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face. ‘Boy, that is some pong!’
    ‘Yeah,’ Pug grins. ‘She overdoes everything, my sister.’
    ‘She’s friendly enough.’
    ‘Yeah. Careful what you say to her, but. She’s a real motor-mouth. Like, she’s probably ringing my mum up right now to say she’s met you.’
    ‘It’s okay. I didn’t let anything slip. So what do you have to talk to your dad about?’
    ‘Oh, don’t ask,’ he groans. ‘Whether she can stay out later, some shit. She wants me to work on the old man.’
    ‘Must be handy, having siblings.’
    ‘It’s a bloody nuisance, if you ask me.’
    ‘What does she do for
you
, in return?’
    ‘For me? Nothing. Oh, she buys me awful stuff for Christmas.
Clothes,
you know, that cost a bloody arm and a leg and make me look like an idiot. I mean, you seen what she wears. Same stuff, only for guys. Stuff to go to
discos
in,’ he finishes witheringly.
    ‘Very you.’ I’m enjoying seeing him uncomfortable, entangled in his family. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad to meet the rest of them? No, no, no. Me in a houseful of Orianas? I’d fade away to nothing, turn into a piece of wood, a skirting board or a broom handle, something completely mundane and invisible. There’s not enough of me to hold out against the personalities; I don’t have a strong enough smell.
    Scene: Lisa’s bedroom. LISA and ME sit at opposite ends of her bed, LISA painting fingernails.
    ME : Lees, do you ever look at your hands and wonder if they belong to you?
    LISA : Uh, no, Mel, I can’t say I do.
(Shoots are-you-losing-it look at ME .)
    ME : Like, do you ever wonder how they got to be these hands, your hands, from just being little fat baby hands, same as everyone else’s?
    LISA
(shooting another look):
Um, never had a problem with that, Mel. You feeling okay?
    (They both laugh, releasing LISA’s built-up puzzlement.)
    ME : I mean it! Don’t you see them doing things in front of you and just think, ‘It’s amazing! What’s behind all this? Who
told
them to move like that? How did they know to grow into these skinny, bony …’
(Waves hands to show, lost for words.)
    LISA : You’ve got nice hands.
(Snort of laughter.)
Your head’s a bit weird, but your hands are fine.
(Looks proprietorially over at them.)
You keep your nails too short, and you could moisturise more often, but basically, good hands.
    ME : You’re hopeless. You’ve missed the point completely.
(Falls back across pillows, giving up.)
    LISA : Well, when you go and get all religious on me …
(looks up, spreads hands, polish brush held delicately)
… well, who wants to know, babe?
    A condom spilling honey, a streak down the door where it was pushed through the ventilation slots, drizzling down a pile of new textbooks. I feel eyes through the after-school scramble, a silence at the far end of the locker aisle.
There is no honey,
I tell myself.
There is no condom.
I pack my bag, maintain the rhythm of packing as I grab up the sticky condom in some tissues and stuff it into the bag as well. I close the locker door and leave, past bent backs shaking with giggles.
    I always get Pug to tell me how he’s spent his week—he used not to be able to remember, but now he tries really hard—he thinks it’s really funny that I’m interested. He’ll be up to
Tuesday
and he’ll say
’You
don’t wanna hear about this boring shit!’ He can’t believe me when I say I do, and force him to go on about the latest feud in the Magnini family, or the fight he saw Thursday night.
    Always after spending time with Pug I feel like coming home and writing everything down, to hang on to the feeling. Our house is so boring, so not-happy, so flat, and when I’m over at Pug’s I seem to be all-over alive, awake as I never am at home—brain and body both. He looks in my eyes as if he wants to suck my brain out through them.
    I just enjoy touching him, walking down grotty old Erskineville Road or somewhere, his hand in my back jeans pocket, his voice in my ear.