Mum’s face blooms red. ‘Don’t tell me about my mother. You don’t . . . You’re not my mother. Go home.’ She catches herself. ‘Please.’
But it’s too late. Even I feel the stab in the guts, watching. My grandfather died in a drink-driving accident not long after my grandmother passed away from cancer and if Mrs Theopopolous and her family hadn’t helped her, Mum would never have been able to take over the mortgage and keep the house.
Mum is already sorry. ‘Yiayia . . .’ she says, but Mrs T holds up her hand.
‘I see when I’m not wanted.’ She points to Lucille. ‘But that poor animal . . .’ She tuts again, shakes her head and stomps away. It’s a dignified stomp and I know she’s holding back tears.
Mum says, ‘Shit,’ and goes to her room.
Lucille sighs.
Tuesday morning, day two. Mum gets washed and dressed for the first time since Sunday and looks like she means business.
‘Are we going to the vet?’ I ask, my voice choppy with tears.
Mum puts her hand on Lucille’s shoulder and runs it down her bony back. ‘No,’ she tells me. ‘School.’
I can’t push her to let me stay home again – it would be like pushing her off a cliff.
We pass Keek riding to school and I wait for him on the street near the gate. A cigarette is essential, so we’re late when we walk into maths together. There’s a ripple of assumption from Rosemary’s corner.
It’s a test. Mr Arkwright nods tensely for us to sit. Even though he’s only about thirty, Arkwright wears ‘slacks’ up to his chin and his shirt tucked in. He hurries to point out the few seats available. Keek peels off to sit next to big Mark.
Katie, sitting with Nat, waves. Rosemary nods to the seat behind them with a look that’s almost a smile. I’ve seen that smile before, offered to others – it says reconciliation is possible, for a price. I lock eyes with Katie and give a little wave back, willing her to forgive me. I know rejecting Rosemary will make life hard for her, but I can’t pretend the rest of the Herbs are my friends. One way or another, they’re going to make my life hell, but I can’t suck up to them. I just can’t. And besides, they’ll never accept Keek.
I turn away and take a seat next to Alison Larder. It’s the turn of a kaleidoscope: everything has changed.
Alison is feverishly lost in some mathematical conundrum, but after a moment, she turns her head and takes me in slowly, as if I’ve grown a third eye; nods the slightest of nods and goes back to her test.
While I’m getting out my pens, two messages arrive at my desk; one slipped sideways from Alison, who doesn’t waver from her impossibly neat and undoubtedly correct workings-out. It’s an invitation: Dear Clover, please come to my 17th Birthday Bad-taste Costume Party, with various uninspiring sleepover details and a no-alcohol message from her parents. The other is a screwed-up note thrown hard at the back of my head that says: Ur ranga boyfriend is DEAD.
When we file out of class, Pete Tsaparis pushes past, lifting Keek by the elbow, shoving him forward. Keek doesn’t say a word, but a wash of red creeps up his neck.
‘Don’t be a dick,’ says Katie, shoving Pete in turn, but she follows the Herbs.
‘Katie—’
Katie stares over my shoulder, as if I’m not there. ‘You should’ve come to school yesterday.’
‘I—’
‘If you had Facebook like a normal person, you’d know what’s going on.’
‘What happened?’
She twitches, meets my eyes and says, ‘Two days is a long time in cyberspace.’ Her eyes drop, down to her jumper, and she picks off a few pill-balls of fluff. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter. It’s just how it is.’
‘I—’
Katie pushes my hand off her arm. Not mean, but firm, her eyes to the ground. ‘Rosemary’s right. I nearly lost all my friends because of you.’
‘Lucille’s dying.’
Katie’s hand flies to her heart, her eyes flicking back to mine. Rosemary, spying from their little knot further off down the corridor, sends Ellen, who says, ‘You all right, Katie?’, as though Katie might be in danger of catching something.
‘Come on,’ calls Natalie – I’d like to think, sadly – and they’re gone.
When I get home, Mum’s got her face in the dictionary and the proofs for a bridal magazine spread over the dining-room table. She’s sighing and moaning over them, despising ‘the commercialism of it all’, circling and annotating the mistakes.
