C’mon, sweetheart. We’ll stay home, put our Snuggies on, make it a DVD Day. Movies are safe, movies are warm. We’ll get two DVDs for $6 from the store, bag of microwavable popcorn, Coke, peanut M&Ms. I’ll phone school, tell ’em you won’t be in. We’ll order Domino’s for lunch. I’ll check the time on my phone. My thighs will be cold metal, tingling, clanging. We’ll see there’s only a text reminding you of your dental clinic appointment. We’ll delete it. We’ll wonder how the fuck they got my new number. We’ll phone from a different number, tell them to delete your records. We’ll put the popcorn bag in a microwave that’s got no circular dish. We’ll stop the microwave every minute and rotate it ourselves. We’ll curse the $20 Pall Malls as I suck an orange ember, exhaling out the window. We’ll keep the curtains closed. We’ll feel my bladder contract as a Sky TV aerial guy parks outside our flat. We’ll watch him cross the road. We’ll wonder if he’s setting up a monitoring device.

Put your gumboots on, little man. We’ll need to leave out the back if we hear his V8 rumble into the driveway, or his mates on their Harleys. We’ll wanna call 111 so badly, but we’ll remember the times all the cops had to say was Ma’am—this line is for emergencies, ma’am.

 

We’ll wonder how he found us. Instagram, we’ll reckon. Never shoulda put those photos of us at Chipmunks online. We’ll leave photo albums as we flee, but we’ll rip the restraining order off the noticeboard before closing the door, ’cause half the time the cops don’t believe me unless they see it in writing.

 

C’mon, you don’t need your school bag. It’s a DVD Day, remember? Gotta have some laughs while we’re alive.