Read The Year Nick McGowan Came to Stay for Free Online

skimming over shapes that could resemble a seventeen-year-old male.
    It’s the smoke that betrays him. He’s sitting on the pool box – a big rectangular wooden box my dad made to keep the pool chemicals in. He’s sitting on the box, down the back of our garden, smoking a cigarette. I walk towards him. I see his profile looking up at the night sky.
    â€˜Dinner is in half an hour. It’ll be Kentucky Fried Chicken in front of the TV while my entire family watches “It’s a Knockout” . You have thirty minutes to mentally prepare yourself.’
    I turn to leave but his smoking is something that . . .
    â€˜You know, my dad will kill you if he finds you smoking.’
    â€˜He knows.’
    â€˜He knows? My dad knows you’re smoking? Down here? Right now?’
    â€˜I told him I was going to come down here for a smoke.’
    â€˜You told my father you were going outside for a cigarette? And he said that was okay ?’
    â€˜I’m not sure he said it was okay. I think his exact words were, “Well, Nick, I’d appreciate it if you used an ashtray”.’ He gestures towards the faded Felix the Cat mug that Sarah Klein gave me for my thirteenth birthday. My father who once offered my sister and me one thousand dollars if we could make it to twenty-one without even puffing on a cigarette is now handing out ashtrays to other teenagers. A recruitment boy for Benson & Hedges. This makes no sense to me. But then nothing makes sense to me anymore. I turn back to Nick and look at his face, suddenly mesmerised by the way the cigarette nefariously balances on the edge of his lips.
    â€˜Are you going to try and get yourself kicked out of here? Is that your plan? Because maybe you don’t care, but this is a big year. I was looking forward to having a quiet, non-eventful year. So if you’re going to start, you know, setting off fire alarms, then could you let me know? Because I’m going to need to factor it into my study timetable.’
    He stares at me, as though I have just spoken to him in Greek. ‘Are you always this uptight, or do I just bring this out in you?’
    My mouth falls open. My brain shifts like a Rubik’s cube as I struggle to think of a comeback.
    â€˜Nick!’
    We both turn. My mother is standing on the verandah waving the cordless phone at us. ‘There’s a phone call for you.’
    â€˜Jesus.’ Nick grinds his cigarette into the bottom of the Felix mug. ‘It’ll be my dad. Again.’
    â€˜It’s a Sam Wilks for you,’ yells my mum, putting the phone to her chest.
    I turn and watch Nick’s tanned face turn deathly pale as he slowly gets up and goes to the phone.

He’s on the phone to Sam Wilks for half an hour. I offer to go and get him for dinner, but Dad looks at Mum and then quickly tells me to leave him go. Mum says, ‘We can start without him.’ She’s going to leave a plate for him in the oven. No eggtimer for him.
    I start heaping chips onto my plate and then I remember what happened down at the pool. I stop – mid chip grab – and look at my father.
    â€˜Nick said you said he could smoke.’
    â€˜Nick’s going through a tough time right now, Rachel. And he’s eighteen, so legally he’s allowed to smoke, so . . .’
    I didn’t know he was eighteen.
    â€˜What tough time? I think I should know what’s going on – just so I can be mentally prepared if I come home one afternoon and find him sticking his head in the oven.’
    Mum looks at me and rolls her eyes.
    â€˜Rachel, you’re being silly. Nick is just dealing with a few problems at the moment. So you need to give him some space.’
    â€˜That’s not what they’re saying at school.’
    â€˜Well, you should know better than to listen to rumours.’
    â€˜Well why can’t you just tell me?’
    â€˜Because it’s not for us to tell you what