Lockie Leonard Human Torpedo: Human Torpedo
Author: Tim Winton
Date: 2013-07-11T14:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Juvenile Fiction; Family; General; Humorous Stories; Love & Romance; Sports & Recreation
Description: Lockie Leonard, hot surf-rat, is in love. The human torpedo is barely settled into his new school, and already he's got a girl on his mind. And not just any girl: it has to be Vicki Streeton, the smartest, prettiest, richest girl in class. But what chance have you got when your dad's a cop, your mum's a frighteningly understanding parent, your brother wets the bed and the teachers take an instant dislike to you and then you fall in love at twelve-and-three-quarter years old? It can only mean trouble, worry, mega-embarrassment and some wild, wild times.
Publisher: Penguin Group Australia

Contents

Before

Truly Packin’ Death

It’s Time We Thought About Sex, She Said

Everybody’s Favorite Spread

Another Big First

The Invisible Man

Church

True Torpedoism

Trouble-Free Zone

During

I Should Be So Lockie

Somebody

Yer Outta Ya Depth

This Awesome Woman

Gettin’ Serious

Youth Group

It’s Not My Problem

Trying To Fly Straight

Swamp Rat

Sadder Than Dog

A Thin Flickering Light

Why Didn’t You Hit Him, You Idiot?

Police Corruption

After

The Situation

That’s Politics

A Pretty Cherry Scene

Ocean Beach

I Accept The Mission

Seven Suns

Tim Winton learnt to surf on a Coolite at Scarborough Beach when he was eight. He fell in love at nine with a girl who lived down the street, and twelve years later he married her. Tim now lives with his wife and three children by the sea in Western Australia. He spends time fishing, diving and surfing, and to pay for all this fun he writes books.

ALSO BY TIM WINTON

Jesse

Lockie Leonard, Legend

The Bugalugs Bum Thief

Lockie Leonard, Scumbuster

Blueback

The Deep

for Michael, Sharyn and Andrew –
dags, all of them.

This book was written with assistance from the Literary Arts Board of the Australia Council and, as always, with the help of Denise Winton.

Every ripple on the ocean

Every leaf on every tree

Every sand dune in the desert

Every power we never see

There is a deeper wave than this

Swelling in the world

There is a deeper wave than this

Listen to me girl

‘Love Is the Seventh Wave’

STING

Lockie Leonard fell in love last term. No one in school knew who the hell he was before it all happened, but he ended up more famous than AIDS. He was the most in-love kid in the whole of Year 8. That’s if you don’t count Vicki Streeton, the girl he was in love with; she’s always been known in this town. It doesn’t take much to get famous, but it takes a lot to stay in love.

he first day Lockie Leonard saw this town it was raining. The old family Falcon had been loaded down like a refugee boat as they rolled into this little place fresh from the city. The whole family tried to be cheerful about it, but the place looked awful. The town was small and crummy-looking and when they saw the house the police force had organized for them, everyone in the car went quiet. Lockie’s little brother looked at him, pegging off his nose with his fingers. His baby sister squirmed on the front seat. His dad left the motor running. His mum just started bawling.

Funny thing is, Lockie got to like that place. It was a big old fibro joint with a rusty tin roof, and it went all higgledy-piggledy inside, like whoever built it kept having more kids and just bunged on a room every Christmas. It was on swampy ground next to the showgrounds. The whole street was just reeds and factories. It was the worst street in the whole town. Not even the poorest people and the Aborigines in town put up with that street; people have their limit, I guess.

Lockie’s room smelled like a German shepherd had died in it. He shared it with Phillip, his brother, who was ten and always wet the bed, and some people would blame the bedwetting for the terrible pong, but the truth is, it was always there. You really had to think DOG before going in.

He got settled in the best he could in those last rainy days of the summer holidays. Lockie was twelve and three quarters, and for the first time in his life he was truly packin’ death. It was one thing going to high school for the first time; but it was a whole different hockey match going to high school for the first time in a town where you didn’t know a single soul, not a single poxy face. Not a man, woman, boy, girl, cat or dog who was familiar. Even the lousy southern weather was kind of unfriendly to him.

That first few weeks in town, Lockie lay on his bed getting up a sweat, or went out walking around the swampy drains behind the house. He played his Van Halen tapes and stood in front of the mirror with his tennis racquet, giving it vibrato and thrash chords and feedback to forget his troubles. He really hammered that old Slazenger like it was connected to a million watts of distortion.

In the mornings he woke from the nicest dreams. He dreamt he was back in the city, in Perth, where everything seemed bigger and better and warmer and full of friends and good memories . . . and then he woke up. The Leonards called Lockie the Human Torpedo because he took so long to get out of bed in the mornings. Actually Lockie was slow at almost everything, but the mornings were his worst time. When he eventually got up, he helped Phillip out of his piddly PJs and went for breakfast.

‘You’re gonna hafta grow out of this peeing in the night boy,’ said Lockie. ‘It’s flamin’ disgusting.’

Phillip bit his lip. He was a small kid, soft-looking and sensitive. ‘I didn’t drink since five o’clock yesterday.’

‘You need a tap on yer dick.’

Phillip laughed and Lockie was glad because he knew it stopped him from going further and getting cruel. It was easy to cut a kid like Phillip. But sometimes he wanted to tie those stinking PJs around Phillip’s neck and sling him out into the rain. As well as wetting the bed, Phillip snored and smacked his lips like he was at a barbeque. Ten hours of lip-smacking. It sounded like a snogging marathon – a snogathon like – someone being kissed to death by Mick Jagger.

Lockie had shared a room with Phillip all his life. People say kids think they’ve got no future, nothing to hope for. But I tell you, Lockie Leonard had something to hope for – his own bedroom, dammit! A quiet room with a lock on the door as big as a TV. Well, it was a longshot the way things were going, but it was something to dream of.

Mrs Leonard put the Weetbix packet in front of the boys and hoisted the baby on her hip. The baby was called Barbara, but Lockie called her Blob.

‘G’day, Blob,’ he muttered.

‘Ock-ock-ock!’

‘She wants to sit on your lap, love,’ Mrs Leonard said.

‘Here, then.’ Lockie reached up and took Blob under the arms. She settled into his lap and then he went stiff all of a sudden.

‘Oh, no.’

‘What?’ said Phillip.

‘Moisture. Your trademark.’

‘Eh?’

‘Wet nappy, mudbrain. I must be the only person in this house who’s heard of the toilet. Aaarrgh! Mum, get her off!’

Phillip laughed. Lockie cooked inside.

‘This is a disgusting family.’

‘You’re lucky you only got a disgusting one,’ said Sergeant Leonard coming in, buttoning his uniform. ‘We could have been putrid, vile or scrofulous. You’re dead lucky, Lock. Disgusting is about the best you could have hoped for.’

‘Yes, Sarge, anything you say.’

They got on with their breakfast as the pale grey sunlight bent in through the window. Frogs garped away in the swamp outside.

At twelve and three quarters, Lockie Leonard was a pretty decent-looking bloke. He was generally polite and knew how to keep himself clean and tidy. The mums of this world would have called him a ‘nice presentable sort of boy’, but most of them wouldn’t have seen what he could do to a Weetbix at breakfast. Lockie’s method of eating Weetbix was truly, awesomely foul. I won’t get you gagging with the details, but let me just say that it involved a lot a milk, an overripe banana, and a spud masher.

While he was going to work on the poor old Weet-bix his mum reminded him of the date.

‘Enrolment day, Lockie. Ten o’clock up at the school.’

Choke, gulp. ‘Yeah.’

‘Would that be HIGH school by any chance?’ the Sarge asked.

Lockie rolled his eyes, trying to look cool about it, but inside he wished he could borrow a nappy from Blob. ‘Yep.’

‘Well, write your name nice and big on the roll: LACHLAN ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON LEONARD.

‘Dad, you must’ve been drunk when you thought that up.’

‘I don’t drink.’

‘It’s longer than a book,’ said Phillip who was lucky enough to be just Phillip Leonard.

‘It should be a book,’ sighed Mrs Leonard. ‘Most of it’s an author’s name.’

‘Yeah, yeah, tell us about it.’

The Sarge was the sort of copper who reads books. You know, clean books, the old kind. How he got to be a copper we’ll never know. He didn’t have a beer gut, he didn’t beat people up, and he even went to church. He made the whole town nervous, the moment he arrived. Books!

‘Another time, cobbers. I’m off to work.’

‘You didn’t brush your teeth,’ called Phillip.

Lockie groaned. ‘He doesn’t have any, thickwit,’

That was another embarrassing thing: the Sarge didn’t have a chopper, not a peg in his gums.

•

Lockie and Phillip and Mrs Leonard walked up the hill towards school, taking turns to push Blob in the stroller. The sky was grey but the rain held off while they trudged.

‘This is going to be hard for you, I know,’ said Mrs Leonard.

‘Mum, we’re only enrolling. Term hasn’t even started yet.’

Lockie’s mum was the serious sort. She liked to be involved; she was concerned, conscientious. She’d even gone to Parent Effectiveness Training a year ago, and for a few weeks after that she was just a flaming nuisance. She was a good egg, but sometimes Lockie wished she’d just shut up and be insensitive for a while.

‘You won’t know anybody, I suppose — ’

‘Mum!’

‘You don’t want to talk about it?’

‘He doesn’t want to talk about it, Mum,’ said Phillip.

‘Well, then.’

Phillip winked at Lockie. They all walked on.

The school wasn’t anywhere near as ugly as the high schools in the city. City schools looked like those concentration camps you see on movies. This place was old. It looked kind of dignified, like it wasn’t going to fall down next Monday (worst luck). Out the front, at the edge of the sloping lawns, there were hedges clipped in the shape of animals.

‘Cor,’ said Phillip.

‘That’s artistic,’ said Mrs Leonard.

‘Just like on “Play School”,’ said Lockie.

Mrs Leonard laughed, and Lockie knew she could see through the tough act.

Just walking down the corridors, just signing his own stupid name for the little old registrar, Lockie Leonard was truly packin’ it. He couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

•

After work, the Sarge drove Lockie down to the beach for a surf. He sat in the Falcon reading James M. Cain, or somebody, and Lockie waxed up his board and checked out the beach. There was a good side to this new town – the south coast had a lot of good beaches, and some great surf.

About fifty yards out, there were a few kids sitting on their boards at the edge of a sandbar. A little rip was running alongside it, and a decent wave broke left and right from it. Lockie paddled out, shivering. He wished he had enough money for a wetsuit.

A big, hairy, country-looking kid with bad teeth swooshed past him on a wave. He was a pretty slack surfer, but confident. And big. When you’re twelve and three quarters and a new kid, everyone seems a bit on the mega side. There were four or five other kids out at the break, all decked out in full trendy surf gear, in every fluorescent colour: Ripcurl, Billabong, Quicksilver, Lightning Bolt. Lockie guessed that even their undies were 100 per cent Mambo. They eyed him off and his nerves shot all over the place. He didn’t hassle for the first few waves. Instead, he let them go.

The big, hairy kid paddled back and pulled up beside him. ‘You’re here on holiday.’ It wasn’t even a question.

Lockie shook his head. ‘Just moved here.’

‘From Perth, eh?’

‘Yeah.’

‘City boys always think they can surf.’

‘I can surf.’

No joke. Lockie Leonard could surf. He was lousy at football. He could be counted on to entirely stuff up a cricket match, and he wasn’t even any good at Monopoly, but he could sure ride a board. Genuine surf rat, grommet extraordinaire.

‘You’re all piss an’ wind, youse blokes. City boys’re up ’emselves.’

Lockie shrugged.

A set came. Lockie let them all scramble for the first wave and he put himself right at the peak and picked off the second without any trouble. He took the drop loose-kneed and casual, taking out a wide, leaning, bottom turn before hammering back up at the lip. As he swung round off the top again, he saw the big, hairy kid dropping in from the shoulder. You rotten mongrel, he thought. The wave walled up and the other kid streaked away out in front, hooting and cutting up Lockie’s wave. Lockie dropped into a crouch, held an edge and came powering down the line, getting speed from each hit at the wave’s lip. It was like a roller-coaster and he could feel his hair streaming water as he closed on the other kid who looked over his shoulder, suddenly startled. Lockie just couldn’t stop himself. He pulled a big re-entry and came floating down right across the guy’s leg-rope. TWANG! The guy was off and cursing. Lockie weaved in to the beach and climbed up onto the sand the moment the other kid’s board drifted in alone.

‘Yeee-haaa!’ No more radical moves today. One wave was enough. Two might get his head punched in. He sprinted up the beach and threw his board into the back of the Falcon.

‘Dja see that?’

The Sarge put his bookmark in place and grinned. ‘I think you just made an enemy. You actually were a torpedo there for a minute.’

‘Well, it was worth it.’

‘Used to ride like that myself, once.’

‘Pull the other one, Dad. It plays the anthem.’

he day before term started, it rained like hell, and the ground around the Leonard house turned to soup. Frogs congregated under every window. When Lockie looked out, the sky was low and nasty. It was a foul day, no argument. Southerly wind, no surf, and school tomorrow. He stuck on his Joe Satriani tape, ‘Surfing with the Alien’, and sprawled back on his bed with an old issue of Guitar Hero that he’d swapped back in primary school for five Mad mags and a cold meat pie.

Mrs Leonard came in, twitchy and nervous. She laid a little green booklet on the bed and looked out the window.

‘It’s time we thought about sex,’ she said.

‘You what?’

‘I mean, I mean, it’s time we talked about it. You’ll be mixing with all kinds of — ’

‘Mum — ’

‘No, listen, I — ’

‘Mum!’

She stopped and looked at him. ‘I suppose you know all about sex then.’

‘Of course! Geez, Mum, I’m practically on the pension.’

Mrs Leonard looked relieved all of a sudden, like all the air went out of her. ‘Oh, well. You can just keep this for reference, then. I just didn’t want you being at a disadvantage. Well, that’s it, then.’

When she was gone, Lockie pounced on the booklet. He was the full bucket on sex (naturally), but there might have been one or two (or thirty or forty) details he’d like to clear up. Besides, there might be pictures!

But it was a rotten little booklet, with the kind of pictures you see in the Good News Bible. And a lot of really gross-sounding and unsexy words. Vulva – ugh, it sounded like a Swedish taxi. Urethra, Gonad, Secretions, Orgasm. It was very tacky stuff. It was a relief to get back to Guitar Hero. He bet Joe Satriani never had a urethra secretion in his life.

t was a long walk up the hill. Lockie did it alone; there was no way he’d let the Sarge drop him off on the way to the cop shop. The big, old school seemed to hang over the town.

Before he’d even reached the car park, they were coming for him. He decided, as those Year 9 goons came charging in with their zits on fire and their ties flapping, that there wasn’t much use in fighting. He didn’t believe in violence.

‘Ah, city boy!’ one of them yelled.

Lockie recognized him. He was big and hairy, the wavehog with sideburns down to his chin like some rockabilly jerk. He looked like he’d been shaving since he was six. Another one, a little skinny runt, had a big jar of Vegemite and a paintbrush.

‘In the dunnies, then!’

They grabbed him by the arms and hair and walked him into the boys’ toilets. Boys’ dunnies smell the same anywhere – city, country, new, old, summer or winter. It’s not one of the world’s best pongs, and for a moment Lockie thought it might be worth fighting after all. A bloke’s principles will only stretch so far. But they had him on the concrete floor before be could say ‘Bono Vox’. Someone got his jeans down and someone else got his jocks, and then out came the paintbrush and everyone’s favourite sandwich spread, and he started to kick. It didn’t do any good.

‘You bunch of yellow vulvas!’ he yelled.

That cracked them up. They gave him a second coat for good measure.

•

Maybe you’ve never had your tricky bits painted with Vegemite – maybe you won’t understand – but I tell you, Lockie Leonard had a very uncomfortable first day at school. That stuff feels like it tastes – tangy to the max. Everyone who sat next to him that day was wondering whether he’d had a bath since 1979. He smelled like his jocks had turned to raw yeast, riboflavin, niacin and iron.

•

‘What’s your name, son?’ Old Squasher rumbled in Maths.

‘Leonard.’

‘You may call me sir.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Sir.’

‘Yes?’

Old Squasher was built like a rainwater tank – tall, round, fat and corrugated. “When he was angry he sounded like someone had thumped his side with a big stick. He vibrated, and brown dandruff came off him like rust.

‘Sirrrrrr! I said Siiiiirrrrrrrgh! Rrgh!’

‘Yeah,’ said Lockie. ‘That’s when I got confused. I thought for a moment that — ’

‘Leonard.’

‘Sir?’

