Free Peripheral Vision by Paddy O'Reilly Page B

freight train in the outback, loaded up with enough stuff for ten towns. Cody felt himself start to redden.
    â€˜Can’t remember. Hey, Hannah, come on, it’s your turn.’
    When she was out of earshot, Dan turned to Cody. ‘Yes, you can.’
    Hannah bowled a strike. She screamed and ran halfway up the lane and back again and the attendant saw her and spoke over the PA: ‘Please stay off the lanes. Off the lanes.’
    Cody watched her run back to Dan, fling herself on the bench beside him and kiss him on the mouth.
    When Dan had taken off his Goth costume, the hard, superior shell fell away from him. Their mother had said to Cody, ‘See, I told you he’d get over this silly phase. I suppose it’ll be your turn next.’ But Cody never had a phase. He waited to feel something different in himself, but nothing seemed to change.
    The next time Hannah went to get drinks, Dan said to Cody, ‘Look, I think it’s really good you’re going on this trip. You can relax, have a laugh. That Goth stuff, mate, I’m so sick of hearing about it.’
    â€˜I did try on your make-up, you know.’
    â€˜Cody, are you listening at all? I don’t care.’
    â€˜That girl told me she was going to kill herself. I’d fucked her twice and I told her to piss off. I didn’t believe her.’
    â€˜Is that what this is about? She told us all a hundred times she was going to kill herself. None of us believed her.’
    â€˜I just do the Goth jokes to make people laugh. I’ll stop, okay?’
    â€˜Cody, it was ten years ago. Let it go.’
    â€˜I have let it go,’ Cody said, frowning.
    â€˜It wasn’t your fault.’
    â€˜I know that.’
    Hannah had brought back beers and she stood beside them, slopping dregs on her shoes.
    â€˜Anyway,’ Dan said, ‘no one could have stopped her.’
    When they finished the round of bowling, Cody gathered his things. Hannah drove. They sat in silence as the car sped down the garishly lit freeway to the airport.
    â€˜It’ll be brilliant, mate,’ Dan said, slapping Cody on the back as he headed toward passport control. ‘Take care. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’
    Cody remembered how his face had looked in Dan’s make-up. He had seen his blackened eyes and white face in the mirror and hardly recognised himself. He’d imagined going out to a club and being someone else, just for one night, but the thought scared him and he had washed away the make-up so quickly that the soap got into his eyes and his mother asked if he’d been crying.
    At last his plane was on the runway. It began to pick up speed. Cody felt his body being pressed gently into the back of the seat.
    â€˜Jenny,’ he said.
    The passenger in the next seat shifted to face away from him and leaned her head against the shuddering wall of the aeroplane.

Family Reunion
    There was a party when I first came to this country. The table was heavy with plates of pizza and chicken balls and Turkish dips with sticks of celery that no one touched. Balloons clustered on the ceiling, trying to escape the heat of the room. A badly lit fire in the fireplace sent out curls of woody smoke, and a heater with two red coils sat burning in the opposite corner.
    â€˜This is my Filipino brother-in-law, Enrico,’ Alan said each time he introduced me. At that point, the person I was meeting would clap my shoulder. ‘Welcome to Australia!’ As if they had all rehearsed this gesture in preparation for my arrival.
    â€˜I told everyone all about you,’ my sister said the first night, before the party, before the bad feeling entered the house and hung around like the shrivelled party balloons that her husband keeps forgetting to take down. She said this in English, loudly, so that he would hear from the next room.
    â€˜I told them how you used to call me Bibby, and how sad you were when I had to go to