FORTY-FOURJulia’s heartbeat quickened. “The things we’ve seen today,” she whispered. “The things we’ve seen.” Flicked hair behind an ear.Diana didn’t reply, deciding instead to let the observation fester in the air.They held each other for a long time. Their humming soothed those about them like icy water on a burn. It eased into melody.Sarah lifted her haggard face.The sound of the ocean withdrew from Michael’s ears, replaced now by that soft, sweet singing. A sigh fled his mouth with mocking ease. He listened to the women and rocked along in his seat. It wasn’t a song, rather undulations of pitch similar to trees blowing in the wind, sometimes in sync, sometimes creaking together, but beautiful all the while. Oh, to be outside, Michael couldn’t help thinking. To be free from this fucking place. Running happily through the bush he loved yet which refused to love him back. The Australian scrub was like that, he knew—as they all did. You could chart it, photograph it, romantic

FORTY-TWOHeavy silence followed the song’s slow death.Michael said the one thing they all were thinking but nobody wanted to give in to. “I wish we weren’t here.”Jack glanced up from the corpse for the first time in ten minutes. For a moment when he saw the limp-wristed kid, he saw nothing but meat and gristle superimposed over a scrawny body. A moving wet mouth spilling wishes Jack refused to acknowledge.“Oh, would you shut up, mate?”Michael tensed. Threat emanated from the man. “I’ll say what I want.” He knew he was being challenged, and knew that it was imperative he not back down.“Yeah, that’s right. You’re all talk, aren’t you?” Jack smiled. Putting someone in their place always felt good.“Stop it,” Sarah said.Jack turned to Michael, pointing. “You and me. Let’s move the body to the front of the bus. Get it as far away from us as we can.”“I don’t want to touch him.”“Come on, kid. I’m sure it’s not the first time you’ve grabbed a dude.”“Jack, please,” Sarah sa

FORTYThe shock of Sarah’s slap knocked the anger out of him, leaving Jack empty for a few seconds. Soon his anger swooped back in, filling him up, relieving him. The memories vanished.He smiled.Sarah slapped him once more.Finished now, she clenched her fist and realigned her knuckles.Click-crunch.His smile was gone.Sarah didn’t let her pain show. “I get it,” she said. “Things are bad and this is how you get through. Now, I’m not saying you’re a bad guy. I’m saying it’s okay to be shit scared. But picking fights is feeble, Jack. You know what that means, don’t you? Feeble?” She looked him up and down. “And calling the kid names. Ha. And as for me? Newsflash, Jack: sticks and stones and all that jazz. From the dropped-pie look of you, you’re in no position to be calling anybody anything. And there ain’t nothing wrong with my hair!” Sarah raised a crooked finger in his direction. “So suck my dick and call me madam, ’cause I’d sooner let you than watch you kick a kid when he’

THIRTY-EIGHTMichael heard the barking and thought of Mr. Maclachley’s junkyard. He used to pass the old man’s auto-wreckers every day after school. The chain-link fence stretched the length of the block, it being the only barrier between the eleven-year-old schoolboy in the ill-fitting clothes and the old man’s guard dog.Before boarding the route 243 bus to town, Michael thought the worst fear he would ever experience was that evoked by Mr. Maclachley’s Rottweiler. In its bark, young Michael heard screaming, gutted children, laughing maniacs—noises that stalked him even into nightmares where he was running past the fence as fast as he could, the black monster leaping at the mesh through clouds of dust.One day his sports sneakers fell out of his backpack. Michael hadn’t dared go back for them. When he got home, his mother yelled at him.His father went back for the shoes.Maclachley’s dog never attacked him, of course, or any of the other kids who had to run the dreaded junkyard

THIRTY-SIXThe glass on the hood stuck into Julia’s palms but didn’t break the skin. Every muscle in her body tensed. Elbow quivered. Inside, her baby continued to grow, unaware of what was happening, of the world it was fated to be born into.Hair swished across her eyes. Blew it aside.You can do this, she said to herself. You’ve got no choice.The house faded into shadow as clouds filled out overhead. A hot gust of wind rattled fairy lights in the dying trees.***As best as Michael could tell, there wasn’t a possibility of Julia being seen until she was off the truck and on the ground, at which point she would be out in the open and visible to all eyes. “Please, please, please, be safe,” he said.Diana moved away from the others. Hatred boiled, rolled to the surface like fleshless bones in a pot. They deserved to die, everyone except Julia, a girl who was too young and stupid to know better. How adults—including Diana herself—could let something like this happen baffled her.