All I Ever Wanted Read Free Page A

the telly.
    My room’s too close for escape, so I go out the back. I stick my iPod headphones in and tune out to something soulful and deep. Cooling concrete steps on the back of my legs as the sun ducks below the tin fence. The last whisper of the day. A commuter train passes, almost empty because it’s after eight. My chest is tight like I’ve been crying, but my eyes are dry.
    These two wars. The first will play out on the street. There will be phone conversations, a calling-in of favours, maybe an exchange of money. The package will be repossessed. There will be blood and retribution.
    The second will be a war of silence. Words can be absent, but with my mother you get the gist of it anyway. She oozes disappointment.
    I feel reckless.
    I stare at the shed and wonder if the beast is dead.

THREE
    I drank champagne for the first and last time two years ago, at Matt’s twenty-first. It reminded me of Tahnee: pale, sweet, little bubbles of nothing, and good fun if you’re in the mood. She doesn’t waste air on formalities. Never hello, or goodbye, or how are you. She skips debate and goes straight to the vote. We’ve spoken nearly every day for nine years. We first sat next to each other in the classroom when we were seven years old and our lives have run parallel ever since. We lost our teeth at the same time, we swapped clothes, toys, families. We played only with each other, we didn’t need anybody else. Shared the same hopes and dreams, told each other everything. Only lately, things have changed.
    I hear her barge through the front door, barge into my room and, before I can react, the screen door smacks me on the ridge of my spine.
    â€˜Sorry,’ she says and sits on the step. ‘Look at my face.’
    I look, but fail to see her point.
    She grabs my hand and pulls me up. ‘Let’s go in your room. Hey, is your mum wearing a tent? That orange thing she’s got on.’
    â€˜It’s terracotta, and yes, I know she looks like Uluru.’
    My bedroom is actually a sunroom, a tacked-on covered porch with glass slats for windows. In summer it’s too hot, and in winter too cold, but the alternative is the room next to Mum’s. Even with the slats closed, on a warm night like this, the bugs get in. There are leggy shadows on the ceiling where the mosquitoes lie in wait and frenzied moths spin around the light bulb.
    Tahnee poses in front of the small mirror on my wardrobe door. Her skin is pink and shiny in the glare. She has mosquito bites on her neck and a hickey on her shoulder.
    â€˜Notice anything different?’ She turns her face from side to side.
    I do, but I pretend not to. ‘That was one hell of a mosquito.’
    â€˜How can you not know?’ she wails.
    I know what she’s done. She doesn’t look any more like a woman than she did yesterday, but I can tell. She’s done it. There are beats of silence and a great gap between us, as if she’s been away for a year and come back different.
    â€˜Tell me,’ I say, because that’s what she wants.
    She rants and I listen.
    Everything about her is in-your-face, like a pop-up book, all colour and texture and gloss. We used to look so alike most people would take us for sisters, but that was before we sprouted lumps and bumps and curves and stopped wearing matching outfits.
    Tahnee’s primped and painted, high on spiky heels and something else. Her hair is almost completely blonde now, waist-length with a copper-coloured layer underneath. When she’s excited or upset, she gets hyper-animated and her hands move like sock-puppets. Her upper lip is pierced and sometimes I forget and go to brush the stud away.
    I’m a black and white caricature, an outline. Sharp lines and angles, but no dimension. My hair is long, dark brown and prone to ringlets—gypsy hair that reacts like a barometer. It expands and contracts, depending on the weather. Tahnee frequently launches