Golden Boys by Sonya Hartnett Page A

him.’
    â€˜I think you do,’ says Tabby.
    It makes Freya clamp her mouth shut and something blocks her throat. She can’t remember when Avery first appeared in her life, this boy her brother must have befriended in the usual way but who seems like an animal that lives in the trees and occasionally chooses to descend. There’s a possum her father feeds with bread and jam, and Avery is like that: a lawless being which will overcome its instincts for the smallest taste of sweetness. Under his good cheer, he’s a desperate thing. ‘Nobody proper,’ she says.

Colt sees her step tentatively past the screen door and onto the deck which overlooks the garden; Avery is there, sitting on a bench of the outdoor table, and Colt’s father is crouching in front of him. She looks at them and then she looks across the garden, at the trees and the corrugated shed where the bikes and tools are kept, at the arena of churned-up earth and the drifts of bark and leaves that escaped the woodchipper. She gives Colt the excuse to walk away from the pool site, leaving Declan and Bastian to contemplate the wonder that is a hole in the ground.
    â€˜It should only be another few days,’ his father is saying as Colt climbs the deck steps. ‘They cleared the site – chopped down the necessary trees – and mapped out the space yesterday, and today they used a natty machine to dig away the dirt so the pool will be level. Next come the frame and the walls, then the lining and the filtration system, and finally the water.’
    â€˜You’re so lucky.’ Freya glances at Colt. ‘I wish we had a pool.’
    â€˜You’re welcome to come for a swim any time you like. It’s for everyone to use.’
    While he’s speaking, Colt’s father has been taking from the first-aid box the equipment needed to refresh the bandage on Avery’s knee and laying it out in order. He peels away the original strips of sticky plaster saying, ‘Sorry, sorry,’ as they tug at Avery’s skin, leaving behind tacky shape-shadows of themselves. The wad of padding, stained and off-colour, is glued to the weepy knee: Rex has a basin of water and a sponge, and steadying Avery’s calf in his palm he presses the wet sponge onto the padding so water floods down Avery’s shin and over the decking and drips through the gaps between the planks into the darkness below, and woozily the pad peels away. Colt watches everything – the press of his father’s thumb into the boy’s calf, the blink of Avery’s grey eyes. Seeing the grotesque injury Freya says, ‘Avery! That’s horrible! How did you do that?’ and Avery shrugs and smiles; Rex says, ‘He’s being very brave about it. You’re being very brave, Avery.’
    You bastard, Colt thinks. You
liar.
    His father takes a cloth and wipes the boy’s leg until the skin is dry and only the slats of the deck are still splashed. He dabs the cloth about the wound, which is a sickly plasma-yellow but clean, Colt sees, and not infected. ‘Yes, he’s been brave,’ Rex murmurs, ‘we’re proud of him, aren’t we, Colt?’ and Colt pretends he hasn’t heard. If he cracked open his father he thinks he would find dark, slimy threads running from his father’s feet to his brain. From the garden Bastian calls, ‘Colly? Can we get the BMX out?’ and Colt forces it down, says, ‘It’s your bike too, Bas.’
    â€˜He just likes the attention,’ Freya says, and Rex chuckles without shifting his focus from Avery. He smooths antiseptic cream into the wound’s depths, takes a fresh disc of padding and sets it into place, then reaches for the plaster and scissors. While he binds the knee in a network of strips he mumbles quietly, as if it’s an old song, ‘We all like some attention, don’t we? A bit of attention never goes astray.’ And Colt, watching