempted, Gus, I can’t deny it.’

‘No one would have to know!’

Gus was lit with hope. Just because he couldn’t console himself with his cooking at school, why shouldn’t he console Brother Nicholas? ‘Besides, Brother Nicholas, it says so in the Bible. Man doesn’t live by bread alone.’

‘Before now, that expression had quite a different meaning for me. It meant we must live by the spirit also.’

Usually when conversations turned the slightest bit spiritual Gus felt lost, but today he must have been divinely inspired. ‘Precisely!’ he crowed. ‘And how can anyone’s spirit grow when their body is dying?’

Brother Nicholas patted him on the shoulder admiringly. ‘You’ve almost got me convinced that giving into temptation could only be for the good. I’d accuse you of using the tactics of the devil, except that I’m in such a state of starvation for some good healthy food, I can only say “bless you” for such a wonderful offer. But I can’t accept.’

Gus felt worse than he had at the canteen. ‘Brother, do you remember when you said I had a gift?’

‘Of course.’

‘What if I don’t want that gift anymore?’

‘School is short and life is long, Gus. Your gift will come in handy soon enough, I promise you.’

It sounded good in theory, but the afternoon dragged by interminably. In last period, during maths, Gus calculated exactly how short school really was. Three and a half years to go … at two hundred and ten days of school a year that made only … seven hundred and thirty-five days! How was he going to survive it?

7. A Technical Virgin

Gus admired women with bodies like the big slides at Luna Park. If you were in the land of the giants and one of these giant women lay on their side, you’d go sliding down over the breast, your bottom coming off the nipple like a ski jump, landing in the region of the rib cage to go in to the big dipper of the waist, picking up speed to mount the curve of the hip and then descending down the long smooth gradient of the thigh, sloping gently to the calf, the foot, and off the big toe onto the ground at last.

The only thing about Trinity that remotely lent itself to Gus’s sliding fantasy was her ski-jump nose. It was very cute: your eye ran down the slope of the narrow ridge and off the tip of it so easily, landing on the soft pillow of her lips. Otherwise you ain’t sliding nowhere. She was neat looking. She was all tied up in one package instead of how most girls look—as though they haven’t got a matching set of body parts yet.

Gus tried to explain about the body parts to Trinity on the way to his house on Thursday afternoon.

‘That’s because they’re fat,’ said Trinity scornfully.

Gus silently disagreed. His cousin Jessy already looked like a bundle of mismatching parts at fourteen years old, and she definitely wasn’t fat. Dior said it would take a while, but in the end Jessy would be lovely.

‘In the end! In the end!’ Jessy had wailed, standing in their kitchen last weekend. ‘I hate those stories where all the good things happen in the end! What good is the end to me now?’

‘She means the end of adolescence, stupid,’ said Gus.

‘Not even that,’ said Dior. ‘I meant at the end of the process of puberty.’

‘And how long does that take?’ asked Jessy.

Gus listened carefully.

‘The process of puberty can happen fast or slowly, but it’s important to remember it’s a process. There’s a reason for it, and it will end.’ On some topics Dior was very wise.

Since then, when Gus came to the breakfast table with a pimple, or Dior moaned about putting on weight, Luke would chant: ‘It’s a process, it’s a process, just remember it’s a process.’

Of course, Luke never exhibited any unwelcome symptoms of adolescence. He was smoothly metamorphosing from a handsome boy into a handsome man.

Coming back to the present with a start, Gus realised Trinity had fallen silent. Was this a good or bad silence, he wondered? What would a problematic silence with Trinity be like? When you’ve spent a total of six bus rides interacting with someone, it’s hard to tell.

Gus let them in to the house and went straight through to the kitchen.

‘Come in,’ he called to Trinity, who was still standing in the hall. ‘Come in and tell me what you want to eat.’

‘I don’t want anything, thanks.’

‘Come on! Look, I made biscuits last night, and tiramisu.’

‘It’s all right.’

Gus wanted to eat, but she was still standing in the hallway. He came and stood with her. ‘You’re not very interested in food, are you?’

‘I am, actually. I just don’t want to eat much of it. Is that okay with you?’

Gus laughed nervously. ‘Of course.’

But of course it wasn’t. Somehow he’d managed to find yet another person to join the ‘last people in the world to care about the one thing Gus is good at’ group. Perhaps he was attracting them somehow?

‘Is anyone else here?’ she asked, craning her neck to peer down the stairs.

The house had that echo-ey feeling of no one else at home. That feeling always made Gus feel especially hungry.

‘What do you want to do?’ he asked.

She shrugged.

‘How about a house tour?’ he suggested, at a loss. Dior always gave people a house tour first thing, so it must be acceptable.

‘Sure.’

As he showed her around, Gus might have thought she was bored if she’d been here for long enough to get bored, i.e. more than three minutes.

‘Very nice,’ she said faintly in every room except Luke’s bedroom, where she stood and stared so intently that Gus worried Luke had left his diary open on the floor, or his toe nail clippings on the pillow, or something else equally revealing, and he stepped forward and shut the door in her face.

Then they got to his bedroom.

‘It doesn’t reflect a thing about me, okay?’ He walked across the room and opened the curtains, shedding light on the mess of his bed and desk, the recipe cards pinned to the noticeboard, and the posters of Rome and Paris from Gourmet Traveller magazine stuck to the walls.

‘Hey, great view,’ said Trinity politely, walking over to the window.

She was here! In his room! It was unbelievable—and very uncomfortable. She sat in the chair at his desk and stood up, she rubbed the fabric of his bedspread between her fingers and then she ran her hand over the smooth wood on his wardrobe. She sat down again at the head of the bed and then stood up again to look more closely at something out the window. Gus gave up trying to make conversation and sank down at the end of his bed, waiting.

Finally she broke the silence. ‘Gus. Can I talk to you about something?’

‘Sure. I mean, go ahead,’ said Gus, hoping this might clear the air.

‘Something personal, I mean.’

Gus’s heart began to pound. He stared at her.

She turned from the window and looked him in the eyes. ‘I think I’m ready to have a relationship—with a man, I mean.’

‘Oh?’ was all he managed to reply. His cheeks were hot.

‘I know who it is. I just don’t know when,’ she continued, turning away to stare out the window. ‘I keep trying to make it happen but it isn’t easy and I want to ask you something. Will you help me?’

‘How can I help you?’ asked Gus, bewildered.

‘By being my friend,’ she said calmly.

It was the coldest invitation Gus had ever heard, but he was at the point where anybody wanting to be his friend was freaky enough to be treasured, no questions asked.

‘Ah, okay.’

‘And can I come to dinner this Saturday night?’

Dinner? On Saturday night? ‘Sure.’ He wondered uneasily if she might be unpopular too.

She turned back from the window to face him. Her cheeks were pink now and her eyes were shining. ‘Fine. It’s good to have that settled. Now you tell me something.’

He sat down on the chair at his desk, stalling for time. ‘Umm.’ He couldn’t think of anything else to say.

‘Of course, you’re a virgin aren’t you?’ she stated, nodding at him encouragingly.

‘Yeah, yeah of course.’ Is it that obvious? he wondered. ‘And you?’

‘Technically.’

‘Technically you’re a virgin?’ asked Gus, so intrigued that for a moment he forgot about feeling awkward.

Trinity rubbed her hand in circles over her fringe, making the hairs stand up away from her forehead.

‘I have experience.’ She sounded irritated. ‘I mean, I can be confident that, when the time comes, I won’t make a fool of myself.’

‘Wow,’ said Gus, ‘you seem to have it all worked out.’

‘That’s what my father’s always saying, to tease me. But I think you can work things out. I think if something’s important to you, you may as well have a strategy and a plan of where you’re going and what you’re going to do when you get there. Don’t you? If you don’t set goals you won’t get anything.’

‘You sound like you can get whatever you want,’ said Gus.

‘Let’s hope so.’

Later, after she’d gone home, Gus marvelled at the way she’d told him such intimate details about herself. They came popping out of her mouth like cake recipes. Obviously she gave nothing away unless she chose to, and she chose to confide in him, Gus! Of course he longed to hold her, and touch her and taste her, but if it wasn’t to be her body, perhaps it could be her soul.

‘Bullshit, Gus!’ laughed Luke while they were watching TV together that evening. ‘Tasting her soul! As if.’

‘I guess you just can’t understand what I’m talking about,’ sniffed Gus, glad he’d decided not to tell Luke about dinner on Saturday night.

‘I guess not, your holiness. But why shouldn’t you want to have any fun? Anyway, what would you know about her soul? You just told me she’s mighty complicated.’

‘Complex,’ corrected Gus.

‘Whatever.’

8. The Invisible Man

The playground stretched out in front of Gus like the endless steppe, as appealing as Siberia. Some guys from his year were playing cricket with a hard ball. They weren’t meant to be playing with a real ball, but the playground was kids’ rules—where they looked the same as the adults’ rules it was fine; where they didn’t, too bad. Guys like Steve did as they pleased out here. Guys like Gus just had to survive it.

Gus saw Bas standing in a huddle with Liam and Simon and Andy, probably arguing a line ball as usual. Pretending not to see them, Gus slowly turned around. He didn’t want to deal with the possibility of Steve hassling him or Liam advising him, or Bas and the others calling him ‘Augustine’.

He retraced his steps back into the building and up the stairs. He would avoid the suspense and the misery of the playground by having a quick bite in the corridor, and then he’d go into the library, where it was boring and lonely but safe.

He was sitting next to his bag opposite the library door when Steve came out.

‘What are you doing here?’ asked Steve.

‘Returning books,’ said Gus. Arsehole, he said mentally, to keep his courage up. He took a book out of his bag and stood up to put it through the slot for returns.

Steve extended his hand. ‘Let me.’

Gus hesitated. Was that a command? What choice did he have? Gus handed it over. Steve looked at it—a book of Indian recipes—and then carefully pushed it through the slot. He looked at Gus expectantly, waiting again.

‘Thanks,’ said Gus, a frightened lion tamer wondering if the big pussy cat was after human flesh.

‘What’s on the menu today?’

Gus clenched his fists. There was no one here to see him get humiliated or bashed to a pulp. It was time to take a stand.

‘Bread!’ he shouted. ‘Okay?’

Steve seemed to become more relaxed, if anything. He slouched against the returns slot and shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘Where I come from, if you went around making lunches like that …’ He shook his head and snorted.

Gus swung at him, putting his whole weight into it as Luke had taught him and letting out a caveman grunt that surprised him. ‘Urugh!’

Steve leant to the side and Gus’s hand swiped the bricks of the wall behind him. Skin scraped against brick, shredding like cheddar cheese.

‘Now, now, Gus,’ said Steve in a pitying tone.

Gus stood there, baffled, his pulped knuckles on fire. Steve got to call him by his name while the rest of the school had been put on formal terms?

‘I found out what we’re doing for Camp this year,’ said Steve. ‘It’s a bivouac expedition.’

‘So?’ Gus held his damaged knuckles up to his lips, sucking them and moistening them with his tongue.

Steve smiled, his full lips spreading wide across his freckled face, his bright blue eyes glinting. ‘Six guys in each unit. Out in the bush, all alone, for two days …’

Gus’s heart dislodged itself from his chest and dropped twenty centimetres down into his stomach. What if he and Steve ended up in the same unit?

‘It’s very testing out there in the wilderness,’ said Steve quietly. ‘You find out what you’re made of—and what the other people in your unit are made of, too.’

What was he planning to do? wondered Gus wildly. Hunt him? A cool shudder of fear started in his buttocks and scuttled up his back. Weak suddenly, Gus had to lean against the corridor wall.

‘I’m looking forward to it,’ said Steve, walking casually away from Gus down the hall.

‘It’s Augustine to you!’ said Gus defiantly, but way too quietly for Steve to hear. All of his courage had gone into that one punch, scraped onto the bricks behind him.

9. As If

When Gus got to school next day, there was a note on everyone’s desk in homeroom, confirming the travel arrangements for Camp. Gus knew he had to do everything possible to avoid going.

First he became a conscientious objector.

‘What kind of fascist school is this where I have to go and play war games?’ he demanded of Mr Winter, the school principal.

Talking to the principal like this was a radical step, but Gus was sufficiently scared of Steve and what they might do to him out there in the wilds to risk anything.

‘They’re not war games,’ objected Mr Winter mildly.

‘Survival skills? Units? It’s completely militaristic.’

Mr Winter looked across his desk at him in vague surprise. ‘Call it whatever you want to call it, Gus, but you’ll go because that’s what the conditions of being in this school are.’

‘But Mr Winter,’ pleaded Gus, ‘I’m a pacifist!’

‘That would be fine if this were a democracy,’ smiled Mr Winter, ‘but this is a fascist state, as you have so acutely observed, and you are going.’

‘He’s not really a fascist dictator, Gus,’ Brother Nicholas explained at lunch. ‘He’s an administrator, and he doesn’t want to pay for someone to supervise you in those two days that everyone else is away.’

That put paid to any more conscientious objecting, then. If it was an administrative problem, Gus would have to solve it administratively. He had a brainwave.

‘You can supervise me!’

‘I’ll be away on retreat.’

‘Spiritual retreat? Well, for God’s sake! That’s obviously more appropriate for a conscientious objector than a survival bivouac thingy!’

‘Please, Gus, don’t take the Lord’s name in vain. And you can’t come. It’s a special retreat for members of the Order only.’

‘I’ll become one.’

‘Over the weekend?’ Brother Nicholas shook his head. ‘You’re desperate to avoid going on this camp, aren’t you?’

‘I’m terrified.’

Brother Nicholas sat down on a low aluminium bench and drew Gus down beside him. Then he stared into space for such a long time that Gus wondered if he’d forgotten he was there. Gus cleared his throat loudly, hoping this would recall Brother Nicholas back to himself and his purpose in having Gus sit here beside him, in complete silence, in full view of the whole school.

‘One more moment.’

A few seconds later Brother Nicholas turned to Gus. His face was radiant. ‘I have the answer!’

‘What was the question?’

‘I’ve seen you withdrawing from your friends over the last few months, Gus. I know you’ve given up bringing your special lunches, now, too. It’s not right.’

‘I’ve been living cautiously. I’ve learnt to value the fact of survival over the possibility of happiness.’

‘And has it made you happy?’

‘Well, see, a while ago that stopped being the point.’

‘But it is the point, Gus. You are meant to be happy. Instead you’re pretending that this … this turning away from everything and everyone is a good thing, when really, it’s just because you’re afraid.’

‘Just because I’m afraid? Just? Wouldn’t you be?’ Gus burst out. ‘I had a dream about Camp, Brother Nicholas, and they were setting me on fire!’

‘I’ve been worried about you for weeks, Gus, but now I have been given an answer.’

‘You mean God’s talked to you about me? Well, come on! What did he say?’

‘Will you promise to do what it is if I tell you?’

‘I hate making promises like that.’

‘I want you to make a commitment.’

Gus struggled between curiosity and caution. He knew Brother Nicholas would hold him to his promise, but he also knew Brother Nicholas had Gus’s best interests at heart.

‘Yes.’

‘Stop being afraid.’

‘That’s the answer?’ Gus couldn’t hide his disappointment. ‘Obviously the answer to being afraid is to stop being afraid! If there was nothing to be afraid of, I’d stop being afraid.’

‘No, Gus! That’s where you keep making your mistake. You have to stop being afraid first, and then you’ll find there’s nothing to be of.’

‘Well, that’s a very interesting theory, Brother Nicholas. But how?’

‘Oh. You want more detail on how to stop being afraid?’

‘That would be most helpful, thank you,’ said Gus sarcastically.

Brother Nicholas stared off into space again. ‘I have an answer for you,’ he said a few moments later.

‘Great.’

Gus had been humouring Brother Nicholas. He didn’t really believe this was coming from God. He didn’t know where it was coming from—Brother Nicholas’s kind and wise heart, probably—but that was good enough for Gus.

‘Don’t forget you promised.’

‘I won’t forget. You won’t let me forget.’

‘You have to do everything exactly … as if! As if you weren’t afraid.’

‘As if. That’s the crucial part, is it?’

‘Yep.’ Brother Nicholas looked pleased with himself.

As if. It was a good answer. ‘Everything?’ asked Gus.

