He stood in the soft light of the dawn at the corner where the tracks to Brunswick Depot turned into Moreland Road, breathing in the sharp smell of early morning air, the familiar tingling in his nostrils, the mild sting in his eyes. Was this what Norman Lindsay had called the smell of Pears' soap? They changed the formula a couple of years ago, apparently, for market tastes or whatever, and that had ruined everything, at least according to the diehard glycerin soap enthusiasts.

Today was clear, but it did get foggy here in the winter. There had been times when you could barely see your own two hands in front of you. The mornings were getting colder, and the days shorter. Soon he would be getting up while it was still dark. 

The events of the weekend had left him feeling rather melancholy. He realised that yesterday was the first time he had genuinely worried about what Fraser thought of him. He had not cared about what they thought of him the first time they had hung out, or the few times after that. Then it had caught up to him, as such things were wont to do. 

It only added to the increasing difficulty of motivating himself to go to school he had been experiencing for the last several years or so. But the concept of skipping was, to him, worse than the thought of having to face people he didn't want to face, so he persisted, albeit without much passion. Sometimes it took every fibre of his soul; he found he had to forget about everything else and focus on the pure, burning kernel of the task at hand just to get himself out of bed and ease himself with sufficient momentum into the familiar old routine. 

One method of adding a layer of incentive to the whole thing was leaving home twenty minutes earlier than usual and taking a route less travelled. And that was what he was doing today, catching the Route 6 tram. He usually caught the 19 a block away on Sydney Rd, or the 58, a dozen blocks in the other direction, or the Upfield Line from the train station across the road, all of which were faster. But none of them guaranteed a window seat, and two of them required transfers once you got to the city. 

The tram stop here was the barest of essentials: just a concrete signpole set into the barely-existent sidewalk. As basic as you got, unless you omitted the pole as well, in the San Francisco fashion. Behind him was a cyclone-wire fence, and beyond that the ballast stretch of the railway line. Sometimes there would be other people, but today he was the only person. 

He looked down Cameron St, at the jumble of tracks leading into Brunswick Depot. Here was the odd layout that you saw sometimes in old photos, two lanes on one side and one on the other, tramlines offset to one side. You stepped right onto the tram; you didn't have to walk onto the middle of the road. He was sure this was the only remaining instance in Melbourne.

His tram would come out of the depot. Once upon a time this was not the case, and he would have had to wait just across the street. The tram would have terminated instead in a stub track, in the few metres of Moreland Road between where he was standing and the train line. 

They had removed the stub in the early 1970s. He had never seen a photo of it, although he was sure there must be ones in existence somewhere; he only knew of it from an offhand post on a forum he had stumbled upon years ago. That had led him to a hand-drawn map hosted in a dusty corner of an ancient website about the heyday of Australian TV. There had been a tiny little line of ink jutting out at the curve. 

No trace remained of it today. But he could conjure up an image of a clean-faced W5 standing in the middle of the road, motorman raising the trolley pole on the other side to get read for the journey back to St Kilda or just the corner of Moreland and Holmes, the wooden level crossing gates at the back, the crossing guard's wooden hut at the roadside, pale yellow morning light illuminating the meticulously painted signs on the shopfronts. 

They'd eased the curve with the latest relay. That had ruined the geometry, and the look somewhat. The eighties mass concrete track that had been here before suited the industrial vibe of the place. 

He inspected the new tracks. He hadn't had the chance to take a proper look at them yet, since the relay a couple of months ago. This was the new method, adopted after 2007 fiasco. The sleepers beneath were still encased in concrete like the old method, but above that there was a layer of crushed rock, and a top layer of asphalt up to the level of the road. The idea was that now instead of breaking the whole thing up, you'd simply scrape away the asphalt and the crushed rock, rip out the rails and put new ones in. Quieter. And easier to maintain. 

