Truck Stop Read Online Free Page A

Chante.
    SAM: I’m at work Chante.
    MICHELLE: Why have you come home from school? Sick? What’s that noise in the background?
    I thought you said you were sick. I told you he wasn’t… I said he wasn’t allowed to be there. The school’ll ring me and then what will I say? I’m with a client. I’ll call you later. Pick up the phone Chante or… Alright.
    Sorry. Sam.
    SAM shrugs.
    So how are things with Mum and Dad?
    What are you thinking?
    SAM: What am I thinking?
    I say I’m thinking about my first boyfriend.
    MICHELLE: Would you like to tell me about that?
    SAM: No.
    I’m not telling her this.
    Trent and I met outside the piercing place. Him alone, just about to have a piercing done. I walk up to him and say what you getting done and he says lip and he asks me if I can stay with him. ’Cause he’s scared. I say I’ll stay but I don’t want to watch the needle go through.
    When he comes out pierced, looks hot but he’s a bit pale. I tell him maybe he should have a pie or something but he says no, to follow him. He takes me around the side of the Coles delivery docks where they smoke near all the rotten fruit and I look at it, at his lip. Ask does it hurt?
    He kisses me.
    I don’t want to talk about it.
    We hear teeny pop music. SAM dances. KELLY comes in with a few Vodka Cruisers. SAM shows KELLY a text she has got from TRENT . They laugh. They take a photograph and send it back. They scull Cruisers.
    AISHA: Then. Saturday night, just getting dark.
    Mum and I walk down our street, Mum asks who Kelly is and why a girl I hardly know would invite me to a slumber party, there’s this dog. From nowhere this dog. Teeth and barking and it jumps at us, Mum reaches for my hand, grips it, stands between me and the dog. Mum protects me even though she is scared. She stares at the dog like it’s some demon. Then this old man appears, grabs it by the collar.
    We get to Kelly’s door. Me with a bottle of creaming soda.
    Mum behind me. Music inside and shrieking.
    KELLY: Oh my fucking god!
    AISHA: The door flies open /
    KELLY: We found a picture of Justin Beiber nude online
    SAM: He hasn’t got pubes.
    AISHA: Then them both looking at me and my mum.
    KELLY: Hello.
    AISHA: This is my mum. Mum, this is Sam and Kelly.
    SAM/KELLY: The skanks.
    AISHA: Mum shuffles her feet, pokes me in the back as a prompt. My mum wants to meet yours. She says she needs to meet her or I can’t…
    KELLY: MUM!
    MUM!
    She’s with Bruce.
    AISHA: Hear the TV get turned down, then footsteps. Kelly’s mum comes to the door, wears a porn star t-shirt, I hope Mum doesn’t read it, what it says.
    CHARMAINE: I’m Charmaine.
    AISHA: She’s younger than my mum but looks tired. Dark rings under her eyes.
    She doesn’t invite mum in.
    Leads her out the front.
    They’re next to one of the cars that sits like a big fish in the long grass.
    Whose cars are those?
    KELLY: They were Dad’s.
    SAM: Look at your mum, what’s she saying?
    SAM and KELLY laugh, AISHA cringes.
    AISHA: She’s shaking her head a little and looking down at her feet.
    CHARMAINE: Go on girls, inside.
    AISHA: Mum calls me over and kisses me, whispers to call her if…doesn’t matter what time. Then Kelly and Sam pull me inside, slam the door.
    Why’d you say the skanks thing?
    KELLY: Joke.
    SAM: Irony.
    KELLY: Yeah.
    SAM: Like when wogs call themselves wogs.
    KELLY: Or fags.
    SAM: Jocks.
    KELLY: Geeks.
    AISHA: Mum doesn’t get irony.
    We watch youtube. Some prank film with school boys and snakes.
    SAM/KELLY/AISHA: Look at the snake!
    KELLY: Bruce at the door tells us /
    BRUCE: Keep it down.
    KELLY: [ under her breath ]Fuck off.
    BRUCE: What did you just say?
    KELLY: Nothing.
    SAM: He live here now?
    KELLY: He’s such a loser.
    SAM: And ugly as.
    KELLY: Mum doesn’t even like him he’s just a rebound fuck. She still calls Love Song Dedications about