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.