1

“Whyja take so long?”

Some girls peak at seventeen, but Em wasn’t one of them. They rolled their school uniforms up at the waist, showing off their long thighs to whoever would look. They laughed a lot and breezed their way through class, then pouted prettily at supply and demand curves during lunch when Mr Young-and-Single offered them a little extra tutoring in Economics. They went to the beach on the weekend, flashing belly studs on flat stomachs, knotting their long, thick hair into perfectly formed ponytails before running into the surf with their pretty ballerina steps. They had exam study sessions in cafes with their boyfriends. They had it made!

Em, as I said, wasn’t one of them. She had thick, orange hair that dismantled hairbrushes. She had freckles. Her school uniform fell from her rounded shoulders like a shapeless pup-tent and the buttons gaped at the front. The best bit about finishing high-school was not having to wear that thing ever again. She walked across the stage when they called her name, took her certificate from the dignitary, shook his hand, gave a tight smile to the camera and moved away.

That night, after turning off the friers, balancing the till and locking the front door, she went to the alley out the back, threw her school uniform into a metal drum, squeezed a half sauce bottle of metho over the top and dropped in a match. Two days later, her Doc Martens turned up in the mail.

Despite the fact that the summer in the Adelaide hills was hotter than average and the air conditioner above the shop door shook and clattered its way through every long shift, Em wore her high topped boots every day. They were the promise of a future, a new identity far from her mum and her dad, far from the shop just off the main road of their small town, and far from the dwelling that hulked above it.

Every Tuesday afternoon, when her mum paid her in the same grubby, gaping envelope, she closed the door to her room, counted out the hundreds, fifties and tens into her biscuit tin and tallied the amount with a small sharp pencil that wallowed in the cashbox like a gambler on a money bed. She worked weekends. She worked evenings. She worked as much as she could. Sometimes, other girls her age came into the shop, deep in gossip, with sunglasses on their head and flashing, white smiles. They ordered their chips, shakes or pineapple fritters and barely looked at her. Em told herself she didn’t care. She smiled tightly, handed over their orders and took their money or their EFTPOS on the machine.

In mid December, exam results came out. Em’s stomach was in knots as she checked her email account on the family computer in the morning before work, and didn’t know whether to be anxious or relieved when there was no email. She went back upstairs at smoko, and it still hadn’t arrived. Then, at lunch, when she saw the bold, black subject line, her breath hitched. SACE Results – ATAR Ranking.

She made sure she was alone, took a deep breath and opened the email.

Dear Manessa,

She hated her name, hated seeing it in print. The three syllables reminded her of a sea cow floundering in the ocean. She preferred Em.

Congratulations on your successful completion of the South Australia Certificate of Education. Your final results and university entrance …

She held her breath and scanned down, looking for the numbers, mentally adding them in her head:

16.5, 14.5…

Em put both hands over her mouth, then moved her hands up and pressed her palms against her eyes, blocking out all the light. She sat there for a long moment, with her elbows on the desk in front of the computer, pushing with her hands against her face, hearing her own slow breathing. Then she logged out of her email, put the computer to sleep and went back to work in the shop downstairs.

Her mum was serving customers with typical cold, hard efficiency. Her tone was brittle, like they were inconveniencing her by ordering sandwiches. When they paid cash, she plucked it out of their hands, threw it into the till and counted out change with force that was close to violence. When she smiled at customers, because that’s what you were meant to do, she drew back her lips and bared her fangs to the eyeteeth. “Have a nice day,” she barked, and then called “Next,” before the customers had even shifted their weight.

“I’m back from lunch,” Em said, more to shatter the tension in the shop than anything else.

Her mum gritted her teeth. “Whyja take so long Manessa? There’s been a run on.”

Em moved uneasily. In truth, she’d been gone seventeen minutes, not the full half hour that she was allocated. She felt the familiar clench in her gut that came from being in the shop with her mum. She was a dark, twisting tornado, drifting her focus around the shop and leaving a trail of destruction in her wake. If Em put her head down and got busy, it wouldn’t be long before her mum drifted away, maybe to the store room to clatter about in the shelves, or out to the hot alley out the back to suck bitterly on a durry and recharge the thunder.

