Bro Read online

  ‘You all right, mate?’ the dog’s owner calls out.

  He’s standing next to the dog, holding a hose. Was he going to squirt us with water? Has he been there the whole time, watching?

  Struggling to my knees, I cough and groan and wheeze. I feel around for my schoolbag, grasping it as I stand. With my heart pounding, I stagger off as fast as I can.

  20

  My hand trembles as I try to unlock the front screen door. Damn! It’s jammed again. I wish Dad would fix it already. I jiggle the key, praying Teta doesn’t walk down the hall. I keep praying until I feel the key turn and I walk in.

  Teta is in the kitchen. I hear the sound of oil sizzling and smell the potato chips she’s frying.

  ‘Hi, Teta,’ I call, forcing the words out of my mouth.

  ‘Hello, habibeh,’ she shouts. ‘You home?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘You hungry?’

  ‘Later, Teta. I’m gonna have a shower first.’

  I head straight for the bathroom, closing the door behind me. I drop my schoolbag, sit on the toilet seat, and cry. Hot tears rush down my face, and I whimper like an injured dog. I suck in a deep breath to try to calm myself, but I can’t stop shaking. Or snivelling. My head pounds, my jaw aches and there’s a cut inside my mouth that stings. My shoulder is sore, and there’s a pain just beneath my right armpit.

  In the mirror I see my flushed reflection. There are no marks yet, but I’m puffy and red and by morning I’m going to have bruising along my chin. That’s where it hurts the most. I’m hopeful Teta will think I haven’t washed my face properly, because she can hardly see, but Dad’s going to be suspicious for sure.

  I fiddle with my phone. I want to text Diz and tell him what happened. But I’m … I’m embarrassed. But I’m also really angry. I suck in another deep breath, and with a quivering thumb I text Diz.

  As soon as Diz gets my message he’ll text Zac. Zac will text Chris. Chris – Robbie. Robbie – Ants. And Ants will multi-text. Within minutes every Leb from our group will know. There’ll be uproar. Then rebellion. Maybe revenge. Did Palmer know what he was starting when he went back on his word? We already had a fight to sort our crap out. This is so messed up now.

  I realise I’m about to get a ton of messages. Everyone will want to know what happened. And how it happened. And when it happened. I break out in a sweat at the thought of everyone knowing. My mouth is dry. I’m shaking more violently and my head starts spinning. With the same quivering thumb I turn my phone off.

  Breathe, Romeo, breathe.

  I shower. Wash away the shame.

  21

  I’m drying myself when Teta knocks on the bathroom door.

  ‘Romeo? Habibeh, Aziz is here.’

  ‘Thanks, Teta. Tell him to wait in my room.’

  Avoiding Teta is a cinch. Avoiding Dad would have been harder if he were home. Thank God, he’s never home before six or seven.

  Diz sits cross-legged on my bed. He’s on his phone.

  ‘Bro,’ he says, locking his phone and tossing it on the bed. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I told you already,’ I snap, annoyed and embarrassed again. My feelings are weird. I pause and take a deep breath. ‘Sorry, Diz. I’m just … you know.’

  ‘It’s cool. But talk to me. What happened?’

  ‘What’s to tell?’ I say, stepping into my trackies. ‘I got dog-shot.’

  ‘You okay?’

  I shrug, slipping my shirt over my head. I wince at the pain under my arm.

  ‘Who was with him?’

  ‘Smitty. Joel. MJ. I think Justin was there too … maybe Tommy … I don’t know. They didn’t give me a chance. They jumped me from behind and started smashing me. I copped it all over.’

  I turn away. Swallow. I still can’t believe I was dog-shot. Dog-shot! I mean, I fought Palmer at school so I wouldn’t get dog-shot.

  ‘We’re gonna fix this,’ Diz says. He sounds angry. ‘They’re cowards. Who dog-shots after a fight? Those pricks broke the rules!’

  I rub my face, shake my hands and breathe deeply.

  ‘Bro.’ Diz’s voice is quiet. My heart starts up again. ‘Have you seen YouTube yet?’

  ‘No. Why?’ I hurry to my desk. ‘What should I look up?’

  ‘Don’t let it get to you,’ he says. Then he sighs. ‘Payback Ozzies Rule.’

