Truck Stop Read online

  KELLY: Um… I think there is something wrong down there.

  JOSIE: Down there?

  KELLY: Want to check it’s okay that I haven’t got… I want to / get tested

  JOSIE: Get tested?

  KELLY: Yes.

  KELLY and SAM look at each other and laugh.

  Then.

  SAM: Truth?

  KELLY: Dare.

  SAM: No. Truth. The sexiest bit on a man.

  KELLY: Easy. Adam’s apples.

  SAM laughs hysterically.

  SAM: Adam’s apples?

  KELLY: Yeah.

  KELLY looks away.

  SAM: Now.

  I sit in a shit suburb in an even shittier demountable, next to some counsellor. She looks at me weird. Like she’s made it and her life’s all sorted. All she does is counselling. Room stinks and the tin walls crack. Fly crawls up her thigh. We’re meat in an oven her and me, she’s yesterday’s left too long. Dried up, grissled.

  MICHELLE stares at SAM and smiles. Waits for her to speak. After a time.

  MICHELLE: How shall we start?

  SAM shrugs.

  Why don’t you tell me why you are here today?

  SAM: Don’t you know already?

  Fly on your face—it’s probably laying eggs on you don’t you want to brush it off?

  MICHELLE brushes the fly away.

  It comes straight back sits on her like she’s a cow shit, a talking cow shit saying:

  MICHELLE: I’d like to hear it from you.

  SAM: Mum made me come. And the school, after it happened they said if I want to stay on then I had to see you.

  MICHELLE: Do you want to be here today?

  SAM: What do you reckon?

  MICHELLE: You seem angry, Sam.

  SAM: I am angry. Everyone I know thinks I am a cock crazed slut.

  MICHELLE: And what do you think?

  SAM laughs.

  SAM: Good one.

  MICHELLE: Would you like to talk about what happened?

  SAM: Camera on me for a long time and then, snap, I tear the singlet off the truckie, run my index finger down his washboard abs, hear him suck in breath, say my line. Nothing can touch us now you know /

  MICHELLE: What about your friend? The girl who /

  SAM: My friend? / We aren’t speaking.

  KELLY: We aren’t speaking.

  SAM: Not a word.

  KELLY/SAM: I hate her / She hates me.

  KELLY: She did this to me. It’s her fault.

  SAM: She hates me. It was her idea.

  KELLY: Josie looks at me doesn’t smile or nothing just asks.

  JOSIE: Has something happened that makes you think you need to be tested?

  KELLY:

  JOSIE: You can say. No need to be embarrassed. Really.

  Have you engaged in oral sex?

  Penetrative sex?

  Was it protected or unprotected?

  Kelly?

  KELLY:

  JOSIE: With one partner? Or more?

  KELLY looks disgusted.

  It’s important we get to the facts. When you say you used protection can you tell me what you used.

  KELLY:

  JOSIE: When did you last have your period?

  KELLY: I’m not pregnant. That’s not why I am here.

  JOSIE: Any stinging or pain? Discharge, any / blood?

  KELLY: Blood. Just a bit of blood,

  JOSIE: Not /

  KELLY: No, not my period.

  Something milky. / Discharge.

  JOSIE: Discharge. Does / it sting?

  KELLY: It stings. A bit. Not all the time.

  Looked it up online. Can you fix it?

  Can you? Fix it?

  Truth?

  SAM: Dare.

  KELLY: No. Truth.

  SAM: Okay. Adam’s apples.

  SAM laughs hysterically.

  KELLY: You bitch.

  KELLY looks away.

  JOSIE: How old are you?

  KELLY/SAM: Fourteen.

  SAM: She got in first. Dumped me on facebook. I sent her messages and shit and she barred me.

  JOSIE: Have you spoken to someone about this?

  SAM/KELLY: Everyone knows.

  SAM: She’s left school.

  JOSIE: But I mean…

  KELLY: No.

  I just need you to fix it.

  KELLY and SAM sit silent at the picnic table. We see two flies projected, close up, hear swarming.

