
Cath Crowley grew up in rural Victoria, Australia. She studied professional writing and editing at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and now works as a freelance writer in Melbourne. To find out more about Cath, please visit cathcrowley.com.au
Also by Cath Crowley
The Life and Times of Gracie Faltrain
Gracie Faltrain Takes Control
Gracie Faltrain Gets it Right (Finally)
Chasing Charlie Duskin
First published 2010 in Pan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited 1 Market Street, Sydney
Text copyright © Cath Crowley 2010
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
National Library of AustraliaCataloguing-in-Publication data:
Crowley, Cath.Graffiti moon.
ISBN 978 0 330 42578 0 (pbk.)For secondary school age.
Adolescence -- Juvenile fiction.Relationships -- Juvenile fiction.
A823.4
Typeset in 11.5/16pt Sabon by Midland Typesetters Printed in Australia by McPherson's Printing Group
The characters and events in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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These electronic editions published in 2010 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd 1 Market Street, Sydney 2000
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Graffiti MoonCath Crowley
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To Teresa and everyone in the room. And to Esther, who read it first.
Thank you very much Claire Craig, Brianne Collins and Simone Ford. Your careful editing is much appreciated. Thank you Elizabeth Abbot, Marcus Jobling, Duro Jovicic, Kirsten Matthews and Karen Murphy for talking to me about art. Thank you Bethany Wheeler for generously donating your time and knowledge about glass. Any errors are mine. Any good stuff is yours. Special thanks to the young adults who shared their stories with me. A big thanks to my nieces and nephews who let me ask all the questions I want and never tell me to go away. Thanks Alison Arnold for plotting in the car, Diana Francavilla for your scary amount of knowledge about young adult fiction and film, Emma Schwartz for your writing advice and Ange Maiden for always laughing. And lastly, thanks to my brothers, to Cate, Cella and Ras, and of course, to my mum and dad.
Lucy
I pedal fast. Down Rose Drive where houses swim in pools of orange streetlight. Where people sit on verandahs, hoping to catch a breeze. Let me make it in time. Please let me make it in time.
Just arrived at the studio. Your graffiti guys Shadow and Poet are here, Al texted, and I took off across the night. Took off under a sky bleeding out and turning black. Left Dad sitting outside his shed yelling, 'I thought you weren't meeting Jazz till later. Where's the fire, Lucy Dervish?'
In me. Under my skin.
Let me make it in time. Let me meet Shadow. Let me meet Poet, too, but mainly Shadow. The guy who paints in the dark. Paints birds trapped on brick walls and people lost in ghost forests. Paints guys with grass growing from their hearts and girls with buzzing lawn mowers. A guy who paints things like that is a guy I could fall for. Really fall for.
I'm so close to meeting him and I want it so bad. Mum says when wanting collides with getting, that's the moment of truth. I want to collide. I want to run right into Shadow and let the force spill our thoughts so we can pick each other up and pass each other back like piles of shiny stones.
At the top of Singer Street I see the city, neon blue and rising. There's lightning deep in the sky, working its way through the heat to the surface. There's laughter somewhere far away. There's one of Shadow's pieces, a painting on a crumbling wall of a heart cracked by earthquake with the words: Beyond the Richter scale written underneath. It's not a heart like you see on a Valentine's Day card. It's the heart how it really is: fine veins and atriums and arteries. A fist-sized forest in our chest.
I take my hands off the brake and let go. The trees and the fences mess together and the concrete could be the sky and the sky could be the concrete and the factories spread out before me like a light-scattered dream.
I turn a corner and fly down Al's street. Towards his studio, towards him sitting on the steps, little moths above him, playing in the light. Towards a shadow in the distance. A shadow of Shadow. There's collision up ahead.
I spin the last stretch and slide to a stop. 'I'm here. I made it. Do I look okay? How do I look?'
Al drains his coffee and puts the cup on the step beside him. 'Like a girl who missed them by about five minutes.'
Ed
I spray the sky fast. Eyes ahead and behind. Looking for cops. Looking for anyone I don't want to be here. Paint sails and the things that kick in my head scream from can to brick. See this, see this, see this. See me emptied onto a wall.
First thing I ever painted was a girl. Second thing I ever painted was a doorway on a brick wall. Went on to paint huge doorways. Moved on to skies. Open skies painted above painted doorways and painted birds skimming across bricks trying to fly away. Little bird, what are you thinking? You come from a can.
Tonight I'm doing this bird that's been in my head all day. He's a little yellow guy lying on sweet green grass. Belly to sky, legs facing the same direction. He could be sleeping. He could be dead. The yellow's right. The green, too. The sky's all wrong. I need the sort of blue that rips your inside out. You don't see blue like that round here.
Bert was always looking for it. Every week or so at the paint store he'd show me a blue he'd special-ordered. 'Close, boss,' I'd say. 'But not close enough.'
He still hadn't found it when he died two months ago. He got all the other colours I wanted. The green this bird's lying on is a shade he found about two years back. 'You had a good first day,' he told me when he handed it over. 'Real good.'
'That is very fucking nice,' I said, spraying some on a card and taking it as a sign that leaving school to work for him was the right thing to do.
'It is very fucking nice,' Bert looked over his shoulder, 'but don't say fuck when my wife Valerie's around.' Bert always swore like a kid scared of getting caught. I laughed about it till Val heard me swearing. Bert had the last chuckle that day.
'What's so funny?' a voice behind me asks.
'Shit, Leo.' A line of blue goes into the grass on the wall. 'Don't sneak up.'
'I've been calling your name since the top of the hill. And the council made this place legal, remember?' He finishes the last bite of his sausage roll. 'I like the rush of working where we might get caught.'
'I like the rush of painting.'
'Fair enough.' He watches me for a bit. 'So I called your mobile earlier. It's disconnected.'
'Uh-huh. Didn't pay the bill.' I hand him the can. 'Write the words. I'm hungry.'
Leo looks at my picture of a wide sky hanging over a sleeping yellow bird. He points at the kid on the wall. 'Nice touch.' He thinks a bit longer and while he does I look around. The old guy who works at the glass studio across the road is on the step, texting and staring at us. At least I know he's not calling the cops.
Leo writes Peace in the clouds. I was thinking it was more like my future. 'Not bad,' I tell him.
His hand moves across the wall, signing my name under his.
Poet.
Shadow.
We walk along streets and alleys and cut through the old train yard. I look out for people working as we walk. I like seeing their thoughts hit the carriages. Makes the city as much ours as someone else's.
'So I saw Beth today,' Leo says. 'She asked me how you were doing.' He throws stones at the dead trains. 'Sounded like she wants you back.'
I stop and take out a can and spray a greeting card heart with a gun pointed at it. 'We were over months ago.'
'You mind if I ask her out, then?'
'You mind if I spray a piece on the side of your gran's house?'
He laughs. 'Yeah, right. You're over.'
'I like her, just not anything more than that. She used to do this thing where she'd lean over and kiss me and then take a break to whisper hilarious stuff in my ear and then kiss me again. I'd be screaming, "What's wrong with you? Fall in love with her, you dick."'
'She didn't think that was weird?'
'Inside. I was screaming on the inside. Anyway, I never fell in love with her so I guess the part of the brain that controls love doesn't respond to being called a dick.'
'For your sake, I'm hoping no part of your brain responds to being called a dick.'
'Fair point.' I wish I hadn't thought about Beth doing that thing because now I can feel her at my ear, warm breath and sweet tickling and her voice sounding like that blue I've been searching for.
'Were you in love with Emma?' I ask.
'I was hard-core obsessed,' he says without thinking about it. 'Not in love.'
'What's the difference?'
He's about to throw a stone at the streetlight but stops. 'Prison,' he says, and puts the stone in his pocket.
Emma dumped him about a year ago now. He was crazier than usual after she did it. Kept begging me to paint this wall on the side of her house so she'd see it and take him back. She lived in the good part of town in a three-storey terrace. We weren't painting anything on that and getting away with it.
There was no talking Leo down, though, so I sprayed what he wanted: a guy with the word 'love' cut out of his chest and a girl next to him holding some scissors. Emma came out and saw it and he got on his knees in the middle of the street, begging her to take him back.
She pulled out her mobile phone and called the cops. Leo wouldn't leave and I wouldn't leave without him and about ten minutes later we were in the back of a police van headed for fingerprinting.
We gave our statements and Leo told them everything, about being dumped, about wanting Emma back. They must have thought she was pretty cold because they called my mum and Leo's gran and let us off with a warning and the understanding that we'd clean up the mess we'd made. I never heard Leo's gran yell so much as when she was dragging him towards the car. He's been mowing lawns on a Saturday for her friends ever since.
Mum was quiet till we got home. She's never once told me I couldn't hang out with Leo. Never said he couldn't sleep on the couch when he turned up late. 'He's one of the good guys,' she always said. 'Just sometimes he's working undercover.'
That night she killed the engine and stared at our house for a while. 'I love Leo like a son, but he's got to grow up sometime. And it'd be a shame for you to start wasting that hard-earned money of yours on bail.' She slammed the car door shut and that was that.
I told Leo what she'd said while we were sweating and cleaning off paint. Emma walked past us with her friends. 'Fuck growing up,' Leo said, staring at her till she disappeared.
I flick on the light and Leo looks in the fridge for food. Comes up empty. I flick the aircon switch. Nothing happens. I smack it. Leo smacks it. He almost knocks it off the wall but it still doesn't give any air. 'We're not meant to get hot days like this in October,' I say, standing in front of the open freezer.
'Where's your mum?' he asks.
'Out at some big deal hocus-pocus night at the casino. Getting her fortune read. It's an all-night thing because "magic" happens in the early hours.'
Leo raises his eyebrows.
'Not that sort of magic.'
He leans against the bench and his legs almost reach the other side of the kitchen. It isn't the smallness of this place that bothers me. It's the grey that's worked its way into the walls. It's the stains on the carpet from some other life that came and left before ours. Bert always said he'd give me a good deal on paint but some places take burning down and rebuilding to make them shiny.
'It's too hot here,' Leo says. 'And it's my last night of Year 12. We should go out, have some food, meet some girls.'
I shut the freezer door. 'I got exactly fifteen dollars left in the world.'
He looks past me at the calendar and the circle around rent day. 'No luck getting another job?'
'Negative luck. People don't even return my calls.'
'I'm helping Jake this morning if you're interested. We can get five hundred bucks each for two hours' work starting at three am. All we have to do is pick up the van, load it, drive it away.'
'Are you stupid?' I ask.
'That's what it says on my report cards.'
'Don't even joke about this. Your brother gets caught every single time.' Right back to when he was fifteen and he talked some guy at a car dealership into letting him take a Jag for a test drive. He's even taller than Leo so the guy believed his fake licence. Plus, Jake's got a way of talking that makes people believe.
He took the Jag and, instead of driving somewhere no one knew him, he rolled around the block near his house, music vibrating through the windows. His gran dragged him out by the ear in front of everyone on the street.
Leo reaches over and hits the aircon again. 'I owe some money.'
He looks worried, which gets me worried because a team of footballers coming at him in a dark alley doesn't bother him too much. That leaves one person. 'Tell me you don't owe money to Malcolm Dove.'
He stares out the window at the cats howling along the back fence.
'Shit, Leo. Shit. The guy's crazy.'
'Define crazy.'
'Eating a cockroach for a dare,' I say.
Leo shrugs. 'Okay, so he's crazy. All the more reason to give him his money.'
I fish in the back of the cupboard for some chips and think about the seriousness of the situation. Malcolm's about the same age as Jake but they're not friends. Malcolm doesn't have friends. He has a group of bad men that hang around, doing him favours. The only person I know who's crazier than him is Crazy Dave. He needed to eat one more cockroach to beat Malcolm in that dare but he ate five for a laugh. 'They're salty,' he said, grinning.
'Why'd you need five hundred dollars that bad?' I ask. 'You mow lawns every Saturday.'
'Yeah, well, old ladies mostly pay in food. And my gran needed some things.' He taps on the counter. 'Malcolm's coming for me tonight.'
'How late is the payment?'
He looks from the window to the floor. 'Two months.'
For Leo's sake I try not to seem worried.
'Look. All I need to do is dodge him till three and I'll have the money.'
'You can't ask Jake for an advance?'
'I don't want him knowing I owe Malcolm.'
'Has he been round to your house?' I ask.
'No. But I'm guessing he'll pay Gran a visit if he doesn't get what he's owed tonight. Dylan said he'd help. We're meeting him at school on the way to Barry's. One job and we all start the month even. We've got at least a first offence before the cops even think about putting us in jail.'
'That's one bright future up ahead.' I look past him at the calendar and the circled rent day. I think about Mum adding bleak numbers in the night, about her seeing psychics and looking for happy endings.
'My son needs a job,' the new owner of the paint store said when he sacked me six weeks ago. 'It's nothing personal.' Funny. The real estate agent we owe money to is taking it very personal.
Leo gets a phone call and while he's talking I flick through Bert's little sketchbook. Valerie gave it to me at the funeral. Said Bert would have wanted me to have it. In our lunch breaks at the shop he'd sit there talking and drawing these pictures. Each one was on a different page, drawn almost the same as the one before. His old hands moved while he talked and by the end of lunch he'd always finished a new series. I'd flick the pages and the thing he'd drawn moved like it was on TV. I look at one he's drawn of me while I wait for Leo. I watch myself eat sandwiches and talk to Bert while the clouds roll over my head, backwards and forwards.
'So?' Leo asks me, hanging up and writing something down. I never could get my handwriting to look like his. Sundays after footy in Year 5 he'd take my hand and move it across the page for me till I got so mad I'd snap the pencil. Leo'd laugh and pull out another pencil.
'I'm in,' I say and close the book on me in the storeroom with Bert. I stick it in my pocket and lock up, even though there's nothing here to steal.
We cut across the train line to the high school. I sketched a picture of this place the day I left for good in Year 10. Buildings surrounded by wire and a little guy caught in the barbs. 'Is he trying to get in or get out?' Bert had asked. I wasn't exactly sure.
Dylan's waiting for us, sitting in front of a wall that says Dylan loves Daisy in big red letters. Leo looks at it for a while. 'We're robbing this place later and you're signing your name on the wall? Did you remember to leave the Media block window open this afternoon?'
'Of course I did.'
'We're robbing the Media block?' I ask. 'That's low.'
'What do you care? They kicked you out,' Dylan says.
'Shut up,' Leo tells him. 'Ed left because he wanted to leave.' And they start arguing about whether graffiti's admissible evidence in court.
I watch Leo yelling and sweating and I plan a piece I could paint, a guy with his back to the wall, crowded by dollar signs that are about to kick the life out of him. The cops won't care how Leo and Dylan and me got here. All they'll care about is that we're filling the van with things that aren't ours.
While they're yelling I spray every corner of the wall so there's nothing to say I was ever here and while I'm doing it a siren goes off not far away. 'I got a bad feeling,' I tell them, but my voice gets lost in the mix of the city.
Poet
Assignment One
Poetry 101
Student: Leopold Green
Where I lived before
I used to live with my parents
In a house that smelt like cigarettes
And tasted like beer if you touched anything
The kitchen table was a bitter ocean
That came off on my fingers
There were three doors between the fighting and me
And at night I closed them all
I'd lie in bed and block the sounds
By imagining
I was floating
Light years of quiet
Interrupted by breathing
And nothing else
I'd drift through space
And fall through dreams
Into dark skies
Some nights
My brother Jake and I would crawl out the window
And cut across the park
Swing on the monkey bars for a while
On the way to Gran's house
She'd be waiting
Dressing gown and slippers on
Searching for our shadows
She'd read us
Poetry and fairytales
Where swords took care of dragons
And Jake never said it was a load of shit
Like I thought he would
And then one night
Gran stopped reading before the happy ending
She asked, 'Leopold, Jake. You want to live in
My spare room?'
Her voice
Sounded like space and dark skies
But that night all my dreams
Had floors
Lucy
I walk across to the wall. A yellow bird lies legs up under a blue sky and the word Peace is sprayed in fat letters across the clouds.
'I guess it's too late to give peace a chance,' Al says. 'Looks like it's dead.'
'Nope,' I say. 'It's only sleeping.'
Most times when I look at Shadow and Poet's work I see something different from what the words are telling me. I like that about art, that what you see is sometimes more about who you are than what's on the wall. I look at this painting and think about how everyone has some secret inside, something sleeping like that yellow bird.
I look and get a feeling, a tickling zing. That zing has nothing to do with sex like my best friend, Jazz, says. Okay, in the interest of honesty, maybe it's got a little to do with sex, but mainly it's got to do with knowing that there's a guy out there who's not like all the other guys out there.
'I need more details,' I say, my eyes still on the wall.
'It's like I told you. Shadow does the painting. Poet writes the words.'
'Did you get a better look this time?'
'Same look I had before. They're young and scruffy,' Al says. 'About your age.'
'Cute?'
'I'm a sixty-year-old man. I really couldn't say.'
'Which direction did they go?'
'My street hits a dead end, Lucy. They went in the only direction they could.'
I walk over and sit next to him. I concentrate really hard.
'What are you doing?' he asks.
'I'm trying to bend the laws of time so I can get here five minutes earlier.'
He nods and we watch the dirty silk of the factory smoke float across the sky.
'Having any luck?' he asks after a while.
'Nope. I can't get no time reversal.'
He smiles. 'You'll see him, just a matter of waiting. Since this place became legal Shadow's been working here a bit. And you finished Year 12 classes today. Are you and Jazz hitting the town?'
'We're meeting at Barry's around nine-thirty.'
'Late start.'
'Jazz wants to have a late-night-all-night adventure.'
'Got time to help me with a piece before you go?' he asks, and I nod and follow him inside.
I'm addicted to this place. To the heat coming off the furnace. To my muscles aching as I help Al blow glass. I ache with the weight of the piece on the end of the rod. Ache with the thought that in a place as ugly as this, a place of rust and sweat and steel, something shining like love can appear.
I've got Mrs J, my Art teacher, to thank for introducing me to Al. In Year 10 she took us on an excursion to his studio and we stood behind a wire safety fence and watched him and another guy turn glass, heat it in a furnace and turn it again. The heat was burning me up but it felt like it was happening from the inside out. I'd never wanted to do something so bad.
Al offered a free six-week glassblowing course to one of Mrs J's students and she gave it to me. After the course was done Al said he'd keep being my teacher. I worked off half my costs by cleaning his studio every week. Mum and Dad paid the other half. I've been cleaning and taking lessons here ever since. Yesterday, thanks to Al, I finished my Year 12 Art folio.
'Concentrate,' he says, and uses wet newspaper to turn and shape the shiny mass. He nods, and I blow into the mouthpiece and cover the opening with my thumb to trap the air; the vase inflates with my breath. He uses the newspaper to turn and shape some more. The paper heats and burns, flecking the air with stars.
His old hands move smooth as water as he cracks the glass off the end without breaking it. After we put it in the annealer to cool, he says, 'So, I think you're ready for a promotion. I thought you could keep working here while you're at uni and I'd pay you in cash instead of in classes. No cleaning. Strictly glasswork.'
'You're serious? I'd be your assistant?'
'You'd work with Jack and Liz. You interested?'
Al's one of the top glass artists in the city. I nod so much there's a nodding festival going on. 'Good,' he says. 'Good.'
We sit outside for a bit longer, me hoping that Shadow will make a return appearance. I get this heavy feeling when I daydream about him. I'm not awake and I'm not asleep. I'm in a soft blue corridor that runs between the two.
'How are things at home?' Al asks.
'Okay. Better. Dad's still living in the shed but he comes into the house more and more, and not just to use the bathroom. I really think he'll be moving back in soon.'
'That's great news.'
'Yep. It was only ever meant to be a temporary move. And now they're not fighting anymore, so, you know.' I look across at that sleeping bird. I imagine Shadow arcing his arm and spilling yellow across the grey. Spilling sunshine.
For a couple of months before Dad moved into the shed, he and Mum had huge fights about stupid things. Mum's a part-time dental nurse and part-time novelist. Dad's a comedian/magician and a part-time taxi-driver. They had some imaginative ideas about where the other person could stick the remote control.
Then they just stopped fighting. I came home from school one day and felt the quiet drifting along the street. When I walked into the yard Dad was standing in front of the shed, sipping lemonade and cooking sausages and dehydrated potatoes over a little camp stove.
'What are you doing?' I asked.
'I'm moving into the shed for a while. Just till your mother finishes her novel and I get my next show written.' He waved the barbeque tongs. 'You want to have dinner at my place?'
'Your place is my place, Dad.' I sat next to him while he cooked and tried to figure things out. Sure they'd been fighting, but Dad and Mum had been together for thirty years. Dad was always going on about how romantic it was that they met in the university cafeteria. He asked for Mum's salt and she asked for his sugar. 'Romance like that can't end in dehydrated potatoes,' I said to Mum.
She answered, 'Lucy, you're lucky if romance ends in something you can add water to and rehydrate.'
This did not comfort me.
She ate dinner with us that night when she got home, which was even more confusing. They didn't fight. Mum told Dad the potatoes were delicious. 'Stop looking at me like that,' she said. 'Your dad and I need space to write. I can't suck the saliva out of people's mouths for the rest of my life and your dad can't drive a taxi.'
I could understand that. Mum and Dad aren't exactly typical. Mum's got a picture of Orson Welles on her wall and she wears a t-shirt to parent--teacher interviews that says: If you don't want a generation of robots, fund the arts. Dad can pull flowers out of his ears and juggle fire.
But they were always typical when it came to love and marriage. Dad's been out of the house for about six months now. He visits us quite a bit; he just lives in the shed. They seem happy but, if you ask me, the whole thing is weird.
'Who gets to say what's weird?' Mum asks when I bring up the subject.
'Me,' I tell her. 'I get to say.'
She rolls her eyes.
I wheel my bike to the wall before I leave Al's. When I touch the painting some clear blue sky comes off on my hands. I didn't notice before, but in the corner there's a confused kid staring at the bird. 'There's a kid, did you see?' I call.
'I saw,' he says.
I wave goodbye and push my bike up the hill. Jazz phones when I'm halfway to the top. 'Daisy and I are already here. How far away are you?'
'I'm close. I took a detour because Shadow and Poet were at Al's.'
'You saw them?'
'I missed them by five minutes but I have even more proof now that Shadow exists and that he's my age.' I know exactly what she's going to say.
'Luce, his art's definitely cool and I'm not saying don't make it with him if you meet him. But in the meantime, I could name at least one and a half guys who'd like to go out with you.'
Okay, so I almost knew what she was going to say. 'One and a half? Did some guy get caught in a bus door?'
'Simon Mattskey might be interested but he's worried about the nose thing. I told him it was urban legend.'
'I'm hanging up.'
'Just remember, paintings proved that cavemen existed, too. Shadow might not be the guy you've been waiting for.'
I click my phone shut and take my time walking. Jazz thinks I haven't had enough action in the guy department. I've had action with other guys around here and that's how I know that I don't want action with them again. The nose thing happened before Jazz started at our school. She never heard the real story because by the time she arrived it had been mixed up, made bigger and half forgotten, and I wanted it to stay that way.
The guy was a sheddy, one of the kids who spent a lot of time leaning against the back sheds skipping classes. Every time he looked at me I felt like I'd touched my tongue to the tip of a battery. In Art class I'd watch him lean back and listen and I was nothing but zing and tingle. After a while the tingle turned to electricity, and when he asked me out my whole body amped to a level where technically I should have been dead. I had nothing in common with a sheddy like him, but a girl doesn't think straight when she's that close to electrocution.
I liked that he had hair that was growing without a plan. A grin that came out of nowhere and left the same way. That he was tall enough so I had to look up at him in my dream sequences. I really liked his t-shirts. When he asked me out he was wearing this one with a dog walking a man on a leash. And there was always this space around him. The sort of space you'd queue to get into. I saw other girls trying but they didn't get past the bouncer at the door.
Anyway. The night didn't go so well because I broke his nose, which was an accident that happened when I hit him in the face because he touched my arse.
Dad was still living in the house then and before I left for the date I told him all the things I hoped this guy and I would talk about. 'Maybe To Kill a Mockingbird, the book we're studying. Maybe Rothko, the painter Mrs J showed us.'
'Sounds like it'll be romantic,' Dad said. 'Your mum and I had a romantic first date. She was studying serious writing and I was studying comedy, so we went to a Woody Allen film that was somewhere in between. I don't remember the film but I remember she smelt like sweet green tea.'
I had that story in my head when I turned up for my date at Barry's, the all-night café where the sheddies hang out. There wasn't any cool conversation, though. We sat in a void of sound only astronauts can understand until we left for the movie. While we were walking I brought up To Kill a Mockingbird and he went to a level of quiet beyond the quiet we'd had before and grabbed my arse.
'Shit,' he yelled as I elbowed him in the face. 'Shit, I think you broke my nose.'
'You shouldn't have grabbed my arse. You don't do that on a first date. Atticus Finch would never have done that.'
'You're out with me and you have a boyfriend?' he yelled.
'No!'
'Then who's Atticus Finch?'
'He's in the book we're reading at school.'
'You're talking to me about books? When I'm bleeding all over the road? Shit. Shit.'
'Stop swearing at me.' It was stupid to talk to him about books when it was my fault his shirt was covered in blood, but everything was going the opposite way to how I planned and I can't stand the sight of blood and I was so disappointed that he'd turned out to be an arse grabber that I ran and I didn't look back.
Mum took one look at me when I got home and said, 'Quick, over the laundry sink.' She held my hair away from my face while I threw up so hard I almost flipped inside out. I didn't tell her what I'd done; I told her he wasn't who I thought he'd be. Mum stroked my hair and said, 'Sometimes they aren't. Sometimes they make you vomit.'
This did not comfort me.
But Shadow won't make me vomit. I feel very sure about that. He'll be a guy who talks about art, not an arse grabber. And like Dad says, love and romance are things worth waiting for.
I reach the top of the hill and get on my bike and let go. The lights of the city reflect and bounce and I fly along my soft corridor thinking about Shadow. Thinking that somewhere in the glassy darkness, he's out there. Spraying colour. Spraying birds and blue sky on the night.
I lock up my bike and walk into Barry's. I don't come here all that often on account of it being the crime scene of my first date. Jazz and I mostly hang at the coffee shop on Kent Street. She works there every Saturday telling people's fortunes.
Jazz swears she's psychic and I'd say that was rubbish if her predications didn't have this way of coming true. She predicted I'd be allergic to guava juice, which was something I'd never tried. I drank a litre of it in the name of scientific research. Dad called me Big Face for weeks.
When I arrive she's sitting in the back booth, dressed for action and sucking on a lollipop. Mum leaves out horror dentist photos whenever Jazz stays over at my place. 'Takes more than that to shock me, Mrs Dervish,' Jazz tells her. 'I see into my future and my teeth are just fine.' Mum rolls her eyes.
Her long dark hair has little plaits and flowers here and there and she's wearing a pink dress and killer boots that she bought at a secondhand store on Delaney Street. The price tag said fifteen dollars but she beat the guy down to ten.
Next to her, Daisy's even more dressed for action in a black singlet dress and green silk slippers. Her outfit matches her eyes. They're winter seas lashed with black that stand out even more because of her short blonde hair. She's the sort of girl who gets stared at. She's the sort of girl who likes being stared at.
I check my reflection. I look like I slept in my faded jeans and Magic Dirt t-shirt. Maybe I did sleep in them, come to think of it. I pull up my hair and push a couple of paintbrushes through the bundle to keep it out of the way.
I slide into the booth.
'You're late,' I say.
Jazz points her lollipop at me and gives me the serious look.
I steal a chip. 'Okay, I'm late, but if the plan's to stay out all night, what's the hurry?'
'She's got a feeling,' Daisy says. 'The next guys to walk through the door are the ones we're meant to hook up with.'
'Have you seen the guys that live around here?' I ask.
'Lucy's right,' Daisy says. 'Some of them aren't pretty.'
Daisy knows the crowd. She's a sheddy so she comes here a lot. Jazz and I only started hanging out with her about a month back when we were put in an English group together. I always liked her; we just move in different crowds and go to different places.
Inviting her tonight was a spur of the moment thing. She and Jazz and I were squashed behind a bush this afternoon, hiding from her boyfriend, Dylan, and his mates. They were slamming everyone with eggs to celebrate the end of Year 12.
'Romance is in serious need of some resuscitation,' Daisy said while yolk slid down her face. She looked at Jazz and me, caked over with egg. 'I'm really sorry my boyfriend is such an idiot. I'm definitely breaking up with him,' she said. 'Tomorrow. If I do it before then I'll have no one to hang out with on the last night of Year 12.'
'Hang out with us,' Jazz said.
Another egg hit Daisy in the face. She didn't need much more convincing.
'Are you really breaking up with Dylan?' I ask while she's looking towards the door. 'You've been together since the end of Year 10.'
'I really am. I don't know why I've stayed with him till now. It's too long to be explained by temporary insanity.'
'Lucy's waiting for romance.' Jazz says it like I'm the girl suffering from temporary insanity. 'I'll settle for action. I've got one last night before my parents come back from holidays. After that it's all study all the time till exams. Every entry in my Year 12 diary can't be: Watched TV, watched TV, flossed, kissed my parents goodnight, secretly watched more TV. Tomorrow I'm writing: Stayed out all night. Kissed someone.'
