Good Oil by Laura Buzo Read Free Book Online Page B

trigonometry.
    ‘Where’d you have it done?’
    ‘Did it myself.’
    ‘You WHAT?’
    ‘I did it myself. With ice and a needle.’ She is still looking down at her bloody trig book, and I am flabbergasted.
    I splay my hand palm down in the middle of her exercise book. ‘Holy crap dude, you could have given yourself blood poisoning! Why didn’t you go to a chemist or something?’
    She shrugs. ‘I boiled up the needle and everything.’
    ‘What did your parents say?’
    ‘I don’t even think they’ve noticed. I did it when they went to a meeting with Jamie’s doctors.’
    Penny’s older brother Jamie is in Year Twelve and had some kind of meltdown earlier in the year. Now he is living in an adolescent mental-health unit. They have a school there and everything.
    ‘Well, shit, Penny, I’m . . . surprised, I guess. Surprised that you stuck a needle through both your earlobes .’
    She shrugs again.
    After final bell I make my way to work in a state of adrenalin-fuelled anticipation mixed with dread. Maybe tonight Chris will cool off from the teasing and welcome me back into the fold. Maybe he’ll have grown tired of it. One can only hope.
    I walk in to work and see him chatting to Ed at the service desk. He says hello in a perfectly civil manner and allows me to continue on to the locker room unmolested. All evening I brace myself for another barrage. None is forthcoming. The shift passes without incident. At nine o’clock I put up my closed sign, pack up my cash drawer and set off to take it up to the cashier’s office. I’m about halfway there, when I hear Chris’s voice over the store PA system.
    ‘Attention, staff.’ His disembodied voice is businesslike. ‘Ahem, attention staff. If staff members have any hard surfaces in their homes in need of a polish, a member of the checkout team is offering her services in this area. She will polish wooden surfaces, plastic, laminex, glass, lino, ceramic tiling, even cork tiling, and will only expect a bottle of wine for payment. Bookings are essential, through myself, Chris Harvey, at the service desk.’
    I stand stock still, clutching my cash drawer, a hot blush creeping up the back of my neck. Then I turn and walk briskly back to the service desk, the coins in my cash drawer rattling with each step.
    There he is, counting out his own cash drawer, innocent as a newborn lamb. He looks up and regards me benignly.
    ‘You don’t have to book yourself, youngster.’
    ‘Will you STOP this?’
    ‘Settle down, tiger. You’ll pop a blood vessel. It’s all in good fun.’
    ‘Fun for who ?’ I bellow.
    He looks down at the wad of twenties he is counting. It’s maddening the way he won’t even acknowledge that he is taking things too far.
    ‘Why, why are you so pissed off about the Jeremy thing?’
    ‘Like I said, it’s all in good fun. You take everything so seriously.’ He drawls over the ‘e’ in seriously, in the manner of one who is extremely put-upon in tolerating my adolescent spats.
    I take a deep breath and do something brave.
    ‘Why aren’t you going at Kathy or Stuart the way you are going at me? That’s what you are really mad about.’
    It’s a good ten seconds before he replies, quietly and, for the first time this week, without belligerence.
    ‘Because girls like Kathy eat guys like me for breakfast. And Stuart could and would squash me like a fly.’
    He looks gutted.
    ‘Ah, Chris,’ I say, melting. ‘I’m sorry it went . . . badly. She must be out of her mind.’
    I wonder briefly if I could somehow broker a deal with God whereby if I put both my arms around Chris, his suffering would be transferred to me via skin-to-skin osmosis at a rate inversely proportionate to how much I love him. But that’s right, I don’t believe in God.
    ‘You know what happened, don’t you? Stuart took credit for my flowers and poem and then fucked her on Bianca’s parents’ bed.’
    I nod. I’d figured.
    ‘Can’t you tell her they were from