‘Everything,’ said Brother Nicholas.

‘Including Camp?’

‘Particularly Camp. This will only work if you tackle the thing of which you are most afraid.’

‘I’m not tackling Steve.’

‘That won’t be necessary.’

‘I just promised to go to Camp,’ Gus sighed. He was doomed. It was as simple as that.

10. The Promise

Gus spent Saturday morning preparing for dinner with Trinity. Just before lunchtime she phoned.

‘I’m calling to confirm dinner tonight,’ she said quickly, after they’d dealt with the hellos.

‘I’m making it now. I’m looking forward to it,’ said Gus. Actually he was worrying about it, he worried about everything at the moment, but he told her what he wanted to be true.

‘Really? I was worried that I’d pushed you into it.‘

Her honesty helped Gus feel more certain about the whole thing. ‘I think it will be fun,’ he said, feeling genuinely enthusiastic about it for the first time. ‘Mum and Dad are going out tonight so I’ve got the kitchen to myself. I’m making tamales.’

‘Will Luke be there?’

‘Maybe for a second, but don’t worry about him. He won’t actually hassle you in our own home, if you know what I mean.’

‘So what are tamales exactly?’ she asked abruptly.

Gus was becoming accustomed to the odd rhythms in their conversation. ‘Tamales are a sensual and theatrical experience. Actually, I read that in a magazine,’ he added, suddenly self conscious.

‘Sounds, um … interesting.’

Gus felt tender toward her as he hung up the phone. Tonight would be so different to the other day, he vowed, when he hadn’t given her anything to eat. Tonight he would really tempt her, and that willpower of hers would crack. He wanted to see her eating up everything on her plate, chasing the last crumbs, and begging him for more. Tonight Gus would show Trinity what he did best.

Luke came in from surfing at three o’clock and stood at the fridge eating the remains of a cold surf’n’turf pizza he’d ordered in the night before.

‘Why don’t you warm it up in the oven first?’ suggested Gus.

‘Can’t wait that long,’ said Luke through a mouthful of ground mince and prawns. ‘I’m starved.’

While he chewed, Luke stared speculatively at the lemon and coconut cake sitting on Dior’s silver stand, and the baking tray of tamales looking like plump little babies, waiting to go into the oven.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ warned Gus, as he stacked the saucepans neatly in the washing-up stand to dry. ‘That’s all for dinner.’

‘I just decided to stay in.’

‘I thought you were going out with Judy tonight,’ said Gus quickly.

‘I could do with a quiet one.’

‘But it’s your second anniversary!’

‘I know, I know. But it’s a lot of pressure.’

‘I thought you really liked her.’

‘I do, I do. But I’m a bit freaked out by it all. I just don’t know if I’m ready to settle down.’

‘What about the present you bought her?’

‘It can wait. There’s no point rushing into things, is there?’

Damn! thought Gus, watching Luke’s Adam’s apple bobbing as he drank milk straight from the carton. With Luke here tonight the whole thing with Trinity was likely to be more tense.

‘So who’s coming?’ asked Luke.

‘A friend.’

‘What friend?’

‘A girl … Trinity,’ he admitted.

Luke didn’t bother to hide his amazement ‘Trinity Prakash is coming here to have dinner with you?’

‘We’re just friends, that’s all.’

‘Are you sure?’ teased Luke. ‘Are you sure you’re just friends?’

‘Yes, I’m sure!’

Gus went to punch him and Luke caught his hand just before he made contact.

‘Your action’s good but you’ve got to make the whole thing happen faster,’ said Luke kindly.

Gus pulled his hand away and went back to wiping the kitchen counter.

‘Sooo.’ Luke came sidling up to him. ‘Is it okay with you if I drop by?’ Luke craned round to stare into Gus’s eyes. ‘Please can I come?’ he wheedled. ‘Please?’

When Luke dropped his swaggering tough-guy act there was no way Trinity couldn’t like him, thought Gus.

‘Pleeeease?’

Even Gus found him hard to resist. ‘Okay, but you have to be nice to her, all right?’

Luke raised his hand. ‘I’ll be at my most nicest. I promise.’

11. Hot Tamale!

Gus worked happily for the rest of the afternoon. When he’d finished cooking, he enjoyed watching the view darkening out the kitchen window as he cleaned up. Then he put the Christmas tablecloth on the kitchen table to make it more special—he’d decided against the dining room because he didn’t want it to be too formal. He wanted Trinity to know that he knew it was meant to be a friendly dinner, and not a romantic one.

At seven, Luke came in to check on his progress.

‘Wow! Did Mum say you could use that?’ He pointed at the tablecloth. It was white with gold piping sewn round the edges, and so large that on all four sides of the table it was draping on the floor.

‘No. Yes. I don’t know.’

‘I thought Trinity was just a friend.’

‘She is just a friend!’

‘Okay, okay, just a friend,’ called Luke as he went into the bathroom.

Trinity arrived early, at ten past seven instead of seven-thirty, dressed in a light-blue beach sarong and midriff top with pink thongs, her dark hair swinging in a glossy bob, as usual. Gus couldn’t help feeling disappointed that she hadn’t dressed up more for the occasion, and he was glad that he hadn’t had time to get changed. Dressed in blue Mambo shorts and an old yellow shirt, he looked just as casual as she did. At least she’d made an effort with her make-up. Her lips were glossier than usual and her eyes looked bigger.

‘You look great,’ he told her.

‘I feel fat today,’ she replied, smoothing her sarong over her hips.

‘If anything, you’re too thin,’ he told her truthfully.

‘That’s really sweet of you to say so,’ she said as she stepped over the threshold and headed towards the kitchen.

Gus followed close behind, eager to hear her reaction to the table setting.

‘It’s only set for two,’ was her first reaction. ‘Isn’t Luke eating with us?’ was her second.

‘He might or might not,’ shrugged Gus. ‘In any case he’s promised to behave.’

‘He’s promised what in any case?’ shouted Luke from the bathroom.

Trinity stood up straighter and flicked her hair back from her shoulders.

‘To behave,’ Gus shouted back.

He heard the bathroom door opening and footsteps approaching. Trinity scurried to sit down just before Luke appeared at the door dressed in only a towel wrapped round his waist. Tanned and tousled, Luke looked like someone in a shampoo commercial.

‘It’s you!’ he exclaimed, pretending to be surprised.

Trinity sat up straighter in her seat. ‘It’s me,’ she squeaked back.

Gus had never heard her make a noise like this before, and he realised she must be nervous, after what had happened with Luke on the bus.

‘Trinity, Luke. Luke, Trinity. I know you two have met, but let’s put the past behind us tonight, what do you think?’

‘I say let sleeping dogs lie,’ said Luke, smiling at Trinity like a wolf.

‘Bygones be bygones,’ breathed Trinity, smiling straight back at Luke, and then quickly lowering her eyes in a move Gus had never seen before, just like a sweet little lamb.

A flicker of dread curled around Gus’s ribcage and lodged itself there.

‘To putting the past behind us.’

They all clinked glasses and sipped. The wine Luke had chosen from Mark’s small but prized collection tasted sweet and cool on Gus’s tongue. The candles Luke had lit cast a rosy hue onto Trinity’s dusky shoulders and made the cutlery gleam. The dining room where Luke had relocated them looked grave and beautiful by candlelight. At other times it could look slightly ridiculous with its chandeliers and fake velvet chaise lounge and chairs, but tonight it looked perfect. It was too beautiful, thought Gus. Trinity had said she wanted a casual night and now Luke had turned it into something out of ‘Gone with the Wind’.

Gus speared a mushroom with his fork and put the whole thing in his mouth at once, hoping to set an example. Luke followed by taking a small bite, and Trinity played with the stem of her glass. Gus chewed vigorously, trying to enjoy the fresh, juicy flavour, but it was ruined by the atmosphere. As he gathered up their entree plates and took them out to the kitchen, he tried to work out what the problem was. Perhaps they both still felt awkward about what had happened between them on the bus? But then why was Luke making such a big deal about everything being so special all of a sudden? This was very unlike him. He rarely ate at the table if Dior wasn’t there to enforce it. He ate most of his meals standing in the door of the fridge.

Gus moved back and forth between the dining room and kitchen, setting out the main course. There was a hatch between the two rooms where he placed the plates once he’d put the tamales on them. He heard voices from the dining room and felt reassured. They were talking at last. So far, they’d hardly said a word to each other, and Gus was finding it difficult to talk enough for three. But when he came back in through the doorway, they abruptly fell silent. Neither of them had touched the plates of food waiting in the hatch. They were waiting for him to serve them! Feeling like a butler, he did so, and at last sat back down.

‘Ta da!’ The tamales looked wonderful, thought Gus. So plump and juicy, their bows so tantalisingly neat he longed to pull the thread and reveal the mystery of what lay within.

‘Great,’ said Luke.

Trinity simply kept staring at Luke. Gus had had no idea she could be so boring.

Well, that would have to do. Gus saw they weren’t going to say anything more and so he fell on his tamale. He pulled the string and the corn husk fell slightly open. A hot blanket of spicy aromas floated up to him. He pushed his fork in. It was so fluffy and sweet. So tempting. He took a bite.

‘Hmmmm.’

Oh, heaven. The finely minced chicken had become almost moussey and was studded with sweet-corn kernels. This was the best he’d made. It was a triumph. He couldn’t help himself. He took bite after bite, savouring the uncomplicated pleasure of his creation.

He’d almost finished when he noticed Trinity hadn’t touched her tamale. She hadn’t even pulled on the string!

Then he saw that Luke had hardly touched his either.

Then he realised what the atmosphere was. This was a romantic atmosphere. This was a romantic dinner for two and the only problem was that three people were sitting here: Luke, Trinity and Gus the stupid butler.

His face must have shown his shock, because Luke said, ‘Gus, what’s wrong?’

‘Ah, Trinity hasn’t touched her food,’ he improvised.

‘Hmm?’ said Trinity.

He’d startled her.

‘Oh. Oh, I’m sorry Gus, I’m not hungry, I guess.’

‘Aren’t you even going to open it?’ asked Gus. They’d taken over an hour to prepare!

She must have sensed his panic, because she pulled on the thread and the tamale fell open, but it had cooled down sitting on her plate and it no longer steamed up flavoursome-ly the way Gus’s so enchantingly had.

‘Aren’t you going to taste it?’ asked Luke.

‘Aren’t you going to eat it?’ demanded Gus.

Tentatively, she took a bite. Then she took another, and another, until it was all gone. The minute her last mouthful was swallowed, she excused herself to go to the bathroom.

‘What’s going on?’ hissed Gus at Luke as soon as she’d left.

Luke grinned. ‘Something good.’

Gus was speechless. Luke had no idea. He had not the faintest idea.

‘Gus?’ Luke was peering at him. ‘I thought you said you were just friends?’

‘Yeah,’ he said weakly, aware that he had to say something.

‘Are you disappointed about the dinner? It was fantastic, Gussy. I haven’t given these tama-what-cha-ma-call-its the attention they deserve tonight. You know, I’ve been attending to other things. But just you wait, tomorrow I’ll be all theirs. I bet they taste great cold.’

Of course they didn’t taste great cold. The whole point of them was to be wrapped up and steaming hot and delicious when you unwrapped them, but Gus couldn’t be bothered to explain. ‘I’ll get dessert.’

‘Fantastic.’

The sad thing was, Luke was trying to be kind. How could he possibly understand? From where Luke stood, those lofty heights, if you wanted a girl, she was yours. If you couldn’t have her, well, you didn’t really want her anyway. That was Luke’s theory and it worked brilliantly for him. Gus’s tiny ambitions regarding Trinity wouldn’t even come within his range.

Gus pushed himself away from the table and went out to the hallway. Trinity was still in the bathroom, so he stood at the window at the far end of the hall to wait, looking out at the view. Headlights nosed their way around Bilgola Head like nocturnal hunters. He’d seen a crash there once, when a car had missed the turn and rolled down the cliff onto the rocks. Gus had been standing here watching then too, as those people’s lives were being changed irrevocably, forever. He had stood there for what seemed like a long time, although it was actually no more than a few seconds, before he came to his senses with a start and ran through the house shouting for an ambulance. Then the whole family had stood at the window for ages, watching ambulances and a squad of police cars arrive, and then the TV buses and helicopters circling in.

Tonight he wished he could see another one. He strained to see a pair of headlights veer too far on the turn. He wanted to shout out, and for Trinity and Luke to join him at the window. They could stand here together, united in their helplessness at the tragedy happening beyond their control. Instead the lights just kept crawling round the bend of the headland, and he just kept standing here, alone.

He heard Trinity coming out of the bathroom at last, and went in himself. He coughed. She’d used too much air freshener. As he washed his hands he sniffed again, and under the artificial smell of the freshener he detected another smell. It was strange, and yet familiar. He closed his eyes and sniffed again, as deeply as he could. It reminded him of sickness, and … vomit. It was vomit. Trinity had just thrown up.

Gus’s eyes met his own in the bathroom mirror as he added it all up—how thin she was, how much she talked about calories and how he’d never seen her eat a bite until now.

‘Great,’ said Gus to his reflection. ‘This is just perfect!’

He desperately needed to punch something.

‘You really do have a perfect life which you manage perfectly,’ he whispered savagely. ‘Not only do you set your own brother up with the woman of your dreams, you spend the whole day preparing a meal for someone who’s gonna hurl it down the toilet!’

Gus balled his hand into a fist and punched the mirror hard. It bounced unsatisfyingly against the glass.

‘And you can’t even punch!’

He kicked the toilet cistern with all his might, hitting the hard ceramic with the side of his foot and slamming his toe agonisingly into the drainpipe. He gasped and clenched his fingers around the edge of the sink while he waited for the pain to die down, looking at himself with loathing the whole time.

Finally his breathing returned to normal. He felt his foot gingerly—nothing appeared to be broken. He washed his face, and, feeling a lot calmer than when he’d entered the bathroom, he limped back into the kitchen.

The lemon and coconut cake he’d baked that morning looked pathetic to him now. He’d been so full of expectations and happy thoughts when he was baking it. He’d imagined himself laughing and joking with Trinity. He’d imagined them taking a walk between dinner and dessert, maybe casually holding hands. And after that, coming back home and eating cake, maybe even throwing some at each other. How incredibly juvenile! He cut the cake savagely into three enormous chunks, and piled each slice with ice cream.

He had been going to serve mascarpone, but that seemed too expensive for them now. He heaped the dishes on a tray with a full pot of plunger coffee and cups and saucers, and opened the hatch to push the tray through. He couldn’t see Luke’s face through the hatch as he’d expected to, nor the back of Trinity’s head. He raced round through the doorway to the dining room. It was empty. Neither Luke nor Trinity were there.

Where were they?

‘Luke? Trinity?’ Gus called out tentatively in the hall. He peered into the kitchen and checked that the bathroom was empty.

Perhaps it was a joke. Perhaps they were hiding from him, ready to jump out and give him a fright any moment now. He checked behind the kitchen door and even opened a few cupboards.

‘Luke? Trinity? Your coffee’s getting cold,’ he called. ‘The ice cream is melting.’

He opened the front door and peered out beyond the circle of light cast from the hall. All he heard was the squeaking of bats and a crackling radio somewhere. He closed the door and returned to the dining room.

The pieces of cake sat slumped in their bedraggled skirts of melting ice cream like tired brides. The ragged stumps of the candles were dripping wax onto the table top; Dior would have a fit. Gus stepped forward to move them, but suddenly he couldn’t be bothered. He knew where Luke and Trinity were. He’d known from the first second he’d seen they weren’t sitting at the table. He should have known from the instant Luke came into the kitchen just after Trinity arrived.

Luke and Trinity were off together somewhere. In Luke’s bedroom, or in the car, or even out in the garden somewhere. What difference did it make? Trinity would be refining her technique, executing the moves she’d told Gus about. Luke would be making all the moves he’d been practising for years.

And what about Gus’s moves? His friendliness toward her on the bus? The efforts he’d made to entertain her and make her feel welcome? What about his baked mushrooms and tamales and cake? His listening and understanding and humour? What about his whole fantastic self? She’d passed all of that up for Luke, who’d only ever hassled her on the bus and ripped up a seat or two.