Jazz heard last week that she got an audition for the College of the Arts. I'm pretty sure she doesn't need the drama course. 'Kissed someone,' I say. 'Not anyone.'
'Okay. Kissed someone cute. Like that,' she says, pointing at the door.
'No way,' Daisy and I say together.
'This is perfect.' Jazz checks her reflection. 'Leo Green's in my English class. I like the way he writes. I don't know the guy with him.'
Daisy grins, and looks at me. 'It's Ed Skye. Lucy, you remember him?'
'Vaguely.'
'He's hot,' Jazz says. 'Perfect for you.'
Daisy stops grinning. 'That leaves Dylan for me. I don't want Dylan.'
'We'll find someone for you along the way,' Jazz tells her. 'Ready?'
'No,' Daisy and I say at the same time.
'Good. We'll head over and let things unfold.'
'I'd really like tonight to stay folded,' I tell her.
'Not an option,' Jazz says, handing Daisy and me a piece of gum each. I didn't seriously think it was.
Some things take forever. Waiting for a bus when it's raining. Getting waxed after winter. Lining up to get tickets for a band. Waiting for a coffee in the morning. The walk across to these guys isn't one of those things.
I blink and I'm there, staring past them through the window at the bridge. The lights on it are sending little warning messages: walk past the table, run, head to Al's and wait on the steps for Shadow to come back.
'Hi,' Jazz says, standing at the table.
Leo looks at her and grins. 'Hi.'
'Hi,' Dylan says.
'Shut up,' Daisy tells him, and makes the introductions. 'Ed, this is Jazz Parker. Just a warning, she's psychic. So don't go thinking bad thoughts. You know Lucy. Leo, you know Jazz and Lucy. Jazz and Lucy, you know Dylan. He's the idiot who threw eggs at us today.'
Ed looks at me like he wishes I'd disappear and if I had the choice I'd grant that wish; I'd turn into smoke and blow away. I want to sit on the other side of the table from him so he doesn't think I'm interested but there's no room on the other side so I sit as far away from him as I can and try to have an out-of-body experience.
Trying, trying. Nope. No luck. I can't get no astral projection. This couldn't get more awkward if we all tried.
'You want to get some air?' Leo asks Jazz, and they walk outside. Daisy follows them and Dylan follows her. Okay, it could get more awkward if we all tried.
Don't think about Ed. Think about Shadow. Think about meeting him. Think about what you'll say, standing in front of him. Think about taking him into Al's studio and showing him shiny pink glazes that blaze in the light. Think about night slowly turning into day and Shadow not disappearing and you there, not disappearing with him.
I look over at Ed. He's staring out the window giving Leo the thumbs down. I wait till he's looking at me then I give him two fingers up. He gives me two fingers back. I give him the middle finger. He gives it back to me. I don't know any more signs so I make up one. Three fingers. Take that, mister. He sticks up four. I call your four and raise you five. He skips straight to ten and does something with his thumb that disturbs me. I remember a sign I saw on TV once and bounce my hands on my lap. Ed bounces his lap right back.
'Good.' Jazz slides back into the booth. 'You're talking.'
'I can't believe you're still this mad at me,' Ed says.
'You grabbed my arse.'
'You broke my nose.'
'You broke his nose?' Jazz asks. 'You grabbed her arse?'
'I was fifteen and I slipped and she broke my nose.'
'Wait a minute. How do you slip onto someone's arse?' Jazz asks.
'I meant slipped up. I slipped up and she broke my nose.'
'You're lucky that's all I broke,' I say.
'You're lucky I didn't call the police.'
Leo, Dylan and Daisy slide into the booth. 'Did you know Lucy broke Ed's nose?' Jazz asks.
Ed closes his eyes and silently bangs his head on the wall.
'I took him to hospital,' Leo says, grinning. 'He had to sit for five hours in one of those gowns with his arse hanging out.'
Okay, if someone says 'arse' one more time I'm going to have to levitate to get away from the humiliation.
'I can't believe he grabbed your arse,' Jazz says.
I concentrate really hard. Nope. No good. I can't get no levitation. 'I need a bathroom stop.' I grab Jazz by the shoulder. 'I have a feeling you need one, too.'
'Do I need one?' Daisy asks, smiling.
'Sure,' I say. 'Toilet stop for everyone.' Leo grins and stands up. 'Not you.'
'Careful,' Ed tells him. 'Not a good idea to make her mad.' I hear him laughing till the toilet door shuts. Before it does, I make sure I swing my arse a little. Take that, mister; you wish you could get some levitation.
Ed
'She's swinging her arse on purpose,' Leo says, laughing. 'I like her.'
I laugh with him till the toilet door shuts and then I stop. 'I don't like her. I'm going home.'
'No way,' Leo says. 'I want to hang out with the Jazz Lady and she wants someone for Lucy.'
'I'm not someone for Lucy.'
'Jazz thinks you are.'
'Jazz thinks she's psychic. Jazz is delusional.'
'Daisy won't hang around without the other two,' Dylan says. 'She's mad because I threw eggs at her head this afternoon.'
The three of us think about that for a second.
'That was stupid to throw eggs at her head,' Dylan says.
'Flowers work better.' Leo leans across to me. 'Look. We've got six hours to kill before the job and three cool girls out for adventure. What's the problem?'
'The last adventure I had with her ended in hospital, that's the problem.'
'So don't touch her arse this time.'
'I'll try to remember that.'
First piece I ever did was for her. A girl with roads and rivers and deserts running across her skin. Highways on her neck that went all the way cross-country. Off to the side of her was a guy with the hood of his car up and smoke pouring out of the engine.
I painted it in the middle of the night with a piece of white tape over my nose and two bruises over my eyes. I didn't even check behind me for the cops. 'Arrest me,' I was planning to say if they turned up. 'Come on, do it. Arrest me.'
No cops showed and I stayed there till the sun blurred the dark. It wasn't even a good sunrise. Factory smoke swallowed the colour before it had a chance and the whole sky was cloudy white.
It took me weeks to ask her out. I'd been stalking her locker, stalking her before school and at lunch and after school. I even Googled her. Found a picture on the school website from this time we'd gone to the National Gallery in Year 9. She was staring at a Rothko painting and I was this sad little dot in the background, staring at her. I'd been checking out the Vermeers and I came round the corner and there she was. All pearls, all eyes, all skin, all mouth.
I watched her at school, too. While she was drawing these pictures of people tangled together. I kept dreaming me and her were tangled like that. Kept dreaming of this spot she had on her neck, this tiny country. I wanted to visit, to paint a picture of what I found there, a wall with a road map of her skin.
Mrs J paired us up for a research assignment on Jeffrey Smart and I was watching that spot and she looked up from her book and caught me making travel plans. 'What?' she asked.
'Nothing,' I said. 'Only. I was thinking. We should see a film.'
She sat there tapping on the table with her pen and my blood was tapping and I was all desperation and no cool, sitting there making plans to move to some country far off the map. But then she said yes and my chest got sucked somewhere and I walked around with this hole in me all week. I kept thinking I wouldn't make it to Friday night. That something would happen before then to mess with my luck, something like a nuclear bomb going off so there was nowhere for us to meet.
'Pretty harsh,' Leo said when I called him to come get me because she'd left me in the gutter with a broken nose. She never even called to check she hadn't killed me. A date like that makes a guy wish they would drop the bomb. Right over his house.
'What do you think they're talking about in there?' Dylan asks, looking towards the toilet.
'I'll take a wild guess and say us.' Leo leans back. 'Girls and money. I've got a good feeling.' He checks behind him for about the fiftieth time tonight.
Him and Dylan keep talking and laughing and acting like they don't care that we might get caught later at the school. I look out the window and think about the sky in Bert's book. About how the clouds look like they're moving but they aren't. It's the same ones flicking over, again and again and again.
Lucy
It's serious business time so Jazz and I walk into the same cubicle. Daisy crams in, too. 'Is this like the cone of silence?' she asks after Jazz locks the door.
'It's more like the cubicle of truth,' Jazz tells her.
Jazz and I met like this when she arrived a few months into Year 10. I was about to lock the cubicle door when she pushed it open, slammed it shut, covered my mouth and hissed, 'Shhh.'
We listened while Holly Dover and Heather Davidson came into the toilet and squealed Jazz's name. 'She's not in here,' Holly said when no one answered. 'Let's look in the library.'
'They're hard to shake,' Jazz said after they left. 'They've been following me since the canteen.'
'We call them the HDs,' I told her. 'You know, because of the high-pitched surround sound of their voices.'
'I had a feeling I didn't want to be their friend even before they spoke. I'm psychic,' she said, and looked at me looking nervously at the door. 'Psychic. Not psycho. I'm Jazz Parker.'
'Lucy Dervish,' I said.
We were friends from that second on. I hung with loads of different people before her. I like having friends from different groups. Some days I'd sit with the kids in my book group. Some days with the arty types. Some days I played chess. Some days I painted my nails black.
In the end I fell into having a best friend easily, though. Jazz is the sort of person who invites herself places and she doesn't follow the rules of high school geography. She likes chess and the supernatural and drama and Shakespeare and sport. 'I'm eclectic,' she said to the HDs once, and I could see them trying to work out where she plugged in.
She looks at me tonight while we're in the truth cubicle. 'Why'd you lie?'
'I didn't.'
'We're out there talking about Ed and you say nothing about him being the broken-nose guy. That's a lie, right?' She looks at Daisy.
'It's withholding the truth,' Daisy referees.
'Fine. Why'd you withhold the truth?'
'You're psychic. I assumed you knew,' I tell her.
She gives me the serious finger. 'You can't joke your way out of this.'
'I felt stupid and I knew you'd mention it as soon as we walked over and I knew if you thought I'd liked Ed once you'd push me to like him again and I don't like him.'
'But he's so cute and he's friends with Leo.' She drops her voice. 'Luce, when we were in the street talking, Leo's arm brushed my arm. I got static electricity down there.'
I can't help laughing. 'So go out with him. Tell me about it tomorrow.'
'I want to tell you about it while it's happening.'
'He'll probably think that's weird,' I say.
'I want you to get static electricity.'
'I'll go rub my feet up and down on the carpet for a while when I get home. I promise.'
'I remember static,' Daisy says. 'Dylan and I used to have it. Now he won't even come with me to Queensland for an end of Year 12 trip. He worked all year to get the money and then he spent it on a Wii. Don't you want static?' she asks me.
'I do. Just not with them.' I nod in the direction of the café. 'I want someone like Shadow.' Not someone like him. 'I want Shadow.'
'Someone you have almost no hope of meeting,' Jazz says.
'Dylan knows him,' Daisy says. 'Him and Poet.'
I've been tracking Shadow for years. Kids make stuff up about him all the time. He's dead, he's overseas, he's studying art. As far as I can tell, none of it's true. 'You mean Dylan knows someone who knows someone who might know them.'
'No. He actually knows them. He says so all the time. "I went here with them and they went here with me." Sounds like they see him more than I do. He acts like it makes him cool.' She thinks about it. 'I guess it does make him a little bit cool.'
I grab Jazz by the shoulders with my insides ticking fast. 'I'll come tonight if we look for them. We can go to places Dylan thinks they might be. You get a night of action with Leo. I get Shadow and romance.'
'Sounds like a book my Aunty Glenda would read,' Jazz says.
'Please, please, please.'
'I wouldn't mind getting Poet,' Daisy tells her. 'His writing is very cool.'
'Please,' I say again.
Jazz grins. 'Okay. I'm up for a Shadow hunt.' She tries to open the door but the lock's stuck. 'That's weird.'
'Is this like an omen?' Daisy asks.
Jazz unzips her boot and takes it off so she can slam it at the lock. 'It's not an omen.' Slam. 'Tonight.' Slam. 'Is going to be great.' Slam. 'I've got a feeling.' Slam. She puts her boot back on and looks at us. 'Okay, we'll have to climb out of here.'
She stands on the toilet seat and heaves herself over the wall. We hear her hit the ground. Daisy winces. 'This doesn't mean anything,' Jazz calls. 'Trust me. I'm psychic.'
I come out of the bathroom and the first thing I see is Ed. Okay, it was a long shot but I was half-hoping he'd cease to exist while we were gone. I feel a little tingle when he turns around but I put it down to the fall I had during my toilet escape. That and the thought of meeting Shadow.
I don't look at him as I slide into his side of the booth. I'm not here for Ed. I'm here for my young and scruffy artist. 'Lucy and Daisy want to find Shadow and Poet,' Jazz says.
'Who?' Ed asks.
'Graffiti artists,' she tells him.
'They do stuff all over town.'
'They call them writers,' Dylan says.
'Whatever,' Daisy answers. 'We want to meet them.'
'I mainly want to find Shadow,' I say.
'We can do that.' Leo grins. 'That's a great idea.'
'No, that's a stupid idea,' Ed says. 'That's the stupidest idea I've ever heard. How would we even know where to look?'
'Daisy said Dylan knows them,' Jazz tells him.
'Really.' Ed stares across the table at Dylan, who looks like he's about to do a runner.
'You were lying?' Daisy asks. 'Typical.'
'I wasn't lying. I see them all the time.'
'So prove it,' she says. 'Take us to the places they hang out and if we find them, introduce us.'
'He can do that,' Leo says. 'Right, Dylan?'
I'm holding my breath. I'm crossing everything on the inside. Lungs, kidneys, ventricles, the whole deal. Please don't let Dylan be lying. An idiot could see there's something going on between these guys but I figure it's that Ed would rather cease to exist than hang out with me.
I imagine what Shadow looks like: paint-spattered clothes, a face that's got a million ideas running underneath it. I imagine him touching me so I get static without having to rub my feet up and down on the carpet. Please, please, please.
'Right,' Dylan says slowly. 'No problem.'
'Now I have to go to the toilet.' Ed looks at Leo and Dylan. 'I got a feeling you both need to go too.'
'Guys don't go to the toilet together. That's messed up,' Leo says.
'That's not the only thing that's messed up.' Ed grabs Dylan's shirt. 'Move.'
I watch them till the toilet door swings shut. 'You think Dylan's telling the truth?'
Daisy checks her face in a little mirror then hands it to Jazz. 'You want me to find out?'
'Let's not ruin the mood by calling them liars.' Jazz looks in the mirror. 'I hate my freckles,' she says, and hands it to me.
'I like freckles,' Daisy says. 'And I won't ruin it. I've got this special way of getting the truth out of Dylan.'
'How?' I ask.
'I kick him in the balls.'
'That's pretty special,' I tell her, and hand back the mirror.
Jazz gives us a serious finger each. 'Okay, let's keep our feet to ourselves and not get paranoid.' She lowers her voice. 'Quick, Daisy. Spill everything you know about Leo before they get back.'
'Okay. He's pretty wild. Less wild since he moved in with his gran, but still, he does some crazy stuff.'
'More crazy than when he used a chain of guys' shirts to abseil out of the classroom window while the teacher's back was turned?' Jazz asks.
'No, pretty much that level of crazy. His brother Jake's been in some trouble with the police, though. I'm not sure of the details.'
'Has Leo been in jail?'
'He was taken to the police station but they didn't lay charges. Dylan never told me what he'd done. Emma, his ex-girlfriend, said he vandalised her house.'
'Emma Forest?' Jazz asks. 'His ex is the girl in Year 11 with the big . . .?'
'That's the one,' Daisy tells her.
Jazz looks at her chest. I pat her shoulder. 'Guys care about personality too.'
'Girls like me started that rumour.' She looks at Daisy. 'When did they break up?'
'Not sure, but it was a while ago. He hasn't had a girlfriend since.'
'No girls at all? If there's been a drought I'm in with a chance.'
'Well, no, he's been with girls. Lots of girls. Lots and lots of girls. Lots and lots and lots --'
'Okay, I get the picture,' Jazz cuts her off. 'What about Ed? Just in case Lucy needs a backup plan.'
'I won't need a backup plan. Ow. Don't kick me.'
'I don't see him much since he left school. He was going out with Beth Darling. Private-school girl. St Catherine's, I think. She's pretty and smart. He works in a paint store now, somewhere in the city.'
'Maybe that's how they know Shadow. Maybe Ed sells him paint,' Jazz says.
'Maybe. Dylan never said.'
'Why'd he leave school?' Jazz asks.
'Lucy.'
'Me? Oh my God.'
'Gotcha,' Daisy says. 'I don't know why he left, exactly. The rumour was he cheated. Leo said that was crap.'
I always wondered why he left, if it was because he'd cheated or if it was something to do with me. I tried to look at him that day in Art when Mr Fennel caught him with the essay. He didn't take his eyes from the window, though.
I missed him after he'd gone. I mean, it's not like the tingle feeling stopped because he grabbed my arse. I spent the weekend after our date wishing I could stab him with my fluffy-duck pen and staring at the phone hoping he'd call. Dating is a very tricky business.
'You've got a weird look on your face,' Jazz says to me. 'What are you thinking?'
'Nothing,' I tell her.
'Is that possible?' Daisy asks. 'To have absolutely nothing in your brain? Because sometimes I ask Dylan what he's thinking and that's what he says. Just once I'd like him to say he's thinking about world peace or saving the whales or something.'
'It's not possible,' Jazz tells her.
'It's possible. He's not a complete idiot.'
'No, I mean it's not possible to not think anything.'
'That's what I tell him. And you'd know, being psychic and all. How does that work, anyway? Do you hear people thinking?'
'I get a feeling sometimes. My mum's way more psychic than me. She's got this sixth sense that she uses to track me day or night. This is my first chance in seventeen years to be off her radar. She's overseas so I'm counting on the time zone messing her up.'
'What are your parents like?' Daisy asks me. 'Do they let you do stuff?'
'Yep. They're artists. They met at uni and fell madly in love.'
I don't look at Jazz. My parents are something we hardly ever talk about anymore. Not since I asked her to use psychic abilities to see if Mum and Dad's living arrangement was a sign that they were getting a divorce. She took the lollipop she was eating out of her mouth. 'It's a billboard,' she said. 'And I don't need psychic abilities to see it.'
I went quiet and she went quiet and it got awkward till she said she was sorry. 'That was a bad joke, Luce.' I told her it was okay. It was okay. She doesn't know them like I do, that's all. Mum says they're not getting a divorce and she has a strict honesty policy so I believe her. I asked her straight out one night while we were in the bathroom getting ready for bed. 'You're divorcing Dad, aren't you?'
She grabbed my shoulders and stared at me without blinking. 'For the fiftieth time, I promise you we're not. I love your father. I need headspace to finish my novel, that's all.' She squeezed past me to get her makeup remover. 'This bathroom isn't big enough to swing a cat,' she said. 'This house isn't big enough to swing a cat.'
'So it's the cat's fault,' I said. 'If only we had a cat.'
She rolled her eyes. 'It's no one's fault. There's no fault. We're staying married. Not everyone lives like the dream you have in your head.'
That did not comfort me.
I tune back in and listen to Daisy. 'Mum's got ten senses going on when I'm out with Dylan. Every time he says or thinks anything about sex he gets this buzz of static electricity right where he's thinking most about it.'
We laugh at Daisy miming how he jumps around when they kiss. 'We should have started hanging out with you earlier,' Jazz says. 'I can't believe we waited till a teacher put us in a group together.'
'I like that we're doing the first out-of-school thing on the last night of Year 12. Makes me feel like I'm moving on from Dylan.'
I look towards the toilet. 'What do you think they're talking about in there?'
'I'll take a lucky guess,' Jazz says, 'and say us.'
Ed
'We're not spending the night looking for ourselves,' I tell Leo after he shuts the door. 'It's a complete waste of time.'
'No, it's fun and you are a guy in need of fun. You've been looking like this for months.' Leo does something strange with his face.
'I don't look like that.'
'Yeah. You do.'
'I'll look like that if Daisy dumps me and she'll dump me if she thinks I lied,' Dylan says.
'You threw eggs at her head. Odds are she's dumping you anyway.' I turn to Leo. 'We decided. We said that we weren't telling anyone. We said it was art for art's sake. We said the more people who knew, the more chance the cops'd pick us up. We said it was you and me, no crew.'
'Are you sure I didn't say it was to score girls?'
That actually sounds a whole lot like something Leo would say. 'I'm sure,' I tell him.
'None of us are scoring if we don't lie.' Dylan leans against the bench. 'Ow. Shit.'
'What?' Leo asks.
'Static electricity.' Dylan shifts his jeans around.
'On your dick?' Leo laughs. 'How'd you get a girl like Daisy in the first place?'
He ignores Leo and turns to me. 'Go along with it, Ed. I am begging. I am on the ground begging you.'
'You're standing at a urinal about to take a piss.'
'Don't make me get on the ground. Do you know how many germs there are in a toilet?'
I shake my head and laugh and he knows he's got me. 'Two hours and that's it,' I say. 'We don't tell them it's us, no matter what. We go to a few places, pretend to look and we find a way to change the plan.'
Leo grins. He's enjoying this way too much. I can see him out there now. Jazz's saying how cool she thinks the writing is and he can't hold the secret in. I look him in the eyes. 'No matter what, we don't tell them.'
'No matter what,' Leo says.
I don't believe him for a second, but I'm not telling Daisy that Dylan lied because I know what it's like to want a girl that much. To get dragged in the dirt behind her hoping you won't lose your grip.
I know because of Beth.
Before her I had this sense that things were moving somewhere else but that around me they'd stopped. Kids walked past the paint store laughing and carrying schoolbags and I watched them feeling like I was that guy in the Jeffrey Smart painting. The one standing in a concrete world with the expressway sweeping round him. That guy could shout but his voice would only bounce around and come back to him, bounce and come back for the rest of his life.
Then one afternoon Beth came in with a couple of guys from her school. Guys in white shirts and ties, looking at me like I was a bag of nothing. While I got the paint they needed for their school banner one of them asked, 'You work here full-time?'
'Uh-huh.'
'Good career move.'
I took the money and passed the box across the counter and said politely, 'Your choice of colour really lacks style.' I smiled and Beth laughed and the guy asked to see my manager.
I got Bert and he leant over the box and looked at the paint and said, 'Ed was being polite. Your choice of colour is shit.'
Beth laughed even more and it was that laugh that got me. She stayed after those white-shirted wankers left, wandering round the aisles, looking at me every now and then.
'You should ask her out,' Bert said. 'No guts, no glory.'
'Last time I asked a girl out I got two black eyes. No guts, no broken nose as far as I'm concerned.'
But before Beth left she came up to the counter and said, 'You should ask me out.'
After that day she took the world off my chest, lifted it so I could breathe. We'd sit on the hill near her house at night and talk. Then we'd ride our bikes home through a sea of sky where all the lights on the shitty factories were stars and the world was a place we could swim right through.
At the start there were moments, blinking moments, when we were lying together and it was warm and I could smell flowers on her skin and turps on my hands and I heard her voice with my nerve endings. Heard her with my blood and skin and I forgot things. Like how one day she'd finish Year 12 and leave me behind. Like how stupid I was compared to her. I forgot because she was hanging over me, and the world was liquid and spinning and for once I was liquid and spinning with it.
I didn't think that one day she'd write me letters and wonder why I never wrote back. That she'd think it was because I wasn't into her when really it was because my writing was like the jungle and every time I tried to type the words they came out wrong. 'Doesn't make sense,' Leo said, reading one of my letters. 'You want me to write it for you?'
'No, I don't want you to write it for me.'
I threw it out. I did pieces for her instead. Beth walls. All around the city. I did them thinking she'd see and know me and keep whispering those secrets in my ear. There's one near the Hoover Street Station with a picture of me, grass growing out of my heart while I'm talking to her. Months later I painted the last wall next to it. A picture of her starting up a lawnmower.
I painted it on the night we broke up. We'd had dinner with her parents and they'd asked me what I was planning to do with my life and the words I didn't say hung in the air. Before I left Beth said, 'You're planning on doing something else, right? Other than the paint store?'
I told her yeah, but there was no skin on my voice and she heard the bones in my words like I did. And I knew. One day a wanker in a white shirt would take her. A wanker who had uni while all I had was a piece on a wall. So I left.
'Who else have you told?' I ask Dylan before we go back out.
'No one. Just Daisy.'
I put my arm across the door.
'Okay, and Raff, but that's it.'
He goes to move but I keep my arm where it is.
'And one or two of Raff's mates. That's really it.'
'Raff has the biggest mouth in the city. What if we run into him tonight?'
'We won't. He'll be hanging at the casino like always. He won't be anywhere near us.'
I lean in close to him. 'You say one more word to anyone and I'm telling people you cried in here tonight because you thought Daisy was breaking up with you.'
'You wouldn't.'
Leo's phone rings. 'He would,' he says, laughing as he answers it.
He talks for a bit and hangs up. 'We have to swing by a party and sort out some details about the job with Jake. It won't take long.'
'A party of Jake's will be hard to explain to the girls,' I say.
'A party of his will be perfect. He doesn't know I'm Poet.'
'And if the girls hear about the job?'
'They won't.'
'They might.'
Leo tells Dylan to meet us at the table. When we're alone he says, 'Look. You don't have to do this job but you have to tell me now. After we talk to Jake, that's when things'll be set.' He lets me think. 'I won't care. Jake won't either.'
'I know.' Leo doesn't get pissed. I'll write your essay, I'll forge your note, I'll kick the crap out of that guy for you, no problem. That's Leo all over but he can't forge and kick forever. He can't pay my rent. 'I'm in,' I say, and he nods. That's it. He won't ask again.
Back in the booth Dylan tells the girls we're going to a party where we might see Shadow and Poet. Jazz and Daisy believe him but Lucy turns the spotlight on. She flicks the band on her wrist for a second and then starts with the questions. 'Whose party?'
Leo steps in. 'A friend of my brother's.'
'So Shadow doesn't go to our school?' she asks Dylan.
'I think they've both finished Year 12,' he tells her.
'Did Shadow do Year 12 at our school?'
'I think so,' he says.
'You think so?' she asks.
'Who are you, the cops? I don't remember.'
I can't help laughing. She's whip smart, that's what Bert would say. Two months ago, on the day before he died, we ate in the storeroom. Valerie had packed a cold beer into our lunches and mine loosened me up so I said, 'I got to stop falling for the smart chicks.'
'I went for a smart chick,' Bert told me.
I held up the beer. 'You sure did. How'd you get her?'
'Asked.' He took a sip. 'She said yes.'
'Asking's the easy bit. Then there's everything that comes after.'
We leant against the boxes of paint and finished our beers. Bert's old hands shook but no more than usual. The counter bell went and he creaked up to get it. A second later there were cans rolling all over the floor. 'I'm okay,' he called as I came into the shop. 'Didn't see them. Visitor for you.'
There was Beth, holding my stuff in a box, handing back the bits of me that I'd left with her. She could have dropped them at my place when I wasn't there or kept them as payback, but she isn't like that. She wanted to see if I was okay and she wanted me to have the stuff I cared about. A book of Jeffrey Smart's paintings that I'd lent her. A t-shirt I made in a Year 9 screen-printing class. A Ramones CD.
'You should tell her you want her back,' Bert said after she'd gone.
'Only I don't.'
'No guts, no glory.' He finished his beer.
I stood at the counter thinking of all the ways I could get her back but every one led to the same place. Me telling her I wasn't going anywhere and her leaving me behind. I got that feeling, like the world was crowded inside me.
I told Bert I had to leave early and I took a can and my brain clicked off and my hands clicked on and I escaped onto the wall, a painted ghost trapped in a jar. I stood back to look at it and I knew the sad thing wasn't that the ghost was running out of air. The sad thing was that he had enough air in that small space to last him a lifetime. What were you thinking, little ghost? Letting yourself get trapped like that?
Jazz tells Lucy to relax and tries to kick her under the table. I know this because she kicks me instead. 'Aim more to the left,' I tell her, and she has another go. 'Further left,' I say, and enjoy watching her hit the target a couple of times.
Everyone starts talking about the night. Leo flirts with Jazz. Dylan tries to flirt with Daisy while she flicks sugar packets in his face. He's got stamina, I'll give him that. Lucy looks out the window, staring at something that's in her head, the same way she did two years ago when I watched her.
She hasn't changed much. Long dark hair still bunched up with paintbrushes. Still smiling like she's thinking something you want to hear.
'Why do want to find him so bad?' I ask after a while, but she's not listening. I watch her a bit longer. 'Why do you want to find him so bad?' I ask again.
She blinks and comes out of her dream. She flicks the band on her wrist. 'I just do.'
Lucy
After Jazz kicks me a second time I stop asking questions. I've got enough information for now, anyway. If Shadow's finished Year 12 and he never went to our school then it makes sense that I've never met him. I'd know if I had, I'm sure of it. A guy like Shadow would stand out around here.
Jazz catches my eye and drums three fingers on the table. Three drumming fingers mean this guy I'm talking to is gorgeous. It's not to be confused with four fingers drumming, which mean get me away from this guy if you have to set my hair on fire to do it. Five fingers means I'm screaming on the inside, for good reasons. Jazz lays her five fingers on the table.
Leo's screaming good-looking, that's for sure. Five fingers to the power of ten. And tall, which is Jazz's type. I once saw him from a distance and thought a tree was strolling towards me. An oak tree with a shaved head, soft eyes, and a tattoo. He's trouble and Jazz knows it. She's just happy to not know it for a night. I did that with Ed and it got me space-like quiet, a quick grope and a whole lot of vomiting. Mr Darcy he isn't.
