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.