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.