I stack box after box of canned peas and toilet paper, and I see my life in those neat little piles. “This place,” I say to Charlie. “Tell me there’s somewhere other than here.”

She doesn’t tell me to have a little patience. She doesn’t tell me I’ll get the things I want when I’m older. She tells me what I want to hear and then says to sit outside. She makes me chips and says, “When you want something really bad that you might never have, then the only thing to do is eat chips. It’s either that or chocolate.” She brings some of that out, too.

She puts them on the table between us and says, “I get the last one, though. As long as we’re friends, I get the last chip.”

“Fair enough. Fight you for the last piece of chocolate, though.”

We eat quietly, and then after a bit she says, “I think—and I’m not sure, but maybe—it’s not entirely crazy to say that Dave might kind of like me.”

I look at her. “Are you fucking kidding?”

“Okay, maybe it is crazy.”

“No, I mean, are you fucking kidding? Of course he likes you.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe? He breathes heavy when you’re around. He either likes you or he’s allergic to that truckload of aftershave he’s started wearing.”

She’s laughing when her dad walks up the path. “Hey,” Charlie calls. “Nice day.”

He nods like some customer said it to him. He lets Charlie do what she wants not because he trusts her. It’s because he doesn’t notice her. I’m looking at a family photo that’s been sliced through the middle, and she and her dad are on separate pieces. Maybe it happened when her mum was cut out of the picture. Maybe it was always that way.

Mum might yell half the time and not listen properly the other half, but if I said something like “Nice day” to her she’d do a dance. If she didn’t answer, I’d say it again and again till she did. Charlie just shrugs but she doesn’t do it like other people do. She resettles her skin. I look across at my house. Dad’s at the mailbox. “Nice day,” I call out.

“Sure is, Rosie,” he says. “Lucky I’m working nights. I get to enjoy it.”

I don’t do it to be mean. I do it to show her what things should be like. The sun’s creeping over her and she shifts back into shade and closes her eyes.

“Is your dad always so quiet?” I ask.

“I guess.”

“He’s never really talked to you?” It’s brutal, but brutal’s what it is.

“Before Mum died, he was a different kind of quiet. Early-morning kind of quiet.” She sits up and puts her toes in the sun. “I remember him teaching me how to make toast when I was about seven. I said, ‘It’s just toast, Dad,’ and he put me on the counter. He said, ‘It’s never “just” with food. You take good ingredients, good bread. Don’t be impatient, Charlotte. Toast till it’s golden. Spread real butter right to the edges.’”

“That was good toast you made the other night,” I say.

“He’s one of the top ten chefs in Melbourne. He taught me right. I can’t cook anything other than toast, though. We had this father and daughter day once. I think I was in Year Three or Four. Every kid had to make something for their dad. So I made these biscuits. I read the recipe and mixed the batter. I wanted them to be sweet, so I doubled the amount of sugar. Mum helped me put them in the oven.

“That morning when we were getting in the car, I tasted one and realized I’d used salt instead of sugar. Dad said he was excited about my present and I couldn’t tell him. He got out of the car at school, and I said it real quick to Mum. She covered her mouth and tried not to laugh because she could see I was panicking. ‘I’ll fix it, Charlie.’

“So she came in with us. We did the father and daughter things, and then it was time to give our gifts in front of everyone. Dad opened his, and I kept saying to Mum, ‘He can’t eat them. Do something.’

“She held me back while he opened the tin and ate one. The look on his face only lasted a second. Then he smiled and ate five biscuits. Mum and I had to leave the room because she was laughing so loud. ‘He’s eating them!’ she kept screaming. ‘He’s eating them.’ Mum had the best laugh. The sort that took you with it.

“On the way home she was still cracking up. Dad looked at me in the rearview mirror and said in his dead-serious voice, ‘They were very good, Charlotte. I’m thinking of adding more salt to my recipe.’”

“You ever remind him of that day?” I ask.

“He doesn’t like talking about her.”

“So what do you talk about, since she died?”

She thinks about it and resettles her skin again. “Sometimes we talk about the weather.”

