Little Bird

by Penni Russon

  The Girlfriend Fiction Series

  1 My Life and Other Catastrophes Rowena Mohr

  2 The Indigo Girls Penni Russon

  3 She’s with the Band Georgia Clark

  4 Always Mackenzie Kate Constable

  5 The (not quite) Perfect Boyfriend Lili Wilkinson

  6 Step Up and Dance Thalia Kalkipsakis

  7 The Sweet Life Rebecca Lim

  8 Cassie Barry Jonsberg

  9 Bookmark Days Scot Gardner

  10 Winter of Grace Kate Constable

  11 Something More Mo Johnson

  12 Big Sky Melaina Faranda

  13 Little Bird Penni Russon

  14 What Supergirl Did Next Thalia Kalkipsakis

  www.allenandunwin.com/girlfriendfiction

  PENNI RUSSON

  First published in 2009

  Copyright © Penni Russon, 2009

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone (61 2) 8425 0100

  Fax (61 2) 9906 2218

  Email info@allenandunwin.com

  Web www.allenandunwin.com

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

  Russon, Penny, Little Bird

  ISBN: 978 1 74175 864 1 (pbk.)

  Series: Girlfriend fiction ; 13

  For secondary school age.

  A823.4

  Cover photo: Jupiterimages

  Cover design by Tabitha King and Bruno Herfst

  Text design by Bruno Herfst

  Set in 12.5/15 pt Fournier by Midland Typesetters, Australia

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  www.allenandunwin.com/girlfriendfiction

  For Catheryn and Miles

  Nana and Papa to my children

  and for my own beloved Nanna

  Ada May

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  About The Author

  1

  I was curled up in the seat by the window. Out in the street a little bird bounced along the footpath, pecking up invisible crumbs. It didn’t seem to care about the world around it – the busy shopping strip and the people dashing by. It just hopped out of the way and kept pecking, as if it didn’t even know how small and crushable it was. The more I watched it, the more sure I became that someone would tread on it. A small child raced along the footpath, and a big red-faced woman laden with shopping bags lumbered after him. Suited men in shiny shoes and suited women in dangerous high heels hurried past the window. Two women walked side by side, pushing big-wheeled prams. A young guy loped past, his head titled upwards, as if waiting for something to fall out of the sky. None of the passers-by seemed aware of the little bird’s existence. If I were a bird I’d fly all the time. I’d never come down to the ground.

  Shandra stepped out of the change room. I turned away from the window to let the bird fend for itself, without me worrying about it.

  ‘What do you think?’ said Shandra.

  Even though my face was beginning to ache, I forced another smile and nodded, trying to look enthusiastic.

  Shandra sighed and stuck her hip out as she gazed in the mirror. She hitched up the stiff bodice. ‘It’s kind of eggshell, isn’t it?’ she asked the attendant.

  She shook her head. ‘Warm white,’ she assured Shandra.

  ‘Colette?’

  Colette, Shandra’s best friend and first bridesmaid (I was second), was wandering around the back of the shop, flicking through the racks of plastic-covered dresses. She turned and studied Shandra.

  ‘This dress is so eggshell, right?’ Shandra said.

  ‘It’s a bit too yellow for eggshell.’ Colette tilted her head. ‘Maybe old bone?’

  ‘I want ivory,’ Shandra said to the attendant. ‘Ivory or alabaster. I don’t want yellow. I don’t want to look like an old bone on my wedding day.’

  I sighed. They all looked white to me. I tried to shift my weight in the chair, but – ouch – it felt as if my skin might peel right off my thighs. I was stuck to the vinyl chair like a roast chicken to a baking tray. Which served me right, I suppose, for wearing a short denim skirt when no one (as Shandra had assured me) wanted to see my blotchy, marbled thighs.

  ‘Listen, Darls, you’re talking about the cold whites. With your skin tones you need a warm white.’ The attendant wore her hair in the tightest bun humanly possible. It pulled her face back so far she looked constantly surprised.

