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Polo. Justin was It.
    “Look at your violin teacher with his kid,”
drawled Rachel as we bobbed awkwardly through the shallow end.
“That’s like the cutest thing I’ve ever seen!”
    “Stop looking,” I hissed. “You’re
embarrassing me.”
    Justin was edging towards us, splashing
through the warm water. I knew he was peeking. I slowed down and
let his wet fingers slide around my waist.
    “Gotcha,” he grinned, opening his eyes.
    “Cheater.”

SIX
     
     
    Nick and Mum started to argue more after he
turned twenty-one. Mostly about things that didn’t really
matter.
    “Were you planning on washing that plate,
Nicholas, or were you just going to leave it to me as usual?”
    “I already said I’d do it later… Jesus
Christ… Give me a break.”
    “Give you a break? I’m the one who has
to run around picking up after you all like a slave…”
    “Do you hate her?” I asked him once.
    Nick was washing his car and soap was running
into the garden. He shrugged. “I don’t know. Sometimes. Do
you?”
    “I don’t know. Sometimes.” I stood in the
river of hose water and squelched my bare feet into the mud.
    “You know, one of these days, I’m gonna
bloody move out,” Nick said for the billionth time.
    He had started to come home late every night.
Sometimes he would act in ways I didn’t understand; bumping into
the wall and things. Once, his t-shirt was on inside-out and
backwards. I knew he didn’t mean for me to see him, but I was a
light sleeper and he’d wake me up when he’d crash through the back
door into the kitchen. I’d always ask him about it the next
morning, when he’d crawl out of bed, his blonde hair flattened on
one side.
    “Where do you go? Why were you acting like
that?”
    “Keep your trap shut,” he always said. “You
didn’t see nothing.”
    Then he’d announce that was gonna bloody move
out. But he never did.
     
    To my endless delight, I was baby-sitting
Oliver while Hayley and Andrew made an appearance at one of the
Acacia Beach social functions funded by Hayley’s ultra-rich
family.
    I hated the way the town pretended it was
some raging social metropolis. For nearly fourteen years I’d been
subjected to countless trivia nights, bush dances and Christmas
parties in which the town gossip- usually consisting of which
no-good young so-and-so had gotten herself knocked up in the
supermarket car park and which senior citizens had recently had
bladder surgery- was bandied around like the secret to eternal
youth. I chucked sickies more often to avoid the parties than I did
to get out of school.
    When I arrived to baby-sit, Andrew was saying
“Oh come on Hayles, seriously?” a lot and kept suggesting they go
to the pub instead.
    “What is it tonight?” I asked, chasing Oliver
along the carpet on my hands and knees.
    “D&D ball,” called Hayley from the
bathroom.
    “Seriously,” said Andrew. “Why the hell are
we going to a D&D ball?” He flopped on the couch. “More to the
point, why is this town even having a D&D ball? Surely everyone
knows each other by now. The single people are doomed to stay that
way forever.”
    “Andrew!” Hayley swanned out of the bathroom
with a neckline so low that even if she had have been desperate and
dateless, she wouldn’t have been for long. “I promised Mum and Dad
we’d go. Apparently tickets haven’t been selling so well. Dad
thinks it’s because Peter from the supermarket is bringing his
karaoke machine.”
    “Kill me now,” said Andrew.
    Hayley flashed her best supermodel smile.
“Stay home if you want. There’ll be plenty of dateless men to keep
me company.”
    “Okay, okay, I’m coming.”
    Hayley scooped Oliver off the floor and
kissed him on the cheek. “You know where everything is,” she told
me, putting the baby in my arms. “If you need us, you know where we
are. Just call the lifesaving club and we’ll come home.”
    “Don’t hesitate,” Andrew called as Hayley
dragged him out the door. “And if