2

Twenty Cents

The Christmas season passed uneventully. Cam, Manessa’s older brother, came home for a baked dinner, gave CDs for presents and left before midafternoon for Victor Harbour. Em took as many shifts in the shop as she could. Her mother basically left her alone and found other things in other places to worry about. Jan was often there to help, of course. Jan was the middle-aged Philipina who was known upstairs as “the employee.” She had been with them for five months, but Em could tell that it wouldn’t be long before Jan’s nerves would be frayed beyond retrieval and she would walk. But then they’d find a replacement, another Jan or Maxine or Gracie, to run the fryer and whiz up milkshakes. When Em’s mum did come to “help,” as she called it, Em bit her lip , held her breath and walked lightly in her heavy Docs until she was gone. Even less occasionally, Em’s dad ghosted in, with his quiet, bald manner and his lily-white hands that hung limply at his apron, but he’d find something else to do and disappear upstairs.

About the time the Christmas decorations got taken down and the Australian flags got stuck up, Em got a letter in the mail. It was in a standard sized envelope, one of hundreds, but special nonetheless. When Em saw it, her heart immediately began hammering on the inside of her ribcage and she felt the adrenaline roar up her carotid artery. She whisked it out of the pile before anyone had a chance to see it and later, when there was a lull in service, she hid out the back, opened the envelope with a serrated knife and scanned the letter quickly. Then, with a self-satisfied nod to the chest freezer, she folded the letter, tucked it into her pocket and went back to work.

For the rest of that day, her movements were crisp and sharp and the packets of chips were wrapped neatly, like Christmas gifts, and that night, while her parents were watching a crime show, she quietly disappeared from the flat above the shop and took herself for a walk in town.

It was in the first week of February that hell broke loose. Em’s mum had been absent from the shop for a few days, but when she returned, it was with full force. She came just as Em was running a mop over the floor. “Did ya balance the till?”

“Yes,” Em said.

Her mum glared at her, then stomped over to the till and punched the drawer open. Like always, Em had left the tally on a small piece of paper, with the required number of notes and coins ready for tomorrow’s opening. Em turned her back and concentrated on swirling the mop head on the floor with smooth, even strokes, but she knew what was about to happen.

The coins clattered on the counter as Em’s mum counted them out, then clattered in the drawers as she piled them back in. Then, finally, there was a furious silence.

Em kept mopping, but her shoulders were hunched.

“Manessa, what’s this?”

Em turned. She clutched at the mop handle in front of her.

“You’re twenty cents short,” her mum said, stabbing a stubby finger at the till.

“I’m not–” Em began.

“Are you calling me a liar?” her mum said, and added, “I can count it again if you want.”

Em shook her head.

Her mum whacked the open drawer with the back of her hand. “Why is it short? Can’t you count?”

Em put the mop back into the bucket, but her hands were shaking. She closed her eyes and tried to talk plainly. “I’m twenty cents short because a twenty cent piece rolled under the counter. I know it’s there. I was going to get it tomorrow.”

Em’s mum slammed the drawer shut. At least, she intended to, but she pushed it so hard that it bounced open again. She pushed it again, choking it closed.

“Get down and get it now,” she said.

“What?” Em said.

“Now,” her mum said, pointing at the wet floor and the gap beneath the counter.

“The floor’s wet. I can do it in the morning,” Em protested.

“What? You want me to get down on the wet floor and do it?” Em’s mum said.

Em shook her head. She’d been on her feet all day and her legs were sore. Slowly, she lowered herself to her knees. The soles of her Docs squeaked on the slick surface and the water soaked through the knees of her work pants.

She saw her mum’s shoes, up close, an old pair of Kmart runners with discoloured mesh fabric and tired, wrinkled soles. “Can you see it?” Em’s mum’s voice said from above.

Em turned her face towards the counter. She felt the damp ends of her her long, red ponytail brush at her neck. It wasn’t nice.

The counter was held off the ground on legs, and there was a space of about five centimetres between it and the tiled floor. Em peered in. She saw a screwed up serviette, some cobwebs, some fluff– and the missing coin.

Em reached in and touched its honest surface. It was cold and hard and reassuring and it slid out, along with a bundle of damp, dark fluff.

Em wrapped her fingers around the coin, clambered to her feet, tabbed the cash register and dropped the twenty cents in where it belonged. There wasn’t any use in talking. Anything she said or did would be held against her. Best to just exit quietly.