LAURENCE: Dry macaroni?

TAMARA: Dribble on it.

He takes his plate away to the front room—door ajar but he’s gone, that’s it—there’s a canyon between us now and for the first time ever I’m glad.

That’s Laurence.

SQUID: He sick?

TAMARA: In the fucking head. Sorry. About/

SQUID: No I mean/

TAMARA: Sick. Na.

SQUID: He looks/

TAMARA: What?

SQUID: Nothing.

TAMARA: He’s a fucking freak. Hides out in his room like a spider.

SQUID: What’s he do in there?

TAMARA: Watches sci-fi shit, I dunno.

Him and Mum hate each other—reckons it’s a big joke she works for Virgin, not that she gets to fly in the planes—not pretty enough. She’s not.

Both spend their lives on their arses watching things fly.

You stare at the thing with strings and nails hanging on the wall.

SQUID: What’s that thing do?

TAMARA: Do? Nothing. Just some ugly shit Dad made at school. He put it up when Mum left.

He went to our school, you know—way before laptops and the internet—probably the same teachers.

Reckons AC/DC came to play.

SQUID: No.

TAMARA: Yeah.

SQUID: Why?

TAMARA: Felt sorry for them. Na, they won some competition. AC/DC played three songs—teachers must have hated every second of it—bet they kept the bad kids out.

SQUID: They always do.

Anything else to eat?

TAMARA: Na. What you want to do?

SQUID: What’s your dad got to drink?

TAMARA: Drink? Dad doesn’t drink anything. Not even water.

There might be something in the cupboard from… Mum used to drink Malibu.

SQUID: Nothing here.

TAMARA: No.

SQUID: Get something—shop’s still open.

What do you want?

TAMARA: Don’t have cash.

He holds up fifty dollars.

SQUID: Got this. We can have whatever we want.

PETCHALL: We used to have discos, when deejays played records and kids actually danced. Girls with lipstick and blush—first kiss at the disco—slicked-back boys with nasty cologne who’d look away and say You wanna dance, Miss?

TAMARA: Creep past Laurence watching his alien shit I’m walking Jasyn home past Jerry next door staring off at the gutter like it’s some ocean view—wish we had somewhere good to go.

PETCHALL: Deaf girl. Jane Spitteri. Came to all the discos. Said even though she couldn’t hear the music she loved the beat. That song—the only way is up for you baby. The way she danced to that song. I’ll never forget it.

TAMARA: You swipe it from Subway?

SQUID: Didn’t swipe it.

TAMARA: They got cameras, you know.

Where’d you get it?

SQUID: What’s it matter?

TAMARA: Just want to know.

PETCHALL: ‘Living on a Prayer’, ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’, ‘Let’s Go Crazy’…

TAMARA: Tell me, Jasyn.

SQUID: Don’t want to.

PETCHALL: I want to dance, I want to feel the heat.