Puberty Blues by Gabrielle Carey Page B

The assemblycrumbled. We were laughing so loud we didn’t even hear Mr Berkoff blowing his whistle. Cheryl was expelled.
    Things were getting heavy for my surfie gang. Vicki’s mother found a dope deal in her daughter’s drawer and rang up to confide in Mrs Dixon. So Kim got grounded and ran away from home. Johnno got busted for smoking hash. Mum freaked when she saw his picture in the local paper. She told me to get some new friends.
    Wayne and I didn’t go anywhere anymore. We didn’t even go to the drive-in. Friday and Saturday nights we hung out on the main street of Cronulla, buying, selling and smoking dope. Sue and I sat with the boys on the steps of the Soul Patterson’s chemist. We could all tell the junkies. They spent most of the night buying hamburgers and then spewing them up into the garbage bins. We’d started to suspect a lot of our friends. Hitting up was the new cool thing to do. If you had needle pricks in your arm, you were tough, and top. A lot of people pretended to be heroin addicts.
    â€˜Oh look at Lorraine Peck. The bullshit artist.’
    â€˜What? Where?’ asked Wayne.
    â€˜Oh leaning up against the post office. She doesn’t hit up you know. She just scratches herself and coughs, the rag. She’d root for a scaffe,’ * I told him.
    â€˜Yeah,’ agreed Wayne. ‘She wouldn’t get rooted for a scag † though. She’s not worth it. No one would waste it on her. Comin’ for a smoke?’
    â€˜Nah.’ I was too stoned to move. Sue and I kept sitting on the cold cement step while Wayne went off to the parking lot with Danny and Gull to blow another number. As I lit up my Marlboro, Sue nudged me urgently.
    â€˜Hey Deb, that’s not Garry is it?’ She pointed across the road to a washed-out figure huddled in the doorway of the shoe shop. From where I was sitting I could see he was pale and thin. His surfie physique had deteriorated into a soggy slouch. He lifted up his blank face and seemed to stare straight through me.
    â€˜God …’ I gasped. ‘It is Garry. Let’s go. Quick.’ We ran down the alley to the beach and stood very close together on the footpath. Leaning against the railing, Sue and I watched the sea surge, swell and smash on the rocks. A thick thread of smoke coiled up into the sky from the Kurnell oil refinery.
    â€˜It stinks,’ I said, stamping out my cigarette.
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Everything.’
    Â 
    Cronulla was getting duller. More and more of our friends were hitting up. Sue and I were sick of sitting in the car with the boys stoned and paranoid. We weresick of fetching Chiko rolls. We were sick of sun-bathing and towel-minding while the boys surfed. For once we wanted some of the action. So, we bought a board. It was a cut-down Jackson, for ten dollars. We put in five dollars each. It was pretty dinged but we were really proud of it. After a few weeks we got brave enough to take it to the beach.
    On Sunday we caught the nine-fifteen train to Cronulla. As usual.
    â€˜We gunna do it?’
    â€˜Yeah.’
    â€˜I’m packin’ shit,’ said Sue, heaving the board off the train. Sue carried the fin end and I carried the nose.
    â€˜Ya Bankie chicks!’ someone called out from the Surf Dive and Ski shop.
    We went to South Cronulla first. That was Dickheadland anyway. Two more dickheads wouldn’t be that conspicuous.
    â€˜You sure there’s no one here we know?’ Sue said, checking out the crowd.
    I laughed at her. ‘Who do we know who’d hang out here?’
    â€˜What if Danny sees me?’
    â€˜Oh, too bad.’
    I paddled out first. Sue couldn’t stop laughing at me slipping off and getting chundered. After we’d both had a few goes, it was time to show off to the boys. We carted the board up the beach past North Cronulla and Wanda. One surfie jaw dropped afteranother: ‘Hey, check out those chicks!’ We