1
I’ve never been very good at getting up early on Saturday mornings. I’m usually wasted
after frying my brain all week at school and Dad never stirs unless he’s working, so
there’s not much incentive. I used to drag myself up, get a bowl of cereal and hop back
into bed, watch music videos and then go back to sleep for a couple of hours. Those
awesome mornings have long gone.
I wish I hadn’t taken them for granted, cause who knows if I’ll ever get to sleep in
again? Things have changed. I have to get up for work now, and since I walked to work I
had to leave way too early. That didn’t mean I get up when I should though. I always
leave it as late as possible. So, on the weekend that my life took a serious plunge down
the toilet, I woke up at nine after forgetting to set my alarm, leaving me only half an hour
to get ready.
Unlike what I was about to go through, this was something I could handle easily.
First, I made sure I had the fastest shower possible. That’s difficult. I love long, hot
showers, washing my blonde hair slowly and rhythmically, just letting the steam clear my
head and the soap wash all over me. It’s probably the most peaceful part of the day.
Then, standing at the kitchen counter, I ate my cereal as fast as I could. I rarely eat
anything else. That’s probably why I’m as skinny as my dad. Sometimes I have a glass of
orange drink (not orange juice, it’s way too expensive), but most of the time I just wolf
down the cereal and slurp the milk from the bowl.
I quickly stuck on the same clothes I’d had on the night before. I’ve got pretty
simple tastes – jeans, white T-shirt, suede ankle boots. I wear the same thing almost every
weekend. Half the time the T-shirt has fallen off the chair in my room and is all creased,
but that’s OK. Customers never seem to notice.
I never wear much make-up, so that’s not a big problem either. I put on some
foundation to cover a few annoying zits and some eye shadow, but I kept it to a
minimum.
....

My hair is not even shoulder length and is dead straight, so I put it in a hair band
and a couple of clips and was ready to go.

This took less than half an hour. Walking to work took longer. But at least I’d be on
time. In fact, I’d probably be there before Crass and I’d have to wait until he turned up
fifteen minutes late looking like a human hangover.

I like walking to work when the weather’s nice. Not too hot, not too windy, and
definitely no rain. If it rained, I had to wake Dad up, and getting Dad up nowadays was
not an easy job.

I walked through Jubilee Park. Only a couple of people walking their dogs and me.
The dogs were all excited, straining at their leashes or running maniacally after tennis
balls. Dogs are always so happy. Every time I see a dog I wonder why I don’t have one.
In fact we don’t have any pets at all. They’ve all gone and died, including a couple of
cats, a goldfish and a white rabbit called Snow that Mum and Dad bought me for my
ninth birthday that lasted about two weeks before it escaped and feasted on snail bait next
door. Dad found it stiff as cardboard in the neighbour’s rose garden. We buried Snow in
the backyard and even now I don’t like stepping on her grave near the lemon tree.
Somehow I think it’s bad luck.

I couldn’t handle a pet, anyway. Who’d feed it? Who’d walk it? I do enough. But
it’d be nice to have some company on a weeknight when I’m alone in the house.
Although that’s not so common anymore. Usually Dad’s home, watching TV or swearing
at the buzzing fridge that has been threatening to blow up for, like, the last two years.

I could hear kids playing cricket somewhere behind the bowls club as I made my
way towards Main Street. Saturday is the big shopping day around here and the Rising
Sun bakery was pretty full when I walked pass it. Men with the newspaper stuck under
their arms were buying coffee and pastries and women loaded loaves of bread into the
storage compartment of prams. One mum was trying to coax her son into shutting up by
offering him a gingerbread man, but it didn’t work. He went on crying and she came out
the door with an exasperated look in her eyes. I heard her say, ‘You can’t have a meringue worm this early in the morning Damien!’ and he shouted back, ‘I want a worm!
I want a worm!’

I wondered what my Mum did when I was a snotty brat? She wouldn’t have put up
with it. Primary school teachers are experts at getting kids to behave. I wouldn’t have got
a gingerbread man as a bribe, that’s for sure.

My boots were beginning to hurt by the time I reached the store. They’re not great
to walk up hill in. I reminded myself to charge my MP3 player so I could listen to some
music after work for the walk home tomorrow. I finished early Sunday mornings and Dad
had stopped picking me up once Daylight Savings had started. I like the peacefulness of
the early morning, but I liked listening to music to unwind at the end of the shift.

The door to the store was opened when I reached it. Right on ten o’clock. Crass
was on time for once.

‘Oh well’, I said to myself as I walked in, ‘another day, another dollar.’ That’s an
expression I read in a book somewhere that stuck with me. It’s like the motto of the
casual student worker who does the stuff nobody else wants to for half the pay. I guess
there’s worse ways to spend a Saturday morning.

Boy, was I ever wrong.

2

..................................
pretty much started wishing I was back in bed as soon as Robert Keppler walked into
the store. Anything would be better than having to put up with Robert Keppler. He’s a
seriously weird guy.
I’d had my suspicions when I first met him three months ago. The fifteen minutes
he’d just spent taking me scene-by-gruesome-scene through a horror movie called Night
Falls confirmed it.
He is really, really strange.
I still don’t know why he felt the need to tell me everything about a dopey horror
that I have absolutely no interest in at all. I’d rather talk about Mexican Walking Fish,
and they totally creep me out. I felt like telling Robert to go and tell someone who cares.
But I didn’t. For some reason I just let him keep talking.
‘Night Falls was kinda lame in parts, but generally awesome,’ Robert said, his
tongue flicking between his teeth and his eyes bulging like ice cream tubs. ‘It’s about this
old woman, right? Her name’s Matilda. She lives way back in the 1800s in a town named
Night Falls. Pretty stupid name for a town, hey? But it is a horror movie, you know?’
I tried to smile while at the same time scan in a pile of DVDs. He didn’t seem to get
the hint that I wanted him to go…away…immediately.
‘So this old woman used to pay the local kids for teeth they'd lost, sort of like the
tooth fairy, yeah? But then these two kids mysteriously disappear, and the locals freak out
and they think she’s murdered the kids, so they hang her, right?’
As you do.
‘Sounds pretty freaky,’ I said, my eyes still on the DVDs I was returning.
I could smell his body sweat from the other side of the counter. It was a bitter, sour
aroma, like the smell of my dad’s work jumpers in summer. When I wash Dad’s work
clothes I feel the sweat cling to me for the rest of the day until the following morning’s
shower. Gross.
....

Robert’s heavy, knee length black coat clung to him tight, like cling film. It was
about two sizes too small. And what was with that coat anyway? It was almost summer
and I was only wearing a T-shirt.

Everything Robert wore was, in fact, black. His tight jeans with the frayed seams,
his faded Korn T-shirt and the scuffed Doc Martens with the flapping sole. The worst was
his beard, a scraggly thing that didn’t seem to know how to grow properly. Patches of it
covered up rashes and pimples on his blotchy face. At least he wasn’t wearing his hair
out this time. It was tied back in a pony tail. If he let it loose, wisps of hair would plaster
themselves to his forehead and neck like bits of loose cotton from his T-shirt.

‘Pretty freaky?’ he said, ‘Hell yeah! She’s standing in this kid’s room! Wouldn’t
you freak if you pulled back your sheets and saw her standing by your bed?’

I looked at him and thought I wouldn’t freak as much I was freaking out right now.
He eventually left. As usual he didn’t say thanks or bye, he just suddenly turned and left
mid-sentence, mumbling to himself. He talks, but he never talks to you. He never looks
you in the eye. It’s weird. He definitely has social problems.

Crass laughed from where he was standing in the comedy aisle. I’m glad he found
it funny. Robert gives me the creeps. I mean, I’m a fifteen-year-old girl. Horror movies
scare me. Grown men who are obsessed with horror movies scare me even more.

