Picture a long room, wide enough and framed on each side by a wall of windows blocked with steel bars. Picture this room packed with bunk beds built over the top of study desks. Picture the black and white checked and red and blue doonas thrown haphazardly over stained white sheets. Picture the desks, a mess with text books and notepads, pictures of swimsuit models ripped from sport magazines and fastened to the walls with blue'tac. Picture piles of clothes heaped on the floor and in mesh laundry bags, stained with the pang of male adolescence ' a mixture of sweat and wet grass, thick in the air like rain.

At the end of this room, in the last bed by the thick wooden door to the fire escape, you'll find a boy. In a bed in the corner, secluded from the rest, picture this boy sitting on a plastic chair in a black Hendrix t'shirt and ripped jeans staring in front of a note. Notice a note which says 'Everything you do will be shit'.

It's 4.30pm on a Tuesday afternoon and school has been out for an hour. 40 minutes ago, this dorm was a rush of activity, filled with the sounds of dropping text books and adolescent banter. It's December, the heat of Summer, and just 5 days before speech day and the break of term. Just 6 days before the occupants of this dorm line the front steps of this boarding house waiting for silver Land Cruisers to pick them up and whisk them away to a two'month Christmas break. This year, the talk for the past few weeks has centred around a Christmas dance for which one of the boys in the dorm, one of the more popular ones, is a host. 14 of the 15 boys on this floor will be going. It's the event of the Christmas holidays the children say. Everyone is going. Everyone except this one boy. And the girls there will be oh so pretty in their summer dresses and sandals, fob chains and ribbons in their hair. And the boys, so confident in their striped shirts and cowboy boots, will smuggle in Vodka in emptied out Shampoo containers tucked down the front of their jeans, which they'll take on periodic visits to the bathroom for healthy swigs and laughter before returning to the dance floor where someone will do the Lawnmower and the Garden Sprinkler. Someone will do the Shopping Trolley. Someone will do the Robot. Someone else will throw up, splattering the arm of a girl he was dancing near and eventually, like last year, an ambulance will be called and someone else will be taken off to have their stomach pumped. Someone else will be off the invitation list next year.

Right now, imagine the sound of an empty room recently vacated. A sound only degrees thicker than silence. Like the vague thickness of lingering souls. Like some sort of spiritual inertia. The air still rich with all the flavours of human presence. And then through it slices the tinny strum of strings on an un'amplified electric guitar ' our boy, lying now on his mattress, staring up at the ceiling, a red Fender Stratocaster across his chest, picking out the intro to Smoke On The Water.

There's another kid in the room ' a taller boy with short clipped hair and stocky football player's shoulders, olive'skinned good looks and he approaches and says,

'Hey Nick, everyone's up on the oval playing touch. Y'wanna come up?' but our boy keeps riffing and says without looking up 'No thanks'

And an hour later, the chaos returns, this room once again filled with chatter and laughter and the smell of sporting equipment and sweat and each of the boys dropping their clothes to the floor and wrapping thin white towels around their waists, heading to the communal showers. Our boy now, still on his bed, working on the riff to Sunshine of your Love.

Just before 6pm, a bell rings signifying dinner and all the boys of this house, Rawson House, assemble in the concrete basement and are led in single file into a large dining hall filled with long wooden tables. At one end of the Hall, raised on a stage, is the Master's table, all the staff members and House Masters dressed in shirt and tie and dinner jacket politely passing the gravy and sipping from glass tumblers of apple juice. One by one, the boys enter through a door to the kitchen, grab a tray from the pile and edge along slowly as frumpy, middle'aged women serve out spoons of watery peas and thin slices of light brown meat which feels, looks and tastes like rubber.

Then one by one the boys, from another door reappear, trays held to their stomachs, and scout the hall for a place to sit. Picture our boy in the doorway near to last and picture a pair of hands on his back. Picture, in slow motion, him lurching forward, his tray launched into the air. Picture how far cold peas can roll across a polished timber floor. Visualise, if you can, the sound of teenage ridicule. Then multiply it by 510. That's the number of people laughing and cheering at our poor little deadshit.

Can you see him now, with gravy on his chin and meat in his hair, lying on his stomach and looking up at the Master's Table to find all of them, bar one, also smiling?

Can you picture it?