Mum told me once that she knew Dad was the right guy because he could juggle and talk about the impacts of globalisation at the same time. 'All the boys I knew could do one or the other and neither very well.'
Sometimes I catch her looking out the window at the little camping stove that Dad cooks on and I know she misses him living in the house. I saw them standing at the mirror yesterday, brushing their teeth at the same time. There's tooth brushing and then there's significant tooth brushing. They took time to floss and gargle and they were laughing.
Some nights Mum eats out at his place. He cooks for her on his stove and they lie on the grass in the front yard under the pear tree. He makes her laugh like no one else makes her laugh. He does magic tricks for her, pulls coins out of her ear. 'Now if you could just pull the mortgage payment out of there we'd be set,' she said.
I catch Dad, every now and then, coming out of their bedroom. He looks at me like he's a thief. 'It's your bedroom, Dad,' I say when it happens. I push past him and sit in the toilet for a while till I know he's gone. It's weird to catch your dad sneaking out of your mum's bedroom. It's weird to feel weird about it.
On the plus side, they're obviously still doing the deed, which is even more significant than tooth brushing. On the minus side, the pizza delivery guy knows exactly where to bring Dad's order and doesn't knock on the front door of the house anymore. On the plus side, Dad has a picture of Mum and me on his bedside milk crate.
'Jane Austen would be turning in her grave,' I say to Mum sometimes.
'Jane Austen was a writer. She'd understand completely,' she answers, and I can't argue with that but it does not comfort me.
I have this picture on my wall, a photocopy of a drawing by the artist Michael Zavros. It's of a horse falling, tumbling from the sky, legs to the clouds. There's no way to right itself. It seems to me it doesn't know how it got there, or where it is, or why it's falling. The picture is called Till the Heart Caves In, and that title tears me open. I love the horse, how real it is; I love the fine lines of its legs and head. But that's not why some nights I can't stop staring at the picture. I can't say exactly why. Only, it's got something to do with how love should be. You should feel it like a horse tumbling through you. You shouldn't be able to sleep knowing that the person you love is lying in the shed.
I look at Leo, playing with one of Jazz's plaits. She gives me the five-finger sign again. I hope he really likes her. I hope he's worth liking but I don't think so. I have this urge to drag her back into the cubicle of truth and keep her there. She's the psychic but she can't see what's coming up: the intersection of hurt and more hurt. The blind spot there is a killer. Maybe if she found Poet he'd be right for her. If Leo hasn't had a girlfriend since Emma, there must be a reason.
'Why do you want to find him so bad?' Ed asks, and when I look at him I can tell he's already asked me the question more than once but I haven't heard.
I flick Dad's lucky wristband a few times. 'I just do.'
Poet
Assignment Two
Poetry 101
Student: Leopold Green
Love in handcuffs
The girl I loved called the cops
And had me arrested
She said it was the smartest thing she ever did
Apart from dumping me in the first place
She waved goodbye
As they cuffed me
She thought it was hilarious
How I tried to wave back
The guy in the van with Ed and me
Smelt like my dad
After a hard night on the beer
Fruity and sour
And it made me think about her
About how the first thing I noticed
Was that she was nothing
Like anything I'd had before
Lucy
Leo checks his watch. 'If we hurry we can make the ten-fifteen train.' He and Jazz walk ahead. Daisy walks to the side and Dylan shadows her so that leaves me with Ed. He's taller than he was two years ago. His hair's still unplanned, though. There's still that space around him. He's wearing a t-shirt with a rabbit reading a book on it.
'You keeping looking at me sideways,' he says, 'like any second I'll grab your arse. Relax. I got a girlfriend and for your information we had a great first date.'
'Maybe you learnt something from how our date went,' I tell him. Take that, mister.
'We didn't have a date. A date ends in a kiss, not blood and broken cartilage.'
'Well, sure, if we're getting technical.'
Ed raises his eyebrows then rolls his eyes. 'For the record,' he says, 'she grabbed my arse.'
'Sounds romantic.' I pick up a stick and pretend it's a glass blowpipe; I spin molten stars.
'It was romantic,' Ed says, watching me put the stick to my lips. 'She didn't give me some pop quiz and then slam me when I didn't get the answer right.'
I blow a gold glass ocean. A sky. Some clouds. 'Beth sounds like the perfect girl.' Damn it. I know he's grinning.
'Never said her name was Beth.'
'Well, all girls called Beth are arse grabbers.' I try as hard as I can to act like that wasn't a stupid thing to say. Trying. Trying. Nope. No good. I make a silent apology to all the girls called Beth.
'Are all girls called Lucy nose breakers?'
'You're chattier than you were two years ago. I'm not sure I like it.'
'Should I duck?' he asks.
I don't answer. I'm not used to people not liking me. At the very least they don't mind me. Although, in fairness to Ed, I haven't smacked the people I'm basing that on in the face.
I concentrate on the scenery, half-dark streets and traffic lights blinking because the grid can't take the air conditioner surge. I use my stick to draw some things onto the world that are missing. An extra tree here and there. Some fireflies. A shadow.
'What are you doing?' Ed asks.
'Drawing.'
I don't have to be a psychic to know what he's thinking. I put down my stick. I've got this hazy feeling under my lids like I'm walking through a neon dream. The heat was nuclear yesterday, too, so I didn't sleep much last night. Maybe I'm asleep now and Ed's something my subconscious conjured up.
Some guys drive past and hang their IQs out of the window, which is disturbing if my dream theory is true. Leo waves. 'Friends of yours?' I ask Ed.
'Something wrong with that?'
'I didn't mean it in a bad way. I'm sure guys who moon people are very smart.'
He lifts his eyebrows and taps his hands against his legs.
'You have paint on you,' I say.
'I work in a paint store.'
'Right. Is that how you met Shadow? Does he buy supplies from you?'
'I work in a place where little old ladies come to match paint with floral quilts. You think Shadow's in there chatting to them while he buys his caps? Do you actually know anything about guys like him?'
'I know about graffiti,' I say, and the words come out like an old lady saying she likes the hip-hop.
Ed laughs.
'Okay, so I don't know where he buys his paint or even what you call the paint. I know I like his art. I know sometimes I'll be on a train passing a corner overgrown with grass and pollution and then all of a sudden there's this painting of an ocean. In the middle of factory land, there's the mouth of the sea.'
I look across at Ed expecting him to still be laughing. He's staring straight ahead like he's trying as hard as he can to block the sound of my voice.
Tonight's going to be one of those things that seem to last forever. Maybe even longer than an after-winter wax. Leo and Jazz are laughing; I hear it emptying into the street. For Jazz, at least, time'll be moving differently. For that week after Ed asked me out and before we went on the date I felt like the world was heated glass and I was glad to be trapped.
Ed's still tapping his hands on his legs and not talking when we reach the station. Dylan stops and points to the sky. It takes me a couple of seconds to see what he's pointing at but finally I do and I want to cut out what I see and take it home so I can keep it close.
'That's one of Shadow's?' Jazz asks. 'I like it.'
'You'll like Poet's stuff too,' Leo says. 'They usually work together.'
Ed gives him a dirty look. Leo grins. Dylan twitches. It feels like something's going on, I think loudly, and I know that Jazz hears my thought because she gives me her serious look and blows a chewing-gum bubble in my direction.
'Everyone stop acting weird,' Daisy says. 'It's freaking me out.'
An announcement tells us that the train is running five minutes late so while they walk through to the platform I stay for a bit longer. On a wall in the distance, under a light from a tower, is Shadow's piece. It's a painted night sky that's faded at the edges so I can see the wall underneath it. Painted birds fly across, hit the line where the sky blurs into brick, and turn back. Their feathers glow. Moon birds trapped on a brick sky. They're not dirtied by the world; from here they look more beautiful than the real ones flying around them.
I turn and see Ed watching me watching. 'Come on,' he says. 'Train's coming.'
Ed
I painted those birds a while back. Took a chance early in the morning, on the way to open the store. The light coming over the buildings was burning back the night. I didn't have to climb high. Just sat on a fence with a couple of real birds lined up beside me and did the whole thing above eye level. Balancing was the hard part. There was this one real crow laughing the whole time I worked, and as I did the last line he flew across the wall and into the sky. He circled back once, like he was saying, See? It's easy when you figure out how.
Feels like art's the only thing I ever figured out. Words, school, I never got the whole picture. I'd sit there trying to block the sounds of scraping chairs and the other kids. I'd try to make a tunnel round the teacher's voice so it came to me clear. Most days I couldn't do it. I'd hear it all and so I'd hear nothing. Like I was standing in a place where every sound was the same level and I couldn't separate the threads. Like every door in the world was open and the sound was pouring in.
I couldn't have got through to Year 10 without Leo. He helped me read and I gave him a place to crash and neither of us needed to know why. I went round to his place once when I was in Year 5. He opened the door and behind him I heard waves of music and yelling. When I think back to that day I hear the zoo. The sounds of things getting out of their cages. He shut the door and we didn't say what I'd heard. We walked away.
He stayed at my place that night. I was almost asleep when he started talking from the floor beside me. About how he didn't like the smell of beer. About how he liked that my house was quiet. He said sometimes he didn't like sleeping because he dreamt. In the dark I told him about the open doors in the world and how I couldn't do the assignment that was due.
Before he went home the next day he asked to see what I'd done and I showed him and he fixed it for me. Didn't change anything. Just made it readable. He did that to every assignment from then on.
The pieces I paint come out of my head right. No spellcheck required. I hear people talking about the feeling they get when they paint stuff in illegal places. Leo says he gets this fast-moving fear swinging through him, running from his heart to every place under his skin. I paint so the fast-moving fear stops. I paint to close those doors.
Lucy stares at the birds tonight. I stare at her and try to work out what she's thinking. Dreaming about some guy that doesn't exist, I guess. A guy with the ocean pouring out of his can and words pouring out of his mouth, saying things she wants to hear. I wonder what Shadow looks like in her head. What he sounds like. She turns and catches me staring. 'Come on,' I tell her. 'Train's coming.'
Train's coming and you have to go to a party to look for a guy you'll never find. A guy who exists in your head, not the guy who did that piece. Not the guy who's me.
The train belts along the line and the world outside the window rockets and blurs. Jazz and Leo take two seats on the left of the door. Daisy and Dylan take two on the right. There are no seats for Lucy and me so we swing with the motion of the train, listening to two separate conversations.
'I bet they have air conditioning on the Camberwell train line,' Jazz says. 'They could at least give us windows that open.'
'Kids'd stick their heads out and bam,' Leo says. 'Blood everywhere.'
'Who'd be stupid enough to stick their head out of a moving train?' Jazz asks.
'It'd be great if you could stick your head out of the window,' Dylan says to Daisy. She licks her finger and writes 'idiot' on the glass.
Lucy laughs and I can't help laughing with her. We sway round each other, the train jolting as it shifts tracks to go south. Through the window I see flames shooting from the refinery and half a moon hanging that wasn't there before. It makes me think of a wall that Leo and me did once. A graffiti moon cut by the shadow of power lines. A prisoner moon, Leo wrote.
I made drawings of that moon in my book before I painted it. I wanted it to be like one of those Dali dreamscapes Bert and me had seen at the gallery. I couldn't get those watery images out of my head and that night I dreamt of a moon locked up by shadows.
'Why'd you leave school?' Lucy asks out of nowhere.
'I was worried you'd beat me up again.'
The train stops and people push on. I let a few get between us so I don't have to answer any more questions about why I left. Beth asked me once, too. I told her I got a job offer and my mum needed help paying the rent. It was half of the truth, the better half of it. The bad half was that I got caught pulling an essay out of my pants.
It was our first in-class Art essay. Until then I'd typed what I wanted to say and Leo had looked it over for me and fixed anything that didn't make sense, like he'd done in primary school. But from Year 10 on we had to do all our work in class to get ready for Year 12 exams so I was stuffed. 'You're not stuffed,' Leo said. 'I'll write what you want to say and then you sneak it in.'
If Mrs J had been at school that day the whole thing would have gone down different. She was sick, though, and Fennel was the substitute. He caught me taking the paper out of my pants and went off. Like me doing that was somehow all about him. He said to the class, 'If anyone else's brains are in their trousers they can come sit with me at the front of the class.' What sort of idiot says trousers?
I didn't look at Lucy all class. I wanted to look. I wanted to give her some sign that I wasn't a cheat but I couldn't think of what that would be since I'd just taken an essay out of my pants.
When the bell went she left with the others and Fennel shoved me towards the office. While we were walking a kid came up behind him and made this clown face and pretended to wank himself. I knew it'd be all over the school in a second. When I think back to that day all I see are wanking clowns.
Fennel got this brainwave in the coordinator's office. Told me to sit there and write the sentence This essay is not mine so he could compare handwriting. He'd had Leo in Woodwork for years so he knew whose handwriting it was. The essay was mine so I gave him some suggestions about where he could put it for safekeeping. 'Till Mrs J comes back.' He didn't think much of them so he dragged Leo in.
'Not my writing,' Leo said. 'It's Ed's.' He sat there with his legs stuck out and his arms crossed, staring Fennel down. We both got suspended, more for the suggestions we gave Fennel about where he could shove the essay than anything else. Leo went back after a week.
I trawled paint stores for blue during the day and I painted skies at night. Found a blue close to what I wanted in Bert's shop, only it was in a tin so I had to keep going back for more.
'I hope you're not one of those little delinquents who've been vandalising the side of my shop,' he said one day as he was ringing up my stuff.
'If I was I doubt I'd tell you,' I said, expecting him to kick me out.
'You get those two black eyes because you got a smart mouth?' he asked.
'I got two black eyes because I don't have a smart mouth,' I said, and when he laughed I told him about Lucy. He kept laughing till Valerie walked in and then he invited me to stay for lunch.
'I'm not bombing the side of your store with paint from a tin,' I told him while we were eating. 'You should stop selling the stuff in cans if you don't want people writing on your place.'
'I stock it for the art studio down the road.' He stared at me for a while. 'Why aren't you in school?'
'I quit.'
'No future in quitting.'
'I got a future in art.' I pulled out my sketchbook.
He looked through it slowly, creaky old hands turning the pages. After a while he pulled out his book. By the end of the day I was a subversive with a solid career in home decoration retail and a discount on my paint.
Mrs J visited after a week or two. Leo told her where to find me. She walked in and pretended to look at the paint. When I said hello she opened her eyes wide. 'Ed, what a lovely surprise. I'm glad I caught up with you. I read your essay.' I didn't even have to tell her it was mine.
Bert made her a cup of tea and gave her a chair and we talked about the colours of Rothko's paintings, how they took you some other place that was all hazy sky. 'You could come back,' she said. 'I could help and there's a department in the school that can make things easier.'
'Thanks but no thanks. I got everything I need here.'
'For now,' she said, and I shrugged. I knew what she meant. The days were already dragging but Bert was a good boss and I figured that was the price I had to pay for being safe.
'You got lucky,' Mrs J told Bert on her way out.
'You don't have to tell me,' he said.
The train stops and people get out. Lucy's in the same place she was before. There's no one between us but she doesn't ask the question again. She looks out the window, maybe at that hanging moon or the shooting flames and tells me, 'I like that the skies go nowhere. In that painting. I like that the birds want to get away but they can't. I like the reflection of paint in the dark.' The train starts again and I hold tight to stay steady.
The party's on Mason Street, a few minutes from the station. Leo takes the long way there, though, and I know it's to show Jazz one of his poems called The daytime things.
While the girls are reading it I give him a what-do-you-think-you're-doing? look. 'It's the plan,' he mouths. But he's not showing her this piece so she can think some other guy did it. Sooner or later he's planning on telling her he wrote the poem.
'I like it,' Jazz says. 'I like that he cares about the world.'
Leo grins. 'Yeah,' he says, looking thoughtful. 'He seems like a good guy.'
This poem's longer than Leo's usual stuff. He read it to me before it went up on the wall. 'When did you write that?' I asked him.
'Sitting at the servo. This guy started talking to me while I was waiting for Jake.'
I walk ahead and leave Leo and Jazz looking at the wall. You got to keep moving round here.
Poet
Assignment Three
Poetry 101
Student: Leopold Green
The daytime things
There's a guy down at the servo
With lions in his hair
Matted tails of roaring kings
A dirty song caught on his skin
He can't remember when he lost them
But he lost the daytime things
Daytime shirts and daytime ties
And shiny daytime shoes
Daytime cloudy thoughts that drift
In cloudy daytime blues
Daytime smiles from people travelling
While they ride the sunshine home
Daytime TV on the weekend
Daytime talking on the phone
Now he's crying at the servo
Midnight stumbling in his mouth
Hope slowly sliding south
A dirty song caught on his skin
Matted tails of roaring kings
Who knows where or when he lost them
But he lost the daytime things
Ed
The party's spilling onto the front yard when we get there and it's only ten forty-five. A couple of Jake's friends call as we walk past. Leo slaps their hands and leads the way.
Walking into parties like this is like walking into haywire sleep. People move past saying things that don't make sense because they're dripping with alcohol. The house vibrates with heat and music and in the darkness people who won't remember each other in the morning are getting to know each other real well now. Everyone here is older than us and even though I know most of them I do a quick check of the exits. I feel better knowing I can get out.
'What sort of party is this?' Lucy asks, staring at a group of guys who look like they walked off the set of Prison Break.
'The fun kind,' Leo says. 'Go have some. We'll find you after I talk to my brother.'
'The fun kind?' Lucy shouts to Jazz. 'I'm pretty sure I saw that guy over there on Crime Stoppers last week.' She's right. She did.
'Don't be paranoid,' Jazz shouts, and drags her to the dance floor. Daisy walks behind them, blowing kisses to people she knows. The three of them weave in and out of the music and Lucy moves like she's got extra beats in her head, beats no one can hear but her. I look at Leo talking to Jake and think about using one of the exits so I can go find myself a wall and paint a girl with a bunch of wild beats.
'Ed,' Leo calls, and I walk across to say hi to Jake. After we've swapped hellos I leave him and Leo to talk business and stand back with Dylan to watch the girls dance. More people crowd in, crowding out air, leaving only sweat and dark.
'You're acting worried,' Dylan says. 'You think something'll go wrong?'
'Yeah I think something'll go wrong. If you got half a brain you won't get involved tonight.'
'You've got half a brain,' Dylan says.
'What?'
'You've got half a brain. How come you're doing it?'
'I got a whole brain, for the record. But I got bills to pay and no job.'
'My mum and dad pay the bills. They won't pay for me to go to Queensland because I spent my money on a Wii.'
'So get a job at McDonald's, you idiot.'
'I've got a job there. I don't have time to save that much money again. Daisy's going without me and she'll be alone up there with all those surfer guys. You know what they want.'
'A great wave?' I ask, looking over at Lucy.
'That's right. They should get their own wave.'
We watch for a bit longer. 'I think surfers are maybe her type,' Dylan says.
'You're stuffed, then.'
'I could be a surfer if I tried.'
'Surfers don't wear checked shirts and iron their jeans and shave twice a day.'
'I like to be neat.'
'And that's fine. But you'll never be a dude.'
'Dude's a stupid word,' he says.
'Yes, it is,' I tell him. And then after a while of more girl watching I say, 'Don't do the job. It's not worth the risk.'
'It is,' he says, eyes spotlighting Daisy.
Take your own advice, Bert'd say. His voice is loud even here in the screaming music and floating smoke. There's nothing you can do for me now, Bert. You're dead and I'm buried.
I did a piece for him the day he died. Not on the side of his shop because he would have hated that. I did it somewhere legal. Down on Edward Street near the docks where they fence off a place for people to make art. It was nothing clever, just a picture of him with that look he wore while he was having a beer or teaching me something new. I made him big, though, so no one on the trains passing would miss him.
I took Valerie to see it one afternoon. We stayed with Bert's old eyes for a long time that day. She ran her hand across his face and shaggy eyebrows while I looked at the river. The water was lower than it had been for a while because rain was starting to feel like a story people told.
'I have to sell the business, Ed,' she told me, and I felt sorrier for her than I did for me. 'There's a hardware place in the next suburb that's been trying to buy us out for years. Bert kept saying no. He wanted you to have it.'
'I couldn't have run it anyway.' I kept my eyes on the river.
'Oh yes you could have,' she said. 'But I need the money. It'll be a quick sale and they can take over almost straight away.'
I pictured the store without Bert in it and I had this thought, this feeling that there was a drought in me, like there was no water for my insides to float on.
Up until a couple of weeks ago I visited that picture of Bert. Most afternoons I sat there with a beer and told him about the jobs I'd applied for, about the art I'd seen.
But it seems pretty clear I'm not getting another job any time soon so I've stopped going. Some things those old eyes don't need to see.
'Right,' Leo says, turning around from Jake. 'At one I pick up a van from Montague Street. At three we go to the school. Security checks are at two and four-thirty. Dylan left the window open today so all we have to do is load the van with computers and anything else that's valuable from the Media block and then take the stuff back to Jake.'
'No alarm?' I ask.
Leo pulls a piece of paper from his pocket. 'All under control.'
'How'd Jake get that?'
'I don't ask questions.'
If I asked questions I'd ask how come we're stealing from the Media block where the only teacher who was ever nice to me works. Good question, Bert says.
'I need air,' I tell Leo, and slide my way through the cracks of the crowd till I get to the back door. It's blocked by a bin full of drinks so I push my way through to the front but a guy and a girl are getting right into it and I can't get past. I tap the guy on the shoulder but he's not moving unless there's a fire and even then he's probably not moving.
There's always a window, I think, and head back to the lounge room and look around. I see it close to the couch where Lucy's taking a break from dancing. She's sitting next to Gorilla, a guy who got his name because he's hairy and because some of his body parts are rumoured to be extendable. He's grinning and moving closer and she's blocked in on all sides by a mass of bodies. I look at her and him. I look at the window. I think back to our date. She can always break his nose if he gets too friendly. I jump through, land on the grass and turn around. Who am I kidding? I want to see it if she breaks his nose.
I rest my arms on the window ledge and watch her fighting the good fight. 'So how old are you, baby?' Gorilla asks her.
'Old enough to know better,' she says, looking at his extendable arms.
'You like what you see?' he asks, and touches her leg. 'You and me should do it, later.'
'Did you forget to evolve?' she asks, struggling to get off the couch. I laugh because I like how she's feisty, when it's not aimed at me. Before she finds out what other parts of him are extendable I haul myself up and drop inside. 'She's with me, Gorilla.'
'I don't see your name on her,' he tells me, and she looks mad and he looks like he wants a fight and I know I can't take either of them so I end this quick.
'Trust me. Find someone else. This is the one that broke my nose.'
'Shit, she's all yours.'
I fall onto the couch. 'You hear that? You're all mine.'
She flicks her wristband. 'There's a guy in the kitchen giving people tattoos. You want to go get your name on my arm?'
'Later, maybe.'
'Did you come through the window?' she asks.
'All other exits are blocked,' I tell her, and sit there trying to think of something to say. It's hard to think of small talk in a sea of couples that are slowly tattooing themselves all over each other. She can't stop looking at them and that's a bad idea at a party like this. 'Don't look,' I tell her.
'It's like the sun during an eclipse. It'll blind me but I have to look.'
'If you keep looking at that girl she will blind you.'
'What you need is a camera,' the girl says to Lucy.
'No, what I need is a hose.'
'Okay.' I cover Lucy's eyes. 'No one's looking anymore.'
The girl goes back to her business. I keep my hand where it is just in case. Nice and close to her mouth.
I watch her so I'm not tempted to watch anyone else. She moves her head and feet around in time to the music. 'You enjoying yourself there?' I ask.
'More than I was. It's not as bad if you can't see it.'
I cover my eyes with my other hand. 'You're right.'
'Do you think that's someone chewing gum?' she asks.
'Uh-uh,' I say. 'Is that you heavy breathing?'
'I'm trying to have an out-of-body experience.'
'Do not leave me here alone,' I tell her, and we laugh, and in the dark she could be a different girl and I could be a different guy. We could be two people swimming through painted music.
'What are you thinking?' she asks.
'I'm thinking this party sucks.'
'I'm pretty sure that there's someone beside me actually sucking. Shadow wouldn't be at a party like this.'
'This is exactly the sort of party Shadow'd be at.'
'You know him too?'
'I catch a glimpse of him, every now and then.'
'I've almost seen him. And Poet,' she says, and I want to say, you have seen him and you didn't want him.
'Oh yeah?' I say instead.
'Yep. He was at the glass studio where I work. My boss texted me when he saw them. I arrived tonight five minutes after they'd gone.'
It's strange that I've seen that old guy a few times and never seen Lucy once. I watch him sometimes, through the window of his studio, melting glass and changing its shape. 'Did your boss get a really good look at them?'
'He said they were young and scruffy.'
'Shadow didn't look scruffy last time I saw him.' That old guy's scruffier than Leo or me.
'So how come you're not mad at me anymore?' she asks.
'Who says I'm not?'
'You're not blocking my airway.'
'It's a crowded room. Lots of witnesses.' I think for a bit. I'm not as mad when I'm not looking at her. Both of us stay quiet for a while and let the music weave around us. 'We can't stay like this much longer,' I say after three songs have gone by.
'Worried it'll get awkward?' she asks.
'More worried someone'll steal our wallets.'
'Jazz is pretty keen to hang around. She said this place is perfect material for her drama audition. She's doing this Shakespearean monologue, so I don't know what inspiration she's planning on getting here.'
A bottle smashes somewhere close by. 'If she hangs around long enough someone's bound to get killed,' I say. She laughs again and I like it even more. Like that it's me who made her laugh.
'Maybe I'll go home,' she says. 'Jazz won't care now that Leo looks interested. You think he's interested?'
I like the mood she and I have got going on, so I don't want to tell her that when it comes to dating, Leo's been on the bench since Emma. I haven't really heard him talk about anyone since her. When the girl you like calls the cops, it's bound to make a guy hold back. 'Maybe,' I tell Lucy. 'Anyway, she's got Daisy. I didn't know you guys were friends.'
'It's a recent thing. You're right. Jazz's got backup. I think I'll go.'
For the past ten minutes we've been on a couch hanging in the middle of nowhere, and while we're hanging I don't think about being broke or being without Beth or being in jail later tonight. 'We should go find Shadow,' I say, and close my eyes behind my hand. What are you thinking? This girl broke your nose. She keeps me waiting for her answer. I think about taking back what I said and then decide to leave it out there.
'Where would we look?' she asks after a while.
No guts, no glory, Bert's old voice tells me, and I take my hand off her eyes and watch her blink me into focus. 'I got one or two ideas.' I tell her about the pieces at the old train yard and the skate park and I try not to act like I'm excited that she's excited.
She says she'll be a minute and pushes her way through the crowd. I watch her talk to Jazz and wonder what I'm doing. Whatever it is I can't stop. I push my way after her and before she can change her mind I grab her arm and we heave with the crowd to the window.
On the grass outside I take a few breaths and while I'm doing that I see Raff and his mates forcing their way past the couple kissing at the front door. Shit. 'I forgot to tell Leo something,' I say to Lucy. 'Give me a second.'
Before I crawl through the window I look back at her. She's staring at the sky like she's having a conversation with what's up there.
I move fast and find Leo on the dance floor. 'Raff's here. You need to keep him away from Jazz.'
'I'll take care of it,' Leo says. 'Relax.'
'Can I borrow ten bucks?' I ask.
He hands it to me. 'See you back here at two-thirty?'
The music switches to techno and the party's a moving trance. You got to get out or go with it. Say no, old Bert says, but I can't. 'Two-thirty,' I tell Leo. 'Remember. Watch out for Raff.'
I work my way through the crowd to Lucy and before I go out the window again I look back at Leo. I can't tell whether he likes Jazz or not. But if I had to take a guess I'd say he does.
Poet
Assignment Four
Poetry 101
Student: Leopold Green
Remember love
Remember
Love doesn't make the world go round
Sex makes it spin for a second or two
If you're lucky
So do chips, sausage rolls and girls in short skirts
Remember
Love
Lays its fingers on your heart
And holds it
Under water
Remember that
When the next girl smiles
Lucy
I wait for Ed outside and for the first time tonight I see a few real stars, ones I don't have to imagine. Tiny flares burning far away. I trace around them with my finger and add a UFO or two. Adding things to the world is a game Mum and Dad and I play when we're really strapped for money. Imagine what you want, Lucy, because we probably can't afford it. I never really minded because they always found the money for the important stuff like my glass. Al says the game probably made me a better artist. It doesn't always work, though. I've drawn Dad living in the house more than a few times lately.
Ed's taking his time so I lie on the grass to wait for him. I draw Shadow in the sky. Dark hair, I'm thinking, scruffy but not out of control. Deliberately scruffy. I'm thinking old Ramones t-shirt. Or maybe a t-shirt that he's printed himself. I draw a speech bubble and words about art inside.
I draw Ed next to him, to pass the time. It's weird but he wasn't as hard to talk to when I couldn't see him. Maybe he should have put his hand over my face on our date instead of over my arse. Maybe we should both have been blindfolded. Things would have looked strange, sure, but they might have turned out differently.
One of my favourite paintings is The Lovers by René Magritte. It's of two people kissing. Both have a sheet wrapped around their head. Everything's so normal in the painting: her dress, his suit, the soft blue of the walls behind them. The only weird thing is that their heads are wrapped so they can't see each other and they're kissing through cotton. Maybe it's not so weird, though. Maybe kissing blindfolded like that is the easiest way to start.