Old Squasher looked suddenly like a man who’d just made a breakthrough. ‘Aah, you understand! Class, he understands.’ There was a polite titter around the room, but nothing enthusiastic. Squasher wasn’t what you’d call a smash hit with the kids. ‘Why are you scratching yourself, Leonard?’

‘Is that what you wanted to ask me?’

‘Sir.’

Lockie blinked. The class couldn’t tell if he was daft or brilliant. ‘Sorry?’ he whispered.

‘Out!’

Lockie blinked again.

‘Outsi-i-i-ide! Get out of my room before I tear your head off and use it for a blackboard duster.’

Lockie stood up looking perplexed and started down the aisle. A girl with green eyes and glinting braces was looking at him. She was twisted round and one decent-looking breast was aimed at him.

‘Leonard?’

Lockie stopped and turned to face Old Squasher again. ‘Yes?’

Squasher closed his eyes. ‘You mean, “Yes, sir”, I’m sure that’s what you mean.’

‘That’s it, yeah.’

Everyone went quiet, as though waiting for an explosion to begin World War Three. ‘Are you a good Maths student, Leonard?’

‘I think I’m basically a good student, sir, but I’m useless at Maths. I have nightmares about it.’

‘I’m glad to hear that Leonard, and I think you’ll be having a lot more.’

Lockie nodded.

‘One more thing, Leonard. I think you’re basically a lousy student, and I suspect I’ll be having nightmares about you, so don’t feel sorry for yourself. Now go away.’

Lockie headed down the aisle on the way to the door. That girl was looking right at him. She looked really impressed and it scared him.

On the bench outside, he took a long breath and began to shiver and twitch. First day. Excellent start.

•

It didn’t get any bettter, and the Vegemite in his undies didn’t improve with age.

In Science: ‘Boy, have you got worms?’

In Social Studies: ‘Who is that scratching and wriggling over there?’

In Art: ‘Get that paintbrush out of your pants, you dirty little snail!’

In Typing: ‘It’s Leonard, isn’t it? Yes. Leonard, as well as Typing, you know, I teach Grooming and Deportment, and I consider myself an expert, and in my opinion you should take a bath now and then. At a car wash.’

In English: ‘Does anybody smell something odd? I mean like yeast?’ Forty hands go up. The first hand up is Lockie’s.

•

When the final bell went, Lockie swung his bag over his shoulder and headed home in the rush, but when he got outside he stopped dead and groaned. Double-parked in the bus zone was a police car. Oh, no. He got ready to lie down and die of embarrassment in front of thousands.

‘Jump in,’ said the Sarge.

‘Dad.’

‘I’ll drop you at the beach. The swell’s up, surf rat.’ Lockie got in.

‘How’s the old First Day?’ said the Sarge with a grin.

‘Oh, fair.’

‘That bad, eh?’

‘Worse.’

And then, to put the icing on the cake, the Sarge slapped on the siren and peeled out of the bus zone like one of the Dukes of Hazzard. Lockie didn’t know whether to hoot or hide.

‘Geez, Sarge.’

‘Not bad, eh?’

‘I’m ruined.’

‘Whew, what’s that smell?’

•

The sun was almost down as he caught his last wave, leaning and cutting across its orange glistening surface as it rolled towards the beach like the twist in a great monster’s tail. It hissed behind him. His hand trailed in the smooth, faceless wall; he tossed his head back and hooted as the whole pitching funnel of its insides shot him down the line. He wasn’t thinking of anything. He didn’t need to.

ockie rolled over, sweaty and breathless in the early dawn light, and felt the wet patch in his pyjamas. Oh, no, he thought, looking across to Phillip who was still asleep. Don’t tell me bedwetting is contagious! There wasn’t much of it, just a small circle the size of a block of boardwax. And it smelt funny, like beansprouts, or something. His heart banged upward in his throat. A bird called from the tree outside and Lockie thought he’d like to strangle it.

He lay back on the pillow and wiped the sweat from his face. No, it isn’t bedwetting, he thought, it’s . . . that other business. Geez, I’m only twelve and three quarter years old – I’m not ready for this stuff!

Getting his breath back, he reached out for that little green booklet still there by his bedside, but at the last minute he pulled his hand away. Pride, maybe. Besides, it’d just come to him, what he’d been dreaming about. If he concentrated he could see it now. That girl turning around. She had braces. Green eyes. Her nose turned up a little. Her hair was frizzy and long. Brown, it was, with streaks of sun. And inside her jumper, her left breast there, almost like a woman’s. And he’d had his hand on it.

Lockie tore back the covers and swung out of bed faster than ever before – a torpedo for real this time. He had to wash his PJs or the oldies’d think he was heavily into pre-teen sex. Moral danger.

He headed down the creaking corridor in the half-light. Not a sound. Down toward the laundry. He hit the skateboard first and took a cricket bat and two brooms down with him. One broom took a paint tin off the shelf, which shifted a couple of light globes and a jar of ball bearings which crashed to the floor. Pock-pock, ker-rash! Ball bearings raced down the bare boards with a sound like a dozen jet fighters roaring by.

That you, Lockie?’ called Phillip.

‘No, it’s Rambo and I’ve lost me bearings. And me balls.’

he first couple of weeks at Angelus High went by quite smoothly for Lockie. Well, compared to his first day. He got into the routine of his timetable, did his homework, kept out of trouble, and learned the name of that girl up the front in Maths. It was Vicki Streeton and she was the smartest kid in the class. For Lockie, Maths was like trying to understand some ancient Icelandic language. Old Squasher kept his eye peeled for any slip-up in class, but for two weeks Lockie was almost invisible. He was so nearly invisible that hardly anyone spoke to him, not even the class dags. They just didn’t seem to notice him there in his seat or standing out in the quadrangle.

In Phys. Ed. he was just a part of the pack, another pair of smelly feet in the change room. In the lunch queues he was another hungry face. No one knew this new kid from the city, the one whose old man was the copper. No one even remembered the wheelie in the bus zone in front of thousands that time. Even the hairy kid whose leg-rope he’d cut didn’t appear to notice him.

Lockie began to suspect they were just ignoring him. The cop car. They were scared. No one is game to come near me, he thought.

Maybe that’s why he wasn’t ready for what happened Friday lunchtime. Lockie sat in the sun by a hedge clipped in the shape of an elephant. He was reading a book of poems he’d found in the library and wondering if he’d get through the lunchbreak without ever understanding a single one of them, when he looked up and saw Vicki Streeton walking his way alone. She didn’t walk anywhere alone. There were always a pile of girls with faces like half-chewed Mars Bars following her round, or some hunky footballers chatting her up.

She walked with her head up in the breeze and all that frizzy hair rolling around in the wind behind her. She had nice legs, but her feet turned out. Ballet dancer, he thought. Lockie’d never really thought much about how girls looked until lately. Oh, he’d always known the difference between awful and pretty, but he’d never cared less. And now he couldn’t help looking. He was safe back here against the hedge. She’d walk by, he’d go back to his dumb poems.

She got close without looking his way.

Don’t look, he thought, turning a page.

Her shadow fell across him. He saw it moving over his legs and he got an instant dose of goosebumps.

‘Hello Lockie Leonard,’ she said.

Lockie looked up to see her passing. Was that the end of a smile he saw? Cor. He fell back against the hedge and watched her go. What? What?

Right then she turned her head and glanced at him. That breast sticking out like an iced bun.

Aaaaarrgh!

He fell back so far into the hedge that he spent the rest of the lunch hour trying to get twigs out of his hair.

unday came around again and the Leonards went to church. Lockie’s mum and dad were religious, though they didn’t show all the usual weird signs. I mean, they seemed normal enough. Well, for a copper’s family living in a swamp. Lockie’s olds got religion back when he was a baby. They went to a stadium to hear some Yank talk and they wound up signing on. People did that sort of thing in those days. Lockie figured he believed in all that stuff, you know, about there being a God and Him listening to your prayers and everything, but he just couldn’t see how it fitted into church. Lockie hated going to church.

Just to cheer him up this morning, it rained. Lockie got into the car and pressed his cheek against the cold glass of the window. Sunday, day of boredom. He figured that if he was a dog and this bored, he’d be asleep already. He wondered how the surf was. He thought about the poem he was trying to write, wondered why he was so miserable all of a sudden.

The church was up on the opposite hill from school. You could see old Angelus High from the car park. It wasn’t a big Catholic church that they went to with steeples and stained glass – it was squat and white and ugly as sin (so to speak). It might have been a squash court or a medical centre. As Lockie went in through the door behind his oldies, taking a hymn book from the smiling bloke at the entrance, he got that old feeling of being in a dentist’s waiting room. He knew he wasn’t here to get his teeth drilled, but by the end of an hour he thought maybe that’d be more fun.

He sat on the pine pew with his family. Blob gooed and gaahed. The organ up the front warbled like a dying pensioner. Everyone sat looking glum. There was a banner behind the pulpit that just said SALVATION! To Lockie it might have said I LOST LOTTO! That’s how they all looked, like they’d just lost a million bucks.

They got up to sing. Lockie didn’t mind the singing. Next to him, Phillip sang like a cat in a blender, but he seemed to enjoy himself. Then they sat down and various people rattled on. The Sarge tried out a few hallelujas during the sermon but no one was having any. No one laughed or smiled for an hour, and only in the singing did they sound halfway enthusiastic. Lockie liked the closing hymn, though. It was gutsy. It felt like the last straining sprint at the end of a marathon.

In all that time, he realized, all through – church besides praying that Phillip would stop piddling his bed – Lockie was thinking of Vicki Streeton. Like a bloke who couldn’t help himself. He scribbled on the back page of a hymn book:

A girl turned her head
and looked at me.

Her breast was like

Like . . . something. He couldn’t get it right. Like . . . well, like a breast, but what was a breast like? Hell, he didn’t know. Blob’d know for sure – she was only just finished breast-feeding, but he couldn’t exactly ask a baby. Well, what did he know about them? Jugs, norks, knockers, boobs and bosoms. He’d leave it out of the poem, that’s what. Right, the tit goes. That’s better. But it didn’t help. Breast or no breast, he couldn’t finish the poem.

•

‘Why don’t you come along to our Youth Group on Saturday night, Lockie?’ the minister asked him at the door.

Lockie shrugged. ‘Umm.’

The minister wasn’t a bad sort of bloke. You could meet a face like his behind a counter in any shop. Eager to please.

‘Well, think it over, Lockie.’

‘He’ll be there,’ said the Sarge.

‘Thanks Dad,’ said Lockie as they walked to the car.

‘It’ll give you a chance to go back before next Sunday,’ the Sarge whispered.

‘Why?’

‘To take the boobs out of the hymn book.’

Aaaaarrrggh! Death!

‘Oh. Yeah.’

Lockie sank into the back seat of the Falcon. What a life.

eonard!’

Lockie looked up from hacking away at a piece of wood with a chisel. Borax, the Woodwork teacher, was coming at him. What is it with Woodwork teachers? They probably aren’t good enough at Woodwork to be carpenters, and they sure aren’t good enough at teaching to be proper teachers, so they just walk around boiling and screaming like granma’s kettle. They carry round something foul like a straightedge, something to clock you with. There’s nothing that’d cheer them up more than the sight of your knuckles hanging neady off the end of their straightedge.

‘Leonard, what is it exactly that you’re doing?’

Lockie threw his arms up, swinging the chisel dangerously near Borax’s long chin. ‘I dunno, sir. A lap joint, is it?’

‘Son, you couldn’t put together two hands to clap.’

Lockie looked back at his lap joint. ‘Reckon yer right, sir.’

Borax nodded. He liked to be right. ‘Tell me the names of these tools.’

‘Umm . . . that’s a marking gauge, and that’s a pencil, ahh . . . an oilstone . . . ’

‘You know what they’re for?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘What’s wrong with you, Leonard?’

‘You don’t wanna know, sir.’

Borax shifted in his mouldy old dust jacket. ‘That’s probably the only correct thing you’ll say all day, Leonard. Do you want to be here, Leonard?’

‘I have to be, sir. Like you, I imagine.’

Suddenly every head at every bench went to work, and a truly evil silence came over Woodwork Three. There was going to be thunder down-under.

‘Son,’ Borax growled, ‘if you want to imagine, you imagine all you want.’

Borax strode back to the material rack and and drew out a cube of pine as big as his own head. ‘You can imagine on that. This is your material for this term and that is your tool.’ He drew a half-bald hunk of sandpaper from his coat pocket and slapped it on the bench. ‘For ten weeks you can imagine all you like. And in ten weeks you don’t touch a real tool.’ Borax ground up an acid smile. ‘Alright?’

‘Orright. Thanks, sir.’

Borax hesitated. Lockie Leonard was smiling like someone in a toothpaste ad.

‘What is it, Leonard? Share the joke.’

‘Well, sir.’

‘Tell us, Leonard.’

‘When they ask me what I’m doing in Woodwork, I can tell them I do what the teacher does. I can honestly tell them I’m doin’ me block.’

The whole workshop cracked up. Mallets hit the floor. Boys collapsed on their benches. Lockie saw the door coming at him. He realized he was airborne. It was a beautiful feeling, true torpedoism, but it didn’t last long.

•

On the way down the verandah, Lockie saw girls sitting in the sun with their skirts pulled up their legs to give them a tan. They were laughing and chatty, rolling their eyes and popping bubblegum. He looked for Vicki Streeton among them but didn’t see her. He hitched his bag, feeling his files rolling around, and concentrated on faces. He recognized a couple by sight, but didn’t know their names. It almost stopped him in his tracks, the thought that came to him. He didn’t know anyone in this school. He didn’t know a single person.

When he got to the door he was looking for, he stood a moment to straighten himself out.

Well, it’s better than being sent to the principal, he figured. He knocked.

‘Come!’

Lockie hesitated.

‘Come in!’

He slid the door open. Behind a desk, with his reading glasses up on his forehead, a whiskery young-looking bloke squinted at him. He didn’t look old enough for a job, even with all the face-prickle.

‘Leonard, sir.’

‘Ah, it’s you. Grab a pew.’

Lockie blinked.

‘Park your bum. Sit.’

Lockie crept across the carpet and took a chair. The Guidance Officer put his boots up on the table. They were size nines and made in Italy – Lockie read it on the soles.

‘I’m John East.’

Lockie nodded.

‘Having a spot of bother, I hear. Sent out once. Thrown out another time. Three teachers have mentioned you to me, and various other staff. You’ve only been at school two weeks . . . Lachlan, is it?’

‘Lockie. People call me Lockie.’

‘Fair enough, Lockie. A couple of weeks and already you’ve made a reputation for yourself. Everything all right?’

Lockie wanted to say it was all a mistake. He’d just said the wrong things at the right time. He was lonely, he’d figured it out. Lonely and nervous. This John East character looked like someone out of ‘Hill Street Blues’, someone in the drug squad who never shaved. Lockie sized him up, wondering what to say.

‘What does your mum do?’

‘She stays at home. My sister’s still a baby.’

‘Your dad live with you?’

Lockie smiled. Of course.’

‘Does he have a job?’

‘He’s a cop.’

‘Oh, he’s tough, huh?’

‘Not very.’

John East pulled his specs down to his eyes and gave Lockie the once-over. He looked older with them on. ‘There’s a bruise on your forehead.’

‘Borax, ah, Mr Borax, threw me out the door. The door was closed.’

‘Hmm.’ John East made a note. ‘You got any trouble at home, Lockie?’

‘Frogs. They drive me crazy. And my brother wets his bed.’

‘Violence?’

‘No, not even roses. It’s a pretty scungy garden.’

John East sighed. ‘Tell me, Lockie, how are you liking school?’

Lockie shrugged. ‘Did you like primary school?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What . . . now this might sound funny . . . but what kind of student were you at primary school? Were you different somehow? Can you tell any difference in how you feel?’

Lockie put his sweaty hands together. This was getting creepy.

‘I got good marks. I was quiet. Sir, I was a suck.’

‘Really?’

I’m packin’ crap every day, that’s what’s different, he thought, but I can’t tell you that. He shrugged.

‘You like being the class clown?’

‘It’s mostly by accident, sir. I’m nervous. Maybe . . . maybe I’m getting to like it. I dunno.’

‘You get respect from it, you think?’

‘Maybe, yeah, I reckon.’

John East pulled his feet off the desk and made some more notes. Maybe a quick half-dozen with the cane’d be better than this, thought Lockie.

‘Your best subject?’

‘English, I s’pose. It’s too early to tell.’

‘Best sport?’

‘I hate sport.’

‘You look fit. You must be doing something.’

‘Surfing, sir. I surf.’

