by John Larkin
At ten-thirty the hooter sounds for recess and everyone comes pouring out to the quadrangle. Although it’s still drizzling, there’d have to be an Armageddon-style deluge for the teachers to voluntarily hold recess in the classrooms on the last day of school. They’re desperate to kick back with a party of their own in the staffroom. I can almost hear the champagne corks popping from all the way out at the bus shelter.
It’s when I see a bunch of year seven boys hurtling down towards me like rabbits out of a sack that I realise I might have chance to say goodbye to my friends after all. I don’t know what sort of game they’re playing – something involving sticks and a lot of jumping up and down.
‘Oi, boys,’ I whisper over the fence, like some sort of delinquent drug dealer. ‘Could you do me a favour?’
One of them looks over at me. ‘Who’re you?’
‘I used to go to this school.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ says the kid with the biggest stick who appears to be in charge. ‘Prove it.’
What darlings. Couldn’t you just take them home and . . . and lock them in a cupboard under the stairs? ‘Okay. Does Mrs Grimshaw still act like she’s got a rock-hard booger stuck up her nose?’
This gets them laughing.
‘Do any of you know Janyce Kirwan?’
They look at each other and shrug. ‘Do you mean the one in year eight?’
As opposed to all the other Janyce Kirwans in the school? ‘Yeah. That’s her. Could one of you do me a favour and go and get her. She usually hangs out in the library . . .’
‘What do you want her for?’ asks this kid with a shaved head and rat’s tail who, and there’s no other way of saying it, looks destined for a career as an armed robber.
‘I want to say goodbye.’
‘Why? Where ya going?’
Geez. What do they want? My autobiography? ‘I’m moving to Africa.’
‘Cool,’ says stick boy, brandishing his weapon like a light sabre. ‘Heaps of animals and stuff there. Lions, giraffes, crocodiles, ostriches . . .’
For a minute I think he’s going to list every single animal that has ever swept across the savannah plains. But fortun- ately his interest wanes and they go back to being Jedi knights again.
‘Hello, guys? Janyce Kirwan.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ says stick boy. ‘You go, Johnno. You know her sister.’
I don’t even know what that means. ‘Tell her it’s Tiffany-Star.’
‘Hey, aren’t you that girl who got sent to jail for dealing?’ says stick boy.
‘It wasn’t dealing,’ I snap. Why does everyone automatic- ally assume that street kids are druggos? ‘And I didn’t get sent to jail.’
‘Still got arrested, but.’
I feel like screaming at them, but what’s the point? As far as the rumour mill is concerned, Tiffany-Star got sent to jail for ever – might even get executed and stuff – for drugs.
‘Just tell her I’m here.’
‘I’ll go,’ says future armed robber. ‘I’m the fastest.’
By the time Janyce and her posse have arrived at the fence the hooter has blared for the end of recess. I don’t have much time. It’ll probably take about two nanoseconds for the boys to spill the beans that the notorious fugitive, Tiffany-Star, is hanging around the school fence trying to sell everyone drugs.
‘Oh my God,’ shrieks Janyce. ‘It is you. Come here.’ She leans over the fence and gathers me up in a bear hug.
Growing up the way I did I’m not exactly a touchy-feely person, though with Janyce you don’t get much of a choice.
‘I thought the little shits were making it up. Kid came bursting into the library yelling that the druggo girl Tiffany girl was at the fence.’
I shake my head. ‘I swear to God I’ve never touched drugs in my life.’ Never will.
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘Did Mrs Lee hear him?’
‘I think half the school did. But don’t worry. She won’t say anything.’
‘She has to,’ I reply, ‘or she could get the sack.’
‘Are you really homeless?’ asks Perla, Janyce’s bestie.
‘Yeah.’
Janyce stares at me. ‘Why didn’t you say anything? You could have come and stayed with me.’
‘What about your parents?’
‘We’re Samoan. There’s eleven of us kids. They probably wouldn’t have even noticed an extra one. We’d have to fatten you up a bit first. You look like a pool cue.’
I smile at Janyce. ‘I’m okay. I’ve got somewhere to live.’
‘Tell me it’s not in a dumpster or something.’
‘No. It’s clean and dry.’
‘And safe? Please tell me it’s safe.’
I nod.
Janyce grabs me again. ‘C’mon. Give Tiff a hug.’
Janyce’s posse gathers around the boss in a sort of scrum. ‘You remember this, Tiff,’ says Janyce from the centre of the huddle. ‘If anyone ever fucks with you, they fuck with the sisters.’
After a session of individual hugs from the sisters I pick up my backpack and walk away from the school for the final time.
‘You can do it, Tiffany-Star,’ calls Janyce after me. ‘You can make it.’
I don’t look back.
I schlep about two kilometres up to the next station, rather than the half-kilometre down to the one near the cop shop. With the rain still drizzling I spend the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon wandering around the rail system, staring out the window, going nowhere.
By the time school’s out for the year my head is starting to loll about on my shoulders. I’m drifting in and out of consciousness almost oblivious to the train filling up with students on that school-holiday high. And by the time I notice that I’m on the wrong line, in the wrong seat, it’s too late.