  ‘No, you listen. You’ve given me café au lait. You’ve given me rose-beige. And now you’ve given me eggshell.’

  ‘Old bone,’ Colette corrected.

  ‘Right. You’ve given me old bone. I want white. Dazzling, blinding white.’

  ‘Pure, virginal white,’ said Colette, who’d turned back to flick through the dresses again.

  ‘Well, I didn’t hold out this long not to get married in white. And I don’t want Damien’s family to think I did the dirty on the side.’

  I sat forward, searching the street. Where was the bird? The bird was gone. Bounce bounce, flutter flutter, fly away. Something about Shandra’s insistence on getting married in white made my skin crawl. I don’t know if it was because I didn’t want to think about my sister . . . well, you know (ew!). Or if it was because Shandra wasn’t quite as pure as she would like people to believe.

  ‘What about this one?’ Colette asked.

  She held up a dress that was very different to anything else in the shop. Shandra had only tried on enormous ones. As far as she was concerned, when it came to weddings, bigger was better. Every time she stepped out of the dressing room there seemed to be way too much dress and not enough Shandra.

  I was sure Shandra wouldn’t like this particular dress, but I could see why Colette had picked it out. It was lacy and romantic around the bodice, with narrow satin shoulder straps like something from a fancy bra, and it had a much simpler skirt than the others Shandra had tried on. It was lighter too, soft and airy, as if it would actually move when Shandra walked.

  Shandra shot Colette a ‘you’ve got to be kidding me?’ look.

  ‘Humour me,’ said Colette.

  The attendant frowned doubtfully. Well, actually, she continued to look surprised, but in a frowny, doubtful kind of way. She tried to talk Shandra out of even trying it on as they walked into the dressing room.

  ‘With your freckles it will make you look a bit plain. Like you’re getting married in your underwear.’

  It was probably the freckles comment that made Shandra determined to try the dress on. Shandra didn’t like anyone talking about her freckles. She won’t buy it though, I thought with a sigh. Shandra had a pretty clear idea of what she wanted. And when Shandra made up her mind about something . . .
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  Colette sat on another of the vinyl chairs. She stretched out her long legs and sipped her glass of complimentary champagne. I hadn’t touched mine.

  ‘Noice seats,’ Colette said. ‘Classy.’

  I nodded. I couldn’t think of a witty response. Colette orbited in a whole different galaxy from me.

  Colette tapped her middle finger on the arm of the seat. ‘Come on, Shan,’ she muttered. ‘I’ve only got an hour of freedom left.’ She swigged down the rest of her champagne and then pointed at mine. ‘Are you going to drink that?’

  I shook my head. It smelt sour, like the contents of somebody’s stomach.

  ‘Doggone, you King girls are so good,’ Colette snorted. ‘The virgin and the teetotaller.’ She sipped again. ‘Not that there’s anything wrong with that.’ She raised her glass in a toast. ‘If it’s not on, it’s not on. You remember that, Ruby-lee. I’m a cautionary tale.’

  I smiled weakly, not sure what to say. Colette’s pregnancy was a cautionary tale at my school, even though Colette didn’t go there anymore. All the girls knew about it and no doubt most of the staff too. Not all the girls were warned off though. Some were jealous, squealing over baby Maisy when they saw Colette in the shopping centre or in town. They’d take photos with their mobile phones, or demand a cuddle. Last time I’d seen Maisy, months ago at Shandra’s twentieth birthday party, she’d been a bundle of blankets and not much more. I’d been too shy to ask for a hold.

  Shandra stepped out of the dressing room with a strange, quiet look on her face. Colette whistled.

  ‘Well?’ Shandra asked. The attendant stood back smugly as if she had personally picked the dress out.

  I couldn’t speak.