I push the chocolate across. “Last piece is yours,” I say.

“Stay away from Charlie, Luke. I don’t want you hassling her to steal again.” I left the shop and came straight here. Talking to Charlie was like sitting in a summer storm. Sweet grass and wind and just cool enough to set my skin rising. I don’t want Luke hurting her or telling her about the scholarship, which amounts to the same thing.

“I didn’t hassle her. Taking stuff from your own dad isn’t stealing.”

“Crap, Luke. You used her, and you know it.”

“You can talk,” he says.

“It’s different for me. I’m not using Charlie to get a packet of cigarettes. I’m not even using her. I might tell her about the scholarship, and I might not, but either way I’m her friend now.”

“She’s not yours, Rose,” he says, and I feel the same way I did watching him with Andrea Cushifsky

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means what I said.”

People say such stupid things sometimes. “Are you going to tell her about the scholarship?”

“You think I’d wreck everything for you?”

“I don’t know, Luke. I didn’t think you’d almost kill Charlie. How stupid can you be, getting into that car with Antony when he’s been drinking? You could have been killed as well.”

“Like you’d care.”

“Are you a complete dickhead? Of course I care.”

“I’m sorry I’m not as smart as you are. Not everyone can have a scholarship.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t smart. I said you were stupid.”

“I guess I’m too dumb to see the difference.”

If Luke and I keep yelling like this, we’ll end up saying things we don’t even mean. We’ll rip each other apart. I’m mad at him, but it’s because he’s acting dangerous. He’ll get hurt and I won’t be here to stop him. I’ll be in the city. “I don’t think you should hang out with Antony anymore.”

“Well, you don’t get to choose my friends.”

“It’s either him or me, Luke.” As soon as I say it, I want to snatch it back from the air. But it’s out of my mouth with a life of its own.

Luke’s cornered. His face is as pale and tiny as the day he kicked Dave through the goals on the footy field. “Then it’s Antony.”

“Then it’s over,” I say. But what I really want is for Luke to grab my hand and run with me to the river. I want what I had before, Luke standing up for me no matter what. I want him right up to the second I leave this town. “And you won’t tell Charlie about the scholarship?”

“I don’t care enough about it to tell her,” he says, and walks away. So this is what water feels like, I think, the second before it can’t hold on any longer. This is what it feels like, the second after it lets go.

Dad takes one look at me when I get home and says, “Rosie, put your walking boots on. We’re going out for the afternoon.”

“I’m too tired to walk.”

“Five minutes,” he says. “Move it.”

He drives to my favorite spot, where the mountain looks as if it’s been cut away from the rest of the hills around it. The surface is jagged and crumbling, and if you climb to the top where the water runs through, “you might be lucky enough to find fossils,” Miss Cantrell told me in Year 7. I’ve never found one in all the years I’ve been coming here. “Most things don’t leave evidence of themselves when they die, they just crumble away,” she said. “But if they live near water, then there’s a chance some tiny part of them will be etched into the earth.”

“You read a lot of stuff, hey, Rosie?” Luke always says when I try to explain it to him. He looks for fossils when we come up here, though. He looks because he knows how bad I want to find something.

“So, everything all right?” Dad asks while we eat the food Mum’s packed.

“Yep.”

“Luke hasn’t been round all that much lately. Everything okay with you two?” I nod and sift through tiny pebbles. “You know, when your mother left for overseas, I thought I’d lost her. She had to go but it killed me to see her leave.”

“Me and Luke aren’t you and Mum, Dad.” Luke and I are over. It’s time I cut my losses and moved on. No more looking after him. No more saving him. No more believing him when no one else does.

I know Dad wants to help, but it’s too little too late. He should have come here with me years ago; he should have kept coming with me to see the sunrises.

“So, you okay to walk or do I have to carry you back?” Dad asks after a while.

“Nope,” I say, standing up. “I can walk on my own.”

I brush my jeans clean of grit before we leave. “Not taking any rocks with you?” he asks.

“No.” All this time I’ve been coming to this place and there’s no history here, at least nothing worth taking with me.