The Drive Home

6: Woo

Muphrid's red cloud of dust stews ahead of me, and I follow it.

I could stop at any moment, cut the engine, turn around. The possibilities are endless. He prolly wouldn't even notice, not till he stops and his dust disintegrates enough for him to see out the rear-view mirror. 

I remember Jacko did that to me once - not on purpose, of course. We were out bush and she got a flat and I didn't notice I'd lost her for over an hour, till I stopped for lunch and she wasn't behind me. She didn't have a jack either; I had to go back and find her sitting crossly on the bonnet.

Me and Jacko were always close, always going out camping and shit. It started when we were neighbours, then she moved to the next street over. The extra 400 metres didn't stop us from hanging out every day, though I bet Jacko's mum wished it did. Just made it worse, if anything, cos we started having sleepovers because it was too dangerous to walk home at night. I think her mum thought we were fucking or something. Don't blame her, not with how close we were. Other than the fact that Jacko's the biggest, gayest lesbian I've ever seen, and asexual. And the fact that we were 14 (not that that was stopping any of our classmates, geez).

Things started to crumble when we hit 16, when we started going off to bush doofs, getting high and saying things we didn't mean. 

Then, of course, Jacko's parents both died. That didn't really fix anything. We graduated, got jobs. Had the kind of thing going where you'd nod your head at them at the shops, maybe ask how the other was going, make a remark about the weather.

We haven't really been close for years but we're still there for each other, you know? Kinda hard not to be when we know every single little thing about each other. Every thread, every fibre of each other's past. It was mostly late-night things, when our reasoning was out. She'd come to mine when she was sad. I'd go to hers when I got too drunk, when my ever-absent parents were pissing me off.

So, her texts from that other day sting a little bit more than all the rest.

Meanwhile, Muphrid parks up at the bottom of a hill and I pull in next to him. We get out, and it feels odd, seeing him again. Like I wasn't really expecting myself to follow through with this after all. Like I was ready to erase him from my mind.

But here he is, in the flesh, and here I am too.

He briefs me on what we're doing again: climbing that big bloody hill. Just to get a photo. A single photo. He can tell I'm unimpressed cos he whips out his journal, flips to the middle and shows me this grainy photograph of someone I don't know - another infamous old person from the old people home. They're all he talks about. He explains how we're gonna recreate the photo, as if that makes the premise of walking up a hill more exciting.

He's positively glowing with it. It's kind of contagious, I'll admit. Just a little. He bounces up the track with a spring in his step. "It'll be so much easier to do recreations now, you have no idea," he grins. He keeps spinning on his heel to make sure I'm right up behind him, and when I lag he waits for me. He's always moving, always bouncing on his heels, or rubbing his knuckles, fingers, adjusting his camelback. "I've wasted so much time stacking up rocks and sticks to balance my camera on, to get that perfect angle. Wait - do you mind taking the pictures? Are you actually camera shy or did you just say that cos you were naked the other day?"

"No, no. I hate pictures. I'll take 'em for you."

"You're hired." 

Our walk makes good progress towards the crest of the hill until Muphrid spots a pigeon; one of them funky orange ones with the mohawk. To be fair, it's one of the more interesting pigeons to be distracted by. And so I watch him chase it around for half an hour, camera bouncing round his neck. Every time he gets within range, the thing beats the air, like newspapers on a windy day, and lands another couple of metres away. I don't get it. I've told him that in Alice those things are so tame they'll come and peck your shoelaces, but he's too stubborn to believe me.