‘But –’
‘Seriously. Don’t go getting all responsible. You’ve got enough on your plate. Feel free to lookoutfor me – it’s nice, and I appreciate it. But don’t lookafterme. I can look after myself.’
I leave the hospital, and Amie, a few minutes later, flop into the car for the drive back to Mildy. The wheat fields on every side of me are darkening into a cold yellow sea. Sunset seeps up, hits the arses of the clouds and tans their hides pink.
Amie worries about me. Now there’s a concept. She worries about a lot of people, though: her dad, her nanna… I’m just one of many. I don’t want to be another load she has to shoulder, another person her thoughts spin pointlessly around.
I try to keep my mind on the reality. She’s got her problems and I’ve got mine. I need to stay loose. I got Dad, I don’t need anything else tying me down. When this job is done I’m cutting outta here – to Melbourne, to wherever, as far away from Dad as I can manage. Find Mum and Kelly, if I can. Stoking the fire in my belly over an unattainable girl isn’t gonna get me anywhere.
By the time I get to Hattah, I’m so tired that the red-and-white road markers are making neon tracers in my vision. Like those glowsticks me and Mike used to buy from Metcalfe’s grocery when we were kids – we’d put strings on them and spin them around our heads to make a firefly lasso…
That’s all I can think about as I’m driving home: fireflies spinning, circling endlessly through centrifugal force around the person at the centre. And the question keeps returning again and again: who am I circling around?
