Behind the Moon by Hsu-Ming Teo Page A

McDonald’s along Parramatta Road and ordered takeaway from the drive-through window. Then they sat in the car park and ate their burgers and fries, and Tien was finally happy. For the first time in months, it was just the two of them, without Gibbo. They talked about the HSC, what they wanted to do during the summer holidays, and what they hoped to do when university started.
    ‘Hey, you know what? It’s been so long since we’ve really had a good chat,’ Tien said.
    ‘Yeah, you’re right. We should do this more.’ He grinned at her and, just like that, her night was suddenly perfect. She wanted to extend this moment of intimacy.
    ‘You want to get some VBs and go somewhere else?’ she asked.
    ‘We could do that,’ he considered. Then he said, ‘Nah. I’m buggered. I just wanna get out of these clothes and crawl into bed. Feel like I’m choking. Take a raincheck, eh?’
    ‘Sure.’ She hid her disappointment behind a smile and was rewarded with a light, friendly punch on her arm.
    It was not even eleven when Justin pulled up to the kerb outside the apartment block where she lived. He put the car into ‘park’, leaving the engine running and the headlights on.
    ‘Well,’ he said, drumming his fingers lightly on the steering wheel. ‘That was all right, wasn’t it? Thank god it’s only once in a lifetime.’
    ‘Yeah,’ Tien said. She unclipped her seatbelt and wriggled around to face him. ‘It was a really great night. I had such a good time, Justin.’
    ‘Yeah, good. Me too. Specially Macca’s! Not.’
    ‘Yeah.’
    He waited for her to say goodnight, but she didn’t.
    Tien sat there in the darkness, expectant. Throughout her HSC preparations, even during the exams, she had obsessed about this night. This was the night when something was meant to happen between her and Justin. There had to be more to it than this.
    The street was quiet, the darkness pierced only by the lit windows of houses and apartments. The car engine sputtered and she could feel the framework vibrating. An empty cassette case shivered on the dashboard. The digital clock glowed eerily green. Minutes flickered by. Still she did not say anything. She just scraped up all the love and yearning inside her and focused it into a gaze so concentrated she was nearly cross-eyed. After all this time, he simply had to see how she felt about him.
    Justin shifted in his seat and looked away. ‘Well,’ he said with forced cheerfulness. ‘Getting late. Thanks for a great evening, Tien.’
    And she remembered that this was Annabelle Cheong’s son. He would never initiate ‘dirty things’ with a girl unless she showed him that she was sexed up and seducible. She would have to make the first move. Tien cleared her throat.
    ‘Justin,’ she murmured in her best husky voice. And she began to undress in the front seat of Annabelle’s car.
    Tien realised something almost immediately: if you’re not used to wearing an ao dai , never attempt to seduce someone while trying to take it off. Her zip ran off its track and locked into the fabric halfway down the zipper but, in her excitement and nervousness, she did not notice. So when she tried to pull the long skirt up and over her head to expose her breasts, the narrow sleeves got caught at her elbows. She sat there in a silk dress that had suddenly transformed into a straitjacket. Her dress was over her head, and her arms were crossed in front of her face, entangled in the material she was trying to tug off. She struggled in vain for several seconds. It was hot under all that fabric. Her arms felt wrenched out of their sockets. She began to think she was suffocating. Panic gushed up swiftly.
    ‘Justin, help me,’ Tien begged.
    For a moment, she thrashed on by herself, wondering whether Justin had left the car in disgust. Then she heard him sigh, and she felt his hands gripping the fabric near her pinioned arms. After a lot of tugging and the sound of ripping silk, her arms were free. She sat