‘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.

‘Come on.’ He started pulling them off, gathering handfuls, stuffing them down his BP shirt. This proved inefficient, so he fetched a wheelie bin and we started filling it.

Later, we walked around the school checking. He was sure we hadn’t found all five hundred. Then we heard a voice, looked up, and Tracey and Something Harris were sitting on a fire escape eating what might have been popcorn and drinking Diet Coke. Tracey said, ‘I still got the original.’ And she held it up.