When Dogs Cry by Markus Zusak

radio.
    For lunch, we all walked down the beach and Dad got the obligatory fish ‘n’ chips. When we were done, Rube and I went down to the water to get the grease off our hands.
    â€˜Friggin’ freezin’,’ Rube warned me about the water, but still he pooled it in his hands and threw it on his face and through his thick, sandy hair.
    Along the shore, there were shells washed up.
    I started shuffling through them and picking up the best ones to keep.
    Rube looked over.
    â€˜What are y’ doin’?’ he asked.
    â€˜Just collectin’ a few shells.’
    He looked at me in disbelief. ‘Are you a bloody poofter or somethin’?’
    I glanced at the shells in my hands. ‘What’s wrong with it?’
    â€˜Christ!’ he laughed. ‘You are, aren’t y’!’
    I only looked over and laughed back, then picked up a shell that was clean and smooth and had a gentle tiger pattern on it. In the centre there was a small hole, for looking through.
    â€˜Look at this one,’ I said, holding it out to him.
    â€˜Not bad,’ Rube admitted, and as we stared over the ocean, my brother said, ‘You’re okay Cameron.’
    All I could do was stare a few seconds longer before we turned back. The old man had already given us an ‘Oi’ to get us back to work. We walked over the sand and back up the street. Later that day, Rube told me some things. About Octavia.
    It started innocently enough, with me asking how many girlfriends he reckoned he’d had.
    â€˜I wouldn’t know,’ he answered me. ‘I never counted ’em. Maybe twelve, thirteen.’
    For a while, there was only the sound of the digging, but I could tell my brother, like me, was going over the girls in his head, touching each girl with the fingers of his mind.
    In the middle of it, I had to ask him.
    I said, ‘Rube?’
    â€˜Shut up—I’m tryin’ to concentrate.’
    I ignored him and kept going. I’d started now and Iwasn’t going to stop. I asked, ‘Why’d you get rid of Octavia?’
    He stopped digging. The answer.
    â€˜Simple,’ he began. ‘Because that girl’s probably the strangest person I’ve ever met. Even weirder than you, if you can believe that.’
    â€˜Why?’ I focused all of my attention on Rube’s mouth, as he told me about Octavia Ash. I could even see his breath exit his mouth with the words.
    â€˜Well, for starters,’ he began. ‘One day you could touch her all over and the next she wouldn’t let you near her.’ A moment’s thought passed his mind. ‘It’s impossible to get her clothes off her too.’ He grinned at me. ‘Trust me—I tried.’ Yet, I could still sense Rube was saving something. He said it. ‘But strangest of all, that girl never let me into her house. Not once. I wouldn’t even know what colour the front door was . . .’
    â€˜That why you let go of her?’
    My brother looked at me, thoughtfully, truthfully, then smiled. ‘Nah.’ He shook his head, slightly.
    â€˜Then why?’
    â€˜Well,’ he shrugged. ‘To tell you the truth, Cam.
She
broke up with
me.
That night when she came back I was expecting her to cry and carry on like some of the others.’ He shook his head now. ‘But I was wrong. She just came and really gave it to me. She said I wasn’t worth the effort.’
    What confused me most was how he could be so calm about it. If it were me in his shoes, the agony of someone like Octavia breaking up with me would have leftme in strips and pieces on the ground. It would have broken me.
    But that was me.
    For Rube, the next best thing came along so he took it, and I guess there was nothing wrong with that. The only problem for Rube now, it seemed, was that this Julia girl came with some excess baggage. She’d come at a price.
    â€˜Apparently she was still with some