I picked up the DVD cover. It had two large hands pressed against a red, burning
sky, making it look as if someone was trying to escape from a stained glass bowl. There’s
no way I’d watch something like this. I’d be sticking with Ben Stiller and Drew
Barrymore. At least they made me laugh.

‘So, did ya have fun with Robert?’ Crass asked as he walked towards the counter.
‘Thanks for helping me out there,’ I replied. ‘I think he’s totally strange and you
just left me with him the entire time.’
Crass just laughed. ‘You know he’s rented almost three hundred movies over the
past year? A load of them were horror movies.’
‘Really? I didn’t even know we had that many.’


‘Yeah, I looked at his rental history on the computer. I’m telling ya Stacey, that’s
almost one every couple of friggin’ days!’

That made Robert the Video Saloon’s best customer by a mile.

Sighing, I opened the DVD cover of weirdo Rob’s movie to scan and return it. The
wrong disc was inside. It was a plain TDK disc with the words: “NIGHT FALLS:
MASTER COPY” scribbled in jerky, green marker pen.

‘Crass, look at this.’ I showed him the disc. ‘It’s a copy. The original disc is
missing. I reckon Robert has burnt the DVD and returned the copy by mistake.’

‘Jeez, he’s an idiot.’

‘You reckon he’s been burning all the movies?’

Crass shrugged, picked up the disc and twirled it around his finger. ‘I’ll give him a
call and ask him to return the original. God, what a total friggin’ loser.’

‘I bet he copies all those horror movies so he can watch them a hundred times
each,’ I said. ‘He probably memorises the lines.’

Crass took the disc and put it in the top pocket of his shirt. ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be the
worst if you were trapped in some old house with Robert?’

The thought made my skin crawl. ‘I’d totally freak.’

I placed the empty Night Falls cover to one side and gathered up the rest of the
returned videos and DVDs. There weren’t as many as there used to be on a Saturday
morning. The new Blockbuster store just out of town was slowly taking all our business
since it opened last Christmas. Nobody wants to go to a crummy old movie store when
you have a brand new Blockbuster. The Video Saloon had been opened in town for
fifteen years or more, but I wondered how much longer it would last. The December
summer holidays were coming up and school finished soon. I hoped I still had my part-
time job by then. At least the weekends continued to be busy – mainly because of the
half-price overnight offers we had. We were pretty busy Saturday afternoons and
evenings, which was good. Otherwise I’d have been outta here.

I returned the DVD discs to the shelf in the back of the store. In Blockbuster all the
DVDs were kept in their covers on the shelf. Not at the Video Saloon. We didn’t have any security gates so we had to walk out to the back office and get every disc or video
game off the shelf. It took ages.

Crass walked out with me to pick up his large green gym bag from the office. Every
Saturday afternoon he spent his lunch hour or two at the local gym. I didn’t mind. It was
peaceful without him, even when he got back so late I didn’t get a proper lunch. At least I
didn’t have to put up with him playing his hip-hop music over the stereo system and I
could even watch the odd romantic comedy when the store was really slow.

‘Catch you later, dude. Hey, maybe Robert will come back to keep you company,’
laughed Crass as he walked out of the store.

I cleaned some shelves and stood watching a preview disc of a kid’s film about
superheroes training robots to fight in a gladiator’s ring. I couldn’t really make much
sense out of it. Topps arrived soon after. He often dropped in on a Saturday afternoon
when he knew the coast was clear. With Crass gone we could talk in peace.

Before Topps could even give me a wave a customer walked in wearing plaster-
splattered overalls and smelling of sawdust. I put on my best friendly, welcoming smile.
‘Can I help you?’

‘Yeah, hi. Colin, the young guy who works here, said he a package for me. I’m a
bit early, I think, to pick it up…’

I looked at him blankly. Crass (Colin Sass was his real name, though nobody called
him that) said nothing to me at all about having a package waiting for this guy.

‘Don’t worry, I can come back,’ he said when he realised I didn’t know what he
was talking about. ‘While I’m here, though,’ he added, ‘my son reserved the cardboard
cut-out of Jim Carrey you had in the window a while back. Can I collect it? I have my
ute, so I’ll grab it now. It’ll be easier to carry.’

‘Did Colin say where he put it?’ I couldn’t remember seeing a Jim Carrey cut-out
anywhere.

‘Dunno. Maybe in the back somewhere?’

Jim wasn’t out the back. Perhaps down in the basement? That’s where most of the
cut-outs were kept. I’d been working in The Video Saloon for three months and had only been down to the basement once. Steps at the back of the office lead down to it. The
basement was full of old and broken video covers, shelving, tables, posters and broken
recorders. It was dark, dusty and cold. No way would I have volunteered to go down
there on a Saturday night by myself.

I looked for Jim, making it extra quick and snappy. It was scary down there. I
glanced under the stairs, behind some shelving and tossed a few movie posters around.
You’d think with a rubber face like his, Jim would be easy to spot. But he didn’t want to
be found. ‘C’mon Jim, it’s your pal Stacey. Where are you?’ I whispered.

I made it to the far end of the basement. Nothing. Crass could have put it anywhere.

Towards the corner of the basement sat a forlorn old shelf, empty apart from a
couple of dusty video covers. I moved it out the way, trying to avoid the dust heaped on
the top shelf, peaked over it, and gasped.


3
..........................
Behind the broken shelf was a Laminex table. On the table were five large stacks of
DVDs. There must have been a hundred discs – perhaps more. Next to the DVDs
lay a pile of glossy colour-copied covers of movies, most of which had not even been
released on DVD yet. Some, including one with Tom Hanks and another with Charlize
Theron, weren’t even in the cinemas in Australia as far as I knew! A list of labels with
addresses lay on top of postal envelopes on the ground. Unopened plastic boxes of blank
DVD discs were stored neatly under the table.
On the other side of the table lay a handful of console game discs next to a pile of
clear plastic covers and photocopied covers. I recognised one as a favourite of Topps’.
It looked like a real sneaky little operation. The DVDs and console games were
obviously copies. I picked up one of the discs, a film about drag racing in the streets of
Los Angeles. It was definitely pirated. Whose were they? My boss Vince was the only
one who bothered with anything down here. Crass just threw down empty boxes and the
odd poster. And what was with the envelopes and labels?
Kids were always swapping copies of DVDs, music and games at school, but they
didn’t look like these. They were always downloaded off the Internet or in photocopied
covers, bought in Fiji or Bali by older brothers and sisters on holiday. I once saw a
Spiderman movie on a pirated disc and had to put up with a lady suffering a sneezing fit
and the guy holding the camera moving it down to his lap when he reached for popcorn.
Then I’d missed the entire ending when a guy stood up in front of the screen and
practised what looked like Tai-Chi.
The covers of the DVDs, however, looked like the real thing. I wouldn’t have been
able to tell the difference from a new overnighter at the Video Saloon and one of these.
Someone had put a lot of effort into them.
I took the drag racing DVD and walked back up the stairs. I didn’t want to be seen
down here.
....

The customer had left when I returned to the counter. Weird, I thought, I’d only
been gone a few minutes.

‘What took you so long?’ said Topps. ‘I’m running out of movies to
recommend…’ I reached out and grabbed his arm in an effort to shut him up. ‘Topps,
you’ll never guess what I’ve just found.’

‘A signed poster of Megan Fox?’

‘No! Just take a look at this.’

I held the pirated DVD cover up to his face.

I let Topps take a good look at it, which he did with a slight look of bewilderment,
as if he knew he should be surprised or shocked, but couldn’t figure out why. ‘Yeah, it’s
a rev-head movie, like Fast & Furious. So what?’ he said.

‘Take a look at the disc and cover itself, Topps. Doesn’t it look suspicious? Like,
it’s not really original. There is a mega load of the stuff down in the basement too.’

