Animal Kingdom by Stephen Sewell

Author:Stephen Sewell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Melbourne University Publishing

After dinner they went back to her room for a while and listened to some music.

Nicky hadn’t really been in detention; she’d just gone down to the mall to smoke some cigarettes. If she’d known he was there, she would have come home instead.

‘How come Gus said he signed the form for you?’ J asked.

‘I just gave him an old detention form, and he was too dumb to notice it had already been signed,’ she said.

‘Why are you so mean to them?’ he asked her.

She looked at him, hurt. ‘I’m not mean,’ she said.

‘Yes, you are,’ J replied. ‘They all love you and you just treat them like shit all the time.’

‘That’s the way kids are supposed to treat their parents, isn’t it?’ she said meekly. ‘You gave your mum shit.’

‘No, I didn’t,’ he said, ‘and anyhow, she’s dead.’

‘So what?’ Nicky asked, looking at him.

‘Well, what if your mum was dead? What would you think then?’

‘If my mum was dead?’ Nicky repeated.

‘Yeah. Then you’d be sorry for all the times you talked back to her.’

‘My mum’s not going to die,’ Nicky said, looking away.

‘How do you know?’ J said. ‘One day she will. What will you say then?’

‘What did you say?’

‘Me?’ J asked, remembering he’d hardly said a thing.

‘Yes, you,’ Nick said. ‘If you could speak to your mum now, what would you say?’

J didn’t know what she’d done, but she’d done something, turned some key inside him, and he said, ‘I’d say that I loved her, and I miss her, and I’m sorry that I was such a hassle to look after when I was a little kid, and that if there was anything I could have done to save her, I would have, but I didn’t know what to do, I just didn’t.’ He wasn’t crying, but there was something inside him making its way up.

Nicky took his hand and pressed it against her face. She didn’t say anything, but he thought she understood.

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