  It wasn’t just the dress – the perfect dress – it was everything: the attendant had arranged Shandra’s long, blonde hair up on her head, stuck a veil on top and put a fake bouquet in her hands. Shandra had kicked off the wedding shop cream-coloured high heels and stood in bare feet, which made her look soft and vulnerable. I realised I could actually see Shandra’s feet – the dress ended a centimetre below mid-calf instead of spilling over half the floor.

  Suddenly Shandra wasn’t my sister anymore. I realised my whole family was about to change. My childhood flashed before my eyes: holidays at our grandparents’ farm, playing on the hay bales and hunting through the vines for ripe raspberries; years of bickering in the backseat of the car; how once Shandra had cut my left plait clean off with Mum’s good scissors; how we used to roll around on the ground laughing till we couldn’t breathe; all the shoes and dresses and magazines we’d swapped between us; the time I king-hit Shandra from behind, totally unprovoked, and Shandra had had to go to Emergency with suspected concussion (she was totally faking).

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Colette.

  ‘I feel like a bride,’ Shandra said in a tiny voice, and she laughed, and her eyes filled with sudden tears.

  ‘You’re gorgeous,’ Colette said. ‘Hell, I’ll marry you.’

  ‘No way! You’re damaged goods.’

  Colette stuck her fingers up. ‘That dress makes you look fat.’

  ‘Get stuffed!’ Shandra flounced over to the mirror. ‘I’m a broide.’

  But at the mirror she stopped mucking around and examined herself, her face flushed with pleasure. I forgot that Shandra marrying Damien was the biggest mistake of her life, and felt instead a warm, glowing joy.

  Shandra turned to one side and examined her profile. ‘Milk froth?’ she asked Colette. ‘Vanilla? Snowbell? Maybe pearl?’

  Colette considered for a moment. ‘Feather?’

  ‘Cloud,’ I tried to say, but the word caught in my throat.

  ‘She speaks,’ said Colette.

  I met my sister’s gaze in the mirror. ‘Cloud.’

  Shandra smiled happily. ‘Cloud.’ She closed her eyes and I remembered playing hide and seek while Shandra counted to a hundred. A surge of grief mingled with my joy. Shandra’s eyes sprang open, as if trying to catch her own reflection by surprise. Ready or not.

  And I was hit by another flash of memory: hiding in the long grass in the empty lot behind our house while fat white clouds raced across the sky. Ready or not? I was never ready, but Shandra would come anyway, swish swish through the overgrown green, and Shandra always found me.

  2

  I thought my brain was going to explode as Shandra handed over a wedge of fifty dollar notes – and that was just a deposit! I couldn’t imagine having that much money, let alone spending it on a dress I would only wear once.

  Colette flicked her mobile phone open and closed impatiently during the whole transaction, which I admit seemed to take forever, and, when Shandra was done, ruefully announced that she had ten minutes of child-free time left. Shandra hustled us into the fancy cafe across the road and told us to order anything we wanted, it was her shout. If I had forked out that much money I would need a lie down, but Shandra hadn’t even broken a sweat.

  We sat at the back of the cafe, under one of the slow-moving ceiling fans. I ordered an iced chocolate with extra whipped cream. Colette ordered another glass of sparkling.

  Shandra and Colette talked a mile a minute. It reminded me of skipping in primary school, the double dutch kind where you had to run in between two ropes and start jumping like a mad thing, but if you didn’t time it exactly right, you goofed it. I kept waiting for a chance to lurch in, but it all seemed to move so fast.

  ‘Should you be drinking that?’ Shandra asked. ‘Aren’t you still breastfeeding?’

  ‘Don’t you start,’ Colette groaned. ‘First the child health nurse, then my parents, my mothers’ group. Even Spence’s mum rang the other day to lecture me about it. She sleeps better on formula. And my nipples kept getting infected.’

  ‘Ew! Too much information.’

  ‘Believe me, my whole life is too much information,’ Colette said.

  ‘Oh, but Maisy’s so cute!’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Colette said. She checked the time on her mobile again. ‘Damn. I’ve got to go.’