There was the sound of crossing bells. The boom gates lowered. The blast of a train horn. The Upfield line had struggled to compete with the Sydney Rd trams for most of the 20th century. For many years it had stopped running after the evening peak, and intending passengers at Flinders St would be allowed to use their tickets on the tram. In the 1990s there had been a plan to change the train line to light rail. The tram would have turned onto the railway line here and continued up along the train line. 

He watched the train pass. It was the one he would have caught, had he decided to catch the train. He could see the people packed against the doors. It was lucky the conversion to light rail had not gone ahead. 

***

 His arrival coincided with the climax of a heated discussion about the taste of Dr Pepper.

"Dr Pepper doesn't taste like anything! That's what makes it unique."

"It does," Mason declared. "It tastes exactly like that traditional Chinese cough syrup."

Everyone in the circle burst into laughter. Arthur bent over double. Other people turned to look at them.

"Dude, you know what I'm talking about, right?" Mason could barely contain his own laughter.

Arthur shot Mason a perplexed look, still clutching his sides. "What? What cough syrup? What are you even on about?"

He noticed that Titus had joined the fray. "Hey."

They all turned to look at Titus. There were also a bunch of the Arts Committee guys that he didn't know that well, who came and went from time to time. Drew's friends. They were nice and they always tried to include him in their things, but it never really worked.

He sensed they knew something that he didn't. He had been around them long enough to see it immediately, the slight slackness in their expressions, the lack of the usual tension.

He felt his mind go blank, like any time he was the centre of attention. He also suddenly realised that Kevin wasn't here yet. Kevin was the only one of them he had known before he came here, and the only person he truly felt he was somewhat close to. He suddenly felt curiously vulnerable.

It was not the first time he'd had these types of thoughts. Were they really his friends? Did he even have any real friends? Sure, they were nice enough and they accepted him for who he was but he felt he had barely done anything in return, and he wasn't sure why they even included him in their circle. Often he only had a peripheral understanding of what they were talking about, and sometimes he had no clue at all. He wasn't even sure they really even remembered he existed at times. He strongly suspected they were keeping him from their activities out of school. He wasn't really sure if he would be comfortable with anyone at all knowing his (relatively pitiful) secrets, but that could wait. But how much longer could he wait? He had spent years pushing today's things onto the next day, and the next day, until now he was running out of days.

"What were you doing at Westfield Doncaster on Saturday?" Arthur was giving a weird look. "With Fraser. Mason saw you." Several sets of eyebrows perked up with the mention of Fraser's name. He was really not used to the attention.

"I-I was just helping him with stuff."

"Surely he can afford a tutor," Arthur sneered. Titus didn't like the way he was looking at him.

"We're just studying together," he said. It wasn't much of a reply, but it was the only thing he could think of.

"So you're friends now?" Drew narrowed his eyes. He didn't know how to reply to that. Was Fraser his friend? He didn't feel comfortable referring to them as friends just yet. It had happened so quickly, at least to him. The word did not feel right coming out of his mouth.

Kevin arrived, brandishing a stapled sheaf of paper, defusing the situation. "What's up?"

It stands for Union Pacific, Titus thought.

"It's a movie about balloons," Mason deadpanned. Drew and several of the Arts Committee people giggled at that one.

Arthur eyed the paper. "You got it back already?"

"Morecambe's a quick marker. His one and only redeeming trait." Kevin flipped through the pages. "Thank fuck that's over."

"What did you get?"

"A+."

Arthur whistled. "Nice."

So it didn't fuck up your marks, he thought. Kevin had always been prone to hyperbole, even in the scholarship class they had attended together back in Grade 6.

"What did you get?" Kevin asked Arthur.

"Darvall hasn't finished marking them yet."

"And you?" He turned to Titus.

"I'm in Arthur's class too." He tried not to make eye contact with Arthur. In his peripheral vision, he saw something large and white land on the margins of the oval, wings outstretched.

Kevin nodded at him. "I keep on forgetting about that."

De Silva strode past. He had an orange tie today. A crowd of Year 9s had formed around him. He was patiently answering their questions. He recognised Dylan among the throng.

