Taming the Beast by Emily Maguire

mistaken for an English tourist. She was the only person Jamie had ever seen who could have hair down to her arse without looking like a religious freak. It was shiny and not quite black, and when she tied it back, her ponytail was thicker than Jamie’s wrist. Her eyes were fucking terrifying.
    Of course he didn’t say any of this to Mike. He just shrugged and said, ‘She’s okay,’ and went to find Shelley.

2
    Most kids Sarah knew applied for their Learner’s Permits on their sixteenth birthday, spent a year of Saturdays learning to drive, received their Driver’s Licence on their seventeenth birthday, and on turning eighteen, a brand new car from Mum and Dad. Sarah managed the first step okay; at sixteen she was still – barely – living up to her parents’ expectations. But then everything went to hell, and she spent most of that year struggling to keep herself fed and clothed and in school, and so had neither the time nor the money to take driving lessons. Her seventeenth birthday was a blur of drinking, smoking and fucking, followed by another year of bareknuckled survival, and by her eighteenth she had decided it was better she didn’t have a licence because she was quite often either drunk or high, and besides, getting lifts from men was the easiest way to get them into her flat.
    The downside to her non-driver status was that she was reliant on the local private bus company to get her to and from work each night. As the only bus service in the district, it had no competition, and thus its drivers were careless about sticking to the timetable, sometimes ignoring it altogether and ending their shift an hour or two early. On these occasions – and after freezing her arse off at the bus stop for twenty-minutes, Sarah realised tonight was just such an occasion – she was forced to either walk, hitch or call Jamie. She had promised Jamie she would never, ever hitch, and she had promised herself she would only ever do it in daylight.
    ‘Shit.’ She stamped her feet against the cold, but her legs were tired after her double shift and the stamping hurt, so she stopped. She looked back at the steakhouse; she would have to go back inthere to use the phone. She really didn’t want to do that: the drunks started to get nasty after eleven and she was still in uniform which meant she couldn’t kick them in the nuts or tell them to go fuck themselves. Not without losing her job, anyway.
    ‘Shit. Shit. Shit.’ Her leather jacket was warm enough, but the wind whipped against her bare legs. Her sore, tired, cold, bare legs. She swore again, stepped to the edge of the footpath and stuck out her thumb.
    It didn’t take long – three or four minutes, seven or eight cars – before a late model Commodore station wagon pulled up alongside her. ‘Where you going?’ the driver called out. He was fortyish, dark, thinning hair, wire-rimmed glasses. Sarah peeked into the car: a child safety seat and a couple of picture books on the back seat; an empty diet coke can on the floor in the front; a blue bear with a polka-dot bowtie hanging from the rear-vision mirror.
    ‘North Parramatta. Just past the gaol. Is that out of your way?’
    ‘Not at all. Hop in.’
    The car smelt like the bottom of Sarah’s fridge, but it was warm and she was off her feet so she was happy. He drove like a man used to chauffeuring small children around. Slow, but with frequent, fast glances to the side, over his shoulder and into the rear-vision mirror.
    ‘Just got off work?’ he asked, glancing sideways and down at her legs.
    ‘Yeah. I normally catch the bus but it didn’t show up.’
    ‘Still though, you really shouldn’t get into cars with strange men.’
    Sarah looked at him. He had a lot of wrinkles around his eyes, and his nose was the tiniest bit crooked. From the front it probably wouldn’t even be noticeable, but Sarah was looking at him side on, and so she could see the kink that was probably from football or maybe squash. Not