Behind the Moon by Hsu-Ming Teo

first time in years it was just the two of them again: Gibbo and Justin. Kicking sand into each other’s faces, dunking each other in the waves, it was as if time had concertinaed and they were simply kids once more, back on Miss Yipsoon’s piano stool mucking around and consolidating their friendship through the rough and tumble of play like a couple of scrapping puppies.
    When the bright afternoon smudged into dusk, they clambered carefully over sharp rocks and threw out a tangle of fishing lines with no hope of hooking anything more than Coke cans coughed out of the sea. They started to feel hungry so they gathered up twigs and soggy driftwood, trying to fire up the sorry pile with the cigarette lighter. After half an hour of scorching their fingers on the flickering flame, they still had no success, so they set alight individual sticks and tried to sear their raw pieces of rump steak with the smoking brands. It was a disgusting dinner, of course, with the meat half charred, half raw, but they laughed and were happy.
    They consigned their steaks to fish bait, stuffed themselves with corn chips and got plastered on VB. They lit their cigars, choked and spluttered and puffed away with watery eyes, feeling rather grown-up before they lurched over to throw up on the rocks. Reaching into the depths of their backpacks for plastic boxes of Tic-Tacs (they’d remembered the toilet paper but not toothbrushes or toothpaste) to remove the taste of puke from their mouths, they grinned idiotically at each other and felt exhilarated by enacting the sheer normality of being two Aussie adolescents smashed at the beach.
    At two in the morning, when the wind blew strong and cold over the surging waves, they wrapped their unzipped sleeping bags around themselves and smoked their joints in silence. Justin shivered and squirmed closer to Gibbo for warmth.
    ‘That’s one consolation for all this lard on me anyway,’ Gibbo said thickly. ‘Don’t feel the cold much.’
    ‘Come on, you’re not that big.’
    ‘Too fat for girls like Tien and her cousins,’ Gibbo sighed. ‘Too fat to be going anywhere. You ever notice that, Jus?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘People like us. You wanna move up and move out of the west, you have to shed the load and get built and fit. You’re lucky ’cos you’re not fat. There’s a bell curve of fat between the Blue Mountains and the coast. People look at me in all my lard and think I’m going nowhere, and the sad thing is, they’re probably right.’
    ‘What a load of crap. Lots of big people are really successful and earn heaps more money than my dad. Anyway, you’ll be glad of all that fat when you’re middle-aged,’ Justin said. ‘Have you ever noticed how skinny people seem to age more quickly? I think the fat stretches out the wrinkles and keeps you looking young. Decades from now, when those trendy eastern suburbs types are cling-wrapping their wrinkled faces, you’ll still be looking young.’
    ‘But fat,’ Gibbo objected. ‘Anyway, years from now doesn’t count. How’m I ever gonna get a girlfriend looking like this?’
    ‘Now you’re feeling sorry for yourself,’ Justin scoffed. ‘Fuck girls, eh?’
    ‘That’s the problem. Wish I could.’
    Justin snorted with laughter. ‘What are you worried about? I’m sure you’ll get good marks in the HSC and you’ll be off to uni next year where you’ll meet lots of new people.’
    ‘Yeah, but we’ll all be split up and what’ll happen to me then? Who’s gonna wanna hang around me at uni?’
    ‘Who gives a shit about people at uni? We’re still friends, aren’t we? Gibbo, mate, you’re the best.’ Justin flung his arms around Gibbo and hugged him tight. ‘You’re my best friend, you know that?’
    Sloppily sentimental from too much unaccustomed booze and bong, distressed by his friend’s dull gloom, he sought only to give comfort and take a little bit for himself. He turned his face towards Gibbo’s—fleshy, familiar, and so