  ‘We need to talk about the bridesmaids’ dresses. All my plans have been thrown off by the dress.’ Shandra grinned dreamily when she said ‘the dress’, as if there was only one in the whole of existence. I knew she didn’t care about starting from scratch. Planning the wedding was practically her full-time job anyway. Even at the real estate office where she worked as a receptionist she spent most of the time surfing wedding sites or flicking through bridal magazines.

  ‘I’ve got a great idea for the dresses,’ Colette said, gulping down her wine. ‘But I do have to go. Talk about it later?’

  Shandra pouted. I think she thought her wedding should be our full-time jobs too. ‘Are you coming to Bella’s twenty-first on Saturday? We could talk about it there.’

  ‘I can’t, Shan. Mum’s got night shift at the hospital this weekend. Anyway, she and Dad have cracked it. She reckons I expect too much of them, and they’ll only babysit once a fortnight now.’

  ‘Once a fortnight? Hypocrites! They’re the ones who went all grandparental on your pregnant ass. What about Spence? Can’t he take her?’

  ‘Are you kidding? I wouldn’t ask him if my life depended on it.’ Colette stood to go.

  Shandra stuck her bottom lip out, then brightened. ‘Hey, I know!’ she said. ‘Ruby-lee’ll babysit on Saturday. Won’t you, Ruby-lee?’

  I blinked, taken by surprise.

  ‘Really?’ Colette asked.

  ‘Uh . . . sure,’ I said.

  ‘Have you ever babysat before?’ Colette asked.

  ‘Oh, she’s done it heaps of times,’ Shandra said. ‘No dramas.’

  ‘That would be ace. Thanks, mate.’ Colette beamed and I smiled back, not quite sure what had just happened.

  ‘I’ll drop Ruby-lee off and pick you up at the same time.’

  Colette ducked out the cafe door, waved from outside the window and was gone.

  ‘I’ve never babysat before,’ I said.

 
Shandra shrugged. ‘Well you can’t be any worse at looking after a baby than Colette. Besides, you used to look after those next door kids all the time.’

  ‘Yeah, but they weren’t babies.’

  Shandra shrugged. ‘What’s the diff?’

  ‘They could talk. They could walk. They could go to the loo by themselves. They ate normal food like chips and ice-cream.’

  ‘Oh well, sorry. You don’t have to do it.’

  ‘Yes I do! Now that you’ve said I would.’

  ‘Maisy’s easy-peasy. She never cries when I’m there. You’ll be fine.’

  ‘Uh huh.’ As far as I knew, Shan had never offered to babysit Maisy, but she was quite happy to volunteer my services.

  ‘She’ll probably be asleep the whole time anyway.’

  ‘Let’s drop it.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Fine.’

  I took a big slurp of my drink. The chocolatey goodness rushed through me.

  Shandra sipped her black tea. ‘You know, you’re not going to be able to have sweet stuff like that all year.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Do you know how many grams of fat are in that? All those empty calories? I don’t want you to be fat for my wedding.’

  ‘Are you saying I’m fat?’

  ‘No,’ Shandra said. ‘You do have a tendency to gain a little, that’s all. But you can go on my diet with me and . . .’ Shandra kept harping on. By the time we left the cafe, ice-cream and chocolate milk were sloshing around my stomach, and any stirring feelings about Shandra the bride were gone. Shandra was well and truly my bossy, annoying sister again.

  I still wasn’t speaking to her when we got home. ‘I don’t know why she’s being so touchy. It’s my wedding,’ Shandra said, flouncing into the lounge room and flinging herself onto the couch. ‘You’d think she’d be grateful for some honest advice.’

  ‘From Bridezilla?’ I snorted from the doorway. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Oh, Shan, I do wish you’d waited for me to come. It’s not every day your daughter goes shopping for a wedding dress,’ Mum said.

  I felt sorry for Mum. Her shoulders sagged with disappointment.

  Shandra rolled her eyes. ‘I can’t do anything right, can I? Maybe I should call the whole wedding off.’