Page 33 of Scapegoat

“Most women are,” Melva agreed.

By mid-morning the next day, we were ready to leave Granville behind. The new jeans, the new jumper, that Jamie had kindly bought me, felt strange, ill fitting, even when she assured me they looked good. It didn’t matter if they did. She was footing the bill and I’d be grateful for whatever she gave me. After we’d hauled ourselves up into either side of the cab of her truck, and I’d sorted out my seatbelt, she turned to look at me and threw me a couple of quick questions before pulling out onto the road.

“So what can you do, Kai? What kinds of skills do you have?”

“I can cook, clean…” I said, racking my brain, trying to think what else I could do that would be useful to humans.

“Fair enough. They’re useful skills to have almost anywhere. I know a bunch of people in roadhouses in this state and others.” She looked over at me. “I can make some inquiries when we pull in at places, see if they’ve got work going?”

“That’d be great,” I replied, settling back in my seat. “As long as it’s somewhere far away from here.”

“Got that loud and clear,” she said with a wink, then directed the truck out on the highway.

Chapter 20

Two years later.

“We need some more chips, Kai!” one of the girls out the front called back to me through the servery window. I looked up from the carrots I was slicing lightning fast and then nodded. As I moved over to the deep fryer to give the basket a shake, more requests came in.

“More pies and sausage rolls.”

“On it,” I replied, pulling several of them out of a pie warmer we kept out the back, the crinkly cellophane wrappers still on. I loaded them onto a tray and pushed them through the servery, one of the girls snatching it out of my hands before I got it all the way through. I didn’t take it personally. We were all here to do a job and that was to feed people that pulled into the truck stop as quickly and efficiently as possible.

“Chips, Kai!” The big booming voice was from Billy, the owner of the place. He walked in through the swinging doors to the kitchen, looking harried.

“Got ‘em!” I said, emptying the basket of golden brown potato chips into a tray, salting them with a shake of the big cannister kept by the fryer and then sending them through.

“More chips,” Billy said, bustling over to dump more into both baskets and then moving to flick the spare fryers on. “More pies, more sandwiches.”

“In the cool room,” I said, pointing my knife at the door. “But, what the fuck—?”

“Didn’t I tell you?” Billy was a massive guy, sporting a full beard and thinning hair. He blinked, looked into the air as though hitting rewind on our last few conversations, and then shook his head. “Fuck, I didn’t, did I?”

“Tell me what.” I stabbed my knife into the chopping board point first, something Kaia never would’ve dared, but I’d left the scared little girl behind me some kilometres and quite a few months ago. I was Kai now, and I’d worked in kitchens in truck stops all across the southern states of Australia, moving from dishwasher, to kitchen hand, and now to a cook. “Tell me what, Billy?”

The way he winced? I wasn’t gonna like his answer.

“It’s shearing season. People are flooding into town, looking for work, and they’re tired and hungry from the drive. We need food and lots of it, now.”

“Shit.” I surveyed the kitchen, looking at what we had and matching it up against what he said? It wasn’t good. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“I thought I’d said something…”

Billy was a nice guy. He didn’t try to pinch my bum or tell me I needed to smile more. So when he’d offered me the position as master of his small kitchen, I’d taken it without a second thought. I’d been in my previous job for too long by that point anyway.

“Shit…”

I wiped the back of my hand against my brow, the skin soaked in sweat. The kitchen was a small, close, hot environment but I shouldn’t have been sweating this much. Another reason why I had to keep on the move. I was due to come into heat and…

“OK, what’s the priority: hot food or cold food?” I asked him.

“Hot.” He raked his hand through what was left of his hair, pacing back and forth.

“So I could do a stew, maybe some spag bol,” I said.

“That’d be amazing.”

“More chips, Kai!” one of the girls called. “And do we have any more sandwiches?”

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