‘A grommet, eh?’

‘It’s fun, not sport.’

‘What’s sport, in your opinion?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Running round in circles. Hitting balls, wearing numbers and getting shouted at. That’s it.’

John East laughed. ‘Well. Surfing is a sport, too, Lockie. World circuit, big bucks, sponsorship, numbers, teams. What kind of board you got?’

Lockie smiled. He’s trying to get in with me, the wally, he thought. He wouldn’t know a damn thing about it. It made Lockie mad somehow.

‘Can I go now, sir?’

The Guidance Officer’s smile went away. Oops, thought Lockie, that stacks it.

‘Yes. Go.’

Lockie headed for the door.

‘And Lockie.’

Lockie turned. ‘Sir?’

‘Pull your head in for a while.’

‘Yessir.’

•

After school Lockie walked downtown just to look in shop windows and wander along. Kids shuffled along in packs, fagging and cracking jokes. A few bikers hung out in front of the Wildflower Cafe, and panel vans full of yobbos cruised up and down looking for action. The harbour stank of algae and effluent from the woollen mills, and the breeze brought up farty gusts of it. It was ripe.

Lockie ate an apple he’d been saving. He went into Boans and flicked through a few records. They were playing u2 in there. He liked it but it made him feel sad. From there he went down to the newsagency where a girl they called Fat Maz worked. Fat Maz looked at him like he wasn’t there. Lockie leafed through Surfing World and Tubes, putting them carefully back on the rack before Fat Maz’s old man, the one with the wonky leg, came huffing down the aisles. He shrugged as he passed Fat Maz again, as if to say ‘Sorry, but I’m broke’, but she didn’t seem to see him. People were bored to death in this town. He wished the Sarge hadn’t brought them here. He wished they’d just stayed home in North Beach and kept all their old friends in the same old streets, and he could have gone on being the old Lockie Leonard who everybody knew and nobody much minded. He hardly even knew himself anymore. He felt like he was making himself up as he went along, as if he’d started over and couldn’t be the same person. He felt pushed, trapped.

Before it rained he headed home. He could hear the frogs already. And tomorrow was his birthday. Thirteen. It felt unlucky.

ell, you’re finally a teenager, Lockie thought to himself as he sat waiting for a wave with the water glittering around him in the chilly afternoon sunlight. Thirteen years old. Well, maybe it wasn’t much, but being twelve and three quarters was truly miserable.

He rubbed the arms of his new neoprene vest. It was a beautiful thing, this wetsuit. Smooth, sleek, in fluorescent yellow and green, Australian colours. Okay, it wasn’t absolutely what he’d hoped for, not like a full top-to-toe steamer, but the Sarge and his mum weren’t exactly made of money. And it was making a big difference: he’d been in the water an hour already and he was only now beginning to shiver. A couple more waves – he’d go in soon.

He was tired but buzzing with pleasure. What a day it’d been. Right from the moment he woke up. It was sunny this morning, and Phillip’s bed was dry. Everyone at breakfast was happy. They sang ‘Happy Birthday’, and then the wetsuit came out. He went to school with a great daggy smile on his face like he’d come half-stoned from the dentist’s. School went fine. There was a forcefield of bliss around him. He was in a trouble-free zone all day. All the girls were crying because Daphne had died on ‘Neighbours’. In Maths, Old Squasher was truly vile and gave Lockie heaps, though Lockie didn’t let it affect him. For two whole Woodwork periods he rubbed away at his block of pine with Borax breathing down his neck - not a problem. The sun streamed onto the lunchtime grass and through the hedges and the hair of conscientious girls doing their test notes.

Great day. He let his hands trail in the water. A set came hissing in.

Lockie caught a left-hander with a serious late takeoff that left him sideslipping with the foam until he braced into a turn and raced back up the face – only to see some rotten sod dropping in on him. He was big, no kid, and he was good, dammit. Lockie stayed in behind as this drop-in made a whole pile of radical moves, turning with real power, riding like he really meant business. Lockie worked up high, gaining on him. He was smaller, lighter and a little quicker off the mark. As he got close, the other rider seemed familiar. Suddenly Lockie was on him and hooting, and in one nice re-entry he overtook the big bloke and pulled out before the final bonecrushing shorebreak.

‘You little prick!’ the other bloke said with a grin, floating down into the still water next to him. ‘You can surf.’

‘Sir!’ Lockie gasped. It was the Guidance Officer, John East.

‘Sir, you rotten mongrel! Next time I’ll put a hole in your head.’

‘I’ll remember that.’

They paddled out again together.

‘New wetsuit?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Should have got the one with the zip.’

‘It was a present.’

‘Come and see me tomorrow.’

‘What now?’

‘Guidance.’

•

Lockie surfed until his arms felt like secondhand sausage. The sun was on the hill overlooking the town and everything seemed set for a cold night.

Fancy seeing the old John East, officer of guidance, Lockie thought, walking up the beach with his leg-rope trailing behind. The air was colder than the water and his teeth were doing first year Typing like they’d never heard of Liquid Paper. There were a couple of people still on the beach: a girl he couldn’t quite see and a couple of old joggers so wrinkled they looked like they needed an ironing. He heard a dog bark.

When he got to his towel and started to get his wet-suit off – well, try to get it off – he understood what John East had meant about the zip. He pulled up from the front and got his arms pinned to his chest. No good. He pulled the vest down again and tried reaching back behind him and he ended up looking like a dumb thirteen year old pashing-on with himself inside a bag. In the end he managed to slip his head inside the neck and shove around in there long enough to get the new wetty knotted up over his head with his arms tied round his ears.

Out of nowhere, some slavering, crazy mange of a dog started snapping at his heels. Lockie lurched all over the beach completely in the dark. He could hardly breathe in there and the more he baulked around, the worse his own breath seemed to him. And the more he moved, the crazier the dog got. Lockie looked like a ‘Doctor Who’ mutation, and he sounded like one every time the dog butted him in the tricky bits. He couldn’t protect himself; he was about to have his groin and future manhood gnawed away.

Someone was laughing, he could hear it now. Blimey, they’d have to be laughing loud for him to hear because it was like the Darth Vader Disco in there.

‘You alright?’ someone said.

Lockie stood still. He didn’t know who it was, but he was fairly sure it wasn’t the dog.

‘Hey, can you hear me in there?’

‘Yeph!’ Lockie yelled, with an arm in his mouth.

‘What?’

‘Yeph. High gan ear ooh.’

‘What?’

‘Helph!’

Lockie felt himself ready to faint or die or become a Maths teacher. Maybe he could chew his way out. If the dog didn’t chew its way in first, that is. All of a sudden there was movement. Lockie felt his head separating from his ears and his arms tearing out of his body.

‘Oorgh croant do aht!’

‘Hang on, you dill.’

It was like getting born. Everything gave and slucked back off him. His nose flattened like a meatball and in a strange moment he thought his skin had come off. It was suddenly cold and Lockie went wheeling back onto the sand and wound up with a big toe in his ear and half his Speedos up his nose. Air. Sky. Sand.

‘I’m alive.’

‘You’re a spack is what you are.’

Lockie looked up. It was a girl talking, a girl he knew.

‘I’m dying again.’

‘Sure,’ said Vicki Streeton.

‘No, it’s true.’

She walked away in the sinking twilight and Lockie made a startling recovery. He got dry, dressed and going, board under arm, before she even reached the dunes. His heart was shaking his ribs like a mad parrot in a cage.

Aaaargh!

He ran like a Bondi tram, only cleaner. No stops please, three to a seat, all out, now or never.

He knew it.

He was in love.

ockie caught up with her in the caravan park behind the dunes. Dogs were howling for their Pal and TVs were pumping out the National Nine News and someone was flushing out the toilet block as he reached her.

‘Hey!’

‘Horses eat it. I’ve got a name, you know.’

‘Vicki,’ Lockie panted.

‘And you’re Lockie, the Kylie Minogue boy.’

He laughed, though he was deeply insulted. ‘I don’t look anything like her.’

And then she sang: ‘Lockie-Lockie-Lockie, I should be so Lockie . . .’

‘Very funny.’

They walked for a while a little breathless, until they got to the road. Lockie watched her from the corner of his eye. She wore an old pair of Levis and an old sweater too big for her, its sleeves pulled up to her elbows. And she had that ducky dancer’s walk. Lockie started breathing like he was inside that wetsuit again. Just now he could have eaten those Levis – no salt, no sauce, no sweat.

‘So you’re a surfer, eh?’

A few cars passed with headlights on.

‘Yeah,’ said Lockie swelling a bit, ‘I surf.’

‘Well, I’ll try to overlook it.’

‘What?’

‘Surfers by and large are the dumbest males around. They think they’re so hot, they think everyone else loves them the way they love themselves, but I tellya Lockie Leonard, it’s just not possible. Surfers are dorks.’

‘So you’re not impressed I take it.’

‘Not by a surfboard and not by someone who can only talk about awesome barrels and rad reos. Ugh.’

‘Then give it to me straight,’ Lockie said, offended to the absolute max. ‘Why are you talking to me?’

She didn’t say anything for a while. He waited.

‘Well?’

‘Life is full of mysteries.’

‘Aargh!’

‘What?’

Lockie swapped arms on the board. ‘There’s only one thing more boring than clever boys.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Clever girls.’

‘Are you saying I’m clever?’ she asked, a hint of laughter in her voice. ‘That would be flattery, you know.’

‘Well, I s’pose the world is full of mysteries.’

Vicki stuck her thumb out and before Lockie noticed, a ute pulled over. They threw the board in and climbed in the back.

‘You look like you’ve never hitched a lift before in your life,’ Vicki said, her hair blowing in his face.

‘I haven’t. My old man wouldn’t approve.’

‘Who’s he, then?’

‘The new cop.’

‘Aha.’

‘Yeah. Aha. He thinks I’m gonna get abducted.’

‘Who’s gonna abduct you?’

It was dark when the driver, an old wharfie, dropped them off at the crossroads below the school.

‘Where do you live?’ Vicki asked.

‘Down there.’

‘In the swamp?’

He laughed. ‘Yeah, more or less.’

‘I live up on the hill.’

‘Yeah.’

‘This is halfway then.’

‘Yeah.’

They stood for a few moments, half-looking at each other.

‘You won’t expect me to sit on the beach like some dumb adoring surf-chick, will you?’

‘No, I . . . but I don’t . . .’

‘Good.’

She reached over and kissed him on the mouth. She tasted like vanilla icecream and smelled like strawberry topping. Lockie’s lungs went off work for the day.

‘Now don’t go thinking you’re a real spunk, or anything. I can’t stand male pride. You’re still Lockie Leonard who can’t get out of his wetsuit and has obviously never been kissed by anyone but his mum before.’

Lockie’s mouth moved, but all the air was long gone from his shut-down lungs.

‘See you at school tomorrow,’ she said. ‘We’ll sort out the details then.’

Vicki headed off across the road, but Lockie managed a dumb sort of squawk that made her turn around.

‘What?’

Air came back to him. Lockie moved his lips and words came. ‘It’s my birthday.’

She came belting back across the road without even looking out for cars, and planted a kiss right on his open gawping mouth.

‘Happy birthday, then!’

Aaaarrrgh! Fabulous!

He ran home flat out. He threw the board in the laundry with his towel and wetsuit, heading through to the kitchen where everyone was already eating dinner.

‘Sorry I’m late!’ The Sarge eyed him dubiously.

‘How’s the wetty?’

‘Yeah, how’d it go, love?’ Mrs Leonard asked.

‘It’s changed me life.’

The Sarge looked at Phillip whose eyebrows were like two Sydney Harbour Bridges. ‘I think he likes it.’

ockie only got as far as the school oval next morning before he knew something was up. A line of girls, sitting like budgies along the fence, started nudging and pointing and carrying on.

‘Lockie’s in love!’ one shouted.

He felt the great, sweet, pink bubble of joy inside him pop and stick to his insides. Why should it worry him? This morning Phillip had climbed into bed with him, wet PJs and all, and that hadn’t ruined anything. He woke feeling great. Anyway, wasn’t it true? Why did he feel ashamed and frightened all of a sudden? Talk about life having its mysteries.

•

First period. English. In she comes, down the aisle with her skirt drifting around her. Her hair is tied back and she has sleepers in her tiny ears. And yep, she sits down right next to him.

‘G’day, rubberhead.’

Lockie felt the blood galloping to his cheeks. ‘Hi.’

‘You’re blushing.’

‘Bulldust. I’m sunburnt.’

‘In this town? Nobody gets sunburnt here. They reckon this is the perfect English climate. That’s why the Poms settled here first.’

‘How depressing,’ Lockie muttered. ‘No wonder the convicts moved north.’

Vicki laughed. ‘You are an ignoramus.’

‘Yeah, I just escaped from the zoo.’

‘Claaass!’ Mrs Twaddle bellowed.

‘None of that here,’ said someone.

‘Right! Who said that?’

You could have heard a sparrow fart. Mrs Twaddle was small and round and soft like a lump of Play-Dough. Her little specs hung on the bridge of her nose like a depressed person ready to jump. She was alright really, with only a couple of sick habits.

‘Someone had better claim ownership to that piece of true wisdom, or there’ll be action.’

They groaned.

‘No? Then I have no choice. Class, heads on desks.’

The groaning went to moaning. They knew what was coming. She was going to give them no mercy, this old duck. Some kids plugged their ears with old Violet Crumble wrappers, while others had to just grit their teeth.

‘I will read you a poem.’

Grooooaaaan!

‘“The Man from Snowy River” by Banjo Paterson —’

‘Oh, cack, sir!’

‘I am not sir. For that, I’ll read it twice, Wassop.’

Moooaaaaannn!

‘“There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around/ That the colt from old Regret had got away . . .”’

Lockie closed his eyes. The movie of this poem was awful; he figured they were lucky she didn’t make them watch the movie. He opened his eyes. Along the desk, with her cheek flat to the sticky black Laminex, Vicki was looking at him. He felt her ankle against his. She twined it around his leg and he thought he could die like this. He tried to smile, but with his face against the desk that way he looked like the Elephant Man impersonating a goldfish.

•

It went on all day, through Social Studies, Maths and Science, ankle to ankle and in a cloud. At lunchtime, Lockie suddenly met people.

‘Lockie, you know Melanie.’

‘No, I, er . . .’

‘And Tracy and Anne. Where’s Egg gone? And Wacker, he surfs too. Lockie’s a hot surfer, Wack. You should see him.’

I’m somebody, he thought; I’m a somebody. Here he was with the crew.

‘Oh, you’re Vicki’s new boyfriend?’

Ah, he thought. That’s what I am. The new boyfriend. Still, it’s something. Hell, it’s everything!

•

‘I’ve got an idea for you,’ John East said, scratching his whiskers.

The guidance office smelt of coffee and gingernuts. Lockie looked nervously at his own hands, just for something to look at.

‘You surf, right?’

Lockie nodded.

‘This town is full of bored kids, right?’

Lockie looked up. ‘You can say that again. This town is so boring you could — ’

‘You could start up a boardriders club, that’s what.’

‘A what?’

‘A surfing club for young grommets like yourself.’

‘What for? I hate clubs.’

John East squinted. ‘You’re that enthusiastic, I can hardly believe it.’

‘Here I am talking to someone who drops in fragrantly on another surfer and now he tells me I need to start a surfing club.’

‘Flagrantly.’

‘Sir?’

‘The word is flagrantly not fragrantly. If I dropped in on you fragrantly it must have been the aftershave.’

Lockie blinked, confounded.

‘So what about it?’

‘What do we need a club for?’

John East sighed. ‘Well, you could run training sessions, movie nights, competitions.’

‘Who against? Half the schools down here are inland. Those kids wouldn’t know a beach if it crawled up their shorts and bit them on the — ’

‘Ever heard of Ocean Beach? Margaret River? You’d find more competition than you think. Who knows, some of you could compete in the State Schoolboys comps. Maybe even the Nationals. Bells Beach. Noosa. Think of it: the Angelus Hotrats.’

Lockie tried to look doubtful.

‘It’d draw more kids into the sport,’ John East continued. ‘Who knows, there might be a Tom Carroll or Mark Richards waiting to be discovered.’

‘Living on a farm?’

‘Don’t be a snob.’

Lockie thought about it. ‘Could I get out of football and cricket and stuff?’

‘Well, we’d have to see.’

‘I’ll think about it, sir.’

‘Alright.’

Lockie got up to go.

‘Oh, Lockie?’

‘Sir?’

‘I hear you’re in love.’ He winked. ‘Watch out.’