‘Hi love, how was your day?’
‘I hate school, I’m never going back.’
‘Mm, okay. That’s good.’
‘What?’
She shakes her head and looks at me properly. ‘What?’
‘I said, I’m leaving school.’
‘Oh, God, Clover. Not now. I can’t cope with this right now.’
‘You can’t cope.’ A wave of red anger, like lava, pushes up from somewhere dark. ‘You don’t want television. You don’t want Facebook. You don’t want me to have a mobile phone. You don’t even know my dad so you don’t care where he is. Well, fuck you.’
‘Don’t.’
‘You want to control every tiny little thing about my life!’
‘Please don’t do this.’
‘I’m not a little kid anymore. I live in the real world, Mum. Do you know what a freak I am? Even Year Sevens are on Facebook now.’
‘That doesn’t make it right.’
‘I don’t care about right! Do you understand? I’m not ten – I’m sixteen and I can make my own decisions. You can’t make me go back.’
Mum’s face has already crumpled and now the tears fall. ‘I want to protect you—’
‘Control me.’
Mum wipes her eyes. ‘Okay. You’re right. You’re not a little girl anymore because I can assure you; the little girl you were would never speak to me the way you just have. And don’t ask me to apologise for the way I’ve brought you up. Don’t you think it would’ve been easier to plonk you in front of the tellie, to give in, feed you crap, go with the flow? You think I haven’t missed out on things, trying to . . .’ She pushes herself up from the table. ‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t even know what I was trying to do anymore.’
Lucille barks, once.
‘I’m going to see to the dog. I’ll think about Facebook and the phone, but you are not leaving school and that is that.’
She hardly says anything all night, and we have eggs on toast for dinner.
I hear her up late, worrying about me on the phone to Aunty Jean, who’s no doubt suggesting she sell me and use the money to fly to England. ‘I’m working from home,’ Mum says. ‘Yes, bridal, really.’ She laughs – or is it a groan? ‘I suppose, it’s cruel, for an old maid like me. Thanks for that.’ Her voice tightens. ‘No, no I . . . She’ll know when it’s time to go.’
I don’t want to go to school, but I don’t want to stay home, either – I can’t breathe. I hang around, procrastinating. Mr McKenzie and Keek turn up to visit the patient and give me a lift. I think my mother arranged it, worried I won’t go. Lucille is quiet, uncomplaining, with eyes of infinite question.
‘She’s dying softly,’ says Mum, shut up in her tower. When Mr McKenzie puts his hand on her shoulder, she covers it with her own and they crouch there, easily, as if all things in the tragic universe are in order.
‘Let’s go,’ I say to Keek.
‘Yeah,’ he murmurs. ‘And I’ve got something to show you.’ He kisses the dog one last time and heads out to the car.
I linger, suddenly unwilling to leave. Lucille wags her tail. Two thumps. Her eyes are on me. I kiss her head, afraid I’ll never see her again. She sighs and closes her eyes. It’s permission to go. Or an instruction. Mr McKenzie ruffles my mother’s head, as though she’s a kid, and follows me out.
In the car, I say, ‘So show me.’
Keek nods at the back of his dad’s head. ‘Later.’
It doesn’t take much to convince Keek to piss off from school. �
�Let’s piss off,’ I say.
‘Okay.’
Keek reckons he’s an expert at forging his mum’s signature. I’m nervous as hell about handing in my note five minutes after he’s submitted his about ‘the dentist’, but Mrs Stubbs in the office is dealing with flooding toilets – clogged by an outbreak of Year Eight toilet-paper madness – and waves me off with barely a look. I’m almost disappointed. After leaving Katie on her own, at the mercy of Rosemary and Thyme, I should be punished.
Outside the gate, we assess each other. ‘Where should we go?’ I ask. ‘The bowl?’
‘Check this out.’ Keek pulls a little red book out of his bag.
I turn it over in my hands. The Skate Park Grind Guide. ‘What’s this?’
‘The Skate Park Grind Guide.’
‘Yes, Einstein, but so what?’
‘It’s got every bowl in Victoria – with photos. And look.’ He opens it up and there’s Fernwood. ‘You’re famous.’
