“Hang out the washing for me?” Mum asks when I walk in the door. She doesn’t ask me where I was this morning or why I was up so early. She doesn’t say anything except “Remember to take the clothes in if it rains, love. I’m on the afternoon shift at the caravan park.”

She never used to worry about the washing in a storm. She went outside and danced around. Now she worries about balancing the books or if the workers are cleaning the vans properly.

I can’t imagine her doing it at all anymore, let alone doing it in a car with Dad. I guess everyone’s got secrets. I told Luke and Dave about Mum getting pregnant before she was married. They looked at me, burgers halfway to their mouths. “Unbelievable,” Luke said. “They did it in a car?”

“What sort of car was it?” Dave asked.

“A Holden.”

“That’s a good car, Rosie,” he said through a mouthful of food.

The only thing that mattered to Dave was that they did it in a great car. The only thing that mattered to Luke was that they did it at all. My best friends have their secrets written on T-shirts.

It doesn’t take long for them to walk into my backyard today. I try to leave them behind, but they always follow me. “Dave, get my mum’s bra off your head. Either help or get lost.”

“Stop messing around, dickhead, or we’ll never get out of here,” Luke says, and throws a peg at him.

I’ve known Dave so long that I can tell what he’s going to do before he does it. I don’t want to meet the person who can predict what Luke’s about to do; they’d have to be crazier than him.

We were all born in the same hospital. I came first, then Luke. “Dave took bloody ages,” his mum says, and winks. She only swears when she talks about giving birth to him. “Twenty-four bloody hours,” she says, and pulls Dave in close. He just acts like he’s annoyed. His dad’s the one he fights with.

Mr. Robbie’s given Dave a hard time for as long as I can remember, like when he made him sign up for the local footy team. Most boys in town are in it; there’s nothing else to do on Saturdays in winter. Most guys weren’t as small as Dave was in Year 7, though. Coach only let him on the ground because his older brother used to play. Mr. Robbie played, too. Years ago. No one asked Dave what he wanted.

I walked up to the wire fence before his first match and stood as close to him as I could. “You’ll be all right,” I said. Sometimes a friend doesn’t need the truth.

Mr. Robbie didn’t make a sound as Dave fell the first time. He watched his son moving like a scared rabbit running wild and barely blinked. My breath ran crazy with Dave as he zigzagged across the field. He didn’t see Luke grab the ball and swing back with his boot. He got in the way, and Luke kicked him instead, thumped him right between the legs. Luke was really, really good at footy; his boot connected with Dave so hard he almost sent him sailing through the posts. Every boy on the field closed his legs in sympathy. The rest of us closed our eyes.

“For God’s sake, get up,” his dad called out after a bit. I would have loved to test how quickly Mr. Robbie’d get up if I walked over and slammed him in the nuts.

At the end of the game Dave and his dad got into the car without saying a word. I would have cried that day, seeing him drive off, except I kept imagining Mrs. Robbie waiting behind the wire door.

Luke and I sat by the river for hours after the match. “I didn’t mean it,” he kept saying, and I felt like I was the one who’d kicked Dave and been kicked, all at the same time. I hate that feeling, worrying about them.

When Dave’s dad gives him a hard time, he goes wandering round the town at night. I see him, scuffing at the dirt, his arms wrapped tight round himself, like if he lets go he’ll fall apart. He doesn’t want to talk. Luke and I tried once, and he told us to piss off.

Lately I worry about Dave a lot, because every time Luke gets in trouble, Dave gets in even more trying to help him. It used to be that Luke only hung out with us and that kept him kind of safe. But last year I started babysitting, and Dave got a summer job at the garage. That meant Luke had time on his hands.

He started spending it with Antony Barellan. There are two sides of town, and the Barellan kids hang out on the wrong one. They sit outside the fish-and-chips shop near the turnoff to Henderson’s Road. They don’t wait for something to happen. They wait to happen to something.

The day Luke got arrested, Dave and I were working. I heard the siren screaming across town from my place. The other kids with Luke were smart enough to run.

Dave and I huddled outside the police station. It got colder and colder and later and later, but neither of us talked about leaving. We found out afterward that they were only keeping Luke to give him a scare. We didn’t know that then, though, and all night we thought about losing him. “How come he does dumb stuff all the time?” I asked while we waited.

“He’s there at the wrong time, and the wrong thing’s happening, and he thinks, Why not?”

“So what you’re saying is my boyfriend’s an idiot?”

I never mind when Dave says stuff like that about Luke. I figure he’s earned the right to, maybe even more than I have.

“How come you never do stupid stuff except with him?” I asked that night.

“My old man would kill me, Rosie. Even I’m smart enough to work that one out.”

Dave talks about himself like that all the time. He’s not dumb, though. He can take a car apart and put it back together in under an hour. “It doesn’t take a genius to do that, Rosie.”

“Not everyone who’s knocked down in their first footy game gets back up and goes in again,” I said to him once.

“Most kids in this town don’t get knocked down to start with.”

I held Dave’s hand outside the police station. He acts like he doesn’t need anyone but he’s looking for someone as much as anyone else; he just doesn’t know how to say it.

Nights like that one make me realize how much I’ll miss Dave and Luke when I go. I think how easy it would be to stay. Dad would love it if I studied by correspondence or went to college in the next big town and worked part-time at the caravan park with Mum.

But then I think about spending my whole life with boys who read car magazines and think “amoeba” is the name of a band. I think about spending my life sitting on plastic chairs waiting for fish and chips to arrive. That sort of thinking can kill a person.

So instead I think, Get out, Rose, get out. See nights that last forever in Antarctica. See where the world began.

Today I feel like I am seeing where the world began, right here in my backyard. Dave’s running around like a strange dinosaur with my mum’s bra making two huge ears on his head. Luke chases him, trips him up, and sits on his stomach.

“Got him, Rose. What do you want to do with him?”

“With Dave?” I laugh. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

He grabs at Luke’s ankles then and they tumble over dirt, shouting at each other so loud the whole town can hear. “Bloody get off, Luke,” Dave yells. “I’ve got a prickle in my jocks!”

Luke pulls Dave’s jeans down fast. “That better? God, Dave, what girl’ll ever go out with you in undies like those?”

“If you plan on stuffing around all afternoon, then leave, will you? I’ve got things to do.”

“Get out of the way, Dave.” Luke picks himself up off the ground. “She’s gone from Rosie to bitch in less than six seconds.”

“Better watch out, then,” I say, and chase him. I run till I’m out of breath and the clouds spin above me when I fall. The three of us lounge together under the shade of the huge old tree that’s been here as long as us. “What things other than this have you got to do, Rosie?” Dave asks.

“She’s got nothing.” Luke laughs.

“Well, you got less than nothing,” I say, and point at his open fly. The clouds slow to drifting above us.