‘Fucken hell, you’re not meant to be in here,’ Doug splutters, pulling the key out of the Maloo’s ignition. I can hear the blonde chick from the porno moaning as the racer ploughs her until it falls silent.
Doug scrambles to get out from behind the steering wheel, then suddenly pauses, and pulls his legs back into the car. He’s realised he can’t hide his stiffy.
‘That’s pathetic,’ I say, horrified. I haven’t moved my feet since I realised what he was doing. ‘You need to imagine you’re some speedway driver to get off? Jesus Christ, you’re a weird unit, Doug.’
Doug’s face crumples, like when I called him Pizza Face as a teenager and he realised everyone could see how ugly he was. ‘It’s no big deal,’ he says weakly. ‘Don’t tell anyone. The yard’s closed. What are you doing here anyway?’
I put my hands on my head. My brother’s as messed up as I am. ‘Yeah, cool,’ I tell him. ‘Never mind. You can’t help me.’
‘What do you mean help—?’
‘Mum and Dad really fucked us both up, didn’t they?’ I say.
‘What does that—?’
I don’t wait to hear his reply. I bail.
On my balcony, I hit the bottle – tonight, Bundaberg rum with no mixer – and scroll through the contact list on my phone.
Doug can’t help me. I can’t even look him in the eye right now.
Everyone at the club hates me.
My parents have only ever given a shit about my footy career if I was succeeding. They never want to hear about the rough times.
That leaves one option.
I DM Zeke.
Zeke replies: he’s at footy training and can’t talk. He says we could catch up on Friday for a beer. I say okay, Friday works.
Zeke asks me if I’m okay and I lie.
I get drunk and spend the rest of the night typing out Insta stories and hovering my thumb over the post button, playing Russian roulette with my career.
On one post, I write:Oi I’m a big homo so why don’t you MFs get off my back and leave me TF alone?
After that, I try a new story:Yeh, u caught me out Hardwick. I hate faggots.
I don’t post either, but edging my own annihilation is the most fun I’ve had in weeks.
19
VERO VOLTO
ZEKE
Right before footy training on Tuesday night, I find myself in a seventh-circle-of-hell queue of seventy punters lining up for a home open in Dianella. The two-by-one flat is all seventies cream brick, cracked driveway, russet stains on the walls from the bore water, and it’s still attracted a crowd. The people either side of me in the queue whisper that a similar place sold for nearly a million dollars last week.
That’s cold water on my face: if I don’t move in with my parents, and I don’t move back in with Sabrina, what will I be able to afford to rent? A rotting shoebox under a bridge in Midland?
The queue moves at a snail’s pace. I’m gonna be late to footy.
Just to make being my parents’ proxy even more annoying, they insist on me video-calling them and holding up my phone to show them the house virtually. As I finally get to shuffle through the flat with the other punters, my mother coos over features she likes (‘Ooh, the mosaic tiles on the kitchen splashback are very quaint!’) and tsk-tsks over detractions (‘That window doesn’t look like it opens fully, does it, Zeke? Can you test it?’).
Not only are there randoms overhearing this, but the property manager keeps throwing me judgy looks. I want to sink through the floor.
While I’m doing the walkthrough, my phone keeps buzzing with notifications I can’t get to: everyone wants a piece of me allat once. I see two missed calls from Charlie, which I can’t answer, but we both avoid phone calls like the good little Gen Z kids we are, so this must be something major. Then messages from Mason, Sabrina and – holy hell – Hammer.