It was only then I noticed Overalls-Man staring at me from the small snack bar on
my right. I hadn’t seen him when I bounded up from the basement and I thought he must
have left. Instead he had grabbed a DVD and a Diet Coke from the fridge and was now
staring at me with more than just casual bemusement.

‘Sorry, I couldn’t find the cut-out,’ I told him shakily. ‘You’ll have to come back
when Colin is here.’ He shrugged his shoulders and paid for the movie and Diet Coke.
‘You could have told me he was still here,’ I hissed at Topps as the guy walked out. ‘He
probably heard everything.’

‘Where did you think he’d gone?’ said Topps. ‘He was hardly going to run out of
the store. Anyway, I don’t know what you’re talking about, so I’m sure he doesn’t
either.’

‘I’m talking about pirated DVDs,’ I said. ‘Topps, I think Vince may be involved in
it big time, cause right below our feet in the basement is a big pile of illegal DVDs. All
the latest movies as well as covers, blank discs and loads of envelopes. It’s like a small
business down there.’ I gave Topps the drag racing DVD as proof. ‘And there’s games
too.’
‘Wow,’ said Topps, examining the cover and then the disc inside. ‘Nice cover, pity
about the disc. They could have done better than this. Obviously used a simple design
program and printer to apply the disc title.’ He put the disc back in the cover. ‘Do you
think Vince is selling the copies? Or perhaps he’s renting them out to customers?’

‘I don’t know, but there’s a lot of movies down there. Man, Vince must be stupid.
If the police find out they’ll shut the Video Saloon down for sure. Then I’ll have to work
at The Chicken Shack for six dollars an hour.’ I pulled at my blonde split ends. ‘Do you
think we should tell?’

Before Topps could answer Vince Gurrieri, of all people, walked into the store.
Topps made himself scarce and investigated the latest release section. Not a good look to
be talking to friends when the boss walks in and it wasn’t the first time he’d caught
Topps and I gossiping.

Vince looked stressed out. He had very little hair and the worry lines stained into
his forehead like the ochre swirls of an aboriginal art painting seemed out of control
today.

‘Where’s Colin?’ he asked.

‘Gone to lunch Vince.’

‘I don’t like him leaving you alone. I told him before,’ he snapped.

Vince always treated me as some little girl who couldn’t handle herself without a
guy around. It’s probably why he’d never let me work alone, which sort of defeated the
purpose of hiring cheap labour. Sure, he paid me nothing, but he had to pay Crass to look
after me on a Saturday afternoon.

Then he looked around the empty store. Topps was the only one in it. He was
pretending to read the back of a Battlestar Galactica TV series cover.

‘So, the joint is empty again,’ Vince said. ‘Every day is slowly getting worse. I
should get you a microphone and make you spruik for customers outside.’

‘I wouldn’t know what to say. It’d be a disaster.’
‘Hey, my cousin Frankie is missing his two front teeth. Having a conversation with
him is like talking to a wind tunnel. But he stands outside his restaurant and drags in three
hundred, four hundred people a night. Why couldn’t it work for us?’

I didn’t say anything and just let him have his whinge. Then I saw that Vince had
the pay envelopes in his hand. Boy, did I love those little white envelopes. Even more
than Vince loved whinging. I loved tearing mine open to see the orange tip of a twenty
dollar note poking out. Not that the envelope was often full. The only reason Vince hired
me was so he could pay me peanuts. Eight dollars an hour – and that’s on weekends.

‘Mate, what do I have to do to make more money?’ Vince asked, putting one arm
over my shoulder and gently squeezing it.

‘I don’t know, Vince. I often think that myself,’ I said, squirming a little.

‘Well, you’re no good to me then,’ he said, removing his arm. ‘Money is money,
and I need ideas. Now with that bloody Blockbuster store all my customers are beginning
to leave. I gotta start branching out. There’s no money in DVDs anymore.’

Vince gave his wart on the back of his neck an angry massage, complained that
Blockbuster was only popular because their store smelt “new” and that most of the films
made this year were rubbish and he wouldn’t watch them for free, so why would
customers pay six dollars to hire them? Then he left.

‘Vince sounds like he needs some happy pills, and what’s with the little hug?’ said
Topps.

‘Yeah, he does that a bit,’ I said, ‘it’s kinda totally creepy. Anyway, what’s up with
the DVDs though? Would he risk keeping pirated DVDs in his own store?’

‘Hey, maybe he watches too much Sopranos; you know, thought some old-
fashioned Cosa Nostra counterfeiting might make things spark up.’

I had to admit Vince was looking more and more desperate. The last time I worked
with him, all he did was complain. But that was Vince. He whinged about his estranged
wife’s spending habits and child support of his kids, his 4WD that kept breaking down,
about government taxes and GST and the film distributors who charged him a hundred
dollars a DVD. I looked around the empty store. Vince probably did have a good excuse
to resort to renting and selling illegal DVDs.

Topps walked behind the counter and into the office. ‘I’m going to take a look. See
what sort of operation Vince has.’

‘What about Crass? He’ll be back soon.’

But Topps had already gone out the back and down the stairs. Oh, man. I’d admit
he was one of the smartest kid I knew, but sometimes he just had no idea. I could feel
myself immediately beginning to sweat. I was about to yell out to Topps to get his butt
back to the counter when the store door opened.

It was Vince again. ‘Topps!’ I tried to hiss as I backed away from the counter,
trying not to look panicky and suspicious. Instead my voice froze up in fright.

‘I hafta grab…something,’ Vince said as he walked around the counter towards the
back. What if he found Topps poking around the office or down the basement with a
couple of Vince’s pirated DVDs in his hands? I had to do something and fast.

‘VINCE!’ I said, a little too loudly. He jumped.

‘What?’

‘Er…I was thinking. The new Nicole Kidman movie.’

Vince raised his wormy eyebrows and looked at me. ‘What about it?’

‘It’s just that you’ve put it on the bottom row of the new releases. I heard it was
really good. Don’t you think we should move it up so customers will see it?

‘Do what you want,’ said Vince. ‘As long as they rent the stupid thing.’

He walked into the backroom towards the stairs. I heard the first wooden stair
creak. Then the second. He was going down the basement. Oh man, this was bad. This
was really bad. I hadn’t wanted Topps to go down there in the first place. And he was
such a skinny little runt, with his gawky stare, his glasses and slouchy walk and hair stuck
up like a carrot. Vince would probably beat him up.

‘Hey, VINCE!’

He rushed back to the counter thinking something serious had happened. I didn’t have a clue what to say now. I just wanted to give Topps a warning. I
fumbled around with ideas. ‘Um, Vince, I wanted to ask you about the err...’ I looked
around the counter wildly until I saw the cash register. ‘The emergency alarm underneath
the register. Does it still work?’

Vince didn’t say anything for a minute. Then he looked really annoyed. ‘Yes it still
works! Why do you ask me these stupid questions, eh?’

‘Well, you know, what if there was some sort of emergency?’ I reasoned. ‘Is it
connected to the police station or something? I’ve never been told.’

‘Why don’t you press it and find out, yeah? I sat on it three years ago and the police
where in here in five minutes waving their revolvers around, so I’m guessing the thing is
still okay, okay?’ He threw his hands in the air again, turned around and walked straight
into Jim Carrey.

Vince staggered backwards and Topps put the cut-out on the ground. It was life size
and taller than his slight frame.

‘I found Jim,’ said Topps. ‘He was hanging around beneath the stairs. A customer
asked for it.’

‘Gimmie a break here,’ said Vince. ‘What are you doing the hell in my office?’.

‘I’m Peter Topolski, I come here all the time. I’ve rented every one of your South
Park discs and most of your Manga titles. I just wish you’d get more in.’

