Truck Stop by Lachlan Philpott Page A

tats.
    AISHA: Next page, girls with roses or orchids covering their vulvas… all of them smiling for the camera. All of them white.
    KELLY: Look Aisha.
    AISHA: Yeah I can see.
    SAM: She’s upset about her phone.
    KELLY: I got a spare one, you can borrow that.
    KELLY: What’s wrong Aish?
    Tell us Aish? You’re a skank you can say whatever you want.
    AISHA: A skank?
    SAM: Yeah.
    AISHA: Do you know what that means? What that says about us? Mum keeps asking what that means. I can’t tell my friends at home that now I’m here I’m a skank.
    SAM: It’s like, a joke.
    AISHA: Nobody else I know gets it.
    SAM: So?
    AISHA: Don’t you see?
    SAM: No.
    AISHA: I just didn’t think things would be so hard here. I don’t understand anything. I thought things were going so well. When I started school and I met you two and when we went to that party I met that guy and I thought… I felt really close to you both but…
    KELLY: What?
    AISHA: Is this what being a skank is?
    SAM has rolled up the magazine and she’s hitting her hand with it. KELLY looks away.
    I don’t want to have to spend my life lying.
    Lying about where I am going. Lying about where I have been. Lying about who I am with.
    Why is everything here a series of lies or dares or…
    Kelly you never tell us what you feel about your dad. Sam you always seem so mad about everything and I don’t understand why.This place is so cold. The way you all treat each other. And I’m just a curry and I feel so left out.
    SAM: Then go back.
    KELLY: Sam!
    SAM: No. If you don’t like the way we do things here why did you come?
    AISHA: I didn’t /
    SAM: You don’t want to be a skank then don’t be.
    I just stuck up for you. I just saved you from those black cunts and what? All you can say is you don’t like it here?
    Why don’t you take your stinky family and go back?
    AISHA: I wasn’t saying that I /
    SAM: You stuck up bitch. How dare you judge us when the place you come from must suck or you wouldn’t have left. I don’t want you hanging around us anymore. We don’t want you.
    Take your fucking ugly curry eating family and get back on the fucking boat. Nobody asked you to come here. You don’t like the way we live here? Then fuck off back home.
    AISHA: I didn’t mean /
    SAM: Don’t talk to me again bitch.
    SAM whacks AISHA with the rolled up magazine and leaves.
    Come on Kelly.
    KELLY hesitates then finally follows SAM . AISHA is left alone. After a time she gets up and leaves. A projection: ants running about.
    KELLY: Now.
    The waiting room.
    Same smell, same posters, same nurses, same doctor. Josie again.
    JOSIE: Hello Kelly.
    KELLY: Same room, same chair.
    She holds an envelope. Inside it the results of the tests.
    For HIV.
    KELLY stares at the envelope.
    JOSIE: How are you doing?
    KELLY: Been alright but I don’t want to talk, want to rip that envelope open so I know, so I…?
    JOSIE: I’ve already looked at your results.
    KELLY: Heart pumping in my ears. And?
    JOSIE: They’re fine. All negative.
    KELLY: You’re sure? It’s not a mistake or something is it?
    / I’m fine?
    JOSIE: You’re fine.
    KELLY: Do I have to come back again in three months or anything?
    JOSIE: No. That’s it.
    KELLY: So I can just go?
    JOSIE: You can go. But…
    KELLY: Yeah?
    JOSIE: I have been thinking about you a lot. I have been wondering something and… I think I just need to ask you this straight up.
    KELLY: Yeah?
    JOSIE: What made you do it?
    SAM: How it started?
    KELLY: You mean how what we did started?
    SAM/KELLY: It was her idea.
    KELLY: She said that but /
    SAM: It was our idea.
    It’s lunch at school. I’m sick to death of standing in the sun. Sick to death of how the guys get all the good places to hang out and how we are stuck there like fucking cows in a field so I say let’s get out of here. Just the two of us.
    KELLY: Out the school