Even though I pretend to be asleep, it’s their laughter that frightens me the most. Its cold taunt. It’s as if they’re saying that a little thing like a sleeping homeless girl is not going to get in the way of their fun. In fact she’s going to play a major part in it.
‘Kind of cute. But too skinny. Be like doing a broomstick.’
More laughter. Forced laughter. They’re not laughing at the quality of the gag but trying to wake me. Scare me.
I’m tensed up like steel when the first one kicks my foot. The butterflies in my stomach churning and squirming all over each other.
‘Hey! We’re talking to you!’
I can’t ignore that. I open my eyes and look at them. Swallow. Year nine, I’d guess. Three of them. Sitting opposite me. Going backwards. The shortest one out for trouble. The two bookends for backup. A really bad combination, especially if you’re a girl travelling by herself on the wrong line. Wrong cultural background.
‘Are you Leb?’
I close my eyes, hoping that they’ll disappear, but one of the bookends reaches across and tries to grab my backpack. I snatch it away from him. His laugh is to tell me that he’s toying with me. That he could take my backpack if he really wanted to and there’s absolutely nothing I could do about it.
‘I said, are you Leb? You look Leb.’
I ignore them. I’m not admitting to anything. I don’t know if being Leb is a good thing or a bad thing with these guys.
‘Must be a leso.’
Keep quiet. Don’t say anything. They’ll give up and move on. On to some other poor girl. Oh crap! I can’t have that.
‘So I’m a Lebanese lesbian, is that right?’
If I thought that a gag might break the tension and make them back off then I was sorely mistaken.
‘She’s got a smart mouth on her,’ says the short one. ‘Maybe I’ll give her a mouthful of this. See if that shuts her up.’
While the booke
nds fall about laughing, the little dipshit unzips his pants and lets it all hang out. I’ve never seen one before. Not up close, thankfully. Only a cutaway one in a school textbook and that looked all scientific with its tubes and bendy bits. This one’s nothing like the one in the textbook. It looks a bit like a . . . well, a cashew. No wonder he’s mad at the world. Still, no matter how small it is, I don’t want it anywhere near me.
I look across the aisle for help, but there’s none there. A couple of straw hat and blazer senior school girls are shut off from the world in their iPods, while a man in a suit is pretending that the only thing of interest in the carriage is in his newspaper, which he’s taken cover behind. He’ll be getting off at the next station, whether it’s his stop or not. There’s a scrawny older emo girl covered in tatts a couple of seats further up, but she’s staring off into space out the window, too weighed down by her own baggage to take an interest in mine. I look back. The bookend closest to the aisle has his feet up on my seat, blocking any escape.
‘Well,’ sneers the little dipshit. ‘What are you waiting for? Get on your knees.’
I’m not getting down on my knees for any man. Mortal or celestial. ‘Go fuck yourself!’
The bookends think this is the most hilarious thing anyone has ever said. They’re practically rolling about in the seat. Their laughter terrifies me because even they can see how non-threatening I am.
Dipshit just smiles. ‘Or maybe I’ll fuck you instead.’
‘Oh, there you are.’ The four of us look up, each equally surprised by the intrusion. ‘I’ve been looking all over for you, Dom.’
‘Sorry,’ I reply, trying desperately to improvise. ‘I got lost.’
She glares at the bookend next to the aisle. ‘Get your feet down, you disgusting pig! You’re not at home now.’ And she’s so forceful he actually moves them.
The scrawny emo girl with the tatts winks at me and sits down.
‘I’ve missed you so much.’ She reaches over and hugs me.
The bookend closest to the window practically explodes with laughter. ‘She is a leso,’ he says.
‘Have you got anything sharp on you?’ she whispers.
‘Gonna put on a floorshow for us, girls?’
I nuzzle into her ear, playing the part. ‘I’ve got a compass in my pencil case.’
‘Hey! We’re talking to youse slags.’ Dipshit has recovered enough to attempt the dominant role again.
‘You got anything to eat, Dominique?’ she says out loud, reaching for my backpack. Dominique? I like that. It’s a damn sight better than Tiffany-Star.
‘Can you believe these lesos?’
Ignoring the little dipshit and his bookends, she opens up my backpack and ferrets around inside.
‘How fucking rude is this bitch?’ I don’t know if he’s referring to me or her, but I can’t help but notice that he’s still sitting there with his dick poking out.
‘Hey, emo girl,’ he says. ‘If you hate the world so much, why don’t you kill yourself –’
She moves with the speed and grace of a leopard. Before anyone realises what’s happening, she’s reached across, grabbed dipshit’s cashew, and is now holding the point of my compass against it.
‘One wrong move. One word from you or these two arseholes and you’ll be pissing sideways for a month. Do I have your attention now?’
Dipshit realises that he’s encountered a dangerous animal – a highly volatile street girl. He’d have a better chance against Godzilla. He nods.
‘Dominique,’ continues my saviour, ‘grab our stuff. We’re getting off here.’ I stand up and pull on my backpack. The train is just pulling into a station.