Vince looked at me and narrowed his eyes. I could see his nose hairs sprouting
defiantly as he flared his nostrils. A most unpleasant face. ‘What’s going on here? The
office is for employees only. Not your boyfriends.’

‘Sorry Vince. He was helping me out.’

‘Maybe I should hire him instead then, yeah?’

Vince stalked out the back and down the stairs. Topps looked at me and grinned
like a moggy cat. ‘He called me your boyfriend.’

‘He didn’t say it in a nice way. He said it in a really sarcastic way.’

‘Are you sure? He seems like a serious sort of guy who wouldn’t throw around
words like that.’
‘You wish.’

I grabbed the cut-out of Jim and made a big deal of putting it safely behind the
counter. Topps was my mate; a good mate. Just like Skye. We’d been best friends for two
years but we weren’t a couple and, as far as I was concerned, we never would be. I just
didn’t have any feelings for him beyond friendship. Why couldn’t it have stayed that
way? I guess deep down I knew he liked me, even though he pretended to only joke about
it. It got a reaction from me because I didn’t find it funny. I just hoped it was his
hormones and he’d grow out of it.

At school I had to put up with constant questions and teasing and laughs about me
and Topps. Girls like Courtney Jarratt, who thought because she had a boyfriend we all
needed one. So she went out with Year Nine’s resident hero because he made it to the
All-Schools long jump championship and came second. Big deal, he could jump a couple
of meters, so what? And so what if they’d been going out for a year and a half and he’d
given her an forty dollar gold necklace from Bevilles? Did that give Courtney the right to
set up every other girl in our class?

No, I liked things the way they were. Being able to watch Anime or Jack Black
movies without Topps trying to slip his arm around me, or getting all mushy when we
were alone walking through the park. We could just have a good laugh and goss. That’s
what I wanted in a friend at the moment. All that romantic stuff was sort of gross, if you
thought about it. I’d never tongue wrestled a guy, and I wasn’t about to start. French
kissing? Yuck. It’s okay for people like Jessica Alba. They got paid millions to do it.

‘Try and make some money for me, yeah?’ said Vince as he left, a bunch of
paperwork stuck under his arm. ‘And make sure your boyfriend pays for his movies.’

When Vince was gone I said, ‘You were lucky to get out of that, dopey, but hey,
did you get down to the basement?’

‘Yeah, but I only got a real quick look. The covers are good quality, that’s for sure.
Digitally printed. You can tell they’re fake, but people would pay seven, maybe eight
bucks for them, no problem…’ But Topps didn’t get time to even move. Crass walked in as we were arguing. He
didn’t look happy. He dumped his gym bag in the backroom and came out brushing his
peroxide blonde hair in that spiky-echidna look he loved.

‘Any action?’ he asked.
‘Vince came in to drop the pay packets off. They’re in the top drawer.’
‘What? Oh man, he hates me leaving you here alone.’
‘He said that too.’
Crass swore for at least half a minute. Something was bugging him. A few


customers came in so Topps waved goodbye. I told him I’d speak to him later.
‘That your boyfriend?’ said Crass as he scanned videos in for a customer.
‘No. He’s just a mate.’
‘Righhht...’ he said, drawing out the word sarcastically.
‘He really is just a mate.’
‘You two seem to hang out a bit though.’
‘Yeah, as mates.’
‘Righhht...’
I gave up trying to justify myself.
Then the last person I wanted to see walked, or rather, stalked into the store.
Robert Keppler.


4
..................................
he Video Saloon store wasn’t very popular. It’s big, old and crusty. Movie posters
peeled off the wall and paint flaked off the white ceiling. Everyone in town called it
the “Video Loon” because the “S” and “A” were missing from “Saloon” on the sign
outside. I thought Vince should change the name completely. I mean, we don’t even rent
videos anymore. Should it be called the “DVD Saloon” or “The Movie Saloon” or
something?
It was too big as well, almost four times the size of the other shops on Main Street.
It looked bare and cold when there were no customers, and dark and dreary in winter. The
counter was right at the back of the store and customers were always complaining
because they had to walk all the way down the store to make a return, unlike other rental
stores, where the counter is always at the front door.
Still, at least I had a job. There weren’t many jobs in Rosedale. Not for year ten
secondary school girls, unless you put your name down on the Coles waiting list or didn’t
mind putting up with greasy hands and the smell of fried fat at the Chicken Shack.
I worked with Crass on weekends and an evening or two during the week. Crass
worked at the Video Saloon full-time where he spent most of his day watching the store
TV. My dad would have called him a no-good slacker before my dad actually became a
no-good slacker himself. That’s why I got this job. Anyway, one thing for sure, when I’m
19 I won’t be working in a video store like him. I’ll be out of this town. Live in Rosedale
all my life? That’s not for me. Who’d want to live in a town in the far reaches of the
galaxy? It’s so far away from anything.
Not everyone thinks like I do though. My friend Skye lives in the Bracken Lake
estate just outside of Rosedale and she loves the place. ‘Stacey Fallon, you’re wrong,
Rosedale is so cool,’ she said to me during my last rant about the town as we walked
around the lake that her estate is named after. ‘It has tennis courts, bike paths and it even
has a skating rink.’
....

A skating rink? Whoopee! Awesome! Let’s stay here forever! Anyway, compared
to a hole like Bracken Lake, Rosedale would seem like some bustling metropolis.

The best thing about getting out of Rosedale? I wouldn’t have to put up with
Robert’s total weirdness.

Robert looked tired, like he had just got out of bed. To my relief he ignored me and
went straight to Crass. He gave Crass a DVD disc. Crass walked to the counter and
casually dropped it in front of me. It was the Night Falls disc. Crass had obviously rung
Robert and asked him to return it.

Robert followed Crass to the counter. He looked embarrassed and kept his eyes on
the ground.

‘It’s illegal to burn DVDs mate,’ Crass said to him with the same soft-as-barbedwire
tone as my principal, Huffy Kilpatrick (named because of her habit of huffing at you
before the start of any conversation) used during school assemblies. He handed back the
blank silver disc Robert had accidentally returned to us, which I thought was overly
generous. It was a copy after all. I thought he should have thrown it away. Crass held it
away from Robert’s grasp for a few seconds, as if leaving the disc where we could all see
it magnified the crime.

‘Yeah, I know,’ said Robert, his shoulders hunched and hands in his coat pockets.
‘It was just for my own collection, you know, just so I could watch it again.’

‘Pretty stupid to give back the copy then. Or were you trying to rip us off by
keeping the original?’

‘No! It was a mix up. I’m sorry man, yeah, it was stupid.’

Crass turned to me with a smile. ‘So Stacey, think we should slap a ban on him for
this or what?’

For copying one DVD? When there were hundreds right under our feet in the
basement? I told Crass that it wasn’t a big deal. Robert paid to rent the DVD, that was the
most important thing.

‘Paid?’ laughed Crass. He looked at Robert with a sneer. ‘I’ve always wondered
Robbo, where do you get all the money for your DVDs? You’re unemployed, right?’ Robert nodded his head sullenly. ‘So then, a DVD is six dollars a night and half-price
during the week. You watch a couple of hundred a year. That’s a lot of dosh. You must
be raking it in.’ Robert didn’t answer. ‘Go on, get out of here,’ said Crass. ‘And if you
want to copy DVDs, burn them from Blockbuster. Not from us!’

Robert gave Crass a sharp look, then hurried out of the store with his bouncing,
gaping walk. ‘I don’t know if I’d have said that, Crass,’ I said when he’d gone. ‘He’ll
never come back here again and he’s out best customer.’

‘Doesn’t mean anything to him. He’s a geek,’ said Crass, dismissing Robert with a
wave. ‘He’s used to people talking crap to him. Anyway, he’ll be back tomorrow. He
likes the staff.’ Crass gave me one of his thin lipped smiles and walked back to the
console games shelf. He could be so obnoxious sometimes. It made me want to thump
him.

