All I Ever Wanted by Vikki Wakefield Page B

tell her about Jordan and his treason and about the drive-by that I suspect is Brant Welles. About Tahnee and our fight. I tell her I call her Lola, and she laughs. She doesn’t mind.
    She tells me she’s going back to school. She wants to be a nurse. She tells me about a man called Max who calls every second night and pays her four dollars a minute to listen to him. He talks to her while his wife is asleep and he’s sitting in a cupboard.
    â€˜What a weirdo.’ I shiver.
    â€˜He’s just lonely. You can’t tell much about a person without seeing them on a good day, and a bad day,’ she says. ‘They’re not all horrible people.’
    I wonder how she can be so accepting of her life. Squatting in the worst house in the worst street in the worst suburb. Talking dirty to strangers and listening to their problems. Living like a nocturnal creature.
    â€˜I hate living here,’ I say.
    She nods and shrugs. ‘I just think of everything as only temporary. Look, sometimes I don’t even unpack.’ She points to the boxes.
    â€˜Don’t you have any family?’
    â€˜Not here. Not any more. They moved away and I stayed because I thought I was in love with this guy but then it turned out he was a complete loser.’
    â€˜Yeah. I know the feeling.’
    Lola goes still. She puts her hand on my arm and her stillness passes to me.
    â€˜What?’ I say. I can’t hear anything over the hum of my blood and the mosquitoes.
    She points to the front window. A shadow moves from one side to the other. The scrape of branches flinging back. A shape at the glass.
    I was right about the gaps in the dark.
    â€˜There’s someone out there,’ she whispers. ‘He’s back.’
    We hold hands like small children and crouch under the kitchen table. It’s absurd, but I feel like laughing. Lola holds a knife in one hand, her phone in the other.
    â€˜I could go out the back way and get Mum,’ I offer.
    â€˜Don’t you dare leave me,’ she says.
    â€˜There’s two of us. What can he do?’
    Lola scuttles across the kitchen floor to the back door. She checks the lock and crawls back under the table.
    â€˜Let’s just go and have a look around,’ I say. ‘We’ll make a lot of noise.’
    Her breath is coming fast and she looks like a hunted thing.
    â€˜I can’t,’ she says. ‘I can’t go out there.’
    â€˜I can,’ I say. I stand on wobbly legs. Maybe the booze is giving me a dose of Dutch courage.
    I go to the lounge room and pick up the candle in its saucer. Hot wax runs along my thumb and immediately hardens like a second skin. Lola is behind me, one hand on my back. Her knife catches the candlelight.
    â€˜Don’t open it. Please,’ Lola begs.
    â€˜It’s fine, it’ll be fine,’ I slur.
    We open the door and stand there, listening.
    â€˜I can’t hear anything.’
    â€˜Me either.’
    â€˜What’s that?’
    The flame flickers in the warm breeze, then goes out. Something moves to the right, outside Lola’s bedroom window. Lola screams and I jump, my hands flying up into the air. The candle and the saucer pitch into the bushes.
    All at once:
    â€˜Shit, Lola!’ Me.
    â€˜Eeeeek!’ Lola.
    And a howl, followed by crashing and flailing as a man lumbers out into the street, beating at his face with his hands. He keeps going, past the dark lamp posts, until I can’t see him any more.
    Lola runs inside the house and slams the door, leaving me on the porch. The street is empty. There’s a stinging pain in my back.
    â€˜Lola, it’s okay, I got him,’ I hiss through the door. ‘He’s gone. Open up.’ I twist my arm backwards to explore the pain. My fingers come away sticky with blood. ‘Come on, let me in. I’m bleeding.’
    The door opens.
    Lola’s face has no colour. ‘You’re crazy,’ she