Graffiti Moon

by Cath Crowley

  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 s
chool.

  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.’