‘Sorry.’
‘You got an indoor dunny?’
‘You don’t?’
‘Nah. Just a long drop.’
I had wondered about the shed behind his house. I’d seen him and his aunt carrying pots to and from it. I had thought it was some kind of well.
‘You want to use it?’
‘Yeah, later.’
‘What’s it like in school?’
‘It’s shit. It’s shit if you’re me, anyway. They don’t like my type there.’
I knew he meant mixed race, but I didn’t know what the mix was.
‘Are you half Maori?’
‘Yeah. My dad was the full job.’
‘That’s cool.’
‘Are you taking the piss?’
‘No. I think it’s exotic.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘Different, but good different, not weird.’
‘Unusual?’
‘Yes.’
‘I like that. Exotic.’ He looked at me and smiled for the first time.
The next time he came over, he brought his homework with him. It was extremely simple. The maths equations were ones I had mastered when I was ten. The reading material was The Hobbit. I had read that when I was seven. I saw corrected homework for the first time, and his teacher’s critical comments written in red biro. Rangi’s handwriting was barely joined up. He asked me to do his homework for him and I was tempted, to win his friendship, but instead I offered to help him. Rangi was going to be leaving school soon to start a building apprenticeship. He needed to pass his School Cert.
We sat at opposite sides of our kitchen table, while I talked him through the English comprehension tests and the maths problems. He was quick to learn.
‘Why couldn’t you learn that in school?’ I asked.
‘Too busy watching my back.’ He explained that there was gang warfare in other parts of Rotorua and that he was trying to stay out of it. Even though he was only half Maori, the white students expected him to be involved and the Maori gang students hated him for staying out of it. He showed me fresh bruises on his arm where he’d been punched. School didn’t seem that appealing any more.
‘I turn up for my classes, talk to nobody and then I leave. I used to hang out at the dairy with this girl I liked’ – the dairy was what they called the corner shop, I’d seen teenagers sitting in there – ‘but her brother found me in school and thumped me.’
‘I don’t think I’ll ever be able to have a girlfriend or a wife.’
‘No shagging? Ever? That’s sucky, mate.’
‘So, you have no friends either?’
‘I guess not.’
I grinned.