  Double dare.

  SAM: Double dick dare.

  KELLY: Double dog dick dare.

  SAM: Yuck!

  KELLY: Okay then… truth.

  AISHA: After it happens the things people say online, names they get called and the jokes. How fast they start. Kelly and Sam. How quick things changed.

  Not like how it was. / Then

  SAM/KELLY: Then. One year ago.

  AISHA: I’ve just arrived. My first day of school. Kelly’s assigned to me by Mrs. Spratt and she drags me about for the morning /

  KELLY: Computer room but none of them work, bubblers, canteen—watch the scabs, smoker’s toilet, music room—watch Mr Moxham—he’s a pedo—gets girls to stay back after class and ‘sing’, lockers, bin,

  Bell rings.

  recess. Suppose you want to sit with us.

  AISHA: Okay.

  KELLY: I’m gonna get a sausage roll.

  I hang with Sam.

  She’s going out with Trent.

  That’s Trent over there. You think he’s hot?

  AISHA: Doesn’t she sit with him?

  KELLY: Na. He’s a lad.

  AISHA: A lad?

  KELLY: Yeah. See their hair?

  Lads hang there, we stay here.

  AISHA: There’s nowhere to sit here.

  KELLY: Na. Sucks. Gotta be quick to get somewhere good at the start of the year. We weren’t so this is it.

  AISHA: A dusty square of ground with a bin and a cross fire of balls.

  KELLY: Stinking hot in summer and now… freeze your tits off once you grow ’em. Your mum have big tits?

  AISHA: What? Why are you asking me that?

  KELLY: Just wondered. Mine doesn’t.

  AISHA: Have you got a boyfriend?

  KELLY: Yeah.

  Na. Do you?

  She offers her sausage roll.

  Want a bite?

  AISHA: Why’d you ask me that before / about…

  KELLY: Tits? You need them that’s all. To get one.

  SAM enters catches a ball in mid flight.

  SAM: Want it? Want it? Then come and get it spastic! Dare ya.

  Ha! Didn’t think ya would.

  She sees KELLY’s sausage roll and makes a face.

  You know how they make sausage rolls? They get the old animals and push them into a tunnel with a blender at the end. You’re probably eating pig prick and cat arse.

  Trent’s a dickhead, sent me a picture of his ugly nipple. Not erect or nothing.

  KELLY: This is Aisha.

  SAM: She hanging with us?

  KELLY: That okay?

  SAM catches another ball. Hides it down her top.

  SAM: Come and get it you fucktard.

  He won’t.

  She throws it back.

  Where you from?

  AISHA: St Mary’s.

  SAM: I meant before that.

  AISHA: Bangalore. Have you been there?

  SAM: Why would I go to Bangalore Curry?

  KELLY: Don’t call her Curry. You like being called Curry?

  AISHA: No.

  KELLY: See.

  SAM: Well, I don’t like being asked shit.

  You eating pig too? Aren’t you Muslim?

  AISHA: No.

  KELLY: Don’t worry about her. She gets this way. Showing off. Like the whole school’s paparazzi. Play along.

  SAM: Is that what you do?

  She hanging with us?

  KELLY: Sam!

  SAM: Just she needs to know how long we’ve been BFs. I met Kel
ly when I was six.

  We’re there for each other like, you know, really there. I was there for you when your dad left, wasn’t I, Kel?

  KELLY: Yeah.

  SAM: See? Heard from him Kel?

  KELLY:

  AISHA: How did you two meet?

  KELLY: We did Jazz.

  SAM: Dance world is full of stuck up bitches.

  KELLY: We were in the same classes in primary.

  SAM: Kelly was the first girl at school to get her /

  KELLY: Sam /

  SAM: Period.

  KELLY: Sam, shut up.

  SAM: What Kel? You were. It happened just as they brought the lunch orders in. Pies and sauce and then blood all over the chair everyone thought she’d pissed her pants ’cause we didn’t know what a period looked like.