"Two-faced motherfucker," Drew muttered through clenched teeth.

"That was a good speech at assembly." Kevin said. "We are on the edge of a new era. We need that kind of inspiring stuff. Bring back the glory."

"What glory? What glory is a new era without a spring production?" Drew replied, glumly. "How could he? How could he say all those nice things and tell us what talented people we are and then just completely ignore what we'd been telling him?"

"It'll be okay." Nolan, one of the Arts committee people, put an arm around him. "We get more funding for the mid-year production. Surely that means something."

"That's not what this is about." Drew was getting more agitated by the second. "It's not about having one big, flashy production. The whole point of a spring production is that the Year 11s get to run the show, so they can be ready when they take over next year. This just shits all over that. We've been waiting five years for this moment. And he knows that. You should have seen the expression on his face, like he wanted to help us. What a lying... you know what? I'm going to go to his office. And I'm going to tell him exactly what I think of this."

"Drew. Calm down." Nolan wrapped him in a hug, who seemed to be on the verge of tears. "It's okay. He'll come round. We've still got time."

"He's got some weird beef with Darvall," Arthur interjected. "You should have seen him in English the other day. Darvall was giving him the stink-eye."

"I'm starting to like him," Kevin said.

The white shape he had glimpsed earlier was now clearing a path through the throng of pigeons, seagulls and the lower years, heading their way. A white ibis, aka bin-chicken, the number one scourge of urban Australia.

"What are you looking at- oh my god." Kevin looked in horror at the bird. "It's a bin chicken."

Everyone else turned to look as well, stepping back instinctively at the sight of the ibis. "Whoa," Mason mumbled.

The bin chicken ignored them, its beady black eyes locked on the rubbish bin a few metres behind them. With a flap of its wings, it hopped up onto the lip of the bin and probed its long, thin bill into the contents, pulling out a half-eaten sandwich, which it scarfed down with relish. 

***

His parents were conversing in the usual animated manner, the conversation punctuated by the gentle tinkle of cutlery on porcelain. His mother was giving an anecdote about a particularly obtuse student in one of her second-year classes who kept on asking , and his father was listening attentively. If he listened carefully, he could hear the tick of the clock on the wall, the hum of a gathering in a neighbouring backyard, the faint electric background hum of the night.  

The spectre of the argument the night before still hung over the whole tableau, wraith-like. He could still hear them. His mother's angry voice, his father silently moping in his usual manner.

They had asked him about school earlier. It was the same old routine. He had given the usual answer, not really giving away anything more than the bare minimum required to satisfy their curiosity. He felt guilty that he was not telling them the whole truth, but at the same time he could not envision a scenario where that could happen.   

He remembered to the times when he actually thought it possible for it to change, for him to reach a new level of openness in dialogue and talk openly about things that happened. But that had never happened, mainly because there was never really anything exciting to talk about. And it probably never would.

Fraser had invited him to his house again. He had hinted he had something planned. He hadn't said what exactly. Titus presumed he wanted to keep it a surprise. 

He had told his parents about that. Just the bare bones, not about anything else. He had not specified which friend he was referring to, and they had not asked. Not that they knew any of his friend circle from school, apart from Kevin, whose parents they had once sat next to at a parent information night or something. He could tell they were just happy he was going out and doing stuff with his friends and not just laying around at home as usual.

He did not feel hungry. But he ate anyway, out of habit, his movements mechanical. He didn't particularly like green beans, but could not stand the thought of wasted food. It was as simple as that. It had been like that since he could remember, ever since he had first learnt of where food came from. On his first ever school camp, he had been horrified at the sheer amount of people who had just refused a perfectly good meal, or stopped eating halfway through. He had briefly considered asking them why. 

Countless camps, house breakfasts, house dinners, cross-country dinners, and other assorted functions later, he still couldn't understand how someone could just say no to an entire plate of perfectly fine food. There was still so much he didn't understand about his peers.