Justin closed the door and walked into the lounge-room where it was dark. In the street there were a few parked cars, perhaps five or six, and a night mist hung suspended, the streetlights draining colour from lawns and houses. Justin sat on the edge of a chair. He scratched his feet and stared at the clock in the darkness, seeing if he couldn’t make out the time. Before five he would go back to bed and push Johnson out of it if he had to, not wanting to get scratched again, or bitten. He would lock Johnson out of his room and close the window even if did make the room hot.

There was an exam in the morning – a math’s exam that he hadn’t studied for. He hadn’t, over the last week, been able to think of anything other than the accident, though he took pride in taking school seriously. He wouldn’t pass this test, though Scott wouldn’t be passing it either, or getting a better mark than Justin as he usually did in math.

It would be unfair to Scott to make light of what had happened. Scott was maimed. Justin could not say it’s just a boo-boo to Scott, and he couldn’t say it to Shane-o either. Shane-o didn’t like Scott. He would be ready to laugh at anything that made fun of Scottie Connor. When Scott had first arrived at Royal Grammar, Shane-o had struggled against him. He was a faggot, Shane-o said. Not a movie star! This was at lunchtime, when the other guys were crowded around ‘Scott-o’ on his first day, clapping him on the back and listening to his stories.

‘Scotto’ had been to Jungegefängnis. And Shane, Justin thought, was jealous. It was a place he would himself have enjoyed, no doubt. Justin thought so too. Plenty of freedom. No shoes. No classes, unless you wanted to go. And Scotto wasn’t stupid. He had learned something there!

Justin was lucky to be at any good school, he told himself, though it was only his own hard work that had made that possible. Carol wasn’t able to provide for his schooling. She didn’t even make him go!

At twelve he tried for a scholarship and won it, entering the year before Scotto arrived. From that point forward Justin had struggled with the strangeness as much as with making friends. If he had them now, it was only by his own hard effort.

It was a lot more difficult for him to first fit it at Royal than it later proved for ‘Scotto’. Everyone liked 'Scott-o' on the first day, and this was only natural. Scott, Justin soon learned, was kind. He was generous. When Justin had no lunch, Scott one day bought him pizza without Justin even asking, simply saying ‘do you want this?’ when he had already bought it and meant it as a gift. He bought food for Justin every day. And would often buy him coke or an ice-block or even give him some of his own food.

Justin at first figured that Scott was trying to make friends with him. But he wasn’t. As far as Scott was concerned, they were already friends. ‘You’re my friend,’ Scott said with the pizza. They had hardly ever spoken.

Justin came home and found Carol unconscious and he cried about this, about Scott’s kindness. There was no food. Carol was in the hospital. He would have eaten nothing for days.

Now, Justin thought, to be unkind to Scott would be to undo all of that. The other guys had never been kind to him when he first arrived at the school. And when he had made friends with them they were frustrated. It never occurred to them to ask themselves why he never went the places that they asked him.

Scott invited Justin to the movies and offered to pay. They saw Return of the Jedi together, the sixth in a series of nine, Scottie explained, though it had been made here first. The film made no sense but Justin didn’t care. It involved a long sequence with plush toys in a forest! Hardly realistic at all. Scottie said A New Hope was in America, and it was better.

Afterwards they went into an arcade and played Space Invaders, something Justin hadn’t even seen. And Scott split his money in half. He gave Justin thirteen dollars!

Now, Justin figured, he had rewarded Scott for his friendship by crushing the guy’s testicles! That was permanent. It’s a permanent injury, he kept saying to himself, and he had been saying it for days. And yesterday learning that he had cost Scott his penis made Justin feel giddy and ill. But how had he laughed? It was partly his fault! The thought of this, along with the thought of Scott’s wound and what it might look like now had made sleep impossible. How had it been done? What was the red thing he had seen? Was it a cord? Some type of staple? Would Scottie have less than an inch? A modest nozzle? It had been one thing to laugh about Scottie’s testicles when he thought Scott would have prosthetic implants. That wasn’t so bad. To laugh now at Scott without even a tiny penis, and without even a scrotum, was heartless. Could Justin be proud of that? Should he be?

A transplant might one day be possible, though Justin didn’t think so. He could agree to have his own genitals removed and offered to Scott. In 2006, he would turn 41. Would it matter then? Not much he figured. Scott could look forward to it, not that it would be possible. You couldn’t sew a face onto a skull, and you couldn’t do that with a penis, either. Only a dickhead would think you could. It was the sort of thing George Lucas would come up with – some monster! Had they sewn Scott’s penis back on?

And even if it did somehow turn out to be possible to fix what Justin had done, wasn't he prepared to do that? He wouldn’t want it himself if he were in Scott’s position. Still, he could offer it to Scott all the same. The idea sickened him, but he could offer. Justin wouldn't like it, and he wouldn’t like Scott, he felt, if Scott had someone else’s flesh attached to him, though not if that were Justin’s.

Justin frowned.

Would Scott want that? Probably not. He wouldn’t want Justin’s genitals sewn onto him, let alone some dead person’s – some old man’s! Scott was perfect. Or had been. And even more so now – like an angel, Justin felt. Sewing other flesh onto Scott would take this away from him. It would sully him. As it was, he had a scar was all – his first. On Scott, even that would look sweet!

Still, though, Scott wouldn’t have a normal life. A woman wouldn’t want to marry him when he was only pretty; he couldn’t give her children. And he couldn’t fuck her, Justin reflected.

Scott would never get married. Justin would. And Scott wouldn’t like that.

If Scott found out what Justin had done, he would be upset and would get angry with Justin. He wouldn’t think it was fair for Justin to have a cock and balls when it was Justin who had planned the accident, even if he hadn’t meant to castrate Scott, or not at first. If Scott learned that Justin had castrated him, that Justin had done that deliberately even if it wasn’t planned, Scott would be furious. He probably suspected, Justin figured. When Justin tried to touch his leg Scott had got angry. He got angry about the tea lady and the orderly. Had Scott guessed? He hoped not. If it were possible to stop Scott working it out then Justin would do that. He feared, however, that it wasn’t possible. Scott wasn’t stupid. Too much had happened.