I snatched the Night Falls DVD and squeezed the scanner trigger. The movie was
added to the “Returned Rentals” list. If a customer returns a DVD late a warning flashes
onto the screen. You could also press the F7 key and take a look at the customer’s profile:
address, fines, rental history, how much money a customer had spent. Usually I took little
notice of customer profiles.

I saw that Robert’s fines were zero. He usually came in every Saturday afternoon I
worked and as far as I knew he’d never handed in his rentals late. I wondered just how
much money he had actually spent on rentals. It must have been hundreds and hundreds
of dollars. If Robert was unemployed that’d mean he spent most of his money in the
store. Was it possible? I suppose if you don’t have a job, watching movies is one way to
pass the time. Then why didn’t he just download them from the Internet for free?

Feeling slightly self-conscious and sneaky, I pressed the F7 key and then selected
“rental history”. At the top of the screen was a text box which read: TOTAL RENTAL
SPEND FOR YEAR: $34.00.

Thirty-four dollars in ten months? That couldn’t be right. That’d be only eight or
nine rentals, even if he did get them at half price. I downloaded his rental history.
Holding down the cursor I ran through the list of rentals. It was long. I knew it would be.
277 films in the past year, exactly the same number as Crass had told me. He has a good
memory. I scanned through the names: Wolf Creek; Saw IV; Land of the Lost; The
Notebook; Semi-Pro; American Gangster; Wrong Turn; Blade Runner; The Hills Have
Eyes. They weren’t all horrors, that’s for sure. And what was with The Notebook? That
was like a mega weepie film from years back. That was a really weird choice for Robert.

Next to each film on the rental history was the charge for each rental. Nearly every
one of them was listed with the same charge: CREDIT $0.00. A credit meant we’d rented
it out for free. Robert hadn’t paid for hardly any of his movies. Fair enough, he may have
used the odd shop-a-docket voucher or his privilege card to get free rentals, but surely he
had spent more than thirty-four dollars?

Next to the charge was a code for the staff member who completed the transaction.
You had to logon each time you used the computer. That way if you didn’t collect fines
or if you charged the wrong amount or the end-of-day balance didn’t add up, Vince
would have known who stuffed up.

Next to nearly every one of Robert’s recent rentals was Crass’ login name: COL. I
kept scrolling until I saw STA. My login name was only next to a handful of titles. I
always made him pay. I looked at some of the titles under my login name. The last one
was a gory slasher flick. I remember renting it out to him a month ago, because Crass had
gone to lunch and Robert had gone on and on about the director of the film being the best
new director out there. The film had been paid for at half price, as Robert had a Saloon
privilege card – a scheme Vince had tried a couple of years before, but it had never
caught on with customers – that gave you half price on new releases during the week.
Soon enough you could get half-price overnighters any weekday regardless. But Robert
still liked to use his card.

It was weird that Robert rented so many videos but hardly any from me. Always
from Crass. Yet I remember him constantly returning DVDs to me, sometimes up to three
or four on a weekend. I saw him every weekend, yet I’d only ever rented four or five
titles to him. I scrolled back to the top of the list to look at the transactions from earlier in the
year. Again, Crass completed nearly all the transactions until around March. Then I saw
another regular login name – KAT – beside a number of titles. The dates for KAT’s
transaction ended in June. I started in mid-July when I answered an ad in the local paper,
along with nearly every other teenager in town. Again, nearly every rental charge of
KAT’s read: CREDIT $0.00.

KAT? Who was KAT? I thought back to the previous assistants. I never took much
notice of them when I was a customer – which was rare anyway. Topps or Skye seemed
to do all the renting, as I couldn’t afford a movie every week. I remember a guy who
always wore a red baseball cap. I didn’t know his name. And an older girl from school. A
pretty blonde. Was she KAT? And if so, what was her name? Kate? Katrina? I’d ask
Topps. He’d been a regular at the Video Saloon for years.

I was so absorbed I failed to notice a customer standing at the counter. I looked up
to see him politely waiting. He had put his hands on the counter and was staring at a
movie playing on the store TV – an old kid’s super-hero animation film, The Incredibles,
that I still found cool. That was the one really good thing about working at The Video
Saloon. You could watch any movie you wanted. At other DVD stores you were
supposed to run a preview tape of all the latest releases. So it was like watching an eight-
hour clip of the same movies, over and over again.

The man had on the crispest, best ironed shirt I’ve ever seen. I noticed the sharply
ironed folds, like the ridge of a inclined hill, on his sleeves. He was old, maybe fifty, with
a pepper-and-salt moustache splashed with silver and streaks through his thin hair. He
looked tired, his eyelids were slightly droopy and when he smiled it looked like it took a
lot of energy out of him.

Crass was at the other end of the store pretending to tidy up the comedy section. He
looked like he was counting the number of videos, a strange habit of his I’d noticed not
long ago. He didn’t bother to make a move when he looked up and saw the customer at
the counter.

‘Hi,’ I stammered. He had given me a fright.

‘Hello there, I wondering if Mr Gurrieri is in.’

‘No, he doesn’t work on the weekends.’

The man reached into his pocket and took out a business card and showed me. The
title on the card read: Detective Sergeant P C Rooks, Croydon CIU.

‘I was talking to Mr Gurrieri a while back,’ the man, obviously Detective Rooks,
said. ‘Can you ask him to contact me? My number is on the card.’

‘Okay, I’ll leave it for him.’

‘It’s nothing important, get him to give me a call sometime next week. I’m visiting
all the video stores in the area. I’m part of a regional response unit dealing with pirated
goods.’

‘Oh, really, like pirated discs?’ I asked, my voice raising a higher octave than usual.
I felt my face flush slightly. The detective looked at me for about a second longer than I
felt comfortable with.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘We’ve caught a few people selling them at local markets. I’m
asking around to see if any of the stores have had any problems. Any distributors offering
to sell illegal discs or computer games to them, that sort of thing.’

‘Okay, I’ll get him to call you.’

‘Good girl,’ said the detective, giving me a smile and walking out. Crass, listening,
watched him go and then sauntered to the counter.

‘What was that about? After copies of Police Academy: Pigs on Patrol, or what?’

‘No. He was asking about illegal discs. Copies. Caught people selling them at local
markets.’

I had to watch what I said. I wasn’t sure that Crass knew about the DVDs
downstairs.

‘What did he ask you?’

‘Wanted to know if Vince had been sold illegal copies.’

‘Don’t think so. Have you noticed any?’

Me? Yeah, Crass, as a matter of fact I had noticed a few. Such as the huge pile
sitting in the basement. Perhaps I should have told the detective about them. I could have
got myself a big reward. Would I have dared to? If I did Vince would be in big trouble.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think I could tell the difference between an original and a copy
anyway.’

Crass snorted. ‘I don’t like cops,’ he said. ‘My older brother was always getting in
friggin’ trouble with them. They had it in for him big time. Got him driving an
unregistered GT Ford doing 150 down Main Street. Also turned out to have some
contraband in the back seat – a decent bag of dope that wasn’t his. Got done big time. So
let Vince deal with ‘em. It doesn’t worry me. As long as they leave me alone.’

That was when Crass saw the computer screen. I followed his gaze to Robert’s
rental profile. I had forgotten to logout of it when Detective Rooks had turned up.

‘What are you looking at that for?’ Crass asked.

‘It’s just Robert’s rental history. Remember you said I should check it out? Well, I
thought I would see how many horror movies he had rented. You’re right, it is scary!’

I left it at that. I knew when you tell a lie you shouldn’t go into a long explanation.
Leave it short. Otherwise it gives you away. I got that from Law and Order. There’s
always someone lying on that TV show. You can tell when they’re telling the truth or are
all shifty and flat out lying.