  The class goes quiet and Miss King puts on a pair of rubber gloves, pushes Kelly out the door to go to sick bay.

  KELLY: Yeah thanks for that Sam.

  SAM: Curry don’t care do you Curry?

  KELLY: Don’t call her that.

  SAM gets a text.

  SAM: Sorry Asia.

  KELLY/AISHA: Aisha.

  SAM checks her message.

  SAM: Trent wants to make it even, see my nipple.

  KELLY: He’s just there. Why don’t you…

  SAM: Na fuck him. I’m not sending nothing. Treat Trent mean. Keep Trent Keen.

  KELLY: Our friend Nat left last term. Miss her.

  SAM: The three of us were the skanks.

  AISHA: The skanks?

  KELLY: That was my idea.

  SAM: No it wasn’t.

  KELLY: Bitch you know it was.

  SAM: Whatever.

  KELLY: The skanks.

  Combination of our initials. Sam’s name, my name and Nat’s name.

  SAM: An anagram.

  KELLY: An acronym.

  SAM: Whatever.

  KELLY: Sam Kilbourne, Natalie Archer and Kelly Stoner.

  SAM/KELLY: The skanks.

  KELLY: Like a gang name or something. We had a tag ’n’ shit.

  SAM: We were gonna be a pop group.

  KELLY: Real elegant like Pussycat Dolls but hotter.

  SAM: Much fucking hotter.

  KELLY: The Skanks.

  SAM: Movie with the same name.

  SAM/KELLY: SKANKS.

  KELLY: Yeah.

  SAM: Yeah. But.

  KELLY: Nat left.

  SAM: Always fucks up bands when one of the girls leaves.

  AISHA: Skanks?

  SAM: It was only a name.

  KELLY: Yeah, we’re not really skanks, it was just like ‘self deprecating’.

  AISHA: What’s a skank?

  SAM and KELLY look at each other.

  SAM: Don’t you have skanks in Bangalore?

  Going to talk to Trent.

  She goes.

  KELLY: It was the three of us. A gang. Hung out did everything. Planned shit together like formals and schoolies. Then Nat moved. To Narrabeen. She said I’ll come back every weekend to visit.

  The AN gone out of skanks.

  SKKS. That’s what was left.

  Doesn’t spell shit. And who’d come back here?

  AISHA: You don’t like it here?

  KELLY: Just off the boat. You’ll find out.

  KELLY leaves AISHA. We see a cockroach projected, close up.

  AISHA: Then.

  Before we leave I spend time looking at pictures of kangaroos and beaches, lifesavers, girls in bikinis… Richarne, my brother, sad because he does not want to leave. But we are leaving and I am telling him it will be better. We can be anything there. Promise my friends I’ll make films, upload them so they can see who I become.

  Film the view landing, the red brick houses, the sparkling harbour—we even see the white sails of the Opera House as the plane comes down through cloud.

  Brown family everyone else seems white.

  Film the train ride to the city and then St Mary’s. Count the stops. Lose count of the stops.

  Two guys behind us on the train talk about a gang that attacked some kid, bashed till he died.

  Dad tells me to stop filming to get ready to get off, that we need to get off at the next stop.

  We get off the train. We look out on St Mary’s. A tattoo shop and an empty bus idling. A boy sits on a bike and smokes. His long hair waves in the wind.

  SAM alone with her iPod sits at the picnic table and sings to herself.

  KELLY/AISHA/SAM: Now.

  KELLY: Josie takes blood.

  JOSIE: Won’t take long, look away.

  KELLY: Needle in my arm. My blood in tubes with coloured lids, cotton wool and a bandaid on my arm.

  JOSIE: You need to make an appointment, come back in a week for the results. You have the symptoms now so… / Chlamydia.

  KELLY: Chlamydia.

  JOSIE: This is serious Kelly. You know that don’t you?

  KELLY: Yes.

  JOSIE: Are you still in contact with the boy, the man. Are you in touch 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 l
ike 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 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.