I'm a little jealous that Jazz doesn't need a sheet over her face to avoid first-date awkwardness. I pushed my way through the crowd to tell her I was going Shadow-hunting and she was spinning her disco around Leo like she'd known him for years. 'I'm leaving with Ed,' I shouted into her ear.
'What?'
'Ed,' I shouted louder. 'He and I are going to find Shadow.'
She pulled me from the dance floor away from the speakers. 'You don't mind if I stay?'
I shook my head. 'You don't mind if I go?'
'Keep your phone on,' she said. 'I'll text and let you know how the night's turning out.' She waved and went back to dancing. A slow song came on and Leo looked unsure for a second before she turned circles around him. She moved without a flicker of doubt in her body. Maybe I'm wrong but he looked flickered with doubt to me.
'What if you meet Shadow and he's not into you?' Jazz asked me once. The thought had crossed my mind a million times. Some guys like me. Some guys don't. But I have the feeling that Shadow will be one of the guys who do.
Knowing that I might finally meet him sends zings to all the right places. Ed and I will find him and he'll be painting something amazing. After the introductions Ed will go back to the party, or to see Beth, and I'll be alone with Shadow. I don't know what I'll say first. Maybe just, 'I like art.'
'Me too,' a voice says.
I look over my shoulder and see a guy. He's older than me, by a year or two, and he's wearing a suit, but not the uncool kind. It's almost silver. The combination of sharp suit and scruffy hair really works. I spread five fingers on the grass.
'It's kind of loud in there. You mind if I sit?' he asks.
I shake my head. 'I needed some air too.'
He lies next to me and props himself up on his elbow. His hair falls over one eye every now and then and every now and then he flicks it back. He catches me staring and smiles. I smile. We look at each other, look away, look again.
'Are you waiting for someone?' he asks in a way that makes me think he's asking if I'm waiting for a guy.
'Just a friend. I'm waiting for a guy called Ed. Just a friend,' I say again. And then in case he missed it I say, 'We're not together, Ed and me. We're about to go searching for a graffiti artist called Shadow. Have you met him?'
'I haven't. I kind of know Ed. He's friends with Leo, right?'
'Yep.'
Some kids stumble past us, kissing as they move. 'They make it look like an Olympic sport,' he says. 'We should hold up signs from one to ten to grade them.'
'All the people in the party are getting very high scores.'
'Tell me about it.' He looks at me and away again. He traces a finger along the grass, making slow patterns.
'I like drawing,' he says when he catches me staring. 'So how come you want to find this Shadow guy?'
'I like his art,' I say, and he makes more patterns. There's something going on. I don't know what but there's something.
'Where will you look for him?'
'The old train yard and the skate park.'
'Are you going now?'
I nod. 'You want to come?' I don't feel weird asking. I feel right.
'I'd like to. I can't now, though. Can I catch up with you later in the night?'
'Yep. Definitely.'
'Great. Where are you going after the skate park?'
'Maybe Barry's café.'
'Okay. So if I want to find you it's the old train yard, the skate park or Barry's.' He stands and holds out his hand. Then he pulls me up so I'm close to him. 'In case I need it, can I have your mobile number?'
I am all tingle as I give it to him and watch as he puts it into his phone. 'I'm Lucy,' I say so he can add my name with the number.
'I'm Malcolm,' he says. 'Malcolm Dove.'
Dove, I think. Birds trapped on a sky. It's not out of the question that this could be Shadow. 'Nice to meet you.'
'Nice to meet you, too,' he says. I watch him walk away, get into a car and leave. Lucky Ed takes a while coming back. I need a little time to unzing.
'Would Shadow ever wear a suit?' I ask on the way to the train station.
'Not in a million years,' Ed says.
'You don't know everything about him, though.'
'I know that much.'
It's more awkward with Ed than when we had our eyes closed but it's not as awkward as I thought it might be. I guess after you break a guy's nose, semi-awkward isn't too bad.
'Where's Beth tonight?' I ask.
'She has dinner with her family every Friday.'
'And she won't care that you're out with me?'
'Beth's cool. And it's not like you and me are on a date.'
'No. Right. Of course.' I look up to the sky in the hope that I'll feel insignificant and get a little perspective on that moment of humiliation.
'What are you looking at?' Ed asks.
Nothing that's helping. 'Did you know that we're made up of the same matter as stars? We are nuclear energy exploding.'
'You're not like other girls, you know that, right?' Ed asks.
'I've been aware of the problem,' I tell him. 'But for the record, ten minutes ago you had your hand over my face while your best friend was dancing with a girl. You're not exactly like the others, either.'
'Fair point.'
'I think it's better to be different,' I say. 'Shadow is different.'
'You've never met him. How would you know?' Ed asks.
'I've seen his paintings and art reveals a lot about a person. There's this one of a girl with a road map on her and a guy with smoke pouring out of his car engine.' Ed doesn't say anything. 'Don't you get it? A broken-down car.'
'I get it. Some girl dumped him and he's crying over it.'
'I don't think he's crying over it, but if he is there's nothing wrong with being sensitive.'
Ed rolls his eyes a few times.
'Careful. You look like my mother.'
He rolls his eyes again.
'Okay, what?' I ask.
'How do you know he's sensitive?'
'Why are you being so snappy?'
'I'm not. Forget it. Shadow is sensitive. Let's talk about something else. We can walk to the train yard from the station.'
Good idea. Subject dropped, mister. 'My bike's at Barry's. We could ride there.' I check my watch. Eleven-thirty.
'What time do you have to get home?' he asks.
'My parents know I'll be out all night. You?'
'I've got till about two-thirty.'
'What happens then?'
He grins. 'Beth.'
'Oh. Right,' I say, and look up at those stars again. Nope. No good. I can't get no insignificance.
So there's truth to the rumour. Teenagers are having sex. If Shadow turns out to be the kind of guy I think he is, which he will, then maybe I'll get to do more than read surveys about it. We'll meet and click and sit up all night and everything will tip out of me and into him and the other way around and while we're tipping the night will fade and the world will get pink and in that pinkness he'll kiss me. We'll keep taking bits of each other till we get to our centre then we'll do it and it won't feel scary or strange. 'I'd do it with Shadow,' I say, imagining kissing a guy who looks like Malcolm Dove. As soon as I say that I concentrate really hard and try to bend the laws of time with my mind. Nope. No luck. The stupidest comment in the world is still out there.
Ed's eyebrows take on a life of their own. 'Really,' he says, and laughs.
'What's so funny?'
'Nothing. You can do it with anyone you want.' He laughs some more. He taps his hands on his legs in time with the laughing. I have this urge to break his nose again.
'Okay. That was a pretty stupid thing to say, but don't tell me you haven't thought about doing it with girls before.'
'I've done more than think about it.'
'I meant, thought about doing it with girls that you haven't done it with.' A second ago I didn't think this couldn't get much more humiliating, but maybe I was wrong.
'I've thought about it with girls that I know, sure. You don't know Shadow.'
'Like Angelina Jolie never crossed your mind.'
'At least I've seen her.'
'So I haven't seen Shadow. I've met someone who's seen him and that's almost the same thing.'
Ed laughs again.
'I actually think maybe I did meet him back at the party.'
'Gorilla?' His eyebrows go higher than I would have thought possible.
'No, not Gorilla. Another guy I met out the front. He was arty and sweet and he wore a very sharp suit.'
'Doesn't sound like Shadow to me,' he says.
I turn my head to the left so Ed's clear that I'm ignoring him. He didn't have to make me feel so stupid. It's not like I said I'd do it with Mr Darcy. Actually, I have said that before but that was a longish time ago when I didn't have the maturity I have now.
The first time Jazz slept over at my house we made lists of people we'd do it with. She looked over mine. 'Yours are all fictional characters.'
'So?'
'So you need at least one real person. Who's one real person you'd do it with?'
'Shadow,' I said.
'I guess an invisible graffiti artist is one step up from fictional.'
'He's visible. I haven't seen him yet, that's all.'
Ed and I don't say anything the rest of the way to the station. We don't say a lot while we wait for the train. He laughs every now and then and every now and then I think about breaking his nose.
Once the train comes and we're sitting opposite each other I get back to Mr Flicker of Doubt on the Dance Floor. 'Is Leo a good guy?'
'We've been best mates since primary school,' Ed says, resting his feet on the seat next to me.
'But is he a good guy to his girlfriends?'
'He hasn't had a girlfriend for a while, not since Emma.'
'The girl with the big . . . brains?'
He smiles slowly. 'Uh-huh. The girl with the big . . . brains. She was smart and funny too, by the way. And tough. I liked her.'
'So why'd they break up?'
'Don't know.'
He knows, he's not saying, which is fair enough. But I've left Jazz on a dark dance floor with this guy and I want to know if she might need a heads-up about something. Jazz would like to think she's tough but I've seen her crying during The Notebook. 'So Leo just sleeps with girls since Emma?'
'He doesn't lie to them. Jazz'll know the score before anything happens.'
'If anything happens,' I say, because I don't want him or Leo thinking that Jazz has made a decision. I don't think she has, but maybe I'm wrong and either way I don't want Leo taking her for granted.
'Okay,' Ed says. 'If anything happens she'll know the score.'
I imagine that moment and how Jazz will feel. Nervous and excited. Hopeful that maybe she'll spend the next day and the day after that with Leo. Days falling like dominoes in her head. And then he'll tell her the score. 'That's awful,' I say.
'Being honest with her is awful?'
'Being honest with her then is awful. He should be honest from the second he starts flirting with her.'
'What, hi my name's Leo and by the way I'm only out for sex?'
'Is that all he's out for?'
'I didn't say that. I was making up a situation. It looked to me as if he liked her.'
I pull out my phone.
'You should leave them alone. Leo's a better guy than everyone thinks.'
'He doesn't look like that to me,' I say, and dial her number.
'Lucy,' she shouts. 'This party is unreal.' The phone fills with music and I know she's holding it out so I can hear. 'Finally, my life is exciting. How's it going with Ed?'
'It's okay. Listen, Jazz, be careful. With Leo.'
'Why? What do you know?'
'Nothing. I left you there, that's all. The plan was to stick together.'
'Stop worrying about me. Have some fun.' She blows what I think is a kiss into the phone and hangs up.
Ed gives me some eyebrow action. 'You're mad again,' I say.
'I'm not blocking your airway.'
'You don't know what it'll be like for Jazz. I know what it's like to feel disappointed, after the blood and broken bones on our . . . whatever it was that we had.'
He gives me loads of eyebrow action.
'Okay, it was your blood. You were probably a little disappointed too.'
'You think?'
The train stops at our station and we stand at the doors but they don't open. The driver announces over the speaker that there's been a slight technical problem but we'll be on our way soon. I imagine him in the control room pressing all the buttons but nothing works to let us out. Press more buttons, I think as Ed and I stare at the doors. This could get awkward.
Through the glass I see part of the Shadow piece hovering in the sky. 'Ironic,' I say, not really expecting Ed to get it.
'What, that we're locked in a train, staring through the glass at a painted sky, or because we're back where we started?'
'Well, both I guess.'
'Just because I don't know who Atticus Finch is doesn't mean I'm stupid.'
'I never said you were.'
'I know what irony is.'
'Okay.'
'Why'd you say yes to a movie if you didn't even like me?'
'It was an accident.'
'You said yes by accident?'
'No. I said yes on purpose. The other thing was an accident.'
'You didn't even put me in a taxi. Do you have any idea how much a broken nose hurts?'
'You are still mad at me.'
'Of course I'm still mad. You never even called to see how I was. After accidents like that, people usually call to apologise.'
'That's a really good point,' I say, because it is a really good point. How could I not even think of calling? How did I not put him in a taxi? I could have called Dad. 'I didn't even think of calling.' I pull back from a severe eyebrow raise. 'I did vomit, though,' I tell him. 'Which I think shows some real remorse.'
He drops his eyebrows. 'You vomited?'
'When I got home. Barely made the sink. I had to throw out my clothes.'
Again we have a silence that only astronauts can fully understand.
Then Ed says, 'That's a shame. I really liked that t-shirt you were wearing.'
'You remember my t-shirt?'
'Up until the anaesthetic I remember everything.'
'I am sorry,' I say. 'Sorry that I broke your nose and really sorry that I didn't put you in a taxi.'
'And sorry that you didn't call to check on me.'
'I'm sorry about that, too.'
He leans on the wall of the carriage and folds his arms. 'I'm sorry I grabbed your arse.'
I can't resist. 'What's wrong with my arse, mister?'
Eyebrows up. Doors open. 'Got it,' the driver says over the intercom.
'If Jazz is anything like you, Leo's the one with something to worry about,' he says, and lets me walk first into the night, which, I have to say, I kind of like.
Poet
Dance floor
11.45 pm
Maybe
Maybe you and me
Maybe you and me
Maybe you and me
But probably not
Maybe I hang out with you longer than a night
Maybe I hang out with you longer than a night
Maybe I hang out with you longer than a night
But probably not
Maybe I forget her
Maybe I forget her
Maybe I forget her
But probably not
Ed
'I vomited,' Lucy says, and I feel jaunty. Bert taught me that word and I like it. After my first date with Beth he drew a picture series of me being jaunty. He flicked through the pages and this little guy did a few side kicks in the air.
'I felt like that after Valerie and I started dating,' he said.
I feel like doing some kicks tonight. Lucy liked me enough to vomit. 'I'm sorry I grabbed your arse,' I tell her.
'What's wrong with my arse, mister?' she asks and smiles with that extra beat and I see that spot on her neck and I have an almost unstoppable urge to touch it. I don't, though, because the definition of crazy is doing something close to the same thing twice and expecting a different end.
You feel jaunty, so settle for that. Don't go asking for more. Enjoy walking next to her. Enjoy showing her your pieces and hearing what she thinks about them. Enjoy saying goodbye before you rob her school. That last thought unjaunties me a little. Bert's face floats in my head and he tells me that thieves don't deserve jauntiness.
'So we're even,' Lucy says on the way to Barry's.
'We can never be even,' I tell her. 'But we're evener.'
We walk further and the people have thinned out in the streets so there's only a scattering left. Every now and then we step over a guy still going nowhere from the night before, determined to get there tonight. Leo never passes one of those drunk guys without giving him money, even if he only has a few coins in his pockets. He hasn't gone home since the day he moved in with his gran. 'Nothing to go back for,' he says, but I don't think it's that simple. I figure the few coins he flicks at the drunks in the street are his way of saying sorry he can't deal with the zoo inside his house.
'You ever notice how the night changes shape?' I ask Lucy. 'It starts out thick with people and sound and then gets thinner till in the middle there's almost nothing in it but you.'
'Are you often awake in the middle of the night?' she asks.
'Not often. I start work early.' Or I did. Since I lost my job over a month ago, the urge to paint's been hitting me hard and I go half the night sometimes. I sleep late and spend the afternoons in the free galleries in the city. Bert and me used to go to them on Saturday mornings sometimes. We'd take our books and make notes about things we liked. We'd eat lunch in the park and then I'd go home. I never got sick of spending time with Bert. Never got sick of watching his old hands draw the world.
'My bike's still there,' she says, pointing ahead. 'You never know in this place. What you leave isn't always there when you come back.'
Her bike lock is the size of a chihuahua I had once and I tell her it's unlikely someone's carrying around boltcutters that big.
'I like my bike. I want it to be safe,' she says and buckles her helmet, which is blue with a lightning bolt on the side. I think about a piece I could do. A girl shaped like lightning in the sky and a guy on the ground with a lightning rod trying to catch her.
'You like that helmet, too?' I ask.
'There's nothing wrong with my helmet, mister.' She points at two big steps on the back of her bike.
'You have training . . . somethings? What are they?'
'Feet platforms. My dad made them for my cousin to use. Step on.'
'But I don't have a cool helmet with a lightning bolt.'
'Your head is hard enough.'
'Funny.' I steady myself without touching her.
'To the train yard,' she says and pushes on the pedals. We don't move.
'Anytime,' I tell her. 'You know. While we're still young and beautiful.'
She pushes hard again. 'You weigh a tonne.'
'You need me to drive?'
'I need momentum, that's all. Get off.'
'You're very charming, but you must hear that all the time.'
'Get off,' she says. 'I'll ride and you run after me and jump on the bike.'
'Do many guys ask you out twice?'
'Only the ones with balls.'
I step off. She pedals away and I chase her tail-lights down the street. 'Hurry,' she yells. 'I can't slow down or I'll lose momentum.'
I run as hard as I can till I almost touch the back of her bike. 'I'm not Superman,' I call. She slows a bit and I do a huge leap and hit the concrete. It goes like that for a while, me running and leaping and falling and wondering how doing this proves I have balls. 'It's not possible to get on this way.'
'Try one more time,' she says.
Once more and then that's it, I think, and run, yelling all the way like that'll give me speed. She slows a little and I leap and land with one foot on, which is a miracle. 'A miracle,' I shout.
'Finally,' she says.
'You know, Leo's brother's hooking me up with a car when I get my licence. I'm making you get in while it's still moving.'
'You'll drive me places?'
'If your aerobic fitness is up to it, sure I'll drive you places. Take a left here. We're going to Fraser Street, you know where that is?'
'Behind the school?'
'Uh-huh.' I close my eyes and let the movement take me somewhere else, let walls drop into my head the way they do when I feel space around me. Maybe later I'll go somewhere and paint the dark that's sitting behind my eyes. A dark filled with the sounds of the city and her breathing. 'This isn't bad,' I say. 'Feels like we're not really here.'
'Don't get too comfortable. You have to get off and walk if there are hills.'
'There aren't hills. I'm not taking you anywhere that's hard to get to.' All my good stuff is hidden. Down on the docks and inside old factories. 'I'm taking you to Shadow walls where no effort is required. Here,' I say.
We get off and she clicks shut her chihuahua lock and we walk into the train yard. We wander through dead carriages sprayed with Leo's and my late-night thoughts. Polar bears holding matches to glaciers, painted after Leo heard some politician say people didn't cause global warming. You're right. It's the animals. The earth wearing a hand-knitted jumper and a beanie. Maybe this is why it's getting warmer? Leo had a bit of a run about the environment and I didn't mind doing the pictures for him. I understand some of his stuff and some I don't. We walk past one of his poems, The ticking inside, and Lucy stops long enough to read it. I feel like she's walking through my head and it feels strange, like we're in a dream I'm having.
'Sometimes he's like a poet,' Lucy says. 'And sometimes he's more like a social commentator.'
'I guess.' I never really thought about it. Lately he's been writing longer stuff but I figure he's just got more to say. Some days Leo wants to talk about what he's heard in his Philosophy class and some days he wants to sit quietly and eat a sausage roll.
'I've never been here,' Lucy says.
'I stop by sometimes,' I say. 'To look at the stuff. Some of it's pretty cool.'
'So you like graffiti?' she asks, walking away before I answer, looking at the next carriage.
'I like some. I don't like others,' I say, but she's not listening.
I look over her shoulder at a piece Leo and me did a while back for a laugh. There's a guy holding out his thumb on a highway in the first frame and a guy picking him up in the second and the car driving away in the third. The car's numberplate says Psycho. I have a chuckle. Leo thought of that. I was just painting some guy escaping.
'See,' she says. 'He's funny.'
'I never said he wasn't.' We walk to the next carriage. 'So you like him because he's funny?'
'I like him because he's clever. And you know, he and I are both artists so we have something in common.' She flicks her wristband. 'I've been taking glassblowing lessons from Al for almost two years now. He helped me finish my folio.'
'What's that like?' I ask.
'It's cool to get an idea and make it with my hands. You know?'
'I guess,' I tell her, but what I want to say is yeah, I know. I know all about it late at night when a thought hits me and I can't sleep till it's out and onto the wall.
'Al makes these mobiles that cover the whole ceiling, like flowers hanging from the sky. They tap against each other and because they're different sizes and thicknesses they make different noises. It's like a ceiling of singing flowers.'
I looked through his studio window once and thought they were clouds of trumpets. I like them even more now I know they make noise. I couldn't hear that from outside. 'I've seen them,' I say, before I think about it.
'Where?' she asks.
I cough to give myself a little thinking time. 'Somewhere in the city. There's a few glass shops near the paint store.'
She nods. 'He exhibits in most of the glass galleries.'
I think about how very cool it would be to exhibit somewhere. I know most guys who do walls say they don't need a gallery, but I wouldn't mind a white room with my pieces hanging in it. Bert and me went to an exhibition of Ghostpatrol, this street and gallery artist. 'You could be here,' Bert said. I told him he was dreaming. He told me dreaming's the only way to get anywhere.
'So what's your folio?' I ask.
'It's five bottles called The Fleet of Memory. Al helped me with the name. Inside the bottles are things I like remembering. They're meant to be like those bottles you see with the ships trapped inside.'
'So what's in them?'
'Stuff I remember. Like, in one there's a tiny cape and a wand to remind me of when I was ten. My mum sewed costumes for me and her so we could be in Dad's magic act. He's a comedian but sometimes he does kids' parties for extra money. Mum and I got into the box and Dad tapped it and when he opened the curtain we were gone and when he tapped it again we were back.'
'So, what, you went out through a back door?'
'That's the thing,' she says. 'The way I remember it, we really did go somewhere. I mean, I know now there was a trick to it but back then Mum knew what it was and I didn't. The way I remember, Dad made it happen.'
'My dad was a magician too. Got in his car and disappeared.'
'Oh,' she says with this strange look on her face.
'Don't worry. He did it before I was born. My mum's cool.' We walk further through the train yard, stopping every now and then to look at something Leo and me painted.
She stands in front of one I don't want her to see. There's nothing funny about the white ocean. There's a rhythm in the paint, like the water's trying to catch its breath. The disappointed sea, Leo's written underneath.
'You ever feel like that?' Lucy asks. 'Just flat to the edges?'
I shrug. I don't want to get into this tonight. 'What I'm really disappointed about is that Veronica Mars didn't go past a third season,' I say. 'And that Turkish Delights don't come in king-size.'
'They do now.'
'Well that's very good news.'
'I want peppermint Freddoes to come in king-size but it's never going to happen,' she says.
It does seem strange, now that I think about it. 'You're right. Why don't they make the others bigger?'
'It's a mystery.'
'You could buy three and melt them down and freeze them,' I say.
'It'd be messy.'
'It'd still be chocolate. It'd still taste the same.'
'I guess. But I like my Freddoes neat, with the peppermint inside.'
'You've got a pretty hardline stance on the inside/ outside thing.'
'I do,' she says, and I like that she can talk about art and Freddoes in the same conversation. I like the idea of her memory fleet, things bottled in so they can't float away.
We leave the painting and head towards her bike. 'I always wondered how they got those ships inside the glass.'
'Al showed me how,' she says. 'You make the bottle first. Or you buy it. The ship goes in after. You build it outside, with collapsible masts. You lay a sea of putty in the bottle and then you slide the ship through the neck and raise the sails from outside. That's how I got my memories in there. I made them small and collapsible. I think I liked those bottles better when they were still mysterious, before I knew how they worked.'
She's got this chip in her front tooth and I think about running my finger along the edges of it. But then I think about her finding out I'm Shadow. I think about her being disappointed because I'm a guy going nowhere, not a guy who's sensitive and smart and funny. I think about her going to uni and making glass and me staying where I am spraying walls and scraping rent.
'I can show you how to get the ship in the bottle,' she says. 'If you want.'
'I don't know. Seems like a lot of trouble for a boat that's going nowhere.'
Poet
Assignment Five
Poetry 101
Student: Leopold Green
The ticking inside
On the inside of him there's a wire fence
And past the wire fence is a dog
And past the dog are thieves
And past the thieves
Is a gang of bad dreams
And past the dreams
If you can get past the dreams
Are the things that make him tick
Tick, tick, tick
Lucy
Ed and I walk through the carriages and I'm in a Shadow world that I didn't know existed. I imagine him here alone, painting in the blush of light from the next street, and I want to find him even more. Every now and then I think he's here because in the dark Ed looks like a shadow that someone else is casting.
I tell Ed the things I want to tell Shadow. I tell him about my folio, The Fleet of Memory. The bottles are full of things I remember about Mum and Dad before the weirdness of the shed.
In bottle two is a clay fish. It's small enough to fit through the bottle's neck because some things you can't collapse. It's in the memory fleet because we used to camp at Wilson's Promontory. Mum would pretend to cook what Dad had caught but really they weren't big enough so she bought dinner from the fish and chip shop and we all pretended that the fish had come from the ocean. Dad pretended so good I was never really sure if he knew the truth.
In bottle three there are a few things stuck in the putty: the corner of a page from Mum's manuscript, a tiny piece of my glass, and a joke from one of Dad's acts. 'Art is more important than money, Lucy,' Mum said when I told her about Al's offer to teach me. 'We'll afford it somehow, don't you worry about that.'
I tell Ed about the colours of Al's studio, the flowers hanging from the ceiling. I helped Al make those flowers. I turned the pipe while he blew on the end and we watched melting glass become petals.
Some days I don't want to go home from the studio. I want to stay with those flowers because the light shining through them makes the studio a pastel sky and the shed where Dad lives is falling down. He tapes plastic bags on the windows to keep out the insects and rain.
'My dad was a magician too,' Ed says. 'Got in his car and disappeared.'
He says it like it doesn't bother him at all and we move through the paintings, to the middle of the yard, till there's nowhere to go but the last painting. The disappointed sea, Poet's written. I feel like that when I see my dad walking out of the shed in the morning in his dressing gown and slippers, carrying his little toilet bag.
'You ever feel like that?' I ask. 'Just flat to the edges?'
I don't know what I expect Ed to say but I don't expect him to talk about Veronica Mars and Turkish Delight and Freddoes. I like that he can talk about art and chocolate and TV and I like that it doesn't feel awkward. At least till I offer to show him how to make a ship in a bottle and he tells me it's a waste of time. Nothing about art is a waste of time. 'It's the time wasting that gets you somewhere,' Al says.
Shadow would have known that. He would have said yes and we'd have headed back to Al's to see my folio and made collapsible ships that sail on putty. I imagine him, in his silver suit, leaning over his ship, gently bringing up the sails.
'You don't have to look for Shadow with me,' I say when we get back to my bike. 'You can leave. Or I can ride you to Beth's place if you want.' I put on my helmet.
He looks at me long enough for it to feel kind of awkward. Then he shrugs and says, 'If you want you can drop me at the station.' He crouches like a runner. 'Okay, I'm ready. Go.'
'You're making fun of me.'
'Uh-uh. I'm excited by the challenge.'
He looks so stupid that it cancels out my stupid so I give in and ride and he runs and gets on the bike after only two tries. 'That was much easier,' I say.
'You run next time. We'll compare definitions of easy.'
Mum says be careful of boys who never take anything seriously. Dad says a boy needs a good sense of humour to get through his love life. Jazz says my dad must need a sense of humour to get through his love life, if he's living in the shed.
'So who else's nose have you broken since mine?' Ed asks.
I make like I'm counting. I don't want to tell him that I've had exactly no dates since him. I've spent my time looking for Shadow. Which could, to some people, Jazz says, look a little pathetic.
'That many, huh?' Ed asks.
'Okay, well, David Graham asked me on a date. I said yes but I backed out after I heard him say in Art that anyone could paint the shit he saw at the Picasso exhibition. Anyone who thinks that is stupid.'
'That is stupid. Woman with a Crow. Not everyone could paint that.'
The night wheels past us, lights and roads and trees. 'You like that painting?' I ask. 'You know that painting?'
'Don't sound so surprised.'
'I'm not, I just thought . . .'
'That art's a secret club only you and Shadow get to be in?' Ed finishes my sentence.
'No.' Maybe. I don't know. I am surprised. If he really liked art so much, how come he didn't say something on our date? How come he quit school in the middle of our Jeffrey Smart assignment and left me to finish the work by myself? 'Did you go to the exhibition?' I ask.
'Bert and me went to see that painting. Bert liked how it looks as if the woman in the painting is in love with a bad bird. "In love with the bad times," he said.'
'Who's Bert?'
'My old boss at the paint store. He died two months ago. Heart attack in aisle three.'
'That's awful.'
'Better than a heart attack in aisle four, which is where they keep the floral wallpaper. Bert hated that aisle but it was the money-spinner. He died looking at the deep reds.'
'I guess if you have to go it's best to see something beautiful on the way out.'
'Uh-huh.'
'Do you miss him?'
'He was a good guy. Paid me more than he could afford but I didn't know that till after the funeral. He taught me stuff. And he drew the coolest things. Stop for a second.'
'If I stop pedalling you'll have to run again.'
'I know, stop for a second.'
I do and he gets off and pulls a book out of his pocket. The pages are bent and it's dirty around the edges. We lean on someone's fence and he moves in close. 'Look.' He flicks the pages and a little guy does a couple of kicks in the air.
'That is the coolest thing.'
Ed flicks through all these animations. Two guys drinking beer. A dog rolling over and playing dead. A guy at a counter serving a woman. A man on his knees proposing. 'That's Bert asking Valerie to marry him,' Ed says, and I like the little smile he gets when he says it. I like the way he holds the book. Like all those drawings add up to something more than money.
The last one is of a guy in a car waving and driving away. Ed hesitates over it. 'He drew this one the day he died. That's me. With my driver's licence.'
'How do you know it's you?'