Gus saw the phone had been knocked off the hook and he replaced it. Then he pulled a chair out from the table and lowered himself down into it. Another drop of wax hit the varnish of the table and Gus picked it up with his finger. The burning felt good. The candle sputtered. Gus put his feet up onto the seat of the other chair, and with one elbow on the table, lowered his head onto his hand. A tear splashed the tabletop just before the next drop of wax. More tears fell, and more drops of wax. One of the candles began to sputter, and, just as Gus slid into a miserable sleep, it died.

12. Sleeping Dogs

The phone was ringing. In his ear.

Gus started awake and fell off the chair. His bottom hit the floor and his elbow hit the hard wooden leg of the chair his feet had been on. The chair overbalanced and slid onto its side, the back of it grazing Gus’s shoulder on its way down. It was as though the ground had reared up and bitten him. Then it all came back, the circumstances of his sleeping in here, and it felt as if the sky had fallen on his head as well. He stretched out on the floor and slid helplessly back into sleep.

But the phone was ringing. Why was it so loud? He rolled over, covering his ear with his arm. It kept ringing. He got up and answered.

‘Gus? Gus, it’s Judy.’

‘Judy,’ he repeated dully.

‘Sorry to wake you.’

‘What time is it?’

‘About eight, I think. Gus, I’m worried about Luke. I tried calling but it was engaged all evening. He didn’t show up last night, for our anniversary.’

‘Oh, no!’ Luke must have taken the phone off the hook on purpose.

A pain in Gus’s stomach burned up into his throat. His indigestion felt like a broken heart. Was this unusual?

‘What, Gus? Is anything wrong?’

Gus thought quickly, formulating a plan. ‘Judy, listen. I’ll go and see if he’s here, okay?’

‘Okay.’

It made him feel better, somehow, to hear her sounding so miserable. He felt tender towards Judy, and murderous towards that evil bastard brother of his, Luke.

‘Ring me back in half an hour, okay?’

‘Yeah, okay. Thanks, Gus,’ she said, and hung up.

Gus steadied himself at the door of Luke’s room, readying himself for what he might find. He knocked. No answer. He opened the door a crack. It was dark in the room, and smelly. Luke’s bed was next to the window and with the help of a faint shaft of light through the curtains, Gus could make out his profile. He was alone. Trinity wasn’t in there.

Breathing deeply to calm himself, he went over to the cupboard where Luke kept his sporting equipment. He pulled out a cricket bat—he didn’t bother to be quiet about it—and a glove and some golf balls came banging out onto the grimy carpet next to Gus’s feet.

Standing in the middle of the room, Gus tested the weight of the bat in his hand while he studied the body in the bed. This piece of wood could smash those fine features, and a lot of people would be grateful. All the Judys of the past, present and future would thank him, Gus, for evening their chances against this monster. Gus moved to stand next to the bed, holding the bat over Luke’s curly head like a sword.

As his eyes became used to the darkness, he was able to make out Luke’s features in detail. The long lashes curling on the faintly freckled cheeks. The thick golden-brown hair curling in tendrils all over the pillow. The faintly squashed nose and nostrils flaring, even in sleep. The full lips. The blue-green eyes, staring into Gus’s own.

‘Why are you holding that cricket bat over my head?’

‘I’m going to smash your face in.’

‘For stealing your girlfriend?’

Gus brought the bat down with all his force on the pillow right next to Luke’s head.

Luke sat up fast, white-faced. ‘Shit, Gus!’

Gus squinted at him, trying to spear him with lasers of pure white hate.

‘You can’t kill me,’ gasped Luke. ‘I’m your brother.’

Gus threw the cricket bat onto the bed, the handle bouncing onto Luke’s shin. Luke winced but didn’t say anything.

‘What did you do with her?’ demanded Gus.

‘What do you think?’

‘You snogged her!’

‘Well, that’s a nice way of putting it.’

Luke never apologised. It was one of about four hundred things you could not make him do, and Gus wasn’t about to attempt to make history now.

‘Does she want to go out with you?’

‘You do like her, don’t you?’

‘Does she want to go out with you?’ Gus screamed, shoving Luke hard in the chest with both hands.

‘Jesus, Gus, what’s the matter with you?’

‘Answer me.’

‘I dunno. Probably.’

Gus slumped back against the wall.

‘Gus—it’s not that big a deal, okay?’

‘It is for her! She told me. You’re the one she chose.’

‘Hmmm. Well, maybe you could let her know I’m not available.’

Luke pulled the sheets up around his shoulders and snuggled down into them. ‘I have to go back to sleep, little brother.’

‘I’m not your little brother,’ said Gus, walking to the door and slamming it shut behind him.

As he climbed back up the stairs to the dining room, Gus tried to master the tears of disappointment and humiliation that he felt bubbling just beneath the surface of his skin. He needed to be calm and collected for what he was about to do next. As they say, revenge is a dish best eaten cold.

13. Serve Cold

Gus had only ever used the phone for good, not evil, to nurture relationships, and keep the lines of communication open between himself and the world. Now he was about to discover the power of the phone as a weapon of destruction, swifter and more terrible than any carefully circulated rumour or threatening look.

The phone rang and Gus snatched it up, expecting Judy.

‘Gus? It’s Trinity. I want to thank you for such a lovely dinner last night. I’m sorry I left so abruptly, but I knew you’d understand.’

It felt to Gus as though a thick fog had gathered at the top of the stairs, and that when he’d picked up the phone and heard Trinity’s voice it had enveloped him, covering him with a clammy chill.

‘Understand what?’ he asked slowly.

‘About me and Luke, and my plan … you know.’ She laughed lightly, a false and pathetic, phoney little laugh, thought Gus. ‘Anyway, you were great,’ she continued. ‘You’ve been a great friend.’

The fog was getting thicker, so thick Gus could hardly think, and so cold it felt as though his heart might be on the point of freezing.

‘Well, uh, anyway,’ said Trinity, ‘is Luke there?’

‘He’s asleep.’ Gus’s voice sounded to him as though it were coming from very far away.

‘Oh. Well, could you ask him to call when he gets up?’

Gus struggled, and slowly the realisation trickled through him, like an ice-cold drink: she was calling to speak with Luke, not Gus. The fog lifted and the facts of the situation emerged from his hurt and confusion like mountain peaks above the mist, crystalline and obvious.

‘Sure,’ said Gus evenly, ‘but it might be a while before he calls back. He’s seeing his girlfriend today. It’s their second anniversary.’

‘Are you sure?’ said Trinity. ‘He suggested we go out.’

‘That’s Luke for you! He’ll say anything.’

‘But … he said …’

‘It’s nothing personal,’ continued Gus calmly, over the top of her. ‘He does it all the time.’

‘Why are you being like this?’ she said quietly.

‘And I’m glad to hear you enjoyed dinner. I was wondering about that, seeing as you threw it up a minute later.’

‘I felt sick,’ she whispered.

‘Yeah, right.’

‘I was anxious. Sometimes I get so anxious I can’t digest things properly … Look, what business is it of yours anyway?’

Gus welcomed the hostility in her voice with relief.

‘You can’t just push and pull people around!’ he shouted into the receiver. ‘You can’t come over here to dinner with me and … and … act like that’s okay!’

‘I thought we had an understanding!’

‘What understanding? I didn’t understand anything! If I had, I would have told you that you were wasting your time. Luke is taken, Trinity. He’s not free. He even asked me to tell you so this morning.’

‘Why are you being so mean?’

Somehow she was turning it all around, as though he was in the wrong!

‘I’m waiting for another call,’ he said finally, with great dignity. ‘From Luke’s girlfriend.’

‘You’re probably just saying that to hurt my feelings.’

‘What planet are you on?’ he replied, in as withering a tone as he could manage. ‘I couldn’t care less about your feelings!’ And he hung up the phone.

Gus was surprised to feel the energy and anger of a moment ago disappear, leaving him with only a stale, slightly sick feeling, as though he’d eaten too much junk food. Judy wasn’t due to call for another ten minutes, so he decided that a shower and a change of clothes might give him the lift he needed.

By the time Judy called, Gus felt clean and fresh. He was ready to continue with his plan.

Gus liked Judy. She was forthright. She was true. She and Luke were entirely incompatible.

‘Have you found him?’ asked Judy, straight to the point.

‘He’s downstairs, asleep.’

‘Ohhh, and I was worried he was lying in a ditch somewhere. What a bastard.’

Judy said this whenever Luke stood her up, but it never took her long to forgive him. Gus didn’t know what kind of excuses Luke gave, but they always did the trick. She treated his lateness and no-shows indulgently, as though he was just a naughty boy playing up a little bit. ‘Gentle but firm,’ she’d told Gus once, explaining how her mother said you should handle a boy like Luke. ‘He’s a good boy, really, only he just doesn’t know it yet.’ But what if she heard about last night? wondered Gus. Luke always flirted like mad, and he definitely went out with other girls, but he explained these away to Judy as friendly outings, and as far as Gus knew Luke had never actually been unfaithful. If she knew about last night, how long would it take her to forgive him then?

‘He’s totally spooked about going out with me for so long, isn’t he?’ she said now, as calmly as a doctor diagnosing the flu. ‘Mum said that’s what it must be, last night.’

No wonder Luke liked her so much, thought Gus in awe. She could read him like a book.

‘He just went out with the guys and forgot about it, right?’ continued Judy. ‘I should have known.’

So she wasn’t as infallible as she liked to make out, thought Gus, suddenly doubtful about what he was about to do. With Luke, the truth was like a ripped old T-shirt that was always half a size too small for reality. It would take so little to slide over what had really happened last night. To stretch the truth slightly here and put a tuck in it there.

‘That’s not quite what happened,’ he said slowly.

‘Well, what did happen?’ asked Judy.

Here it was, thought Gus. The skin on his arms prickled. His chance for revenge.

‘Gus?’

‘There’s something you need to know about Luke. Something he wouldn’t want you to know.’

‘Are you sure you should be telling me then?’ she asked, after a long pause.

Sure? Of course he was sure! A bracing shot of outrage flooded Gus. She deserved to know the truth about her own boyfriend, didn’t she?

‘He got with this friend of mine who came over to have dinner with me.’

Silence.

‘Don’t you understand? On your second anniversary he got with the girl I’ve liked for months!’ A wave of self-pity overwhelmed him. Gus waited for her to commiserate with him, and to thank him for helping her see the truth about Luke at last.

‘I don’t believe you,’ she said flatly.

Didn’t believe him? What was she talking about? ‘There have been plenty of other incidents, as bad as last night or worse, Judy, let me tell you.’ Gus knew he was exaggerating, but he had to make Judy see his point.

‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘I’m telling you so you won’t be such a sucker anymore.’ This wasn’t coming out quite as he’d intended, but he was too upset to find the right words.

‘Luke’s annoyed you in some way, hasn’t he?’ Judy’s voice was shaking, as though she was nervous, thought Gus, or about to cry. ‘You’re making this up to get him back.’

‘What?’ Why wouldn’t she understand? ‘I’m trying to help you, Judy.’

‘I don’t need your help.’

‘D-don’t n-need my h-help?’ Gus was so angry he stuttered. She always talked as though she had Luke all figured out, but really she had no idea. What about all those white lies he’d told for Luke, whenever the surf was good? What about all those times he had felt sorry for Judy, and tried to persuade Luke to be more kind? ‘If I h-hadn’t helped, you t-two probably wouldn’t even b-be t-together.’

‘Well, maybe that’s what you need to think to feel important,’ said Judy. And then she hung up.

‘Hello? HELLO!’ Gus slammed down the phone. ‘AM I LOSING MY MIND?’ Gus shouted at the ceiling, as loud as he possibly could.

‘Maybe.’ Luke’s head appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘What’s up?’ The rest of his naked body emerged, clad only in his underpants.

‘Judy’s what’s up.’

Luke opened the fridge. ‘She’s called, huh?’

‘Happy anniversary!’

Gus went downstairs into his room, closed the door behind him and flopped face down onto his bed.

When Gus opened his eyes, the sun was right up in the middle of the sky, cooking him through the window with the full force of midday. Groggily, he went upstairs, following the sounds of the radio into the laundry where Dior was sorting through a pile of clothes.

‘Hello, my darling.’

He hadn’t been so happy to hear her soppy love talk for years. He walked over to stand beside her and put his arms round her, burying his head into the hollow between her shoulder and her neck. It was an awkward fit, and not as comforting as he remembered. Awkwardly, he loosened his arms and moved away from her. Dior put her arm around his waist and pulled him back to stand close beside her.

‘You’ve gotten taller recently,’ she smiled at him. ‘You’re growing up fast now, Gus.’

‘You can say that again,’ said Gus. He took a deep breath, ready to unload. ‘Trinity came over and then Luke …’

He stopped. He couldn’t imagine talking to Dior about Trinity, or Steve—or anything that really mattered. Even thinking about talking to Dior about sex made his cheeks hot. He used to tell her everything, but that was when his biggest problem had been losing his boogie board, or being sentenced to a fortnight’s detention at school. It was weird, but now that his problems were bigger, they had become impossible to tell.

He moved away again, out of her reach, clearing his throat and breathing in the clean dry smell of freshly washed clothes.

‘Gus?’ She was still waiting for him to say something.

‘I better go upstairs and clean up.’ Gus pictured the dining room as he’d left it. The dirty plates, and the wax on the table. ‘Sorry about the mess, Mum.’

‘But it’s spotless! Luke must have done it.’

Was this the start of a sorry? wondered Gus.

‘Where is Luke?’ he asked.

‘He’s a bit miserable, I think. Something to do with Judy. He’s in his room.’

14. Blood And Beer

It was something to do with Judy.

At dinner that night, Luke announced that Judy wasn’t speaking to him. ‘I think we’ve broken up. No one’s ever broken up with me before,’ he said flatly, staring down at his plate.

‘Oh, Lu,’ said Dior, and put her hand over his on the table.

Mark pushed his chair back over the cork floor-tiles. Dior shuddered but she didn’t yelp ‘Mark!’ as she usually did, even though she loved those tiles. She’d made Mark’s favourite meal, too—steak, salad and baked potatoes. They must have had a romantic night last night, deduced Gus. For his part, Mark praised every bit of food put down in front of him, despite Dior’s reliably terrible cooking. Gus sighed. At least some couples managed to get it together and make each other happy. Miraculous but true—and here was the evidence, right here in his own home.

Mark went into the kitchen and came back carrying three bottles of beer. He dumped them down onto the table and hooked his arms around Luke’s neck.

‘Not speaking doesn’t mean breaking up, mate.’

Take it from the expert, thought Gus. Even though Dior went all silent on Mark sometimes, generally she was one happy customer. Luke put his hands up to Mark’s beefy forearms and pulled down, releasing himself from their grip.

‘Judy’s never not spoken to me before. Isn’t that right, Gus?’

Gus nodded, staring at the large piece of grilled meat oozing blood on his plate. (Mark liked his meat rare.) A vision, a beautiful picture materialised before him: Luke laid out, arms and legs trussed to a pole, eyes rolled to the back of his head, dead as a doornail. Blood oozing warm and clogging from the hole in his chest where Gus has gored him with his spear. Shouldering up the load and lugging him home to his cave where his cavewoman awaits. ‘Ug! Fresh human!’ she exclaims delightedly. ‘We’ll spit roast him,’ grunts Cave Gus, ‘it’ll make a nice change from mammoth.’

Luke took a long swig of beer. ‘Usually when I do something bad she wants to tell me all about it.’

‘Then what are you complaining about?’

‘There’s bad and then there’s bad,’ muttered Gus.

Mark took the top off his beer with an expert twist. Dior splayed her long red fingernails over the top of her glass and Mark shrugged at her before refilling his own.

‘This is weird, isn’t it, Gus?’ said Luke. ‘It’s weird. She hasn’t spoken to me all day.’

Gus raised his head quickly to catch Luke’s eye and smote him with his thoughts: Die! But Luke was looking down, busily sawing at his steak. Mark reached over the table and pushed a beer at Gus. ‘Go on, Gussy.’

Gus glanced at Dior. She smiled at him encouragingly.

‘A boy as big as you is old enough to have a beer, I reckon,’ said Mark.

‘He is taller, isn’t he?’ said Dior. ‘Our baby chicks are growing up so fast!’

