• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

'I caught a bus.' I sigh, as though it was the easiest and most boring thing in the world. I help myself to a bowl of this noodle salad thing from Declan's fridge, and explain about Mum's one hundred points through a mouthful, and soon we're squatting on the floor in the garage with the filing drawers open.

All of our most sensitive documents are spread across the oil-stained cement floor. I don't know what half of them are about, but I know they're supposed to be private. I feel exposed, kind of like I'm wearing one of those hospital gowns where your bum hangs out – Declan did keep his, by the way. He swears hospital chic is the new black. I can see myself in a scrub cap. It would look really cute with this Anna Sui smock dress that I have. Had.

I tell Declan about the night in the hotel. He loves the story about the French hairy nipples at the pub. He can't believe I didn't tell him about the hairy nipples thing from the beginning.

'Because you would have demanded proof that my nipples aren't hairy!' I say.

'True,' he concedes. There's a pause where I wait for him to say, So are they? but he leaves it.

I tell Declan how Mum has taken up smoking, about the whisperer, and how they beat up Will. I told him about how they stole Will's clothes, and pantsed me in the laneway. Declan's face scrunches up.

'I did that to a kid. Aiden Farmer, his name is. He's a little pain in the arse, and one time he was walking along the promenade in front of me. It's this second-storey walkway that goes from B Block to C Block, and it's glassed in, so you look down into the Junior Quad. I fully pantsed him and then pressed him against the glass so everyone below could see. So they put me on this "program". Every Tuesday morning I had to go in with the chaplain and talk about empathy, so then I stopped going to school on Tuesdays. They changed it to Mondays, so I stopped going on Mondays too. The chaplain asks me questions as if he's trying to find the reason for me being such an arsehole.'

'Well, it was an arsehole thing to do.'

'You think I don't know that?' Declan glares at me. 'But the whole thing happened in about five seconds and I've been on the program for months now. You'd think we could all move on.'

I flick through the folders in the filing cabinet. 'How come it's going on so long?'

Declan grimaces. 'The chaplain says I have to keep going until I agree that I sexually abused a younger boy, and I won't, because I didn't.'

'Yeah, you did.'

'Pantsing isn't sexual abuse. It's only sexual abuse if you touch it.'

'You did touch him. You pulled his pants down. You made him do something against his will.'

'I didn't touch his thingo. And I didn't get off on it either. It wasn't sexual, it was just normal abuse, and if you don't want boys to do that, then you shouldn't put, like, a thousand of them together, and only acknowledge the ones that are good at contact sports.'

'Okay, whatever.'

Declan is getting shirty, so I open the next drawer. 'If you had asked me to guess why you hated school I would never have picked that,' I tell him. 'You look more like the pantsee to me.'

'You're welcome to try.' He grins.

It doesn't take us long to find Mum's passport. It's with mine and Will's, but Dad's isn't there.

'He would have needed it to get to New Zealand,' Declan reminds me.

I stare at the spot where his passport should have been. 'He must have slipped his passport in his pocket and then crept out, leaving his pregnant wife and two sleeping kids. Nice.'

'Classy,' Declan adds.

'This sucks. He should be here. I can't believe we let him off so easy. I'm going to ring him.'

'How are you going to ring him?'

I pull out the drawer above. This one has bills in it. They used to be filed in order by date with receipt numbers written in the top corner in my mother's small, neat handwriting, but for the last few months they are just shoved in. They have big red stamps on them. OVERDUE!

Declan takes a handful of phone bills, and we flick through