Ed holds the tiny picture next to his face. There is quite a likeness. Something about the eyebrows. 'Plus,' Ed says, 'Bert was quizzing me so I'd pass my driving test.' He flicks the pages and a guy smiles and waves a licence out of a car window. 'I failed once but Bert was already making plans for me to take the test again so I could drive the delivery van.'
'Everyone fails at least once.'
'That's what I hear,' he says, and we look through the book again. He stops at the one of Bert drinking beer in the sun and flicks the pages to make him raise his glass a few times. 'What do you think is on the other side?' he asks.
'I'm not sure. Jazz says we come back and get a second chance at things.'
Ed looks around him. 'Hope I don't come back to this place.'
'You don't like living here?'
'You do?' he asks.
'I like how the place looks at night. I like the bridge, all those car lights moving in the dark. Mum and Dad and I used to drive over it because Dad likes the view.'
'That's a little strange,' Ed says.
I nod. And that's not the weirdest thing about us. We haven't driven over the bridge together for a while. Dad and I still go sometimes. He took me over to get an ice-cream in South Melbourne after I found him nailing a number on the shed. '132a?' I said. 'We're all 132.' I pointed at the house.
'Yeah, but the pizza delivery guy keeps getting confused. Don't frown like that, Luce,' he said, and we went for a drive over the bridge, and the world that was dirty during the day spread speckled and polished beneath us.
'When are you moving back in?' I asked.
'Soon,' he said.
'Jazz says you're getting a divorce.'
'Well, Jazz is wrong. I'd tell Jazz if we were getting a divorce. Would I be living on the property and spending time with your mother every day if we were getting a divorce?'
'No,' I said as we drove past billboard signs that were disappearing too quickly to read.
I had Dad drop me at Al's that night and I started the fourth ship in my memory fleet. I built it out of toothpicks and matches. I crushed glass into black putty to make it look like lights in the night. I bought a toy car and made three tiny people to put inside. That bottle took me the longest time. Al couldn't believe it when I'd finished. 'It's as if you've shrunk the world and glassed it in.'
Ed closes the book and we watch the street. 'Do you ever hear from your dad?' I ask.
'Uh-uh. Mum said they had the biggest fight before he left. She was sixteen and telling him about me and he left a dad-shaped hole in the wall.'
I laugh and then stop. 'That's not really funny.'
'Doesn't seem to bother Mum. She says she expected it.'
'It'd bother me if I loved a guy enough to sleep with him and then he left when I was pregnant.'
'You don't have to love someone to have sex with them.'
'I know that,' I say, and my face goes nuclear like the stars. 'It'd be nice, though. If it happened that way. If people stayed together.'
'Go visit Leo's parents. Nothing nice about them staying together.'
'Daisy said he lived with his gran.'
'You guys did a lot of talking about us while you were in the toilet.'
'Like you didn't talk about us when you were in the toilet.'
'We talked about the dangers of hanging out with you,' he says, and it actually has a ring of truth about it.
'That's pretty much what we talked about,' I say, which has a ring of truth about it, too. 'Daisy said Leo had maybe been in trouble with the police once.'
'No charges were laid. Leo's a good guy.'
'But his parents aren't good?'
'They drank too much, I think. He hasn't lived with them in years.' End of story, Ed means, and that's fair enough. I might think my parents are weird but I get to see Dad every day. I want to see him every day. Sure, I had to read him the health regulations so he stopped using the lawn as his early morning bathroom, but it was a fairly minor fault.
Ed's quiet for a while and then his laugh breezes over me.
'What?'
'Nothing. I was just thinking. You hit me because you wanted Mr Darcy and I wasn't him.'
'You know who Mr Darcy is?'
'I exist therefore I know who Mr Darcy is. Beth studied the book in Lit this year. She made me watch the film with her over and over. She knew it back to front, that and all her other texts.'
'She sounds smart.' I try to make that comment seem casual but weirdly, anything I say about Beth comes out of my mouth dressed in a full-length ball gown.
Ed looks across at me and I can tell he's heard the weirdness in my voice, but he's not sure why it's there either. 'She is smart.' He flicks through the book again, speeding up people and slowing them down. 'Smarter than me, that's for sure.'
I watch his flicking hands. 'You're smart.'
He gives me a little eyebrow action again. 'How would you know that?'
I think about it. I know he is, I'm just not exactly sure how I know.
'See,' he says before I can answer. 'You don't know.'
'You're funny, which you can't be if you're not smart. Dad says it's harder to make someone laugh than it is to make them cry.'
'Because you can always punch someone to make them cry.'
'Exactly.'
'So would I have seen your dad's comedy act?' he asks.
'Nope. I mean, not unless you hang out at late-night clubs where they have open-mike nights.' I look at Ed with his old jeans and steel-capped boots and think about him skipping class with the sheddies. 'You probably do hang out at late-night clubs.'
'I told you -- I go to bed early. I have to open the shop at seven-thirty in time for the trade guys and to get deliveries. Bert didn't get there till eight-thirty so I always had to be on time.' Ed's hands tap on the book. 'I was never late,' he says, and I get the feeling he's not talking to me so I don't interrupt. We lean on the fence and watch the street. 'What's the time?' Ed asks.
'Twelve-thirty.' The night's thinning out like he described before. There are a few people waiting for the last tram, some taxis moving past. Ed and me. 'Don't Beth's parents care that you're meeting her so late? Or early, I guess.'
'I don't knock on the front door,' he says. 'We have this place, down the back of her garden. There's a huge tree that blocks the view from the house. I get in over the back fence and meet her behind it.'
'Romantic.'
'Till her dad catches me. I got my escape route all worked out, though, so no one's getting hurt.'
'Except Beth,' I say. 'Sure you get over the back fence, but you leave her standing there.'
'Beth can take care of herself.'
Thinking about him jumping the back fence makes me think about him leaving, and that makes me wonder how long we can stand here till we run out of things to say and it gets awkward. I shuffle around so he knows I'm okay with him going if that's what he feels like doing.
'You flick that band on your wrist a lot,' he says. 'Some guy give it to you?'
'Yep. Some guy.' I flick it. 'It's my dad's lucky band. Lucky things happen to anyone wearing this band.'
'So how's his luck since he gave it to you?'
I think of him sitting on the deckchair outside the shed. 'His luck's okay. You know, you can leave. If you want.'
'That's twice you've told me that,' he says. 'What if I don't want to go?'
The heat rising from the takeaway place nearby makes the air look like satin, like I could touch it if I wanted, and I concentrate on that instead of looking at Ed. 'Where do you think Shadow is right now?' I ask, because I can't make my mouth say that it's okay if Ed doesn't want to leave.
'Waiting for you to come and do it with him,' Ed says, and I don't have to look to know that he's grinning again.
'It's not like I'm searching for the tooth fairy or something.' I get on the bike. 'Shadow exists. And I don't know that he'll like me but I just want to meet one guy, one guy, who thinks art is cool. Am I asking too much to meet someone who can talk and who paints and who has a brain?'
He gives me his standard eyebrow action.
'What?'
'He'll only be all those things until you meet him. Then he'll be like every other guy. And for your information, a lot of guys have brains.'
'Get ready, mister. I have a feeling you're going to need a run-up.'
'Uh-uh. I'm not running after you anymore.' He balances on the back of my bike and pushes off with one foot to give us momentum. 'Pedal now. Now. We've been doing it all wrong,' he says.
We take off along the side streets and Ed puts his hands on my shoulders and I get a zing and a tingle and the small circle of bike light pearls the road ahead. I think of those Bill Henson photographs Mrs J showed us, of teenagers in the night. When I looked at them I felt like someone got it, like someone saw what it was like to be bare skin shining in darkness.
'By the way,' Ed says as we ride, 'I think art is cool.'
Ed
I keep my hands on Lucy's shoulders even though her skin's burning me all the way up my arms. I don't mind the feeling. The road rolls by and my brain rolls with it. Thoughts spill from my head to my hands. They'll tap till I paint the thoughts right out of them.
'I think art is cool.' That's thought number one.
Thought number two is about my plan to jump the fence and leave Beth if we ever got caught in her backyard. It made me feel better knowing I wouldn't have to explain myself to her dad. I never thought of what it'd be like for her, staying behind.
Thought number three is about Lucy and her flicking band and shuffling feet. She's always moving like she's got somewhere to be. I want her to stand where she is for a while. Stand still and talk to me about the strange things she's got going on in her head.
Thought number four is about her saying she'd do it with Shadow. It goes without saying that I wouldn't mind doing it with her, but that's not likely since as soon as she knows I'm Shadow that offer won't be on the table anymore. What we have here is a catch 22. I can't do it with her till I treat her right and tell the truth. And if I tell the truth and treat her right then she won't do it with me.
'You got to treat a woman well,' Bert said one day when we were unloading paint.
'I treat Beth okay,' I told him.
He looked at me, those shaggy eyebrows moving round his face, and said, 'You got to be honest. Valerie says all she wants from me is some goodness and the truth.'
'I can't tell Beth about me being Shadow,' I said. 'She'd get uptight about me doing something she thinks is dangerous.'
'That's not why you won't tell her. You won't tell her because what's on that wall is what's going on in there.' He tapped my head.
'Take a left,' I tell Lucy. 'That piece is here.'
It's the one I painted after Beth gave me back my stuff. The ghost in a jar. Lucy does a quick search for painting shadows before she looks at the wall. I stand behind her, watching her watching my work. I feel like I'm shedding skin, feel like if she turns she'll see a skeleton man behind her and then she'll know.
But she doesn't. She looks at me and then back at the wall. 'You ever feel like that?' she asks, and I don't say anything because anything I tell her will give me away. 'Like you're stuck somewhere and the lid's on tight?'
The lid's on tight, the lid's always on tight, but there's nothing that can open that jar but smashing. That's how I felt sometimes, in the shop after I left Beth. All I wanted to do was paint. But then Bert died and I was out of the store and into a worse place because I didn't have any money coming in. 'He's got airholes,' I say, pointing at the top of the jar.
'That's the worst bit.' She wheels the bike around so the light hits me. 'His paintings are never hopeful, are they?'
'Maybe he painted that on a bad day.' I don't know if I ever feel hopeful when I work. I feel a high kick in and then sort of a floating ocean inside and then relief. Maybe that's hope.
I look across at the line of the city. The nights are mean in this place, full of smog that eats the stars. 'Who does feel hope round here?'
'I do,' she says. 'Al offered me a job as his assistant. I'm going to uni next year.'
'Maybe Shadow's not going to uni. Maybe he doesn't even have a job.'
'But he's good,' she says. 'Really good. And he makes stuff better, just by painting. I was sitting at a bus stop one time, getting annoyed that I was running late and then I noticed this small piece by him across the road. This bug looked at me with eyes that said, Can you believe this? I've been waiting here for half an hour. The picture didn't have any words. It didn't need any. The eyes were enough.'
'How'd you know it was his?' I ask her. 'If there weren't any words?'
'I know,' she says, and because of the way those words feel I keep my eyes on her hands.
'This blue's from his sky,' she says, turning them over so I can see. 'I brushed against a piece of his earlier. A guy who paints like this is doing something. He's not sitting around.'
Listening to her I feel like I did when Bert talked about where I'd be ten years from now. 'Famous artist,' he said, and I felt like I needed to run but my skin wouldn't let me. I had this urge to throw cans at the windows so I could hear a noise that sounded like escape.
'We should go,' I tell her. 'It's not safe to stay in the one place at night.'
She doesn't move. 'What does he look like? In the glimpses you've had of him?'
'Guys don't really check out what other guys look like. I guess he's tall. Dark hair. Muscles. Very big muscles.'
'But you've never checked him out,' she says.
'It's hard to miss this guy's muscles.'
She still won't drop it. 'But what does he look like?'
I shake my head. 'I don't know.' And she stares at me and I search around for a word to get her off the subject, grab the first one that comes into my head. 'Lost,' I say, without knowing that I'm going to say it. 'I guess. I don't know.'
That's enough for her, for now, and she gets on the bike. I push off but I'm having real second thoughts about going further into the park. Leo and me can be out in the dark because he's a giant and used to fighting. I know some of the other crews and they're cool, but not everyone out at night is friendly.
Lucy won't listen to me though and we go further into the park, on paths I'd rather not go with her. Twisted ones that lead to the centre and make me think of paths curving into the sky and stopping. It's hard to see where we're headed from where I'm standing. For all I know we could be on a path that ends and we fall into who knows what. Leo and me have fallen down a few hills around here before.
'Maybe we should go back. Some of the path isn't fenced. There's a pretty big drop round here somewhere,' I tell her. I want to go to Barry's and have something to eat. Go somewhere with lights and other people. Somewhere far away from the things I paint.
'We'll feel gravel if we go off the path, won't we?' she asks.
'I guess.'
'Then stop worrying.'
'Easier said than done,' I tell her.
'You have to let your mind go somewhere else,' she says. 'Let it drift to places you want to be. When I don't want to do something, like give a talk or take a test, I imagine that I'm in Al's studio, blowing glass. I'm turning the pipe and I'm breathing out and making something grow from my breath.'
Something about her voice puts me at a wall, in the night, darkness all around, with a world I made in front of me. We both stop worrying.
That's when we fall off the path.
Lucy
I might be jinxed. It's either me or Ed. That thought occurs to me as I'm sailing over the edge and down a hill on my bike, and I feel Ed bouncing off the back. It would have been better for both of us if he'd held on tighter. Without his weight my bike gains momentum and I move so fast I think I'm going to die. 'Shiiiittttt,' I yell, and hold tight to the handlebars. My arms and legs and face cramp up. Uneasy rider, coming through. I go over a bump and keep moving. God I hope that bump wasn't Ed.
I get this moment of clarity as I'm racing, a spark that hits me out of nowhere. If Dylan knows Shadow, and Dylan and Ed are good friends, why doesn't Ed know Shadow better? The moment of clarity doesn't go any further than that because smacking into a tree in the middle of the night will knock clarity right out of a girl, every time.
I take off my helmet and lie there, catching my breath. 'Ed? Are you alive?'
'Yes,' he says from somewhere close by. 'And that's genuinely surprising since your bike went over me about halfway down. You're a very dangerous girl to date.'
'We're not on a date.'
'Lucky me. I might be dead if we were. Are you hurt?'
I do a quick check. 'Nope. The rocks cushioned my fall. Are you?' I get up to shine the bike light on him.
'Uh-huh. Right down the line of that tyre track on my face,' he says, and maybe it's the shock but I lose all control and snort with laughter.
'Don't go listening to the rumours,' he says. 'Guys find snorting girls who run over them with bikes very sexy.'
I snort some more.
'Don't worry about me, I'm fine.'
I catch my breath and calm down and we look up the hill and assess the situation. Mister Tough Guy says we have to walk back up and I know he's right but I really want to call the police or the firemen to come and get us. 'You can't call the police to help you up a hill,' he says. I wonder if my dad could drive his taxi down here. If he knew I was with a boy, he probably could.
'Okay, we walk,' I say. 'But first I'm calling Jazz so someone knows where we are.' We leave the bike light on between us and he limps over to a rock and sits down. He's far enough away so he probably can't hear me but I move even further from him to make sure.
'Are you chewing gum?' I ask when Jazz finally picks up.
'Yeah. Wait a sec.'
'Oh,' I say, putting the pieces together, thinking back to the chewing noises at the party. It's weird but I feel the tiniest bit jealous.
'Okay, I'm back,' she says. 'Where are you?'
'At the bottom of a dark hill with a boy.'
There's silence for a couple of seconds. 'Is that a metaphor?'
'No. I'm really at the bottom of a dark hill. Ed and I rolled down it on my bike.'
'Are you okay?'
'A little shaky but fine.' I look quickly over my shoulder to check Ed's still far away on his rock and then I whisper, 'Ed's funny.'
'Something's going on, isn't it?' She moves away from the phone for a second and I hear her yelling across the crowd, 'Daisy, Leo, something's going on with Ed and Lucy.'
'Oh my God.'
'Okay, I'm back.'
'I can't believe you did that. Leo will tell Ed that I said something's going on. It isn't. He's with Beth,' I whisper.
'Really? She's here, you know. Talking to Leo.'
'There as in within earshot of you yelling that something's going on with me and her boyfriend?'
'I didn't think about that. Hang on. I'll fix it.'
'No, don't!'
But she's gone and I hear her yelling, 'Lucy just wishes something was going on but Ed has a girlfriend so there's nothing.'
This does not comfort me.
She comes back. 'All fixed.'
'All fixed? Now they think I'm delusional. I have to go.' And find a way to spilt my conscious self from my unconscious self so I can erase this memory. I don't think my chances are all that good.
'Wait,' she says. 'We haven't talked about Leo. We've danced but there's no action.'
'What was that noise when you answered?'
'I told you. I was chewing gum.'
'I thought you were kissing and being shy about saying it.'
'I once chased a boy down the street to ask for his phone number. I'm not shy, Luce.'
It's true. And she does love gum. 'So you've put out the signals?'
'I'm a lighthouse. He's got something else on his mind. He keeps looking at his watch. I say, "You got somewhere to go?" And he says, "I have to be somewhere at one. I can come back to the party and get you after that." And I say, "I'll go with you." And he says, "No, you can't come with me." And I think, well, he's not interested.
'But then he picks up one of my plaits and he twirls it, Luce. He twirls it round his finger and I get twirls in the place. Maybe he's thinking about Emma. Maybe he's meeting Emma later. It's driving me crazy. Should I ask Daisy to kick Dylan in the balls so I can find out?'
'It might ruin the mood.'
'The mood is dead for those two. Dylan's been trying to dance with her but she's dancing with a guy called Gorilla. I think she's mad about something more than the eggs. It's sad to watch. He's sitting in a corner now, staring at the two of them. Hang on. Beth's telling me something.'
'Beth?' Oh my God.
'Okay,' Jazz says. 'I've got news. Beth says she and Ed broke up about three months ago.'
I think about that. I think about that some more. 'That's bad, bad news.'
'How do you figure? If you want him, he's free.'
'He's free and he doesn't want me to know he's free because he doesn't want me to think there's even the possibility of us getting together.'
'Are you okay? Your whispers have gone kind of high-pitched.'
'I'm fine. I don't even like him like that.'
'This is me you're talking to.'
'Okay. Maybe I like him a little like that. I don't know. I'm confused. I ran over him with my bike on the way down.'
'You might want to ease up on the assault and battery if you do like him.'
'No. I'm out here looking for Shadow. I should stick to the plan.'
'Maybe Ed's playing hard to get,' she says. 'That's romantic.'
'Lying isn't my idea of romance.'
'Your idea of romance requires a corset and a time machine. Loosen up for once. Hang on. Leo wants to talk to Ed.'
She's gone before I have a chance to tell her the pieces I've learnt about Leo. I walk over to Ed and hand him the phone. He walks to where I was and I sit on his rock. I try as hard as I can to hear him. Trying. Trying. Nope. I can't get no supersonic hearing.
Jazz says the universe tells us answers. I always thought that was stupid but no one else is giving me anything to go on so it might be time for last resorts.
I take out a coin and flip it. Heads means Ed didn't tell me about Beth because he was playing hard to get. Okay. Best out of three. Best out of four. Okay, best out of five. Oh well, there's always Shadow.
I stare at the coin in my hand for a while and do some tricks like Dad taught me. I fold it around my fingers, making it appear and disappear. 'It's about what you make your audience believe,' Dad always says. 'But it's also about what your audience is willing to believe. People want to see you magically pull a coin from your ear. So if you're quick enough, if you hide things well enough, they'll believe.'
I stare at the coin. Tails, and Mum and Dad aren't getting a divorce. Tails, and Dad's only taking a break and the shed isn't a permanent thing. I take a breath and flip the coin.
Ed
I watch Lucy talking to Jazz, watch the mark on her neck, watch her shuffling, watch her, watch her, watch her. Maybe I could tell her who I am while we're standing in front of that wall in the skate park. Or take her to the one I did of Bert. Introduce them, sort of.
Or I could show her the scales I drew near the docks. Like those ones I saw in the Vermeer painting, Woman Holding a Balance. Mrs J told me once that those scales in his painting weighed something important, something like actions or a soul. Bert and me went to the Vermeer exhibition and while we were looking at that painting I asked him, 'What do you think someone's got to do to make a soul heavy?'
'I don't know about souls but a person should live good. No point living if you don't live good.'
While she's on the phone Lucy looks at me every now and then. The only thing I can hear is her occasionally saying, 'Oh my God. Don't. No.'
Leo, what are you telling her? I try to think of ways to explain why I lied. After a while she walks over and hands me the phone. 'Everything okay?' I ask.
'Everything's fine,' she says, and smiles, and I breathe easy again. Easy breathing, I think as I walk away from her and turn my back. I hear Leo laughing before I put it to my ear. 'You fell over the drop?' he asks. 'Hilarious.'
'Hilarious,' I whisper. 'It's dark and we can't call the cops to help us because I'm robbing a place later. I don't want them getting the idea that Lucy has anything to do with it if I get caught.'
Leo stops laughing. 'Yeah, definitely don't call the cops. Listen, Dylan and me are leaving to pick up the van soon. We're coming back to get Jazz and Daisy and then we can swing by the park about one-thirty. You'll be at the top by then.'
I lower my voice even further. 'You can't drive them around in the getaway van.'
'How about we don't call it the getaway van? People might get suspicious.'
'So what should we call it?'
'How about the van?'
'It doesn't change what it is and that it's a shitty thing to do. Someone might see them in it.' I look back at Lucy who's sitting in a pool of bike light flipping a coin. 'I don't want her in this.'
'There's something going on?'
'There's nothing going on. Don't go telling Jazz there's something going on.'
'That's what you said in Year 5 when Mrs Peri accused us of being up to something but she couldn't work out what it was. She was frothing at the mouth and you kept saying, "There's nothing going on."'
'So?'
'So you had the class fish down your pants. There was something going on.'
'Tell Jazz I had a fish down my pants and we're done.'
There's a few beats of silence before he says, 'What do you think about the Jazz Lady? She has these little plaits. I like those little plaits. She points her finger a lot. She knows some good poetry. I recited a few of mine and she really liked them.'
'You recited stuff from the walls?'
'Relax. Not that. Other stuff.'
'What other stuff?'
'Stuff. Don't worry about it.'
'I'm not worried about it. I just didn't know you wrote poetry other than for our pieces. Would you say you're more a poet or social commentator?' I ask, thinking about what Lucy said earlier.
'I don't know.' He chuckles. 'Would you say you're more of an idiot or a wanker?'
'Fair point.'
'So what do you think of Jazz?'
'I think you actually like her so don't do something that'll wreck it. Walk her home and pick up the getaway van and hope you don't get arrested tonight.'
'It's not technically the getaway van till we get away in it. That's two hours from now, give or take. So how about we pick you up near the skate park, go get some food, have a laugh, drop the girls home and then, you know.'
While I'm thinking about it he says, 'By the way, Beth's here looking for you. Says she's got some things to say. Says she tried your mobile. I told her the phone company cut it off because you're broke.'
'Thanks.'
'She doesn't care about that stuff. She wants to get back with you. Should I bring her in the van?'
'Don't get her involved in this. I'll call her from a pay phone. Listen, Lucy still thinks I'm with Beth so don't tell Jazz I'm not.'
I don't like the dead-man quiet that comes after what I just said. 'Leo?'
'Look. Jazz told me that there might be something going on with you and Lucy because Lucy hinted there might be and Beth heard Jazz and so Jazz told her there wasn't anything going on because you two were dating and Beth said you two hadn't dated in about three months.'
'Fuck.'
'It's not all bad,' he says, and I hang up while he's still talking.
I walk over to Lucy. She's spun a coin in the air so I catch it and put it on the back of my hand. 'What are you doing?'
'Asking the universe questions.'
'The universe just dumped you over the side of a steep hill. You really want to ask it questions?' She doesn't laugh. I follow my instinct and cover my nose.
'I can't ask you,' she says. 'You're a liar.'
'Okay, elbows in and stay calm.'
'It's not funny, mister.'
'What do you care if I'm not going out with Beth? You're on an all-night adventure to find Shadow so you can do it with him.'
'Lie down,' she says. 'I want to get my bike and finish the job.'
'Nice.'
We stand there for a while and I don't know what to say. 'Do you want to know what the universe told you?' I hold up the coin.
She grabs it from me and puts it in her pocket without looking. 'That's my dad's coin. My dad is a good man. He doesn't lie.' She wraps her bike helmet strap around and around one handlebar till it's tight and then clicks the clasp. I get the feeling she's imagining the bar is my neck.
'I never said your dad lied,' I tell her, and pick up her bike.
'Just leave it,' she yells when I start walking. 'It's too heavy.'
'It's not too heavy,' I yell back. 'It's fine. Leo's meeting us at the skate park with a van. We can throw it in the back.'
'Excellent,' she says.
'Excellent,' I say, and we stumble over rocks under our feet.
Bert's huffing beside us on the walk up the hill. He's telling me I should say sorry. 'You're acting like a heel,' he said that time Beth came into the shop to bring my things back.
'No one says heel anymore,' I told him.
'Laugh all you want, but I still got my girl.'
I heave the bike higher on my shoulders. It is too heavy but I'll feel better if I have the option of my own getaway ride when we reach the top. Plus, I feel like a heel and I'm trying to make it up to her.
'Move it along,' Lucy says. 'I don't want to miss Leo and Jazz.'
Seems my efforts aren't working. 'Look, I lied about Beth because of the way you were looking at me earlier. Like I was a bag of nothing about to grab you.'
'But then we got friendly and you still didn't tell me.'
'You just ran over me with your bike. When exactly did we get friendly?' But we did talk and we did get friendly and I know it and I should have told her. 'I'm sorry.'
'Is there anything else you lied about?' she asks.
Now's my chance. I'm Shadow. I've lost my job. I'm robbing your school later so I can pay my rent and help Leo clear his debt with Malcolm Dove. 'Uh-uh. Nothing. I broke up with my girlfriend and I didn't feel like talking about it and that's it.'
Gutless wonder, Bert says.
'Why'd you break up with her?' Lucy asks.
'It doesn't matter now. It's done.'
I don't want to talk about Beth stuff with Lucy. I'm already swimming in the swampy part of the river because I kind of like them both, which would be shitty only I don't have a chance with either of them so who cares? Beth might think she wants to get back with me but she doesn't. She doesn't know all of me.
She told me to read this book she was studying in Literature class. 'It's about Vermeer,' she said. 'You like him.' So I sat there, every night, reading a page or two. But my head doesn't hold words. They drop out before I'm putting the next ones in. I'm not any stupider than Leo so if he can hold words, why can't I?
I got him to read it for me and fill me in. I knew all the paintings he was talking about, knew Girl with a Pearl Earring, knew the way Vermeer used that box of his to see things differently. Mrs J told me about his camera obscura when I was still at school. How Vermeer looked through it and everything was mixed around so he could paint how no one else saw. I liked that idea so I watched a documentary on him. I knew lots of stuff, I just hadn't read the stupid book.
But I couldn't tell Beth because she was so happy when I pretended I'd read it. We had this big talk and all the while I felt like she was looking at me through that box of Vermeer's. Everything she saw was true but mixed round the wrong way.
'What are you thinking?' Lucy asks.
'I'm thinking I should have had some carbs before we left the party.'
'I've got a packet of mints in my pocket,' she says, and I get the feeling I'm on the way to being forgiven.
'I'll take it.'
We sit on the hill, halfway to the top, and she divides the packet. 'I like to take my time till they disappear,' she says, and it's a second before I realise she's talking about the mint.
'Me too.'
'Jazz can eat a packet of these in under a minute.'
'Her and Leo should get along then. He can eat a sausage roll in under thirty seconds.'
'You think they'll get together?' she asks.
'I don't know. Maybe. Leo was asking what I thought about her. I said she seemed nice.'
'Nice is too boring. She once chased a guy down the street for his phone number.'
'She catch him?'
'Yep.'
'Then she sounds perfect for Leo.'
Poet
Dance floor
12.45 am
Almost
Your jokes kind of make me laugh
And your hair is fairly close to being cute
Your smile isn't half bad, either
You know, I almost, almost kind of like you
The dress you're wearing is short and sweet
And your boots are kind of cool
You're not, not turning me on
You know, I almost, almost kind of like you
The way you dance definitely isn't stupid
I could maybe get used to the way you move
I'm not saying I've made up my mind
But you know, I almost, almost kind of like you
Ed
I finish the last mint and we start walking again. 'I could carry the bike for a while,' Lucy says. 'I have great muscles because of all the glassblowing.'
I heave the bike higher on my shoulders. At least carrying it gives me an excuse for breathing heavy, other than walking next to her great muscles. 'You say pretty much whatever's in your head, don't you?'
'It's better than saying nothing, which is what you said on our date. I really wanted to talk.'
'You made that pretty clear.' This time I let her call it a date.
'I had it all worked out. I thought we'd talk about art. About Rothko. Or maybe books. Or the weather. There was a hurricane in the north that day.'
She's the strangest girl I've ever met. I didn't know she was this strange when I asked her out in Year 10. I'm not sure I would have asked her if I did. 'So how did our conversation go? The one you had in your head?'
'I thought I'd say something like, "Wasn't that Rothko we saw at the gallery cool?"'
'Very casual.'
'Well it sounds less casual now because we just fell over a hill.'
'True. So what did I say back?'
