Truck Stop

by Lachlan Philpott

  CHARMAINE slaps KELLY.

  SAM: Truth.

  KELLY: Neighbour’s dog barks.

  SAM: Dare.

  KELLY: Feel like whacking you back, feel like hitting you hard, feel like reaching and grabbing you and pulling you close to me.

  SAM: Double dare.

  KELLY: Feel like running.

  Look away from you, never want to see you again.

  SAM: Truth.

  KELLY: I want you dead.

  And then calm as anything you say.

  CHARMAINE: What would you know?

  KELLY: I want you to get out. You’re fucking crazy. / What would I know?

  CHARMAINE: What would you know?

  KELLY: I don’t want you in here anymore.

  What would I know?

  I don’t want to see you. I want to run away from you I want another mother.

  CHARMAINE: This isn’t about you. Not everything is about you Kelly. I know what happened to you but move on. You saw a counsellor. It was years ago

  KELLY: Move on?

  CHARMAINE: Yes.

  KELLY: How can you say that? I was eleven.

  CHARMAINE: I know.

  KELLY: Do you? ’Cause you act like you forget. And that’s when I cry. That’s when the carpet swallows me like the sea and I’m scared.

  And she looks at me like she doesn’t get it but she does.

  I wish Dad was here.

  The room spinning.

  The carpet the sea in a storm, the blinds sharp knives in the wind.

  Who have I got?

  Who will protect me?

  We see images of moths and flies buzzing around a light. We hear CB radio noise, snippets of conversation but nothing intelligible.

  AISHA: Then.

  Cockroach wakes me up, runs across my mouth, it’s in my hair scratching my scalp. Car headlights through the window and I see Mum outside in the cold. She stands on the dirt in her dressing-gown and slippers where Dad says we’ll grow grass. She’s talking to the tower. She’s telling it why we’ve come here. Part of me wants to put my hand on her shoulder, say what she wants to hear. The other part of me wants to push her over. Mum?

  INDHU: You scared me.

  AISHA: You scared me. What the fuck are you doing out here freak?

  I don’t get you. You’re miserable. You hate it here but you don’t make an effort to fit in. All you do besides sit at home is visit the Guptas.

  Why did you bring us here? You’ll never fit in and then I’ll never fit in and…

  INDHU: Aisha.

  AISHA: She reaches out, tries to hold my hand. And I laugh at her and walk away.

  AISHA goes.

  Daylight.

  SAM then KELLY.

  SAM: Then.

  KELLY: The mall after school.

  SAM: The food court near the donut shop, anything to avoid going home.

  AISHA enters.

  AISHA: I film the boys, all their haircuts. Them coming in and out of the toilets ’cause they’re checking their hair, the colours, the tips, the shape.

  KELLY: Faggots the lot of them. Just don’t know it yet.

  AISHA: This boy with beautiful skin. Noah from Samoa.

  KELLY: He plays football.

  SAM: Are they bitch tits or pecs?

  AISHA: Noah from Samoa smiles at me when I look.

  KELLY: Noah from Samoa’s watching you, whoooo.

  AISHA: Noah has really curly hair he’s trying to make straight. He looks serious not rough like some of his mates.

  Noah buys a bag of donuts and shares them with his mates.

  SAM: Bitch tits, see?

  AISHA: I see him every day after school at the food court. If I’m sly I can catch him on film and take it home and watch it. I lie on my bed and imagine what it would be like to dance with Noah. Lie on my bed and imagine what it would be like dancing to a slow song and then move in to kiss him.

  Mum comes in. She sits next to me on the bed gives me a look.

  INDHU: Something weighs on me.

  AISHA: She asks me about the day when we met Kelly’s mum. She asks about Sam and Kelly. Then she says /

  INDHU: I’ve been on the internet. I want to know why those girls call themselves the skanks. Do you know what it means?

  AISHA: Then she stops talking and stares at me.

  INDHU: Are you going to go back to church? Maybe you could meet other girls there.

  AISHA: She picks up my phone. The phone that’s made all the films. Films of us, when we got here when I knew no-one else. Films of school, of the skanks in the playground, at Westfield, the night at Kelly’s and the party at Nat’s.