Gus frowned. He hated being talked about like this. His size was the topic of the week all of a sudden, and he couldn’t remember ever feeling so small to the point of tininess to the point of disappearance. Anyway, he didn’t like beer. Never had.

He took a sip and stuffed another chunk of steak into his maw. The beer helped the flavour. He took another swig with the meat still in his mouth. Gus had had a beer before, of course, he’d had a few, but never with meat. Now the beer sliced through the grease and bathed his mouth in cleansing bubbles. As his teeth clamped on the meat again, the flavour met his tongue anew and the bloody savour of it was freshly satisfying.

‘Gus, it’s weird, isn’t it?’ repeated Luke, staring at him.

Gus stared back, chewing slowly.

‘Good, Gus?’ asked Dior.

‘Delicious, Mum.’

A few minutes later the beer was finished, and Gus felt more relaxed about the smooth trajectory his steak knife kept making in his mind’s eye as it slid into Luke’s throat.

‘Look, what’s eating you two?’ Mark burst out.

‘What did I do?’ said Luke.

‘What didn’t you do, more like!’ said Mark as he gathered up his cutlery and picked up his plate. ‘Not a word out of the two of you for five minutes. It’s no fun for your mother and I to be sitting here with this.’ Mark pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘You two are about as cheery as a month of wet Wednesdays.’

For once Gus appreciated Mark’s stock turn of phrase. A month of wet Wednesdays sounded bad but manageable. Gus hoped he was right.

The calm sounds of the TV golf commentary came leaking into the kitchen from the living room across the hall. Gus couldn’t look at Luke now. The beer had softened him up and he didn’t trust his face not to give away his guilty knowledge about Judy.

‘So, what are you two up to tonight?’ asked Dior brightly.

‘We’ll stay home,’ said Gus.

‘Watching you dunk Mint Slices into your tea all night? Get stuffed,’ said Luke.

‘You’re going out?’ said Gus. ‘I thought you were miserable.’

Luke shrugged.

‘Anyway, you’re grounded,’ said Gus.

‘Dad’s given me the night off,’ said Luke.

‘Where are you going?’

‘The usual,’ said Luke.

‘Girls in pubs!’ exclaimed Gus. ‘So much for your broken heart.’

Gus had never been allowed to go into town on a Saturday night. That didn’t mean he hadn’t gone, of course. He’d been twice last summer holidays with Bas and Liam and the rest, when he was staying the night at Bas’s house. It hadn’t happened since then, though, because no one had invited him.

Luke was staring at him. Gus stared back, slowly licking the chocolate from a Mint Slice.

‘Well? Aren’t you going to ask me?’ said Luke finally.

‘Ask you what?’

‘If-you-can-come-into-town.’

Gus wanted to say ‘get lost and die’, but Dior was still sitting there, looking interested, so instead Gus put a whole biscuit into his mouth.

Luke leant forward across the table. ‘I can fix it up with Dior. Can’t I, Mum?’

‘I think it would be lovely for you to have a bit more fun, Gussy,’ she said.

Gus took another biscuit out of the packet while he swallowed the last one. That’s how depressed he was! He was chaining bikkies!

Luke and Dior waited, and watched, as Gus nibbled all the way round the top of the biscuit like a can opener, lifted the chocolate lid and licked the mint filling off the top of the biscuit. Then he put the chocolate lid back down on the spot he’d just hollowed out.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Luke eventually.

‘Sucking the brains out,’ said Gus thickly through the mint cream. He pushed the moist biscuit remains under Luke’s nose. ‘Want the corpse?’

Luke sat back quickly. ‘I worry about you sometimes, Gus.’ He got up from the table. ‘Sure you don’t want to come?’

Suddenly Gus realised—Luke was relieved! Dior had put him up to this. She’d probably bribed him to ask, and now he was glad Gus didn’t want to come.

‘On second thoughts, I think I will.’

‘Great,’ said Dior brightly.

‘Great,’ mumbled Luke.

‘Yeah! Everything’s great!’ shouted Gus triumphantly at Luke’s back as he left the room.

15. The Ride To Oblivion

Pittwater Road is a long, long road that winds all the way from the top of the peninsula at Palm Beach, down along the ocean past Newport and all the beaches, through the bush and down across the Spit Bridge where it becomes Military Road. It winds past cinemas and shopping centres, gyms and liquor barns. It crosses the Harbour Bridge until it hits the city at Wynyard, filled with office workers on weekdays but windswept and empty on the weekend.

The L90 is the bus that travels along Pittwater Road, morning and evening, snuffling or galloping depending on the state of the traffic, backwards and forwards all day like a trusty ox. Throughout the week, it belongs to commuters and school children and mothers and senior citizens. On Saturday night, it belongs to the young.

On Saturday night the L90 is an institution. It’s where some people smoke their first joint, kiss their first kiss, drink their first beer. Local legend has it that its even where some people have lost their virginity, but Gus can’t quite credit that one. It’s a bedroom, an ongoing party on the back seat, a meeting place.

‘It’s an experience,’ said Luke, settling into the back seat and looking around expertly, checking out the scene without meeting anyone’s eye.

Gus sat down next to him hesitantly.

When they pulled up at the bus stop in Collaroy, Luke stuck his head out the window and shouted, ‘Groink! Getchaarseinhere!’

Luke’s best friend, Mitchell, aka Groink, barrelled through the bodies already crowding up the aisle and squeezed in next to them. He was wearing new-looking jeans and a dark-coloured long-sleeved shirt, just like Luke and Gus. A few stops later Roo got on, and then Justin. Soon after that a carton of stubbies was revealed nestling between Groink’s feet. Justin popped one open and passed it over to Gus.

‘Get that into you,’ he ordered.

‘To the best ride in the world,’ said Groink.

‘The ticket to oblivion!’ said Luke.

They all threw their heads back and drank. Gus hesitated. He had never drunk much. He’d always been meaning to, but up until now he had never had the chance.

‘To oblivion,’ he repeated, and drank, swallowing the rich swirling foam until he had to pause for a breath.

Pretty soon, fourteen young men and two cases of beer, smuggled on in sports bags, had the whole back half of the bus to themselves. Any other night Gus would have sat up the front with the girls, hoping not to be noticed, avoiding guys like Groink who might catch your eye and try to start something. But tonight he was part of the group. He could do what he wanted, be as loud as he wanted, and nothing would happen to him. It felt wonderful. Gus finished his beer and accepted another, his third, counting the one Mark had given him at dinner.

Gus looked out the window at the view. Dusk was falling over the ocean, the sea blurring into the sky in a growing smudge of velvety blue. It looked so peaceful. The bus swung around a sharp corner and Gus grabbed Luke’s arm for balance.

Luke ruffled his hair. ‘All right there, mate?’

Gus grimaced. ‘Think I’m drunk.’

‘That’s the way,’ said Groink.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Luke. ‘I promised Mum I’d look after you.’

‘I don’t need looking after,’ said Gus. He took another long swill. There were a lot of girls on this bus to distract him from Trinity. The trouble was they all kind of looked like her. They were all thin and tanned with long hair loose around their shoulders, and wearing short wraparound skirts. He shook Luke’s arm. ‘Have you spoken to Trinity?’

‘Shit.’ Luke hit himself on the forehead with the palm of his hand. ‘I meant to call her and tell her it was off.’

‘Tell her what was off?’

‘Last night I said she could meet up with us in town.’

Gus was flabbergasted all over again by Luke’s insensitivity.

‘Maybe she won’t come,’ said Luke hopefully.

‘You wish. She’s crazy about you.’

‘Well, I’ll just have to avoid her then.’

‘That’s a great plan, Luke. That’s brilliant.’

The bus roared over the Harbour Bridge and everyone started putting their shoes back on and finishing off their beers. Down the front, girls were putting the final touches to their hair and make-up. The chances for a St Patrick’s boy in town on a Saturday night were slim—the girls had other guys in their sights now—unless you were Luke, who could compete against anyone.

‘Luke, you should be a pop star,’ yelled Gus over the roaring of the traffic on the bridge.

‘I already am one,’ yelled Luke back. ‘Wait until we get to the pub. You’ll see.’

And he was. All sorts of girls crowded round him, tall and lanky, short and curvy, dressed up and dressed down. Luke kept Gus close to him, making sure he always had a drink, introducing him to girl after girl.

‘Alicia,’ bellowed Luke over the clamour of a thousand conversations and loud music in a small room. ‘Kirsty!’

There were representatives here from every high school in Sydney, like a local Miss World. For a moment, Gus wished he had better clothes. Then he wished he were taller and bigger; and then he gave up on the whole idea of self-improvement. What was the point? Steve, Bas, Trinity … you can’t blame that kind of treatment on your appearance. Obviously he was cursed.

‘Gabia!’

After each introduction Gus would smile and try to lip-read. Then he’d shout something back and she would smile and nod. This would go on for a few minutes, and then they’d stand shoulder to shoulder in the crush near the bar, near Luke, swaying to the music. It was all for the best that talking was impossible, because Gus was becoming incapable of speech.

At the next pub, he saw Liam and Simon sitting at a table with a whole group of other guys from their year. So they were still coining into town, thought Gus, it was just that he’d been dropped. At least they waved at him and gestured for him to come over. Gus pointed to Luke and shook his head, miming that they were going to be leaving soon. They were probably as relieved as he was, thought Gus, and he was glad that they’d seen him with … what was her name? Skye, at his side.

Gus squinted into the murky swirl at a man standing alone with his hands in his pockets watching a game of pool. He looked a bit like Steve. Gus shook his head and tried to focus. He looked a lot like Steve.

Gus turned back to the bar and started shredding a beer coaster, looking around for the exit signs. Running off alone was a stupid idea, decided Gus. The thing to do was to stay with the group, to stay in a crowd of people at all times so that Steve wouldn’t be able to get anywhere near him. And anyway, thought Gus, pushing the remains of the beer coaster aside, maybe it really was a coincidence. Maybe it wasn’t even Steve.

Gus mustered up his courage and turned around again. The corner of the room where Steve had been standing a moment ago was filled with strangers, and he couldn’t even see the pool table anymore. Steve had disappeared into the crowd. If he had ever been there in the first place.

16. Unhygienic

At the next pub, Gus found himself sitting in a corner booth by himself. Standing wasn’t working so well for him anymore. He breathed in cigarette smoke and tried to think about fresh sweet things, like water. He felt sick and he felt happy.

‘Hello, Gus.’

Gus blinked rapidly in the smoky haze. It appeared that Trinity was standing right there in front of him, all dressed in black with gold jewellery round her neck and in her ears.

‘Can I sit down?’ She slid neatly into the seat opposite.

‘It’s a free country.’

‘Don’t be like that.’

‘I’ll be however I want to be!’

‘But it was all just a mis …’

‘Where’s Luke?’ interrupted Gus.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, but her quick glance to the right betrayed her. Luke was standing near the bar with his arm hooked around the neck of a girl with a thick blonde ponytail. They were drinking from the same bottle, passing it back and forth between them.

‘He’s so rude,’ said Trinity.

‘You’re crying!’ Gus exclaimed.

‘No, I’m not. It’s just extremely smoky in here.’ Trinity pressed a knuckle into her eye, smudging her make-up so that when she took her hand away she looked like a raccoon. ‘He didn’t even look at me when I went over to him. He hardly even said hello.’

‘Aaah, look. Don’t take it personally.’ Gus couldn’t stop himself from being kind. ‘It’s happened to half the girls at St Mary’s.’ This wasn’t strictly true, but it didn’t seem right to get all technical about things now.

‘Thanks, I guess. Oh, how disgusting!’

Gus followed her gaze to where Luke was nose to nose with the blonde ponytail, not quite kissing but well on the way by the looks of things. Gus couldn’t believe it. Even if Luke hadn’t been unfaithful to Judy before last night, he was certainly making up for lost time now.

‘When you think of kissing,’ said Trinity, ‘what is it really except getting a great big dose of someone else’s saliva?’

‘Eeuw!’

‘It’s completely unhygienic. Why not just put all your fluids into a cup and pour it down someone else’s throat to begin with?’

‘Gross!’

‘What a wasted effort,’ she sighed, smearing black mascara across her cheeks as she wiped her eyes.

She pulled a greasy paper bag out of her backpack and tore it open, revealing the biggest chocolate eclair Gus had ever seen. The chocolate icing was so smooth and hard it glimmered, and the fake cream piped around the middle was as firm and white as toothpaste.

‘Where did you get that?’

‘The station. I waited for an hour, and then I went to four different pubs before I found you.’

Gus thought she might be about to cry again, but instead she bit heavily into the chocolate eclair.

‘Isn’t that a little bit fattening?’ asked Gus cautiously.

‘It’s a lot fattening,’ she said through a mouth stuffed full of eclair. ‘What does it matter now?’

‘That’s not real cream,’ Gus warned, but any kind of protest was useless.

Trinity closed her eyes as she bit into the eclair again, and all Gus could do was watch as her small white teeth nibbled their way down the pastry, as fast and neat as a possum. This was what he’d been dreaming of when he served her dinner last night, but she’d been happy, and she hadn’t even wanted to digest a bite. Now she was heartbroken and she was eating anything she could get her hands on. It didn’t make any sense.

A group of young girls sitting in the booth opposite theirs were watching her too, their eyes wide and their mouths hanging open as they stared at her, ignoring the diet drinks and cigarettes sitting untouched on the table in front of them.

He didn’t hate Trinity, realised Gus. He didn’t fancy her either. As he watched her licking a big glob of cream off the bag, she seemed just like any other girl.

‘Oh, God, that’s better.’ She burped loudly. ‘Woops.’

‘Charming.’

‘Well, so are you. You’re practically dribbling, did you realise that? You keep sipping at your beer and then splurting it back into the glass again. Woops.’ She burped again. ‘I have to go.’

‘You can stay a bit longer if you want.’

‘Like this? With your brother socialising at the bar? I don’t think so.’

She hauled herself to her feet, struggling into her jacket and pushing her arm through the straps of her bag. ‘’Bye Gus.’ She leaned across the booth and squeezed his hand. ‘I’m glad we can still be friends.’ She turned and quickly walked away from Gus into the crowd.

‘What?’ said Gus, looking after her in bewilderment as her words sunk in. ‘No way! Trinity!’ he shouted. ‘Wait!’ Gus turned around in the booth, trying to see where she had gone. ‘We’re not friends!’

‘Don’t say that, man, I just bought you a beer.’

Jason, one of Luke’s swimmer fish, pushed into the booth next to him.

Gus lifted the glass in thanks and took a long slurp. ‘Aaaah,’ he said in satisfaction, just like Mark. ‘Women are nothing but a pain in the arse.’ He’d meant to broach the topic indirectly but somehow he’d fallen right on top of it. If it was abrupt, Jason didn’t seem to notice.

‘Certainly are.’

‘What’s the point of them?’

‘Yes, indeed.’

It was marvellous, thought Gus, how they saw eye to eye.

Jason leaned towards him, dousing Gus in beery breath. ‘Forget about them,’ he confided. ‘That’s all there is to it. Forget ’em.’

‘Forget ’em,’ repeated Gus. It was so wonderful to be liberated like this. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? ‘Forget ’em.’

After that, he and Jason were on the same wavelength. Collapsed there in the booth together, they finished their beers, brothers in arms.

17. Blood Brothers

After pub closing time, they all stumbled up to Hyde Park. Gus, Roo, Justin, Groink, Luke and the blonde ponytail. The lush greenery looked so inviting, a nice change from the sleazy grime of the pubs. Gus threw up on some pure white dahlias, his favourite flowers. They all lay down on a bank of grass in front of some trees and Gus thought about Trinity. He didn’t feel angry about last night anymore. He just felt sorry for her. It was lovely. He wanted to tell Jason about it but that was when he realised Jason wasn’t there.

‘Where’s Jason?’ he asked.

‘Who?’

What a shame. Jason was gone. Tears trickled down Gus’s cheek. His one true friend. They’d agreed on everything. Gus would never find him now.

Someone brought out a bottle of Scotch. Normally Gus hated Scotch, it made him want to throw up the second after swallowing it. Tonight it didn’t taste so bad. Not bad at all, in fact. The warmth of it set off a fire in his belly that contrasted nicely with the chill in the air.