Aaargh!

hey sat on the wall above the muddy hockey field as all the other homebound kids streamed past in a swerving rush of bikes, skateboards and feet. Ah, you should have seen them there, holding hands like there was no tomorrow. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in love or not, but I tell you, when you are in love, you might as well have your brain sealed up in a jam jar until it’s all over.

‘What do you reckon about the Greenhouse Effect?’ Vicki asked, trying to bite an apple without busting her braces.

‘I dunno,’ Lockie murmured. ‘I reckon it’s lousy.’

Vicki rolled her eyes. ‘No idea.’

Lockie smiled, looking even dumber.

‘Don’t you have any ideas and opinions?’

‘Probably not,’ he said.

‘Did you know that Australia is being stuffed up the most by the hole in the ozone layer? We put out less CFCs and we get the hole. How do you like that!’

Lockie just stared at her, smiling. She looked great.

‘Did you know that?’

Lockie shook his head. ‘We haven’t done it in Science yet, have we?’

‘Science! Lockie, don’t you even read the papers?’

He shrugged. She looked fabulous, all hot in the face and bursting with brains.

‘Boy you’re useless.’

Yeah, he thought, I’m useless. You’re not supposed to stare at girls like this. You’re supposed to be impressive. You’re useless, Lockie Leonard.

Vicki squeezed his hand deliciously and they sat there in silence awhile until a question came into Lockie’s head.

‘Will you ever have kids?’

Vicki let go his hand. ‘Wow! Keep back, Rover.’

Lockie laughed, all embarrassed. ‘I wasn’t suggesting anything.’

‘Whew, I hope not.’

‘I was just making a hypodermical question.’

‘Hypodermical! Geez, yer a dag!’

‘Well?’

‘Well what?’ she asked.

‘Are you gonna have kids? When you get married?’

‘Married? Who said I was ever gonna get married?’

‘No one,’ Lockie mumbled. ‘I was just — ’

‘Marriage is a decayed and rotten institution, boy.’

Lockie thought about it. ‘Are your mum and dad happy?’

‘With each other? No, they fight like animals, like politicians. They hate each other. Only the money keeps them together. See? They really are like pollies.’

‘That figures.’

‘What figures?’

Lockie grabbed her apple and took a bite. ‘You and getting married. People whose oldies fight always say that marriage sucks. People whose oldies are happy, well, they don’t worry so much.’

‘Where’d you read that?’

Lockie shrugged. ‘Nowhere. I just thought it. I bet you’re the kind of person who’s not going to have kids ‘cause they don’t wanna bring children into a world like this.’

‘That’s right. You got it.’

‘Sometimes I reckon people think too much.’

‘Don’t be stupid. And give me back my apple. Thank you. And you’re gonna fill the world with kids, eh?’

‘Nah, but I’d like a few.’

‘Yer mad as a cut snake.’

Lockie smiled. ‘Me mum once said that us kids made her and the old man real happy. I always remember that. I had a good time when I was a little kid. I don’t see the problem. I’m glad I wasn’t an abortion, I tell you.’

‘Don’t be so sure you aren’t.’ Vicki bit carefully on her apple. The school was quiet now except for a couple of kids trying to upend the hockey goal.

‘You got brothers and sisters, then?’

‘Yeah,’ he murmured. ‘Brother’s ten. Sister’s a baby.’

‘You talk like there’s a lot more of you.’

‘Well, it always feels like a crowd. What about you?’

‘I got a sister who’s married. She married a dipstick, he’s a complete dipstick.’

‘What do your oldies do?’

‘Business. They sell cars. You’ve seen the ads.’

Vicki took a breath and said it like it made her sick to even say it. ‘Streetons’ For Ford. Streets Ahead.’

Lockie smiled. ‘I think advertising people are the lowest form of life.’

‘No. Car salesmen.’

‘You don’t sound like the happiest person in the world,’ Lockie said.

‘No, but I’m the nicest.’

Lockie got all embarrassed again and looked at his hands. ‘You’re alright.’

‘Don’t overdo it, Leonard.’

‘I like you,’ he said.

She hit him on the cheek with a quickspeed kiss and took off with her bag flying behind her. ‘I’m late for ballet!’

Ballet, he thought; Lockie, yer outta ya depth.

ockie lay in bed with all that talk still hanging over him like a warm cloud in the dark. There she was, this pretty, clever girl with all these ideas. Not just some dumb schoolgirl. It was like . . . like she was a woman, almost.

On the other side of the room, Phillip was talking to him.

‘There’s this nun, Lockie. One of them Cathlick ladies. And she reckons she’ll get me fixed. If I only have banana juice after school and no water or milk or anythink, nothink except bananas, then I won’t wet. Mum reckons it’s worth a go, but, geez, I dunno. Nothin’ works, Lockie. I’m gunna be a wetter all me life. I’m not ever gunna be proper. Lockie? Lockie. Ah. Yer asleep.’

Lockie heard the voice trail off, but he hadn’t been hearing the words. There’s this awesome woman, he was thinking. And she likes me.

He had this picture in his head. In it, Lockie was a man and Vicki was a woman. They were in a dark place but light came off their skin. Light. And skin. Smooth light and skin. He dozed to the sight of their bodies. He . . . they . . . He slept.

•

The frogs stopped. Lockie woke and felt his PJs in horror. Aaargh! Double-aaargh! They were wet again! Wet. Mega-aargh-to-the-max! It was all hot and clammy on him, a whole slushpile of wet, and another one on the sheet.

He sat up sweating. I’m addicted to wet dreams, he thought. My life’s over.

He looked at his watch. 6.30a.m. The Sarge would be up soon, and then they’d all be up because he could never do anything quietly, not even read. Think, Lockie, use your incredibly sophisticated and nearly adult brain. Aaaaaarrgh!

Lockie sprang up in the semi-dark, ripped off his sheet, down with his dacks, and off to the bathroom. Destroy the evidence, that’s it. They’ll notice it this time.

Close the door. On with the light. Plug in the bath. Hmm. A bit of Lux beauty soap as used by film stars. Bit of a rub round the stain, the rest in the wash. Onto the knees. Scrub-scrub under the stinging cold water, rinse, spin cycle. Come on, Hoover-arms, don’t panic. Aaghphhf.

Wringing out a bedsheet is harder than strangling a friendly dog. It’s definitely a job for two. He tied one end around the tap and twisted. Oops. Out of the wall comes the tap. Poke it back in. Oops. Off the wall comes a ceramic tile. I’m not hysterical, he thought. I AM NOT HYSTERICAL!

Heading out of the bathroom with his sheets and PJs dripping and wrinkled like the underneath of Joan Collins’s neck, Lockie ran into the Sarge.

‘I’m sleepwalking! I’m sleepwalking! Don’t wake me or something terrible might happen!’

Out he bolted to the backyard and across to the clothes line.

Coo, he thought, that was close.

Hmm, that funny beansprout smell was still there in his PJs. Tough luck.

‘You awake yet?’ the Sarge asked, frightening him half out of his skin.

His skin! That’s all he had on except for a few goosebumps.

‘No,’ Lockie said. ‘I’m out to it.’

He headed back inside doing his best to look like a sleepwalker. Arms out front. Zzzzzz.

‘Mind the step,’ called the Sarge.

Too late. Lockie stubbed his toe and went crashing through the screen door. Out in the yard the Sarge was cracking up.

I used to like this world, thought Lockie, wondering if he should OD on Listerine.

y the end of the week, Vicki and Lockie were solid news. You could see them swapping chewies at the canteen verandah. Any dill could see their legs tangled together under the desk in English. They started doing their Science projects together, and at lunch you’d see them sprawled on the grass in the sun, not pashing madly, but arguing. Not lovey arguing, but brainy arguing. They believed things, those two, and other kids hung around them, listening in. They drew a crowd.

Suddenly Lockie had other blokes tagging around him. They said, ‘G’day, Lockie, what’s up?’ Or they begged a few cents off him or asked his advice. He cracked jokes and they laughed. There was Handle, the skinny kid who walked like a Darlek and tried to sound tough. And a short kid called Flea who could never decide to be nice or nasty. Sometimes a huge kid called Boof hung around. He looked like an old fridge with the paint peeling off.

‘Hey, Lockie, there’s this chick, ya see . . . ’

‘Oi, Lockie, what you want with loose change . . . ’

‘Lockie, Vicki’s a real chick. All the others are dogs, believe me. Wivout class, them. You got ten cents?’

•

On Saturday morning Lockie headed up the hill past the silent school to the pine plantation. Vicki was standing out on the shady edge near the road, but he didn’t recognize her for a moment. The school uniform; he’d got used to seeing her in it. Her hair was back in a clasp, sort of fishtailed out the back, and she had big, silver earrings. Tight jeans, boots, and a black sweater that made his skin tingle.

‘You lookin’ for someone else?’

He shook his head. ‘You look pretty.’

‘Thank you.’

‘No sweat,’ he said. ‘I’m a natural suck.’

She kicked at him half-heartedly.

They walked through the cage of light and dark inside the forest, not saying much. Lockie sniffed the resin and the damp and the occasional, light scent of her as she crossed his path.

‘It’s been a good week,’ she said.

‘Yeah.’

‘Are we serious?’

Lockie laughed. ‘What’s serious?’

‘I dunno.’

They climbed the slope till the forest ended and there were boulders and scrub and native trees.

‘Let’s go to the top,’ he said.

‘Okay.’

At the top there was a war memorial – a couple of bronze soldiers looking brave and worried – and from it you could see for kilometres in every direction. The town and the harbour, the beaches stretching eastward, the islands in the sound.

‘Amazing how all this turned out so pretty,’ Vicki murmured. ‘Look, it’s almost like someone organized it.’

‘Hmm.’

‘Maybe someone did.’

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I reckon.’

‘You believe in that stuff?’

‘What?’

‘Religion.’

Lockie looked at her face. She didn’t seem ready to ridicule him. He trusted her. ‘Yeah.’

‘We came from monkeys, Lockie.’

‘Suppose God made the monkeys?’

She smiled. ‘You’re a nut.’

He shrugged.

She turned and set off down a dirt path and he followed. It wound between boulders across the spine of the hill until it came to a series of holes in the ground.

‘What’s this?’

‘The old forts,’ Vicki said. ‘I used to play here as a kid. They built them in the war.’

Lockie stood there as she climbed down, half out of sight.

‘C’mon, you coming?’

‘Is it safe?’

She rolled her eyes and went down. Lockie scrambled over the concrete lip and went down after her.

Inside it was dark and smelly. Shafts of light drifted in from holes and cracks. There were passages blocked up with steel mesh. The floor was littered with wood from old campfires, bits of clothing, bottles. Now and then they came upon a terrible pong where some nice person had dropped his dacks.

‘It goes for ever,’ she said in the echoey dimness. ‘Fabulous, eh.’

‘I s’pose.’ Lockie wished he’d sounded more enthusiastic.

‘You’d never find this stuff in the city.’

‘You’d never need to,’ said Lockie.

‘City people always think they’re better!’

‘Let’s get out of here before we slip on a turd and break our necks.’

‘Sure, fine, whatever his Lordship wants.’

He followed her up a ladder.

Up in the fresh air again, Lockie tried to talk, but Vicki wasn’t having any.

‘What’s wrong, Vick?’ She looked fit to kill. ‘Hey, what’s up?’

‘Nothing.’

They stumbled back downhill.

‘Tell me, Vick. Don’t be a pain.’

She stopped so suddenly in the dirt track that Lockie walked straight into her and they both went reeling into the open fronds of a blackboy.

‘You clumsy berk!’

‘Sorry!’

‘Get off me.’

‘Not till you tell me why you’re in such a stink.’

‘It was my favourite place as a kid, orright? I was showing you, orright? I thought you might like it, orright? Now get the hell off me, orright?’

‘Orright, orright.’

He rolled off into the damp,prickly grass and lay on his back looking up at the sky. It was crowded with clouds up there.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Maybe I should go.’

‘Oh, great.’

‘Well, what do you want me to do?’

Lockie wasn’t ready for her. He was looking up at the sky when she rolled off the blackboy right on top of him. He didn’t feel her tongue in his mouth until his lungs finally peeled themselves off his backbone and tried to suck some air in, and when he got air, he drew it in so hard, he nearly tore her tongue off.

‘Oowch! Take it easy, boy.’

Lockie gasped and writhed, getting the winded feeling out of him, and Vicki cuddled close.

‘Geez, Lockie, you really get worked up.’

Worked over, you mean, he thought.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Let’s walk for a while,’ he said.

•

They trudged through the bush as the clouds darkened over them. Lockie felt awkward and shaky. He didn’t know what to do with himself. He was making a balls-up of this whole thing.

In the end they came to the edge of the pine plantation and the track that led to the high houses above town.

‘Where to?’ Lockie asked. That’s it. She’s gonna drop me like a hot spud.

‘Come to my place, if you want.’

‘Okay,’ he murmured.

They got halfway down the track before Vicki stopped again. ‘D’you like me, Lockie?’

‘Yeah. Course.’

‘Why?’

That got him sweating. ‘Because you’re smart and pretty. Because you smell like icecream.’

‘You in love with me?’ She stood there, feet apart. She was flexing her leg muscles as she looked him over. He’d never seen anything like this before in his life. She was great.

‘Yes. But I dunno why.’

‘You were watching me in those classes, weren’t you? I could feel your eyes on me, boy. Every time I felt you looking it was like my blood went hot and cold. It’s like you were hungry or something, I knew it was you.’

With that, she turned and led the way again. Heart racing, Lockie followed.

•

The Streeton house was a big, big joint. Pool, triple garage, landscaped gardens and two storeys full of shagpile carpet. Lockie nearly passed out with fright walking around in that place. Big stereo, CD, videos, a piano the size of a truck, big fat recliner-rockers and a giant TV overlooking it all.

‘Geez, Vick. You must be loaded.’

Vicki squinched up her nose as she opened a fridge big enough to put a horse in. ‘Wanna Coke?’

Lockie nodded.

They sat at the kitchen bar and drank their Cokes. Lockie was still nervous.

‘Where’s yer oldies?’

Oh, they must be out at the yacht club showing off the new boat. Here, I’ll show you something.’

Lockie followed her through the living room and upstairs to a bedroom with a balcony that overlooked town. The room itself was ankle deep in pink carpet. The walls were pink, and the bed was round and pink like a powder puff.

‘Is that gross or is that gross?’ she asked.

Lockie smiled nervously.

‘It’s the kind of people they are,’ Vicki said. ‘All money and no taste.’ She showed him the ensuite. ‘Look, they both keep spare sets of false teeth in the cupboard.’

‘C’mon, Vick, let’s get out of here.’

‘What are you worried about?’

‘I dunno,’ Lockie said, squirming.

Vicki went back to the bedside and pulled open a drawer. She got out a packet of Marlboros and lit one up with a silver lighter. She looked like a woman now, but not the woman Lockie’d thought of. She blew a few chubby smoke rings and looked at him. ‘Wanna drag?’

‘No.’

‘No thank you.’

‘I thought you had some brains.’

‘What?’

‘Smoking. It’s stupid. It gives you cancer. Why worry about the ozone layer if you’re fagging yourself to death anyway. It’s irrational.’

‘Irrational. Like believing in God. Like being in love. Don’t be a dag, Lockie. Don’t you ever get sick of being sensible? Sure it’s dumb, but I’m smart enough to do dumb things sometimes.’

Lockie turned and tried to head downstairs, but ended up getting lost. He found himself in a room with a big pool table and overhead lights. Against the wall was a long, black sofa. He sat down for a second. Maybe this girlfriend/boyfriend business wasn’t for him after all. It was flamin’ complicated.

‘Oh, there you are.’

Vicki was at the door. The smoke was gone.

‘Are you mad at me?’

Lockie shrugged.

‘Lockie-Lockie-Lockie, I should be so Lockie.’

He couldn’t help but smile at that. Vicki came and sat on his knee. She put her arms around him and looked into his eyes. She smelled of smoke, but it was exciting somehow. She kissed him and the taste was bitter and his heart jumped. He pulled her to him and ran his fingers across her neck, through her hair. Her legs clamped around his waist and she put a hand up under his windcheater hot against his skin. Lockie felt her teeth and braces against his teeth, her tongue against his.

‘Hmm. Nice,’ she murmured, pushing him down on the sofa.

She had a little waist and a pretty little bum in those jeans. Lockie pulled her down on him and felt her breasts crushing against his chest. So this is what they mean, he thought; this is what it’s all about. For a moment that booklet flashed into his mind. Secretions, labia, vas deferens. It didn’t seem entirely revolting.