  INDHU: When did you take this photo?

  AISHA: It was… at a party.

  INDHU: A party? What party? Where was that party and when did you go?

  AISHA: Dad comes home. He looks tired now doesn’t smile like he did.

  Mum shows him the photo on the phone. Says:

  INDHU: Look at your daughter, what your daughter is becoming.

  AISHA: And I say what do you mean by that Mum?

  My father looks at the photo, then at me, then at my mother.

  He says

  INDHU/AISHA: My daughter is becoming a woman.

  We hear flies and the traffic on the highway.

  SAM: Then

  Week after Nat’s party, I’m at school and this little cow in year seven starts slutting all over Trent in the quad. Flirting with him in front of me and then I find out she’s been sending him pics.

  Nick Trent’s phone from his bag and it doesn’t take long to find them. Pics she’s sent to him that make me gag, her in underwear, looks like a whore, her in a swimming pool, then her nude in her bedroom, heaps of cheap stuffed toys on the pink bed in the background.

  Trent looks all red and mad says / My fucking phone’s been nicked.

  TRENT: My fucking phone’s been nicked.

  SAM: I say it straight up. I nicked it Trent. Knew something was going on and look what I find. I hold up the pic of the fat cow’s tits and his mouth opens so wide I could punch out all his crooked teeth.

  Who is she?

  TRENT: No-one.

  SAM: No-one? Then what the fuck are all these pics? What’s her name dickhead don’t just dribble. Speak up you arsehole and tell me her name.

  TRENT: Chante.

  Eryn Jean Norvill and Elena Carapetis in the 2012 Q Theatre production at the Seymour Centre. (Photo © Amanda James)

  SAM: Chante? What an ugly name.

  Well you two can be together. It’s over.

  So over.

  Break up video in my head like Rihanna post Chris Brown.

  Yeah. I look sad but… I’m planning revenge.

  Chante. Chante. Two and two together.

  That was then and now…

  When I overheard her name on the phone I realised who Chante is. And who spawned her.

  I change my plan with the counsellor now. I’m going to talk and talk and then… when the time is ripe… I’ll ambush her.

  Sitting there after school in the demountable now. Flies circling above us and her with her sweat marks and I see Chante looks just like her mum. Fat cow with a pig nose. Her tired eyes looking at me as she’s saying.

  MICHELLE: I’m glad you’re talking now Sam. It makes it easier when you open up.

  SAM: I feel like laughing out loud and challenging that, let’s just see how easy it gets. I ask her what I am meant to call you, she smiles says,

  MICHELLE: Call me Michelle.

  SAM: I tell Michelle what she wants to hear about my home life. I say that Mum read in some Christian magazine that the way to ensure your daughter doesn’t go off the rails is to sit down every day and talk about things so we talk every night before dinner. When Dad and my brother are out and it’s just us. Sometimes we cut up carrots or beans and we talk. Sometimes we have a glass of wine but I have to scull if Dad comes through the door. Dad’s princess doesn’t drink.

  Mum thinks our convers
ations are deep but I just tell her what she wants to hear.

  MICHELLE: And what is that?

  SAM shrugs.

  I’m sure your mum would like to know the truth.

  SAM: I thought that too until after you know what happened. Do you know what their solution to it all was? Send me to you and to a Catholic school. Send me a school run by a barren old nuns and never speak about it again.

  MICHELLE: Maybe they don’t know what to say.

  SAM laughs.

  SAM: I ask Michelle about all the stuff on the internet.

  MICHELLE: What do you mean?

  SAM: Like what happens to it all? Like say a kid gets run over by a truck or shot in the head by some drugged up emo loser freak in some school in America what happens to their facebook page? Who answers their email messages? Who turns the whole thing off or does it just keep living? Does the inbox just keeping getting spam?

  She never knows what to say.

  MICHELLE: Maybe the parents…

  SAM: Nobody’s parents have their passwords Michelle.

  I want to tell her maybe I’m worried about all the pics of me that Trent has. How they might live on like some dead kid’s facebook.

  She’s happy to let me talk. Weird she never just asks me. Why did you do it?

