Free Skeletal by Katherine Hayton

little circle ever mentioned “the incident”.
    Perhaps it would’ve been easier to have it out in the open so that I could laugh about it, but at the time I was grateful for the opportunity to ignore it.
    Other pupils didn’t make life so easy. Not by confrontation – I think that would’ve offered me the chance to set things right – but by whispers behind hands. Whispers that stopped while I walked past, then resumed.
    I got into the habit of having lunch with Vila, Tracy, Melanie, and Susie. We used the same bench and table each time; nothing like a teenager to stake out territory even in a public place, and I grew used to the company. On occasions when there wasn’t any food in the house I grew used to the offers of sandwiches and the dreaded fruit that health-conscious mothers put in their daughter’s backpacks, apparently unaware that unless I claimed it the apples, oranges and bananas they provided would go straight in the bins. Or, even worse, they’d sit at the bottom of the backpack for a couple of weeks and then go in the bins.
    We started to sit near each other in class, in classes where the teachers didn’t need to keep to a strict seating plan in order to remember each pupil’s name anyway.
    There was something for me to look forward to.
    My mother continued to throw parties on the weeks she was paid out her benefit money, and continued to scrimp and save and go through the DTs on the week that she wasn’t. I tried to lift her EFTPOS card again, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. My mother may seem like an idiot when she was drinking, but all the booze hid a fierce intelligence that was more than equal to secreting a small plastic card away from her teenage daughter.
     
    ***
     
    ‘Daddy. What are you doing home?’ Vila bounded into her lounge and gave her father a big hug. Unilateral parental hatred, then.
    Her father was a big man. Broad-shouldered. Well over six foot. He towered over me, and at five foot ten myself, that was becoming an increasingly rare occurrence for anyone, even a male.
    He nodded at me, and I took another step forward into the room. ‘I’m Daina.’
    ‘She’s the girl helping me with my maths,’ Vila explained, still holding her Dad around the waist with one arm. ‘Not that it’s really helping.’
    He gave her a kiss on the forehead, and pushed her back slightly so she let go. ‘You don’t have to be good at everything. As long as you’re trying your best.’
    ‘What are you doing home?’ Vila repeated, this time a frown appearing and creasing her brow.
    ‘I’ve got an all-nighter coming up,’ he said. ‘And I wanted to bring some stuff home, then go back into the office.’
    He waved at his briefcase, which lay open on the side table. There was a flutter of pages as he leaned over and snapped the lid down shut.
    ‘You’re not leaving me alone with Mum for tea, are you?’ Vila asked. The mock horror in her voice lifted it up into a higher octave.
    He frowned at the television, ignoring Vila, and picked up a remote to pump up the sound.
    ‘I don’t want you fighting with your mother,’ he said idly, his concentration diverted.
    There was a picture on the TV of a crashed plane in snow. The 25 th anniversary of Air New Zealand flight 901’s infamous crash had spread the images across the airwaves so much it was as familiar as wallpaper.
    Vila shifted her weight from foot to foot, then looked at the TV as well. There was an array of crash scenes, a Dash-8 on a foggy hilltop, with an Ansett NZ official tearfully breaking the news, then a Cessna 182 in a lake with a grey-suited man staring down the gathered journalists.
    I felt a wave of sickness and turned away to steady myself against the sofa. Vila’s Dad, his eyes still glued to the screen, stretched a hand behind him to feel the locks on his briefcase.
    Broadcast over, he turned the TV off and kissed Vila on the forehead. ‘I’ll see you later tonight. No fighting, okay?’ He picked up the