Free Friday Brown by Vikki Wakefield Page A

the river snaking its way through a stripe of vegetation that connected a series of parks. I worked out the direction Bree and I had come from that morning. Below, people looked like a line of ants ferrying food back to the nest.
    With a dozen or more lenses zooming past my nose, I spotted that strangely vacant square of green where I had sat with Silence on my first day in the city. It was a world inside a snow dome, but without the snow.
    I was drawn to it. That was where I’d go.
    When I reached the park, I headed straight for the statue. I felt the ridges of the horse’s hooves and the strain of its tendons. Its rider was standing in the saddle, a sword raised above his head in triumph. Over what, I didn’t know. The base was covered with gobs of old gum, cracks stuffed with rubbish, bricks defaced with tags and graffiti.
    ‘How’d you find me?’ Bree said.
    She was watching me from the other side of the statue.
    ‘I didn’t. You found me,’ I said.
    ‘Whatever,’ she said.
    ‘Are you alone?’ I asked.
    ‘Course not.’ Bree gestured to a group of Aboriginal men and women sitting in a circle on the grass. They were darker-skinned than Bree, dressed in traditional costume, their faces and arms painted with streaks of grey. ‘They’re doing a performance for the festival.’
    ‘Can I watch?’ I walked closer to the group and Bree followed, reluctantly. ‘What do you do?’
    She shook her head. ‘I help out but I don’t…you know. I just don’t.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘It’s not my thing,’ she said and kicked the ground.
    ‘Oh.’
    One of the men pulled a didgeridoo onto his lap. He ran his hands over it, like he was checking for breaks, then lifted the end to his lips. His cheeks ballooned and a long, deep sound vibrated.
    It was just a test note, but I shivered.
    ‘I love that sound,’ I said. ‘It goes through my bones and leaves through my feet.’
    Bree laughed. ‘You’re weird, you know that?’
    I blushed.
    ‘That’s my mum, over there. My uncle plays the didge.’ She said it fiercely.
    She had a family. A close one, judging by the easy banter I heard.
    ‘So why do you sleep at the squat?’
    She sighed. ‘I’d have to share a bedroom with two younger brothers. It’s shit.’
    ‘But you share a room with me and Carrie.’
    ‘That’s different.’
    ‘You’re lucky,’ I told her. ‘To have your mum, I mean.’
    ‘What happened to yours?’
    I pointed at the sky. Not because I believed in heaven, but because it was effective shorthand for dead and gone.
    ‘Sorry.’
    ‘Me too.’
    There was an awkward pause. Another blast from the didgeridoo.
    ‘They’re getting started.’ I waited for her to invite me to stay.
    ‘Yeah. You’d better go,’ she said. ‘Don’t get lost. It’s a big city.’

CHAPTER NINE
    The days went like this: we woke with chattering teeth and stumbled about in the dark as winter ended and spring began; the first person up boiled an ancient kettle that looked like a penguin, using stolen electricity from a series of concealed extension cords leading to the basement next door; ten chipped mugs were lined up, instant coffees were poured and distributed like hand-outs in a soup-kitchen. Low, inane chatter, like polite conversation at a funeral. Some days Carrie’s and Darcy’s niggling sped up the exodus and one by one we’d slink out through the cellar window, through the trapdoor.
    There was a laundry roster: an off-white linen bag sat clumped by a back door that didn’t open. To keep costs down, clothes had to be worn three times before washing. Arden gave the rostered kids a stack of dollarcoins and they heaved the bag into a three-wheeled shopping trolley that veered left. It took two of us to steer the trolley to the laundromat, three blocks away. Everyone liked laundry duty. It meant fifty bucks off your weekly contribution because it was down time. It was nice to sit and daydream in the humid room, to inhale the scent of washing powder and