There’s my art in the little black-and-white photo – and it looks amazing.
‘Sadly verminous with bikers,’ I quote, amused, reading Fernwood’s entry and its fascinating facts about spines, rollovers, grindable lips and hip-to-hip transfers. It’s like they’re describing a living body. My eyes light on words that wing that little brown bird back into my tree: Graffiti gives this bowl definite character.
Keek taps on the page. ‘Apparently our bowl is a lot like Fitzroy bowl.’ He seems to think this is significant.
‘Character,’ I murmur.
Keek says, ‘And public transport directions for every bowl in Victoria.’
I return from my fantasy of being the world’s next Banksy, even though I know I’m not even half as good, and if I’m honest with myself, I prefer a pencil. Or a brush. ‘What are you suggesting?’
‘Let’s check them out.’
‘What? All of them?’
Keek offers an exaggerated shrug.
‘What about your bike?’
‘I’ll get it from home.’
‘What about your mum?’
He shrugs again.
Keek steals his own bike with no problems at all, adds fifty-seven bucks from his piggy bank to the heist and by lunch we are on the train, eating falafels, headed for Fitzroy.
By the time we get there, it’s almost time to turn around and get back before our parents wonder where we are. And I want to see Lucille. But it’s exciting to be in the city, without Mum; with Keek. On the train, we gravitated into a new way of being together: my legs slung over his. His arm is around my shoulder as we walk into the Edinburgh Gardens.
‘That tram ride down Brunswick Street proves that Melbourne is really a giant art gallery,’ I say. ‘Promise me we’ll check out some art for every skate park.’
‘That would take months,’ he says. ‘What about school?’
Beyond the gardens, I feel the swell of the city. ‘I’m done with school.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ says Keek. ‘Have fun telling your mother.’
As far as I know, nobody in the office has questioned my phone call informing the school that I’ll be away sick for the rest of the week. I guess it’s because of my excellent impersonation skills, and my long history of absences. And they’re used to Keek staying home because of his mother.
‘But I defs want to sit that English test on Monday,’ he says.
I shrug, but it comes out as more of a shudder.
‘They’ll forget about us,’ he says.
‘What if they don’t?’
It’s Keek’s turn to shrug.
I’ve never had trouble getting Mum to buy me art supplies, so I’ve used them to make myself refillable pocket-sized tins and a couple of deodorant-bottle felt markers from instructions Keek found for me on the internet.
So many suburbs. So many bowls. Police or no police; it’s an opportunity too good to resist, but I can’t use ‘Kandas’ anymore. I get out the sketchpad and throw around a few ideas. I choose Jonez because in a strange way, it feels like reclaiming myself from Rob . . . and it’s so good to write, it sets a tingle in my bones.
But even with the whole day, and saying we’re going to the park after school, we’re still only going to have time for one or two locations a day.
Thursday is day four and Lucille lies on her bed and sleeps. Or stares at us. Her mouth is dry and her lips keep sticking to her teeth, giving her a hapless look. We give her water from a teaspoon and Mum changes the bedding every few hours. But it still smells, so she burns incense and scented candles. The house feels closed, warm; claustrophobic.
Lucille does wag her tail when I give her a pat, or coax her to eat a few crunchies from my fingers, her bony head as smooth and warm as ever. Leaving her is scary because every time could be the last time, but it feels good to get away from the house and on the train with Keek. I use his phone to ring Katie, but hang up when she answers. I don’t know what to say.
When I get back late on Friday afternoon, Mum hands me the bad-taste birthday invitation. ‘You should go to Alison’s party,’ she says. ‘She rang.’
‘Where did you find that?’
‘In your room.’
‘What were you doing in my room?’
‘Picking up washing off your floor.’
I suspect she was snooping for evidence of graffiti crimes. She won’t find any. Not in my room. I’ve done a couple of less-than-inspired paintings at home as camouflage, but she’s suspicious of my paint-affected fingernails. Not even a nailbrush can get them clean.
‘You’ve left art-mess all over the lounge and got pastels on the carpet again,’ she complains, then nods at the invitation. ‘Friendship goes both ways, you know.’