  I’ve never typed so fast in my life. I find it. It shows Palmer – only Palmer – sitting on my stomach, punching me in the face. They’ve rigged it to look like a fight between me and him only. A fight I lost – badly.

  ‘Those –! That’s not what happened! It was a dog-shot. There were at least six or seven of them.’

  ‘I know, bro, I know.’

  ‘Look,’ I say, pointing to the right-hand corner of the screen. ‘You can see their feet.’

  ‘I know. Robbie checked it out already. He just texted me. I’m just spewing I wasn’t with you, bro. I swear I would’ve smashed their –’

  ‘Bro, don’t start feeling guilty. How were you supposed to know?’

  I shut the page on my computer and pace up and down my room, grunting and swearing under my breath. The air feels stuffy and suffocating. I slide open my window. A cold breeze fills my room but it’s not enough. I’m hot and flustered. I take off my shirt, and chuck it on the floor.

  ‘Chill,’ Diz says.

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Breathe, bro. Get some chi in you.’

  ‘Chi? What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘Chi. You know, life energy. It’s Chinese. Breathe it in. It’ll help you think straight. Saw it on Oprah.’

  ‘Oprah? Are you serious, Diz?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter where you learn it from as long as you learn it. And Oprah’s a good teacher, know what I’m saying? I swear I’m gonna meet her some day, and I’m gonna tell her how cool she is.’

  You know how most people pray to God? I reckon Diz prays to Oprah. The thought of him kneeling before her with his hands joined, muttering some positive affirmation written by a spiritual guru, makes me crack half a smile – even though my jaw aches.

  But Diz’s serious eyes stay fixed on me. He’s thinking about the dog-shot, because every few seconds he shakes his head and swears.

  ‘Maybe you need chi or whatever it’s called,’ I say.

  He slams his fist into my pillow.

  I figure he didn’t get much satisfaction from that punch because his fist bounces back up. I grab a textbook off my desk and hold it out at him. He looks at it, looks at me and grins.

  He punches the book.

  We burst into a high-pitched laugh between broken sentences of ‘what the hell’ and ‘you’re killing me, bro’. I don’t know why we’re laughing. Maybe it’s the chi or maybe we both think Diz might actually meet Oprah. I don’t know, but Diz laughs so hard he falls off the bed. I dive on top of him, but my body’s too sore to wrestle, so I pinch and slap him instead.

  ‘What the hell kinda piss-weak slap is that?’ Diz says, laughing hard and gasping for breath. ‘Please stop, I’m gonna piss myself.’

  It feels good to laugh, good to muck around. For the moment, we forget about Ozzies, Fobs, Rez and Lebs. We’re just two boys playing.

  The doorbell rings. We stop. Freeze like naughty kids caught sneaking chocolate. I hear Teta’s footsteps coming up the hallway. There’s the sound of the screen door opening, then Zac’s voice greeting my grandmother.

  I struggle to my feet. Diz climbs back onto my bed and flops on his stomach.

  Zac’s head appears first as he looks around my bedroom door, entering sombrely. It’s as if he’s attending a funeral. My funeral.

  ‘Hey, bro,’ he says, looking me up and down, checking me out. ‘I can’t believe what happened.’

  I shrug. Make out like I’m tough.

  ‘You okay?’ he asks.

  ‘Yeah, it’s all good.’

  But Zac shakes his head. ‘I don’t think so. There’s nothing good about this. Those Ozz
ies are gonna cop it. We need to show them where it’s at now.’

  I shrug.

  ‘You should’ve gotta punch in, Romes,’ Zac says.

  ‘Are you serious?’ Diz cries. ‘He didn’t have a chance. They jumped him from behind. Don’t talk like that, bro. It’s a bit dog.’

  ‘All right, relax. It’s cool,’ Zac says, reading the message he just received on his phone. A smile stretches across his face. He chuckles to himself. ‘Looks like it’s war, boys. Listen to this from my cousin: Ozzies going down give me time and place. I’m getting heaps of messages like that,’ he says, locking his phone and putting it back in his pocket. ‘So how’d they get you? Where were you, Diz?’

  ‘Bro, I wish I was with him, but I was at home.’

  ‘I went to the library after school,’ I say. ‘Caught a later train.’

  ‘Library?’ Zac says, as if he’s never heard the word before. ‘Why?’

  ‘I had homework. Nat was there too. We studied together.’

