A Little Wanting Song by Cath Crowley

without him?” Dave asks.
    I don’t tell him I go all the time, without either of them. “It looked like rain.”
    “I have to go, Rose,” he says. He’s leaving to see if Luke’s all right. They won’t talk about me; they’ll play video games until Luke laughs again.
    The first spits of summer rain land on my face but stop as soon as they begin. “See, I didn’t lie,” I call out, but it’s too late. I’m already alone.
    Sometimes I wonder why I love Luke so much when he makes me this mad. But then I remember how I felt when he kissed me in Year 6. He didn’t do it again until Year 8, and he only did it then because I told him to.
    I’d been waiting and waiting for him to ask me to the social. “Well? Are we going together?”
    “What? I don’t know. Yeah. We go everywhere together.” I was so pissed off. “Unless you ask me, I’m going with Michael Howsware.”
    “So go with him.”
    “I will.” Idiot. Stupid idiot. “I’ll let him kiss me, too.”
    Luke snarled. “Do whatever you like.”
    “Rose, you look beautiful,” Mum said before I left that night; I didn’t care, though. What did it matter if I had to go with Michael? We walked in and Luke was dancing as close as the teachers would let him with Andrea Cushifsky.
Andrea Cushifsky
.
    I danced next to Luke and grabbed Michael tight. I held on even though I was gagging on cheap aftershave. I tried so hard to remember how I’d felt when Luke kissed me and to feel it for Michael; but he wasn’t the one who sat with me all Sunday at the edge of the freeway. He wasn’t the one who bought me tiny cars for Christmas. “Just a car,” Luke said. “You don’t have to get so excited.” But I was excited because he’d noticed what no one else had.
    Luke and Andrea disappeared about eight-thirty. Most kids made a stop at the back of the sports equipment shed sometime during the night, but I couldn’t believe Luke would take Andrea there.
    I waited till Michael went to the toilet, then I slipped outside. I leaned forward as far as I could without being seen. And there they were. Sitting at opposite ends of the fence, staring separate stares across the oval.
    Luke was such an idiot. If I hadn’t come round the corner, he would have pretended he’d kissed Andrea, and loved it. I watched till she got sick of waiting and went back inside. Then I walked round the corner in my fantastic dress and sat on the end of the fence.
    “What are you doing here?”
    “Waiting for Michael.” I smiled. “He’ll be out in a minute.”
    Luke looked so hurt that I let him get away with stuffing up my first dance. “You idiot,” I said. And I moved close to him on the fence, swinging my legs while the wood caught at my stockings, making holes in them. The leaves blew off the trees and scattered color. In the light from the gym they looked like tiny pink tongues.
    *   *   *
    I climb into the old tree. Its branches are thick enough to sit on, but I’ve never done it before. I can see the whole of Charlie’s yard from here. I never knew the garden next door was so green, so overgrown. She’s sitting outside holding her guitar and smiling. I’ve never seen her relaxed like that.
    “Rose?” Luke calls from the back door. “You out here? I’m sorry I got mad.” I curl my legs up in the leaves and hold my breath. Part of me wants to go down and talk to him, and the other part of me holds tighter to the tree. “She’s not out there, Mrs. Butler!” Luke shouts, and I stay till I hear the front door close.
    “Rose?” Mum calls from the living room as I come inside. “Luke was looking for you. He said you weren’t in the yard.”
    “Didn’t hear him. I must have been dreaming.”
    She stares at me for a second. “Be careful, Rosie. People hurt easy.”
    “You don’t have to worry about Luke.”
    “It’s not him I’m worried about,” she says.
    Mum and I have heaps of almost conversations these days. She almost asks me what’s wrong and