Vicki’s skin was hot and smooth where her sweater rode up from her jeans, and he slid his hands inside. Up across her belly to the rough fabric of her bra. It was soft under there, though he didn’t know what else he should have expected.

Vicki slid down beside him and he felt inside the lacy edge. Was that her pulse in there, or his own fingertips throbbing? Her nipple ran under the palm of his hand and she breathed quickly. Lockie could have howled like a werewolf.

Slam!

A door.

Suddenly Lockie was shivering like a cocker spaniel.

‘It’s me mum and dad! Quick!’

Lockie was up, buttoning and straightening, running round in circles. Straighten the sofa, flick back the hair, grab a pool cue. Human torpedo.

When Mr Streeton came heaving his beer gut into the doorway, Lockie was shooting at the eight ball with the fat end of the cue. He also had a stain on his Levis that smelled of beansprouts.

‘Oh, yer back. You two behavin’ yerselves?’

‘This is Lockie, Dad.’

‘Lockie?’

‘Yes. Sir.’

‘What sort of name’s that?’

‘It’s the name his parents gave him, Dad.’

‘Surname?’

‘Leonard, sir.’

Mr Streeton scratched himself where the sun never shines. ‘New in town?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Hmm. The new copper’s a Leonard. Any relation?’

‘My father, sir.’

‘Wanna buy a car, does he?’

‘Don’t think so.’

‘Hmm. Well, I’m off. Just left me smokes behind. Behave yourselves, orright?’

‘Yes, master,’ said Vicki.

‘Tell your father I’m an honest man.’

‘No worries!’ said Lockie, almost dying of relief as the big man left. They waited till they heard the car start before either of them dared breathe.

‘Cor. I need a kiss,’ said Vicki.

‘Not me,’ said Lockie. ‘I need an ambulance.’

ou alright, Lockie?’ Mrs Leonard asked at dinner. ‘You look a bit feverish tonight, love.’

Lockie scoffed his mashed spud and shook his head. ‘No, I’m fine.’ To himself he thought, I’m a nervous wreck, that’s what.

The Sarge was on the late shift. Phillip left the table to watch ‘Alf on TV. Blob just sat there gobbing up her pumpkin.

‘You said you’d go to Youth Group tonight.’

Gulp. ‘Did I?’

‘Come on, Lockie, you’ve got to meet some nice friends. What did you do today? Walk around on your own all day, I’ll bet.’

‘No, Mum.’

Mrs Leonard hoisted Blob out of the high chair and onto her lap. Now she looked worried. He hated it when her mouth pinched up like that; she took everything so seriously.

‘I should have asked you before, I know, where you’ve been going, that is. I’ve always trusted you, Lockie, that’s why. I know you’d never do anything — ’

‘Mum, don’t get all — ’

‘I’m not getting all anything.’

‘I just went walking. Up Mount Clement behind the school. Through the pine plantation.’

‘On your own?’

Here goes. ‘No, Mum. With a friend.’

‘What’s his name.’

‘It’s a she.’

‘Oh.’

Lockie could hear ‘Alf’ blasting away from the lounge room. I should have said I was sick, he thought. Lockie’s mum looked like she seriously regretted giving him that little sex book. She was blaming herself already, he could tell.

But she smiled. ‘You’ve got a girlfriend?’

Lockie shrugged.

‘You must bring her home. Do I know her?’

‘Mum, do you know anyone in this town?’

She grinned. ‘Okay, dumb question.’

•

Lockie went along to the Youth Group that night out of sheer gratitude to his mum. She didn’t get hysterical, she didn’t press the point, she left him in peace, so he went along as a favour.

But there’s only so far you can take a favour. It was a horrible night. All these terrible, awful, spoilt, two-faced teenagers in a hall with two nice, unsuspecting adults. All their parents were straightlaced mega-respectable churchgoers and their kids pretended to be the same, but they were just acting. They infuriated Lockie somehow. They thought they were so cool. Why didn’t they just own up, he thought, and be who they were, instead of this false thing they were into? One kid tried to sell him a packet of condoms and a watch he’d stolen. The boys had scabs on their knuckles from fighting. They talked about ‘boongs’ and ‘slopes’ and ‘dagos’. They hated ‘poofters’ and ‘lezzos’ and ‘greenies’ and it made him sick to hear them. They even slagged each other when they couldn’t be overheard, and when the adults were round they were sweet as custard. It was like they were angels on the outside and dunny rats on the inside. And worst of all, they were boring as well, though they didn’t seem to notice. They seem to be full of hot stinking air. Lockie’d never seen anything like it before in his life.

‘Let’s pray!’ said the leaders at the end of the night.

‘Yeaahh!’ they all said.

Lockie nearly puked in his pocket.

•

‘How was it?’ the Sarge asked, driving him home.

‘I couldn’t even begin to tell you,’ Lockie mumbled.

‘Nice kids?’

‘They should be in South Africa running the government.’

‘Run that past me again?’

‘Send me to Sunday school, to gaol, but never send me there again. And if you go yourself, take your handcuffs.’

The Sarge laughed. ‘They can’t be that bad.’

‘And your truncheon and a shotgun.’

‘And I thought coppers’ kids were rebels.’

‘Dad, you’ve lived a sheltered life, I swear it.’

They laughed all the way home, though neither of them really understood what was so funny.

fter church on Sunday, the Sarge and Mrs Leonard stayed to talk with people, so Phillip and Lockie walked home to avoid getting mugged by Youth Group kids. Heading down towards the swamp, Phillip hummed something and Lockie skimmed stones across the road. Lockie was thinking about Vicki. He’d see her tomorrow at school. Home Room, Maths, Social Studies. Funny, he couldn’t remember being keen to go to school before. It was all he could think about, being with her, cracking jokes, swapping stories and ideas, holding hands, being a pair.

Phillip rattled on about something or other, chatting, chatting, and Lockie thought of Vicki.

‘Is there something you always pray about?’ Phillip asked as they came into their own street. ‘The same thing always, I mean.’

‘Don’t tell me, you pray about bedwetting, right? No, Phillip, I don’t. I don’t have your stupid problem orright? It’s not my problem!’

Lockie walked ahead, gaining ground with his bigger strides, leaving Phillip behind.

You’re as big a turd as anyone, Lockie told himself. He felt like sticking his head in a blender.

ids saw Lockie surfing and it was common knowledge that he was the hottest of the grommets. There were big kids who were better, but among the grommets Lockie ripped. At the first Year 8 meeting of the Angelus Boardriders Club, Lockie Leonard was elected President in a unanimous vote. The library seminar room was thick with paper planes, spitballs and Marlboro smoke. Ten boys and two girls joined. One of the girls was Vicki Streeton. About the only other business they got through in that first pig-swill of a meeting was to decide to meet at four every second afternoon on the main beach. That’s when Old Squasher came roaring into the room smacking kids’ heads together and causing a rapid evacuation.

‘What’s the matter, Lockie?’ Vicki asked as they sat on the verandah out of the rain. ‘You don’t look like someone who’s just been elected president.’

Lockie shrugged. ‘None of them hardly know me.’

‘You’ve got a rep. People have heard you’re good.’

‘No, the only rep I’ve got is that I’m on with you.’

‘That’s crap.’

‘Look, you’ve always been popular; you don’t even think about it. You’re used to being good at everything and well known – I’m good at one thing and I’m used to being nobody.’

‘Until now.’

‘Yeah, that’s what worries me.’

‘Ha! And you’re the one who reckons people think too much.’

•

Pretty soon, people saw Lockie and Vicki as the Year 8 couple. They might as well have been married. At the school elections they were voted onto the student council. They took submissions and gathered petitions, organized fundraising and oversaw the Year 8 First Term Disco where they danced together with everybody looking at them.

‘I used to dream about being like this,’ Vicki whispered in his ear as they danced to some soppy slow Chris de Burgh song.

‘Like what?’ said Lockie feeling her cool cheek against his.

‘In love. With a nice boy. Someone who cares about things, someone bright and gentle.’

‘Mills and Boon, you mean.’

‘I’ll be Mills,’ she whispered, ‘and you be Boon.’

They got to be on speaking terms with all the Year 12 prefects. There wasn’t anybody who didn’t know about them now, not even a teacher. Teachers smiled tolerantly when they sat together and worked together. After all, they did work, and they worked well. They topped their classes in everything except Maths. Lockie was lousy at Maths. Teachers called them mature and responsible. Lockie figured he did better with Vicki’s help than he would without her, but it didn’t worry him. The Angelus Boardriders Club held five comps that term and Lockie placed first every time. Two other clubs started, a Year 10 and a Year 12. Lockie placed in the top three in all of them: he gave those older guys a run for their money. He even got asked to the Year 12 party on the beach. The older kids sat around trying to light a fire, passing round a joint. They passed Lockie the joint and he lit the fire with it. They thought he was the funniest little kid. Lockie didn’t even know it was a joint. He hated smoking. Smoke was for fires he lit the fire. Vicki didn’t laugh at all. She thought they’d punch his head in and hers, too, but lucky for them they thought Lockie was smart and funny. The fifty-buck beach fire, they called it. When Angelus surfers wanted spokespeople to talk on local radio about making surfing a school sport, they chose Lockie and Vicki instead of Year 12s. When term ended, they were famous.

•

Lockie and Vicki saw each other every few days and had passion sessions in the dunes at the beach, behind the skating rink in town, up in the pine plantation – which were usually interrupted at a critical moment, and half the time Lockie was grateful for the interruption. It’d rain, or somebody’d come along, or a dog would discover them and want to join in the fun just when Lockie thought something uncontrollable might happen.

In his head he didn’t want to go all the way. He didn’t want AIDS or a baby or a wife. And he didn’t want to stick one of those condom things on. He was thirteen, he didn’t want to do anything that serious. But down there, in his gonad-secretion-zone, in all his business bits, he was on autopilot, same as anybody else. When someone’s got their tongue in your ear and their hand on your zip, it’s kind of hard to fly straight. He loved passion sessions; he just wished it didn’t get complicated.

•

‘Still seeing Vicki?’ Lockie’s mum asked, well into the holidays.

‘Fair bit.’ Ar, Mum, he thought, can’t you be a bit more ignorant and uninterested?

‘How come you don’t bring her home?’

Lockie stirred his cup of tea, trying to figure it out himself. Just then, the Sarge came in, all uniformed and spruced up for the afternoon shift.

‘This the girlfriend we’re all looking so serious about? Is that the “her” I hear?’

‘Not now, love.’

‘What’s her name again?’

‘Streeton,’ Mrs Leonard said, ‘Vicki Streeton.’

Lockie winced. The old girl never missed a trick. She’d only ever heard the name once.

‘Not the car people.’

Lockie nodded. ‘Yes, Sarge, the car people.’

‘Just between you, me and the magistrate, he’s a flamin’ crook. She a nice girl?’

Lockie squirmed. ‘Yeah.’

‘I was trying to get him to bring her round one day,’ said Mrs Leonard.

The Sarge laughed.

‘Mum,’ said Lockie, ‘it’s not like we’re gettin’ married or anything!’

‘No,’ said the Sarge, still cacking himself. ‘You’ll have to wait till you’re fourteen before you can marry. House rules.’

Lockie managed a smile. Parents are excruciating, he thought, and good parents worst of all.

‘He’s probably embarrassed,’ said the Sarge.

‘Well, she’s probably used to better,’ said Mrs Leonard, trying to be understanding.

‘Better than Lockie? No fear.’

‘Don’t be facetious, dear.’

‘You mean the house, then? Nah, Lockie wouldn’t crack onto a snob. No, what he’s embarrassed about is us.’

‘Oh, leave off, will you!’ Lockie smacked out through the back door and into the rain.

•

After a while there were more door-slamming episodes at the Leonard house. Lockie went all prickly and couldn’t take a joke. The more the Sarge and Mum and Phillip tried to laugh him out of it, the snakier he got. To Phillip he started sounding more like the President and the school councillor and the bigknobs than like the old brother he used to have, the one who didn’t take himself so seriously, the one who mucked around and listened to what you had to say. Nowadays he talked like he was used to having people hang on every word, as if now he was a VIP.

‘Mum?’ Phillip asked one night. ‘What’s wrong with Lockie?’

‘What d’you mean, what’s wrong?’

‘He’s like somebody else.’

‘He’s growing and changing. It’s the time of his life for changes.’

‘It sucks.’

‘Drink your banana juice.’ ‘He doesn’t care about us anymore. All he does is look in the mirror. Anyway, he’s getting zits.’

‘What zits?’ Lockie said, coming in.

There was an awkward, squirmy silence.

‘Yer always lookin’ at yerself in the mirror, Lockie. All you see is you. You’re really impressed with yerself all of a sudden.’

‘That’s big talk from a small worm.’

‘Lockie,’ Mrs Leonard said.

‘Mum, I don’t have to put up with that.’

‘See.’

‘Lockie, why shouldn’t you have to put up with that? He is your brother. If it’s not true you can tell him so yourself. Everybody gets a say in this house. Or have you forgotten how things are in this house?’

Lockie groaned. ‘Oh, Mum – not you too.’

‘I’ve always taught you to believe in yourself, right?’

Lockie closed his eyes. ‘Right, right.’

‘Well, there’s a difference between believing in yourself and having tickets on yourself.’

‘Ah, geez, what is this?’ Lockie said, heading for the door.

‘Lockie!’

He stopped. ‘What?’

‘We still trust you, you know.’

He kicked his way out through the door. Happy holidays ahead.

ockie burst out of bed. Aaargh! He was late! Skiing. Today he and Vick were going water-skiing up the river. He looked at his watch. Hell, they’d be leaving without him in a minute. With a single movement, Lockie swept back the blankets and jackknifed into his own clothes. Phillip was gathering up his own stuff, wet as usual, his bottom lip quivering. Lockie said nothing, charged into the bathroom. Quick squirt of Colgate straight into the mouth . . . squish-squish . . . hark it back into the basin . . . off we go. Phillip calling: ‘Lockie! Lockie!’

•

He was sprinting flat-rap up the main road when he saw the big Landcruiser and powerboat pass. The wind of it rushed in his face and he stopped dead. That was them, the Streetons. The rotten sods! Then he saw the brakelights go on. They were pulling over. Lockie turned around and ran towards them. A door was opening. A figure got out and waved. Vicki. It was her and mm-mm, she looked awesome.

•

It was a long drive to the ski spot, past paddocks full of splotchy cows, big stands of timber and thick bush. The sky was grey and so was the inside of the Streeton Landcruiser. It was so grey with cigarette smoke in there that Lockie could hardly see the half-bald head of Mr Streeton in front of him. Definitely not breathing territory. As they drove, with Vicki’s oldies bitching at each other and the cows going past, Lockie felt her hand on his leg. It was a comfortable feeling. They knew each other, all about each other. She liked Sting and Whoopee Goldberg. Cherry Ripes. ‘Dr Who’. Tom Selleck. Hot chips swimming in vinegar. She barracked for the West Coast Eagles. She liked hands on her bum. And flowers. Hand-painted Reeboks. Yahoo Serious (that wally). She liked to be a leader. In a school full of Kylie Moles and Kylie Minogues (barf!), she was real class.

They didn’t say much, bouncing along in the big 4WD. Funny, he thought, we don’t talk as much anymore. Maybe it comes from being close. Maybe we don’t need to. Especially when you compare us to those two going at it up the front.

‘Look, will you just leave off, woman!’

‘Yairs, everyone leaves off on old Swifty Streeton!’

‘Don’t call me that, dammit!’

•

Vicki streaked out in a long, sweeping fan of water and came bouncing across the wake of the outboard. The wind blew her hair back; she hadn’t even got it wet. She glistened in her wetsuit and leaned back on her single ski. She was good, alright.

As the boat swung round at the big, shady bend of the river, Vicki cut out wide and let go the rope to whoosh into shore where the others were fixing boats and skis and picnicking on the grass in the sun.

‘She’s good!’ Lockie yelled to Mr Streeton next to him in the boat.

Mr Streeton twitched his fag round his mouth. ‘She’s my daughter.’

Lockie smiled blankly. End of conversation. They swerved back across their own wake and headed in for lunch.

There were plenty of people all along the river-bank at lunch, and they all seemed to know each other. The kids didn’t look familiar – Lockie figured they went to posh private schools. Their parents talked like Mr Streeton, about money and business and the way to get things done. They talked about cash-flow the way Lockie might talk about waves. There was something about the whole picnic that gave him the creeps.

Mrs Streeton kept offering him food, but she never actually spoke to him. She was scrubbed up to look young, but she was kind of scraggy and worn-out, with hard, thin, smoker’s lips. He could tell she was smart, smarter than any woman here, but she was mean with it, as though being clever had made her bitter somehow. The men all stood together holding their sausages and talking with their mouths full. The kids seemed. . . something. Shallow, maybe. They were confident, real confident, and hard. Some of them looked him over, especially the girls, but they didn’t say much.

