Read Bleakboy and Hunter Stand Out in the Rain for Free Online Page A

from the computer screen. The cursor hovers over the ‘DONATE NOW’ button in the bottom right-hand corner. My hand shakes on the mouse. Anybody with four sisters deserves all the help I can offer.
    I’ve checked my piggy bank and I have exactly nine dollars and sixty cents. If split six ways with his sisters and dad, that amounts to one dollar and sixty cents each. Which is not even enough to give him clean drinking water. My eyes wander to the water bottle on my desk. If only I could push the bottle through the screen and all the way to Kelifa in Africa.
    I look out the window. The storm has cleared and Dad is tending his peach tree in the garden. He sees me watching and waves, then plucks a ripe peach from the tree. He tosses it into the air and catches it before taking a big bite. The juice spurts into his eye. He laughs and walks robot-like around the garden, his arms reaching out in front of him, feeling the way, pretending to be blind. Then he opens his eyes and takes another bite.
    I wonder if hunger can cause real blindness. Kelifa appears to nod from his village in my computer. My throat is dry. Absentmindedly, I reach for the water bottle. But Kelifa is watching. I get up from my desk and walk down the hallway, taking a guilty drink as I go.
    On the kitchen table is Dad’s wallet, a twenty-dollar bill poking out.
    I glance down the hall to my bedroom. Trevor looks blankly at me, through the doorway, his arms spread as if to say, ‘It’s your decision, Jesse’.
    Mum and Beth are out shopping for groceries. In thirty minutes they’ll arrive home and Mum will complain that she spent over two hundred dollars at the supermarket as she stores cans of food in the pantry. I doubt Kelifa has ever seen a pantry.
    I quickly open Dad’s wallet and take out his MasterCard. Running down the hallway, I avert my eyes from Trevor. ‘Forgive me, Trev,’ I whisper.
    Kelifa is waiting. He looks thinner than a few minutes ago. I click on the ‘DONATE NOW’ button. A screen appears with all the details I need to fill in: name, address, card number, expiry date. I do it as quickly as my shaking hands allow.
    My finger hovers over the mouse. One click and fifty dollars is on its way to Kelifa and his family. I hope his sisters share.
    I hear the crunch of car wheels on gravel in the driveway. Beth’s voice is loud, ‘One chocolate bar!’ I lean across and close my window.
    My right index finger clicks the mouse.
    Kelifa smiles.

10
    HUNTER
    The house echoes with emptiness when Hunter closes the front door. He walks to the kitchen and hangs his schoolbag on the hook. There’s a personal assessment task in the bag and that’s where it’s staying. He opens the fridge door and reaches inside for a handful of grapes. When his mother brings them home from the supermarket, she pulls each grape from the stalk, and puts the fruit in a bowl, to encourage Hunter to eat them. As he crunches down on the skin, he wonders how far he could spit a grape. He closes the fridge door and notices the puddle he’s created on the kitchen floor. He walks into the laundry and takes off his jeans, socks and t-shirt, tossing the squelchy bundle into the laundry basket.
    He runs to his bedroom, where the blinds are rattling in the wind. He left the window open this morning. Hunter slams the window shut and looks out to the road, slick with damp. The storm has passed but the gutters are still surging. He wonders if the old man made it home in time. He tries to remember if the scooter had a roof.
    Hunter leaves his bedroom and walks up the hallway to the closed door of the second bedroom. He reaches for the doorknob and a sudden clap of thunder booms in the distance. He quickly removes his hand from the knob.
    â€˜Ha!’
    Even though he’s only wearing undies, Hunter is sweating as he turns the handle and opens the door. In the corner is a single bed, covered with a doona. A pile of