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‘Yeah. I guess I thought maybe no-one would notice I was bald.’
Joey grabbed some tongs and started gathering up the little glass bits. ‘That mighta been a bit optimistic.’
‘What gave it away … the moulting eyebrows? The fake eyelashes?’
Was she laughing at him?
She was. He gave her a grin and she grinned back.
By the time they got to unloading the stuff in the third box, he knew she was a year older than him, but she’d missed so much of Year Twelve at her last school she was starting again, and she knew that he was probably going to fail maths, which sucked alotbecause he wanted to go live in Sydney and become a billionaire or something. His days of shovelling chicken shit under fruit trees and milking goats were freaking numbered.
‘A billionaire, huh?’ she said.
‘Yeah, you know, with probably a mega yacht and my own rugby league team.’
By the sixth box he knew she was worried she wasn’t going to make the end of Year Twelve.
‘Is that, like, for real?’
She twirled a wiry brush-headed thing around the bottom of a beaker and handed it to him for rinsing. The veins in her hands showed purple against her skin.
She looked at him. ‘Why would I say it if it wasn’t true?’
He shrugged. ‘I dunno. It’s just … well, I’ve got these two sisters, Felicity and Daisy, and the things they say. Man, it’s all drama, drama, drama.’ Oh no, had he just compared freaking cancer to the whingeing his sisters carried on with when they ran out of shampoo or whatever?
‘Um, sorry,’ he said.
Natalie grinned at him. ‘You say that a lot. It’s kinda cute.’
He snorted. ‘Are you flirting with me indetention?’
She laughed. ‘Why not? You only live once, right?’
Right.
By the ninth box he’d convinced himself it would be totally normal for him to ask some girl out that he’d only just met. Even if she was—he took a shaky breath—crook. He unscrewed the clunky old tap and a gush of hot water filled his sink. ‘So, um, Natalie,’ he said, praying he was using his coolest tone of voice. ‘You wanna, um, go see a movie sometime?’
‘Oh,’ she said.
‘Is that a … yes? A no?’
She passed him another beaker. ‘That’s kinda sweet, but I’ve got this rule.’
He blinked. ‘You only go out with bald guys?’
She shoved her shoulder into his. ‘Funny. No. It’s just, what with the whole C thing and all, it doesn’t seem like a good idea to get all romantic and mushy and stuff, because, you know, it wouldn’t be fair. On you, or whoever.’
He frowned. The whole C thing didn’t seem fair on her. ‘I don’t get it.’
She shrugged. ‘I’m getting a lot of crying going on at home from Mum and Dad. It’s pretty exhausting, you know what I mean? I don’t need anyone else around me getting all weepy and stuff.’
Joey was pretty sure he had no idea at all how exhausting it would feel to think you might be dying and to watch the people around you crying.
‘It’s a pity, though,’ she said in a musing voice.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, can you keep a secret?’
