Only a few yellow leaves adorned the trees, caught in the mid-afternoon light, cast by the sickly yellow sun now low on the horizon. The faintest trace of a blue sky could still be found if you looked hard enough at the clouds.

Titus was pruning the roses in the front garden. The chickens had followed him to the front yard. It was too cold for them to be truly lively, and the ground was still damp from the last rainfall, so they just stood in the sunniest part of the yard trying to catch the rays of the sun. 

Fraser was picking him up. He had a school game in the morning, and then he had another in the afternoon with his club. 

He heard the car before it hove into sight. Was it the white Golf? He couldn't tell. He tried to remember if he had told him about the car he had seen on all those occasions. 

"Ah. What the world needs at this moment," he said, stepping out onto the nature strip as Fraser emerged from the car. "Just another private school wanker driving around in a white Golf."

"Well, actually it's my mum's car. Her old car. She got a new car and now it's mine." 

Our shadows are going to be so confused, he thought. They're going to think they're chasing themselves. "How was footy?"

"Well, we won and we lost." Fraser didn't seem too keen to elaborate. The chickens were looking warily at him. "They look... new." The leghorn preened her feathers. "I don't know how to explain it." 

"They moulted." He closed the secateurs. He would do the rest of the roses tomorrow. "They shed all their old feathers and grew new ones. You should have seen the coop a week ago. It was like the aftermath of a pillow fight." 

Fraser met the glare of the silkie hen. "Do they have names now?"

"Nope. Still haven't decided. Don't have the time." 

The chickens started clucking as a ginger tabby appeared on the top of the wooden fence. 

"Why are they making that noise?"

"Because there's a cat." Titus pointed at the top of the fence. He shooed the cat away. It obliged, ducking behind the fence and disappearing into the neighbouring garden. 

Fraser turned his attention back on the chickens. "They're so cute. Could we take one?"

"No. I can't take just one. They're soulmates. They get separation anxiety when the other one walks around a corner. Anyway, they will absolutely shit in your car. Maybe I'll get chicken nappies. They sell those, you know. And we could take them on a trip or something." 

"They're a thing?" 

"Yes." For a moment Titus' facial expression galvanised into something inscrutable. 

"You look kind of worried," Fraser said. 

"That's what everyone says until the shit hits the fan."

***

"It had nothing to do with the sport of golf. It was named after the gulf stream, because VW was in the habit of naming its cars after winds at that time. Y'know, Jetta after the Jet Stream, and Passat, which was a trade wind of some sort. Because symbolism, blah blah blah, because these cars were a breath of fresh air, after they'd basically been building the same car for 35 years."

After Titus had eventually herded the chickens around the back and into the coop, they had left. He was surrounded by the usual sensations of being in a car. The chemical smell, the tyre roar, the rounded-off angles. 

"So what's with the Polo?" Fraser just seemed really happy that he was here with him. 

"Well, everybody thought that the Golf was in fact named after the sport, so they decided to throw in the Polo as a reference to, you know, the other rich people sport. You know, the good ol' company starting one naming scheme and then getting carried away halfway through. That's basically the history of Nike in a nutshell. Oh yes. We got big plans. We're going to do it chronologically. 1, 2, 3, simple as that. Actually, no, fuck it, we're going to do years. Actually, now we're going to do angles. Whoops, changed our mind again, back to years. The plus sign for some reason. More angles. More years. More angles. Now we're doing actual names." He paused for effect. "Have some fucking consistency. You hired an architect to design your shoes. Hire a mathematician to come up with a naming scheme. Just poach whoever is in charge of naming the cars at BMW. 100 million dollar contract." 

"They're not exactly good with names themselves." 

"Yeah, well, they suck in a predictable way. People have developed immunity to it. Everyone just knows by this point that a 340i does not, in fact, have a 4.0 litre engine. Just look at the attention to detail." He pointed to the tiny quarter window, almost lost in the depth of A-pillar. Fraser almost took his eyes off the road. "You know, ordinarily, they would put a big ugly triangle of black plastic there, which is what everyone else does, to fool you into thinking there was a window there. But VW went the whole nine yards. They actually put a real window in there. Most people will never notice it. But they sweated that detail."

"What's the difference? Visibility?" 

"Car design purists reckon it's sacrilege to use plastic bits to extend the window line. I don't know. Maybe they try to sneak it through every time, and Giugiaro calls them and tells them he will kill them if they do it. Just look at that." He pointed to a car in the next lane. There was an ugly plastic triangle of fail where the A-pillar met the door line. "Absolutely disgusting. Volkwagen used to build cars in Australia, you know. They had a factory in Clayton."

