New Boy Read Online Free PDF

at the gate and leaves me to walk the rest of the way. Hansie has been crying and looks tired. It’s definitely chocolate on his face.
    â€˜So, is my share of that in the car?’ I ask my mother, before she can ask me about my foul day, right here on the street.

‘So, what was your first day like?’ The picture on the screen breaks up and re-forms itself as Richard Frost, in Bergvliet uniform.
    He’s eating breakfast. I can’t say I had one best friend in South Africa, but he’d come pretty close. It’s so good to hear a voice from home – a voice I don’t have to concentrate on so that I don’t miss something. I’ve got the laptop on the counter in the kitchen. Mom has been chopping onions for bobotie and has now moved on to the apples. Dinner will be ready early tonight. I’m hoping it’s before Hansie hits the wall and starts yelling again.
    â€˜Weird! They speak English, but it’s like a different language,’ I tell him. ‘Eish. It’s like going from Bergvliet to Hogwarts. A guy told me in three ways this morning that a fan was broken and I had no idea what he was saying until I googled the words just before you came on.’
    â€˜Try me,’ he says. He’s smiling. ‘How hard can it be? Hit me with your best Aussie.’
    â€˜Bung. In a sentence: “It’s gone bung, mate”. He told me the fan had gone bung.’
    â€˜Bung?’ He throws his hands in the air. ‘That’s stupid.’
    â€˜I know.’ It feels good to have an ally, someone else who wouldn’t find it normal. ‘Here it means dead. And there’s another one: cactus. Same thing. Dead.’
    â€˜But a cactus is a cactus.’ Richard seems outraged on my behalf, or on behalf of cacti. I hear his mother’s voice in the distance. He looks over her way and nods. There’s a painting on the wall behind him that tells me exactly where he’s sitting. ‘Out in some deserts, they’re the only thing that’s
not
dead.’
    â€˜I know.’ Suddenly I can remember how their kitchen smells. And I just want to be back there. His mother bakes all the time. I can smell it just looking at him. I can feel how it feels to be there. Most of Australia is still only pictures to me, and things I’ve never heard of at all. But instead of getting into all that, I just say, ‘And then there’s carked it.’
    â€˜Carked it?’ He says it as if he can’t have heard me properly. ‘That’s like a bird noise.’ He points at the screen. ‘Do they have some big bird of prey that goes caaaark?’
    â€˜I don’t know. That’s good thinking. I could’ve done with you around today.’
    â€˜Hey, maybe that’s why they say “stone the crows”. I went to that Aussie slang site you told me about.’ A hand reaches across the screen, passing him a mug. He takes it and sets it down. It’ll be hot chocolate. He persuaded his mother long ago it’s all about the milk and his calcium intake. ‘Do they actually stone any crows? And, if so, do the crows have to be doing something first to deserve it, or is it any crow?’
    â€˜I haven’t heard anyone say it. But crows come right up to the house, so I guess it’s been a while since the last stoning, at least in One Mile Creek.’
    Mom has started cooking the bobotie and already there’s that great smell of onion and apple and curry powder frying in the pan.
    I tell Richard that’s what we’re having for dinner and he says, ‘Hey, have you eaten kangaroo yet?’
    â€˜Not yet,’ Mom calls out. Now she thinks she’s part of the conversation. ‘You can buy it here, though.’ She comes over with the spoon in her hand and leans across until she’s sure she’s visible. ‘People do eat it. It’s not just bush meat. It’s at the supermarket. We can