Smoke

At six o’clock, all the mothers singsong “Dinnertime!” into the echoing valley, and the kids in the playground jump down from swings and slides and run barefoot across the prickle-sharp grass and up the long driveway to the street where they live side by side in wooden bungalows surrounded by shaved, green lawns.

“Clare!”

“Hurry, Fiona!” her mother calls, because Fiona huffs when she runs and comes last to the table every single night.

“Dinner, Kenneth! I said,dinner!”

Kenneth tosses a tennis ball high into the air and still three more times after his mother’s final “Kenneth, I mean it!”

“Clare, darling!”

Clare yanks the other end of the skipping rope from Amanda’s hand, loops it neatly, then crouches to buckle her patent-leather sandals.

Amanda is already at the bottom of the driveway by the time Clare catches up to her. “It’s not fair,” Clare says. “You don’t even have to go.”

Amanda stops suddenly. For the last few weeks, she had been going home at dinnertime, same as everyone else, as if her mother’s voice rang out too. But no one called her now. She just hadn’t noticed yet.

“You don’t even have a mother.” Clare pokes Amanda in the chest with her finger. “You get to stay here and do whatever you want.” Then she runs up the hill and doesn’t say bye to Amanda or look back once.

“See ya later,” Amanda whispers. “Have a nice dinner.”

When all the other kids have gone, Amanda sits on a swing and kicks at the dry dirt beneath. Dust puffs and settles on her skinned knees. They had been playing horses, and, as usual, Amanda was the horse, on all fours. Clare had bridled her with the skipping rope and guided her to the gravel. When Amanda hesitated, Clare had said, “Horses who misbehave get cropped,” and threatened to use the belt from the waistband of her corduroys.

Amanda licks her palm and rubs at the dirt and grazes on her knees; it stings.

On the ridge, behind the cabbage trees and Norfolk pines, the Auckland sun is melting like a pink marshmallow. School has started, but it seems like summer still, warm with a little breeze and the lazy buzzing of fat flies.