"Really?"

"Yes. Later they also used it to assemble cars from other companies. Volvo. Peugeot. Renault. And then in the 1980s they sold it to Nissan, and they used it to make something called the Pintara, which turned out to be a huge fiasco. It's a long story. They basically withdrew in the 1980s, and then it took until the late 1990s before they had a real presence again." Titus fiddled with the passenger-side vent. "Now what are we going to do? I mean for today." 

"I don't know." Fraser slowed for a major intersection. St Georges Rd. The median was so wide that the lanes on either side of the expansive median strip had their own set of traffic lights. "Watch a movie? I know you don't really like movies, but..." 

"You asked me what your favourite movie was last time. But I forgot to ask yours." 

"Uh..." He hesitated. "Come on. It can't be that bad."

"Spirited Away." he said in a small voice.

"You know, I haven't watched it."

"You haven't?"

"Well, not all of it. They were showing it on SBS one night and I watched like a third of it."

"Well, we should watch it." 

***

"We should make something." Titus got up and headed in the direction of the kitchen. They had watched Spirited Away for the second time in a row. He didn't know that it was even possible, but they were bored. 

Fraser felt compelled to follow. "What, food?" 

"Yes."

"Well, mum doesn't trust me in the kitchen. Especially when she's not at home." 

"You're 18."

"Well she doesn't." Fraser reiterated. "I suck at cooking." 

"Yes," Titus mocked. "I must cook and clean for my large, nearly adult son. It is hard work, but I do not mind because I love my son."

"Shut up," Fraser gently nudged him. 

"Well it won't hurt to try. Look, it's not fucking Masterchef, it's not like Gordon Ramsay's going to parachute in through the skylight and start yelling at us the moment we move a saucepan. At least it's less sad than nuking something frozen in the fucking microwave. Or ordering out. We can't do that again." 

"What exactly is wrong with eating out?"

"I get mouth ulcers." He looked uncomfortable for a moment. "Gotta watch what I eat." He began to comb through the drawers, laying out what he found on the kitchen island. A tin of Dutch cocoa. A jar of mayonnaise. A packet of self-raising flour. A half-empty packet of caster sugar. Some vanilla extract. A lonely-looking egg. Several boxes of breakfast cereal. 

"I know this is depressing," Fraser said, behind him. "Mum's going shopping tomorrow. We could do something then." 

Titus didn't answer. The mayonnaise had given him an idea. Could it work? It could. Just. 

"Actually," Titus had that twinkle in his eye, "I think we can make something." 

"What the actual fuck are we going to make? Chocolate-flavoured mayonnaise?"

Titus smiled. "Yes." 

***

"This is spectacular," Fraser said, taking another bite of his slice of cake. They had brought the cake up to his room. 

"The mayonnaise is the secret ingredient. Makes it moist and gives it a nice nutty undertone." 

Fraser cut himself another slice. He'd already spilled some crumbs onto his white sweatshirt. "Come on. I really want you to come. It'll be fun,"

"That's what everyone says, eh?" Titus did not look very impressed. "Oh, it's going to be different this time. It'll be different. You'll love it. I really want you to be there. What even happens at an 18th? What do people talk about? How does it start? It makes no sense to me. I could never understand that about the kind of soft drink appreciation nights they used to have in primary school." 

"There won't be that many people from school. If that's what you're worried about."

"I'm not worried about the people. I just don't like being out late at night. It's all the artificial light. It's like being inside of the lights of a police car." 

"It'll be alright," Fraser assured. "I'll look after you. I want you to met my other mates."

"Your what?"

"Yeah. From my old school."

He fell silent and looked away from him. He didn't meet his gaze again. "You alright?" 

"You know, last time I came here, after school?" 

"Yeah?"

"That was the first time I ever got invited to someone's else's house." 

It took a moment for Fraser to realise what he was talking about. He tried to avert his eyes. He felt the spirit drain out of his face. 

"I mean, a few people have probably figured it out already. I've never tried to hide it, really. I mean, everyone knows I don't have that many friends, they just don't know, you know, just how few. All the Asian kids make jokes about it all the time. Oh, I've got no social life. All I do is study. I'm such a nerd. Ha ha ha. And what they really mean is that they don't go out as much as they'd like to. They don't mean it... literally. You know, it's not something you ever seriously ever talk about." 

His jaw clenched slightly. He still didn't meet his eye. Silence fell. The sound of two cats fighting outside rang out loud and clear. He could hear his own breathing. He could sense the fast-paced alternate current flickering of the lights. Time itself felt like it was slowing down. 

