Free The Ice-cream Man by Jenny Mounfield Page B

balls.’
    With a clatter, Aaron scrambled onto his knees. He swallowed, tasting bile – and something else, sharp and bitter: the taste of fear.
    ‘Steve, p-please.’
    ‘Of course it didn’t occur to me to look inside the shed, did it? I just locked the door like a good son, thinking my lazy little step-brother had forgotten to do it after he’d put his bike away.’ Steve sighed and shook his head. ‘Tsk, tsk, accidents will happen.’
    With tears and sweat blurring his vision, Aaron scrambled forward on all fours. But Steve was too fast. The door slammed shut and with a rattle the bolt and padlock slid home. Openly sobbing now, Aaron threw himself repeatedly against the scorching metal, screaming at Steve to let him out.

    Rick couldn’t decide if Marty was the gutsiest kid he’d ever met, or the craziest. He remembered the first time Marty had done a slam-jump. He had come up with the idea after seeing an extreme sports show on TV and was busting a gut to try out some of the moves in his chair. Rick had dared him to do it, not believing for a second he was serious, and Marty had seized the challenge the way a pit-bull seizes a chop. Targeting a garbage truck, Marty had almost got on the wrong side of dead that day. Once the garbo had recovered, he had leapt out of the truck and chased Marty a full block yelling that he was going to tear him limb from limb when he got hold of him – which he hadn’t. Rick was yet to meet a person who could outrun Marty.
    But the stunt he’d pulled on the ramp made no sense. For one thing there was no one there to see it, except Rick, and Marty hadn’t known that. Everyone knew a stunt was no good unless someone saw it. It was almost as though Marty had wanted to get hurt. In his mind Rick could still see him hurtling down the ramp, grinning like a madman.
    Rick kicked the toes of his joggers in the gravel on the side of the road and swiped at a cloud of flies. Even if he wasn’t able to smell the dump up ahead the flies were a sure sign it wasn’t far away.
    After leaving Marty, Rick couldn’t face going home. Instead he headed for Stockman Road, which led west out of town in an almost straight line. It was a fair hike to the dump, about four kilometres, but Rick didn’t mind. The simple process of putting one foot in front of the other helped him order his mind. Sometimes he walked along the disused train line running parallel to the road, balancing on a rusty rail and counting each step to see how far he could get before falling off. The highest he’d got to was two hundred and four.
    He couldn’t go home, couldn’t face that stranger wearing his mother’s skin. Where had that laughing mother gone – the one who used to bake muffins and crack stupid jokes and thrash him every time at cards? Sometimes he missed his mother more than he missed his father. If he went home now he knew he’d tear the place apart, maybe do something he’d really regret like burning the house to the ground.
    There was something appealing about fire. Thinking about it gave him a sick sense of satisfaction that scared him silly. He walked faster, grinding gravel beneath his soles.
    When he reached the dump, he sat in the shade of a gum tree beside the boundary fence. Flies swarmed, drawn to the moisture on his skin. He was sure he swallowed a few as he sucked the heat-charged air into his parched throat. He should’ve brought a bottle of water.
    Resting his chin on his drawn-up knees, Rick eyed the dump manager’s shed. If the old man had spotted him, he would have sicked the mange-ridden Rottweiler on him by now. He scanned the dump, his eyes coming to rest on the recycling area for a moment where a guy in a white ute was unloading crates of bottles. Before Rick had discovered the billabong this had been his favourite hangout. It was a place he could be alone even when he wasn’t.
    He leaned back against the gum tree and looked up into its branches, streaky-white against the dusty blue