Truck Stop Read Online Free

with him?
    KELLY: She puts a little sticker on a container of my blood. Yes.
    JOSIE: Then you should /
    KELLY: I mean. No. I’m not. She pushes my blood into a bag, presses the seal together and then removes her plastic gloves.
    JOSIE: If you can find a way to let him know Kelly because the infection /
    KELLY: But I’ll be alright? The tablets / will…
    JOSIE: Will treat the infection but you won’t know all the results for six months Kelly.
    KELLY: You mean for… ?
    JOSIE: HIV. Yes.
    KELLY: Six months?
    We see the film AISHA made of a slow-dying cockroach.
    AISHA: Then
    Our new house. Cockroaches scuttling and the smell of stale cigarettes. Incense burning all the time because of the smell. The look on my mother’s face as she moves about cleaning each room shaking her head and I say what Ma?
    My brother and I walk to the main street past the Hillsong Church that doesn’t look anything like a church to me. We stop to see if we can hear the hillsongs but we can’t.
    Police cars cruise up and down the street and the barber waits, sits in his chair and stares at us.
    Bakery. Cakes with bright yellow icing.
    Men in bright yellow shirts.
    That boy we saw on the first day rides past on his rusty bike.
    A reptile shop. Supplies for snakes and spiders. A giant beetle in a glass tank touches its feelers together and crawls across a toilet roll. We stare at it and the guy laughs and tells us it is a cockroach from Queensland.
    Then Dad’s in the street. Worried. Says he didn’t know where we’d gone and we need to come home it’s getting dark. We should not be out alone.
    I film this place. Cold wind blowing. You don’t see it when you watch it on screen but the wind coming from the mountains is cold / now.
    SAM: Now.
    Back at the counsellor’s and she’s looking at me like I’m just gonna split, like an orange and let all the juice run out just ’cause she asked how it all started like I’m gonna piece it all together for her.
    I’m not.
    MICHELLE: Would you like some water?
    SAM shrugs.
    SAM: We both look out the window. The car park with the barbed wire fence. The street with the red brick houses. The garbage men and the garbage truck, garbage spewing out of everything.
    You like living here?
    MICHELLE: Good a place as any.
    SAM: I hate it. Bogans everywhere. Can’t wait to get out.
    MICHELLE sighs.
    She fiddles with her ugly bracelet and then she looks at my hands.
    MICHELLE: I like your ring. Where did you get it?
    SAM shrugs.
    SAM: Folder with my first name on it and a number. Sam 74302.
    Why should I speak, not under oath or nothing.
    Then she starts. Like she is trying to wear me down in the heat of the room if she can’t peel me like an orange she’ll bash me against the wall until answers bleed out from me. Questions. One after the other after the other.
    MICHELLE: How do you do at school?
    SAM: What is your favourite subject?
    MICHELLE: Do you have a part time job?
    SAM: What do you like to do on the weekends?
    MICHELLE: Someone special in your life? A boyfriend? A girlfriend?
    SAM: After she says that she laughs like god knows what. She sounds so stupid laughing at her own question maybe she’s lezzo. Sweat spreading from her armpits to the edge of her ugly fucking sagging tits.
    MICHELLE: What is your secret talent Sam?
    SAM: Do I have a favourite teacher someone I can talk to.
    What I’d like to do when I finish / school
    MICHELLE: school /
    SAM: Where do I get my / hair done
    MICHELLE: hair done /
    SAM: How long have I had my / ears pierced
    MICHELLE: ears pierced /
    SAM: where did I get / that bag
    MICHELLE: that bag /
    SAM/MICHELLE: the shoes, the iPod
    SAM: what am I listening to / do I like music?
    MICHELLE: do you like music?
    MICHELLE ’s phone rings. It’s a very uncool tone and SAM rolls her eyes.
    MICHELLE: Won’t be a sec.
    SAM: Don’t care if you take two years.
    MICHELLE: I’m at work