Crass thought about what I’d said for a moment. ‘Perhaps I should have told that
cop about Robert pirating our movies.’

‘You’d really do that?’

‘Nah. Just joking. After all, he’s our best customer.’

5
............................
I’d been cooking for Dad for a couple of years. It was either that or live on a constant
diet of fish & chips and BBQ chops with over steamed vegies. Dad was never a good
cook and it gives me something to do at night instead of watching TV.
My favourite is lasagne. It took me at least five attempts to get it right though. The
first few times I kept tearing the pasta layers apart, the white sauce could have been used
in art class for glue and the pasta sauce was bitter.
So I did some surfing and came up with a sure fire hit. First, use instant lasagne
sheets. Second, make the bolognaise sauce yourself with tomato soup, crushed canned
tomatoes and a couple of spoons of brown sugar to make it sweet. I also use celery,
mushrooms and a few slices of bacon strips. Beautiful. The white sauce still gets me, but
as long as you keep stirring it, no problems.
The best thing about lasagne is freezing it. I can get three, sometimes four meals
out of one tray. There’s no way I’m cooking every night, and lasagne actually tastes
better with age. It can be too sloppy when freshly made.
When I got home from work I threw two pieces in the microwave and then cooked
up my second speciality – roasted vegetables. It’s something I worked on at school and
have perfected over the past year. The secret to good roast potatoes and pumpkin is to
smother it all in heaps of olive oil and sprinkle on seasoning and garlic powder. Dad
doesn’t like buying olive oil because it’s too expensive, but since I do the shopping with
him I always smuggle it into the trolley. It’s way better than sunflower oil.
The roasted vegetables sizzled in the oven as I set the table. Dad was watching a
reality cooking show in the living room. This was bad news, as Dad hates reality TV.
When he watches crap it usually means he’s on a downer. Usually I’d just plonk his plate
on a tray and we’d both eat in front of the TV, but my lasagne and roasted veggies
deserved better than that, especially as I actually worked all day as well. I think I was
beginning to realise what a lot of married women’s lives were like. Work hard, come
....

home and have your partner sitting in a recliner itching his bum with you in the kitchen.
Sounds kind of sucky if you ask me.

I don’t think we’ve had new utensils or a table cloth since Mum died, but I tried my
best anyway. I used the two plate coasters with the Matisse paintings, two clean glasses
and even put out some paper napkins.

‘Table’s looking good.’

Dad stood leaning on corner wall watching me finishing the table.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘You know that lasagne and roasted vegetables deserve the full
treatment. May as well put some effort in.’

Dad rubbed his whiskered cheeks. ‘Perhaps I could go whip down the shop and buy
a Danish for dessert?’ he said.

‘Nah, we’ve got ice-cream, and I can open a can of fruit salad,’ I said. Dad look
relieved he didn’t have to go out, and I knew he didn’t want to spend any money on
dessert. The ice-cream and fruit salad were both cheap home brand and they were for
special occasions. The only time we’d get away with a Danish would be if Queen Mary
of Denmark popped around for a chat.

I made sure the lasagne and vegetables were steaming hot before I served them
(nothing worse than a lasagne with a cold centre) and we both sat down to eat. I did most
of the talking, as usual. Dad just smiled and listened.

‘Vince is really angry because the games are coming back scratched,’ I said, giving
Dad the highlights of the day. ‘He just bought another copy of Assassin 2 and now we get
it back today, and I go to return it, and there’s an awesome scratch right across the disc.
He’s going to go, like, off his head when he finds out tomorrow. They cost a hundred
dollars each.’

‘Crazy,’ Dad said, smiling. He usually perked up a bit after my lasagne.

I went quiet for a bit, thinking about what else happened. There was no way I was
going to bring up the pirated discs until I spoke to Topps. I thought I’d just leave that one
lie for a while. It was when I went quiet I noticed how big the kitchen table was. I used to
sit against the wall, Dad next to me and Mum across from me nearest to the kitchen. It took a couple of years for me to change seats and sit where Mum always did. But the
table still looked too large even with half of it full of bills and letters and hardware tools.
I suddenly decided I preferred to eat in front of the TV. It wasn’t as if Dad had a huge
deal to say anyway.

‘It’s amazing how customers treat the games and DVDs,’ I said. ‘They must play
Frisbee with them or something.’

Dad laughed. ‘You wouldn’t believe some of the items they return at the Hardware
Barn either,’ he said, scooping up a fork full of lasagne and roast carrots. ‘The other day,
or was it the other week, well, a lady brings in a gardening fork and asks to return it. Too
heavy for her, apparently. Only problem is it’s caked with dirt. She’s used the fork in the
garden, probably planted what she needed too, then when she’s finished with it she’s
decided she wants a refund!’

‘Did you tell her to fork off?’ I laughed. Dad pointed the fork at me. ‘No, but that’s
what we should have done. Good one Stacey.’

The laughter sort of broke the unspoken feeling of sadness that sometimes descends
on us at dinners. It still happens. It’s good to see Dad laugh.

‘Oh, I need a beer,’ he said, still smiling and getting up from the table. ‘Want
anything?’

‘No,’ I said, wishing he could leave the beer alone for one night. ‘But you can’t
have beer with lasagne, it ruins the taste.’

‘Nothing can ruin the taste of a cold beer,’ Dad said, opening the fridge.

‘I meant the taste of lasagne,’ I said.

Later I piled the dishes into the sink while Dad sat down with his beer and his ice-
cream and fruit salad. This’d be the best dinner we’d have for a few weeks, that’s for
sure, because I wasn’t going to put in an effort like this every night.

I started to fill the sink, then turned the tap off. Let Dad do it, I thought. He wasn’t
going anywhere for the next few days. It’d give him something to do. Why should I do all
the work? But then I saw the lasagne dish. White sauce and burnt pasta had dried along
the rim of the dish and bolognaise stained the base. It looked so dirty and Dad wouldn’t clean it properly either. He’d probably leave it in the sink until the end of the week. I
hated having the dishes pile up. So I ended up washing them myself. I didn’t even use the
dishwasher, a horrible old thing that was loud and wasted too much water.

Sometimes I feel like I’m nothing but a fifteen year-old housewife.


6
..............................................
I waited until I could hear Dad snoring in his recliner before I rang Topps. I didn’t want
Dad to listen in. ‘Hey dude,’ I said when Topps answered. Even though there was five
in his family, Topps always answered the phone at his house. I think it’s because a
cordless phone sits right next to his computer.
‘Hey,’ he replied absent-mindedly.
After hearing that far away voice, I knew immediately that Topps was either
playing World of Warcraft on his PC; updating his homepage or fiddling around with
something technical such his remote-control car motor that was always in need of repair.
I love talking on the phone. It’s much better than face-to-face. I just feel more
comfortable and free to speak my mind. Skye is my best phone-buddy. We can talk about
everything and anything, seriously, for an hour without stopping for breath. It’s one of
the reasons I’m not allowed a decent mobile, though I’m planning on getting a Motorola
this Christmas from Dad. At the moment I have to put up with a pre-paid phone that is at
least five years old and dies at random times throughout the day.
My all-time phone record? Last summer when Skye had come back from the Gold
Coast with an awesome story about almost drowning in the surf. It took two and a half
hours to tell it.
Now Topps, he’s different. He loves to talk but on the phone he’s really average.
He’s always distracted and never listens to what I’m saying. ‘Ah…huh…yep…okay,’
he’d mumble as I waxed on about the store or an assignment or my dad’s latest bad
mood. Boys just don’t get phones.
This time, however, he listened.
I explained about the visit by Detective Rooks and Crass being fairly unhappy
about it. Then I told him that according to the store computer Robert Keppler had rented
almost three hundred DVDs in the past year – most of them for free.
....