  ‘You and Nat?’ Zac seems puzzled. ‘She didn’t say nothin’ to me. I could have met her there.’

  Pause.

  Long pause.

  No, not a pause. Zac falls quiet. He’s a tough guy, but when it comes to Nat, Zac is exposed, different.

  ‘You okay with that, bro?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, it’s not that …’ he says, deep in his own thoughts. Then he raises his eyebrows, points his finger at me. ‘But only because it’s you. I’d be spewing if she was doing homework with anybody else. I just don’t get why she didn’t say anything. She’s been avoiding me heaps lately.’

  He’s my bro, and I want to tell him something, warn him even, but I know it’s best to keep quiet. It’s their thing.

  22

  When I wake up on Monday morning the first thing I hear is Teta’s voice. ‘Yulla, habibeh.’ And the first thing I think about is the bashing I copped on Friday. It hasn’t left my mind, actually. All weekend I lay about in my room reliving the kicks, the punches. I had to ice my jaw to stop the swelling. Sneaking it into my room was like an undercover operation. Teta busted me twice and lectured me on how it was unhealthy to put ice cubes in my glass of water in the middle of winter. I was extra careful when Dad was around. It wasn’t easy convincing him the bruise on my chin was from the fight I’d had earlier in the week at school. I still don’t know for sure if he believed me, because he stuck his head in my room more times than ever – never saying anything, just looking at me.

  I sit up in bed and rub my chin. It’s still aching. The clock on my bedside table reads 7.27. In an hour I’ll be at school, facing everyone. People are going to stare and ask questions. The thought makes my nerves kick in and I shudder.

  ‘Yulla, habibeh,’ Teta hollers again from the hallway outside my bedroom.

  Yulla is Teta’s favourite word in the mornings. It means ‘come on’ in Arabic, and Teta repeats it like a trained cockatoo. When she strings three or four of them together it sounds like a yodel.

  She opens my bedroom door and I quickly drop my head, pretending to yawn so she doesn’t see my bruises.

  ‘Are you awake?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Good, here’s your school shirt. Yulla, habibeh, you’ll be late,’ she says, laying the perfectly ironed shirt on the end of my bed.

  It’s not until she closes the door behind her that I slip out of my warm bed and get ready for school. Bit by bit, I dress, taking care not to touch the spot near my armpit. It’s tender and sore. I wrap a scarf around my neck, hiding my bruised jaw. Good thing it’s winter, otherwise I’d be stuffed.

  ‘Yulla, yulla, yulla, you’re taking too long,’ Teta hollers from the kitchen. ‘You want cornflakes?’

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ I shout back, smoothing the last bits of gel through my hair. ‘I gotta go, Teta, I’ll see you later.’

  ‘Okay, habibeh. Take it easy today, all right? You did a lot of homework on the weekend.’

  ‘Yeah, no worries,’ I say, cringing at my deceit. I laid out open books on my desk and placed a few loose papers on the floor so Teta and Dad would think I was doing assignments. That way they wouldn’t ask why I wasn’t leaving my room. It’s shifty, I know. But Teta would have a stroke if she knew I was attacked. And Dad … he’d go crazy at me. Even though I was the one who got dog-shot.

  The morning sun is blinding when I step out the front door. Diz is waiting for me by the gate. For a few seconds, his presence calms my nerves, but as soon as I peer down the street to where I was attacked, my stomach lurches.

  ‘Hey,’ I say, dicing him.

  ‘You all right? You disappeared on the weekend.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. It’s all good. I just needed some space, that’s all.’

  Diz nods. ‘Figured that. But you didn’t even answer your phone?’

  ‘Turned it off.’

  ‘I called your house a couple of times. Your teta said you were studying the first time. The second time I rang she said you were sleeping, so I figured you must’ve gone into a coma from all that studying.’ He laughs.

  I half-smile. ‘Nah, I just didn’t wanna talk about it with anyone.’

  ‘You cool now?’

  ‘Bit sore but yeah, I’m cool.’

  That’s all I have to say. Diz gets it. He always gets it. There isn’t anybody else who understands me like Diz. I figure we must have known each other in another life. What other explanation could there be?

  ‘Zac’s waiting for us at the station,’ he says.

  I nod.

  ‘The boys are there too. Everyone’s waiting for you. You’re a celebrity.’

  ‘What, for being bashed?’

