Jacaranda Blue by Joy Dettman

second was one of the boarders from Dorby, Leonie someone-or-other. They did it on the night of the school social. Leonie lived in at the school all week, then went back to the farm at weekends.
    â€˜Boring,’ the youth said as he carved two deep slits into the shelf. ‘How can they stand being locked in all week?’ It was bad enough going to school every day, without staying there at night.
    All the out-of-town kids got a late pass on the night of the school social, and Leonie what’s-er-name made hay while the sun shone. She made a lot of hay that night; he hadn’t been the only one who got onto her. Half the football team had already done it before him, and the other half were lining up for their turn after him. It hadn’t been much good, like sharing your condom.
    Old Stell was something else. ‘Radical, man,’ he said. ‘Animal.’
    Animal. The way it was meant to be. None of this sensitive new-age guy bullshit the whole world was pushing down your throat these days. Just hit ’em over the head with a club and drag ’em home to your cave by their hair and give it to them in the dirt.
    â€˜She liked it,’ he said to a sauce bottle. ‘She really liked it.’ He turned the bottle upside down and rammed its top into the now empty carton. It dented the cardboard, but didn’t go through. He looked over his shoulder again before slashing the carton with his knife – a horizontal, and a vertical – then with the bottle gripped before him, he hit the cross dead centre. The bottle penetrated. He ground it in, deeper and deeper, thrusting with his pelvis, grinding it in like he’d ground it into old Stell.
    Then the carton collapsed and he almost went down on top of it.
    â€˜Tommy?’
    â€˜What do you want?’
    â€˜What are you doing there?’
    â€˜Nothing.’
    â€˜Can you get some small packets of self-raising flour please? Mrs Wilson is waiting.’
    â€˜Yeah,’ he replied, then muttered low. ‘Let the old bitch wait.’
    I didn’t know there’d be blood though, he thought. He had thrown his under-daks out this morning, but his old man wouldn’t miss ’em in the wash. Plenty more where they come from – they got them wholesale from the supermarket.
    He’d gone for a ride around town before he came to work this morning, and he’d dumped his daks in old lady Murphy’s garbage can, then ridden his bike on past the minister’s house. Nothing was moving there, no cop cars, no nothing. He rode by the cop station too. It was just as dead.
    Bloody hick town. Nothing moved before eight. He hated it. Hated it like he hated this lousy supermarket. Hated hearing how lucky he was that his parents were putting money away for him to go to university in Sydney, money they saved by paying him a pittance to do the job they’d have to pay someone else ten dollars an hour to do.
    As if they couldn’t afford to send him to university without him working, and who but they ever said he was going to go to university anyway? You needed good marks to go to university, and his marks weren’t worth shit – not since he’d discovered sex. It was a drug. The more you had, the more you wanted. If they hadn’t made him work, then he might have found time for sex and school work.
    â€˜Their fault. Hardly any of the other kids at school are expected to work and study too, and they get a lot more than me for doing nothing.’
    His old man and lady expected him to go down on his bended knee and thank them for letting him lug boxes around all Saturday morning and half his holidays, while they doled him out ten lousy bucks a week. Ten bucks? It was nothing. He could get the dole if he left home. He’d be rich. Have a fortune coming in every week.
    Never mind, he thought. I take what I’m due.
    He unscrewed the top from the small bottle of sauce and slid his finger inside, slid it up