‘How does he get DVDs for free?’ asked Topps after I had explained how so many
of his DVD listings displayed CREDIT $0.00 and how easy it was to credit customers for
rentals. ‘You think Crass rents them all to him? Crass doesn’t exactly come across as a
generous sort of guy.’

‘Dunno. Perhaps Crass feel sorry for him because he’s unemployed?’ Although, I
thought, his smart arse cracks this afternoon said otherwise.

Then I remembered the previous login name I saw: KAT. I asked Topps who it
could be. He knew immediately. ‘Only the second best looking chick who ever worked at
the ‘Loon.’

‘Do you have a name Topps, or are you going to start drooling down the phone?’

‘Of course. Who could forget her? Caitlin Allende.’

Caitlin Allende. I knew who he was talking about. Caitlin Allende of the swirling
blonde hair and the blue eyes and the school uniform that was just a little too small. A
very deliberate ploy, I felt, to show off her long, tanned legs. She was in Year Twelve
and had played the lead role of Sandy in the school production of Grease. I thought her
rendition of “Hopelessly Devoted to You” sucked, but Topps loved it and sang it at
school the next day all through our game of indoor hockey.

Being incredibly beautiful, popular and two years old than me, I had never spoken
to her. Topps wanted to change all that.

‘We should talk to her, you know,’ he said. ‘She suddenly left The Video Saloon
several months back. I was heartbroken, of course. It’s like losing your first true love.’

‘Give it a rest Topps. You’ll make me throw up. Why would we want to talk to her
anyway?’

‘She could help us out. Give us some clues. Perhaps she knows something about
the stash of DVDs in the basement? Hey, you could also apologise to her too.’

‘For what?’

‘Taking her job. You replaced her.’

‘Should it be a verbal or do you want me to write a formal “sorry”?’

‘Verbal will be fine.’


I thought it was a dumb idea to speak to Caitlin, even though she had, like Crass,
rented out DVDs to Robert for free. A coincidence? Still, I thought it was pointless and I
definitely didn’t want to tell her about the stash in case she told Crass or Vince.

‘C’mon Stace, this is like one of those awesome Secret Seven books we read in
primary school where the kids solve the crime,’ said Topps, all excited. ‘We’ve got to
take this further by talking to Caitlin.’

Before I could tell Topps how much of a stupid idea it was, Dad barked from the
living room: ‘Stacey, would you get off that phone! You’ve been on it for ages!’
‘You just want an excuse to talk to Caitlin,’ I said, trying to finish off the
conversation. ‘She isn’t that great.’
‘Hey, I never said she was. After all, I said she was the second best looking chick at
the Video Saloon.’

‘STACEY!’ my dad bellowed from the family room. I heard him shift on the
recliner. I used it as an excuse to hang up on Topps. I didn’t want to hear who he thought
was number one.

I went and apologised to Dad. I’d virtually sat on the phone this week. Better to say
sort, it would save a beery lecture later on. Still, if we had broadband I could use Skype
for free.

‘Stacey,’ he said, ‘you know how tight money is at the moment.’
‘We’re not exactly at the starving stage Dad. You make us sound like we’re like,
totally poor. If we can afford beer, we can afford a few phone calls.’

Dad, cut, shrunk back down into the couch. ‘They’ve reduced back my hours at the
store. So it’ll be fairly tough going this month until they need me again full-time for
Christmas.’

Dad worked at a hardware store out of town. One of those giant warehouses that
blight the landscape. He used to be manager of the tradesperson’s accounts but quit when
Mum died. He couldn’t handle the stress. Now he shelves nails and helps answer
customer queries about outdoor acrylic paint. I don’t think he enjoys it.
It’s one reason I was so happy to get the job at the Video Saloon. I hated asking
Dad for money and this way I earned my own cash. If it wasn’t for my job I’d never get
to the cinema, never get any new clothes and I’d even struggle to buy my magazines each
month. I’d even paid for a birthday present for Skye last month because I didn’t want to
ask Dad for any money. If I wanted anything, I had to pay for it. How we’d afford the
text books for school next year when the workload started to really increase, I didn’t
know.

I’d be jeopardising what money I did earn by telling him about the DVDs, that’s for
sure.

‘Don’t worry Dad,’ I said, patting his hands. I drew them over my shoulder and
hugged him. Something I don’t do so much anymore. He hugged me back and I could
feel his bony ribs. He’d lost weight this year. He was skinnier than me. It made me feel
sort of sad. I felt his bristles rub against my cheek. He had bad skin. Wrinkled and
blotched and tight with worry. His grey hair looked limp. His general appearance was not
helped by a boring, daggy grey tracksuit than hung off him like a scarecrow.

I think I got over Mum’s death a whole lot quicker than he has. In fact, I don’t think
he’s made any progress at all. I read somewhere that men fall into two categories: men
who want to look after their women, and men who just want to be loved by them. Dad is
definitely in the second category. He relied on Mum a lot. I guess Dad was always a bit
of a dreamer, a romantic. She was the hard-headed, no nonsense one who ran the house,
paid the bills, made the tough decisions and even bought his clothes. I guess I take after
her. I get over things and just keep working. Boy, the ways things are going it’ll only be a
few years until I’d be buying his Bonds undies for him.

Mum was a primary school teacher. A good one. She was always busy, always
running around organising picnics and school dances and our camping holidays to Lakes
Entrance. I don’t think any of us could believe it when she got cancer. Except her. She
told me before she died she always knew she had been living on borrowed time. It’s why
she hated wasting it, why she was always so busy. Something had happened years before.

A scare. Or more. I never did find out exactly what. It was the reason she couldn’t have
any more kids after me. Something to do with her ovarian tubes.

Anyway, out came the library books, the therapies, the all-natural pills and
meetings with self-help groups. But it didn’t do any good. She hung in there for a long
time. The cancer was like a see-saw. Up, down, good, bad, temporary remission, hospital.
Dad fell apart soon after, although everyone else thinks he’s more-or-less held it together.
But he hasn’t. He doesn’t play in his night tennis competition anymore, he can’t face
Lakes Entrance even though we used to spend almost a month down there every year for
as long as I can remember; he dresses badly and he has to force himself to even smile.
The only thing he still does is fish, but most of the time he comes back empty handed. I
think he just sits by the Yarra River (his favourite fishing spot) and stews.

God, it’s hard to see your dad down so badly. Although it has made me more
independent. I don’t know any other fifteen-year-olds who do the laundry, cook spaghetti
bolognaise dinners and buy the groceries every week. I just want to get on with life.
That’s what Mum would have wanted. I try to tell him that, but there’s a barrier between
us. I just don’t feel like talking about these sort of things. I can talk for hours about
gossip, school, TV. Just not feelings. That’s probably why I have a boy as my best friend.
I feel freaky talking about feelings. I like action, as the saying goes, not words.

Dad sighed. ‘I have to get back on the treadmill,’ he said. ‘Back to some decent
work. I owe it to you.’

‘Yeah, when you’re ready, Dad. You don’t need to rush things.’

This wasn’t true. I wanted him to get back to full-time work. I wanted him to be
able to buy me a decent birthday present instead of a Sanity record voucher I got this
year. I’m in year ten, but I’m still getting primary school presents. It didn’t even buy me a
full-price CD! I want to come home without seeing him staring emptily at the car racing
on the box, or staring out the window as he shovels a saucepan of baked beans around.
Most of all, I want to be able to be a daughter, not a surrogate mother. The fact I’m an
only child makes it worse. I’ve got nobody else to help me out.

‘Stacey, I have to get a move on. We’re not saving anything. Your mother’s money
isn’t going to last forever,’ he said.