‘What time is it?’ he asked.

‘You have to form words, Gus,’ said Groink kindly, ‘with beginnings, and endings.’

‘What time is it?’ he repeated, enunciating as clearly as he could.

They all laughed.

‘Go on, have another drink.’

‘Watch it, guys. He’s just my little brother,’ said Luke, lying down on the grass.

Gus peered at him. He was lying down with that girl! Was it Judy? No. His heart beat faster. Trinity? He could make out a thick blonde ponytail underneath Luke’s arm, and shiny silver trainers entwined with Luke’s dirty blue ones. No. A feeling of outrage flooded Gus. Luke was cheating again—this time on two girls!

He clambered to his feet and stumbled over to where Luke was lying stretched out full-length next to the girl. Their arms were clasped around each other and their faces were connected.

‘Stop it!’

‘Wha?’ Luke rolled away from the girl and looked up at Gus. ‘Gussy? You all right?’

‘Stop it!’

All that saliva! Gus kicked him in the ribs but missed somehow, so his toe merely scuffed at the grass. He swayed, struggling to maintain his balance. The girl screamed.

‘Gus!’ Luke sat up. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘It’s disgusting!’

Gus swung his foot again, and this time Luke was ready for him. He grabbed Gus’s foot and brought him crashing down onto the grass. It hurt. Gus crawled up to Luke and, grabbing a handful of his hair, tried to pull. Luke deflected him easily, laughing now. The blonde ponytail was smiling too.

‘What’s got into you, Gussy?’

‘You’re unhygienic!’

‘I can’t make out what you’re saying, Gus. You’re drunk. Go and lie down over there and I’ll come and get you when it’s time to go home.’

Luke’s sympathetic calm upset Gus even more. ‘What about Judy?’ he wailed.

‘What about who?’

Gus struggled to speak clearly. ‘Last night was your anniversary and now you’re doing it again!’

The girl shifted uncomfortably and wriggled her feet away from Luke’s. He put a restraining hand on her arm. ‘That’s none of your business, Gus,’ he said.

‘Oh, yes, it is,’ said Gus darkly. ‘More than you know. I told her, Luke. Why should she put up with you? I told Judy everything!’

This time Luke understood every word. He jumped to his feet, letting go of the girl. ‘Is that true? Is that why Judy won’t speak to me?’

The blonde ponytail got to her feet. ‘Who’s Judy?’ she asked, frowning.

‘His girlfriend!’ shouted Gus.

She rolled her eyes and started straightening her clothes.

‘Where are you going?’ asked Luke.

‘This isn’t my idea of fun,’ she snapped, and went over and sat down with the others who were passing round the Scotch.

Luke reached over and grabbed Gus’s shoulder. ‘You little jerk. You’ll pay for this.’ He pulled Gus up into a standing position by the neckline of his shirt. Choking, Gus flailed at him, hitting at Luke’s midriff and chest ineffectually.

‘Steady on,’ yelled someone from the group on the grass.

This seemed to make Luke madder, and he punched the side of Gus’s body with his free hand.

A girl screamed and Groink came over and grabbed Luke’s arm. ‘Easy, Lu. Easy! He’s your brother.’

‘He doesn’t act like my brother,’ said Luke savagely.

Gus pictured the trajectory of his own fist flying through the air just as Luke had taught him. Then he let fly. His fist connected with Luke’s chin, and Luke slumped to the ground like a puppet cut loose from its strings.

I’ve killed him! thought Gus wildly, elated and afraid. I’ve killed my own brother!

‘You all right there, mate?’ asked Groink.

Luke hauled himself to his feet.

‘Steady mate, steady,’ said Groink.

Luke planted himself a centimetre away from Gus. ‘Go on! Get lost!’ he bellowed, right into Gus’s face. ‘Get lost before I kill you!’

Gus scrambled up the bank and stumbled away.

18. An Oasis In The Wilderness

Gus set off down a lit pathway between the trees. The park looked magical and inviting, like an enchanted fairyland.

Once, years and years ago, lights had been wound through the trees for Australia Day. He remembered coming into town with Dior and Mark and Luke. They had walked through this park as dusk fell, and the fairy lights had come on. He must have been just a toddler, and Mark had carried him when he tired. Life had been magical then. He’d taken his little lunch box to school each day, packed with a sandwich and a piece of fruit, just like all the other kids. Life had been so simple, so good. And now look at me! thought Gus. Estranged from my brother! Outcast by my peers! The horror impelled him forwards, loping through the trees, away from the desolation which lay behind.

Bats squeaked, and the footlights on either side of the path guided him. He ran faster, panting and crying. Striking his toe against the root of a tree pushing up through the pavement, Gus tripped and hit the ground with his chin. The shock of it was sobering. Sprawled on the ground, Gus felt his chin with his fingers. It was wet and warm and his grazed palms were stinging like crazy. For a moment he closed his eyes and rested his head on the ground. The darkness behind his eyelids heaved and surged and his stomach rose up in his throat, tasting of vomit. He opened his eyes again and the tide retreated.

He lay there, trying to think of what to do. He thought of the germs in the path that were mingling with the wound on his chin, and slowly worked out that he should wash it. But the ground was so comfortable; he would have liked to sleep here a little. Regretfully he got to his feet and, more slowly now, advanced along the path. There was a sense of promise about it all. Gus laughed, imagining himself happening on a fairy world to match these fairy lights.

And then he did.

He stood in the middle of the pathway, overwhelmed by the vision before him. The path ended where he was standing and opened out into a round area, with three other pathways feeding into it from different directions. Trees and ferns drooped over the stones, which had been laid in concentric circles leading inwards to the most beautiful thing Gus had ever seen. It was a crystal wedding cake as big as a squash court and as high as the trees. Crystal droplets rushed from sources placed all over it, making flowing patterns as they rained and rushed everywhere. The sound was like a gentle ocean, an all-encompassing soft rushing. Gus sighed deeply. Helpless with wonder, he waited for a fairy to show herself.

After a few moments he became more aware of himself and, with halting steps, he approached the crystal castle. At the foot of it was a moat, deep blue and mysterious. Tentatively he reached out and dipped his fingertips in the water. He splashed water up onto his chin and it felt so good he knelt down and dunked the bottom part of his whole face in. He couldn’t reach very well over the high edge of the moat, so he climbed up onto the edge of it and let himself roll over and down, into the healing waters.

He watched bubbles floating past his chin and felt the eddy of little currents running all over his body. He rested his head against the edge of the moat and waited for the fairies to receive him. When he closed his eyes this time it was peaceful, and he let the smooth rushing carry him off to sleep.

Gus opened his eyes onto swirling darkness. His chest hurt, his throat hurt, his nose burned. He looked up into a blinding light. He couldn’t breathe. His arms were being held in a painful grip and his chest felt as though it was about to explode. Like a brick wall detonating, Gus burst through the surface of the water. His head collided with a terrible hardness and the soft darkness enveloped him again.

His face lay cool in the water, his aching body weightless and free.

‘Gus!’ A voice was calling in the distance. ‘Wake up, Gus. Wake up!’

The voice grew fainter, and the rolling of his body and the rushing in his ears pulled at him harder now.

‘Ouch!’ Something had bitten him!

‘Wake up, or I’ll hit you again,’ said the voice.

He sucked in a juddering lungful of air. It caught in his throat. He had to cough, and cough and cough and cough. Water came up his throat and then slid back down again, choking him. As he spluttered and gasped, strong hands pulled his body out of the water and onto his knees, his head lolling between his arms, the stones on the ground wavering crazily in front of his eyes like the deck of a ship in a storm.

‘Cough. Go on. Clear your lungs.’

Gus didn’t need urging. He coughed and retched and coughed again until a stream of water came splashing out of his mouth onto the stones.

‘Go for it!’

The hand on his back patted at him infuriatingly, but Gus didn’t have the strength to shake it off. The end of each cough started up a harder one, until his whole body was arching and collapsing with the strength of them. Everything was heaving, his stomach, the ground. Out of the corners of his eyes he could see trees and stones and sky revolving as if he was on a slow and agonising merry-go-round. Gus’s arms buckled, and his body fell heavily onto the clammy stones.

‘I’m dying.’ His whole head was chattering against his teeth.

‘You’re all right.’

That voice was familiar. The chill in Gus’s body spread into his chest. That voice was terrifyingly familiar. Gus flopped his whole body over like a landed fish and squinted up blearily into the darkness. A face loomed over his.

‘You wait here. I’ll get us a cab.’

It was Steve.

19. D-Day

Dior woke Gus with a mug of hot chocolate in her hand, and sat on the end of his bed as he drank it.

‘This is a nice surprise,’ said Gus, chewing on a bitter lump of cocoa. (Dior had no idea you should stir the cocoa once you’ve added the milk, or that sugar is needed.) His brain thudded from side to side in his skull as he drank, and his chin stung when he spoke.

‘I’m so glad you had a good time last night, Gussy,’ said Dior.

Gus looked at her carefully. Obviously she hadn’t heard anything about the fight with Luke, or his swim in the fountain.

‘And thank goodness that nice boy had the presence of mind to bring you home in a cab. You were so wet!’

‘I had to wash my face,’ said Gus vaguely. He couldn’t remember anything after falling in the fountain. ‘What boy?’

‘Steven. It’s so nice to see someone looking out for their friends like that.’

Gus fell back onto the pillows. It was all coming back to him. He’d almost drowned! ‘Steve’s not a nice boy, Mum, and he’s not my friend.’

‘Whatever he is, he got you home safely, which is more than I can say for your brother. Anyway, you can thank him yourself this morning.’

‘This morning?’

‘You’ve got Camp, remember?’

‘I can’t go to Camp now, Mum. I’m sick!’

‘You don’t have a temperature.’

‘I feel like I’m about to throw up!’

‘If you hadn’t drunk so much, you wouldn’t feel that way,’ she said briskly, jumping to her feet. ‘Now I’m going to make you one of my famous bacon and egg sandwiches and you’ll feel better in no time.’

Gus had never heard of her bacon and egg sandwiches, but there was no point in arguing. For Dior to offer to cook anything before she’d finished her morning coffee showed just how determined she was.

‘I want you to have a wonderful time on this camp, Gus,’ she said softly. ‘You deserve it.’

That was about as likely as Dior learning how to cook, thought Gus in despair.

Dior drove him to school, where other boys dressed in khaki were being bundled out of cars, lugging large packs and pillows for the bus. She waited with the other parents in the car park as Mr Castaldi called the roll. Then he blew his whistle and beckoned them to cluster round.

‘Listen up, men,’ he shouted. ‘You have all been assigned to a unit, each unit consisting of six men. I have given each of you a number from one to twenty, and you will assemble with your unit in numerical order around the car park. Is that clear?’

Gus was assigned to number nine, a neutral fact until he went over to find his unit. Simon was standing there with Steve, who was dressed like Rambo with a bandanna round his forehead. As he stood there, Gus saw Bas and then Andy and then Liam make their way over and dump their gear down next to Steve’s. Gus couldn’t believe it. Perhaps he was cursed, or Steve was psychic, but whichever way you chose to look at it, this was incredibly unlucky.

Well, perhaps that luck could be changed. Gus backed away, sure they hadn’t seen him, and searched until he found Mr Castaldi buried in a crowd of boys.

‘Sir!’ he whispered urgently, tugging at his sleeve.

‘Yes!’ boomed Mr Castaldi, drawing at least six pairs of eyes their way.

‘I have to change to a different unit, Sir!’

‘Oh yes, that reminds me.’

Hope surged through Gus. Everything was pinned on the pen and clipboard in Mr Castaldi’s hands. All he wanted, all he asked for in this life was to be in a group that didn’t comprise Steve, Liam, Simon, Andy and Bas. Surely that wasn’t too much to ask?

The light seemed to darken, even though it was early morning, and the birds seemed to lower their voices as they chattered. A rushing sound grew louder in his cars. Could this be the presence of God, wondered Gus, hearing him in his hour of need?

Mr Castaldi cleared his throat. ‘There will be no, I repeat no, changing of units. These men are your family for the next two days. You will remain together through thick and thin. You can no more change your unit than you can change your family. So don’t waste your breath asking.’

The rushing in Gus’s ears grew louder, and blackness loomed up at him. Just before he lost his balance, Gus sat down on the ground.

The next thing he knew, Dior was speaking to him from very far away. Had he died? Was the bivouac over?

‘You almost fainted, darling. You should have eaten a bigger breakfast.’

Gus opened his eyes. Dior was leaning over him, and just behind her face was Steve’s.

‘Probably still hung over, Mrs D’Agostino,’ he was saying.

Gus closed his eyes again.

‘Here.’ Steve’s voice had come closer. ‘Are you going to get up?’

There was nothing for it; Gus had to open his eyes. Ignoring Steve’s hand he managed to stand upright.

‘You look terrible,’ said Steve.

‘You’ll be all right, won’t you, Gussy?’ asked Dior anxiously.

‘Where’s Brother Nicholas?’ demanded Gus. ‘I have to see him right now!’

18. Psychomania

‘Gus. I almost didn’t recognise you. We’re both guyed up today, aren’t we?’ Brother Nicholas was dressed for the retreat in long brown robes.

‘Brother Nicholas, you’ve got to save me!’

‘What’s happened, Gus? What’s wrong?’

‘I’m in a unit with the school maniac and four ex-friends.’

‘Oh, that. I know. I put you there.’

‘You put me there? You put us all in the same unit?’ Luke and Trinity’s betrayal paled into insignificance compared to this. Bas’s desertion of him didn’t even rate. ‘It’s a big Year, Brother Nicholas. There are nineteen other units you could have put me in.’

‘I’ve been praying about this.’ Brother Nicholas stared deep into Gus’s eyes. ‘I believe there’s a better solution than simply turning away from one another.’

‘What are you talking about? The only person being turned away from is me!’

Although they were standing well away from the crowd of boys and parents clustering around the buses, a few of them turned around to stare.

‘You don’t have the clearest view of things at present, Gus.’

‘I don’t think you do! Steve is an unpredictable person, Brother Nicholas. He’s irascible.’

‘It’s so nice to hear the occasional four-syllable word.’

If he hadn’t been a priest, Gus would have been tempted to hit him, but he had to put his feelings aside for now. He had to think rationally, to muster the arguments which would persuade Brother Nicholas to change his mind. All in the next two minutes.

He took a deep breath. ‘Brother Nicholas, I think Steve has some kind of disorder, like manic psychotism or something.’

‘Manic psychotism?’

‘You know, people who are psycho one minute and friendly the next.’

‘Is Steve being friendly?’

Brother Nicholas was hopeless at pretending.

‘You’ve been talking to Steve?’

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did! Oh, why couldn’t Steve have just left him in the fountain to drown?

‘I talk to all my students, Gus, and when they’re having a hard time I make an extra special effort to support them, just as I have been doing with you.’

‘What hard time has Steve been having?’

‘Come on, Gus, you’ll miss your bus.’

Brother Nicholas started walking towards the buses where boys were already lining up to get on, and Gus had no choice but to scuttle after him.

‘You know what it probably is?’ said Gus desperately. This was his last chance. ‘Roid Rage.’

The bus’s engine started up, its throbbing roar reverberating through the playground like thunder. Gus’s fear went up another level into blind panic. ‘You’ve seen how muscly Steve is for his age—for anyone any age actually—for any chimp or gorilla, too.’

‘I can’t listen to you insulting another student, Gus.’

‘I’m not insulting him! It’s a condition. Boys take steroids to make them bigger and it affects their hormones and turns them into uncontrollable wild animals. He probably can’t help himself. The whole thing is a great big cry for help.’

‘Then maybe you should help him.’

‘I mean pastoral help, Brother Nicholas. Introduce him to the Big J.C. Teach him about Christian values. You know, thou shalt not kill.’

Brother Nicholas picked up Gus’s bag and handed it to the driver who stowed it in the storage compartment at the side of the bus.

‘Gus, I know why you’re afraid,’ he said softly, standing like a gaoler at Gus’s side. ‘And I know Steve’s wild. But he’s trying hard to calm down. He desperately wants to be friends with you all.’

‘Wants to be friends? He goes about it in a funny way, then. Everyone is terrified of him.’

