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right? I got ’em confused.’
    I kicked at a stone in our path. I was angry. She was suspended for a week and I wouldn’t get to see her. The principal said he showed some leniency in not expelling her because the next school was an hour away.
    I walked her home. We were a street away from her house when we both turned around at the sound of a car zipping behind. It was Mick Hammer and his crew, his brother, Ant, driving. They screamed at Mia as they went past, and screeched the car to a halt in the middle of the road.
    The shriek made my chest heave. I started to walk right around the car, though Mia wasn’t following.
    ‘I just want to ask if she’s okay,’ Mia said.
    ‘No,’ I said, dragging her. ‘C’mon.’
    We were almost running when we stepped off the road. I didn’t get her going fast enough for her not to hear Mick’s spray; he yelled he was going to kill her. We raced each other to her house; I let her win and she knew it.
    ‘When am I going to see you again?’ I said, forlorn and not out of breath. I stared up into her honey-brown eyes.
    She must have known I wanted to hug her because she folded her arms across her chest. ‘We’ll meet every day at the hill, okay? At four.’
    ‘You better,’ I said.
    ‘No doubt ’bout it.’
    It was only when I turned away that I saw her house had been pelted with shit. I drew my eyes away from the sight and to the letterbox on the street – it was crowded with envelopes. I opened them all. Some had already been opened but stuffed back in. It must have been weeks’ worth. Hate mail. Mia hadn’t told me.
    By the next day I had forgotten about Mick and the others, I was dreaming of my life with Mia. The curve of her neck, those legs on show. In the classroom I observed the other girls and wondered why I didn’t feel the thump like I did for her.
    When the bell rang I slapped my backpack on and ran to the hill. I was there until 5 p.m. before I realised she wasn’t coming. She must have only been around me because of proximity. Now that she didn’t have to anymore she had no interest.
    Even Mum’s warm shortbread didn’t help. My grandmother said, ‘Cheer up, grandson. You are too young to be looking backwards.’
    I retired to my bedroom early, surprising both of them.
    I heard my grandmother tread labouredly to my door. ‘Don’t you want to hear a story tonight? Mum has a pie in the oven.’
    ‘No stories,’ I said.
    The call at 9 p.m. sat me up. Nobody ever called us. No one else in our family paid their phone bill, our rellies just showed up at the house and didn’t let us know they were coming.
    My mother was whispering and when she saw me her eyes got smaller.
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘Go to bed, Colin. I’m going out. Stay with Nana and I want you to do everything she tells you to do.’
    I stood tall. She saw I wasn’t going to move.
    She said, ‘Mia hasn’t come home …’
    Our headlights found Mia’s shirt, floating like a dollar note in the dust and mist of the night. We stopped the car and her guardian got out first. The way she ran down the bank I knew she had located Mia. I shut the door against my side when I got out, but the sharp and immediate pain paled to the thwack of the horror I got when I saw Mia bent over herself in the grass.
    At first it was like I didn’t understand why there was so much blood. I thought the leeches had got her. They were bad down there in the swampy area. As my mother moved past me to Mia I registered the mud on her cheeks and underneath her eyes. Her stomach was raw skin and there was blood growing on her jeans.
    We raced to the hospital, surged through the Emergency doors and were hit with a buffer. The white women whispering, ‘Rape doesn’t take priority to heart attack. You’re going to have to sit down.’
    I snatched the television remote from the woman, pulling it apart like Lego blocks and smashing it under my feet.
    Mia was making her first noises of hurt. And the woman kept whispering,