Candelo Read Online Free Page B

greeting, shy for a moment, awkward, as their grasp missed and then caught.
    I just met his gaze. Without a word. And in the silence that followed, I watched as he kicked his feet in the dirt, as he scratched a hole with the toe of his thong, and as he kept on staring at me, seemingly unperturbed by my failure to acknowledge him, until, with a further widening of that grin, he finally turned to Evie.
    It’s not ‘gidday
’, she told him, mimicking Vi’s own words to us each time we lapsed into any semblance of lingo.
It’s ‘hello
’.
    Vi glared at her.
    That’s what you say to us
, and she crossed her arms obstinately.
    All the time
, I added, but under my breath.
    And Simon kicked me, hard, on the shin.
    Mitchell had been to four foster homes. He didn’t tell us this. Nor did Vi. I read it in the letter from the placement program.
    When I asked her why, I knew the answer I was going to get. A lecture about disadvantages. About abuse. About single mothers. About poverty. All punctuated by sharp, angry taps of her cigarette against the side of the ashtray.
    What I wanted to know was whether he’d ever been in trouble, serious trouble.
    Vi told me to stop being childish.
Mitchell’s past is Mitchell’s business
, and she turned back to her work.
Stop being difficult and give it a try
.
    I looked offended. I told her that of course I would. Who did she think I was?
    But I didn’t. Not at first. I remember.
    We were hot and cramped in the back seat. Simon, Evie and I pressed against each other, sticky skin on sticky skin, furnace blasts of air rushing in through the open window, while in the front, Mitchell stretched out and tapped his fingers on the dashboard in time to whatever tape he had put into the cassette player, singing out of tune to whatever song happened to be playing.
    Reckon I’ve got a voice?
he asked Vi in all seriousness, and I saw her looking at him, uncertain as to how to respond.
    The white of his teeth was reflected in the rear-vision mirror as he caught my eye and smiled.
    Pretty bad, hey?
and his look was sheepish, but he did not stop. He just turned the volume up another notch and sang a little louder, grinning with embarrassment whenever his attempts to hit the note went blatantly wrong.
    How come he’s allowed to choose what we listen to?
I asked Vi at the service station.
And how come we have to listen to that?
I added, referring to his singing.
    It wasn’t that I hated what he put on. In fact it was a relief from the usual Joan Baez or Harry Belafonte that Vi always played, and I had to admit that his singing was amusing us all.It was the unfairness of it. Simon and I were never allowed to play our tapes in the car. We always brought them with us, but they stayed in the glove box.
    Mitchell hadn’t even asked. One push of the eject button and Joan Baez was back in her case, replaced by David Bowie.
    I had looked at Simon. I had waited for Vi’s response.
    Nothing. Simon had just shrugged his shoulders and Vi hadn’t seemed to notice.
    You never let us play our tapes
, I complained to Vi as we waited at the counter.
    She pushed her sunglasses up into her hair and searched for her money in her purse. She was ignoring me. But I was not going to be stopped.
    How come he can?
    Do you want a drink?
she asked.
    No
, I told her.
    Just as well
, she said, and she held out her hand for the change.
    I looked at her.
    Because I certainly wasn’t going to buy you one
, and she turned her back on me, leaving me standing by the cash register, still waiting for an answer to my question.
    Back in the car, Simon and Mitchell had swapped seats. Leaning forward into the front, Mitchell talked constantly. Asking endless questions about where we were going, the places we drove through and what Simon liked to do. Music, skateboards and surfing. He wanted to know everything. Comparing bands they liked, food, movies. He barely stopped to catch air