‘He’s made some big mistakes, but now that he’s seen the error of his ways, I think you’ll find he’s a very different person from the one you think he is.’

Just because Steve had fooled Brother Nicholas and Dior didn’t mean he could fool Gus.

‘People can change, Gus,’ said Brother Nicholas, as though he had read Gus’s mind. ‘Sometimes overnight. Look at Saul on the Road to Damascus.’

Gus sighed. The last thing he needed right now was a discussion about ancient history.

‘Steve is determined to fit in,’ continued Brother Nicholas, ‘and with your compassion, I know he’s going to succeed.’

‘What compassion?’

‘You’re going to find a solution out there, Gus. All of you. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t be making you go.’

The bus’s engine revved again and the line of boys started moving up to the door. Brother Nicholas reached down and pressed a rosary into Gus’s hand.

What was he meant to do with a rosary in this situation? wondered Gus bitterly. Hit someone over the head with it? Use it as a slingshot, perhaps?

‘I thought you might use it to help you pray,’ said Brother Nicholas. ‘But if worst comes to worst, you have my permission to eat it.’

Gus shuffled forwards like a convict in leg irons, onto the bus. At the top step he turned and paused a moment. Dior was waving at him from the car. Brother Nicholas was smiling a few steps away. Gus took a deep breath, and, turning his back on them, he made his way through the sea of faces to the very back of the bus, where he sat on his own.

21. Shake

The bivouac was to start from the same place Camp had been held last year. Gus felt sick with fear as they passed the charred remains of the campfire where he had dreamed he was being attacked with flaming marshmallows. Act as if you’re not afraid, Brother Nicholas had said. That had sounded realistic in the relative safety of the school grounds. It probably sounded realistic to Brother Nicholas right now on his retreat, where the only danger was sore knees from praying. But Gus was about to spend the next two days in the jungle with one wild animal and four indifferent observers, and fear seemed rational in these circumstances.

The idea was for each unit to set out into the bush with a minimum of food and water, a compass and a map. Over the next two days and one night they were meant to not only survive, but to make their way round a series of checkpoints, honing their navigation skills as well. Each group had been given a different series of checkpoints, to ensure they didn’t all band together and trail around after each other like a herd of sheep. Each team of six was meant to fend entirely for themselves, thus learning important lessons about teamwork and survival—as if school hadn’t already achieved that, thought Gus bitterly. Pack mentality and survival of the fittest, that’s what Gus had learned about teamwork in the schoolyard. Why should it be any different in the bush?

They were tramping along a dusty fire road, winding through bush already throbbing with the hum of cicadas and shimmering in the heat. Steve had found a large stick and was hitting at bushes and trees on either side of the path with a tremendous thwacking noise as he went. The straps of Gus’s pack dug into his shoulders, and after five minutes walking he was already hunched forward under its weight, trying to distribute it more evenly across his back. Simon and Andy were discussing the reasons they were all being made to do this.

‘Character building,’ Simon was saying. ‘That’s what the school promised to do when our parents enrolled us into kindergarten. After ten years, it’s become obvious to everyone that it hasn’t happened, and so they panic, and send us out on stunts like this to instil something in us, and fast.’

‘Instil what in us, though? That’s the question,’ replied Andy. ‘How do they know we won’t be traumatised? How do they know we won’t be scarred for life?’

Good question, thought Gus, hiking his pack up onto his shoulders again.

‘You know, every time Gus shifts his pack, I hear a sort of clanking noise,’ said Simon.

Gus glanced at Steve, but either he hadn’t heard or he didn’t mind anymore about people calling him Gus.

‘Is your pack too heavy?’ asked Liam.

‘It’s fine.’

Liam came up behind Gus and, without asking, he tested the weight of the pack in his hands. ‘This weighs a ton!’

‘Cripes,’ said Andy, who came up next to try.

‘You’ve brought cooking equipment, haven’t you?’ said Bas. ‘I bet you’ve got a whole range of stainless-steel saucepans in there!’

‘Just a frying pan with a lid,’ muttered Gus, furious with himself for not settling for the billy they’d all been instructed to bring.

‘I knew it!’

‘Just a frying pan with a lid,’ echoed Simon. ‘What about a fish knife? Or a cake stand? I hope you haven’t forgotten the meat tenderiser.’

‘Just some extra supplies,’ muttered Gus.

His ears burned. He’d packed as though he wasn’t afraid, and now he was just going to have to starve. How was he supposed to cook in front of these guys?

‘With a pack that heavy, how are you going to keep up?’ Liam asked.

‘It’s all right.’

‘What if you fall behind?’

It can be hard to act as if you’re not afraid when someone else is obviously terrified for you.

‘I’ll carry it, if you like,’ offered Steve. He had been blissfully silent up until now, if you didn’t count the noise his stick made as it bashed into the bushes at every step. ‘We can swap.’

‘No!’ cried Gus. Who knew what kind of weird scheme Steve had in mind? Perhaps he had a landmine buried in there somewhere, or a killer virus ready to invade the body of the pack’s host.

‘No,’ repeated Gus, willing Liam not to fall for Steve’s clever plan. ‘I’ll carry my own pack.’

He hoisted it higher onto his shoulders and tightened the belt buckle with a snap. Why was it so much heavier now than it had been in his room that morning?

‘Okay,’ shrugged Steve. ‘It’s your funeral.’

So much for Steve’s supposed change of heart, thought Gus bitterly. He was threatening Gus already!

The others were staring at Steve and then at Gus and back at Steve again, as though one of them held the answer to a riddle.

As always, fear had affected his stomach, and now Gus desperately needed to pee. ‘I’m taking a leak,’ he announced.

He walked to the edge of the fire trail and into the trees. The bush was straggly and thin, and Gus had to walk for a couple of minutes before he was sure he couldn’t be seen from the road. As an extra precaution, he positioned himself in a thicket of banksia, before unzipping his fly.

He was halfway through when he heard the bushes crashing and Steve was standing at his side.

‘I’ve been wanting to get you alone.’

Gus froze. He couldn’t zip himself back up and he couldn’t go on. The moment he’d been dreading for so long had arrived. ‘Can it wait a moment?’ He couldn’t stop his voice from shaking.

‘I saved your life last night.’

Why? Wondered Gus. So he could kill him now? ‘Ah, yeah. Thanks.’

‘The way I see it is, now we’re connected. Like brothers or something. Like in Hong Kong.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Gus carefully. Manic psychotism had been a conservative diagnosis!

‘It was in this Kung Fu movie I saw,’ said Steve enthusiastically. ‘If you save a man’s life, then it’s like he’s your son, or your dog, or something. He’s your responsibility.’

‘I’ve never heard of that. And anyway, we’re in Australia.’ Surely Liam was going to wonder what was taking so long and come looking for him soon?

‘The way I see it is, I gave you a hard time, but then I saved your life. So we’re square.’ Steve thrust his hand out. ‘Shake?’

‘Can’t you see I’m busy?’

‘Brother Nicholas says I have to make my peace with you.’

‘Right now?’

But Steve just kept standing there, so Gus turned his back to zip up his fly and tuck his shirt back in to his shorts.

‘Okay, Steve,’ said Gus, turning to face him. His heart was beating wildly. ‘Here’s what I think.’ Whatever might befall him out here, Gus was determined he would go down with his honour intact. ‘I think you’re a complete moron. Everyone does. The only reason they don’t tell you is because they’re afraid to.’

Gus saw Steve’s fists clench and felt the muscles in his stomach do the same. It was all very well to talk about acting as if you’re not afraid when it’s not your worst nightmare about to happen, but once it is … what then?

‘Everyone hates you!’ he cried recklessly.

‘No one hates me. They’re just shy.’

‘Shy?’ Gus laughed wildly. He was beyond fear now. ‘Well, I hate you,’ he said brightly. ‘So that’s one person already, isn’t it? Before you came along everything was great.’ This wasn’t strictly true, but Gus didn’t see why he should start quibbling over details now. ‘Then you wrecked it all.’

‘I thought you deserved it.’

‘Deserved it?’ Gus’s voice rose to a shriek. ‘How did I deserve it?’

‘It doesn’t matter anymore,’ said Steve, airily dismissing the past with a wave of his hand. ‘That’s all water under the bridge.’

‘Not to me it isn’t. Tell me!’

‘Gus!’ Liam’s voice wafted through the trees. ‘Steve! Cooooee!’

‘It’s the others!’ cried Steve, obviously relieved.

Gus followed behind as Steve rushed crashing through the bush back to the road.

‘What were you doing for all that time?’ asked Liam, giving Gus a strange look.

‘What do you think? I was taking a leak.’

‘Together?’ asked Bas.

‘No, not together! I didn’t get much choice.’

Gus strode over to his pack and, tearing open the lid, he unpacked the saucepan and all his extra supplies.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Simon.

‘What does it look like?’

Gus dumped the basmati rice and kidney beans into the saucepan and dropped it at the side of the track. Then he did up his pack and lifted it easily onto his shoulders.

‘We’ve got to stick together,’ said Liam. ‘It’s no good just going off without telling the rest of us.’

‘I told you I was taking a leak!’

‘Now, there’s no call to be so snarky, is there?’ protested Liam.

‘Snarky?’ snarled Gus. He hated them all. ‘Oh no. What reason would I have to be snarky?’

22. Some Chocolate And A Fork In The Road

They kept walking, and pretty soon the road they’d started out on became a track, and pretty soon after that the track came to a fork. The six boys halted.

‘Well, team,’ said Simon. ‘Which is it then? Left or right?’

With much flailing and craning, Bas managed to find the compass and map in a back pocket of his pack. He drew them out and they all huddled round it.

‘Where are we then?’ asked Simon.

‘Here?’ Andy splodged his finger down. When he took it away, a great brown mark obscured a one-centimetre radius.

‘What’s that then?’ asked Liam.

‘It’s chocolate, isn’t it?’ accused Bas. He licked his finger and rubbed at the spot, making it larger and blurring the edges into a spot the size of a fifty-cent piece.

‘Nice work, Bas,’ said Andy.

‘You put it there in the first place!’ cried Bas.

‘You idiots!’ Simon reached out and slapped Bas’s hand away with such force that the map was torn from Bas’s other hand, leaving the whole corner section of the National Park still clutched between his fingers, while the rest of it fluttered to the ground. They all stared silently at the ragged shred of map.

‘It’s wrecked,’ said Liam.

‘At least we’ve still got the compass,’ said Andy.

‘It’s not much use without the map, Einstein, is it?’ snarled Simon.

Gus was loving this.

‘Now we’ll have to go back and get another map,’ wailed Bas.

They all turned and looked up the track at the way they’d come. It looked long and dusty and hot.

‘Or we could elect one person to go back for us and the rest of us could wait for him here,’ said Andy hopefully.

‘Oh, and I wonder who that would be?’ cried Bas.

‘Well, it was you who wrecked the map,’ snapped Andy.

‘It was you first, and then Simon tore it,’ shouted Bas.

Gus was feeling great. They were all against each other, it was every man for himself—this was better than he ever could have hoped.

‘You’re all such a pack of wusses,’ said Steve. ‘I’m the only one who’d make it back in one piece anyway. I’ll go.’

Up until now Steve had been standing to one side, whittling at his bush-bashing stick with a penknife and watching the goings on with open amusement.

Hope surged in Gus’s breast. Maybe Steve would get lost, and they’d mount a search party, but all in vain …

‘No way,’ said Liam firmly.

Gus’s fantasy plummeted.

‘We have to stay together. They’re the rules and we’re sticking to them.’

Steve shrugged and resumed whittling. ‘It’s your funeral.’

He kept saying that, thought Gus. It made him uneasy.

‘It’s all right, kiddies,’ said Simon. ‘Once we’ve made our way to the edge of the chocolate stain we’ll be fine. Look.’ He pointed to the numbers written on the map that signified the checkpoints they were meant to get to. ‘They’re all still very clear. All we have to do is stumble on one of them. Then we can work out where we are in relation to all the others, go to the other checkpoints and go home.’ Liam looked around at them all. ‘Any objections?’

It sounded too easy, thought Gus warily. But why should he draw any more attention to himself by objecting? The main aim here was to survive, right? And that’s what he was going to do.

‘I’m with you,’ said Steve, flinging away his stick and pocketing the knife. ‘How hard can it be?’

‘Right then,’ said Liam. ‘Let’s go.’

They all took a few steps forward and then stopped again. Three of them were standing at the head of one track and three of them at the head of the other. The track Gus stood on was a rutted, deep and narrow affair, almost a dried creek bed. It wound its way among the boulders and disappeared about ten metres ahead of them around some trees. The path the other three stood on was a continuation of the track, but so wide and ill defined it was almost invisible on the scrabbly ground. Both had their disadvantages as far as tracks went, thought Gus.

‘It’s this one,’ said Steve confidently, gazing off down the wide, ill-defined one. ‘It must be.’

The others looked at each other bleakly for a moment. Then they shrugged their packs more firmly on their backs and followed him into the bush.

After four more hours walking through the heat and flies, their creative powers were almost exhausted. Every couple of hundred metres the track petered out, and they would be left to discover something new and track-like in the increasingly hostile terrain.

‘Here! This is it!’ someone would call, and the others, each standing in their own patch of bush looking round disconsolately, would come scurrying over. Then the creative part would begin.

‘Yeah, look, it must be, there are footsteps,’ Liam would say.

‘They’re roo marks, you idiot!’ Steve would say.

‘Find something better, then,’ Simon would say.

People were losing their inhibitions very quickly, Gus observed.

After a few more moments of staring thoughtfully around himself at the ground, Steve would say, ‘Yeah, actually, they are footsteps.’

Bored with inaction, they would all start walking again, setting off on the ‘track’ through scrub and heavy gorse, until another half-hour had passed and they would be forced to stop and invent yet another track. The one good thing about all of this, thought Gus, was that no one had picked on him since they tore the map. No one had the energy.

By late afternoon they were hopelessly lost, and all of them were ready to admit it.

‘What do we do now?’ asked Steve.

‘Set up camp,’ snapped Liam. ‘What do you think?’

Gus held his breath, waiting for Steve to take offence and tear into him, but Steve just dumped his pack on the ground and lowered himself down, groaning, to lie beside it.

23. In Deep … Bush

The place they’d stopped at was lovely, or would have been lovely if they hadn’t been so lost. A stony creek clattered along beside long soft grass, and gum trees stood in a semicircle facing the water, creating a natural camp ground. In exhausted silence, they attached their tarpaulin to the trees at one end and weighted it down with rocks at the other, creating the approved St Patrick’s lean-to which they’d perfected at Camp last year. Then they tried to light a fire. Unfortunately, the spot they’d picked was so damp that the only burnable wood was attached to the trees. After much grunting and pulling, they managed to drag a few dead and dry branches together to start a small fire. They boiled up their dehydrated rations, and even Gus was so hungry that he gulped them down uncritically.

Finally, with their stomachs full and their packs lying in a pile away from the campfire, they relaxed. Or tried to.

‘Another day of this,’ Bas groaned.

‘Some great survival skills we’re learning,’ said Andy.

‘As if running around in the bush has anything to do with survival, anyway,’ said Simon.

‘It would come in useful if there was a war,’ said Steve. ‘If we had to perform a man’s duty to his country.’

‘What duty?’ said Simon.

‘One day we may be called upon to defend our nation. Then all this survival stuff will come in very handy.’

‘Very handy,’ chuckled Andy. ‘The enemy can follow us into the bush and get completely lost.’

‘You think if we get invaded they’re going to come looking for us in the bush?’ said Liam. ‘Why wouldn’t they just invade us in town? That’s where we live, right? That’s where all the people are.’

‘We might have to retreat to the bush and set up a resistance,’ said Steve eagerly. ‘Or else, I dunno, we could be fighting somewhere else, maybe. In a foreign land.’

‘Vietnam is over, Steve,’ said Simon.

‘You sound like one of those ads for the Army,’ said Andy. ‘A foreign land!’

‘Gus knows what I’m talking about,’ said Steve.

‘Huh?’

‘You know about standing up and fighting for what is right.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘I don’t follow,’ said Liam.