'I left room for you in the conversation.'
'Considerate.'
'So?'
'Okay, so. Yeah. That Rothko we saw at the gallery was cool.'
'Do you even remember what Rothko we're talking about?'
'What are you, a lawyer? No. 301. Reds and Violet over Red/Red and Blue over Red.'
She looks impressed. 'What was cool about it?'
I think for a bit, remembering how the last wrong answer I gave her won me a broken nose. 'For a while, for as long as you're looking at it, that painting is the world and you get to be in it.'
I try to put into words what it feels like to look at that painting but I can't and that's the point. 'Art like that doesn't need words. That painting tells you something by pulling you into it and pushing you out and you know what it's saying without words being spoken.' I put the bike down for a second. 'Is that what you thought I'd say?'
'No,' she says. 'But that was good. Better.'
I pick up the bike and keep walking. 'What were you planning on saying next?'
'Do you remember the first piece of art that got you hooked?'
'Maybe io from The Spoils by Sam Leach. I've been thinking about it lately, since Bert.'
'The dead birds side by side?'
'The bird on the left had the best blue on its chest. I thought about that painting, while Valerie was at the shop, reading out cards from the funeral. They were all full of bullshit words that didn't get close to Bert's death. But that painting gets close.'
The tiny white bodies making shadows and their skinny legs pointing at the air. Those birds were small enough to fit in my hand but the day before they'd been flying. 'I felt like that painting, when I found Bert lying in aisle three.'
It's quiet after I say that, so quiet. And I'm not that low river on the inside anymore. I'm high tide and trying to keep my head above the water while I'm back in the store looking at Bert, lying face up, his old drawing hands not moving.
Apart from Mrs J, he was the only person who believed I was more than some loser writing on the side of his shop. 'Everyone gets the chance to start again,' Bert said when I made a mistake. And he never went on about it either, the way some people did. He pointed it out and we moved on.
'What do you miss the most about him?' Lucy asks.
That's easy. 'I miss the look he'd get on his face when he swore and then checked to see if Valerie had heard him.' We're at the top of the hill now and we sit to rest for a while.
'He sounds like a good guy,' Lucy says. 'A little like Al, maybe.'
Now that she knows about Beth it feels like there's not such a big gap between her and me. Instead of two people in the middle of us there's only one. Shadow. And I'm him so it's almost just her and me.
'You left school right in the middle of that Jeffrey Smart assignment we were doing. You acted like you didn't care about any of it,' she says, and I know where she's going and I don't want her to ask me again why I left because maybe this time I won't be able to lie.
'It was bad timing. Bert offered me the job and Mum needed the money. I wanted to finish the assignment.'
'You like his work?'
'Him and Vermeer,' I say. 'I like them most of all.'
'They're so different,' she says.
'Maybe. Feels like life's not moving much in either of them, though.'
She's quiet and I don't want her wondering too much about me leaving school so I say something just to say something. 'Can you believe it's this hot in October?'
'It's weird. But I don't mind. It's like we're in a little bubble of December floating in the wrong part of the year.'
'I like that thought.'
'Me too,' a voice behind us says.
Lucy turns. 'Hey, Malcolm.'
Shit. Shit.'You know him?' I ask. 'He's the guy I met outside at the party.'
I look at his suit. 'You thought he was Shadow?'
'Lucy and I had a lovely chat about where I might find you tonight,' Malcolm says.
'You told him where we were going?'
'Yes,' she says, sounding confused.
I fill her in quickly. 'He's a psychopath.' I look at the bike and Malcolm wags his finger. He's brought along the bad men and they're standing behind him with their arms folded. Shuffling and waiting, shuffling and waiting. The bad men aren't people you want to meet in the dark. The bad men aren't people you want to meet in the light.
'So. Leo owes me money.'
'You'll have it tomorrow.'
'I want it now.'
'You tricked me,' Lucy says. She's gone from confused to angry in less than a minute. I consider putting my hand over her mouth but there's no time. 'You acted as if you liked me to find out where we'd be tonight. You're not nice at all.'
And even though it's stupid of her to say because we're in what Bert would call a sticky jam, I can't help laughing at the surprised look on her face. Like it's a shock that some guy she just met isn't what she wanted him to be. Like it's a shock that a guy in a sharp suit isn't nice.
'That's right. You're just good friends,' he says, and I put my hand on Lucy's arm so she doesn't attack.
'Don't let him get to you,' I tell her. 'He eats cockroaches.'
Malcolm grins. 'Just the one.'
'Cockroaches? How do I miss that about someone?' she asks, looking pretty disturbed by her lack of judgment.
'In your defence, that's not the sort of thing you just assume,' I say.
'Enough.' Malcolm's voice is serious now and we both get quiet. 'I want you to give Leo a message for me.'
'That's it? You want us to pass on a message?' I ask.
'That's it.'
'Okay,' I say, feeling pretty lucky until he and the bad men move closer and I get the feeling that the message is going to be in the form of a big bruise on my face. I can't stop looking at Lucy's bike that's lying on the ground. 'If you try to run,' Malcolm says, 'I'll give her the message instead.'
I like Lucy's face, like it more and more as the night thins out. So I let him get closer and as he does the world inside me moves fast and the world outside stays deadly still.
'Why don't you give the message straight to Leo?' Lucy asks, and he ignores her. It took her two meetings but she's figured Malcolm out. That he's giving me the message because Leo could probably take him and his bad men, or at least have a good crack. Malcolm'll deal with Leo if he needs to, but why not start with something easy? Plus, it's like it was with the cockroach. Sometimes Malcolm likes to do strange stuff.
The bad men hold me and I don't like to admit it but my knees are making clackitty-clack sounds. They shake even more when he pulls out a compass and twirls it round his fingers like a naughty circus performer. 'I'm going to give you a nipple ring.'
He's giving me a present? No, that's not right, he's not giving me a present. I'm all whirl inside, all spin. Where's Leo? Leo and me are always together when stuff like this happens, that's why it's funny. It's funny because we get away. It's not funny if we don't get away. If we don't get away it's shit.
'Pull up your shirt,' Malcolm says, and he's got this puppy smile going crazy. He puts the compass to my skin. I close my eyes and feel the point. It's going to hurt so, so bad. Lucy takes hold of my hand, which is nice but I'm not really in the mood right now.
Malcolm stops. 'I'll do you a favour. How's that?'
'That's great,' I say. 'That's so great.'
'I'll pierce your ear first.'
'We need to talk about the definition of a . . . fuuuuuuuck!' I yell, as he pushes the compass straight through my ear. 'You are crazy,' I say, shoving him off. He's laughing harder than the day he ate the cockroach.
That's when it happens. Lucy cracks him in the face. I look away for a second and then I look back. It's too good to miss. There's blood and screaming and I feel better because I didn't scream when she hit me and I only cried later, which was the effect of the anaesthetic.
'That wasn't an accident, mister,' she says. And then she goes white and while the bad men are busy checking out Malcolm's nose I pick up the bike, tell her to get on and I ride, her lightning bolt helmet bumping against the handlebars.
My legs pump and my heart spins crazy and it feels so good not to have given in to some loser who thinks he can tell us what to do and we'll just do it because he's got us up against a wall and it looks like there's no way we can escape. But we can escape. We do. We spill across the park, spill and fly and there's light rising from somewhere ahead, from the skate park, from the light that hangs over the wall I want to show her. 'How are we doing?' I call.
'I'm about to vomit.'
'Well, that's bad, since it'll land on me, but I meant, are we losing them?'
I feel her twist and turn back. 'We're doing good. I can't even see them. How is your ear?'
'It has a compass-size hole in it so, you know. It's sore.'
Her hands are on my back and we're rolling through the park, rolling on our getaway bike. I'm back to where I was with Beth, the air moving again, making way for me, making way. I stop at the skate park and we topple onto the grass, close, circled by heat from the air and heat from our breath. 'You really cracked him hard.'
'I hope he's okay,' she says.
'I hope he's hospitalised.'
'Do you think we're safe here? He might be chasing us.'
'Trust me, I've been where he is. He's not running anywhere. And even if he is, by the time they cover the ground we did on the bike, Leo'll be here.'
She pulls a tissue from her pocket and it's old and dirty and she'll probably kill me with infection but I don't say that because I don't care. I don't care because I'm close to her now and I see that mark on her neck and I'm back at that wall, painting those lines on a face that's all mystery, all something I want to understand. Only this time my car's not blowing smoke because she's interested, maybe.
And she looks over my shoulder, touching my ear, taking in my wall. A huge storm, a monster. Waves bigger than buildings. It took me all night to get the blues and the greens moving in and out of each other. To get the yellow sky swirling above the dark waves, swirling above these two figures on the shore. A guy with a surfboard and a little fish, next to him. Me and Beth at the beginning. Me and Bert, too. Me and Leo.
She looks at it and looks back at my ear and I don't know if she sees me in the piece or not. How could she not see me in it? That's all I am, some guy on a shore, trapped by waves and looking for a way to swim. 'What do you think?' I ask her, but she's back to looking at my ear.
'It's not completely pierced. I think you could let it heal or go all the way.'
I'm making travel plans again and getting real close, my breath touching hers and she's not moving back. She's not moving at all. 'I choose go all the way,' I tell her and feel like a complete wanker, but being a wanker doesn't ruin the moment. She leans forward and I'm about to kiss her. Finally, I'm about to kiss her. I lean in, my mouth so close, so close. And then she goes white and I roll out of the way because I'm pretty sure she's about to heave.
Lucy
Ed's breath wanders over me, and he spotlights that freckle on my neck with his eyes and the heat of the night is sharper than ever and it feels like we're hanging from the sky or the ceiling. Swaying around each other without our feet on the ground. If we touched I wouldn't be surprised to hear chiming. I press that tissue to his ear and my fingers tingle. He asks me what I think and I tell him he could let it heal or go all the way. He chooses go all the way.
He says it in a voice that makes me think cool, not idiot, and a line like that is one hundred per cent risk. I'm not sure of anything, not sure if he means what I think he means, not sure if the adrenalin is playing tricks on me. Not sure if he's the one I like or if the one I like is Shadow. Maybe it's both. It's definitely not Malcolm Dove.
Like I said before, a girl doesn't think clearly when faced with electrocution, and if Ed is a toaster then I am a girl with a knife. I'm about to say something in reply, maybe ask him what he means or just let him kiss me, which I think is where we're headed, when I have a flash of Malcolm's nose and a flash of him eating a cockroach and this wave rises in me and I'm pretty sure I'm going to throw up.
I think all the experts agree that throwing up while a guy tries to kiss you is bad. It puts all but the very, very keen off and I'm not sure that Ed is very, very keen. I try hard to stop thinking about Malcolm's blood but the harder I try the more I think.
'It's Malcolm's nose,' I say to Ed, so he doesn't get the wrong idea. 'And the cockroach.' I don't want him to think it's the thought of his kiss that's making me sick.
'Lean forward,' he tells me. 'And think about something else.'
'Like what?'
'Something good. What's something good?'
We can definitely rule out this exact moment. 'My glass. I like my glass.'
'Okay, so talk about the studio. How long have you been working there?'
'Since Year 10.' I lean further forward and take deeper breaths. 'My parents couldn't afford the whole cost so I cleaned in exchange for lessons.'
'Not a lot of money in writing or comedy, huh?'
'Not a lot. But they have jobs on the side and one day Dad'll get famous and Mum'll get published. You don't need money, anyway.'
'You need it to pay the rent,' he says.
'But not to be happy.'
'Glass makes you happy. Can't do that without money.'
I sit up. 'No. But there are ways. You find ways. Like cleaning.'
'You think you could be happy? Cleaning for a living?'
'Yep. If it meant I could do my glassblowing.'
'You'd eventually want to work on your glass all the time though, wouldn't you? Are your parents happy, working at some shitty job on the side of what they really love?'
'I didn't say that they have shitty jobs,' I keep taking those deep breaths. 'They have jobs on the side but they're happy. Lately, Mum's been writing loads. She's nearly finished her novel.'
Since Dad moved into the shed she's stopped saying she's too tired to write. She comes home and cooks us dinner and we talk. She likes hearing about glass, about what I learn from Al. How I have to cool my pieces the right way or internal pressures make them explode.
After dinner I do my homework while Mum types away. We go until midnight sometimes, stopping for cups of tea but not talking because Mum says an artist needs headspace. Mrs J and Al say the same thing. So does Dad.
'My mum really likes that she and Dad are artists, even if it means we don't have much money. They tell me to work at my art, no matter what.'
'Stop talking for a while,' Ed says. 'Breathe.'
I put my head down again and think about Mum telling me that a person has to do what they love and that money doesn't matter. Dad didn't move into the shed because they were fighting about money. It would be less confusing if that were the reason.
I feel better after a while. Ed's breathing calms me. So does the wash of traffic coming from the side road. I sit up and look at the monster waves on the wall. 'You think it's a tsunami?'
'Tsunami waves aren't steep like other waves,' Ed says. 'If you were in a boat in deep water a tsunami might go underneath and you'd never notice. It's only when they're close to shore that they get big.'
'I didn't know that. You could be in trouble and have no idea.'
'Uh-huh.'
I think back to what Ed said about the money. Maybe Mum and Dad are fighting because of that but I never realised. 'I wonder what Shadow does for a living.'
'Maybe he's unemployed. Maybe he can't get a job.'
'He buys paint,' I say.
'Maybe he steals it.'
'He wouldn't do that. He's not that sort of person.'
'You didn't think Malcolm was that sort of person.'
'So you think Shadow is a bad guy?' I ask.
Ed scratches his head and looks at me. 'We should stop talking, in case you think of the blood and the broken bones and the cockroach.'
The others arrive while I've got my head between my legs again, taking deep breaths. 'Things are going well I see,' Leo says.
Jazz kneels and holds back my hair. 'You got her drunk?'
'I didn't get her drunk,' Ed says. 'I got her attacked by Malcolm Dove. Technically, he attacked me and she attacked him. Broke his nose.'
Leo laughs when he hears that. He slaps me on the back, which really isn't a good idea. 'I need water,' I say.
Jazz and Daisy help me over to the tap. After I feel better we move to the skate ramp and lean our backs against the curved concrete so we can watch the guys.
'What do you think they're talking about?' Jazz asks. 'It looks kind of intense.'
'Maybe how much money Leo owes Malcolm,' I say.
Daisy hugs her legs. 'Dylan talks about that guy but I always thought he was exaggerating.'
'He's threatening to pierce Ed's nipple if Leo doesn't pay up.' I stare across at the wave on the wall. 'This has been the strangest night.'
'I've got material for my drama audition coming out of my ears,' Jazz says.
'Lucky you. I've got it coming out of my mouth,' I tell her, and she hands me some gum and a roll of peppermints. I give her and Daisy the details about Ed almost kissing me.
Jazz whistles. 'If you hadn't nearly vomited I'd have said you were in.'
'You think I put him off?'
'I'm saying it's something you have to consider. Then again, you did break his nose and he came back for more. Daisy?'
'Vomit doesn't turn a guy off. I remember this time I had the flu in Year 10. Dylan skipped classes to sit next to me with tissues and a bucket. He never does stuff like that anymore.'
'Sometimes you sound like you still like him.' Jazz hands her some gum as well.
'I do like him,' she says. 'You know he arranges the textbooks in his locker in alphabetical order?'
I shake my head. Some things you can't guess about a person.
'But he forgot my birthday. It's today.'
'Then we forgot it too,' I say.
She laughs. 'You never knew it. But now I've told you when it is I bet you remember next year.'
'You should have told us before,' Jazz says. 'We could have celebrated.'
'I wanted Dylan to remember on his own because he forgot last year too. When today he said, "I got something for you," I thought he'd remembered. Then he threw a carton of eggs at my head. What sort of girl likes a guy who does that?'
Jazz rubs Daisy's shoulder. 'On the bright side, eggs are good for the hair. Your hair looks great tonight.'
'Thanks.' She stretches her chewing gum till it breaks. 'But I'd rather have bad hair and a birthday present.'
'I think Ed still likes Beth,' I say after a while. 'I asked him why they broke up. He wouldn't say.'
'Guys don't always talk about that sort of stuff, Luce,' Jazz says. 'That's not necessarily a bad sign.'
'She was at the party looking for him,' Daisy tells me. 'He knows that and he hasn't called her.'
'He doesn't have a mobile phone.'
Jazz thinks for a bit. 'The important thing is, Beth's not here and you are and there was an almost kiss so you've got a window.'
'I thought you liked Shadow,' Daisy says.
'Shadow is a figment. She's got to forget Shadow. Ed is real and standing over there with an almost-pierced ear.'
Jazz might be right. I'm still on the fence between Shadow and Ed but I'm leaning towards falling off on Ed's side. 'What should I do?'
Jazz thinks again. 'Don't talk about the almost kiss. That will kill any hope of future kisses. People like you and Ed have to grab each other and go for it.'
'People like me and Ed?'
'Uptight people,' she says.
'I'm that bad?'
'You are, and it's worse because Beth Darling is like that singer from the Bleeding Hearts.'
'Oh my God.'
'Don't worry, you've got your own style,' Daisy says.
Sure I do. She might be like the singer from the Bleeding Hearts but I'm cool too. 'I'm like Courtney Love without the drugs, right? Edgy. Full of unspoken feeling.'
'You're a brick when the guy is real and in front of you,' Jazz says. 'Don't take that the wrong way.'
His ex is grungy-sensitive-girl-band and I'm a brick when I'm not being delusional. 'It would have killed you to humour me with the Courtney Love comparison?'
'Bricks aren't bad.'
'Say that when one's sailing towards your face.'
'There's hope if you take my advice. Stop over-thinking it, stop wishing for a Shadow you'll never find and start flirting with Ed.'
'Ed may need a faceguard,' I say. 'I flirt like chopper blades.'
'So start slow. Ease into it.'
'Flirt like slow chopper blades,' Daisy says, blowing a bubble that pops on her face.
'So what's happening with you and Leo?' I ask. 'Did he leave you to get the van?'
'It was like he wanted me to follow him but he couldn't tell me that so I followed him without being asked.'
'The stalker defence,' I say.
'He danced with me all night and recited poetry. He was begging for a good stalking. Anyway, so Daisy and I catch up with him and Dylan after a while and we walk the couple of blocks together then Leo makes us wait at the corner. He wouldn't tell us why.'
'Maybe the van has something to do with the money.' I look at Daisy. 'What do you think?'
She shrugs. 'I think Ed and Leo are good guys. I think Dylan's an idiot but he's a good guy too. Leo's brother knows some scary people, though. Leo probably didn't want us to freak out when we saw who he was borrowing the van from.'
'That makes sense,' Jazz says. 'So you don't think it was because Emma was at the place?'
'She's not the type of girl who'd be out in the middle of the night. She's the sort of girl Leo could take home to his gran.'
'Why does he live with his gran?' Jazz asks. 'What happened to his parents?'
'Ed said they drank a lot,' I tell her.
Jazz sits up. 'I've been dancing with the guy for two hours and you know more about him than I do. All I know is that he likes poetry. I mean, why does he need a van anyway?'
'Guys like vans,' Daisy says. 'No mystery there. I know what you mean, though. It's frustrating. Dylan hardly tells me anything.'
We look across at the three huddled shadows. 'Something's not right,' Jazz says. 'They look like they're plotting. Doesn't it look like they're plotting something?'
'Is it time to kick Dylan?' Daisy asks.
'It might be,' Jazz answers, and we watch their outlines move.
Ed
The girls walk Lucy to the tap and I get straight to the point. 'Malcolm's piercing my nipple if you don't get him the money.'
'I don't like the word nipple,' Leo says.
'Me neither,' I tell him. 'I like it even less when it's in the same sentence as compass and Ed.'
'He won't be piercing anything once I find him. Stick with me. You'll be fine.'
'I'll have to stick with you for the rest of my life if you don't get him the money. Lucy will, too. He has many bad men with him, Leo. You need to call Jake and organise backup.'
'He'll be fine once he gets paid.'
I think about the blood coming from his nose and the screaming. 'I don't know about that but at least get Jake to advance the money so you can give it to him now.'
'I don't want Jake knowing I owe Malcolm.'
Leo looks cagey. Apart from tonight, Leo never looks cagey. 'Why'd you need five hundred dollars in the first place?' I ask.
'None of your business.'
I point at my piercing. 'This makes it my business.'
Dylan looks closely at my ear. 'Did he sterilise the compass? Because if he didn't that'll get infected.'
'You know, he didn't seem all that concerned with my welfare.'
'And since the bad men might still be in the park somewhere I think we should go,' Leo says. 'Lucky we've got a getaway van. It's legit to call it the getaway van now because we're using it to get away from Malcolm.'
'I get it, Leo.' I also get the feeling he's changing the subject, which makes me more curious about the five hundred dollars so I ask him again.
'I told you, I needed it for Gran.'
'Blue rinses gone up in price?' Dylan asks.
'My gran could take you in a fight, so shut up.' It's true so Dylan does what he's told. Leo turns to me. 'Beth told me to tell you to meet her at the place at five this morning. She wanted to meet earlier. I said you were busy.'
'Great. She either thinks I'm with a girl or robbing a place.'
'You are with a girl and robbing a place.' He pulls out his keys and swings them around. 'So I was thinking. It's only one-thirty. We've got an hour or so to kill before we take the girls home. What's the name of the hocus-pocus lady your mum went to see at the casino? The Jazz Lady loves psychic phenomena.'
'We've got secrets coming out our arses and you want to take them to a clairvoyant?'
'Speak for yourself. There aren't any secrets coming out of my arse.'
'Only shit,' I tell him, and Dylan steps back a little.
'Okay,' Leo says, 'what's your problem?'
My problem is I got attacked for him and Lucy nearly got attacked for him and he won't tell me why he needed five hundred dollars. But it's been the other way round plenty of times and Leo hasn't had a problem with me.
'Nothing,' I say. 'My ear hurts. And even if I wanted to go see Maria I don't have money for a ticket.'
He pulls out fifty bucks. 'Here.'
'Where'd you get that?'
'Jake gave me some money for petrol.'
I don't take it because if I do I've taken money from the job and that means there's no way out and I'm hoping that there is. I imagine a piece I could do, a tree with money dripping off the leaves and a guy picking it up. I put a girl next to him and she looks a lot like Lucy and the guy looks a lot like me and when they kiss the money falls softly on their shoulders.
Leo tucks the fifty into my pocket. 'Relax. You don't even believe in psychics. We make a quick stop at the casino. Far away from Malcolm. We get something to eat there. We drop the girls home.'
'Who's going home?' Jazz asks, walking over with Daisy and Lucy.
'Ed thought he might need a jumper,' he tells her.
'It's over thirty degrees.'
'I told him he was worrying about nothing.'
She points a finger. 'Out with it. You're up to something.'
'Relax,' Leo says. 'We're not up to anything.'
Jazz points two fingers at us now. One from each hand. 'If Daisy has to kick someone to find out what's going on then she will.'
Daisy taps her foot and I stand in front of Dylan. I've seen her in action and one kick sends the truth spilling from his mouth.
'We were planning a surprise,' Leo says. 'Ed's mum is seeing this all-night psychic at the casino and we thought we'd take you.' He looks at me. There's no way out now.
'Maria Contessa,' I tell them.
'Maria Contessa? She's the best in the business. The cops use her to solve crimes. My mum's seen her. She comes to Australia like once every five years . . .'
Jazz keeps talking about the great Maria and I know we're going with all our secrets to see the clairvoyant who works with the cops.
Leo grins. 'To the getaway van.' He walks ahead towards the road with his arm slung around Jazz's shoulders.
'So you're not really up to anything?' she asks him.
'I'm up to nothing.'
'Promise that you're not up to anything,' she says.
'Are you and Leo and Dylan up to anything?' Lucy asks while I'm waiting for Leo to answer.
I think back to the night Leo talked to me from the floor, telling me he didn't like sleeping because that's when he dreamt. Telling me because in the dark it felt like we weren't awake, weren't even real.
'I promise,' Leo says to Jazz.
'You can tell me,' Lucy says, and we walk closer to the road where the cars wash sunlight across the night. I'm about to say, it's me you've been chasing, what do you think about that? Do you still want to do it with Shadow now? But before the words are out Leo starts the van and I get distracted.
He's grinning and revving the engine as I walk over. 'Tell me this isn't the getaway van,' I say quietly, leaning into the driver's window.
'Don't worry. It's better than it looks.'
I stop worrying about the rest of them hearing. 'It looks pink. It looks like a pink VW van with Free Love written on the side in huge letters.'
'So?'
'So people are going to notice us.' Police are going to notice us.
'People are noticing us now,' he says, looking at the girls. 'Get in quietly and we'll talk about it later.'
It's Jake and the Jag all over again. Only this time Leo and Dylan and me are the ones being caught and we're not getting off easy. It'll be the cops dragging us by the ear and not his gran.
I don't move. 'Get in,' he mouths through the window. I walk the way Lucy's gone. 'It's got pink carpet on the walls,' she says. 'And there aren't any seats in the back.'
'You sit on the floor,' Daisy says. 'And hold on to the sides like this.' She shows her. 'See?'
Lucy nods, gets in and holds on tight to the pink fur of the free love van. Dylan and Daisy are on the same side as her so I heave the bike in opposite them. I stay outside, thinking things through. If I was a good guy I wouldn't take her for this ride. Don't take her for this ride, Bert would say. If she gets arrested then there go her chances at uni. There go her chances at studying glass. Tell her to get out of the van and go home.
'Ed?' she asks. Go home now, I think. Go home and forget about me and Shadow. Go home and sit in front of the TV and get up in the morning and make glassed-in memories and study for your exams and get into uni.
But then she smiles and I think about sitting next to her so I cram in and close the door.
'Whose is this, anyway?' she asks, running her hands along the fluffy pink walls.
'Crazy Dave's,' Dylan says before he thinks about it.
'You took the girls to Crazy Dave's?' I ask.
'We waited on the corner,' Jazz says. 'Leo wouldn't let us go to the house.'
At least Leo's acting like he's got half a brain. Wait a minute. 'This van belongs to Crazy Dave?' I try to be calm but the calm's not coming.
'Who's Crazy Dave?' Jazz asks.
'Some guy,' Leo says. 'Nobody. A friend of my brother's.' He looks back at me in the mirror, eyes telling me to shut up. Lucy looks at me too, and now's the time to say stop the van and get out. But if I say that then I don't get to touch that spot on her neck, ever.
'They just call him crazy because he ate five cockroaches once,' I say, and everyone laughs and talks about urban legends like I knew they would. I don't look at Lucy because she's looking at me and if I look back then maybe I'll tell her the truth.
Leo swings around a corner and we bounce and her leg touches mine. I lean my head back and my ear throbs and the lights through the front windshield flicker and everything's messing together and I want to get out but we're on the freeway and there's no escape till Leo takes the exit and maybe there's no escape even then.
I close my eyes and spray a piece in my head, a wall with a shadow guy on it and a shadowy road in front of him. I feel Lucy next to me and I want to tell her right now, tell her everything. But those shadows are laughing and asking me, what good would that do? What are you thinking? You can't go back to the bottom of that hill and stay with her there. You got to climb to the top sooner or later and people like Malcolm are always waiting for you.
I had a chance while Bert was alive. I had a place to go every day. I had Beth, someone who kept the shadows from my blood. But now there's just me, wandering round the galleries and trying to write job applications full of spelling mistakes. Job applications for things I don't want to do anyway.
Daisy tells Dylan to get lost and I open my eyes to see him aim a pillow at her head but miss and hit Lucy. 'Oops,' Dylan says, and Daisy gets stuck into him and the two go at it, ducking and sending punches and it's clear they've got just enough love left to murder each other.
Lucy's looking at them and every now and then they try to drag her into the fight but she just shrugs and keeps watching them like a tennis match, back and forth and back and forth.
'You could have hurt her,' Daisy says.
'It's a fluffy heart. It's not hurting anyone.'
'Like the eggs, right?' she asks.
'That's what this is all about, isn't it? The eggs?'
'Don't say it like I'm being stupid. You threw a carton of them at my head.'
'Exactly. A whole carton. I used the last of my eggs on you.' He crosses his arms. 'It was a celebration.'
'You know what? Stay away from me on my birthday.'
'Count on it. You know what? It's over. O-V-A-R.'
Daisy laughs at him. 'You spelt it wrong, idiot. It's O-V-E-R.'
'That's what I said.'
'No it wasn't, was it, Lucy?' she asks.
'I'm not really sure. Can we maybe open a window in here? I'm feeling kind of van sick.'
'You're an idiot,' Daisy says to Dylan. 'I've been dating an idiot.'
'Leo,' I yell. 'Open your window. Quick.'
'You don't get to call me an idiot if we're not dating anymore. I've got some self-respect.'
'That's a high benchmark you set for yourself. Only your girlfriends get to call you an idiot.'
'Why are you so mad at me? We were kissing behind the sheds last week.' He turns to Lucy. 'Do you know why she's so mad?'
'Why would Lucy know?' Daisy asks. 'Why don't you ask me?'
All the while Dylan and Daisy are yelling, Lucy's getting whiter but they don't notice, they just keep going at it. 'Will you two shut up? Can't you see she's sick?' I ask.
'Let me out. Get me out,' she says.
'Stop the van, Leo,' I yell.
Daisy looks at her. 'She's about to hurl. Stop the van.'
