Precocious Read Online Free

back then, it was still concrete.
    Depending on which crowd they belonged with, the estate kids hung around either on the park (the grebs) or the precinct (the skaters).
    Grebs and skaters were largely defined by the kind of music they listened to, and each group looked on the other with the particular disdain that comes from
knowing
your taste is correct and everyone else’s is wrong. Grebs listened to rock, mostly, sometimes heavy metal, sometimes goth music too. They bought albums from the kind of shop that also sold hemp and bongs and tie-dyed clothes. Skaters were about pop music, pure and simple, and they had picked up dance music in its late-1980s incarnation. It sounded tinny and trivial tip-tapping its rhythms out of their Walkmans.
    As well as their place and their sounds, each crowd had their uniform. The skaters wore baggy jeans, or long shorts, and bright colours. And of course, they each carried their board, like another limb; on the rare occasion you saw them without, their usual swagger would become a shuffle. They seemed most comfortable when their tricks and twists sent them air bound; the ground held no interest for them, except as a place from where they could set flight.
    I’d thought I would find my place with the skaters until I became friends with Mari, who was high ranking among the grebs. The grebs wore Doc Marten boots, a lot of black, and even the boys (some of them anyway) wore eyeliner. I was a little bit scared of them, they always looked so serious and severe, but actually when you got to know them they were a really good laugh. Mari was two years older than me and worked in a tobacconist’s after school. It was from the window of the shop that she saw two orange-faced girls, their hair pulled so tight into hairbands that they looked as though they had extra cheekbones, their lips pinched, laying into me. Her plea wasn’t particularly emotional: with her head and one arm dangling out of the window, gesturing as though swatting a fly, she simply yelled, ‘Leave it – she’s had enough,’ and the two orange-faced girls with their flying fists ran away. After this, she just kind of carried on looking after me.
    Mari said I reminded her of her kid sister, who had died when she was a toddler. I didn’t understand how I could remind her of a two-year-old, but I didn’t ask. Not having sisters myself, I liked the way she sometimes hugged my neck and called me ‘sis’ or, more commonly, ‘doll’ or ‘babe’.
    Coming back to the estate always makes me feel uncomfortable. They say the past is a different country; it’s one I recognise less the further away I move from it. Everything looks smaller. There are street names I don’t recognise, or don’t remember. I am here because of the one thing that hasn’t changed: the friend I can say anything to.
    Mari’s flat can be described as minimalist. Not in a contrived way, not in the sense of clean lines and a neutral palette – just in the sense that there isn’t much
stuff
. Mari doesn’t think much of possessions. She doesn’t even have house plants, says they are ‘too much responsibility’.
    ‘Well, doll,’ she says, appearing from her tiny kitchen carrying a bottle of whiskey and two mugs, ‘to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?’
    ‘I need to talk to someone.’
    I take a deep breath and pause for effect. I am ashamed to find myself excited to have something scandalous to tell Mari. She is my wild friend, the part of myself that never gets let out. She is usually the one with the stories, the one with the drama.
    It comes out in a tumble.
    ‘I saw Morgan last night, we went for a meal, we kissed.’
    ‘Wait. Morgan?
Mister
Morgan? Henry Morgan?’
    It’s funny how, even as an adult, I still feel more comfortable using your last name. This was how I first knew you, after all; in school it was as though teachers didn’t even
have
first names, or lives outside the classroom, or interests beyond the subject they