That’s what’s saved us. Mum’s life insurance. Her superannuation insurance wasn’t
much, but it still paid off the mortgage so we now own our house. But the insurance, I
think, let Dad off the hook. He preferred moping around and not dealing with stuff. Two
years after she died he still only works a couple of days a week. The money has dwindled
and if this continues we’ll really be stuck. I know he hurts. I know he even suffers a bit of
depression from time to time. But what sort of life does that leave me with? A dead
mother and a dad that’s all worn out.

‘Then what about looking around for another job?’ I said. ‘There’s some decent
stores around that’d need full-time work.’

‘Stace, it’s not that easy. I’ve tried, but…’

I let him trail off. It’s always the same. Spell out the problem and then discuss why
it can’t be solved.

The next day at school Topps virtually dragged me towards the Year Twelve home
room where Caitlin was most likely to be. He was that excited.

‘I thought computer geeks weren’t interested in girls,’ I said as we walked to the
portable. It came out more cutting than I meant (both about him being a geek and being
uninterested in girls), but I was feeling uncomfortable and silly about talking to Caitlin
and I felt angry at Topps because of it. What, exactly, were we going to ask anyway?

Topps wasn’t an easy boy to upset. He never had been. ‘C’mon Stacey, you’ve seen
Revenge of the Nerds’ he said. ‘Remember that line: “All jocks think about is sport. All
nerds think about is sex”’. There’s an honest truth about that quote.’

I pretended to be unimpressed and told him I’d never seen Revenge of the Nerds.

It’s hard to say if Topps is really a geek or not. He loves computers, he has an
encyclopaedic knowledge of movies, he can ace a test without studying and he wears
glasses that don’t suit him. Also, he can’t play sport to save himself, except for
badminton, and prefers to listen to video game soundtracks and electronica created by
MySpace weirdos than Video Hits. But he’s confident and friendly with strangers, which is decidedly un-geekish. And he’s not a real geek because he wears Globe skate shoes
and Ever Tough shirts his mum buys him. I think he’s a unselfconscious half-geek/halfcool
sort of guy, a bit like a werewolf that uncontrollably changes at every full moon. It’s
a fairly good personality mix.

We’ve been best friends since year seven. We hooked up in the first week during a
game of softball. We both sat on the fence at the end of the batting line trying to avoid
playing. ‘Don’t you think softball is, like, illogical,’ he had said. ‘It doesn’t make sense.
You hit a ball, you run around a diamond and you just end up back where you started.’

‘I’m thinking of making it more interesting by just running to first and doing a
handstand on the base,’ I had said.

‘I’ll give you a can of Sprite if you do.’

‘You’re on.’

But I never got the chance. I got struck out and the ball was thrown to first base
before I took a step. I wouldn’t have done it anyway. It takes a lot for me to do something
that makes me look ridiculous.

From then on we clicked. We’d been through a lot together: the infamous
shepherd’s pie food poison outbreak at school camp, the school bus crash last year that
broke Trevor Gilchrist’s nose; Helen Dudley’s birthday party where Topps ignored me
after I’d replied ‘true’ when asked the question: ‘You’d rather kiss road kill than Peter
Topolski, true of false?’, and as a result we didn’t speak for the rest of the night. And of
course, my mum’s death.

So he’s been a good mate.

We found Caitlin reading over school notes. Year twelves seemed to do nothing but
exams and homework. One of her friends – Becky someone, I think – was with her. They
both looked up at us in surprise.

‘Hi Caitlin,’ said Topps. ‘I was wondering if we could talk to you for a minute?’

‘What about?’ she asked hesitantly. Obviously she had no idea who we were.

Topps looked at Becky and back to Caitlin. ‘It’s private,’ he said. ‘It’s about the
Video Saloon.’ Caitlin gave Becky an exasperated look. Becky turned up her nose at us and left,
obviously annoyed.

‘What about the Video Saloon?’ Caitlin asked, but before Topps could answer she
looked at me. ‘Say, don’t you work there? You took over my job.’ She didn’t sound very
happy about it.

‘Yeah, I thought it would be good if Stacey apologised,’ grinned Topps. ‘And while
we’re here, I was just wondering, did anything funny go on before you decided to leave?’

‘What do you mean funny?’

‘Like, anything that was perhaps not one hundred per cent normal?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Stacey just has this feeling about the place, you know, that things are a bit weird.
Like that guy, Robert Keppler. We wanted to know a bit more about him – like, he freaks
Stacey out a bit, and I was sort of wondering, is he dangerous or what?’

‘I only worked there Friday and Saturday evenings,’ Caitlin said, ‘I don’t remember
every customer.’

‘Horror movie fanatic,’ said Topps. ‘Likes the freaky stuff. Looks like that old
wrestler, The Undertaker, if The Undertaker had gone on a Subway diet.’

‘Oh, yeah, him. Robert Keppler. I sort of remember. I dunno, I was only there six
months. He seemed…harmless. I wouldn’t worry about him. Nah, he’s just a bit weird,
that’s all. Why, has he been hassling you?’

‘No,’ I said, wanting to tie this pointless conversation up, ‘I just wanted to know.’

‘Hey Caitlin, why did you leave anyway?’ asked Topps as I took his arm and
turned to leave.

‘My dad knows the manager of the new Blockbuster store. I’m going to be working
there over summer.’

Which didn’t answer the question because the school year wasn’t over for a month
and Caitlin left the store around four months ago. I surprised myself by speaking up again
and asked, ‘How did you find Vince and Colin?’ I wanted to know if she’d seen either of
them getting up to mischief down in the basement with the pirated discs, but I didn’t want

to spell it out yet. I still didn’t feel I could trust Caitlin enough.

‘Oh, I dunno, I wasn’t there long, so…’

The morning bell interrupted us. Caitlin seemed relieved. She told us she had to go
and quickly picked up her notes and rose from the bench. I saw Topps glance at her legs
as she did. I gave him a nasty look and he shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, “‘She’s
wearing a really, really short skirt, what did you expect me to do?”

‘Thanks Caitlin for your help, we’ll see you round,’ Topps called after her. She
ignored him. He seemed reluctant to leave but I dragged him away.

‘Seems a bit strange,’ I said to Topps as we walked to our homeroom. ‘Caitlin
wasn’t telling us everything.’

‘Like what?’

‘I dunno. But she seemed uncomfortable, like she didn’t want to talk about it at all.’

‘Perhaps she was dazzled by my wit and charm?’ said Topps.

‘No, I’d reckon it was more freaked out.’

‘Why don’t we just tell her about the pirated gear?’

‘Because we don’t know all the facts yet. And that little discussion didn’t help at
all. We didn’t even ask her about the free rental credits. Besides, I don’t feel comfortable
talking about it with her.’

Truthfully, I was almost ready to ignore the pirated discs anyway. If Topps hadn’t
been so pushy about talking to Caitlin, I would have never gone near her.

Later that afternoon during lunch I left Skye (Topps had gone off with his mates to
the IT room) for a toilet break. As I walked into the toilet block with its harsh antiseptic
smell and faded graffiti half-heartedly rubbed off by the cleaner I bumped right into
Caitlin. She gave me a fright. ‘Oh, sorry,’ I said, a little shaken.

She ignored me. Instead she looked around, as if she didn’t want anyone to hear.
She leaned over to me. I could smell sweet perfume and tangy shampoo on her skin.
‘Listen, I just want to add one more thing about that store,’ she said, almost whispering now. ‘I didn’t want to say anything in front of your friend, but watch yourself. Just keep
your head down…’

Before she could finish her friend Becky called her from outside the toilet block.
‘Just watch yourself,’ Caitlin said hurriedly. She started to leave but stopped again,
turned to me and said, ‘And don’t ask me anything about that store again, because I don’t
want to talk about it.’

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 23.12.2010

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