‘What’s the matter, Lock?’ Vicki whispered. ‘Cat got your tongue?’

‘Yeah. A whole batch of ‘em.’

She gave him a queer look. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’

•

High above the river on a ridge thick with trees, Lockie and Vicki sat on a sunny patch of ground. She still had her wetsuit on, and she looked sleek as a seal in it. The ground smelled of eucalyptus. Birds called to each other like old ladies on talkback radio.

‘You’re the strangest guy I ever met,’ Vicki said, smiling.

Lockie nodded. He believed her.

‘What is it? You look like you just stepped on a dog turd.’

He sat there feeling the sun heating through the legs of his Levis.

‘C’mon, they’ll be wondering where we are, Lockie. Are you gonna tell me?’

They, he thought; they, they, they.

‘You don’t like them, do you?’

‘I hate ‘em,’ he said. ‘I hate the way they all act as if they’re about to rule the world. Not the oldies, the kids. They make me sick.’

‘Jealousy’s a curse, you know.’

‘I don’t want anything they’ve got,’ he murmured. ‘They don’t have anything, they don’t think anything, they don’t believe anything.’

‘Aren’t you a bit up yourself?’

‘Maybe.’

‘You always have to have people believing in things.’

‘Well, don’t you?’

She shrugged. ‘I can take it or leave it.’

Lockie couldn’t believe it. This was the girl he’d found with brains, who cared about things even more than he did. He’d thought about things more because of her, he felt more grown-up from having known her. Was it all some act?

‘I just wanna have a good time, Lockie. Orright?’

He reached across and touched the wetsuit over her breast. It was cold to the touch. His hand moved up the zip and drew the zip down to her belly. She had a bikini on under the suit and she shivered in the sudden cold rush of air. Inside, her skin was hot and smooth. He slipped his hand inside her top and felt her nipple harden from the cold. Maybe it wasn’t talk and love and ideas after all; maybe it was just this he wanted.

Vicki’s head was back and her eyes were closed. Her neck was white and graceful. He kissed her there and felt sad, sad like he’d never been before.

•

‘Lockie wants to try it on skis,’ Vicki said, when lunch was being packed up. ‘He says it should be a cinch for a surfer.’

Lockie froze. He hadn’t said anything of the sort not a flamin’ whisper. All these people sat round with their eyebrows up, looking him up and down. You bitch, he thought. I couldn’t ski for all the poo at Bondi.

Orright, son,’ Mr Streeton said, lighting up another fag. ‘Let’s see what you’re made of.’

They fitted him up with skis and he sat shivering by the bank in nothing but his Speedos. Mr Streeton took the boat out into the middle of the river, letting the rope run out behind. The seventy-horsepower Evinrude purred away out there. Lockie held the wooden handle and tried not to piddle himself.

‘Let’s see if the swamp rat can stay afloat,’ someone said.

‘Just keep leaning back,’ said Vicki.

‘Thanks. Mate.’

The boat roared and stood up in the water and he was off. Well, his arms were, anyway — the rest of him took a moment to catch up. It was like riding two skateboards behind a bus with your arms caught in the pram rack.

Aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Lockie burst onto the river and swung out precariously, trying all the time to keep his feet together but not too together. The boat started zigging and zagging and to his amazement, he found he could stay with it. Even go out wide and pull himself across the wake. He was absolutely hooting along. After a couple of minutes they came to the wide part of the river where he knew he’d have to make a turnaround. His knees were getting weak now, but he held on and went round swinging like a rusty gate, across chop and wake and weird afternoon reflections, until he was headed back towards the crowd. He could hear them now, those dorky, tightbum, rich kids, sitting on their mums’ and dads’ Audis and BMWs. Swamp rat, they called him. It was the house they were talking about. How did they know where he lived? Unless they were told. By Vicki. What else was she telling them? That his old man was a copper? That his brother wet the bed? That he – Lockie – had all these crummy ideas? Swamp rat. Well, they hadn’t got a laugh out of his skiing yet. Not yet. Oops. Oohh. Ooeer. Yet. Whooaaaa!

Lockie’s left leg decided somewhere along the river to go left, but the right leg had other ideas. When he hit a ridge of backwash, the rest of him settled on going down. He hit the water like a meat pie dropped from a balcony. Splat. He forgot to close his mouth. Boring along underwater, he realized, too, that he’d forgotten to let go of the rope. Lockie Leonard, human torpedo.

They were cacking themselves on the bank when he lurched ashore. He smiled. And vomited on die first person he came to.

ockie didn’t see Vicki for a few days after the skiing business. He hung around home, reading and listening to the radio, or he spent hours down the beach, sitting out in the cold water waiting for waves that just never came. He missed her; he knew it. He wanted to see her, crack a few dumb jokes, talk about things. Away from school, he didn’t have anyone else to muck around with, even though he was popular. Kids figured Lockie was always going to be with Vicki. No one actually came to see him at home. If they saw him down the beach they’d stick around, maybe go halves in a bucket of chips, but it was as if the guys knew they could never be Vicki Streeton, so they didn’t try any harder to know him.

•

In the rain, he stood out the front of the Streeton house. The dog barked. The rain fell. After a while he went.

•

He thought about her all the time. He wondered if she’d started the Geography project they were going to do together. He thought about her sharpening pencils, about her having a bath. He wondered what she was reading, what records she was listening to.

‘Geez, Lockie,’ Phillip said one night, wiping that goopy banana juice off his lip, ‘you look sadder ‘n a dog.’

Lockie didn’t even hear him.

he day the Sarge came home early, Lockie knew something had happened. All of them knew. The sound of the patrol car coming up the long drive made them suddenly alert. That’s coppers’ families for you.

Lockie went to the verandah and saw the Sarge pull up.

‘Shit!’ Oops, he covered his mouth.

The car was full of holes. Bullet holes. Lockie knew what a bullet hole looked like. One of the big blue lights was smashed. There were holes in the windscreen, in the bonnet, along the door.

‘Dad?’

Lockie belted down to the car. The Sarge sat behind the wheel. Lockie saw the hole in the seat upholstery beside his father’s head. The Sarge looked green in the face and kind of faraway in the eyes. Lockie opened the door.

‘You orright?’

The Sarge sighed. ‘Put the kettle on, will you?’

‘Yeah, sure. Want a hand?’

That’d be nice.’

‘You hurt?’

‘Nope. I just can’t stop me legs shakin’.’

Lockie helped him out of the car. It was scary, having to help him like this. ‘What happened?’

Mrs Leonard came to help.

‘Oh,’ said the Sarge. ‘A farmer, you know.’

They got him to the kitchen.

‘I could do with some brandy, I think.’

The Sarge never drank, and the only grog in the house was some cheap brandy Mrs Leonard used to stoke up the Christmas pud a bit. She poured him a slug while the kettle was coming to the boil.

‘Ugh. Now I remember why I don’t drink.’

‘What happened, love?’

‘Oh, a domestic. The wife called us. Farmer was beatin’ her up, wouldn’t let her out of the house, so I took young Snowy out to see her. He must’ve been expectin’ us. Started shootin’ as soon as we drove up. Went mad, the silly bugger. Mad. He had enough ammo to start World War Three.’

‘And?’

‘Yeah, Dad, and?’

‘Snowy got one through the big toe. We got behind the car. We were stuck orright. I started talkin’ to him. With some help we might’ve even been able to grab him. But we didn’t get time. He blew his brains out. Just a couple of minutes of hullaballoo. Just a lot of fuss, and then his brains are all over the living room. Funny, all the time I’m thinkin’ of ways not to shoot him, and he . . . well. I think I’ll go to bed. Ah, it’s a sleepy little town, this, eh, boy?’

Lockie didn’t have a lovesick moment for twelve hours after that. He went out and put his finger in the hole in the car seat next to where his dad’s head would have been. He felt cold and thankful. Life was a tiny, flickering light, sometimes. He thought about it that way all night.

n the end, Lockie went up the hill to see Vicki. He just couldn’t wait any longer.

It was a grey old day in Angelus, that morning, but Lockie felt good about it, for some reason. He’d kind of gotten used to being in a little country town. You could see it all from the top of a hill: where you lived, where your friends lived, the beach, the school, the main street, the parks. Lockie didn’t see it as so boring now. Yeah, he’d been a snob thinking the city was automatically better. After all, what would he be doing on his holidays in Perth right now? Sitting around in a shopping mall probably, watching kids shoplifting U2 records. Here at least there was some natural stuff to see: all the granite cliffs and the sea crashing against them, the old whaling station, the mountains out east, and kilometres of beaches. Hell, it was a good place to live.

The Sarge was back at work now, as though nothing had happened. He read his books and stayed cheerful enough, and Mrs Leonard looked relieved. Everything was alright. All he had to do was suss out Vicki and he could rest easy.

He went shambling up the hill, feeling pretty cosy with the world, when he saw the car parked out the front of the Streeton place. It was a black panel van, a Holden, and it was jacked up with air shockies and sitting on a set of tyres with more bulge than Dolly Parton. As he got closer, Lockie could read the stickers on the rear window.

Lockie stood there in the street out the front of Vicki’s place and took it in.

Bogans. This was definitely, undoubtedly, UNBELIEVABLY a bogan car. Bogs. Rockers. Petrolheads. Black T-shirts, ripple-sole desert boots, grimy jeans. And they obviously weren’t there to doorknock for the Mormons. Those guys had to be seventeen, eighteen. Lockie thought about it. That meant they had money, jobs maybe, or the dole. They’d be big as full-grown men. Forget it.

He headed back down the hill, but halfway down he decided to cut back towards town. There was a cold kind of anger burning in him like dry ice, and it pricked his eyes with the rotten beginnings of tears. He hated this. He hated all of it!

When he hit the main street, Lockie headed down past shops and banks to the harbour. He got to the crumbling town jetty where grass grew in cracks in the planks and birds sat watching. He looked out over the water.

That’s it, he thought; you can’t compete with blokes who are twice your size. Who’ve got money and cars. Funny thing was, he wouldn’t have thought Vicki’d be impressed by all that bogan crap, or even the thrill of hooning around in a Chevy-powered panel van. Geez, he thought, if she can lower herself to bogans, why not dive to the bottom and try bikies, or worse, skinheads. She could go out and bash Aborigines with them. Dammit, dammit, dammit. Aargh, damn!

He wandered back up to the caff across the road from the roller rink and bought himself a Coke. He sat in the window, peering out through the flyspecks at cars passing, at kids wandering by with roller skates. Geez Lockie, he thought to himself, you’re really a prize wally. You think you’re in love with this girl, you think you know everything about her, but you haven’t got a clue. You don’t know a flamin’ thing about her. And you probably don’t know a flamin’ thing about love, either. Yer a thirteen year old cretin. Fair dinkum, yer a loser.

Then he saw the Chevy-powered van cruise past, pull a squealing U-turn and slide to the kerb across the road outside the skating joint. Lockie blurted Coke all over the caff window.

‘Hey, you little knob!’ called the guy behind the counter. ‘Get outta here before I make you lick it off.’

‘Sorry! I choked!’

‘You wanna demo of choking? Come here.’

Lockie hit the fly-strips at the door like a dive-bombing mozzie. Out on the street, he watched Vicki Anne Streeton, thirteen, of View Terrace, Angelus, recent girlfriend of one Lachlan Robert Louis Stevenson Leonard (loser) get out of the jacked up black van and head for the doors of the skate rink with two straight-out-of-the-seventies bogans. One had an Iron Maiden T-shirt, and the other had on a pair of — wait for it — cowboy boots. Their Levis hung down so far you could see the tops of their bum cracks from across the street. They walked like scrap metal, and there she was, walking between them.

Go home, Lockie, his brain was saying. But his gonads had other ideas. He found himself crossing the street and forking out a buck to get in the door. It was dim inside; the place used to be a cinema, but now all the seats were ripped out and the place was full of the roar of wheels on wood. He had forgotten that bogans like skating and tenpin bowling as well as their diet of violence, so he was a bit shocked to see all the black T-shirts and beetle-crushers in there.

Feeling awkward and wheel-less, he moved around to a spot in the shadows and watched Vicki rigging up. Maybe they’re old school friends, he thought. Cousins? Friends of the family? Sunday school chums?

When they came around on their first circuit, rolling and sloughing along, Lockie saw one bloke with his hand in Vicki’s back pocket, and the way he was squeezing around in there didn’t look all that cousinly.

Something happened inside him. An electrical fault, some dippy microchip going on the blink, but whatever it was, he was over the barrier and onto the rink, right in the traffic, having his feet immediately run over and skaters coming a-gutser all round him.

‘Lockie! Lockie, you dickhead, what are you doing here?’ Vicki yelled as she ran him down and skidded across the floor with him till his head smacked into the barricade and stopped them both rather neatly.

‘I was . . . ouch . . . about to ask you the same question.’

‘I’d say mind your own business,’ she said, getting up off him. ‘Now get out of here before someone hurts you.’

He got up and grabbed her arm, and that’s when the two bogans came down on him like a five minute burst of AC/DC. Lockie felt his nose flatten and blood spurt hot onto his chin. His head hit the boards and he saw (double) up several girls’ skirts. Maybe it was one girl’s skirt. He thought she should wear jeans skating, for safety reasons.

‘Get up, wart. You wanna fight?’

Lockie knew these guys liked to fight more than anything; they liked it better than the smell of exhaust fumes in their faces. He got to his feet, but he didn’t even bother to make a fist.

‘Carn, you little surfie wanker, let’s see what yer made of.’

Lockie stood there.

‘Fight, weed.’

Lockie took one on the mouth, but didn’t fall.

‘I didn’t come here to fight,’ he said around his swelling lip.

One of them swung, but Lockie managed to duck. The bogan lost his balance and landed on his backside, right on his tailbone. Lockie heard the little ball bearings ticking in the guy’s wheels. Someone sniggered. Lockie couldn’t see Vicki anymore.

‘I heard about you, smurf,’ the one with the Iron Maiden T-shirt said, head-butting him. ‘But I don’t wanna hear anymore, right?’

Lockie took the punch in the guts and went down like a sack of discount spuds. Wheels rolled by. Hundreds of wheels.

‘Why didn’t you hit him, you idiot?’ It sounded like Vicki’s voice, but it might have been his own. He didn’t know if he was Arthur or Martha.

mm,’ the Sarge said, ‘the hunter home from the hill. Here, use this. We’ll stop off at the surgery.’

Lockie took the Sarge’s hanky and mopped his nose and lips. It felt as though bits of them were coming off every time he dabbed. His face felt like cornflakes glued to a basketball. He looked out of the window and saw they were taking the long way to the surgery round the mountain road high above the bay. There was a paperback on the dash. The Big Sleep. He’d never heard of it. Still, it was exactly what he felt like.

‘Orright, what happened, mate?’

‘I got a hiding.’

‘Did you fight?’

‘No.’

‘Then you didn’t get a hiding at all. And I’m proud of you.’

Lockie smiled and stretched a few cornflakes out of place. ‘Well, I turned the other cheek. And he smacked hell out of it.’

The Sarge laughed. ‘Well, you had two left, you know.’

‘I think he sank the boots in there, too, by the feel of it,’ Lockie murmured, feeling his backside.

‘You did good not to fight.’

‘Half of me thinks it was really dumb not to. There must be a time to fight sometime.’

The Sarge looked doubtful.

‘Dad, would you go to war?’

‘What’s this? Philosophy session? You’re in shock, mate. No, I wouldn’t go to war.’

‘But you’re a cop.’

‘So everybody keeps telling me. It’s my job to prevent or apprehend criminals.’

‘You carry a gun.’

‘I have to. It’s the law. Australians want to be Americans, it seems. Just like on TV.’

‘Would you use it? Like the other day?’

‘He did it himself.’

‘It must be right sometimes. What if you’d got to him and he’d had a gun on his wife and was about to kill her? Would you shoot him to save her?’

The Sarge smiled. ‘Smart kids. Never have ‘em.’ He ruffled Lockie’s hair. Lockie tried not to wince. His head still felt like a cooking disaster.

‘Love your enemies, and Thou shalt not kill. No. It’s never right. Maybe sometimes there’s no right choice, though. Life sometimes presents us with only two or three bad choices. Have someone die, kill someone.’

‘It stinks.’

‘Yep. But don’t worry yourself, Lock, old son. You’re thirteen years old. There’s a whole pile of stuff, but it’s a long way away.’