‘My bag’s a couple of seats down on the other side.’
Now that the tables have turned I push past bookend’s legs and walk up the aisle and grab her backpack. She doesn’t have much.
‘Now you,’ she says. ‘Get up.’ He does as he’s told and as though his life depends on it, which I suppose it does. ‘And if either of you morons move, I’ll turn your mate here into a eunuch.’
The two bookends look at each other.
‘Know what a eunuch is, you dorks?’
They shake their heads.
She glances over at me and shakes her head.
‘Okay,’ she says. ‘One move and I’ll be posting the family jewels home to his parents. You got that?’ Fortunately she’s hit upon a metaphorical construct they can grasp.
‘And you, you little shit –’ she gets right up into his face – ‘I even want you to try something. Because I so want to stick you with this thing. Believe me. I will. And more than once. Your testicles will look like pincushions.’
‘I won’t do nuffink,’ squeaks dipshit who, now that he’s standing up and away from the bookends, no longer appears so threatening. In fact he looks pathetic. It’s fair to say that his afternoon isn’t panning out how he’d imagined.
‘What would Mummy say if she could see you right now? I bet she’d be real proud. Treating women like shit. Like we exist solely for your pleasure and to serve you. Is that how it is in your culture?’
‘No,’ he squeaks.
‘Really?’ she acts surprised. ‘That’s how it is in most.’
I get the feeling that someone, some man, is responsible for the tatts and the attitude and her rage.
When we get to the carriage door I’m surprised by how little reaction there is from the people already standing there waiting for the train to stop. Hardly anyone seems surprised. I don’t think I’ll travel on this line again.
The train stops and the doors slide open. Several people push past as I step onto the platform with our backpacks. I look around. My emo friend has also backed onto the platform but she’s still holding my compass against dipshit’s manhood, and he’s still standing in the doorway of the train.
‘What happens now?’ he pleads.
‘We wait until the doors close and then I’ll let go.’
‘It’ll get chopped off.’ He’s practically begging now.
‘That’s a risk you’re going to have to take.’
‘Please.’
‘Please?’ she mimics. ‘I bet it wouldn’t have made any difference if she’d said, “Please don’t hassle me.”’
The doors have a rubber safety seal on them to stop people getting their arms and legs and, though it probably wasn’t envisaged in the design phase, their penises wedged in them, so he should be okay. Should. Whatever happens, I don’t think he’ll be taking it out in public again in a hurry.
The recorded message announces the train’s imminent departure. The boy’s eyes widen. The whistle blows. The doors start to close.
At the last second, my new bestie lets go and watches him tip backwards into the carriage.
‘We’d better get going,’ she says. ‘Won’t take them long to get the next train back.’
Luckily there’s another train pulling in that’s heading in the opposite direction. We grab our stuff, tear across the platform and jump on board.
We’re still laughing when we sit down. In fact, we’re practically falling over each other. We don’t care how much attention we’re drawing to ourselves. Right now we own the world.
‘I haven’t had that much fun in ages.’
‘Fun?’ I reply. ‘That was terrifying.’
And with that we’re off. We laugh so much that for a moment I forget just how much trouble I’d been in.
‘Listen,’ I say when we’ve recovered the power of speech. ‘I just want to say –’
She interrupts my apology. ‘Please don’t. It wasn’t your fault. Little arseholes were looking for trouble.’
‘Well they certainly found it.’
She smiles and stares out the window. ‘You were just sitting in the
wrong spot. That’s life. Just a random sequence of events.’ She looks back at me. ‘Think of all the moments, all the twists and turns of your day that led you to that seat. Someone was going to cop it from those a-holes this afternoon, which is why I followed them onto the train.’
‘You followed them?’
‘Yeah. They were being jerks on the platform. Shouting and swearing and calling out to girls what they’d like to do to them. Real subtle. You could see all these old people edging away from them. Stationmaster asked them to settle down but that short one told him to piss off.’
‘You followed them onto the train. You’re like a superhero.’
‘Yeah. I’m Emo Girl.’
This sets us off again.
‘I loved your line about being a Lebanese lesbian, that was a slam dunk. Beautiful. Wasted on them, but still.’ She pauses. ‘So are you?’
‘A lesbian?’
She snorts like a horse. ‘Lebanese.’
‘I don’t know,’ I reply. ‘I’m from everywhere.’
‘Aren’t we all?’
She stares at me but she has a distant, glazed look in her eyes. The look of alleyways. And now that I’m studying her I can see that she’s older than I thought.
‘Can I ask how old you are?’
She looks at me and grins, turning her head to one side and letting the hair fall down over one eye – classic emo. I actually think she’s taking the piss out of herself. ‘How old do you think I am?’
I shrug. ‘Mid twenties. Twenty-seven maybe.’
‘Nineteen.’
Oh crap. ‘Sorry.’
‘What about you?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Seventeen? Eighteen?’
‘I’ve just turned fourteen.’
‘Girl,’ she says, reaching across and grabbing my hand. ‘We’ve got to get off the streets.’
‘How did you know I was homeless?’
