TAMARA: Last time Mum and me went shopping she bought me these boots with tassels. Loved them. I wouldn’t be seen dead anywhere with her now but I wish I still had the boots. Wonder where they are.

DEZZIE: Tassels are for sluts.

Pause.

He looked suicidal.

Wonder if she’s strict at home? I had her in Year Nine. She was a full-on bitch. Wonder if she lets him listen to music and do Facebook ’n’ shit or if it’s all…

TAMARA: All what?

DEZZIE: Dunno.

TAMARA: Our formal’s in the city at a restaurant near the harbour.

DEZZIE: Better than a shitty boat.

TAMARA: Yeah. Formal committee lied to the owner. Told him we’re Year Twelves.

DEZZIE: Killer.

TAMARA: I want to go to the formal. Want to get a hot dress and shit but Squid doesn’t want to go.

DEZZIE: Why not?

TAMARA: Dunno.

DEZZIE: Why do you call him that?

TAMARA: Squid?

DEZZIE: What’s his real name?

TAMARA: Jasyn Donovan.

DEZZIE: No? Jasyn Donovan?

TAMARA: Yeah. Just happens I guess, like slutty girls called Brittany. Anyway he reckons it’s a rip-off.

DEZZIE: His name?

TAMARA: No. The formal. Something to look forward to, but.

DEZZIE: Yeah, something to look forward to.

They stare into space.

SQUID: Get home. Aunty looks at me funny.

What’s wrong? I done something? I haven’t done something? What?/ It’s good news.

AUNTY/DANE: It’s good news/

SQUID: She says. Good news. What is it, then?

If it’s so good why don’t you say it straight away? If it’s so good why you turn back to the telly, not say what the good news is?

AUNTY/DANE: Look at this idiot/

SQUID: She always says that/

DANE: Points to the telly shakes her head and mumbles/

AUNTY/SQUID/DANE: Look at this idiot.

AUNTY/DANE: Hasn’t got a hope in hell.

SQUID: What’s the news, Aunty?

DANE: I’m coming out.

SQUID: If it’s good news why you still all quiet, Aunty?

SQUID/DANE: Aunty?

SQUID: You visit him every week, look into his eyes, you can’t forget what it was like.

DANE: They still yell at each other next door?

AUNTY/SQUID: Don’t talk like that.

DANE: Still play that fucking shitty trance music all weekend?

AUNTY/SQUID: Don’t talk like that. He’s your brother/ Don’t talk like that. He’s your brother.

DANE: Aunty still gets annoyed every Thursday ’cause everything she bought got eaten straight away?

Remember that day Aunty cut her foot on the beer bottle all that brown glass in the soles of her feet?

Blood footprints all the way up the hall?

Must have hurt but she didn’t swear or nothing.

Never heard her swear. Not even the day I told her what I done.