‘Doesn’t seem like it.’

‘Listen, you’re already worried about the Greenhouse Effect, the whales, the seals, the dolphins, uranium, nuclear war and South Africa. Don’t worry about the ethics of when to kill people until it arises. You’ll give yourself a flamin’ ulcer. The adult world isn’t that fabulous you have to hurry for it. Enjoy being a kid.’

Lockie looked at him. The Sarge always looked like he needed a shave and a long weekend. He should have been a teacher, not a cop. No, not true. He had too much going for him to be a teacher.

‘You’ve been reading my essays,’ said Lockie.

‘I gotta get an education somewhere.’

They came down the sea side of the mountain. All the islands and bays and beaches stretched out into a misty horizon. ‘I was feelin’ pretty good a couple of hours ago,’ said Lockie.

‘Well, you’ll feel pretty good in a couple more. Tell me, did this little fracas have anything to do with your love life?’

Lockie groaned.

‘Aha.’

‘Dad, just — ’

‘And would the person or persons who made your face look like a half-cooked pizza happen to drive a panel van with a foreign motor in it?’

‘Dad, there’s nothing you can do.’

‘No, no,’ the Sarge smiled. ‘Of course not.’ But he changed gears like a man who’d just had a mint idea.

•

Lockie coasted past the cop shop on his old buckle-wheeled crate of a bike the next afternoon, and saw a black panel van. It was going over the inspection pits surrounded by traffic cops. Two bogans stood by, biting their nails. He managed to stop himself waving. He had a hunch, a fabulous hunch, that he wouldn’t be seeing that bucket of bogan bolts again for a while.

Ah, police corruption!

n the first day of the new term, the news was out. Vicki and Lockie were off. Well, they weren’t exactly on, anyway. Actually no one could say for sure what they were, but there’d been a fight and Lockie’d been floored by a seventeen-year-old bog. Two of them. With boots. And iron bars, bike chains and knuckle-dusters. And ten of their mates. Lockie’d lost some blood. No, an eye, a finger, all his teeth. The gossip went on and on, and got worse. Vicki was suddenly pregnant. She was having some bogan child. She’d had a miscarriage skiing. Lockie’d OD’d on Panadol . . .

When Lockie slouched into school with his bag slung from his shoulder, it was:

‘G’day, Lockie!’

‘Hi, Lock!’

‘Oi, mate!’

Owzit, Lock?’

Other kids peered at his blue bruises and the scab on his nose, secretly marvelling at what an awesome job the plastic surgeons had done. He’s a pacifist, they told each other. A fruitcake, but you gotta respect him for it.

In Woodwork, he sanded away at his famous block of wood that he’d decided to carry on with in Second Term as well, and the other boys winked at him like he was a hero. They knew that blokes with cars were the final enemy. Soon as a girl saw a set of car keys she went weak at the knees. Those driving guys with P plates would poach all the decent women and only leave the crumbs.

He must be on pain-killers, girls said at recess. He looks too peaceful to be real. That Vicki Streeton was a real moll doing that to him, two-timing and getting him bashed up like that. It was romantic, but. Just a shame he couldn’t fight. They reckon he’s religious, but it’s just slander. She probably put that rumour out herself. And he’s free now, you know. Well, kind of. There’s gotta be a blow-up before it can be official.

•

Lockie took his seat in English and saw that Vicki’s seat stayed empty. She came in late and sat up the front in the other row. At the sight of her, Lockie’s heart jerked. Her hair was out and bouncing and he could almost smell the Alberto Balsam from where he sat. All period he stared at the back of her. He didn’t hear a thing that was said. He couldn’t have told you his name if you’d asked him.

At the end of the class he caught up with her in the corridor and touched her shoulder.

‘Meet me at lunchtime behind the library.’

She opened her mouth to speak, but he took off.

She sat down the front again in Social Studies. He watched her pleated skirt, the way her shoulders moved. He imagined the feel of her braces and teeth against his lips.

The girl next to Lockie passed a note. ARE YOU AND HER OFF?

WHO? he wrote back

THE ONE YOU’RE STEARING AT.

YOU CAN’T SPELL.

ARE YOU STILL IN LOVE WITH HER?

Lockie snatched up his pencil. ARE YOU STILL HAVING YOUR PERIOD?

She got the message. No more notes. But Lockie couldn’t get the question out of his mind. Did he love her? And what if he did? Did it help much?

•

Lockie ate his lunch in a hurry and headed for the library while his pie was still halfway down his throat. He pushed past a few gloomy-looking punkettes doing scab duty out front, and headed down the side to the car park.

She wasn’t there. Lockie kicked the wall. He’d wait five minutes. Five minutes, dammit!

It started to drizzle. He stood there shivering. One more minute.

‘You’ll get wet.’

Lockie whirled around. She’d snuck up behind him.

‘You’re late.’

‘Still lunch, isn’t it? You didn’t say a time.’

‘Let’s get out of the rain.’

In the library, up between the reference stacks, they folded their arms and looked at each other out of the corners of their eyes.

‘Well?’ she asked.

‘I just wanted to sort it out with you.’

‘What? Sort what out?’

‘Us, Vicki.’

‘I thought there wasn’t any us, that’s what I heard.’

‘Yeah, well if you went on what every turkey said, you’d be at my funeral.’

‘Your face looks awful.’

‘Thanks.’

‘I’m sorry, Lockie.’

Lockie looked along the shelves and pulled out a book spine: Great Australians. ‘Sorry about what?’

‘Everything.’

‘About me getting my head punched in, or about you dumping me?’

‘I didn’t dump you.’

‘No, you didn’t even bother. What is it with all those greaseball spanner-heads. I s’pose it’s all the ideas, the intellectual chit-chat. You don’t go for dumb machos, you told me yourself, remember? They must be greenies in black, that’s what it’ll be.’

‘Lockie!’

‘Or maybe it was the foam mattress in the back of trie Sinbin . . .’

That’s when she began to cry and the steam went out of him.

‘What do you want?’ she cried, smearing tears across her cheek.

‘You,’ he said. ‘The problem is what you want.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I’m ordinary, Vick. If you want a hoon or a headbanger, stick with the Chevy boys.’

‘They got a yellow sticker.’

‘Yeah?’ He nearly died from not smiling. Actually he’d hoped for a red sticker so they wouldn’t have even been able to drive it home, but it seemed the old Sarge wasn’t that corruptible after all.

The bell went. End of lunch. The library started to empty. Vicki blew her nose and straightened herself up. ‘Funny thing, Lock. You’re a hero all of a sudden and I’m a leper. Why didn’t you fight?’

‘Fight? Aren’t you the one against war?’

‘Why didn’t you fight?’

‘My old problem. I believe in things, I guess.’

‘And you think I just say ‘em.’

‘Well, I thought you were different. Smart, you know. I always liked that about you, you weren’t just a schoolgirl.’

‘Listen, Lockie, you get sick of being one of die smart girls, orright? I want to be lots of things. Remember what you said – the only thing more boring than a clever boy is a clever girl.’

‘That was a joke, a dumb joke.’

‘Well, it rubs off and people believe it. Clever girl with the house on the hill. Too good for everybody. Too good for the bogans and the surfers . . . and the swamp rats.’

Lockie felt those words thump him in the guts. Her parents! Was she doing all this stupid stuff to get back at her parents? Was that why she took him skiing, to show him off, to show them she was slumming around with a swamp rat? He felt vicious all of a sudden, but then he felt sorry for her. How sad could you get?

‘It’s your mum and dad, isn’t it?’

‘Brilliant, Lockie. Actually they said you were very nice.’

Lockie squinted. ‘I thought you were kind of grownup,’ he said, not meaning to let his disappointment show.

‘Clever, maybe, but not grown-up. You should know the difference. My oldies aren’t even grown-up. You can be so dumb.’

‘Yeah.’

She sighed. They were late now, and they’d cop it from Old Squasher.

‘And the bogs?’ he murmured. ‘Were they just to get up your oldies?’

‘And you.’

‘Me!’

‘You’re just as much of a snob. A surf rat’s too good for a bogan, eh? Even though you listen to bogan music. Van Halen. Heavy metal, hah!’

‘It’s not that!’

‘Anyway, you didn’t come and see me. Ever since the skiing you were in a stink. My friends weren’t good enough for you. Well, as you can see, I’ve got other friends.’

‘So you were tryin’ to make me jealous?’

‘Maybe, maybe not.’

Lockie was hurting and angry inside now, but he could have kissed her at any moment. ‘So what’s the situation?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

‘Well,’ he said, trying to sound offhand. ‘We’re thirteen years old — it can hardly matter.’ But he wasn’t convinced. He felt sure it mattered. He loved her and it didn’t make any difference that they were thirteen. It was love, and you couldn’t help but feel it was important — not unless you were a flamin’ robot.

he meeting of the Angelus Boardriders Association was a wipeout to say the least. Everyone saying fifty things at once, and the air full of paper and farts and spitballs. Copies of Surfing World, Tracks and Waves got rolled up and used as clubs. A desk got overturned and someone took Nat Young’s name in vain. Naturally, it started with a discussion about the club Secretary, Vicki Streeton.

‘I move we strip her of her rank!’

‘That’s not all you’d like to strip, Wacker!’

‘“What for?’ shouted Lockie, trying to keep the riot down.

‘You know what for, ya silly suck! For hangin’ around with bogs! Fraternizin’ with the enemy. And betrayin’ the club President.’

‘Yeah, she’s not fit for this crew!’

‘Besides, she doesn’t even surf. It’s a joke, anyway. She’s only in because of Leonard.’

Lockie stood up. ‘You voted for her.’

‘Arr, get out. Surfers only.’

‘Well, how many of you can surf, eh?’ There were howls of outrage. ‘I mean well enough to be in a club? Come on — who out of you farm boys and towel tuggers has got anythin’ to brag about? Come on, hot-shots!’

‘Maybe we need a new President as well!’

‘That’s a fact,’ said Lockie, sitting down.

‘She’s out of order!’

‘She can see anyone she wants. Geez, the dogs you guys hang out with, you’d think we were the German Shepherd Club.’

‘You prick! Sack him!’

‘Too late, scumbags, I resign! Take yer Coolites and yer rubber duckies and get stuffed!’

Hero for a day, he thought, as they turfed him into the corridor. Funny how you don’t know what you believe in till it jumps up and bites you. Politics!

•

Kids poured out at the last siren like rats off a sinking ship. Lockie walked into the drizzle with his bag on his shoulder, thinking about how quick things changed.

‘I heard.’

Lockie looked up. Vicki sat on the wall where those dorky animal hedges finished.

‘Oh?’

‘Looks like we’re both lepers now.’

Lockie smiled. ‘Yeah, I reckon so.’

‘Thanks, anyway.’

‘For what?’ he asked.

‘For stickin’ up for me.’

‘Oh, you know me. Always doin’ the dumbest thing possible. I can’t help meself.’ Strange, but even after sticking up for her she was the last person he wanted to see. Hell, he’d liked being President. Lockie Leonard, hot-shot.

‘Where you going? Hey — ’

Lockie called over his shoulder. ‘I’m late for “Roger Ramjet”.’ It was the best line he could think of, but it wasn’t much.

‘I love you, Lockie!’

Lockie stared at her. He believed her. Geez, it took guts to say a thing like that in public. But his heart was still hard with hurt.

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘So does Bob Hawke.’

Striding off into the rain, Lockie had to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other so he didn’t just fall over and explode in a million pieces. When he got to the road he gave in and turned around. She was still there, and she came running like a ballerina on a racecourse.

‘And you love me,’ she blurted, smacking into his chest.

‘Yes.’

‘You do.’

‘Yeah.’

‘You do.’

‘But — ’

‘But what?’

‘I’m all screwed up, Vick. I need some time to think.’

‘You love me, Lockie Leonard.’

ockie sat on his own at school for a week. After school, he walked along the beach, looking out over the dead-flat bay. Sometimes there was a school of dolphins out there chasing bait-fish, but mostly there was just rain and a pretty obvious lack of swell. Usually he went home to lie on his bed and listen to Van Halen or Stevie Ray Vaughan instead of doing his homework. Almost every day his mum would come in with a soggy envelope and say: ‘There’s another note for you, love. Found it under the door.’ And at dinner, he’d slip it unopened into the woodstove. Phillip would sip his banana juice and shrug. Blob would goo and gaa and sick up sympathetically. A pretty cheery scene.

‘You’re still not signed up for the school camp, love,’ Mrs Leonard said, at the end of the week.

‘I’m not going, Mum. Save your money.’

‘Come on, mate,’ the Sarge said hacking away at a piece of steak. ‘You’ve pulled out of Youth Group and the Boardriders, you can’t file for divorce against the whole of Year 8.’

‘Know a good lawyer?’

The Sarge laughed. ‘Can’t say I’ve ever met a good one. Come on, don’t be a dope. Sign up. It’s at Ocean Beach, isn’t it. They’ll probably let you take your board. Best surf for miles. Kilometres. You’d be mad not to.’

There was a knock at the back door. The Sarge sighed.

‘That’ll be one of my least brain-dead constables come to ask how to spell “Breaking and Entering”. Hop up and see, will you, Lock.’

Lockie went out to the back door and hauled it open. Outside in the rain stood Vicki Streeton.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Standing in the rain waiting to be asked in.’

‘Well . . . come in then.’

She came inside and stood dripping on the purple lino. Lockie could hear the frogs belting out their favourite rap numbers. He closed the door.

‘You better come in by the fire,’ Lockie said. Inside he was going Aaaaarrrgh! ‘Everyone, this is Vicki. Vicki, this is everyone.’ Aaarrrghh!

‘Hello.’

‘Hi.’

‘Hello, Vicki.’

‘You’re the one he loves,’ said Phillip, matter-of-factly.

‘Phillip!’ Lockie groaned. Aaaaaarrrrgh!

‘You’re all wet, love,’ Mrs Leonard said. ‘Stand by the stove. Lockie, get Vicki a towel from the linen press.’

‘You like a cuppa?’ the Sarge said. O r Phillip’U fix you a Milo.’

‘No thanks, I’m fine. I just came by for a word with Lachlan Robert Louis Stevenson Leonard.’

Phillip cracked up.

‘You must know him pretty well, then, if you know his whole name,’ said Mrs Leonard. ‘He doesn’t exactly spread that around.’

‘It’s a perfectly decent name,’ said the Sarge.

‘It’s exotic, that’s for sure,’ said Vicki.

‘You read books, Vicki?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Don’t call me sir,’ he grinned. ‘Call me Sarge.’

‘Yes, Sarge.’

‘I read Treasure Island and Kidnapped when I was ten years old, down on the farm. It changed me life. Once you’ve read a book, you’ve experienced it, you’ve lived it, and no one can take that experience away from you. It’s the bee’s flamin’ knees as far as I’m concerned.’

‘Don’t mind him,’ Lockie said, coming back with a towel. ‘We lock him up at night to keep the town safe.’

Vicki took the towel. ‘You’re just like him, Lockie.’

She said it right there in public. He was so embarrassed he expected internal bleeding.

‘That’s true enough,’ said Mrs Leonard.

‘I just came to see if Lockie’d be at the camp next week.’

‘He’ll be there,’ said the Sarge. ‘You try and keep him away. Right, son?’

Lockie opened his mouth, but all that would come out was a feeble little ‘Aaah’.

hree to a seat! Down the back of the bus! Pull your head in, Watson. Whose blasted guinea pig is that?’

Lockie stowed his board and bag at the back of the bus and flopped gloomily onto a seat. Kids who’d sucked up to him last term sat all around him, but not on his seat. He looked out the window. His oldies waved, and he tried to crank up a smile for them but it came out looking like the zip on a fat boy’s jeans. Someone sat next to him. The whole crowd went ‘Whooaaaaa!’ and he turned and saw that it was her.

‘We’ve made an impression,’ she said.

‘Not hard to impress this lot of defectives.’

She put her hand on his leg. The bus ground forward. They were off.

‘Glad you could make it.’

For some reason he wanted to say something really cutting, but all he could do was smile.

•

Everyone cheered when the bus rolled down the last long hill to Ocean Beach. There was a river estuary and a broad sandbar, and behind the bar you could see the spray of surf. At the campsite there were about twenty timber chalets, a dining hall, and ablution blocks, all beneath peppermint trees with grass all around. A week of this. Even Lockie softened at the thought.

He purposely bunked in one of the boys’ chalets where there were no surfers – only science boffins, the sort of kids with calculators and soldering irons. They sat around nutting out problems and rigging up circuits. They hated girls and music, so he figured he was safe enough. This’ll be alright, Lockie thought. And it was. The whole camp was alright.

