90 Packets of Instant Noodles by Deb Fitzpatrick

knew I shouldn’t have read it tonight. I wish I’d never got it. He sounds weird—too cheerful—like there’s other stuff he’s not telling, or bad vibes going on in his head. It’s hard to tell because he’s always pretty dry, you know. Doesn’t let on much.
    The rain’s so loud now that I can barely hear myself think.
    There’s a sort of coldness around my foot. I look down. A puddle. On the floor, inside, and I’m standing right in it.
    â€˜Oh for fuck’s sake!’ I spit, ripping off my sock and almost taking my ankle in the process.
    I prise open the jammed cupboard under the kitchen sink and chuck all the rags and sponges I can see onto the water, and my sock for good measure. As I’m feeling around in the cupboard, I come across an old towel wrapped around something. I unwind the towel, keeping the thing at arm’s length, just in case.
    A torch falls out. A torch —finally, something fucking useful! I examine it, as though I know something about torches. It seems in reasonable nick. This could come in seriously handy. I open the battery compartment to rust and bubbled-out acid. I clean it out with the only dry rag left in the place—my other sock. Batteries. Of course: I don’t have any. I feel a slump coming on. Something else for the shopping list. I’ll have to wait days before I know whether it works.
    I look up at the ceiling. Water is almost running in along one of the wooden beams.
    â€˜Icecream container,’ I mumble, rummaging through the remaining cupboards. I yank my hand back. Big spider web. There’s too many surprises in this joint.
    I stay away from the cupboards. There’s movement in that web. Maybe a bowl will do. A large salad bowl. Cos I’ve been having so many salads since I’ve been down here—you know, with rocket and parmesan.
    I find a very seventies bowl and line it up so most of the drips hit it.
    It takes a while for me to realise that once the drips have hit the bowl, they then bounce out of the bowl.
    Oh, sweet baby Jesus, release me.
    Newspaper, I think wearily. I need some paper to put in the bowl so the drips are absorbed. I look around. That’s not something I’ve been doing much of, either, funnily enough: reading the papers. Craggs’s letter catches my eye. It’s paper. I snatch it, shove it into the bowl.
    It’s funny about Craggs. There’s this total other side to him. He’s got this thing about poor people—street kids and people asking you for money and stuff. Whenever we catch the train into town he ends up giving someone something. A dollar here, a ciggie there. He’ll give whatever he’s got to whoever asks. I’ve never seen him say no. Buskers in the mall, he’ll sling em a few coins. Little Aboriginal kids running around in a park—if they come over, he’ll swap the chat with them, throw their Frisbee back to em, kick the footy, whatever.
    These kids approached us in town one day. One says, ‘Gotta cigarette for me, man?’
    And Craggs just pulled out his smokes and let them go for it. There were two of them and they took two each.
    â€˜Thanks, brother.’
    He didn’t say anything when they went off, like it was completely normal.
    â€˜Jeez, man, don’t you mind?’
    â€˜Mind what?’ he said, looking at me. ‘It’s just a fucking smoke, Joel-boy.’
    â€˜Yeah and they’re about twenty bucks a pack.’
    â€˜Twenty bucks those dudes don’t have. You and I can thank our shining stars, sonny-boy,’ he said to me, grinning as he slapped me on the back.
    I guess I took his point. But it was a hard one to remember the night when I was on my own and three blokes came up to me at the Freo train station. They were the kind of dudes who wear basketball gear even though they don’t play basketball. Long and loping and hoody and shiny. Anyway, I didn’t hear what