Every day after school, Mike tells his mum he has homework, but in reality he goes down to the basement to hang out with Antarctica, who’s become a really good friend since his dad left and his mum took out the restraining order. Antarctica’s boss at listening, never yells or lectures, and most important, never asks tricky questions. Mike won’t tell his mum about Antarctica because she’ll freak out and she’s been through enough already. A snowy albatross glides overhead.

Mike tells Antarctica a lot of things that he’d never tell anyone else. For a start, he tells Antarctica that his mum has two jobs and she’s very smart because she knows all the answers to the questions on Wheel of Fortune. Mike also confides that he knows his mum’s hurting because after his dad ransacked the house looking for money and Mike had to call the police, he heard her crying in her bedroom. When Mike thinks of his dad, he feels like he’s on a free-fall ride at the showground.

Antarctica’s response to Mike’s disclosures, which Mike knows is due to deep glacial emotion, is to whip up a concern of katabatic wind that freezes Mike’s nose and fingers, so now Mike wears a puffer jacket, balaclava, and gloves. Mike can tell that Antarctica’s in his corner, but he’s seen the deep ravines and canyons of blue ice that Antarctica can summon in a second. To be honest, it’s cool and comforting knowing that Antarctica’s in his basement, a vast and wondrous polar continent beneath him, and when Mike’s at school he yearns for that quiet world.

When Mike tells Antarctica that he has a part-time job on Saturdays at Deep Blue Bait & Tackle sweeping floors and restocking shelves, Antarctica puts on a show of Adélie penguins diving from ice floes. Mike also tells Antarctica that he’s saved some money, but he did spend quite a bit on a speargun and wooden persuader that he keeps behind his wardrobe, and they’ll be the first things he goes for if his dad ever sets foot in the house again after what happened last time. Antarctica is for sure a peace-loving guardian, but Mike knows Antarctica’s response to his dad turning up will be blizzards and snowstorms and a total deep freeze.

Mike’s watching a blue whale cruise by with its calf when he hears his mum calling. He takes his gloves off as he climbs the basement stairs, shoves them in his pockets with the balaclava, brushes the snow from his jacket, and hangs it on the coat hook in the hallway. He wonders if he’s too old for this kind of malarkey, you know, hanging out with a wild continent, but Mike decides he’ll never turn his back on Antarctica, not in the near future, anyway. He calls downstairs, Catch you later, man. His mum’s wearing a yellow sundress—she’s too busy cutting up watermelon to notice the snowflakes in his hair.