It was a pretty slack time. They made kites, went on nature walks, learned photography and about weather; they played games and saw videos. John East was running the camp, and Lockie was impressed. He didn’t run it like a teacher, more like an ordinary human being. Like for fun.

Lockie kept pretty clear of Vicki, best he could. He could sense her hurt and he knew it was cruel, but when he came down to it he was scared. He’d been hurt himself – these last weeks were murder – and something in him told him not to get hurt again. He really didn’t know how to figure it out.

But on the second last night, after that Watson kid poled himself on the flying fox and that Brinkley kid set fire to his jockettes doing blue flames, Lockie went for a walk and got himself ambushed.

‘Hey, spunk,’ a voice hissed from the bushes. ‘Wanna bite of me Cherry Ripe?’

‘Vicki?’

‘Scared you.’

‘Give us a bit, then.’

‘I’ve got a dry pozzie. Over here.’

Lockie picked his way through ferns and bracken. Suddenly he was on his back with the stars above him and she was laughing.

‘You tripped me.’

‘Poor Lockie,’ she giggled.

He felt her against him. Her hip against his ear. He didn’t move away.

‘When you gonna stop going round like I’m invisible?’ Lockie sighed.

‘This is my punishment, I s’pose, is it?’ she said.

‘No. Maybe. I dunno, Vick.’

‘It’s off, then?’

‘Give us a bite.’

Vicki picked up his hand and sank her teeth into the heel of his palm.

‘Ouch! Smart arse.’

‘It’s off, then?’

‘I thought you’d called it off ages ago,’ he said. ‘That’s the message I got.’

‘That’s bulldust, Lockie Leonard. You know different to that. I told you what I thought. Seven letters. You didn’t read one of ‘em did you? Did you?’

‘No.’

‘You rotten mongrel.’

She started to cry. He felt her body shaking.

‘I’m sorry, Vick.’

‘You hate me, don’t you.’

‘No.’

‘Liar.’

He put his arm around her waist. Her big, sloppy sweater was damp with dew. She’d been out here waiting for ages.

‘Leave me alone.’

‘Give us a bite.’

She sniffed. ‘I haven’t got a Cherry Ripe, dumbo.’

‘False promises,’ he said.

He felt her roll across his arm and then on top of him. She bent down and he felt her teeth in his neck. It hurt, but he didn’t mind it. He pulled her mouth to his and felt her hot, wet face against his. She ran her tongue across his lip, she kissed his eyes, and her hair fell across him. Lockie could smell the sweet vanilla of her, the ground, the dew, the bracken. Her hands were smooth and cold beneath his windcheater. She pushed it up and pulled up her own sweater and their skins met, hot and moving, her breast to his, and Lockie nearly crying himself. She kissed his chest and his neck and he felt her nipples on his belly, her tongue snaking across his skin, and something broke in him. It was too much. He liked her, loved her, but this . . . it seemed too rushed. It was great, but she was talking about love, they both were, but this wasn’t love and somehow it seemed important to him, the difference.

‘Vicki?’

‘Hmmm?’

‘Come here.’

She slid up to his shoulder.

‘You don’t need to do this.’

‘I want to.’

‘Tell me something smart. Impress me with your mega-superior girl’s brain.’

She licked his neck. ‘You’re scared.’

Lockie’s heart beat faster. ‘What of?’

She slid her hand into his jeans to give him an answer.

‘Of that?’ He wanted to lie his face off right now, to sound like Tom Selleck instead of Lockie Leonard. It was too much, being yourself, sometimes. ‘Of sex?’

‘It’s love, Lockie. You’re scared of love.’

He took a big breath. Go on, say it. ‘Sex. Yeah, I’m scared of sex, orright. But you’re the one who’s scared of love, Vick. I don’t know anything about sex and you don’t know anything about love.’

She pulled right back from him. ‘You sayin’ I’m a slut, then?’

‘No, don’t be an egg.’

‘You think I’m slack, don’t you?’

‘I hate that word.’

‘If you were a girl they’d call you frigid.’

He laughed. ‘Probably.’

‘It’s easier for boys.’

‘You think so?’ He wondered.

‘It’s your religion, isn’t it, that stops you.’

‘No, not really. Well, believin’ those things helps me believe in love.’

‘But this is natural.’

‘Not for me. Not if it doesn’t feel natural for me right now. Geez, Vicki, six months ago I was in primary school. I’m a kid. I’m not in a hurry for all this stuff. We’re not grown-up, you said it yourself. Geez, I look at seventeen year olds, twenty-five year olds and they don’t look so blissed that I suddenly want to be like them. I care about you, Vick, you’re me best friend, but you probably won’t even remember my name when you’re seventeen. You don’t know what you want.’

‘You talk like a fifty year old already. I don’t know what you’re worried about.’

‘I love you, Vick. But I’m too straight for you, or something. It’s like the word “love” means something different to us. I like you. I care about you.’

‘I want you.’

Lockie kissed her eyes. ‘Me? This is old Lockie, dumb Lockie, straight Lockie, remember? Nice Lockie who does everything slower than a wet week.’

‘I hate being thirteen,’ she said.

‘See? I’m weird,’ he murmured. ‘I love it.’

•

In the morning on the last day of camp, Lockie woke feeling happy for some dippy reason he couldn’t figure. He could hear the swell pounding down at the bar like he’d never heard it before. It throbbed and pulsed like a headache. He slid out of his bunk and pulled on shorts and wetsuit. No one else was up. That surf was hammering, pumping down there. He couldn’t believe no one else could hear it.

He grabbed his board and snuck out of camp.

Down at the point, great grinding right-handers were twisting around into the bay, throwing out fat, heavy barrels that hissed and gurgled like nothing he’d ever seen before in his life. It was huge. Absolutely insane. He let out a crazy mad-dog howl and a mob of seagulls took off for a safer place.

‘I’m nuts,’ he told himself, climbing across the rocks down to the water’s edge. ‘I am a flamin’ fruitcake!’

He leapt out off a rock and hit the surging water with his arms already paddling. The rip along the point took him quickly and the granite boulders slid past like he was in a speedboat. He headed for the breakzone and saw the lumbering walls peaking around the corner. He waited till he was almost past before he paddled furiously to cross the rip and come out at the surging area with its trails of suds from previous waves.

Lockie sat up on his board and steadied himself. This is serious, he thought. This is as serious as it gets. There was no one else out. He figured the swell was just a hair’s breadth away from being out of control. Maybe that’s how he was himself. All it needed was a sneaking close-out set and he mightn’t make it to the beach in one piece.

A set came rumbling through and Lockie paddled over each wave, just making it through. They fell behind him like demolished buildings and their spray stung the back of his neck. He watched them breaking across the bay, five hundred metres to the sandbar at the mouth of the estuary. He’d never seen anything like it before in his life.

Another set came, and then another, and he passed on both. You’re gutless, he told himself; you can’t do it.

And then came this great green thing hissing out of nowhere and Lockie knew he’d either ride it or drink it, so he turned and went for it and felt it power him out forward as though he’d been shot from a cannon. He went screaming down the face. Aaaaaaarrrgh! With his bouncing, vibrating, bottom turn, he thought his board would snap, or maybe his legs, but he held to it until he was fading to the shoulder again . . . up . . . up . . . until he was aiming down the long, long curving wall of the wave. He crouched to save his knees breaking and the whole world went green as the inside of a cave. He was swallowed up. Not a cave, a sea monster. All ribbed and snaky, cold and deadly with its trapped breath on the back of his neck. He held on and it kept curling across in front of him and above him until he thought it was getting to be a dream. And then he shot out the end into the light and let out another hoot before working the rest of the diminishing wave all the way into the beach. He fell to his knees on the sand and yelled:’Thank yoooooooou!’

No one had seen it, not a soul, and he couldn’t care less.

•

All day, Lockie tried to get Vicki alone, but there always seemed to be something stopping them. A crowd of girls, the lunch bell, a look she gave him, some-damn-thing.

The big sensation of the last night was the girls short-sheeting the teachers’ beds. It was Vicki who organized it. Word was that there was some dope around and then they discovered Vicki Streeton had been handing out little plastic bags of parsley and lawn clippings mixed with Drum. Kids were impressed.

On the way back to Angelus, Lockie sat up the front of the bus and Vicki up the back where the fame always is. Lockie felt kind of numb and tired. He dozed off alone, and only woke up when Jenny Friendly’s guinea pig made a leap to freedom through the window. The bus stopped. Everyone but Lockie got off to look for the escapee. Good on you, mate, thought Lockie; go like hell and don’t look back. He felt peaceful in a weird kind of way, as though someone had moved a tonne of bricks off his back.

he night be got back from the school camp at Ocean Beach, Lockie found himself some change and stepped out for a while. It was dark and raining, and as he walked out along the stony, puddled driveway, the frogs croaked and groaned in the swamp all around him. You could see the phone box lit up at the end of the street and it took forever to get up there. It was cold inside the booth, and it stank of stale cigarette smoke and damp phone books. There was graffiti on the walls: I LOVE YAHOO – KAREN IS A MOLL – SAVE THE OZONE LAYER, FART NO MORE.

Streeton . . . Streeton . . . Streeton. He found the number and dialled. His heart started sounding like the music from Jaws. If I get one of the oldies I’ll hang up. It rang, it rang, it. ..

‘Hello. Streetons’.’ It was her. He sighed with relief.

‘Give over with the heavy breathing, pervert.’

‘Vick, it’s me.’

‘Oh, Lockie.’

‘Sorry to give you the wrong impression.’

Awkward silence.

‘Listen, Vick, I. . . ‘

‘Yeah?’

‘I just wanted . . . to say hello.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘I’m glad they didn’t find the guinea pig.’

‘Yeah, that’d be right.’

‘I’ve been thinking about the pollution in the harbour, you know the mercury John East was talking about. I thought maybe you and me could start a group, you know, get a petition going, heavy the fat cats in this town, you know, the business people . . . um . . .’

‘Forget it, Lockie.’

‘Forget what? The mercury?’

‘Us. Forget it. It’s over.’

‘Over? People are never over, Vick. We don’t have to be romantic or anything, but we still like each — ’

‘Lockie, watch my lips.’

‘Must have a bad line. I can’t quite make ‘em out. Ah, there we are. Great lips. Now there’s memories.’

‘I am finished with you. No friends crap, orright? Don’t come round anymore, don’t speak to me, don’t even smile at me in the quadrangle.’

‘Am I allowed to remember your name?’

‘No, don’t even think about me.’

He felt all shaky and busted. ‘Fair enough. I accept the mission.’

He heard her sob.

‘We’ll laugh about this when we’re old,’ he said.

‘Oh Lockie.’

‘Maybe next year?’

He listened. She didn’t hang up. She was crying. She loves me, he thought, but it won’t work.

‘This phone booth will self-destruct in five seconds. Let’s hope I score the loose change. I love you.’

He hung up and burst outside into the rain and sprinted up against the wind until he felt like losing his lunch right there in the street. Under the solitary streetlight the rain looked like confetti falling. He tried to laugh, but it came out as tears, and he cried till he thought he’d die from it. He’d never get over this. Never. His life was over. It had to be.

or a long time Lockie felt like a fire-gutted warehouse – everything inside him seemed scorched. Weeks went by, months, and he hardly knew himself. The Sarge and Mrs Leonard gave him hugs and didn’t say anything stupid and he nearly died from gratitude. His marks went up and down at school and even the weather was patchy. There was a hint of summer in the air when he felt himself coming good, one night late last term. Until then Lockie had thought that nothing good could ever happen in this world. But things changed. That night in bed, Phillip was talking, and for once Lockie found himself listening.

‘This doctor says no more dumb diets, no more banana juice, no alarm blanket, nothing. He says we shouldn’t even bother to talk about it, like it’s not even important enough to talk about, can you believe that?’

‘So what’s he do for you. What’s Mum and Dad payin’ him for?’

Phillip paused for a moment, as if he couldn’t actually believe that his brother was listening. ‘We got this chart, see, one for the week. Seven empty squares on it. I ride down every afternoon after school on me own and draw a picture.’

‘Oh, that sounds useful.’

‘Hey don’t rubbish what you don’t know.’

‘Orright, keep yer hair on. I just can’t see how drawin’ pictures will help.’

‘If I don’t piddle, I draw a sun. If I do piddle, I draw a cloud with rain coming out. Get it?’

‘No.’

‘Lockie! The other doctors always talk about it. Talk, talk, talk! It makes it bigger, the problem gets bigger and I worry more. This does it, that does it — it makes me frightened and I wet more and more. This way it doesn’t matter. He says we pretend it’s not even a problem. It’s just the weather, rain or shine. Just a picture.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Well, I pray, still.’

‘Did the quack recommend that?’

‘He says why not. It’s good as any think he’s got.’

Lockie laughed. ‘Sounds fair enough. Least he’s honest. Sure he’s a doctor?’

‘Lockie.’

‘How many suns this week, by the way?’

Phillip paused. ‘Two.’

‘How many days gone?’

‘Three.’

‘What are you aiming at?’

Philip took a deep breath. ‘Seven. Seven right in a row. I like the sun, that’s all.’

‘Good luck, mate,’ Lockie said, feeling hopeful all of a sudden.

‘I don’t need luck.’

•

It was a Tuesday afternoon in the last week of school when Lockie burst back into his own skin at last. Lockie Leonard rode out into the cold, grey wind with his little brother, ducking and weaving along the footpaths downtown towards the surgery. The two hills above Angelus were all shrouded in cloud and a terrible pong was coming off the harbour – like five million pairs of unwashed undies. Lockie’s old crate with its buckled wheel lurched along behind Phillip’s muddy BMX. They dodged cranky pedestrians all the way down the main street, past the hoons at the post office and the town hall, past kids from their own schools who hardly had time to see them whip by, past the cop shop and past the skate rink where Vicki Streeton and a couple of ripple-soled dudes stood rolling fags.

Lockie shouted: ‘Look out. Medical emergency, bogs away!’

‘Hey it’s the Human Torpedo,’ said Vicki with just the hint of a smile coming to her awesome lips as he ripped past.

Lockie grinned but didn’t call back. He just watched Phillip’s knobby back wheel and kept with him as they hit the corner at the harbour and leaned out, fearless as fruitcakes. They came skidding broadside to a stop and went through the surgery door like a pair of terrorists. The receptionist shrieked as Phillip leapt the counter with a yellow crayon in his hand.

‘There’s no drugs kept here!’ she whimpered.

Lockie got the giggles. People reading New Idea and Better Homes and Gardens in the waiting room looked at him like he was mental. The doctor came out and Phillip started on the chart pinned to the wall behind the desk.

‘What’s up?’ said the quack.

‘The sun, I think,’ said Lockie.

Phillip was drawing a sun that spilled over onto other charts, drug lists, posters, onto the wall itself like an explosion, growing, growing until he suddenly got tired and dropped the crayon.

He jumped the counter again. ‘Let’s blow this joint, Lock.’

‘I’d say it’s well and truly blown,’ said the quack looking around at all the alarmed sickies.

They went back to their bikes, sweating and breathless and cacking themselves laughing.

‘What do you reckon, Lock?’

‘Well, Phillip, I’d say life has its mysteries.’

‘Let’s lose some rubber.’

They took off, hanging wheelies all the way down the street, through the pong of the harbour, the main street, the coming rain, the whole day.

Lockie’s survived his first year of high school, settling into a new town and his first mad love affair – it’s all behind him; he made it!

But the world of weirdness hasn’t finished with him yet. His little brother’s hormones have kicked in, his baby sister refuses to walk or talk – but eats anything in sight – his Dad arrests a sheep and his Mum seems to have checked out of the here and now.

As Lockie’s world turns upside down, he learns that life is never as simple as it seems and along the way finds out a lot more about himself than he ever realised was there.

Nothing’s easy for Lockie Leonard. Dumped by his girlfriend, he’s back to being the loneliest kid in town and life looks bleak. That is until he meets Egg – who might be the weirdest human being he’s ever met.

On top of all that, Lockie decides to save the planet; at least the bit of it he lives on. Then he falls in love again, which would be OK except she’s younger and surfs better. Can a thirteen-year-old surfrat have a headbanger for a best mate? Will he save the town from vile pollution? Will his love outlast the school term?

Another gnarly situation for Lockie Leonard, Scumbuster!

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First published by McPhee Gribble 1990

First published by Penguin Books Australia, 1993

This edition published 2003

Copyright © Tim Winton 1990

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ISBN 978-1-74348-120-2

Lines from ‘Love Is The Seventh Wave’ by Sting used by kind permission of Warner Chappell Music

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