What about this then? Close your eyes and come with me. It's two hours later and the boys are seated at their desks in complete silence studying for their final exams ' maths tomorrow and then nothing on Thursday. Geography on Friday. An assistant House Master, only just out of school himself, enters the dorm every 20 minutes and walks its length. Anyone caught talking or out of their seats is warned three times and then given detention. Tonight no'one talks ' the faint music from someone's headphones and the occasional rustling of paper the only noise amid the breathing. The Master, in pants and tie, appears at the door and steps down the stairs, a plastic toy baseball bat in his right hand. As he walks, he peers to his left and right into each alcove until he gets about half the way down, stops and brings the bat down hard with a thwack on a boy's desk just to the right of his sleeping head. The kid jolts upright slamming his head against the bottom of his bed and screams 'Fuck' as the man says 'It's not time to be sleeping James'.

And then from the far end of the dormitory, a thin boy named Nathan farts, its volume setting off landmines off laughter all the way back to the door, and the Master quickens his step and smacks his hat against the palm of his empty hand and on approach bellows 'Ok, who was it? Was that you Nathan?' and Nathan, red'faced and trying desperately not to laugh says 'No Sir' and pointing over his head 'it was Nick'.

Picture now our sad, lonely dropkick leaning forward in his chair and reading from an Australian Guitar magazine crammed inside his maths text book and looking up to see the Master fuming above him then quickly slamming the books shut and pleading 'it wasn't me sir' and the Master, taking a small notepad and pen from his back pocket, looking the pathetic little kid in the eye and saying, loudly enough for the whole dorm to hear, 'Baker. Detention'.

At 8.30 another bell rings, this one for supper, and all the boys except one make their way down stairs where packets of biscuits and glasses of cold milk have been laid out on tables and the boys, helping themselves, group off in cliques around the walls. While they're there, laughing and telling jokes, unwinding, I want you to imagine our boy up on the second floor meeting with the school councilor, an overweight and matronly lady who smells of sour tobacco, who says with one arm on the kid's shoulder 'How are you feeling this week Nick? Have you finished that course of Zoloft yet?'

'Nearly,' says Nick 'I've got about four days left. I'm not feeling very great tonight Nurse. I just got another detention.'

'Oh Nick,' the nurse says and then 'that's ok, just forget about it. I'll have a word to your House Master'.

Then the Nurse pulls the door shut and draws the curtains closed and says 'Jump up onto the bed Nick. I'd like to talk to you a bit more about your parents.'

From where Nick is lying he can hear the faint mumble of the other boys on the floor below. Occasionally, a monotone hum cuts through which Nick figures must be the television. There's a vague whistle of wind blowing through the top of a window across his face and he's just thinking how kinda nice it feels when the nurse cuts his daydream off and says 'Nick, now why don't you tell me a bit more about what your Dad was like to you as a young boy?'

Nick shuffles his ass across the bed and says 'I don't really remember. I mean, he wasn't like playing cricket and stuff with me that's for sure'.

The nurse is standing over him now, stroking his right forearm.

'And Nick, what was the relationship like between he and your Mother?'

'Well no, it wasn't the best. He used to bring a lot of other ladies around. But I've told you all of this before'.

'Tell me again Nick'.

'Well Dad used to drink a bit and Mum was always walking in on him with, you know, other chicks'.

'I see. And what did your Mother do then Nick? Can you remember?'

Nick closes his eyes and thinks for a second about the light turning the insides of his eyelids red. Thinks for a moment again about the breeze, sending strands of his long hair dancing across his forehead. He shifts his weight once more and uncrosses his feet at the ankles. Opens his eyes.

'Well she fuckin lost her shit at him didn't she?'

'Nick?' As she says this, picture the nurse unbuttoning the last two buttons on Nick's shirt.

'Sorry. Umm. Yeah well Mum would start yelling at him and she'd kick the chick out. Then she'd say things like 'That's your last chance' and 'how could you keep doing this to me?'

'And what would your Father do?'

'Well first he'd try to cover the girl up and then he'd say 'we weren't doing anything', or he'd say something like 'she's a friend. She just needed to take a shower'. But I know Mum never believed him and if ever for a moment she did, he'd just do it again and then it would all go back to the way it had been before'.

'And what was that Nick?'

'Well Dad would disappear again for awhile. Sometimes he'd drive his car into a national park and sleep in it until Mum would call him and beg him to come back and then he'd come back and for a couple of weeks everything would be great until Mum would either come home early from work or Dad wouldn't come home at all and they'd have another fight and Dad would go away again'

'And how did that make you feel Nick?

'I didn't care'.

'Why do you think you didn't care Nick'.

'I hated him'. As he says this, see our boy lifting his ass and wriggling out of his black denim jeans.

'Now I want you to tell me something Nick. Your Dad... did he ever hurt you physically in anyway? Did he ever hit you?'

Nick says 'yeah, all the time', as the Nurse leans down and takes him whole in her mouth.

Nick tips his head back and says 'Can you get me out of my exam on Friday?'