'I'm on a freeway in the right-hand lane.'
'Stop. The. Van,' we shout, and Lucy hangs her head and I put my hand on her back and hold her so she doesn't swing. I really like holding her, which feels kind of pathetic considering the situation.
'Hang on, everyone,' Leo calls, and the van moves and I grip her tighter. We stop and she gets out and falls on her knees. She doesn't heave. She kneels there, but she doesn't heave.
'Sensitive, isn't she?' Daisy asks.
I pull her hair back and see that spot on her neck and think how I'd like to get closer. You'd have to be a different guy for that to happen, the shadows say. Maybe I could be. Maybe there's a way I could be a different guy. What way, the shadows ask, but I don't have an answer.
The others go across the road to the petrol station for food. I look around for a place Lucy and me can wait, other than the scene of her near-heaving. 'I've got an idea,' I say, and climb the fence next to the van. I'm level with the roof but I need to be higher. There's no way to get across to it without standing on the very top of the fence and I think screaming while I fall will probably ruin my cool image.
'You'd have to be Superman to get on that way,' she says.
'And I'm not?'
She grins and opens the driver's door a little. Then she climbs the fence and uses the open door to step onto the roof.
I follow her. 'Some girls let the boys look cool,' I say.
'What girls?' she asks.
I don't have an answer.
'I'm not so cool,' she says, lying back on the roof. 'I keep nearly vomiting.'
I lie next to her and try to get a laugh by telling the story about me throwing up my lunch in the car when I was nine. I tell her every humiliating detail down to the bit about the busload of schoolgirls watching. 'Scarred me for life.'
'And them too, I bet,' she says, flicking that band. 'I wasn't travel sick.'
'Still thinking about the blood?' I ask, turning my head to look at her. We're close enough to touch but we're not touching.
'Not that either.'
I stare at her and she stares at the sky but she's really staring at that thing in her head again.
'My mum and dad fought like that. Almost exactly like Dylan and Daisy. Back and forth about stupid things. She once told him to stick the remote control in his uvula.'
'That sounds bad.'
'It's the little flap at the back of the throat.'
'Not as bad as I thought, then.'
'He told her to stick it in her punchline.'
'Your parents sound kind of strange,' I say.
'They are sometimes. Mostly they're great. They only fought like that for about two months and then they stopped. They don't fight anymore. Dylan and Daisy reminded me what it was like, that's all.'
'I'm glad I don't have parents that fight,' I say. 'Even if that means it's only me and Mum.'
'Jazz says my parents are getting a divorce.'
'What do you say?'
She thinks a bit. 'I say she's probably right.'
I want to hold her hand and I'm not sure if I can or if I should. I feel like I'm on a shaky staircase in one of those surrealist paintings. This night came out of nowhere and it's hanging midair, half-finished.
From across the road I hear Daisy yelling at Dylan. 'Why is she so mad?' I ask.
'He forgot her birthday.'
'That's it? I'll tell him and he can buy her a card.'
'I don't think it's that simple,' she says, and reaches her arms up, grabbing at stars.
Lucy
'I don't think it's that simple,' I say to Ed.
If you treat glass right it doesn't crack. If you know the properties you can make things the colour of dusk and night and love. But you can't control people like that and I really, really wish you could. I want the world to be glass.
I think I knew as soon as I saw Dad drinking his lemonade out the front of the shed that he wasn't moving back in. I think I knew when I heard the quiet that followed him leaving. I don't know why they're getting a divorce. I know they still love each other, but I guess love's kind of like a marshmallow in a microwave on high. After it explodes it's still a marsh mallow. But, you know, now it's a complicated marshmallow. In those two months when they were fighting, before Dad moved out, they exploded a lot.
The reason I love that Rothko painting so much is because, like Ed said, I don't have to put what I feel into words. I look at it and while I'm staring I understand something about love. It's not pink. It's different reds bleeding into each other. Mum and Dad are somewhere in those reds. They were closer to crimson when they were fighting, but since Dad moved out there's been this quiet around Mum. She's nearly finished her book and she doesn't snap about small things and sometimes I catch her stretching out on the bed like a starfish and sighing. She's doing that while he's nailing new numbers on the door of the shed. So why don't they get on with it and divorce each other? I guess maybe they're staying together for my sake.
That's the thought that made me sick. I tried to have an out-of-body experience in the back of the van but it wasn't any good. A girl can't levitate to get away from the truth. Even if she can, sooner or later she'll fall back into the world how it is.
And Mum and Dad how they are, divorced or not, are okay. Sure they're a little weird and the great love they had ended in potatoes that can't be rehydrated, but the way they love me, that's lasting. They're never moving me into the shed.
I reach up and draw a few wishes in the air. I draw Dad in a place that has a nice view and a good coffee shop around the corner that's not too far from me. I draw a shed empty of him. I put a desk in there so Mum can use it for an office. They're complicated drawings so I draw something simple as well.
I draw me kissing Ed.
'It's been a long night,' he says. 'We're nearly at the thin part.'
'And we've still got to get back in the pink van and go to the casino.'
'You didn't even get to meet Shadow.'
'You know,' I say, 'I'm losing interest in the whole Shadow thing.'
I turn to look at him and he's looking at me and our noses are almost touching. He's got tiny dots of white paint on his ears. 'You mean you don't want to do it with a guy who likes art anymore?' The way he says 'do it' makes me zing quite a bit.
'Other guys like art. You like art.' Go on, I think. Go on and give me a kiss.
'Lucy, there's something I need to tell you.'
You're dying to kiss me; I knew it. 'What?'
'It's about Shadow. About me and Shadow.'
Enough talking, mister. Grab my arse.
'I do know him. I mean, I've met him. I never said because I thought you might be disappointed. In him. He's not what you think. He's not a bad guy. But he lost his job a while back and his mum isn't all that good at paying the bills. All that romance you want, that perfect guy you've got in your head. He's not that.'
'I don't need the perfect guy. That was stupid of me, thinking I did.' I'm not talking about Shadow, now. I don't want Ed to think I don't want him because our first date wasn't perfect. I think about that blindfolded kissing couple. Who's to say what's perfect and what's not perfect? Right now, I'd be willing to kiss Ed through a bag. So it's true what they say about teenage hormones. It seems I'm raging out of control. It's not very Jane Austen of me but it feels pretty good.
The problem is, Ed's acting all Jane Austen on me and he won't stop talking. Shut up, I want to say. All talk and no action is really kind of frustrating.
'He's not even close to that guy you want,' Ed says, and sits up.
'Okay, I get it. Shadow bad.' Ed good. Lucy stupid. Everything's much simpler than I thought it was. Now lie down again.
'No, you don't get it.' He leans his elbows on his knees and his hands tap away on his boots. 'Shadow's planning on stealing some stuff later. From your school. From the Media block.'
'Mrs J's block? He's stealing from other artists?' I sit up. I think about it. 'He's stealing at all? He's a criminal.'
'Well, you knew that. He's a graffitist.'
'That's different from being a thief.'
Ed nods slowly, his eyes escaping with every car on the freeway. 'It is different.' I watch the cars too. We watch for ages. Just two people stuck on the side of the road, alone on the roof of a free love van. I'm not sure what Ed's thinking but I'm thinking about how wrong a person can be.
'A lot of people going somewhere,' Ed says eventually. 'That blue one. Where do you think it's headed?'
I've played this game before. 'To the desert. To red dust and hot stillness.'
'The desert's ugly. It's mostly dead, isn't it?' Ed asks.
'Not when you know where to look.' I flick that band three times for luck and courage before I say what I'm thinking. 'It's okay. That you didn't tell me about Shadow.' I flick it again. 'I understand why. Things are different now, anyway.' I move so that my arm is against his arm. He moves, too.
We sit in this place that's real and not something I invented to keep me going. Shadow can rob the school; he can paint oceans. He can do whatever he wants. I'm brushing against Ed.
I scratch at the paint of the van with my nails and some of it comes off. 'You know,' I say, 'I think in another lifetime, this van might have been blue.'
Ed
I'm looking right at her. There's one movement between me and that freckle and I could lean over and start this whole thing off between us. 'Lucy, there's something I need to tell you.' She asks me what and I tell her it's about Shadow. 'About me and Shadow.'
The words are finally out there. I'm painting a wall for us, a Shadow stepping back into the person who cast it, and becoming solid. I can't think of the words quick enough to tell her, though, and she's filling in the outline for me and somewhere in the telling and the hearing I'm sitting instead of lying next to her.
'He's a criminal,' she says.
And I am but I'm not and I want to put her on pause and paint a wall where I explain everything. A wall that starts years back and goes until now. A guy with thoughts bashing at the inside of his head with no way to get out. A guy with the doors in his brain open to the world but closed to him. A guy sitting on the side of the road, watching a blue car go past.
She tells me that car is going to the desert. That it's not an ugly place. That if I looked I'd see signs of life. I'm tired of looking. I want something to be easy. I want to get in one of those cars and go someplace where I can paint on air so people know what I'm thinking without me having to say.
She moves closer and I move closer and I'm back at that wall, painting that ghost in a jar. I'm brushing against her. She smiles at me and I'm lost. She tells me that the van we're sitting on was blue in another lifetime. I want to believe it.
Leo and the guys come back across the freeway and we climb off the roof and cram back into the van. Leo takes off and I talk to hear her talk back. 'Pink is a shitty colour.'
'It depends,' she says. 'Last year Mrs J took us to this exhibition by an artist called Angela Brennan. It was full of paintings that were so vivid: pink and green and red. I think you would have liked it.'
'Not really a pink kind of guy.'
'You'd have liked the title. It was called Everything is what it is and not some other thing.'
'Be easier if we all called things what they really are.'
'What would you do if you weren't at the paint store?' she asks.
'Work at McDonald's, probably.'
'No you wouldn't,' she says.
'No I wouldn't. I'd study art, I guess. But I don't have Year 12.'
'At Monash University you can do this course that's like Year 11, but if you do well in it you go through to the uni. Al told me about it when I was in Year 10.'
'So you do all practical stuff?'
'I guess some essays, but mostly practical. Why don't you apply?' she asks.
'No money to do a course.'
'You can get grants and you could keep working at the paint store, part-time.'
'Maybe,' I say, and catch Leo looking at us in the rear-view.
But like the lady says, everything is what it is and not some other thing. I can't write essays and I don't have a job at the paint store. I don't have choices. Maybe things would have been different if I'd heard about the course when Bert was alive. 'No guts, no glory,' he'd have said before he helped me get on with it.
Leo pulls into a car park near the casino. The night's thick and humming here, even though it's close to two. We walk over and watch people go headfirst into the glitter.
The queue for Maria runs all the way alongside the taxi rank. I guess a lot of people in the city are looking for magic. My mum'd give her last five dollars to that woman for a bit of hope, and when a person's hoping that hard it's wrong to take their money.
'I got a bad feeling about this,' I say to Leo and Dylan while the girls are in the toilet. 'I don't want to go in.'
'You've been telling your mum this is stupid for years and now suddenly you believe it?' Leo asks. 'Maria Contessa is not going to bust us in front of the girls.'
'I can't explain it. But I don't want to go in there.'
'I want to go in there,' Dylan says. 'I want to find out why Daisy's so mad.'
'You forgot her birthday,' I tell him.
His pupils dilate a bit. 'I knew there was something I meant to get with the eggs. Don't go in without me. Tell the girls I'm in the toilet or something.' He runs to the doors and disappears into the casino.
'I'm serious, I'm not going in,' I say to Leo while we wait. 'I'm asking Lucy if she wants to get some food with me before we take her home. I'll meet you back here at two-thirty. Half an hour's heaps of time to drop them off and get to the school.'
'I know you're pissed at me,' Leo says. 'I know why.'
'Forget it. I'm worried about getting caught, that's all.'
'I didn't know the van was Crazy Dave's. Jake told me to go to Montague Street and by the time I worked out it was his house it was too late to turn back. But I told Jazz she couldn't come in there with me.'
'I know.'
'I'm not a total idiot. I'm not completely out of control.'
'You really like her, huh?'
'She eats a lot of lollies,' he says. 'More than I eat sausage rolls.'
'That's quite a few lollies, then.'
'Quite a few.' He keeps watching the doors, waiting for her to come back through them. 'I wish I hadn't borrowed that money. If I could think of any other way to get it than doing the school over . . .'
'So we'll think of something. We'll deal with Malcolm some other way.'
'There isn't another way,' he says. 'I've been thinking all night, while she was dancing around me. That's all I could think about. But you shouldn't come with me. It's my problem.'
'If you go, I go.'
It feels like we watch those doors for hours, waiting for what we want to walk on through. A light goes on and off over our heads making us nervous shadows. After a while Leo says, 'I want to tell her I'm Poet. Not to score her. Just so she knows.'
'Catch 22,' I say. 'Once you tell her, there won't be any scoring.'
'Yeah,' he says. 'Still.'
I nod. 'How do you want to tell them? You want to go with straight honesty?'
'That's the plan,' he says, and then we see them coming out of the doors. 'That's bad.'
'Uh-huh.'
Everything is what it is, I think, watching Raff and Dylan and the girls walk towards us. I just wish it were something else.
Lucy
The casino's all zing, all everything that's inside me. In the toilets we cram into the cubicle of truth. 'Ed's the one. It's Ed,' I say. 'Not Shadow. Ed has great hair. He listened to me talking about Mum and Dad. He didn't seem to be put off by my vomiting.'
'All important qualities to take into account,' Jazz says. 'But the most important?'
'Static. Definitely static.'
Jazz grins. 'I knew it. I had a feeling.'
'Do you have a feeling about me?' Daisy asks. 'About my static?'
'I do. I think you're going to meet someone who gives better static than Dylan.'
'Really?'
'Absolutely,' Jazz says. 'What you have to do is write a list of all the things you want and then you tell the universe and that's what you get.'
'Who is the universe, anyway?' Daisy asks. 'I mean people are always talking about it, but the universe must have better things to do than eavesdrop on three girls in a toilet cubicle.'
'The trick with the universe theory is not to over-think it,' Jazz says.
'Okay.' Daisy takes out her lipstick and starts writing a list on the toilet wall.
'So you and Ed,' Jazz says. 'Leo and me. Everything's turning out even better than I planned.'
'I feel kind of stupid that I was chasing Shadow all this time. Do you think I was stupid?'
'That's the way it is. Most people don't know what they want till it's right in front of their face.'
'I like Ed being right in front of my face.'
'He seems to like being right in front of your face too.'
'I'm done,' Daisy says, staring at her list. 'That's the guy I want to meet.'
I read through. 'That's an interesting list. I never met a guy who'd straighten my hair for me while he's watching the footy.'
'It'd be handy, though,' Jazz says. 'The back bits are so hard to reach.'
'Yep. It'd also be handy to have a guy who makes a great toasted cheese and tomato sandwich.' I read further down. 'And one who'll work in your parents' fruit store on Saturday without complaining even though he's a little scared of your mum.'
'And a guy who still wants you back even when you call him an idiot in a pink van on the freeway would be a catch,' Jazz says.
'So would a guy who kisses exactly how you like because you taught him how. These are all important qualities,' I tell her.
'They are,' Daisy says.
'Daisy!' Dylan calls and bangs his fist on the toilet door. 'I know you're in there! Get out here, I've got a present for you.'
Jazz opens the cubicle of truth. 'Don't get too excited, but I think that might be the guy of your toilet-wall dreams knocking at the door.'
'The universe must be having a slow night,' Daisy says.
We walk outside and Dylan hands her a bunch of flowers. 'Happy birthday,' he says, and she smiles. She doesn't need to know that Ed probably gave him the heads-up.
'I have a good feeling,' Jazz says.
'Me too.'
'Happy birthday,' a guy next to Dylan tells Daisy.
'Thanks, Raff.' She makes the introductions. 'Lucy, Jazz, this is Raff, Pete and Tim. Guys, this is Lucy and Jazz.'
We walk out of the casino, back towards Ed and Leo. Daisy asks Dylan how he remembered. 'Your shouting in the van jogged my memory,' he says. 'I kept wondering why you'd yell at me to stay away on your birthday.'
'So, you two go to school with Daisy?' Raff asks Jazz and me.
'Yep. We've been celebrating the last night of Year 12 with Ed and Leo. They're outside,' I tell him.
'Pete and Tim and me are celebrating too,' he says.
'Where do you go to school?' Jazz asks, and I know she's planning on pumping these guys for information about Leo. She reads my thoughts and smiles.
'Delaware High,' Raff says.
'So how do you know Dylan?' Jazz asks.
'Him, Leo and Ed are on our footy team.'
Leo and Ed are staring at us from the queue. They're standing under a blinking sign that's lighting them up one second and making them hard to see the next. It's the blinking that does it. It's Ed's face in light and shade. It's the way he looks at me, nervous and sad, shoulders swimming downwards like that disappointed sea. The way he's haloed with blue from that light above him. He looks fenced in and lost and flat to the edges. He waves at me and the light makes a bird of his hand.
'Did you know he's Shadow?' I ask Raff, hoping he'll tell me I'm stupid and Ed can go back to being right in front of my face.
'Yeah,' he says. 'I didn't think anyone except me and Dylan knew. His and Leo's stuff is some of the best around.'
The light over Ed and Leo blinks on and off.
Jazz stares ahead too. 'Quick question. Are we the stupidest girls in the world?'
'Possibly,' I say, close enough now to see the worry on Ed's face.
Ed
I see the moment when Raff tells them. Lucy's foot stops for half a second and then she puts it down and keeps walking. She doesn't take her eyes off me.
'Shadow,' she says when she's close enough to touch.
I don't bother lying.
Leo shuffles away. Shuffle, shuffle. 'Don't move, Poet,' Jazz says. Leo gives a smile like he gave his gran that day she caught him pissing on the roses.
Daisy's slower at catching up than Lucy and Jazz but she gets it now.
'Liar,' she says, and drops the flowers on the ground.
I stare at Lucy. She stares back. 'All those things I told you about Shadow,' she says. 'You must have thought they were pretty funny.'
'I didn't think they were funny,' I say, and move towards her.
'You laughed, though. Quite a lot. So you must have thought some of the things I said were funny.'
'It wasn't Ed's idea,' Leo tells her. 'It was me who thought it'd be a laugh.'
Jazz thinks about that for a while. 'You thought lying to us all night would be funny?' She thinks some more. 'All that time we were talking about poetry and you were quoting lines to me you thought it was funny? All that time we were dancing you were really laughing at me?'
Leo looks like he did that night at Emma's house. He stares at Jazz, almost touches her hair but then pulls his hand back and does something that surprises everyone.
He runs.
He turns around and runs, pushing people out of the way, tumbling through the crowd. All six foot something of him. It seems pretty clear he's not suited to a life of crime. Dylan isn't either because he looks at Daisy and runs too. Raff and his mates run, as well. Jazz and Daisy take off after them all.
I don't run. Lucy doesn't move. She stands there in front of me. All mouth, all eyes. 'I guess we're even now,' she says.
'I didn't do it to get you back.' Shit, I didn't do it for that. 'Maybe at first. Before the party, I don't know. But after.' I'm not making a lot of sense but I keep going because her eyes are pinning me down.
She knows now that I'm him, that I've lost my job. That I'm planning to rob the school later. She knows it all but she doesn't know why. 'In your head, Shadow was this great person and I'm nothing.' Her eyes keep pinning me down. 'I can barely even read.'
I feel all those years of running and never catching up to everyone inside me. I'm back on the expressway like that guy in the painting, back on the side of the road with the concrete sweeping round and no way to make people hear or get it because they'd have to be inside my head for that to happen.
Lucy stops looking at me. She stands there not looking and not saying and I think about that Art essay and wanking clowns and Fennel and those birds on my walls, flapping on the bricks. I think of that ghost in a jar. I think about the hope Bert gave me that ended with him lying face up in aisle three, his hands clawed, old face sinking and old heart not ticking. I think about Leo and the dreams he's too scared to have. And I think how much I want Lucy to tell me something that changes what I think about myself. I want to paint a wall right now and put those words in her mouth but I don't know what those words would be.
Leo pulls the van into the taxi rank and yells, 'If you're coming, get in. It's time. It's way past time.'
'Aren't you going to say something?' I ask her, but she's a blank wall. Leo's beeping and yelling but I can't leave till she says something. 'Does it matter?'
She opens her mouth and Leo beeps the horn and if she says what I want her to say then I won't get in the van.
'It matters,' she says.
And all the birds on that wall fall off the sky. I see them dropping and lying belly up. A snow of them covering the ground. Later I'll paint that empty sky and the birds below. I'll paint it and know that what's worse than being trapped in a jar is not being anywhere at all.
Lucy
'Shadow,' I say, and I know from his face that he is. I look at him and the whole night clicks together. The paint on his hands and his clothes and his boots. How he knew where to find the walls. The looks between Leo and Dylan and him. Me saying I'd do it with Shadow and him laughing. Me saying I'd do it with Shadow and him laughing. That last one goes on replay and won't stop.
'All those things I told you about Shadow. You must have thought they were pretty funny.' He tells me he didn't think that but I remember him laughing at me, at all my ideas about love and romance.
He keeps staring and I try to see him as Shadow, the guy painting in the night. I see him on his own in the dark with all the things he's thinking appearing around him: painted birds and painted doorways and monster waves. A ghost trapped in a jar.
Jazz is clicking everything together too. She's been talking to Poet all night. Her real guy was fictional. My fictional guy was real. Taxis pull in and out and they make me think about Dad. About how nothing's what you think it is. About how love is harder to solve than a sudoku puzzle.
I knew Dylan was hiding something, right from the start, but I didn't really want to know. I wanted to find Shadow. I wanted to find that thing that's been missing from my house since Dad moved to the shed. I wanted flowers hanging from the roof. I wanted to do it with Shadow. Oh my God, when I have time I need to put that in a memory bottle and smash it with the biggest hammer I can find. I have reverse zing. It's like someone's dipped me in plastic and earthed me. Everything is muffled.
Jazz yells at Leo and looks like she did while she was watching The Notebook that time. I guess she knows the score now and those domino days are falling. Leo doesn't even stay to explain. He runs. That's the score. Leo zero. Dylan is zero too, running like a coward after Leo. He forgets Daisy's birthday, throws eggs at her and lies to have a laugh. Jazz and Daisy run after them.
'I guess we're even now,' I say to Ed when we're alone. His words stumble from his mouth but they don't make sense and I'm not sure if it's him or if I'm not hearing right because of the earthing that went on before.
I stare at him, trying to see him for who he is, not all the bits that have been scattered tonight. He won't fit, though. Shadow, Ed, robbing the school, with Beth, not with Beth, employed, unemployed. I don't know the truth of him.
'I can barely even read,' he says, and then I do know the truth. Then he clicks together and I see him. His face is kind of lopsided for a second, like he's trying to keep himself together, keep himself in the shape that he shows to the world but he can't do it anymore and everything in him is sliding out. I look away because it's easier to look at the lights than at him.
Leo pulls the van into the taxi rank. 'If you're coming, get in. It's time. It's way past time.'
'Aren't you going to say something?' Ed asks me. 'Does it matter?'
I hear everything he's ever painted in his voice. I hear that person on the beach, looking at the waves. I hear hearts rocked by earthquakes and disappointed seas. I make myself look at him because he needs to be looked at. He needs to be seen. I hate that he's been on his own for so long, painting graffiti moons and bricked-in birds and keeping quiet about who he really is. 'It matters,' I tell him.
He gets in the van and leaves.
'I didn't finish,' I shout after the van. 'To you! I meant it matters to you!' I don't care if you can't read. I care about the lying and robbing the school. I don't care about you not having a job.
The pink van disappears down the street like a reversing sunset to match my reversing zing. I watch them go and think about the first time I made something out of glass and it broke because I didn't treat it right. That's two times now I've really hit Ed in the face. I'm going out on a limb here and saying that a guy might not come back for a third.
I sit on a bench outside the casino, drifting my legs back and forth and waiting for Jazz and Daisy. The bridge lights blink out messages. Go to the school. Get Ed. Give him the all-important missing words and stop him robbing the place. Tell him he's too good for that. Too smart. Too talented. Take him back to Al's and show him how glass turns into something different when you heat it right. When you cool it right.
All the time I'm waiting, the urge to run after him is getting stronger. I wish I had my bike. I'd ride straight there but it's in the back of the van.
Where are you, Jazz and Daisy? Please, please, please let me get there on time. Before Ed gets arrested, let me tell him that I don't care if he doesn't have a job. Tell him he's still smart and funny. Tell him that some of my most beautiful glass pieces have cracks running through them and I like them anyway because of the colours.
Come on, Jazz and Daisy. We need to get there on time. Please, please, please let me get there on time.
Finally, after a lot of pleases, they walk around the corner. 'We lost them,' Daisy says. 'They've probably gone to Barry's since it's open all night. How bad do you want revenge?'
'I want a hamburger and chips more,' Jazz says. 'So I guess not very bad.'
'They haven't gone to Barry's. They've gone to rob the school. Ed told me.'
'How is it possible that I saw none of this coming?' Jazz asks. 'I'll have to quit my job telling fortunes at the café. I can't keep taking people's money.'
'Some things are hard to see,' I say.
'Everything's hard to see when you've got your eyes closed. I'm sorry I got you into this, Luce. I thought my night of action would be less full of, you know, action.'
'I want to go to the school.' I look over at the one taxi left in the rank. 'Do you have any money? I've only got fifteen dollars.'
'I don't know, Luce. If we get caught on school grounds with them . . .'
'It's goodbye uni, hello prison,' Daisy says. 'Dylan doesn't even need money. His parents pay for everything.' She thinks for a bit. 'Except our holiday.' She smiles. 'He doesn't want me to date a surfer.'
'I don't want Ed to get arrested.' I look at the people milling around. Any minute that taxi will leave and if we have to wait for another we might not make it in time. 'You don't have to come with me.' Please come with me.
'Why don't I try to call Leo?' Jazz asks.
'I'll try Dylan,' Daisy says.
I watch them dialling. Please, please, please.
'Leo's must be switched off or he's not picking up.'
'Same,' Daisy says.
I walk fast to the taxi so I don't change my mind. I don't want to think about what Mrs J's face will look like if I get arrested on suspicion of robbing the school.
Daisy sits in the front of the taxi and gives directions while I sit in the back with Jazz. 'Luce,' she says, 'I don't want my diary entry tomorrow to be: Stayed out all night. Went to prison. I have this urge to go home and watch TV with my parents and be completely boring.'
'I have the same urge,' I tell her. And then, because I need to tell someone I say, 'Only, I don't want to watch TV with my parents. I want to go home, hang out with them, and say it's okay if they get a divorce. I have this feeling that maybe Dad wouldn't still be living in that old shed if I hadn't made him feel like he couldn't leave me.'
'That's stupid,' Jazz says. 'You're not in control of your dad. He can do what he wants.'
'So why don't they get on with it? It's weird, isn't it, my family?'
She hands me a lollipop. 'It's a little weird. But my mum worships the moon on Friday nights. Parents are all a little weird if you ask me.'
'What if we turn out like them?' I ask.
'No way I'm worshipping the moon on a Friday night. You should ask your parents to explain, Luce. It might make you feel better.'
'You got one of those lollipops for me?' Daisy turns around from the front seat.
'Does your dad live in the shed?' Jazz asks.
'No. He lives in the house. I have to watch him and Mum kiss every morning.'
Jazz fans out the lollipops for Daisy. 'Pick any flavour you want.'
The driver stops in front of the school and we pay and get out. I give Jazz a hug for being here. 'Thanks,' she says. 'But I'll need that more when they're fingerprinting me. I wish it were lighter. What's the time?'
'Two forty-five,' Daisy tells her. 'It doesn't get light till at least five. I guess that's why they're robbing the place now.'
'They are so stupid,' Jazz whispers. 'Why do I like a guy who's so stupid?'
'I ask myself every day,' Daisy says. 'Actually, you know, Dylan's not stupid. He scored higher than me on all his practice exams.'
'Leo's not stupid, either, really. He recited me his poetry tonight. You know some journal accepted his work for publication?'
'No way,' Daisy says. 'He really is Poet.'
'Ed's smart,' I say.
'Ed's super smart,' Daisy answers. 'He set all the sheddies talking when he left school. We figured he and Leo must have done something bad for him not to come back.'
'Okay,' Jazz says, straightening her dress. 'We have to save them. So remember. Stick together and run if you see the cops.'
I'm not a psychic but that goes without saying.
Poet
The Casino
2.15 am
Losing her
Running from my girl
Past the glitter of the casino
Past the line at the ATM
Past the reflection of me in the glass
Looking scared
Past the sign that says Wrong Way Go Back
Past the fireballs tearing at the sky
Back past the glitter
Back past the line at the ATM
Back past the reflection of me in the glass
Still looking scared
Back past the sign that says Wrong Way Go Back
Past the fireballs tearing at the sky
Till I've lost her
Ed
I get in the van and Leo hits the road, making Lucy nothing but a dot. A dot I never had a chance with. 'Turn your phone off, Dylan.' Leo throws his phone at him. 'Turn mine off, too. We don't want to make any stupid mistakes.'
'So we're still going?' I have the urge to leap out of the free love van and into oncoming traffic.
'You want me to let you out?' Leo asks. He's not mad. It's a simple question. I say the word and he'll stop. Through the front window the world is nothing but a tangled glare bouncing and moving past us.
