Free Making Laws for Clouds by Nick Earls Page B

people’s rules and kiss her and she’d kiss me right back. I feel her fingers on my arm, touching it so lightly it’s hardly a touch at all, hardly even a bend in a rule but still there anyway.
    â€˜It’s okay,’ I tell her. ‘I’ve got my bike.’
    And she says, ‘Yeah,’ but slowly.
    â€˜I’ve got my bike, so that’s probably good. No dilemmas, then. We can toe the line tonight and look totally respectable. Fine upstanding members of the community. But, like you said, this isn’t over, hey?’
saturday
    Rules apply on Saturday too. The rest of the church crowd are off to see a band – some Christian country group – but Tanika and I still have an event ban slapped on us.
    So, today we win. And they don’t even know.
    Wayne knows. Wayne who was shouting at Mumas she slicked down his hair. Something about ‘Kane fornicated so he gets out of it. It’s totally unfair.’ And Mum said there’d be some soap heading for his mouth quick smart if that trash talk didn’t stop.
    â€˜But Wayne,’ I said to him as I put my boots on, ready for Brown’s Slipway. ‘You love a bit of music, don’t you?’
    Wayne loves music all right, a few kinds of music but particularly metal. Big grunting thrashing metal. Not Christian country. Wayne loves the metallest metal so much that he hates Metallica for selling out and doing that Symphony album, and he hates AC/DC for being old. It turns out Dad was into them and we’ve got his records from about 1980, only Wayne didn’t know they were from 1980. Wayne, mate, they’re
records
. You could have thought it through.
    Wayne thinks Acca Dacca ripped him off, as if they were young and angry and loud and totally convincing, and then they whipped twenty years away from him behind his back and turned fifty and rich to embarrass him. ‘Fifty’s not so bad,’ I said to him. ‘Nanna’s fifty-four remember. You playing Acca Dacca’d probably give the two of you something in common. She probably even knows them. Like, from school.’
    So Wayne checks the dates of things now and helikes Rammstein and Sepultura, and he doesn’t mind that Nine Inch Nails song with the animal reference that’s not consistent with Christian practices.
    It’s not fair that they should send Wayne to a Christian country band, not unless he’s done something very bad. It’s just not him.
    The bus pulls up outside our place and we take our usual seats.
    â€˜Country songs about God, Wayne,’ I whisper in his ear. ‘You all have a good day now, you hear.’
    He belts me in the thigh and glares out the window.
    Mum’s head whips around and she says, ‘Stop it you two,’ in that crabby voice of hers that never takes the facts into account. ‘Country music’s changed, Kane. You know that. And you could be a bit more open-minded.’
    She turns to face the front again and Wayne points forcefully at the back of her seat and looks at me and says, ‘All day. Right? That and country songs about God.’
    â€˜And respectful of other people’s tastes,’ she says, louder this time, since upping the volume is easier than turning. ‘What about that
Heartaches and Highways
album I wanted for Christmas, Kane? And you got me Powderfinger instead . . .’
    She has this habit – and it’s not a good one – of finishing what she’s saying, then totally ignoring whatanyone else says and starting up again with an And, as if she never stopped in the first place.
    Wayne just looks at me – gives me a blank look that says, fill in the blank with whatever look’ll do justice to the next six hours of my life.
    Mr Bell stops the bus in the street outside Brown’s Slipway.
    â€˜Okay, you two,’ he says as Tanika and I walk past him and down the steps. ‘Mr Harbison’ll be around all the time