Truck Stop (8 page)

She's happy to let me talk. Weird she never just asks me.
Why did you do it?

I let her make me tea. I eat all her biscuits. She even starts bringing in Tim Tams for me.

And I have a silver gun like a film star and I am loading it up with bullets.

I take two Tim Tams. Says:

It makes me sad thinking about how girls lose their virginity.

MICHELLE:
What do you mean by that Sam?

SAM:
I mean it sucks. One guy was an arsehole. And I reel her right in and line her up for target practice.

I start to cry and I say

He knew it was my first time but he wasn't romantic, he didn't care.

He took pictures of me naked, made me send him pictures of myself and showed his mates. He put them up online and when I asked him to take them down he laughed at me.

He didn't want to use condoms and after a while he made me promise I'd go on the pill. Then I found out he was fucking other girls as well.

I found pics of other girls on his phone.

I broke it off with him and I was lucky.

Finger on the trigger.

'Cause I never used his name up until then and so I aim and I say

I found pictures of another girl on Trent's phone.

Chante. This girl Chante.

Fire. Bang. Bang.

Poor Chante everyone blogging that she's a slut. Pretty sad pictures. Looked like she was in her mum's knickers and then there were pics of her nude. Poor thing. He's shown all his mates and put them online he's gonna be a pedo when he gets older he's so sick.

Bullets fired and I'm waiting for blood.

MICHELLE:
You enjoying this Sam?

SAM:
What do you mean?

MICHELLE:
I mean are you enjoying putting me through this? I don't even want to know if it's true but even if it is it doesn't matter because this isn't about Chante or me or our lives… this is about you. You want to intimidate me? Make me feel scared like some girl at your school?

SAM:
No.

MICHELLE:
I'm not scared of you. Why would I be scared?

Take a look at yourself Sam. At what you do. What you did. Not about the way it might have looked in a movie or a video clip but about the reality of what you did. To your best friend. To yourself.

I have been trying to figure out something about you. Where do you live? Not the house or the street or the suburb but in here. If you can't see the difference between what's going on in there and what's happening around you, what'll happen to you?

SAM:
Michelle's spat on her blouse and knocked a Tim Tam on the floor.

No idea what you're on about. Gotta go.

We hear swarming and trucks passing at high speed.

KELLY/AISHA:
Then

KELLY:
New guy at the food court.

AISHA:
Noah's cousin. / Torquan.

KELLY
:
Torquan.

KELLY:
He doesn't go to school, works on the roads. Torquan knows he's good looking. He's seen the school girls watch him, he's felt the eyes of every lady from Shoe-Deeni to GOLO look him up and down. He leans back on a chair in the food court looking bored. Noah brings him donuts.

AISHA:
I stand between Gloria Jean's and Chinky Chonk's waiting for Sam, watch them, him and Noah. The way Noah's looking at his cousin.

KELLY:
Then Torquan sees Aish filming them. He sits up, his mouth snarls and he points at her. / They're coming over.

AISHA:
They're coming over. Torquan first then, another one of their gang followed by Noah. Torquan says /

TORQUAN:
Why were you filming us?

AISHA:
His breath is stale cigarettes his green eyes are cold.

TORQUAN:
Why were you filming us?

AISHA:
He grabs the phone out of my hand and plays back the film.

TORQUAN:
Oh look at that Noah, she's got you on film. Why you filming my cousin, freak?

AISHA:
Noah looks down at his feet.

KELLY:
Torquan grabs Noah's donuts, takes one out and squashes it on the phone.

AISHA:
Takes another one out and squashes it in my hair. His mates are laughing and a table load of boys behind him start cheering then Noah tells him to stop and Sam comes up behind us. She gets in between Torquan and me and says:

SAM:
What the fuck are you animals doing to my friend?

TORQUAN:
Teaching her a lesson.

SAM:
Teaching her a lesson?

TORQUAN:
Yeah.

AISHA:
My phone ringing now. Mum Mum Mum flashing on the screen.Torquan grabs the phone, answers it says: /

TORQUAN:
Hello Mum she can't come right now 'cause she's sucking my dick.

AISHA:
I close my eyes and start to cry.

Sam yelling to get the phone back. Torquan saying it's his phone now. Footsteps, security comes, some guy says sort things out or you can leave and then I hear something smashing. I open my eyes and Torquan is smashing my phone hard against this giant plastic kebab. The phone scatters in pieces on the food court floor.

I'm led outside. Sam and Kelly both pat me like I'm a dog. Kelly strokes my hair while Sam tries to put my phone back together. She gives up, chucks it the ashtrays near the entrance to the food court.

I'm shivering.

SAM:
Torquan's such an arsehole.

SAM/KELLY:
What were you filming them for?

SAM:
Shouldn't have filmed them. I don't get you.

AISHA:
I look at them and can't explain.

An awkward pause, then
SAM
reveals a magazine.

SAM:
Look what I nicked.

KELLY:
Cosmo
.

SAM:
Sealed section's back.

KELLY:
Open it. Open it.

AISHA:
They peel it back like hungry dogs.

SAM:
The great
Cosmo
boobs and bottoms match up game. Look at him!

AISHA:
Photos of naked white guys with vegetables over their bits.

SAM:
And him.

AISHA:
Their fronts and their behinds.

KELLY:
Hot arse. Look at his 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 gates and up the highway, really hot day but it feels good being out of school. Nobody staring.

SAM:
And we've gotten away from Aisha.

KELLY:
Still feel shit about that.

SAM:
Bullshit.

KELLY:
I do. What we did. How we froze her out.

SAM:
She deserves it. She's a real pain in the arse Kelly.

SAM/KELLY:
Just the two of us.

SAM:
Like it should be.

KELLY:
Out of school.

SAM:
Walking up the highway.

KELLY:
No balls flying past /

SAM:
No boys shouting shit at us /

KELLY:
Just cars and trucks speeding past.

SAM:
A hot shirtless guy in a red car passes beeps his horn and / we wave at him.

KELLY:
We wave at him.

SAM:
Some hot guy in a red car.

KELLY:
How it feels when he does that, and it doesn't matter if he beeped at you or at me, how I feel is like we are on some adventure while everybody else is stuck in the real world in that fucking hot horrible playground, there we are… like in some video clip.

Sam and Kelly sing the first three verses of ‘Your Love Is My Drug' by Ke$ha.

SAM:
We could be running away you know. Escaping forever.

KELLY:
You changing out of your school clothes? We're going back aren't we? After lunch.

SAM:
Maybe.

KELLY:
Traffic passes on the road.

SAM:
One truck after the other.

KELLY:
None slow down.

SAM:
None turn in.

KELLY:
None notice us, walking like ants in the sun.

They both raise their arms up and scream.

SAM:
We are alive. We not sitting in some fucking classroom reading about the world.

KELLY:
No /

SAM:
We are living /

KELLY:
Bell for class rings in the distance. / We keep walking.

SAM:
We keep walking.