The Turning Read Free

for Briony Nevis. For two years we’re sort of watching each
other from a distance. Sidelong glances. She’s flat-out beautiful, long black hair like some kind of Indian. Glossy skin, dark eyes. She’s funny in a wry, hurt kind of way, and smart.
In class she goads me, says I’m not as stupid as I make out. I kiss her once at a party. Well, maybe she kisses me. Hair like a satin pillowslip. Body all sprung as though she’s ready
to bolt. A long, long kiss, deep and playful as a conversation. But there at the corner of my eye is Biggie alone on the smoky verandah, waiting to go home. I don’t go to him straight up. I
do make him wait a fair old while but I don’t go on with Briony Nevis the way I badly want to because I know Biggie will be left behind for good. Not that I don’t think about her. Hell,
I write poems to her, draw pictures of her, construct filthy elaborate fantasies she’ll never know about. But I never touch her again. Out of loyalty. Briony isn’t exactly crushed. If
anything she seems amused. She sees how things are.
    And she’s right, you know, I’m not as stupid as I make out. It’s a survival thing, making yourself a small target. But even now, feeling kind of euphoric, buzzing up the
highway, I know I’m stuck in something that I can’t figure my way out of.
    You see, back in first year, right at the beginning when Biggie was my saviour and still doing his two weeks’ suspension for busting Tony Macoli’s nose, I kept notes for the full
fortnight and more or less wrote Biggie’s essays for him when he got back. He didn’t care if he passed or failed but I wanted to do it for him, and so what began as a gesture of
gratitude became a pattern for the rest of our schooling. I made him look brighter than he was and me a little dimmer. His old man preferred him to be a dolt. My mother expected me to be an
academic suckhole. Most of the time Biggie couldn’t give a damn but sometimes I think he really got his hopes up. I feel responsible, like my ghost work stopped him from learning. In a way I
ruined his chances. For five years I worked my arse off. I really did all our work. Out of loyalty, yeah, but also from sheer vanity. And the fact is, I blew it. I got us both to the finish line
but ensured that neither of us got across it. Biggie hadn’t learnt anything that he could display in an exam and I was too worn out and cocky to make sense. We fried. We’re idiots of a
different species but we are both bloody idiots.
    At New Norcia we pull in to fuel up and use the phone. Biggie decides that he’s not calling home so he sits in the VW while I reverse the charges and get an earful. My mother wails and
cries. I’m vague about my whereabouts and look out at the monastery and church spires and whitewashed walls of the town while she tells me I’m throwing my future away. I hang up and
find Biggie talking to a chick with a backpack the size of an elephant saddle. She’s tall and not very beautiful with long, shiny brown hair and big knees. She thinks she’s on the coast
road north and she’s mortified to discover otherwise. Biggie explains that this is the inland route, shows her on the map. She wants to get to Exmouth, she says. I can see Biggie falling in
love with her moment by moment. My heart sinks.
    There isn’t really even much consultation. We just pull out with this chick in the back. Meg is her name. I know it’s hot and she’s had a tough day but she’s on the nose.
She’s got a purple tanktop on and every time she lifts an arm there’s a blast of BO that could kill a wildebeest. Biggie doesn’t seem to notice. He’s twisted around in his
seat laughing and chatting and pointing and listening while I drive in something close to a sullen silence.
    Meg is as thick as a box of hammers. It’s alarming to see how enthralled Biggie is. He goes right ahead and tells her about life in the salmon camp every season when all the huts are full
and the tractors are