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Katie said.
    My riding pants? My tracksuit? My pyjamas? I put them in the car and felt a bit stupid. I’d wear them once. A hundred bucks?
    Katie checked her email for half an hour in an Internet café then offered to buy me a hot chocolate at the bakery to celebrate my new shoes. We didn’t get inside. There were three skater boys in their teens wearing big beanies and lounging at the table on the roadside in front of the shop. Katie just waltzed right up and sat down at the fourth chair at their table. I couldn’t believe it.
    ‘Hey!’ she said, and waved.
    Two of them straightened in their seats, one waved back from across the crumb-flecked table. ‘What’s happening?’ he said.
    ‘Nothing much,’ Katie squeaked. ‘Can you recommend anything from the menu?’
    I stood there feeling beached and sunburned.
    The guy who’d waved stretched and laced his fingers behind his head. ‘You like custard tarts? Tarts are good.’
    One of the other boys chuckled and Katie did too. ‘Yeah? Don’t mind a tart every now and again,’ she said.
    They all laughed then.
    Then came the worst half hour of my entire life. Katie kept talking as if her pause button was broken. She said ‘like’ about ninety-four times. She explained that we were, like, cousins and stole a chair from the next table so I could sit down, but I couldn’t. My heart was pounding away in my neck and I just wanted to run and hide. She talked about, like, the Forsyth Show and our, like, mission to find me, like, some sexy shoes. One of the skater boys – the pimply one on Katie’s left – said he was going to the Show, that he and his dad lived on a farm at Kildambo and he’d been going since he was little. Katie got seriously excited then and tried to con the other boys into, like, coming as well, but they were less than ecstatic about it. I watched them as if they were on TV. I watched the boys watching Katie and felt like an alien again. Katie kept trying to drag me into the conversation, but I didn’t know what to say. She happily filled any gap.
    We were supposed to be meeting Aunty Jacq back at the car at twelve o’clock. I wondered how early I could get away with using that as an excuse to drag Katie off. Twenty minutes? The car was just around the corner and I’d almost worked up the courage to whisper that it was time to go when things got infinitely worse.
    A white Patrol tray ute with L plates parked on the opposite side of the road. I vaguely recognised the car but it wasn’t until the occupants were on the roadside that I realised it was the Carringtons’ ute. Of all the parking bays in the whole of Mildura, they had to choose the one directly opposite me having a meltdown! And the L plates belonged to Nathaniel. He had a clean trucker’s cap tugged hard over his wild hair and his navy T-shirt was too small in all the right places.
    I started hyperventilating. I felt the skin on my neck chill with sweat. I locked my arms over my chest. Nathaniel and his father checked the road twice then crossed to where we were. They were going to the bakery! I stared at the footpath until Nathaniel practically brushed against my arm as he went inside.
    Some small valve inside me felt as though it was going to burst. My skin was twenty hectares of blooming goosebumps and I could feel waves of heat coming off me. I knew I was changing colour but there wasn’t a single thing I could do about it. I was frozen there – a multi-coloured exhibit at the museum of embarrassment – until Nathaniel came out again. He held a pie in a white paper bag and had just taken a humungous bite when he saw me. He looked at me but didn’t recognise me at first, then he froze, his eyes lit up and – to my sweetest delight – his face flushed. We probably caused an instant spike in global temperature. The pie was obviously hot too, and he covered his mouth as he nodded a greeting. His dad stepped past and headed across the road to the ute – Les Junior probably