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.’