‘You should have seen Gus laying into his brother the other night,’ said Steve. ‘Luke’s probably—what? Twenty centimetres taller? Ten kilograms heavier? But Gus decked him. You should have seen it.’ Steve mimed punching someone, his enormous fist sailing through the air. ‘What a punch!’

‘How do you know?’ said Gus.

‘I was walking through the park.’

‘You were following me!’ cried Gus.

‘Steady on. The pub was shut and I went for a walk. Lucky for you that I did, anyway.’

‘You punched Luke?’ asked Andy. ‘What did you do that for, Gus?’

The rest of the group were all sitting up and staring at them, their faces shining with enjoyment.

‘Pissed me off,’ Gus muttered.

‘Luke mistreated a lady,’ said Steve.

‘Sounds like Knights of the Round Table,’ said Simon. ‘Who was the damsel in distress?’

‘Come again?’

Gus smirked. Steve was too thick to give Gus’s private life away.

‘The girl,’ said Simon. ‘Who was the girl?’

‘Trinity Prakash.’

Rats, thought Gus. Not thick enough.

‘I know her,’ said Andy. ‘She’s the pretty one. Lives in Collaroy.’

‘Gus had a thing for her, but she had a thing for Luke,’ explained Steve.

‘Where do you get all this … bullshit?’ burst out Gus.

‘You told me all about it in the taxi, after I saved your life.’

‘I did?’ Gus couldn’t remember a thing about it.

‘You had a crush on Trinity Prakash?’ gasped Bas.

‘You saved his life?’ gasped Simon.

‘But I thought you were … But that means you’re not …’ Bas was stuttering in excitement.

‘Bas,’ said Liam warningly.

Bas flushed and instantly became involved in reprogramming his wristwatch.

‘What?’ asked Gus. ‘You thought I was what?’

‘Course he’s not,’ said Steve, responding to some unspoken statement that everyone seemed to understand perfectly except for Gus. ‘You should have seen him,’ he continued proudly, ‘drinking, fighting …’

‘I’m not what?’ demanded Gus, scrambling to his feet. ‘What’s he talking about?’

The silence around the campfire was absolute. You could hear the twigs snapping in the fire and the wind ruffling the tops of the trees.

‘Nothing,’ said Bas. ‘It was nothing, Gus.’

‘Tell me!’

But they were all otherwise occupied. Andy and Liam were winding their watches, Simon was plucking tobacco from the end of his cigarette and Steve was looking away from them all into the bush, picking his nose.

‘Think I’ll turn in,’ said Liam finally, faking a yawn.

‘Good idea.’

‘Excellent.’

‘I’m sooo tired.’

It was the first time they had agreed on anything all day.

24. The Hunger

Gus licked his lips. His mouth was dry and his tongue felt rough. He shook his head, waking up a little more. He was lying at the end of the row underneath the plastic tarpaulin they had strung up between the trees. He lifted himself a little and peered down the row of sleeping boys laid out like a line of corpses. He was the only one awake.

Gus rubbed at his eyes and looked out beyond the clearing. The faint moonlight cast a pale white light over the remains of the campfire. The rushing sound of the creek was much louder now, as though the water had risen in the night. Gus breathed in deeply. Smells of earth and eucalyptus wafted past, mixed with the roasted smell of the wood they had burned to make their dinner. It was nice here.

You had to hand it to Brother Nicholas, thought Gus, in awe. The miracle he’d told Gus to keep hoping for had come about at last. No matter what the others thought of him, no matter how it turned out with Luke and Steve and Trinity, it didn’t make any difference. He wasn’t afraid anymore.

‘All right, troops. This isn’t funny,’ said Liam the next morning.

‘No one’s laughing,’ Simon pointed out.

‘We’re lost, we’ve only got a bit of food left before our rations run out, and we’re up the creek without a clue.’

‘We can’t be too far away, can we?’ said Andy. ‘I mean, how big is this ruddy National Park?’

‘Goes as far as Wollongong,’ said Liam.

‘That’s a hundred kilometres away!’ moaned Bas.

‘Three bushwalkers got lost in here last year and another died in those bushfires at Christmas,’ said Simon.

‘What are we going to do? No food, hardly any shelter, what if rains? What if there’s a bushfire?’ cried Bas.

They were making the same mistake he kept making, realised Gus. They were letting their fear run away with them. So what was stopping him from speaking, then?

‘Look.’ His voice sounded strong and clear. ‘As soon as it’s three p.m. and we don’t show up, they’ll know we’re lost and they’ll come looking.’

‘But then it’s only four hours until it gets dark,’ objected Simon.

‘And what if they don’t find us?’ said Andy. ‘They don’t find bushwalkers sometimes, you know. Not until they stumble on their skeletons years later.’

‘And what about food?’ said Simon.

‘We’ve only got one meal left. That’s like a deadline ticking over us,’ said Liam.

‘Oh, God,’ moaned Bas.

‘Look on the bright side,’ said Gus, trying to sound cheerful. ‘At least we don’t have to worry about grizzly bears, or panthers, or any of those predators that stalk you in the night.’

Bas gave a muffled wail.

‘What are you scaring him for?’ said Liam roughly.

‘I’m just saying we’re lucky to be lost in the Australian bush,’ said Gus, smiling determinedly.

‘Well, that’s one way of looking at it,’ said Andy.

‘What about funnel-web spiders and black snakes then?’ asked Simon. ‘The bush is teeming with them. You can’t even see them until you’re on top of them, and they can definitely kill you.’

‘Oh, God,’ wailed Bas again.

‘Good point,’ muttered Gus. His first attempt at raising group morale hadn’t worked as well as he’d hoped. ‘In the meantime,’ he said brightly, trying again, ‘what about lunch?’

‘Lunch?’ said Simon. ‘What about breakfast?’

‘Both, yeah,’ said Andy.

‘I’ll cook,’ offered Gus.

Liam stared hard at him and shook his head from side to side, mouthing a silent no.

As if, Gus reminded himself. As if. ‘I’ll cook,’ he repeated. ‘If the rest of you will make a fire and keep it going, I’ll cook.’

‘You’ll cook?’ said Steve. ‘With what?’

‘With the rest of our supplies and anything else I can find in the bush,’ said Gus calmly.

‘It’ll taste terrible,’ announced Steve, walking over to his pack. ‘He can only cook with gourmet ingredients.’

Gus thrust his hand into his pocket and started running the rosary beads Brother Nicholas had given him through his fingers.

‘So isn’t it lucky,’ continued Steve, pulling out the heavy-bottomed saucepan and lid Gus had dumped on the fire trail yesterday, ‘that I rescued these?’

‘My stuff!’ Gus couldn’t believe it. ‘You’ve got my stuff.’

‘We’re saved!’ yelled Bas.

‘At least for the next meal,’ said Simon.

‘You carried it all this way?’ asked Andy.

‘Thought it might come in handy,’ said Steve, shrugging modestly, pulling out the packets of rice and beans as well.

Gus had to take a deep breath, and then another, until his racing heart began slowing down. Steve Warner had saved Gus D’Agostino’s cooking supplies. He could hardly comprehend it.

‘You’d take the bullet, Steve, wouldn’t you?’ said Simon.

‘Come again?’

‘You weren’t kidding when you were talking about a man’s duty to his country. If you were a bodyguard, you’d take the bullet.’

‘Well, you wouldn’t, Simon, that’s for sure,’ said Gus. Simon wouldn’t have carried his saucepan for ten minutes, let alone all afternoon.

The others were staring at Gus as though his head was exploding. ‘What?’ he asked them. ‘What is it?’

‘You’ve changed,’ said Liam slowly.

Bas and Andy nodded. ‘Yeah.’

‘You’re a lot more … I can’t put my finger on it.’

‘Snarky?’ offered Gus.

That shut them up.

They emptied their ration bags onto the tarpaulin. Dehydrated potato and onion, beef jerky, soup cubes, salt and pepper and one packet of Rosella savoury rice.

‘Right then,’ said Gus confidently. His own morale had never been higher. ‘When I mix this stuff up with the rice and kidney beans, it will taste great.’

‘It will taste terrible,’ said Simon flatly.

‘Why don’t you all build the fire and get some water boiling, while I get started on chopping?’

Simon lay back down on the tarpaulin. Slowly Andy, Bas, Steve and finally Liam followed suit.

‘What are you doing?’ cried Gus.

‘Sorry, Gus,’ said Simon, ‘but I am now so depressed at the sight of that poor excuse for a meal that I can’t go on.’

‘There doesn’t seem to be any point,’ said Andy.

‘We have to conserve our energy for the final push,’ said Liam.

‘I’m knackered,’ said Steve, rolling onto his stomach and stretching out his arms.

‘But you should still cook if you want to, Gus,’ said Bas generously.

‘Gee, thanks.’

Some people coped well with being lost and some didn’t, thought Gus, as he collected wood for the fire. As he chopped up all the ingredients into tiny pieces he glanced at the others sleeping in the sun. They were probably going to get sunburnt, and for a moment Gus thought about fixing up the tarpaulin to shade them. Then he got a grip on himself. He was making them lunch, wasn’t he? While they all lay around doing nothing. He owed them nothing more.

Once he had the fire going he set up a thick stick between two rocks to hold the saucepan over it. The dehydrated onions were gloppy, and when he added the rice it took much longer to soften than the onions and made the whole thing worse. Gus changed his plan for a dry meal to a wet one. He’d cook them a delicious vegetarian casserole, and that way no one would notice the lumpy texture of the dehydrated food, or the unevenly cooked textures of the rice and kidney beans. He stirred the mix over the fire for a long time, until finally most of the lumps came out. Then he mashed it with a spoon to form a smooth paste. Then he added more water and the six small mushrooms he’d found when he was collecting firewood.

Now, Gus knew that some mushrooms which grow wild are poisonous, hut he’d read a book about them in the library, and he was sure these mushrooms were fine. He’d bitten a tiny corner off one to test it, and he felt fine, didn’t he? He put a hand to his forehead and it came away quite damp. He was sweating and felt faintly dizzy. It wasn’t a bad feeling, though, more light-headed. It was probably the heat and the strain of fending for the whole group on his own. Gus smiled to himself as he put the finishing touches to the meal.

He thought again about letting the others burn in the midday sun. They all deserved it. But when he considered it, he slowly became aware of a feeling that had to be from heaven it was so nice. He didn’t want them to burn. Not Liam or Andy or Simon. Not even Bas. Not even Steve! He wanted them to prosper, not perish. While he felt this good, what grudge could he hold against his fellow man? Brother Nicholas would be so proud. Admiring himself and his charity made Gus feel even more wonderful. So wonderful, he got distracted and went back to stir at his casserole for another five minutes before remembering the others again and going over to wake them. By this time they were all fairly pink anyway.

He dribbled water from his water bottle onto their faces.

‘Come on, wake up, sleepyheads.’

‘What?’ Bas spluttered awake. ‘What’s happening? Have they found us yet?’

‘Lunch,’ said Gus calmly. ‘Lunch is what’s happening.’

23. Augustine’s Lunch

Grumbling and yawning, they made their way over to the campfire where Gus’s pot was bubbling away.

‘Oh, no!’ said Andy. ‘What’s this?’

‘Glop,’ said Simon. ‘Gus’s Glop.’

‘Augustine’s Disaster,’ said Steve. ‘Looks dis—Gus—ting. Ha ha! Get it?’

‘Vegetable casserole, in fact,’ said Gus happily. Nothing could faze him, it was great.

Steve was by far the reddest of them all, and he looked hot and uncomfortable as he perched awkwardly on a rock.

‘Do we have time for this?’ worried Liam. ‘Shouldn’t we send out a search party or something?’

‘You had time to lie around all morning,’ said Gus reasonably, ‘and you have to eat at some point. Why not have a bite now?’

As he spoke, he ladled the glop into the plastic bowls they’d all brought as part of their kit. The glop was a dark greeny-grey colour, and the only spot of brightness was the orange of the dehydrated carrots. They came in cubes so bright Gus was sure they used artificial colouring. Unable to find carrots growing wild, however, Gus had decided to use them for the colour they added to the meal. Now he wasn’t so sure. More than anything they reminded him of vomit. He hoped none of the others would pick up on this before they’d got some of it down.

‘Looks like vomit,’ said Steve, his spoon poised over the bowl.

Gus took a big mouthful, hoping this would encourage the others. He needn’t have worried. After their first mouthful of glop, they gulped it. They couldn’t stop. As though the sight and smell of real food had reminded them of their appetites, they snuffled and munched in silence. Sliding his spoon around the edges of his bowl to eat the last scrapings—with a chef’s gallantry he had given himself the smallest helping—Gus pondered the satisfaction that only this particular silence, the silence of happy eaters, can bring.

Andy was the first to break it. ‘Any more, Gus?’

Gus shook his head.

Simon licked his bowl, his spoon and his fingers. ‘Pity. It wasn’t that bad.’

Gus lay back on the sandy dirt of the ground and let the bowl slide off his chest into the dirt. Everything was starting to feel rather lovely.

‘The green of the trees is so … variegated,’ Bas was saying. ‘I’ve always been afraid of the bush, but really, it’s very beautiful.’

Gus wanted to tease Bas about ‘variegated’, but before he could start, he too became caught up in the many greens. Bas was right! There were so many. And all so beautiful. There was lime and khaki and, um …

‘How many words for green are there?’ asked Gus.

‘Dark green and light green,’ said Steve.

‘Simon green and Andy green,’ giggled Liam.

‘Bas green,’ replied Andy.

‘Gus green,’ sang Bas.

‘Steve green,’ called Gus.

‘We’re a team, the green team,’ Andy cried, and they all sighed with pleasure at their composition.

‘I have to tell you something, Gus. Something important,’ whispered Steve. Somehow he had moved and was sitting next to Gus on the ground.

‘What is it?’

‘I’m sorry I was mean to you.’ Steve stared intently into Gus’s face and then his face crumpled. ‘I’ve been unhappy. So unhappy!’

‘Glad to hear it,’ said Gus affably.

‘I got it all wrong, Gus. I thought you were gay.’

‘Gay?’

‘All that cooking, Gus.’

‘Gay?’

The word tumbled over and over in his brain, refusing to sit still long enough for him to get a grip on it.

‘It was a mistake anyone could have made,’ Steve bawled. ‘Where I come from, if you cook, you may as well sew and keep house too. It’s just not becoming behaviour for a man.’

‘Where do you get this stuff from, Steve?’ Simon chortled ‘It’s priceless.’

‘What about when Bas said he smiled too much to be straight?’ laughed Andy. ‘That was a classic!’

Gus looked over at Bas. His face was red and his eyes were like two tiny beetles in his face, burrowing away from the light.

‘Is that why you dropped me, Bas?’

‘Bas was scared that if he hung out with you, he’d look gay as well!’ cried Andy gleefully.

‘Is that why none of you wanted me around?’

‘No, that was just Bas,’ said Andy helpfully.

‘You all excluded me!’

So this was why they said his cooking looked peculiar. Suddenly the trees were looming towards him and the sky seemed very near.

‘What are you talking about?’ said Simon.

‘You were the one who stopped coming outside for lunch,’ Andy pointed out.

‘You were the one who didn’t want to play handball anymore,’ added Liam.

‘I feel just the same about you as I always have,’ said Simon.

‘I think you’re crap at handball, but I don’t mind having you on the team,’ said Liam.

‘We don’t care what you are,’ said Andy.

Tears in Gus’s eyes were streaking the colours of the sky and trees so that they blended together crazily.

‘So who do we know who is gay?’ Simon was saying.

‘No one,’ giggled Andy.

‘Nuh,’ agreed Steve.

Gus squinted woozily at the bush. I’ve got to get out of here, he decided. I’ve got to leave!

‘Well, some people at this school must be, mustn’t they? Statistically,’ said Simon.

‘I dunno. Not really,’ said Liam.

‘We’re more into surfing,’ said Andy.

‘Yeah,’ said Steve.

Gus was trying to stand up when he felt something pulling on his ankle again. He looked down. It was Bas.

‘I’m sorry, Gus. I’m so sorry!’

Bas’s cheeks were glistening with tears and his nose was shiny with snot. He looked miserable. He looked so miserable it made Gus happy to look at him. Gus wiped his eyes and all the colours of the sky and the trees returned to their places between the lines. It seemed a waste to feel bad when he had Bas here to feel bad for him. Gus gazed down at Bas crying in the dirt and smiled. He was feeling all right again. In fact, he was feeling wonderful.

