With a single honk on the horn Eric arrived in the van. He got out, looking up at the sky. "Damn, it's clouding over" he said. He looked at Mal and Steve. "Did you two know there's an eclipse tonight?" he asked.

"Really?" Steve joked. "We had no idea."

Eric didn't pay any attention to Steve's tone of voice. "God, you two are so bloody uninformed" he said. "All you need to do is watch the news every now and then."

Mal and Steve ignored him as they loaded their gear into the back of the van. Steve rushed around to the front of the van, beating Mal to the front passenger seat.

"Aww, man!" Mal complained. "You had the front last time."

"What are you two, five years old?" Eric snapped. "Mal, you can have the front seat on the way back."

"You're giving me a lift back?" Mal asked, surprised.

"Not if you don't shut up about who sits where" Eric replied. Mal took a while to sort out the negatives in that sentence, and decided not to say anything more about it.

Instead he looked out the window of the van. It was dark now, and people were coming out of their houses and gazing at the moon, half-hidden though it was behind clouds: families leaning on railings; housemates having impromptu picnics on the wide strip of grass down the middle of the road; people talking to their friends on 'phones from the balcony; all of them gazing skywards to the west.

Steve noticed, too, and craned his neck forward above the dashboard to look through the windscreen past Eric. "Can you see anything yet?" he asked. "Has it started?"

"Not with this cloud" Eric replied.

"When's it meant to be happening?" Steve asked. "Like, the full thing?"

"8:40" Mal said from the back. Eric glanced at him in the rear-view mirror.

"It'll be clear by then" Steve said confidently. "It always clouds over when it first gets dark. It'll clear. There's heaps of time still."

"Whatever" Eric said. He was trying to sound unimpressed by the whole thing, but he couldn't help being a little excited. "My parents are going down the park to watch it" he said in an offhand way. "They say you guys are welcome to go with them. You know, if you want."

Steve twisted around to try and share a look with Mal, but Mal was looking out the window again, looking at all the small groups of people. Looking at the pretty girls.

"Sounds nice" Steve said. He looked at the sky again. "Clouds're clearing already, see?"