Get off in the city near the posh arcade. Stand in the shadows of buildings people in suits huddled smoking—group of private school girls in hats and ties walking in a line—follow them nothing else to do.

Follow them along the street past Town Hall teacher saying to a girl up the front even if you’re thirsty don’t drink in public wait until we get there and you can drink ladies don’t drink in the street.

Cross the park, past the cathedral hear the wind whistling up the street.

Traffic charging past.

Watch three girls hang back and wait.

Watch them turn around and laugh—rip off their hats and ties and jackets shove them in their bags and walk the other way—hear them talking about their formal just like those cashed-up bitches in my year and they stop and look into a shop with blank-faced mannequins in the window wearing these dresses.

Awesome dresses. My dress—silver like spoons and mirrors and clouds full of raindrops—the dress I always imagined. One of the mannequins wearing my dress. She knows it—looks embarrassed. Caught you!

Two of the girls go up the steps into the shop. The other one stays on the street.

We look at each other.

She looks at me like she knows everything about me my dad my mum—my broken front door how much money I got in my pocket.

Then she looks the other way—there’s this handsome guy coming towards me—he waves and I think he’s waving at me but then—he walks straight past me—kisses her and they walk into the shop laughing together.

She puts on her iPod.

Sit on the street outside Gloria Jean’s. Make an iced mocha last the afternoon. Thinking what am I doing? What have I done?

Walk home. Brace myself for Mum but find Dad back from hospital asleep on the stained couch in front of the blaring tele in the living room all these pills in bottles laid out on the coffee table. And I’m not thinking of Dane anymore I’m thinking about you Squid. Remembering the way that girl and her boyfriend looked at each other before they kissed and how they laughed as they went up the stairs together to choose a dress for that girl to wear to their formal.

PETCHALL: My desk covered in essays, trousers with ink stains pockets full of ink and the echoes. Years ago what my mother said about becoming a school teacher. Telling me that school teachers never grow up because they never leave school so they never get a chance to go out into the real world.

TAMARA goes to visit SQUID.

TAMARA: Sunday morning—knock on your door stand there wondering what the fuck I’m gonna say to you—the truth all around me. Your aunty answers—tells me where you are—inside’s clean—smells like eucalyptus—Squid?