Oh, and Ben did want this bat. He was already sliding it into his kit bag, under his ratty old pads. ‘I’ll look after it for you till we give it back to Joel.’

‘Okay, just look after it for me then,’ Zane said, knowing from habit that the first stage in getting Ben to agree to a theft was to make him think it was a loan. ‘If anyone asks questions, you’re hanging on to it for me.’

‘For Joel.’

‘Joel doesn’t have a Puma,’ Zane reminded him. ‘He’s got a Gray-Nic.’

They walked along Trevally Street towards Bluebird Beach, Zane heading for the bus stop that would take him to his housing commission block two suburbs away.

‘I don’t know why you play,’ Zane said. ‘They’re such cock-heads. With Coach Stoyle sucking on their dicks.’

Ben blushed. He didn’t know if this kind of talk was homophobic abuse; it was more that Zane’s insinuations that the tough boys in the cricket clique and their coach were a gay circle-jerk crew supplied Ben with fantasy material that he couldn’t quite un-imagine. He couldn’t help hoping, which became suspecting, that Zane, with his ability to see through social facades, was not issuing an empty insult but revealing a secret.

‘How’s it going between you and Daniel anyway?’ Zane asked in a gentler tone. Regrettably, Ben had told Zane that he was pretty sure Daniel was bi-curious. There were too many of the familiar signs of struggle. For Daniel, who lived in that busy heterosexual intersection of cricket, footy, surf club and his dad a big wheel on the council, the journey towards honesty was going to be rocky. Ben wanted to help him. He had tried to start the conversation with Daniel in the surf, where it seemed possible to talk as equals, but Daniel splashed water in his face and paddled away, muttering about fucken faggots and their kinky parents.

‘I only wanted to help,’ Ben said.

Every day started with the intention of wanting to help someone, and ended not the way he hoped.

‘Course he’s gunna heap shit on you,’ Zane said. ‘He’s dangerous, man, he’ll do you damage.’

Ben knew about damage. Once Mr Stoyle had brought it to the principal’s attention that Ben was being bullied because he had ‘something wrong with him’, the school’s pastoral response was to stage ‘healing conferences’ between perpetrators and victim, ‘truth sessions’ where everyone had to ‘own’ their actions. Ben discovered that the only person who ended up owning anything was the victim, who came out of the meetings with one hundred percent ownership of his pain. Dad had confronted Mr Stoyle about the bullying. ‘Oh, they eventually get the message and leave,’ Mr Stoyle said. Dad had walked away satisfied, until he realised that Mr Stoyle meant the victims.