‘I feel terrible!’ moaned Bas.

‘It’s okay, Bas,’ said Gus grandly. ‘I forgive you.’

Gus lay back down on the ground next to Bas, who was beaming at him foolishly. It was nice to be down here again, on a level with his brothers and sisters the ants.

‘How would you know who was gay anyway?’ Simon was asking.

‘It’s just … you can tell,’ said Steve.

‘Like you could tell with Gus,’ said Liam.

‘Um. Right,’ Steve muttered.

‘How do you know I’m not, then?’ demanded Gus recklessly.

‘No way!’ said Bas. ‘What about Trinity?’

‘Doesn’t prove anything,’ said Simon.

‘Could you be gay and not know it?’ asked Liam anxiously.

‘Sure,’ said Simon. ‘You might not know until you’re older.’

‘Could you really be gay, Gus?’ asked Bas.

‘Well, if I am, I’m certainly not attracted to any of you lot, that’s for sure,’ said Gus. He felt wild, and free. ‘For example,’ he continued, ‘I think Steve is really ugly, and the rest of you—well, you’re only slightly less ugly.’

‘I totally agree with Gus,’ said Simon. ‘You guys are really ugly.’

‘If I was gay and you were the last people alive on earth, I still wouldn’t be attracted to any of you,’ said Andy.

‘No way,’ agreed Bas.

‘I’d quite like to go to the Mardi Gras parade, though,’ said Steve.

‘Really? Good on you, Steve,’ said Andy.

‘Well done!’ said Simon.

‘To watch, I mean,’ said Steve hurriedly.

‘Sure.’

And then they were all laughing again, on and on, and although he didn’t know what they were laughing at, Gus laughed too, he couldn’t help himself.

Liam slowly hauled himself to a standing position and walked two steps closer to where Gus was lying in the dirt. Then he flopped himself down on his back beside Gus and whispered, ‘Everyone’s acting kind of weird, don’t you think?’

Gus thought about it. Or tried to. It was more like pictures that swirled crazily in his brain for a while, almost making him dizzy. This was like being on a roller-coaster, and Gus was starting to wish he could get off. He sat up abruptly and the thoughts arranged themselves into a long line of dominoes, ready to fall into some kind of sense. Steve was acting weird. Bas was acting weird. Gus was feeling weird. It seemed to be affecting everyone in the group in the same way. They were all lying down or resting their heads on their arms. He couldn’t understand it. What had happened?

‘I have an announcement to make!’ cried Steve. He jumped to his feet and then wavered crazily, his arms out like wings as he tried to regain his balance. ‘I just want to say, I love you. I love you all. I especially love Gus. But I love you too, Liam, and I love you, um. Um …’ Steve started laughing again, so hard he sank to his knees. ‘Isn’t that funny? I can’t remember your names!’

‘What’s all this then?’

An impossibly tall man with a hose looped over his shoulder stood over them. This must be the early bird that gets the worm! thought Gus. He started to giggle, and the others, momentarily silenced by the stranger, all started giggling too. Then the worm-bird-man was joined by another one, just the same, and another and another. Perhaps they were aliens, come to take them away.

‘Not the … not the … anal probe!’ shouted Simon.

It was as if they all had ESP, as if every thought Gus had was shared by all the others. Gus was suffocating, drowning in laughter. It was agonising, and beautiful, The world was full of rainbows, and the tears coming out of his eyes were heavenly dew.

‘Who’s the ringleader here?’ asked the worm-bird-man.

Gus was waiting for him to get the joke and join in, but instead he walked up to the fire that was still smoking under the saucepan and doused it with his hose.

‘Hey, what are you doing?’ cried Steve. ‘That was our fire!’

‘That was a fire hazard,’ said the worm-bird-man calmly. ‘You’re creating a fire hazard, and the bushfire danger today is high, see? You could have set the whole coast alight with that.’

Steve turned to the others. ‘Is that all right?’

‘Yeah,’ said Liam.

‘Gus?’ said Steve.

‘Fine,’ called Gus.

‘Fine,’ repeated Steve, liked a robot.

‘What have we got ourselves into here?’ the worm-bird-man said to the other worm-bird-men behind him.

One of the men shouldered his way forward and looked at the boys, five of them lying on the ground giggling exhaustedly and Steve standing in the middle ready to defend their fire.

The worm-bird-man walked over to where the saucepan still hung on the branch. He ran his finger round the edge and then lifted it to his tongue and tasted it gingerly. Proudly Gus waited for the compliments. The man nodded wisely. The others looked at him anxiously and he nodded again.

‘Mushrooms. They’re stoned on magic mushrooms.’

26. Gus’s Lunch

‘I really am grateful to be alive,’ Gus said to Brother Nicholas. They were standing in the quadrangle after Family Mass, where afternoon tea was being served. Brother Nicholas had only just returned from retreat that morning, and this was the first chance Gus had had to speak with him.

‘I know we’re lucky not to still be wandering in the bush, and we’re lucky we didn’t start a bushfire and we’re lucky I didn’t pick poisonous mushrooms, and so we’re lucky that we aren’t all dead … Gus paused for breath. ‘But it was a miracle, the whole thing. A great big … miracle.’

So much had changed in the week since they’d come back from Camp. People said hello to Gus in the halls—boys he hadn’t ever spoken to before—and his lunch was becoming more notorious by the day.

Brother Nicholas folded his arms and smiled.

‘You’re thinking God didn’t forsake me, aren’t you?’ said Gus. ‘You’re thinking it was all those prayers you were saying for me.’

‘For all of you,’ corrected Brother Nicholas gently.

‘Well, how do you explain the magic mushrooms, then, Brother, was that a godly miracle?’

Brother Nicholas looked at Gus seriously. ‘The miracle was the change in you, Gus. The change in you all.’

‘You knew this would happen, didn’t you? You’re amazing!’

‘I can’t take the credit personally.’

Steve lumbered up to them just as Gus was stuffing a moist lamington into his mouth.

‘Hi, Brother Nicholas. Hi, Gus.’ Gus winced as Steve punched him playfully in the arm. ‘I saw you taking communion. Ha ha. I didn’t take you for a God-botherer!’

He guffawed loudly, beaming at Brother Nicholas as though he was sure to see the joke. Gus smiled thinly. He knew Steve had some good points, he had even learnt to appreciate some of Steve’s good points, but it still didn’t make it any easier sometimes to like Steve.

‘You looked pretty stupid up there on your knees!’

Luckily Brother Nicholas intervened before Gus had the chance to reply.

‘Steve, may I speak to Gus alone for a moment? There’s something I have to ask him.’

‘Sure,’ said Steve, his eyebrows raised.

‘I’m glad to see you two are friends now,’ said Brother Nicholas, once Steve had gone.

‘I wouldn’t take it that far. Anyway, I’m friends with everyone right now, the man of the moment. But you know, it’s very shallow, the whole social thing at school. Very shallow. I took it all way too personally.’

Brother Nicholas nodded seriously. ‘It’s good you have a clearer perspective on it now, Gus. Particularly in light of an important request I wish to make of you.’

Gus felt strangely uneasy.

‘We have decided, after much discussion, that its time to make the food in the canteen more healthy.’

‘Healthy food at school? In the canteen? That’s a contradiction in terms. You’ll have a riot on your hands!’

‘Exactly. In order to distract the boys from the health aspect, we’ve decided that the food must also be delicious.’

‘Oh no,’ groaned Gus. He’d waltzed straight into Brother Nicholas’s trap.

‘Sadly, none of the Brothers know much about cooking, although some of us are very keen to learn. Therefore, we have decided we need the services of a consultant. As you know, we like making the most of our students’ talents wherever possible, and to my mind there’s only ever been one contender for this important role.’

Gus could hardly breathe. Brother Nicholas was proposing to make a fool of him all over again! Social life might be shallow but it was enjoyable too. Liam had invited him to a party next weekend, and Bas was asking all of them to his family’s beach house for the long weekend. He couldn’t bear to lose all of that now.

‘Do you accept, Gus?’

‘Ah, thanks anyway, Brother Nicholas, but from now on I’m keeping all that cooking stuff at home.’

‘Everyone already knows about your lunches, Gus. How can there be any going back?’

‘Brother, you know I would love to help, you know I would love to create beautiful food for everyone, but I’ve only just got on my feet again out here.’ Gus spread his arms to encompass the whole quadrangle, the packs of boys clustered around the food, the boys and girls sitting along the benches against the walls.

‘So you’re saying social acceptance is more important to you than giving your gift?’

At last he understood! Gus nodded vehemently.

‘What about sharing your talents?’

‘I did try to share them. I got persecuted, remember?’

‘At first, maybe. A temporary setback. But now what’s happened?’

‘Hey, Gus,’ called Liam, as he walked past with Simon and Andy. ‘I wish you’d had a hand in this tea.’

‘It seems to have turned out all right,’ Gus allowed.

‘So what do you say, Gus? Shall we do it?’

Their eyes met.

‘Okay,’ said Gus quietly. ‘I’d love to.’

‘That’s wonderful. Wonderful!’ Brother Nicholas beamed. ‘No more of Brother Andrew’s horrible lunches for me. I’ll be eating gourmet food every day,’ he crowed.

It all came together in Gus’s mind. ‘Brother Nicholas, you are terrifying,’ he gasped, awestruck.

‘Me, terrifying? In what way?’

‘You’ve solved it all, haven’t you? My problems, Steve’s problems, your own problems … It’s all worked out perfectly, to your exact specifications.’

‘Well,’ Brother Nicholas shrugged modestly. ‘There are plenty more problems out there to be solved, for a start. And it’s not quite so calculated as you’re imagining. Perhaps it’s a bit like cooking without a recipe. You start off with some ingredients and a general idea of what you want, and then you improvise. It always seems to work out for the best in the end.’

‘You should be working for the Vatican or the CIA,’ breathed Gus. ‘You should be bringing down governments, establishing the new world order. Your talents are wasted in the schoolyard.’

Brother Nicholas smiled serenely. ‘Do you think so?’

Gus became aware of Luke, standing in the crowd behind Brother Nicholas, beckoning.

‘I have to go, Brother Nicholas, but there is just one more thing.’

‘Anything!’ Now that he was victorious Brother Nicholas had relaxed into an expansive mood.

‘We have to keep the sausage rolls,’ said Gus. ‘Everyone—well, nearly everyone—loves them.’

‘Done!’

Gus waded through the crowd. Girls dressed in the navy-blue pleats of St Mary’s were everywhere, their hair as brushed and gleaming, their shoes as black and shiny as the St Patrick’s boys’ teeming round them.

‘Hello, Gus.‘

Gus jumped. Trinity was standing next to him in her school uniform, and for a moment she looked as beautiful to him as ever.

‘Listen,’ she said calmly, as though they were simply resuming an ongoing conversation. ‘Would you like to come to my house some time? My mum cooks great South Indian food.’

Gus hesitated.

‘She’ll make idly, vadai, oothapam, all the traditional things. She says she’ll show you how to do it too, if you like.’

She could never be the girl of his dreams, thought Gus, but maybe they could still be friends. And anyway, no matter how it turned out with Trinity, at least her mum knew how to cook.

‘Sure,’ he said, returning Trinity’s smile. ‘You’re on.’

Gus slipped through the crowd to where Luke was waiting. Most of the family groups had broken up now, and clusters of adults were standing around at one end of the quadrangle while the students clustered together at the other.

‘There she is!’ whispered Luke, staring yearningly at a tall girl with short red hair, who was talking animatedly in a large group of girls and boys. She wasn’t as pretty as some of the girls Luke hung round with, and she’d never have a proper tan. But as everyone round her burst into laughter at something she had just said, it occurred to Gus that Luke might face some competition for her affections, too.

‘Look,’ said Gus kindly, ‘why don’t you just go up and join in? You’ll find out soon enough if she’s forgiven you.’

‘Please, Gus. She won’t let me come within five metres of her. Please.’

Gus sighed with pleasure. Luke was begging him!

‘Okay, but this is the last time, all right? I don’t have time for your messages anymore.’

‘All right,’ said Luke humbly.

‘Hi, Judy,’ said Gus as he walked up to the group.

‘Hi, Gus,’ said Judy, biting her lip and frowning.

Gus flushed, remembering the last time they had spoken. ‘I want you to know that I exaggerated about Luke that morning on the phone. I’m sorry.’

‘I know,’ she said gently. ‘But what he did was bad enough.’

‘I have a message for you from Luke. The last one ever,’ he added hastily.

Judy folded her arms and leaned back against the wall. ‘What is it then?’

‘It’s a very … um … personal message,’ said Gus, aware of the other people in the group who had all stopped talking and were listening curiously.

‘I don’t mind people hearing it.’ Two bright pink spots had appeared on her pale cheeks. ‘There’s nothing personal between us anymore.’

The girls on either side of Judy moved in a little closer to stand next to her.

‘Luke wanted me to tell you that he likes you.’

‘He likes me? I don’t understand.’

Luke had instructed Gus to go higher if he had to. ‘He really likes you.’

‘But just not enough,’ said Judy sadly.

‘Not enough,’ repeated Gus uselessly. He didn’t have a clue what to do now.

‘Luke?’ said Judy faintly. Her cheeks had completely lost all colour now.

Gus spun around. Luke was standing there with his school tie neatly knotted and his sleeves rolled down.

‘I’m … I’m …‘ Luke stumbled. He looked at the ground, and then up to heaven. ‘I’m …’ He pulled at his tie and puffed out his cheeks. ‘I’m …’ He swallowed, and cleared his throat. Then, taking a deep breath and standing straight and tall with his eyes fixed on Judy’s, he said it. ‘I’m sorry.’

It seemed to Gus that the whole quadrangle fell silent. There was an audible gasp, as though the entire gathering had heaved and sighed. Gus stared around at all the students and parents and teachers. Mark and Dior were standing frozen next to one of the tables—Dior’s spoon poised over her cup about to stir, Mark standing with one arm in his jacket and the other halfway out, about to take it off. Brother Nicholas had a piece of teacake poised just a centimetre away from his open mouth, and Principal Winter had a napkin held against his wrinkled forehead.

Only Judy appeared unimpressed. ‘You really hurt me a lot,’ she said, so quietly that only the people closest to her could hear.

‘I’m sorry, Judy,’ repeated Luke.

‘This is unbelievable!’ Mark’s voice could be heard from the other end of the hushed quadrangle. ‘Do you think he’s all right?’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Luke again. It seemed to be getting easier for him to say it every time he tried.

‘Not once in eighteen years!’ Dior could be heard replying. ‘And now three times! Three times in thirty seconds!’

‘What do you think, Gus?’ said Judy. Her brown eyes were sparkling and her mouth was twitching with the beginnings of a smile. ‘Do you think a person can really change that much?’

A vivid picture flashed before Gus’s eyes of a terrified boy sitting frozen on a bench in this very quadrangle, while a much bigger boy forced him to eat a sausage roll ‘Yes,’ said Gus. ‘I think that sometimes they can.’

Epilogue

A new taste sensation has swept St Patrick’s in fourth term. Popularly known as ‘Gus’s Lunch’, this continually evolving sandwich has led the way to a healthier and more popular canteen than ever before in the history of the school. The record profits will go to help support the Northern Beaches Animal Shelter in Manly.

Brother Nicholas, who championed the changes, gives all the credit to Gus D’Agostino, a Year Nine student, who advises the canteen on its menu and is responsible for creating the best-selling sandwich.

We caught up with Gus between end-of-year exams to ask him his secret to creating such innovative and ground-breaking recipes.

‘Cooking’s just like anything else, really,’ says Gus. ‘There’s no magic recipe. Life is full of flavour, and you’ve just got to keep giving everything a try.’

Copyright

Copyright © Laura Bloom 2001

First published in 2001 by Allen & Unwin

This edition published in 2021
by Ligature Pty Limited

34 Campbell St · Balmain NSW 2041 · Australia
www.ligatu.re · mail@ligatu.re
e-book ISBN 978-1-922730-42-8

All rights reserved. Except as provided by fair dealing or any other exception to copyright, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

The moral rights of the author are asserted throughout the world without waiver.