PETCHALL: A love story! Thank you, Tamara, I could use something a bit steamy in my day.

TAMARA: Oh Miss!

PETCHALL: I’m looking forward to reading it, Tamara. You better go down to the quad now.

I’ll walk with you. I’ve got duty. Did you have lunch?

TAMARA: I’m not anorexical.

TAMARA stares at a boy sitting by himself in the corridor.

PETCHALL: Hello Raymond.

TAMARA: Ay, ya great fucking spaz. Answer her.

PETCHALL: Tamara! Raymond, are you/

TAMARA: I’m talking to ya, sped—speds like you shouldn’t come here, shouldn’t come here ’cause you take up so much time and we get nothing, normal kids like us get nothing.

PETCHALL: Tamara!

TAMARA smiles suddenly sweet.

TAMARA: Nothing wrong with calling them sped, Miss, it’s just special ed.

We learnt about it in English with you. Abbreviation Miss.

TAMARA disappears.

All the things you hear in these corridors. Things teachers say to kids, things kids say to each other. And all those bells echo.

SQUID waits in the laneway for TAMARA.

SQUID: Where you been?

TAMARA: Doesn’t matter.

SQUID: You okay?

TAMARA: Don’t ask me that. Serious, if you ask me that again.

SQUID: What?

TAMARA: If I’m fucking okay.

SQUID: Sorry.

TAMARA: And don’t say fucking sorry. Why do you ask me that?

SQUID: Want to know.

You talk a lot but I never really know—

TAMARA: You want one of those relationships. What gave you that idea?

Hate talking that shit—fucking feelings.

SQUID: What’s up?

TAMARA: Fucking Bloomfield had a go at me in Hospitality—you can’t do prac in those shoes.

That bitch. Why can’t I wear open-toe shoes if you are?

I’m a teacher—yeah but your ugly old feet’ll burn the same as mine if I drop a saucepan of hot shit on them, fucking dog. Sent me to Dietz.

SQUID: Why?

TAMARA: Language. Bad language at school means trouble at home.

Like derr. Dietz is a lame-fuck counsellor anyhow, she just fiddles with her fingernails.

Pause.

Six weeks today.

SQUID: Yeah? Happy six weeks.

TAMARA: You stink. Why you all sweaty?

SQUID: Smith let us play tackle in PE.

TAMARA: You miss it, don’t you?

You could go back and play.

SQUID: Can’t. When my brother went to court things came out.

TAMARA: What do you mean?

SQUID: They said he’d been selling shit at the club.

TAMARA: But that wasn’t you.

SQUID: No. But he was their best player. Like some god. And then…

TAMARA: Play for another club.

SQUID: You kidding? That’d be worse than dealing drugs.

Pause.

TAMARA: Saw the CD cover you made in Art. Mad.

SQUID: Desilva kept saying it was fully trippy.

TAMARA: She said mine’s superficial. What would she know?