“Thank you for feeding my paranoia.”

“No prob. Want to hang out at your place?” he says as we reach the bus stop.

“No.”

“See. There’s the bitch coming through.”

The bus stops in front of us. “Get stuffed.”

I get on and show my pass.

“I’ve got nowhere else to go,” he cries in exaggerated anguish. “I’vegot -nowhere-else-to-go,” he blubbers dramatically in a pathetic broken voice, clutching the pole.

The bus driver and I exchange looks and I roll my eyes.

“An Officer and a Gentleman,” I tell the driver. “You know? Richard Gere?”

“First sign of trouble and you’re both off.”

We get to Annandale and he takes out a cigarette and offers one to me.

“I try not to indulge. It’s a filthy habit,” I tell him.

“I love that word filthy. I love the way you force it out of your mouth like it’s some kind of vermin you want to get rid of.”

“You’ve had vermin in your mouth?”

“You’re mean in that way, you know. You don’t let anyone get away with pathetic analogies.”

When we arrive at my house, I look over at the people across the road.

“Those people have no life,” I tell him.

“They look happy, though.”

He gives them a wave and they wave back.

We walk inside and I put on the teakettle, throw my bag into my bedroom, and push him toward the living room.

“Sit down and don’t touch anything,” I tell him before walking into Mia’s study. Today she’s sitting on the couch, in her nightgown as usual, her laptop in front of her, staring into space. She doesn’t want to lose the conferences and is making an attempt at writing the paper.

“I’m making some tea,” I say, kissing her. “I’ll bring it in a min—”

“Hi.”

I turn around and Jimmy’s at the study door.

Mia looks at me curiously.

“James Hailler,” he says, walking over to the couch and extending his hand for her to shake.

I’m furious, but he ignores me. My mum shakes his hand.

“What are you doing?” he asks her.

“Trying to write a paper.”

I look at him and indicate the door with my eyes. He reminds me of our dog. He totally ignores any look that demands obedience. Instead, he sits on the couch.

“What’s it on?”

“The role of fantasy in popular culture.”

“I’m your man. It’s my genre.”

I hear the kettle whistling and I ignore it. He looks at me and indicates the door with his eyes.

“The kettle,” he reminds me. “I like mine with a squeeze of lemon.”

I’m reluctant to leave him in there. Just say he asks her why she’s in her nightgown? Just say he spreads it around the school? I don’t know this guy. All I know is that he looks like he’s here to stay.

“And get James some biscuits, Frankie,” my mum says.

I prepare the tea and make my mum a salad sandwich, straining my ears to hear what they’re talking about. I don’t hear my dad walk in, but I see him as I come out of the kitchen into the corridor. He’s standing at the study door, and I come up behind him and give him a gentle push out of the way.

“This is Jimmy, Papa. Jimmy, my dad.”

“I didn’t catch your name,” Jimmy says to my dad, getting off the couch and extending a hand.

“Mr. Spinelli,” my dad says a bit coldly.

“It’s Robert.” This comes from my mum as I place the tray next to her.

Jimmy makes himself comfortable on the couch again and serves her the tea before biting into a biscuit.

“Hmm. What’s for dinner?”

When he leaves, my father comes into my room.

“He’s a drug user. I can tell.”

“How?”

“I know about marijuana, you know.”

“It’s called pot.”

“Oh, aren’t we the smarty-pants.”

“I think you mean ‘smart-ass.’ ”

“I don’t need this right now, Frankie. I’ve got enough things to fix up around here.”

“If you don’t want me to hang out with potheads, you should have sent me to Pius.”

I feel as if I’m doing Jimmy Hailler a disservice because he’s probably not a pothead, but it’s a way to rile my dad up. I’m not sure why I want to do that, but I just do.

He doesn’t say anything else. Later, I hear him in Luca’s bedroom, doing his quality-time thing. But I know he’s dying to get into that room to be with Mia while we have to watch it all from a distance. And I hate that distance. Because from a distance, Luca and I see it blurred. And blurred, it looks worse than anyone can ever imagine.

chapter 18

THE MORNING BUS trips to school are a combination of Thomas Mackee’s music, Tara Finke’s protest, and Justine’s mooning over Tuba Guy.

Sometimes Thomas Mackee will stick an earphone into my ear and ask me to listen to a song. When I get over the revulsion of putting something in my ear that’s been in his, I sit back and let the music take over, and for a half hour there’s something comforting about someone’s heart beating at the same rhythm as mine.

Other times, I sit back and listen to Tara organize the troops. If it’s not a food drive outside school, where most of the homeless hang out at night, it’s volunteering for a social justice day run by the Education Office or organizing a protest outside a local MP’s office, who she feels is doing nothing about the detainment of refugees.

A stubborn part of me doesn’t want to get involved. Mia spent the last four years asking why I couldn’t be “like that Tara Finke girl.” “Because I want to have friends,” I’d tell her.

“Some of those people won’t even know what the issue’s about,” I say to Tara Finke. “They protest for the sake of protest.”

“That’s a cop-out and you know it,” Tara says.

“Are you denying it?” I ask.

“No. But it’s like the argument ‘don’t donate to third-world countries because the money mightn’t get to them.’ People only say that because it makes them feel better about the fact that they do nothing.”

Thomas Mackee is sitting next to us listening to his Discman. Tara takes one of the earphones out of his ear.

“You’re coming with us,” she says firmly.

“I don’t think so,” he says, knowing exactly what she’s referring to, as if he’s listened to our conversation.

“Don’t pretend for one moment that we haven’t caught on that you’ve got a social conscience,” she accuses.

“Not listening,” he singsongs.

“Yes, you are listening.”

He turns off the Discman, takes out the other earphone, and stares at her coldly. “No, I’m not listening.” He points to himself. “My world.” And then he points to her. “Your world. Different worlds.”

“Where’s your world now, Mackee?” she asks. “Where are they after school when you’re hanging out with us?”

“I don’t hang out with you. I take the bus home with you. Get the difference. I’m not into protesting. I don’t want to save the world. I don’t care about anything, and I don’t care that I don’t care.”

Tara stares at him and then nods. “I’m sorry,” she says honestly.

Thomas Mackee looks surprised for a moment, and then he nods back, as if he accepts the apology.

“It’s a habit of mine to force people into things,” she adds meekly.

“T’sokay.”

Oh God, Thomas Mackee, don’t fall for this.

“You could get into trouble at school, and where would that get you?” she continues. “I mean, you’re thinking of joining a punk band one day, right? And what if they ever found out that you protested about something? It’d ruin your reputation. As a punk artist you need a squeaky-clean image, not a rebellious one.”

He stops nodding when he works out where she’s going with this.

He has that stupid look on his face. His “Huh?” look.

“What are you looking at?” he asks Luca gruffly.

Luca giggles. He has that Year-Five-need-to-get-attention-of-senior-boys thing happening. Sometimes, Thomas Mackee carries Luca to school, holding him upside down by just one leg, and I picture my brother’s head splattered all over Market Street, but I don’t stop him. If Luca is killing himself laughing, I don’t have the heart to stop anything.