The young bloke looks at me as if to say, “You okay about this?”, and I just nod. Then he dunks me. He leans me back into the darkening water and I go under. I feel like I’m drowning but I know I’ve got breath. There’s something’s choking me, something’s trying to get out. I start to panic, and with the water flowing over me, I cough up this ball of darkness and pain and regret – this wad of sorrow and sadness that holds every dumb thing I ever did and more – and I spit it into the water with the last of the air in my lungs. And I know I’m gonna die. The water’s gone black and I don’t know where the surface is. I got nothing left and I just wanna drift away like a leaf in the current. Then he lifts me up out of the water, and I’m hacking for breath and wondering why I’m alive – and I hear that bloody great cockatoo screech from the sky right over my head, and I just bloody laugh. Laugh like I’ve never bloody laughed in my life – or not since I was a kid. Like a dam breaking. Like a chain snapping. Like a kid who’s just heard the words he’s been longing to hear all his life. And the young bloke’s smiling at me and Jonno’s bawling his eyes out and nothing seems to have changed but the whole stupid world is completely different. Like I said, I don’t know what happened. But I’ll take it. That was a while ago now. So much has changed. Not long after that day, Jonno and his followers left. Came and said thanks and goodbye and walked off up the drive. I asked him if I could come but he said I wasn’t ‘one of his’. It wasn’t cruel, even though it hurt. He was a mate. But he was right. I wasn’t one of his. Last thing he said to me was, “Keep an eye on him for me, eh?” I know now that they headed to the city. Jonno went to town on the Government one too many times and ended up in jail. Then there was 19
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