It’s Friday, party time. Thuli can’t wait; she comes round to dress me.

“I don’t know about going to this party,” I tell her. “I don’t know anyone.”

“I’ll introduce you. It’s in a digs. It will be chilled. No parents. Just don’t be full of shit,” she warns me.

“When am I ever full of shit?”

Secretly, I’m worried that having a good time will make me feel worse. Like after coffee when you slump, or when you come down from a sugar rush. And how will I join in if I don’t know what they are talking about, or what the in jokes are?

“Go,” Mama says. “Have some fun. You’re getting really boring with that long face of yours. Besides I’m having stokvel here tonight and we want to gossip too. I want to find about Mrs Mashu’s Ben 10.”

We roll our eyes. Mama trying to be ‘down’ with us. I kiss her cheek and rub her shoulders.

Lunga comes in and hands us each one of the pamphlets he hands out at the traffic lights.

The dream vibrating mattress.

“It has four settings,” says Lunga proudly.

“Why would you want one of those?” says Mama

“Thato has one of those in his res room,” Thuli says proudly.

Lunga has a date too, he tells us. Some lady he picked up at the traffic light when he gave her the mattress pamphlet. An older lady!

Thuli gets all excited about dressing him too. “It might lead to things, like a new job,” she says.

“Oh, this came for you.” Lunga hands me an envelope, like an afterthought, when Thuli takes off his jacket.

“In the post?”

“There is still such a thing; don’t sound so amazed,” says Mama.

I open it with shaking fingers. It has the letterhead ‘Bright’s Appliances’.

My heart flutters. If they replied this must mean …

‘We regret to inform you …’

Those words that make my hopes and dreams plummet.

“At least they replied,” Lunga says.

I roll my eyes at him. “Really Lunga?”

“Hey, what about this gold belt with this …” Thuli changes the subject, and fishes in her bag and pulls out a black mini dress.

“Hey, Lethu, someone at the party might know someone who knows someone who is just waiting for someone like you to come and work in his mega rich company. That’s how it works,” says Lunga.

“So how come you aren’t working the parties?”

“Well, Lady ‘Green for Go’ has invited me to come to a party she is throwing. She says boys like me shouldn’t be handing out pamphlets at traffic lights.”

“She’s right,” says Ma. “Now get going. My ladies should be arriving soon.”

In the streets round here things work a bit differently, I think. ‘Someone who knows someone’ can get you a cheap radio if you have the right money. Or someone who knows Blesser Baba Booitjie who has a vacancy for a hot young somebody …”

Lunga says he’ll walk us to the taxi and soon we are whisked away, taxi music blaring, towards another world, where who knows what opportunities await …

“These are the days of our lives,” I say out of the window. Thuli is too busy texting Miranda, asking for directions to the party, to notice.

“It’s here,” shouts Thuli. “Pull over here!” she says, as the taxi drives past a big apartment block on Rondebosch main road.

“Okay girly. Calm down.”

The taxi pulls in, no indicators. A car hoots behind it and slams on brakes; squeal of tyres. The car swerves around the taxi and pulls in, in front of it. As we get out of the taxi a white girl with blonde hair gets out of the passenger side and starts shouting at the taxi driver.

“You asshole, you could have killed us! You fucking taxi drivers – you think you own the roads. My dad will sue you.”

“Oh, hi,” says Thuli, as we step onto the pavement. It’s the girl in the selfie.

“It’s you, Thuli!” she shrieks in delight. “What are you doing in a taxi? You know they are not safe. You should Uber,” says Miranda. Only it’s not Miranda. I know just who this girl is.

“That’s how us people get from point A to B I say.”

“Chelsea, meet my friend Lelethu. She’s coming to the party.”

Chelsea looks like she’s never seen me before. But I have seen her. Oh yes, Chelsea Clarke is Thuli’s new BFF.

***

Tell us: What things is Chelsea assuming when she says Thuli mustn’t use minibus taxis because she, Chelsea, believes they are unsafe?