Fraser instinctively wrapped him in an embrace. "It's okay." 

"I just never saw it as a problem, you know?" Now that he was close to him Titus lowered his voice. "I'm just slow like that a lot of the time. You know, it took almost six years of hearing everyone else talking about what they did on the weekend every Monday for me to realise that it might be quite a big problem. That was their stuff. It didn't concern me. Or so I thought. I knew that I wasn't happy, but somehow I just couldn't connect the dots. I'm perfectly fine on my own. I spent years telling that to myself. Can you believe that? I actually believed it. 

"It wasn't until recently that I realised they might have something to do with each other. How could I have been that blind? There were whole months where I would just cry myself to sleep and wish that I had someone to talk to. I was trying so hard to hold it all in that I just completely zoned out of classes. I would just walk around school completely zoned out. I was still ahead of classes because I'd read the whole textbook before school even started. But that was back then when the work was easy."

Fraser hugged him even harder. Titus felt the impulse to push him away but he just didn't have the energy anymore. So he just let him be. 

"To be fair I kind of brought it upon myself. I thought that the things they were big about were stupid and childish and I decided that I would just skip all that stupid shit. I would just turn my back on all of that. I would do what I wanted, forge my own path... It just wasn't for me. So I just ignored them... turns out that you can't just do that. 

"I've done pretty much everything it is physically possible to do to keep people away from me. I've pushed away so many people and burned so many bridges. Sometimes I just felt like being mean to people who did nothing to me. I don't really want to hurt them. I just wanted them to feel the same feeling of confusion and discomfort that I feel every single waking moment of my life. You know, people just give up and stop trying after a while, if you push them away long enough. Also if you know all of their inside jokes they probably just assume you're friends with them. because I didn't have a phone until year 10, and other stuff. Just little things like that. There never was a Big Bad Thing that happened like other people talk about. Not like I got my head dunked in a toilet bowl or anything. Although that would have been funny."

Fraser barely suppressed a snigger. He knew it was inappropriate but he couldn't help it. He looked away for a moment. 

"It's not like I've been completely lonely all of the time. I've had some great conversations with great people. But no one stays. They all go away in the end. They make new friends and they become close and they get to do stuff I never got to do with them. Sometimes it feels like everyone else in the world has friends except for me. Even the worst people in the world have friends. What did I do wrong? I just feel like there's really nothing I can do. I can try to be less boring but that's never worked out. None of it has ever worked out. People always see through me. I always feel like I'm just adding unwanted stuff to the conversation." 

"But our little date at the NGV. But that was awesome. I don't see what-"

"That was a mistake." Titus didn't look at him. "This whole thing was a mistake. You know, you asked me where I wanted to go and I thought, 'what's the shittest place that's near the CBD?' That grotty bit behind the NGV.' I just hoped that you would get thorougly bored by the history lesson and go away. Which did not work. Then I tried saying more weird shit which also didn't work. Sometimes I just say stuff because I want people to go away. Can't you see? I don't want this. I just want to watch people safely from afar." 

"But why? You said you were lonely. Why would you want to be..." He wondered if he should just shut up and listen. 

"I don't get why people like me. I don't mean that in the sense that I don't think they like me," he clarified. "I mean that I literally have no idea what the hell is going on in their head. It's just a big blank space with a question mark over it. I have no idea where it's coming from. I can't be a part of that, do you understand me? I have no control over it. It's like finding a package on my front door that I don't remember ordering. And there's a get-well card attached to it, but you weren't sick. It's just kind of freaky. Why the fuck are these people following me? What do I do to stop this? Anyone? Hello? I need this to stop. Where is it coming from? I don't understand why any of this is happening. I can't be a part of something I don't know where it came from. Go away. I didn't ask for this. What's the purpose of having people like you if you don't know why they like you? There's no point. And there's no point asking people why they like you, because people are generally useless at explaining why they like things they really like. It's just the way we are."

"I don't know, there's so many reasons I like you. Well you know a lot, you can bake, you're funny. Like you made that joke there-" 

"Yeah, well anyone can be funny." Titus sighed. "Making people laugh is the easiest thing in the world. Do you know a good joke? Tell it. Voila. It's all Kleenex and spit. These things shouldn't be the basis of... anything. They shouldn't be the basis of more than ten seconds of conversation. But somehow it all works. How? How do friends work? People are always talking about fake friends. Well, people have vastly differing definitions of friend. Who am I to say what's real or fake?"