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Avery tossed the hair off her forehead.“Zammy, this is my big bro, Carter.”
“Yeah,” said Zammy.She blew a bubble of gum, grape-coloured like her ponytail.It snapped and she reeled it back with her tongue and kept chewing, still watching him out of impassive eyes.
Carts shifted his feet.Christ, how could a sixteen-year-old be this intimidating?
“What you doing here?”Avery cocked her head at him.
“I thought I’d pick you up from school since I’m coming to dinner.”
“It’s not Wednesday.”
“I know.But Dad’s out tomorrow at some work function, so I told Mum I’d come Tuesday.”
“Zammy and I are going to the mall.To choose make-up for her party.”
“No worries.I can drop you and wait.”
“You’ve got a car?”Zammy’s eyes sparked sudden interest.
“Yep, sure do.”Carts was proud of his immaculate Mazda 6.He washed and vacuumed it most weekends, and it had just been polished.Another job he’d done on Sunday to get his head away from ejaculatory issues and Judith.
“Cool,” Zammy drawled.“It’ll give us more shopping time if we don’t have to walk.Can you give Boner a ride too?”
Carts blinked.“Who?”
“Boner.”Zammy smirked between chews.“His surname’s Bone.But he got the name for other reasons.”Her eyes challenged him.As if he was going to take the bait on that one.
Finally, a big youth with an angry looking rash of spots along his jaw joined them, and then another smaller one with close-set eyes who muttered that his name was Lewis.They all muscled into the back of his car, except Avery, who got in the front seat and immediately preened herself in the passenger mirror.
Carts supposed things could be worse.
He could be called Boner.
Sometime later he was sitting in Blue Heaven café waiting… and waiting.Ghastly tuneless elevator music piped out of an invisible speaker above his head.An elderly couple sat drinking coffee out of paper cups and staring into space with stolid-looking pastries in front of them.Babies and children screamed and were hushed by exhausted-looking mothers.A machine whizzed and creamy milkshakes were poured and handed to a seething mass of uniformed kids.
It seemed like the whole of St Catherine’s College congregated here after school.
Carts, sipping on a cappuccino, surveyed the group of teenagers moving as one.It was like they had an identity that was more than their individual selves, a group consciousness that made them somehow more powerful, like an army of locusts that descended on Summerside Mall every afternoon around three-thirty, stomping and munching everything in their wake.
Then he thought of Judith’s words about Avery, that maybe her flute wasn’t enough right now.He thought about his own longing to be accepted when he was much the same age as Avery.How the bullying had scarred him, not visibly, but at some deep level.Despite Aaron’s friendship, he’d never quite recovered, had he?Sure, he’d learnt to armour himself, but there were places where the soft parts of his soul still hadn’t healed.It showed in his failed relationships with women; in how he allowed Ron to keep abusing him at work.
It showed in his lack of adventurous spirit, his unwillingness to try new things.
Like learning to sail.It wasn’t too late, Judith had said.Could he step out from his safe little cave of collecting eighties LPs, and his evenings at the Shamrock?Except… he had—with taking up yoga, hadn’t he?He was proud of that.Damn proud, in fact.
He breathed in, muttered a couple of OMs under his breath, and wondered whether it would look too keen to message Judith.It was Tuesday, after all.
He picked up his phone and thumbed in,I’m with my little sis at the mall.She’s buying make-up with her friend.Talking it through with you helped.
His fingers hovered over the send icon.
Then, letter by letter, he deleted it from his cracked screen.He couldn’t risk any more pain right now.
When he glanced up his eyes snagged on Avery over near the drinks counter.She was leaning against a post with her skirt hitched up—he could tell, because her jumper had ridden up and you could see the bunched-up waist band.Carts’ eyes narrowed at her long skinny legs with the socks wrinkled down around her clunky Doc Martens… he guessed that was the look girls went for these days.
But there was another look happening that he really didn’t like.It was the one the boy with Avery was giving her.And the fact that he wasn’t a boy as such.He had slicked-back blonde hair and a foxy face.What worried Carts more was, he wasn’t wearing school uniform.Instead he was dressed in oil-stained jeans and a denim jacket.He was the type of guy a girl of sixteen might think was kind of cool, but by Carts’ summation, he was at least eighteen or nineteen.
Carts frowned as Avery’s hand came out and gave the guy’s arm a playful punch.He leered—yes, that was definitely a leer—then leaned forward and whispered something in Avery’s ear.She wiggled her shoulder into him with a giggle then pulled back, batting her eyelashes.