'You don't want to do this, either. You think this is stupid. It is stupid.'
'I know it's stupid. So is Malcolm Dove coming over to my house and doing something bad to my gran. And then to you and me.'
'Sooner or later you have to stop,' I tell him. 'Deal with the stupid things we've done without doing more stupid things to undo them.'
The van slows and I figure Leo's actually listened.
'The engine cut out,' he says, pushing his foot on the accelerator as horns go off around us.
'Get out of the intersection,' some guy yells from the car behind.
'There's nothing I can do, moron,' Leo yells back.
'Maybe it's the gasket,' Dylan says.
'I didn't blow the gasket.'
'Maybe it's the transmission,' Dylan says.
'It's not the transmission.'
'Oil?'
'No.'
'Leo, that money Jake gave you for petrol. You filled it up before you leant me the fifty, yeah?' Leo's quiet and I can't help laughing. 'Criminal mastermind at work. You forgot to put petrol in the getaway van.'
'Dylan, slide across and hold the wheel. Me and Ed'll push.'
I jump out and lean on the back of the van. 'Lucky we're inconspicuous,' I say.
'Just push.'
'You know, when they report this on Crime Stoppers half the people in the city are going to remember us.'
'Will you push?' he asks.
'I am pushing. We're not going anywhere.'
'We are going somewhere. It's taking a while because this thing weighs a tonne, that's all.'
Cars roll past and people call us bad things. 'You still got a good feeling about tonight?' I ask as we turn and try shoving the van with our backs. More cars go past and more people yell at us. 'The general consensus seems to be that we're losers,' I say.
'Well, we're not. Can you believe no one's offered to help us?'
'It's a thirty-degree night and the city's going crazy. Would you help two guys push a pink van?'
'Yeah,' he says, 'I would.'
'Yeah, you would,' I agree. 'You're a good guy, Leo.'
'Strange time to tell me, but whatever. Head for that traffic island.'
We manage to get the van across to the island and we lean against the back, catching our breath. 'I really messed things up with Lucy.'
'Join the club. I really messed things up with Jazz. No more lollies for me. I wanted to say sorry and I was all ready to do it and then my legs took off.' He moves his hand quick across the air. 'Just like that.'
'Did they catch you?'
'Dylan and I lost them in the crowd.'
'You haven't had a girlfriend since Emma. Maybe you panicked.'
'I knocked a little old lady over and she spilled her coins. It's safe to say I panicked.'
'So tell her you're sorry. Explain that your last girlfriend nearly had you arrested.' I watch as he slides onto the ground and leans his head against the back door. 'Leo?'
'I lied to you,' he says. 'I haven't been mowing lawns for the past ten Saturdays. I needed the five hundred dollars for a poetry course. My gran wanted me to take a TAFE poetry course on Saturday mornings.'
I don't say anything because I don't know what to say. It surprises me and it doesn't.
'I was writing poetry. I owe Malcolm because I want to write poetry. You got attacked in the park for poetry.' It's like once Leo starts saying poetry he can't stop. 'Mainly I work with free verse. I did a haiku last week, though. "I am in deep trouble/I owe lots and lots of cash/Malcolm will kill me."'
I can't stop laughing about Leo's haiku, about the guy who wants to kill us. 'My teacher said it was earthy.' Leo imitates her. 'Most of the women in my course are Gran's age. I like them.' He looks at me. 'Stop laughing.'
'Why didn't you tell me?' I ask, but I know why.
'You didn't want to make me feel like an idiot because you can read and I can't.' 'You're so full of it,' he says. 'You can read, it just takes you longer. I heard what Lucy was saying to you. About that course at Monash.'
'I'm not doing it.'
'I know you won't do it. If Bert hadn't died you'd have stayed there with him, bored out of your brain, because it was safe.'
'I liked working with Bert.'
'You liked Bert,' he says.
I'd get mad only I know he's right and so does he so there's no point. I take out the sketchbook and flick through it for a while. Bert smiles and waves, like he's agreeing with Leo. 'He was a good guy.'
'He was a great guy,' Leo says. 'He would have told you to stop bitching and apply for the course.'
We watch the traffic for a while; coming and going, thoughts of Lucy and the course she told me about come and go. Thoughts about Leo's course come and go too. 'So, why didn't you tell me about the poetry?' I ask.
'Because I was writing haikus on Saturday mornings with little old ladies,' he says. 'It's different from writing on a train carriage. I felt like a bit of a wanker.'
'You're not a wanker.'
He shrugs. 'I don't care anymore. I like poetry. Anyone who doesn't like that can shove off.'
'And you're big enough to make them shove off.'
'Exactly,' he says.
We watch more traffic and listen to people yell more interesting things at us and then Leo says, 'Bert would have told you to go see Beth.'
'I told Lucy everything tonight. Unemployed graffiti artist who quit school before he finished Year 10. She couldn't wait for me to get into the van. Beth won't be any different.'
Leo takes a while to answer. 'She knows. I told her. She doesn't give a shit.'
I think about that. I think about her standing there in front of me with the box of my things, waiting for me to say something. She's been waiting for months. I think about her waiting at the tree tonight, about how she'll feel if I don't show. A taxi slows and stops in front of us. 'You need a lift?' the driver asks.
'We could still make it to the school,' Leo says.
But you have to stop doing stupid things sometime. 'I'm not doing the job,' I tell him.
He waves the cab on.
'You're a smart guy,' he says. 'You know, Emma dumped me because I'd abseiled out of that window and she'd said I had to grow up or that was it. I told her I'd grow up when I felt like growing up. Emma dumped me because I chose not growing up.' He shakes his head. 'So to get her to take me back I vandalised the side of her house.'
'Technically, I vandalised it and you gave me artistic direction.'
He chuckles. 'The course made me think a bit, you know. That we're smart enough to get out of here. We're just too stupid to work out a way.'
'That course was really worth the five hundred dollars.'
He chuckles again. 'Robbing the school was not one of my brighter ideas.'
'You're not going either?'
'Tomorrow we sign up at Maccas. I'll come clean with Jake and ask for some help in the meantime.'
Dylan gets out of the van and sits next to us.
'We're applying for jobs at Maccas,' I tell him.
'I'll put in a good word for you. We still have to fill this thing up with petrol and get it back to Crazy Dave. He'll make us eat cockroaches if we don't.'
None of us moves. 'I can't believe you threw eggs at Daisy on her birthday,' I say.
'You two have been hanging out since Year 10. You've known her since primary school. How do you not remember her birthday?' Leo asks.
'I try not to pay her too much attention. I figure if I do she'll work out she doesn't want to date me.'
'That's the stupidest thing I ever heard,' Leo says, and I listen while he gives Dylan his women secrets. 'Don't ever throw anything at them. Every now and then, tell her something you're thinking, even if it's about the rain. Write her some poetry. And grow up.'
'I can't write poetry.'
'I'll give you one of mine,' Leo says.
I get this lucky feeling leaning against that broken-down pink free love van listening to poetry. I got Dylan and Leo as friends. I had Bert. I try not to think about how I don't have Lucy. At least Beth doesn't hate me. That counts for something.
'I better call Jake and tell him we messed up. See if he can come down here with petrol.' Leo turns on his phone. 'Shit.' He checks his messages. 'He's texted me about fifty times. Get away from the school. Don't do the job. Malcolm's doing the job. I told him the code. Are you there, idiot? I think my phone's full,' Leo says and dials Jake's number.
'It's me.' Leo listens and winces. 'Sorry, Jakey. I'll make it up to you. Really? No, don't put her on. Don't. Gran, hi.' He winces again. 'I had to pay for the poetry classes somehow. You don't have the money; you're living on the pension. Okay, I should have asked. No, I'm not coming home yet. I'll be home when I'm ready. Okay. I'll be home when you say I'm ready. When is that? Okay, that's fair. I love you too, Gran. Can you tell Jake to come with petrol to the corner of Flinders Street and Swanson? He'll see me. I'm kind of hard to miss.'
'Good news?' I ask after he's hung up.
'Not exactly good. Not exactly bad. But your nipples are safe. Turns out Malcolm paid Gran a visit. She caught him sneaking around the house with his bad men and hit him in the nose with her stick. The screaming woke Jake and his mates. Malcolm told them I owe five hundred dollars and Jake told Malcolm about the job as proof that I'd pay him later.'
'Are we getting to the good news soon?' I ask.
'Jake drove Gran around to the ATM and she paid Malcolm five hundred dollars. Jake gave Malcolm the alarm code when she wasn't listening to make sure things were really square between us. My debt is paid in full. Lucky we ran out of petrol, hey?'
'I'm still out rent.'
'Yeah, but we got a bright future at Maccas and you never wanted to do the job anyway.'
'No, I didn't,' I say, and get that lucky feeling again.
'Why didn't you ask your gran for the money in the first place?' Dylan asks.
'Because I didn't know she had five hundred dollars sitting in a savings account. And if I did I wouldn't have wanted to take it from her.'
'You'll pay her back,' I say.
He nods. 'After Jake brings the petrol we can stop at Barry's and grab food before we return the van.'
I wait around. We talk a bit. We yell some things at passing cars till Jake gets there. I don't go to Barry's, though. Leo drops me off at Beth's on the way. 'You're early,' he says.
'I can wait if I have to.'
I don't have to. I jump the fence and head to the tree and she's already there. The sun's not up yet but it's coming soon. The world's thinned to silence. I lean against the tree and the birds scatter. 'I made them leave,' I say.
'They'll come back.'
'I want to tell you some things. I know Leo already told you but I want you to hear it from me.' Anything else is the easy way and I'm tired of that. 'I never read the Vermeer book. I know all about him because I went to exhibitions and watched documentaries but I never read about him. I left school because it got hard. I don't have a job. I don't have money. I'm Shadow. And I'm sorry I broke up with you the way I did.'
She leans in and whispers that she knew, that she missed me, that she doesn't care if I have money or not. She traces the blue around my hands, traces the bits of sky left there.
Lucy
Daisy, Jazz and I lie in the bushes near the Media block. 'What's the time now?'
'Four o'clock,' Daisy says, her eyes closed. 'A minute later than the last time you asked me.'
'We've been waiting here for over an hour. They're not coming.' Jazz stands and stretches her legs.
I look past her and see some shadows get out of a van, walk across the grass and crawl through a window. 'They're here.'
We move quietly and I get a tingle that I'm pretty sure comes from the thought of Ed, not the thought of illegal activity. We stand at the open window and Jazz sticks her head through and whispers, 'Get out here, Leo.' He doesn't answer. 'Leo,' she says a bit louder. He still doesn't answer. 'They must be unplugging things in the computer room. I don't want to go in there unless I have to. I'll try calling his phone again.'
I keep watch while she dials. 'Leo,' she whispers. 'You answered.' She holds the phone out and we all crowd and listen.
'Yeah, I answered. I'm sorry I ran before. Sorry I lied, too.'
'We'll talk about that later. For now, get out of the Media block before the police come.'
'I'm not in the Media block,' he says. 'I'm at Barry's having a burger.'
'If you're at Barry's, then who's in the Media block?' she asks.
'Jazz,' Leo says, 'get out of there. We're coming but you need to run, right now.'
'Hello, Lucy,' Malcolm says, leaning his arms on the window. I look into his two black eyes.
'Run!' I scream.
We take the short cut around the girls' toilets and past the staffroom. I'm running the fastest because I've had experience with Malcolm and, judging from his face, I can't rule out that he doesn't want to kill me.
'Are they behind us?' Jazz yells, and I tell her I don't know; I'm not wasting time on looking.
'Go, go!' Daisy yells, and takes the lead. 'I think they're behind us.' She keeps running and looks back and there's no time to warn her. She smacks straight into the security guard and falls over. 'Okay,' she says, shaking her head. 'That was unexpected.'
The security guard looks at us and we look at him and my future looks dim and then Jazz says in her most innocent voice, 'Thank goodness we found you. We were taking a short cut through the school and noticed some men robbing the Media block. We told them we were calling the police and they started chasing us.'
It's not exactly a performance worthy of a Golden Globe but he buys it. 'Stay here,' he says. 'You might need to give a statement.'
As soon as he's out of sight, we run again. I've seen enough of Malcolm Dove to last me the rest of my life. We don't stop moving till we're a couple of streets away from the school. 'At least they decided not to do the job,' Jazz says, the run still moving through her voice. 'Things could have turned out way worse tonight.'
'You got your action and adventure.' Daisy leans against a fence. 'And then some.'
'I wouldn't have minded a little romance.' As Jazz says that a pink spot appears at the end of the street, moving through the night like a dot of sunrise in fast forward. It's them, I think. It's Ed.
It's Ed and I'm finally going to have the chance to make things right. To tell him he's smart and if he can't read then there's a reason. And if there isn't a reason I still don't care. I'm going to tell him that I've never had a better night than this, laughing and talking behind our hands. I'm going to say that I want to hang out with him today and tomorrow and the next day. And on one of those days I want to take him to Al's studio and show him all the things I've made. Show him how glass works, how you can heat it and change it. How you can add colour. Show him how after you're done and it cools, it becomes this beautiful thing that you've made.
'Hey, you feel that?' Jazz asks. 'The change is here.'
'At last,' Daisy says. 'I'm so sick of sweating.'
I hold out my arms and let the change float across my skin. The lightning never came in the end. Just the breeze. I feel like that Winged Victory of Samothrace sculpture that Mrs J showed me. It's marble, held at the Louvre in Paris. A statue of the winged goddess, Victory. She lost her head along the way but she still looks triumphant. Half angel, half human, wings spread wide. I turn to Jazz. 'I'm going to kiss Ed,' I say, and she smiles.
The van pulls up and Leo and Dylan get out of the front. Leo walks over to Jazz and grins and in his grin I see what I didn't see at the start. He really likes her. She gives him the serious finger. 'I don't date guys with prison records.'
I watch him take one of her plaits and twist it slowly. 'I will not be going to prison,' he says. 'I'm thinking about growing up.'
I open the back door of the van, my zing re-reversing. 'It's empty.'
'Because we decided not to rob the place,' Leo says, still twisting Jazz's plait.
'But where's Ed?'
Leo stops twisting and looks at me. Without him saying anything, I know Ed's with Beth. 'Good for him.' I sit in the gutter. 'Good for him.' I lie on the footpath. 'Good for him.'
Jazz lies next to me on the concrete. 'I'm looking at the stars,' I say.
'Are you doing that thing where you try to feel small so your problems seem unimportant?'
'Nope. I'm looking at them just because they're not covered in smog. I want nothing else from them but to be in clear view.'
'Are you having a breakdown?'
'Nope. I'm upset. But at least I know the truth about Shadow. I'm pretty sure I know the truth about my parents. At least, I will when I ask them about the divorce this morning.'
'I'm sorry I pushed you into tonight,' Jazz says. 'I'm a pushy friend. I'm always making comments about your mum and dad when I don't even know them that well.'
'You were right, though. Real is better. The truth is better.' Painful, but better.
'Is she okay?' Leo asks.
'She's fine,' Jazz says. 'Come and join us on the footpath. We're checking out the stars.' We lie side-by-side and listen to Dylan and Daisy talking in the background.
'I'm sorry I threw eggs at you on your birthday,' he says.
'Just write the date somewhere so you don't forget it next year.'
'Okay. What was the date yesterday?'
'The nineteenth of October,' we all shout.
'So does this mean we'll still be together next year?' he asks.
'It means you can be hopeful,' Daisy tells him. 'But you can't lie to me again.'
'If I can't lie, you can't call me stupid,' he says.
'That's fair.'
He takes a piece of paper out of his pocket and reads. 'If my like for you was a footy crowd, you'd be deaf cos of the roar. And if my like for you were a boxer, there'd be a dead guy lying on the floor. And if my like for you were sugar, you'd lose your teeth before you were twenty. And if my like for you was money, let's just say you'd be spending plenty.'
'You didn't write that, did you?' Daisy asks.
'They're my ideas. Leo made them rhyme.'
'Good enough,' she says, and puts the paper in her pocket.
I get up after a while and take my bike out of the back of the van. It's a bit bingled but still in working order. I untie my helmet and put it on. I ride down the streets slowly, a cool wind on my skin. The glassy darkness will be gone soon and the day will be starting up. Birds go crazy and the world belongs to them for now. And to me. I ride from one side of the road to the other. I'm not thinking of last night as the time I got dumped for Beth. Or the time when I almost kissed Shadow. I'm thinking of it as an adventure. The start of something real.
Poet
5.30 am
Here
She says she'll forgive me
She says just this one time
She says get on with it and kiss me
She says do that twirling thing with my hair
She says that was exactly what I was after
She says she's glad the cool change has come
I say I'll see her tomorrow
She looks at her watch and says
It's here
Ed
While those birds fly I hold Beth's hand. She stops whispering in my ear because she knows like I do that something's different. That I came here to say sorry and to say that we're really over. I can't be with her if I'm thinking about Lucy.
'At least I got to say goodbye. You were so awful when you left me.'
'I thought you'd end up with one of those guys from your school.'
'I wanted to end up with you.' She sounds so sad it kills me.
We sit under the tree for a bit longer and talk. Then she says, 'You have to leave now.' She lets go of my hand.
Because she is a very cool girl she lends me her bike and gives me two of her dad's beers. She is very fucking cool, Bert would be saying, and I have a chuckle at the look he'd have on his face while he was saying it.
'Ed,' Beth says before I go, 'don't do the same thing with her.'
I ride to the corner of her street and I stop to wave. But she's not standing there anymore.
I pedal down to the docks and find Bert where I left him. I crack open the beers and we have a chat about last night. About places I might be going. 'You got one more place to go,' he says, and I know I do. Lucy might not want to be with me but I have to finish things off with her. Try, maybe. No guts, no glory.
I stop off at home on the way to get some paint. Mum's sitting at the table, scribbling her bleak numbers. I kiss her on the cheek. 'How was Maria?'
'A load of rubbish,' she says, smiling. 'Where have you been?'
'Out on the town. Celebrating Leo's last night of Year 12.' I take a piece of her toast. 'You know he's been studying poetry?'
'No. But I'm not surprised. My boys are talented.' She messes up my hair.
'So how are the numbers adding up?'
She looks at her book and runs her pen down the columns. 'We can make the rent. The wolf's away from the door for this month.'
I make her a cup of tea before I take off again. The wolf might be with us now, but he won't be with us forever. I think of a wall, with wild dogs running, and me chasing them in a McDonald's uniform. At least it's not an orange jumpsuit.
Lucy
Mum and Dad are sitting on deckchairs out the front of the shed when I walk my bike through the gate. They're drinking coffee and talking. 'It's six am. Are you waiting up for me?'
'We're enjoying the cool change,' Mum says. 'And congratulating ourselves on a few things. Like having raised a daughter who finished Year 12 yesterday.'
'Congratulations, Lucy Dervish,' Dad says. 'You made it.'
'I've still got exams and my interview with the organiser of the art course.'
'You'll get through.' Mum smiles. 'We went down to Al's last night. He called to see if we wanted to look at your folio before he packed it up and took it to school.'
'What'd you think?' I sit on the ground between them.
'I thought it was the most spectacular thing I've ever seen,' Mum says. 'My daughter the artist.'
'You put me in a bottle. How'd you get me in there?' Dad asks.
'I made you collapsible. I put you in and raised you with string and made you stay there with putty.'
'Gee. You went to a lot of trouble.'
'You're important to me, Dad. So what are the other things you're celebrating?'
'Well, I finished my novel.'
'That's great, Mum.'
'And your father is almost finished his new act. I won't give anything away, but he performed it for me last night and it's good. Sad and funny.'
Dad smiles. 'Humour without sadness is just a pie in the face.'
I wouldn't mind a pie in the face if it meant we were all happy. 'I can't wait to see it, Dad.'
'To us,' Mum says, and raises her coffee cup.
'You forgot one thing. You forgot to say that you're getting a divorce. It's okay,' I tell her when she shakes her head. 'I'm almost eighteen now. I can take it.'
'We're not getting a divorce, Lucy. I've told you that a million times. I love your father. He loves me.'
'He lives in the shed.'
'Maybe I'll move into the shed to write my next book,' Mum says. 'Maybe Dad will live in the house. Or I might go away for a month or two. You're older now, so I think that would be okay. Would that be okay?'
'Well, yeah.' And then I can't keep inside the thing that's busting to get out. 'You're weird. That's weird. You're married. You should want to be together all the time.'
Mum laughs. 'We raised a very conservative daughter. Too much Pride and Prejudice.'
'That could change,' Dad says. 'There's still time to get her onto Margaret Atwood.'
'Funny. Hilarious. I'm going into the world of adult relationships. I need some solid advice.'
'All I can tell you is to have the relationship that's good for you. I need to write. So does your dad.' Mum shrugs. 'You see how we fight when we don't get time for that. But we love you. You get that, right, Luce?'
'I get that.' I don't get a lot of other things but I always got that. 'It's still weird.'
'To the Dervish family,' Mum says, holding up her coffee again. 'Great, and just a little bit weird.'
I guess it's like art. What I saw in Mum and Dad was more about me than them. I watch them chatting and laughing. Who says romance is dead? It's not. It's just living in the shed. I crack myself up a little at that thought. 'What about firing up your camping stove and cooking me some pancakes?'
'Magic,' Mum says.
I take off my wristband and give it back to Dad. 'For luck with your new act. Although after last night I have serious doubts about the ability of that band.'
My phone buzzes while Dad's cooking and it's Al. Shadow is here. Right now. I think about Ed painting a wall and I hope it's different from the ones scattered around the city. But I know that even if part of it's hopeful because he's back with Beth, there's still a corner that belongs to me. A corner where I'm telling him it matters that he can't read, that he's broke, that he doesn't have a job. I don't want him to paint me like that.
I put on my helmet and grab my bike. 'I'll be back soon.'
'Where's the fire, Lucy Dervish?' Dad asks.
In me. Under my skin. I figure I've got enough to give a little to Ed. I take off under a dark sky fading out and turning pink. I owe him some words. To you. It's important to you.
I pedal down Rose Drive where rubbish trucks are collecting bins and clouding the smell of jasmine. Tangled gardens hold up drunken houses along the street. Please let me make it in time. Let me make it to Ed before the night's officially over and he paints that corner of the wall with me in it, telling him he's less than what he is.
The speckled lights of the factory stars are fading. In the background the city rises, grey buildings pointing at the sky. I like this place in the light as well as the dark. I like the crates stacked up on the docks and the old buildings. I like Al's street, all the industry piled together. I like how his glass studio and Shadow's walls take me by surprise in the middle of it all. At the top of the hill I take my hands off the brakes and I let go.
Ed
I spray the sky fast. Eyes ahead and behind. Paint sails across the wall and the things that are in my head sail from can to brick. See this, Lucy. See me and you emptied onto a wall. See us so big that you can't miss it, even if you get here after I've gone.
Lucy's boss sits on his step, watching and texting. Every now and then I turn to check for Lucy and see that he's still there.
I finish and stand back to take it in and I know it's my best wall yet. I hear slurping behind me. The old guy hands me a coffee. 'I like your work,' he says. 'Shadow, right?'
'Right. Actually it's Ed.'
'Al.' He puts out his hand and I shake it. 'It's different from your other pieces,' he says, pointing at the wall.
'I'm trying a new style.'
'I like it.'
'I like your stuff, too. The ceiling flowers. I thought they were trumpets but then Lucy set me straight. You've texted her, right?'
He only looks surprised for a second. 'A few times.' He texts her again. 'I expect she'll come speeding over that hill any second. You're working early today.'
'I haven't been to sleep yet. I'm not so much working early as working late.'
'I always work this early,' he says. 'Sun coming up is the best time to make glass. No other time has such great colours.'
I see why Lucy likes Al. He reminds me a bit of Bert. I ask him about the course she mentioned and I tell him I can't read too well and he says universities can help with that. 'Maybe you qualify for a scribe. Someone who writes things down. You ever had someone like that?'
'Leo used to write for me, when I was at school. I left in Year 10. I don't have a folio.'
Al sips his coffee and looks at the wall. 'Maybe you do. Lucy takes a good photograph. You and she could borrow my camera. Take some shots of your paintings.'
'And that could be a folio?'
'I'm not sure. But there's a woman I know, Karen Josepha. I could ask her.'
'Mrs J.'
'Miss J, actually,' he says. 'She's Lucy's Year 12 Art teacher.'
'I know her. She's very cool.'
'She is very cool,' he says.
We look at the hill, waiting for Lucy, who's taking her sweet time, as Bert would say.
'I like Vermeer. Do you like Vermeer?' I ask after a bit.
'I do,' Al says. 'You go to the exhibition earlier this year?'
'Me and a friend went. My old boss at the paint store. I lost my job, after he died.'
'I'm looking for a cleaner. You got references?'
'Uh-huh. I got references.'
And just like that he offers me a job. We go inside his studio and he shows me round. I give him Valerie's number. 'You could ask Mrs -- I mean, Miss J too. She'll tell you I'll do a good job.'
'I'm sure you will.'
I wander around, looking at the glass. 'The Fleet of Memory,' I say, picking up one of her bottles. They're the coolest things. Memories sitting on putty. It's like the inside of her head's out there on the table. The last bottle in the series has a tiny Shadow wall inside. It's the one I did of a blue sky on bricks. 'You never see blue like that around here,' I tell Al. 'That blue's exactly right.'
I leave a message for Lucy with Al and head off. I'm at the end of the street when I see her, that helmet with the lightning bolt on the side flying towards me. I stop and wait for her to arrive.
'Hi,' she says.
'Hi,' I say back. 'I met your boss. He offered me a job cleaning his studio.' I want her to know straight away that I'm not the guy I was last night. I don't know who I am but I'm not that guy.
'That's great, really great,' she says, taking off her helmet and hanging it over the handlebars.
'You don't look all that happy. You look like this.' I make her face.
'Really? I meant to look happy for you,' she says. 'Are you sure that's what I look like?'
'Uh-huh.'
'Maybe this would be easier if you covered my face.'
'Still a romantic, I see.'
She covers her own face. 'Before you left the casino, I meant to say it's important to you. All those things like leaving school and not having a job and not being able to read all that well are important to you, not to me.'
I got something inside me now. It's not much but it's more than I had. 'I didn't rob the place.'
'I know. I went to save you.'
I look at that spot on her neck and make a few travel plans.
'Do you think I'll be on the run from Malcolm all my life?' she asks.
'Uh-uh. Leo's brother took care of it. But I'd stay out of dark parks.'
'You shouldn't have lied to me all night,' she says. 'I feel really dumb now because of all the things I said about Shadow. You should have told me the truth. That bit matters.'
'I know.' I keep looking at that spot. I owe her something for what I did. I think of that Vermeer painting with the scales. You got to weigh something, in the end. Even if it's not very much. 'I like you. I didn't want you to think I was stupid so I lied. I tried to tell you when we stopped at the freeway.'
She's quiet for ages.
'Now would be a good time to tell me I'm not stupid,' I say.
'Why did you get back with Beth if you like me?' she asks.
'I didn't get back with Beth.'
'Really?'
'Okay, take your hand off your face, it's too strange.'
She takes it off and smiles and I think of wall after wall after wall. Green mazes wandering and two people wandering through them. Doorways that lead somewhere. Skies the exact kind of blue I've been looking for.
Lucy
I listen to Ed with my eyes closed. There's something in his voice that wasn't there before. The truth, maybe. He likes me. Three colliding words. He didn't get back with Beth. 'Really?'
'Okay, take your hand off your face, it's too strange.'
I do and we smile at each other for a while and it's not awkward. Ed's not back with Beth. My parents are in love but they don't want to live together all the time. Dylan and Daisy fight but they're staying together, at least until her next birthday. Leo is a poet and he likes Jazz and that's the score.
I know nothing about love. But I know that I want to kiss Ed. I know that I want him to be happy. He's happier than he was; I see that, now that I don't have my hand over my face.
'I went to meet her,' he says. 'Turns out I went to say goodbye.' He smiles again. I smile. 'You've got a great smile,' he says.
'My dad lives in the shed but my parents aren't getting divorced.'
'Okay.'
'I wanted to tell you. In the spirit of being honest.'
'Okay,' he says, and he's moving closer and that zing is running through my body and I'm so nervous, so, so nervous.
'You okay there?' he asks.
'I'm okay. Keep going. Keep going.'
His mouth dips to that freckle on my neck. Thank you, sun. Thank you, thank you, sun. He works his way back to my mouth and my blood is hot glass, caramel and shiny, moving with his breath. I don't even have to try. I get loads of levitation.
'You're not going to lie to me again,' I say, and he says that's the plan. And I say, 'You left school because you couldn't read,' and he says that and some girl broke his nose. I say, 'Your artwork is my favourite thing about the city.'
And he says, 'I did a wall for you. Maybe my last one for a while.'
'Why the last?'
'I'm thinking about that course you mentioned. Thinking about working on paper.'
'Don't guys like you live for the adrenalin?'
'That was always Leo,' he says. 'So, you want to see it?'
We walk our bikes down the hill to Al's and look at his painting. 'Wow.'
'Thanks,' he answers.
It's the sun. A ball of burning glass taking over the night. He hasn't signed it. But I know who he is. I know who I am. I don't know exactly who we are together, yet. Ed takes out a can and paints a little yellow bird. It's not like that sleeping bird, belly up to the sky.
It's awake.
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