  I let her make me tea. I eat all her biscuits. She even starts bringing in Tim Tams for me.

  And I have a silver gun like a film star and I am loading it up with bullets.

  I take two Tim Tams. Says:

  It makes me sad thinking about how girls lose their virginity.

  MICHELLE: What do you mean by that Sam?

  SAM: I mean it sucks. One guy was an arsehole. And I reel her right in and line her up for target practice.

  I start to cry and I say

  He knew it was my first time but he wasn’t romantic, he didn’t care.

  He took pictures of me naked, made me send him pictures of myself and showed his mates. He put them up online and when I asked him to take them down he laughed at me.

  He didn’t want to use condoms and after a while he made me promise I’d go on the pill. Then I found out he was fucking other girls as well.

  I found pics of other girls on his phone.

  I broke it off with him and I was lucky.

  Finger on the trigger.

  ’Cause I never used his name up until then and so I aim and I say

  I found pictures of another girl on Trent’s phone.

  Chante. This girl Chante.

  Fire. Bang. Bang.

  Poor Chante everyone blogging that she’s a slut. Pretty sad pictures. Looked like she was in her mum’s knickers and then there were pics of her nude. Poor thing. He’s shown all his mates and put them online he’s gonna be a pedo when he gets older he’s so sick.

  Bullets fired and I’m waiting for blood.

  MICHELLE: You enjoying this Sam?

  SAM: What do you mean?

  MICHELLE: I mean are you enjoying putting me through this? I don’t even want to know if it’s true but even if it is it doesn’t matter because this isn’t about Chante or me or our lives… this is about you. You want to intimidate me? Make me feel scared like some girl at your school?

  SAM: No.

  MICHELLE: I’m not scared of you. Why would I be scared?

  Take a look at yourself Sam. At what you do. What you did. Not about the way it might have looked in a movie or a video clip but about the reality of what you did. To your best friend. To yourself.

  I have been trying to figure out something about you. Where do you live? Not the house or the street or the suburb but in here. If you can’t see the difference between what’s going on in there and what’s happening around you, what’ll happen to you?

  SAM: Michelle’s spat on her blouse and knocked a Tim Tam on the floor.

  No idea what you’re on about. Gotta go.

  We hear swarming and trucks passing at high speed.

  KELLY/AISHA: Then

  KELLY: New guy at the food court.

  AISHA: Noah’s cousin. / Torquan.

  KELLY: Torquan.

  KELLY: He doesn’t go to school, works on the roads. Torquan knows he’s good looking. He’s seen the school girls watch him, he’s felt the eyes of every lady from Shoe-Deeni to GOLO look him up and down. He leans back on a chair in the food court looking bored. Noah brings him donuts.

  AISHA: I stand between Gloria Jean’s and Chinky Chonk’s waiting for Sam, watch them, him and Noah. The way Noah’s looking at his cousin.

  KELLY: Then Torquan sees Aish filming them. He sits up, his mouth snarls and he points at her. / They’re coming over.

  AISHA: They’re coming over. Torquan first then, another one of their gang followed by Noah. Torquan says /

  TORQUAN: Why were you filming us?

  AISHA: His breath is stale cigarettes his green eyes are cold.

  TORQUAN: Why were you filming us?

  AISHA: He grabs the phone out of my hand and plays back the film.

  TORQUAN: Oh look at that Noah, she’s got you on film. Why you filming my cousin, freak?

  AISHA: Noah looks down at his feet.

  KELLY: Torquan grabs Noah’s donuts, takes one out and squashes it on the phone.

  AISHA: Takes another one out and squashes it in my hair. His mates are laughing and a table load of boys behind him start cheering then Noah tells him to stop and Sam comes up behind us. She gets in between Torquan and me and says:

  SAM: What the fuck are you animals doing to my friend?

  TORQUAN: Teaching her a lesson.

  SAM: Teaching her a lesson?

  TORQUAN: Yeah.

  AISHA: My phone ringing now. Mum Mum Mum flashing on the screen.Torquan grabs the phone, answers it says: /

  TORQUAN: Hello Mum she can’t come right now ’cause she’s sucking my dick.

