The Piper's Son by Melina Marchetta

family probably had to travel across the world in a leaky boat and his mother probably spent time in Villawood detention center with her kids, trying to keep them sane. Regardless, it didn’t give Mohsin the right to ignore anyone who wanted to be friendly, especially someone who would understand the humor of what some sports commentators get away with. But nothing from Mohsin the Ignorer.
    When Tom’s done reading the
Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Guardian,
and the
New York Times
from top to toe, he starts reading his mobile-phone statement online. The curiosity of his low phone credit on the night he ended up in hospital doesn’t become an issue until tedium makes it one. What he notices are the international numbers. The country code of the first one is 44 and the second is 670. The phone calls were made at 10:47 p.m. and 10:49 p.m. — sometime after his dive off the table. One of his ex-flatmates and their hangers-on must have taken his phone while he was flat on his face bleeding and rung two overseas numbers. How low can people get? It was probably their dickhead drummer, who was into some Swedish chick he met on the Internet. So Tom goes to the Google search and looks up international phone codes. Not Sweden. The first belongs to the UK, the second to . . .
    He chokes. His reaction must be loud, because everyone turns to look at him, except Mohsin the Ignorer. Tom’s eyes are fixed on the screen, and after a moment he fumbles through his backpack for his mobile, realizing that he left it back home being recharged. The countdown to three o’clock becomes an excruciating waiting game, and then he breaks speed records racing to the station, jumping turnstiles, taking the stairs up to the platform two at a time, and practically throwing himself into the train. He sprints out of Stanmore station so fast that one of the slacker skateboarders tries to race him.
    Back in Georgie’s attic, he yanks the phone out of the socket and begins scrolling down the names under dialed calls, praying to anyone who will listen. God. Baby Jesus. Saint Thomas the doubter. Saint Whoever, patron saint of losers. Praying,
Please, please, don’t let it be true.
    The first name shatters him.
    The second makes his head spin.
    He hears the clumps of footsteps on the stairs, and then Georgie pokes her head in.
    “What?” she asks, alarmed.
    He can’t speak because his tongue gets stuck in the roof of his mouth.
    “Tom? You screamed.”
    “No,” he says listlessly.
    “You screamed. And swore. Like this.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck.
”
    He tries to recover for a moment and stares at her. “Stubbed my toe. Painful.”
    She squints with total disdain. “More painful than childbirth?”
    “Oh, so now everything’s going to compete with that one,” he mutters. “I’ve got to go.”
    He passes her and flies down the stairs and out of the house.
    He can only get his head around one thing at a time.
    That on the night he dived off that table, he rang Tara Finke in Timor.
    And he can’t remember a single word of the conversation.
    He walks straight to the back room of the pub, where Francesca and Justine are rehearsing.
    “You’re not on tonight,” Justine says, almost as an accusation.
    Ned the Cook walks in with some food he’s prepared for the girls and stops suddenly when he sees Tom.
    “He’s not on tonight,” he says. Accusation in his voice.
    It’s clear to Tom that he won’t be receiving employee-of-the-month badge at the Union.
    He sits at the table they’ve taken possession of, and no one says a word for a moment. Francesca puts her guitar to the side discreetly. He doesn’t know how he’s going to broach this subject without drawing attention to the fact that he is in desperate need of information only she can give.
    “I never thanked you for coming to the hospital that night.”
    Francesca stares at him. She’s not buying it, he can tell. She looks over at Justine and even has the audacity to shrug in front of him as