He hosed the driveway. I sat on a pile of tyres. ‘I reckon your Mum’d be happy.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘She loves kids. But she just got stuck with you and John.’

‘There’s a secret.’

‘What?’

‘How Gazz holds his smoke, but doesn’t blow the place up.’

‘It’s probably got eyes by now. Yours. And a nose, stubby—’

He turned the hose on me.

‘Or maybe it’s a chook? And it can walk backwards?’

He kept wetting me, but I ran, laughing, across the driveway. ‘Dad, can we go to the footy?’

A car pulled up, but he didn’t care.

‘Think I shat me nappy. Dad, can you change it?’

It was a Torana, a girl on her P-plates. She got out and said, ‘Fill her up, please, Curtis.’

Harris. Something Harris. One of Tracey’s mates. Curtis unscrewed her cap and began.

She said, ‘Trace told me you worked here now.’

‘Yeah?’

She waited, deciding. ‘Told me to tell you she’s gonna fix it.’

No expression, but I could tell he was smiling inside.

‘But she said she’s gonna make you pay.’

‘Yeah?’ He finished, replaced her cap and said, ‘Ten fifty.’

She gave him the correct change. ‘You didn’t check my oil.’

‘D’you want me to?’

‘Na.’

‘Well, why’d you ask?’

She was enjoying it. ‘You’re a creep.’

‘She never said no.’

‘That’s disgusting!’ She took a folded piece of paper from her pocket, opened it, and showed him. It was his photocopied bum, blown up to a full page, and the caption: This is the arse of Curtis Burrell. Big, smelly and full of shit, like him.

Curtis said, ‘That’s very grown-up.’

‘Cost her twenty dollars.’

‘What?’

‘To have five hundred copies made.’

His face went white.

‘And it took us four hours to stick them up around school. What d’you reckon about that?’

He studied his arse. It seemed familiar, convincing.

‘And she reckons there’s more to come.’ She smiled, got in her car and drove off.

‘Five hundred?’ I asked.

‘She’s bullshitting.’

It was a decent arse, with a long cleft, dimples, and a shadow that might’ve been one of several things.

‘Come on!’ He went inside the shop, wrote a note (Back in 10 mins) and locked the door. We ran down North East Road, past Don’s, the salvage yard, Cara-Rest campers. Faster, through the back streets, past the semi-detached houses and cracking fibro. I called for him to slow down but he paid no attention. Five hundred arses. If they hadn’t been named, it might’ve been okay, but Trace had made it clear.

We arrived. She wasn’t lying. On the front fence, the staff room door, the main doors, the arbour, stapled to trees. Every square inch of weatherboard building. Arses, hundreds of them, flapping in the breeze, blowing along the ground, caught in lavender bushes. Arses on the change rooms and arses on home economics. Bums all over our art room, where the year had started with such promise.