I wish I could tell her about Katie. About the lovely – and scary – people Keek and I have met on the train, at different parks. That today, Keek met a bunch of riders and nearly broke his neck learning a crazy new trick he’d never seen before, and I had time to create a cool little stencil dog character. ‘Save the Creek’ has morphed into ‘Retrieve the Planet’ and the dog has the globe of the earth in its mouth.
But I can’t.
And Keek can’t tell his dad about the cool concrete he’s found, or about the bowls that are so rough they make Fernwood seem like luxury, or the truth about where the scrapes and bruises come from.
Keek rescues me from having to lie about my day at school by ringing and asking if I want to come over to watch TV. I practically run there.
I’m totally jealous of the huge flat-screen TV attached to Keek’s bedroom wall. The rest of the room is bare except for electronic stuff, his computer, the bikes – of course – that hang on a different wall, and horizontal stacks of books. ‘Why don’t you put them on shelves?’ I ask, having knocked one over.
‘It’s a system,’ he says, righting and sorting them, restacking with definite obsessive-compulsive tendencies.
‘There’s something wrong with you,’ I observe.
But he stings me with, ‘What? Because I’m not clumsy?’
It’s been a big week and I’m happy to snuggle up on Keek’s bed for Friday night television. I show him Alison’s invitation. ‘She rang to see if I’m coming and guess what my stupid mother said?’
‘Happy birthday?’
I give him a withering stare. ‘She said, of course I’m coming.’ At the time, I’d been relieved Alison hadn’t given me away by asking if I was sick or something. But now I’m annoyed. ‘It’s tomorrow night.’
‘Let’s go.’
‘It’ll be boring as!’
‘How do you know?’
‘It’s God-bothering former lesbian Alison Larder, Keek. A-l-i-s-o-n.’
Keek is finding pleasure in my outrage. He studies the invitation. ‘It’s her dad who’s a God-botherer. And don’t be such a bigot – so what if she’s a lesbian?’
‘Bigot? What kind of a word is that?’
He tuts, mocking me. ‘Did you not study To Kill a Mockingbird?’
‘So now yo
u’re Atticus Finch? And as if Aunty Jean would let me be a bigot about lesbians.’
‘Then maybe you should think a bit harder about what you say.’
Ouch.
But it’s hard to stay annoyed with Keek when he has his little-kid face on. ‘Look – we have to dress up,’ he says cheerily. ‘Bad taste. What will we go as?’
‘I might go as Alison Larder.’
He laughs. ‘The superbrain’s all right. Why are you so mean about her?’
‘I dunno.’ I flop back on the pillows. ‘Because she makes it so easy, I suppose.’ A news update comes on. I hate the way they do that in the middle of other shows. ‘Mute it,’ I say over the sound of manicured voices and machine-gun fire.
‘That’s what we can go as.’ Keek is excited. ‘Dad’s got a couple of ski masks and I think he’s even got some camo stuff.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘The party. Let’s go as suicide bombers.’
‘What?’
His eyes spark. ‘You heard me. Can’t get much more bad taste than that.’
‘That’s not bad taste! Bad taste is like . . . a woolly brown jumper tucked into pink high-waisted nanna slacks, or something. Or going as, like, Tinkerbell.’
Keek directs me to the television screen where there are explosions and smoke and terrified people. ‘That, CB, is bad taste. And I know just the thing for the bomb.’
‘Or tan leather lace-up shoes,’ I counter, weakly.
Keek grins. ‘Suicide bombers.’
‘You want to go to Alison Larder’s supervised, no-alcohol, bad-taste fancy dress sleepover birthday party as a suicide bomber?’
‘It’s perfect.’
‘But you hate parties.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Yes, you do.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘But you never go.’
At these words, an octopus of regret swims from its secret cave in the sea of my guts. I wish its tentacles could grab the words back. I think of Rosemary’s party; Thyme telling Keek I was off up the road with Robbo. Of that horrible room at Josh Eldrich’s. I’m like Lysander in Mum’s annual version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream – I’d been totally obsessed with Rob Marcello, but now I ‘repent the tedious minutes I with him have spent.’ I’m about to try some Shakespeare, but Keek rescues me.
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