Frankie Read Free

shout me a kebab, hey.’
    I dump a twenty on the table.
    I’m not sure what I was expecting from this meeting. It isn’t like a date, but then it kind of is. I wanted to be funny, intriguing, intelligent. I didn’t want to accidentally spit brownie on him or trip over my own feet and face-plant the pastries. I wanted him to call me later and say, ‘Hey, I had a good time. Let’s be brother and sister. Let’s fight over the remote. You can call me Pus Face and I’ll call you Sarcastitron, Her Royal Bitchiness, and we’ll moan about what a fuck-up Juliet is and no one will understand just how fucked up but us.’
    I wanted to be impossible to walk away from.
    â€˜How ’bout it?’ he asks.
    Looking into those black-brown eyes, I get that feeling again. Weird and cool at the same time. And then I look down at the serviette.
    It’s hard to tell the wrong way up, but I’m pretty sure it’s a drawing of me. A nice me, though. A happy me.
    Kaboom.
    What’s that sound? Oh, nothing. Just my heart exploding into a million pieces.
    When I look up, he’s watching me. Waiting. With dimples.
    â€˜Okay,’ I say.
    Bouncing to his feet, he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a few crumpled notes, dumping them on the table next to mine. ‘Cool,’ he says and thrusts out a hand for me to shake.
    This time, I take it.

Ten minutes later I’m back home at the unfashionable end of Smith Street. Terry’s Kebab Emporium: where kebabs go to die. I’m greeted by the familiar crack that spans the front window. It’s like the shopfront is giving me a sleazy, toothless grin.
    I walk in and Vinnie’s leaning against the front counter, flicking through a magazine. She’s calm, not a bleached hair out of place. You’d never guess she’d spent the last couple of hours having a conniption about me meeting up with Xavier.
    â€˜Morning, sweetheart,’ she says.
    I collapse against the counter with a groan. ‘
Afternoon
, Vinnie.’
    Vinnie licks her finger and flicks over another page. Her nails are painted the same shade of red – Vixen Rampage – as her lipstick. ‘Is it afternoon already? Well, I never.’
    There are a couple of people in the shop, all of them too busy stuffing their faces with kebab to worry about the domestic unfolding in front of them. Or maybe they’re locals, used to looking the other way.
    Vinnie’s still got her head down and I’m not telepathic so I can’t get her to look up simply by thinking it. And I’d
really
like her to look at me so I can launch into a detailed account of
everything
and ask her what she thinks. Is Xavier for real? Is he after money? Is he likely to sell me to sex traffickers for a packet of smokes?
    â€˜I’m starved,’ I say instead. ‘Do we have any food? I could score us some
banh mi
.’
    â€˜Nice try, honey, but you’re going nowhere. You’re still grounded. It’s not my fault you wasted your
one
get-out-of-jail-free card meeting up with God Knows Who.’
    Finally, she closes her magazine and looks up, giving me The Nonna Sofia: eyes narrowed, lips pursed, a single hand on a cocked hip. We don’t live with Nonna anymore, not since she lost her marbles and had to go live at Peaceful Pines Retirement Home, but I can’t escape The Look.
    â€˜Whatever,’ I say. From the bar fridge under the counter I grab a tub of Vinnie’s emergency supply of low-fat yoghurt, rip off the lid and lick it clean. I grab a spork from the canister on top of the bain-marie. ‘You could have had it so much worse.’ I spork runny globs of yoghurt into my mouth. ‘You could have –’
    â€˜Don’t speak with your mouth full.’
    â€˜â€“ been lumped with a spider-fancying, cockroach-eating serial-killer-in-the-making. So you got a niece who gets expelled from school. Big deal. You’ve