  He laughs. ‘Don’t get a big head, will you?’

  ‘No chance. It’s embarrassing.’

  ‘What? No way. Palmer’s the one who should be embarrassed. That was a dog act. The YouTube clip was taken down, you know.’

  I look at him. Frown.

  ‘Yep. Palmer puts it up, right? He messages Dane to tell Robbie. Of course, Robbie checks it out, he tells everyone, it goes viral. But a few hours later, it’s gone.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To hide it from school, I reckon. He just wanted to make sure we saw it.’

  ‘That’s crap. A million clips on YouTube, and he’s worried the school will find it? As if, bro. He just didn’t want anyone to work out it was rigged. I don’t care anyway. It’s better for me.’

  ‘The boys are all pumped. They wanna get the Ozzies, big time.’

  The news gives me goosebumps. I’m not sure how to react. I know Lebs look out for each other but this is surreal. It’s like I’m in a movie or something, and the drama’s building with every scene.

  •

  I hear Robbie’s shrill call resound across the platform as the train doors open.

  ‘BRO!’ He cuts through the crowd, running towards Diz and me. Zac is close behind him. Ants, Chris and a trail of others are also sidestepping the crush of people, trying to reach us. At the top of the platform steps, I glimpse Stef standing with a couple of girls. For sure she knows. Everyone would by now.

  ‘Bro!’ Robbie cries. ‘We heard about the dog-shot. I can’t believe it.’

  The boys swarm around me, knocking each other with their schoolbags. They close in tight, hurling questions and checking out the evidence of the dog-shot.

  ‘Why didn’t you answer your phone?’ Chris says, frowning with concern. ‘I was calling you all weekend.’

  ‘Sorry, bro. I forgot to charge it,’ I say, tripping as I walk up the platform stairs.

  Zac grabs my arm to steady me.

  ‘You didn’t even come to footy,’ someone says.

  ‘Yeah, we thought you died or something,’ Robbie adds.

  I groan inwardly at the thought of footy. I couldn’t have played feeling as sore as I did, so I’d told Dad we had a bye before going back to my room.

  ‘So where were you?’ Chris asks.

  ‘He was at home,’ Diz answers.
‘Where else is he gonna be?’

  Ants squeezes through the group until he’s in front of me, walking backwards up the stairs. ‘Bro, how bad was it?’

  ‘It wasn’t that bad.’

  ‘But you were dog-shot,’ he says, searching my face for a reaction. ‘You were friggin’ dog-shot! After you already fought him!’

  ‘Really? Was I?’ I say mockingly.

  ‘That bruise on your chin looks painful.’

  Diz slaps Ants across the side of his head. ‘What are you, a doctor? Move out of the way, will you? Let him breathe.’

  ‘Yeah, move out of the way,’ Robbie echoes as he yanks a couple of the boys. He walks close beside me, shoulder to shoulder. ‘So?’ he says, his eyes wide with anticipation. ‘What exactly happened?’

  ‘What’s to tell? They beat me up.’

  ‘How many of them?’

  ‘You think he was counting them while he was getting bashed?’ says Diz.

  ‘You know we can’t let Palmer get away with this, right?’ Ants cuts in.

  ‘We should dog-shot them,’ Robbie says.

  Chris shakes his head. ‘Nah, no way. Then we’d be dogs too.’

  ‘So what? We can’t let them disrespect us like that.’

  ‘Robbie’s right,’ Zac says. ‘They should all cop it. They’ve stuffed up, big time.’

  I’m getting a headache. There’s too much talk about it, too many questions. The attention is making me uncomfortable. Don’t get me wrong, it’s cool having my bros around, protecting me, but all this drama is crazy. I feel like that guy in the movies who gets ushered up the courtroom stairs, trying to avoid the frantic media.

  ‘Romeo? Can I speak to you, please?’

  The clamour of talk is silenced by a female voice. The boys look spooked as we turn to face Stef. It takes a lot of guts for a girl to walk up to our group and call out a guy’s name.

  I’m impressed.

  ‘Sure,’ I say.

  The boys move to one side, creating a path and allowing me to pass.

  ‘Romes?’ Diz calls after me. ‘I’ll wait here for you.’

  I smile and raise my thumb to let him know everything is okay, even though it’s not. I’m edgy and Diz knows it. I can never hide anything from him.