Free Peripheral Vision by Paddy O'Reilly

hangers-on, who called him Daniel, but pronounced it Daarniel. They used to clank as they walked with their dull metal jewellery and buckles and ornamental zips weighing them down. In summer the black clothes must have been stifling, but they never wore another colour.
    Often Dan wouldn’t come home for meals at all, but when he did arrive he would sit opposite Cody at the dinner table, pale and hacking away at the cough he had acquired from smoking thin black cigarillos. Their father would ask Dan how school was going.
    â€˜Fine.’
    â€˜Still topping the maths? I don’t know where you two boys got that gene from. Your mother and I can barely add one and one!’
    â€˜Back then,’ Cody leaned over and said to Hannah while his date stared at the pins, preparing to bowl, ‘Dan’s hair was halfway down his back and he spent hours washing and conditioning it. I could never get into the bathroom. Even Mum complained. He had more make-up in the bathroom cupboard than she did.’
    â€˜Cody,’ Dan said, ‘that’s enough, mate. It’s your turn. Let’s bowl, okay?’
    Cody strolled down to the head of the lane and balanced the ball in both hands, mimicking the stance he’d seen people take on American TV shows. Then he backed up ten paces, swung the ball in an arc behind, and slid his feet down the runway to the lane, making sure that when he released the ball his left knee was bent low and his right foot pushed back and to the side for balance.
    â€˜Dude!’ the video screen shouted, and a lairy tune burst from the speakers under the bench. ‘Steeerike!’
    â€˜Hey, Dan,’ Cody said when the commotion had died down, ‘couldn’t do that in a Man Skirt, eh?’
    â€˜What is it with you?’ Dan’s voice rose slightly. ‘You can’t let things go. You should try on a bit of make-up yourself, mate. Maybe you’d loosen up.’
    In the next lane a girl bowled a strike and the winner’s tune rang out again. Her friends screamed. The pack of girls milled around the lane, their glittery low-cut tops shimmering in the video light.
    Cody had tried on Dan’s make-up once. He caked on the white foundation and black eyeliner and watched himself from the corner of his eye in the mirror as he poked around Dan’s room. He found condoms and crystals and small plastic packets with traces of white powder. Cocaine? But Cody was afraid to rub the powder against his gums like they did on television, in case it was something else, some Goth poison. He found black candles, a test tube with a crust of dried red liquid, bits of bone and fur and hair tucked into a jar.
    Downstairs, later that evening, Cody told his mother that Dan was performing satanic rituals in his room. She tried to hug Cody and tousle his hair.
    â€˜Dan’s going through a difficult time,’ she said. ‘And soon you’ll be going through it too. Let him be, hmm?’
    â€˜I’ll never do that dress-up stuff.’
    â€˜No, I guess you won’t, sweetie,’ she said. ‘But there’ll be something, you’ll see.’
    One of the things Cody found in Dan’s room was a poem by the fat girl, written out in big loopy handwriting. He had heard her through the wall a few nights before, reading it aloud to Dan. After she finished the poem there was a long silence, when Cody wondered if they were kissing.
    â€˜Wow,’ Dan had said finally. ‘Heavy poem.’
    Cody hid the poem and a few other things he had taken from Dan’s room in a box at the back of his wardrobe.
    Dan failed school that year. The week before classes started again, he threw out his make-up and his jewellery, sold the big coat to a kid down the road and cut off his hair.
    Dan’s repeating meant that he and Cody were in the same class. They sat at opposite ends of the classroom. For the first month of term, Dan’s Goth friends floated past the