Rose sat down on the end of her bed and looked at her suitcase. If she worked at the factory, she’d give up on ever getting out of town. There wouldn’t be time. Slowly, she shut the lid of her suitcase with her foot and pushed it under her bed, her good clothes still folded inside. She was going to ask her mum for a month, just one month, and in that time she was going to make her dream happen. She was going to get out of here.
“So Frank wasn’t worried?” Mia asked, as they laid towels down on the carpet of her bedroom.
“He said he wasn’t, although Baz said he was. It is just a toy though, right? It can’t be anything too bad,” Rose told her.
“How did Laura handle having to let it go?”
Rose smiled. “I don’t know if she’ll ever forgive me.”
“I’m sure they’ll give it back to her when it turns out to be nothing.”
“Hope not—I don’t think I’d sleep with that creepy thing in the house.”
They sat down on the coarse gray towels, the bristles rough on their bare legs.
“If I tell you something, you won’t laugh?” asked Mia, who was stirring the wax that they had heated up in the microwave. The two of them were sitting on the towels in their undies, a half-empty bottle of Bundy between them.
“Maybe, but tell me anyway.”
“My aunt Bell said she’s going to give me her old tarot cards.”
Rose snorted. “You’re going to be a fortune-teller?”
“No!” Mia hit her playfully. “I don’t know—it’s stupid, I guess. I just find it interesting.”
“It’s not stupid! You should do it. You’re good at that stuff. Your beer-foam readings double our tips.”
Mia smiled into the wax tub.
“Maybe we could get in touch with the ghosts of the Eamons?” Rose said, poking Mia in the side.
“They’re tarot cards, not a Ouija board!”
“Same thing though, right?”
Mia opened her mouth to retort, then saw Rose’s smile.
“But seriously,” Rose said, “I think you could do the tarot thing and charge suckers a mint. People in the city love that shit, and I won’t be able to pay the rent on my own.”
“The city?” Mia asked. “I thought, you know, without the cadetship...” She trailed off.
Rose leaned back against her bed. “I’m going to work it out,” she told her. “I’ve already sent in a bunch of job applications. Just for crappy temp jobs and call centers, but something has to come up, right? And once I’m settled, you can follow. We can still do it.”
“Cool. Okay, are you ready?”
“Ready.”
They repositioned themselves so their bare legs were laced together. It was always easier to do it to someone else. One time, when Rose was about fourteen, she had been too afraid to pull the wax strip off and had left it on for a full twenty minutes. When she had finally worked up the courage to do it, it had hurt like hell. The thing had pulled off a layer of skin. For the next week, Rose had a raised pink rectangle on her calf that was so tender she could barely even touch it.
They’d been doing this together for ages, thinking it was easier if someone else was the one to pull the strip off. Sometimes, Rose worried that their friendship was a little stunted. She loved Mia, but it was like they both reverted back to being teenagers again when they were together. Like neither could really grow up with the other around.
Swirling the wax with a Paddle Pop stick, Mia scooped up a globule. It felt warm and nice on Rose’s thigh and smelled like honey. She rubbed a bandage down on top of it. They both took a swig of Bundy, enjoying the burn of it in their throats.
They nodded at each other and Mia pulled Rose’s strip off at the exact moment that Rose pulled off Mia’s.
“I always forget how much it hurts,” Rose said.
They both took another swig.
By the time they’d finished they each had shiny, hairless legs. They were also a bit drunk. They lay on the floor giggling, staring at the cracks in Rose’s ceiling. Slowly, the giggles subsided and their breathing became even.
“My mum will be home soon,” Rose said, the impending argument playing out in her head. “I’m going to ask her if I can stay a few more weeks. She won’t be happy.”
Mia propped herself up on an elbow.
“One of the Friday the 13th films is on telly tonight. Do you want to come to mine?”
* * *
They decided to stop off at the gas station for snacks. Rose was in the mood to really gorge. She was sick of planning and worrying. Watching a shitty movie and eating junk sounded like absolute bliss.
Rose rolled down her window, and they turned up the radio, letting the girlie pop song blare. Turning the corner, Mia braked hard for some kids crossing the road.
“Paper-plate kids never even look,” she said, shaking her head.
One of the kids poked his tongue out through his mask at them. Mia, like most people, thought they were cute. Rose found them disturbing. There were around ten of them, both boys and girls from the local primary school. They wandered around together, sometimes even at night, wearing those dumb masks they’d made in class. Paper plates with eye and mouth holes cut out of them and silly noses and eyebrows painted on. They wore them constantly, the strings tied tight around the backs of their heads.
“So creepy,” Rose said.
“You just think that cos they got you!”
“Shut up!”
It was true. The kids played a game where they’d hide around corners and jump out at people, yelling boo. They scared Rose so much one day she’d actually screamed. Mia didn’t understand how Rose could hate the poor kids. Really she should hate their parents for kicking their children out for the night while they got loaded.
Mia pulled in to the pumps slightly too fast; the brakes squeaked when she stopped.
“Whoops!” she said. “Usually I’m a good drunk driver.”
Rose laughed and they got out of the car, snapping shut the doors. Mia left the keys in the ignition so the pop song would continue playing. She hummed along as she unscrewed the lid to the tank, pulled a ten-dollar note out of her pocket and flicked it to Rose. It seemed to hesitate in the air for a moment before floating down into Rose’s hand.
“Thanks.”
Dusk hung heavily around her. The air retained the heat of the day and felt sticky against her bare skin. Walking toward the service station, she breathed in: freshness, mixed with the tang of petrol and hot cement. The automatic doors opened for her and goose bumps rose on her arms as she walked into the air-conditioning.
There was a line, as usual, at the counter. Since the grocery store had burned down, the service station had been doing great business. Of course, the place was a chain, so the profit it made was being filtered straight out of the town. To another country, probably. Rose plucked two large packets of corn chips, a jar of spicy salsa and a family-sized block of Dairy Milk chocolate from the shelf. Holding the bundle, she grabbed a large plastic cup and put it on the grille of the frozen Coke machine. She watched as the shiny brown