‘And he gave them to you?’ Ian said, picking up a knuckle.
‘Yeah,’ Cassie said. ‘For my birthday.’
‘Where’d he get them?’
‘I don’t know,’ Cassie said. ‘He probably had them since he was a kid. They look pretty old.’
‘What kind of knuckles are they?’
‘What?’
‘What animal did they come from?’
‘I don’t know. Pig maybe,’ Cassie said. I could tell he’d never thought about them belonging to an actual animal before.
‘Do you reckon they’re human?’
‘That’s sick,’ Cassie said, putting a knuckle onto the backs of his fingers and flicking it into the air. ‘They’re too big, anyway.’
Ian held one up to his eye, and then put it under his nose and sniffed. He rolled it around in his palm like he was trying to warm it up.
Cassie took the knuckles from Ian, put them into the pouch and then back into the drawer. ‘I’m going to piss,’ he said, rolling off the bed.
Once he’d left the room Ian lay back on the bed and rubbed his head. He stared at the ceiling, and when the bathroom door slammed shut, he sat up and opened Cassie’s sock drawer. He took out the knuckle pouch and then opened his backpack beside the bed. He pulled out his school jumper, put the knuckles at the bottom of the bag and stuffed the jumper back on top. When the toilet flushed he scrambled back onto the bed, lay still.
I couldn’t believe my luck. I’d been waiting and waiting for something like this and it had happened without me even looking for it.
A few minutes after Ian went home, Cassie came into the lounge room.
‘Have you seen Wally?’ he asked, yanking at the quilt I had over my legs. Before I could answer he charged into my and Wally’s room.
‘Did you take my knuckles?’ Cassie demanded.
‘No,’ Wally said.
‘Give them back.’
‘I don’t have your stupid knuckles.’ Wally threw his pillow at Cassie, hitting him in the face. ‘Get lost.’
‘Ian took them,’ I called out from the couch. ‘When you went to the loo he put them in his bag. I saw him.’
Cassie looked at me like I was telling a lie, but then he charged down the hallway, went outside and got on his bike.
He came back an hour later. I followed him into his room. ‘Did you get them back?’ I asked. ‘I told you it was Ian. He’s a thief. He’s a bad egg.’
Cassie was much calmer than when he left. He took the knuckle pouch out of his bag, and instead of hiding them in the drawer he opened his cupboard and dug them into a tin of marbles.
I went to bed that night feeling like I’d won a long race. It was all over. Cassie had realised that Ian was rotten and everything would go back to normal.
But when Ian came around the next day it was as if nothing had happened. I watched them cycle into the paddock, leaving their bikes behind the gate. I didn’t understand. If someone ever stole anything important from me like that, there was no way I’d be their friend. I’d never talk to them again for as long as I lived.
7.
A FEW DAYS LATER, WALLY and me were about to go into town for lollies when Mum told us to invite Tilly to go with us.
‘No way,’ Wally said.
‘I thought you had a nice time at the fete,’ Mum said. ‘She’s probably lonely all by herself in that house, with no brothers or sisters. No one to play with. Not like you lot.’
When Mum left the room Cassie pulled his velcro wallet out of his back pocket, held out a five-dollar note. ‘You don’t have to hang around with her all day,’ he said. Wally reached for the money but Cassie didn’t let go. ‘Share it,’ he said, making Wally look him in the eye and nod before he let go of the money.
Wally bent down and slipped the money into his sock. I don’t know why Cassie didn’t give the money to me to look after when he knows Wally’s a thief. Probably because he’s a boy.
Cassie looked out the window, reached his hand under his shirt to scratch his belly. ‘Just be nice to her, alright?’ he said.
We walked across the yard and came to a stop a few metres from the yellow house. Neither of us wanted to go up the steps. I was nervous that Tilly did hate me, and remembered how cross Helena was when she found out what Ian had told Tilly. But after a second Tilly appeared behind the flyscreen.
‘We’re going for lollies and Cassie told us we have to invite you,’ Wally said, staring at the grass.
‘He did?’ Tilly said. Helena must have been close, because Tilly turned her face and said something in a whisper, looked back at us.
‘Do you have any money?’ Wally said.
Tilly said something else behind the door.
‘So do you wanna come or not?’ Wally said. ‘We don’t have all day.’
Tilly’s lip drooped a bit and I could see her bottom row of teeth were all crowded in together, like there were too many of them and they were shoving each other to share the space. Tilly disappeared from inside the door, and when she came back she had a bag over her shoulder. It was black plastic with purple love hearts patterned all over it. She’d put something on her lips to make them pink and sticky.
We headed towards the road. ‘Don’t think I’m going to kiss you,’ Wally said, squinting at Tilly’s lips.
‘What?’ Tilly said.
‘If that’s why you’ve put all that stuff on your mouth,’ Wally said. ‘You shouldn’t have bothered, because I’m not going to kiss you.’
‘We’re related,’ Tilly said. ‘You can’t kiss someone you’re related to.’
‘Yeah, well, just stay a metre away from me at all times.’
‘There’s no way I’d want to kiss you anyway,’ Tilly said. ‘I like someone else.’
‘Good,’ Wally said. There was a pause, before Wally turned and stepped onto the road.
I tried to change the subject, asked Tilly whether she had a very best friend at school yet.
‘Everyone there’s gross,’ Tilly said. ‘Not like at my old school. And that wasn’t even a private school.’ She’d said she’d made heaps of friends a few weeks ago, so I wondered what had happened. She tucked her hair behind her ears, pushed her shoulders back. Something in her voice changed. ‘Heaps of people want to be my friend, though,’ she said.
When we got to Main Street, Tilly stopped on the footpath. ‘Mum said it wasn’t true. What Ian said about Granddad. She said that if you say otherwise you’re just playing a trick on me.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, before Wally could get in first. ‘Ian lies a lot. He makes things up all the time.’
Tilly nodded. ‘That’s what Mum said. She said he was just tricking me because that’s what immature boys do. She said Ian’s probably never had a girlfriend and doesn’t know how to speak to girls.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Ian’s pretty weird. I don’t know why Cassie’s friends with him.’
‘So you’re sure it’s not true then?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Cross my heart.’
‘Wally?’ Tilly said.
‘Yeah,’ Wally said. ‘It’s not true.’
I sent Wally a thankyou brain message, and one to Helena for thinking of the lie.
The buzzer sounded when we went into the corner shop. The man who worked there was reading a magazine on a stool behind the counter. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and his belly hung over his ruggers. He never said hello to us, but never got mad at us for taking too long to choose what we wanted. We didn’t go to the big shop on the middle of Main Street anymore. Once when we were paying for our lollies the woman who worked there thought Wally had nicked some money from the counter. We have pictures of her in photo albums, of her and Mum in Girl Guide uniforms. She grabbed Wally’s hands and tried to prise his fists open. Wally spat on her neck, and as we ran out of the shop he grabbed the bucket filled with flower bunches by the door and emptied it on the street, grinding the petals into the brick path. But Wally hadn’t even taken anything—not that time, anyway.