  AISHA: I close my eyes and start to cry.

  Sam yelling to get the phone back. Torquan saying it’s his phone now. Footsteps, security comes, some guy says sort things out or you can leave and then I hear something smashing. I open my eyes and Torquan is smashing my phone hard against this giant plastic kebab. The phone scatters in pieces on the food court floor.

  I’m led outside. Sam and Kelly both pat me like I’m a dog. Kelly strokes my hair while Sam tries to put my phone back together. She gives up, chucks it the ashtrays near the entrance to the food court.

  I’m shivering.

  SAM: Torquan’s such an arsehole.

  SAM/KELLY: What were you filming them for?

  SAM: Shouldn’t have filmed them. I don’t get you.

  AISHA: I look at them and can’t explain.

  An awkward pause, then SAM reveals a magazine.

  SAM: Look what I nicked.

  KELLY: Cosmo.

  SAM: Sealed section’s back.

  KELLY: Open it. Open it.

  AISHA: They peel it back like hungry dogs.

  SAM: The great Cosmo boobs and bottoms match up game. Look at him!

  AISHA: Photos of naked white guys with vegetables over their bits.

  SAM: And him.

  AISHA: Their fronts and their behinds.

  KELLY: Hot arse. Look at his tats.

  AISHA: Next page, girls with roses or orchids covering their vulvas… all of them smiling for the camera. All of them white.

  KELLY: Look Aisha.

  AISHA: Yeah I can see.

  SAM: She’s upset about her phone.

  KELLY: I got a spare one, you can borrow that.

  KELLY: What’s wrong Aish?

  Tell us Aish? You’re a skank you can say whatever you want.

  AISHA: A skank?

  SAM: Yeah.

  AISHA: Do you know what that means? What that says about us? Mum keeps asking what that means. I can’t tell my friends at home that now I’m here I’m a skank.

  SAM: It’s like, a joke.

  AISHA: Nobody else I know gets it.

  SAM: So?

  AISHA: Don’t you see?

>   SAM: No.

  AISHA: I just didn’t think things would be so hard here. I don’t understand anything. I thought things were going so well. When I started school and I met you two and when we went to that party I met that guy and I thought… I felt really close to you both but…

  KELLY: What?

  AISHA: Is this what being a skank is?

  SAM has rolled up the magazine and she’s hitting her hand with it. KELLY looks away.

  I don’t want to have to spend my life lying.

  Lying about where I am going. Lying about where I have been. Lying about who I am with.

  Why is everything here a series of lies or dares or…

  Kelly you never tell us what you feel about your dad. Sam you always seem so mad about everything and I don’t understand why.This place is so cold. The way you all treat each other. And I’m just a curry and I feel so left out.

  SAM: Then go back.

  KELLY: Sam!

  SAM: No. If you don’t like the way we do things here why did you come?

  AISHA: I didn’t /

  SAM: You don’t want to be a skank then don’t be.

  I just stuck up for you. I just saved you from those black cunts and what? All you can say is you don’t like it here?

  Why don’t you take your stinky family and go back?

  AISHA: I wasn’t saying that I /

  SAM: You stuck up bitch. How dare you judge us when the place you come from must suck or you wouldn’t have left. I don’t want you hanging around us anymore. We don’t want you.

  Take your fucking ugly curry eating family and get back on the fucking boat. Nobody asked you to come here. You don’t like the way we live here? Then fuck off back home.

  AISHA: I didn’t mean /

  SAM: Don’t talk to me again bitch.

  SAM whacks AISHA with the rolled up magazine and leaves.

  Come on Kelly.

  KELLY hesitates then finally follows SAM. AISHA is left alone. After a time she gets up and leaves. A projection: ants running about.

  KELLY: Now.

  The waiting room.

  Same smell, same posters, same nurses, same doctor. Josie again.

  JOSIE: Hello Kelly.

  KELLY: Same room, same chair.

  She holds an envelope. Inside it the results of the tests.

  For HIV.

  KELLY stares at the envelope.

  JOSIE: How are you doing?

  KELLY: Been alright but I don’t want to talk, want to rip that envelope open so I know, so I…?