Chapter One

THERE’S A CARNIVAL IN TOWN RIGHT NOW AND NO ONE WANTS TO GO. I drive past every night, long after the rides have stopped spinning. The place is always deserted by then, the lights all off, the shutters drawn over the trucks that sell popcorn and mini cinnamon doughnuts and fairy floss. But if you squint, you can still make out the silhouettes of fun in the darkness. 
  Every night, I try to think of someone who might like to come with me, when the lights are still on and the popcorn is being popped, and we can ride the shitty rides and win something we’ll just throw away in three years’ time. 
  And every night, no one comes to mind.
  Instead, I drive to the main street along the beachfront and wait for Sab. There’s a chemist there, a hairdresser, a supermarket. She usually turns up outside the fish and chip shop, but sometimes she pops out around the Chinese takeaway.
  It’s a late one tonight. My car’s dashboard clock says 3:46am by the time I see her walking towards where I’ve parked in front of the fish and chip shop. My windows are covered in salt from the wind blowing up off the waves, and I roll one down a bit so I can look out towards her. She’s wearing a leather skirt, a plain white t-shirt and old white sneakers. Her blonde hair is piled up on top of her head, and it looks like parts of it are now streaked with bright red, like she’s been at the strands with a permanent marker.
  She reaches the passenger side of the car. I unlock the doors for her to hop in, then lock them immediately again. “I hate your hair.”
  Her hair nods. “I know.” She folds her legs into her chest, wiping her eyes with her fingers, smudging her eyeliner and glitter mascara. “I’ll dye it chestnut tomorrow. Like a pony.”
  I don’t say anything. She pulls a cigarette from her pocket and lights it - 
  “Not in the car, are you joking - ”
  - then rolls down her window and blows the smoke out into the night.
  The pink-and-white fish and chip shop sign flickers on, as it does occasionally. I have a fondness for it that I can’t explain. Ocean View Takeaway, it says. Underneath – Ask us about SCALLOPS!
  “Come on,” Sab says eventually, after her third drag or so, stubbing the ciggie out on the side of the car and dropping it onto the road. “I can tell you want pancakes.” 
  “Do I?” But it’s a peace offering, so I put the car in drive and pull away from the curb, turning up the radio as we go. My car is too old and crap to play anything but the FM radio, and the station I listen to is playing the seedy kind of house music that only surfaces onto the soundwaves when it’s after midnight and it’s time to think about everything that’s gone wrong in your life so far.
  There are no stars in the sky as we drive back to the caravan park, and the moon seems to be hiding. The darkness of the night sets in around us, seeps in through the windscreen like a spilled glass of wine into a carpet. And Sab seems comforted by the darkness, speaks into it over the music. “Do you want to know where I’ve been?”
  “Same place as usual?”
  “Nah,” she says, waiting for me to bite and ask where, but I don't.
  We go back past the carnival. We both look at it as we go. Sab reaches out and turns the dial on the radio down a bit. Clears her throat, like she’s going to be serious for a second - and when she is, it surprises me.
  “You know that I really appreciate you picking me up. I know you were probably busy.”
  She knows I wasn’t busy. I was doing exactly what I do most nights - lying in my bed, half-waiting to fall asleep, half-waiting to hear the buzz of my phone. Just before two o’clock in the morning, the message came through. pick up 330? I wrote ok back, set an alarm to go off at the right time, then slept for exactly another hour and twenty-five minutes before getting in the car, not bothering to get changed out of my pyjamas.
  “Please don’t fuck with me,” I say as we pull back in to the tourist park. I roll the window back down and put in my pin, and the boom gate opens in silence. “I will drive you every night, until the end of time if you really want, but not if you sit there and say stupid shit like I know you were probably busy.” 
  “Well.” She turns away from me and towards the night, clearly offended. “I was just trying to be nice.”
  Sab never really tells me where she goes. It’s the same thing almost every night, and it’s been the same thing for about six months now. She doesn’t talk to me about anything important, she never really tells me what she thinks about, and she cries silent little tears when we’re surfing and she thinks I’m distracted by the waves. 
  But most nights, just when the sun’s starting to make a move towards the horizon, she’ll start swigging a bottle of four-dollar sparkling wine and messaging numbers that she hasn’t saved under names in her phone. She leaves, on foot, around nine. She texts when she’s ready to be picked up again, usually around four hours later.
  My side of the deal is to wait, not ask too many questions, and make sure she’s still alive by the time the sun comes up. 
  I park the car outside the cabin and unlock the doors. We get out, careful not to slam them too hard so mum doesn’t wake up. And once I let us into the cabin and turn the lights on in the kitchen, Sab goes straight to the pantry to pull out one of the shake-and-bake pancake mixes always stocked along the bottom shelf. 
  I lie down on the couch, my feet dangling off the end, my face positioned directly under the ceiling fan. I try to think of all the good things: at least she’s not wasted tonight. She’s just somehow ended up with a shit hair colour, which will have to be fixed. Will she want to do a quick at-home dye job in the morning, or will she want to go to a hairdresser? 
  “Is that - like - a spray-in colour in your hair?” I call from the couch, propping myself on an elbow. 
  Sab is shaking water into the pancakes while turning the stove on. She whips the pile of hair on top of her head around and around until it unties from its knot and settles around her face. “Don’t know. Should we see if it washes out in the surf tomorrow morning?” 
  “We don’t have time for a surf tomorrow morning.” I stare at her as she grabs a frying pan from where it’s always drying beside the sink. “Did you forget?”
  She pauses, looks at me with the frying pan in her hand. Her eyes go wide. She reaches for the back pocket of her leather skirt and pulls out her phone, swiping open and finding the post, doubling checking the date against today’s. “Fucking hell. That’s tomorrow?” 
  “Six months to the day.” 
  The way her eyes are swivellling reminds me of when I’m snorkelling, and I’m swimming behind a fish, and it gets trapped in a rock wall and can’t find its way out. 
  “I’m sorry,” I say, but it’s to thin air; she’s already dropped the frying pan and the pancake mix and left the kitchen to go and lock herself in the bathroom. The door is so thin, I can hear her turn the water on and collapse onto the toilet. 
  I sigh - quietly, so she doesn’t hear it - and lie back down on the couch, closing my eyes. It’s almost four o’clock in the morning, and if she keeps having a panic attack, it’s just going to cut into my sleep schedule. I’m going to need to coax her out of the bathroom. I’m going to have to finish making the pancakes, and eat them, then clean up. I’m going to have to find us something to wear and make us look presentable. 
  And then we both have to go to a memorial for someone who isn’t even dead.

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