I’m impressed. She’s making her own choice, she’s decisive and clear, and I can feel her confidence emanating from her. ‘And he has everything, um, organised?’
Lucy snorts. ‘Sky! You’re being a grandma!’
‘My mum had me at eighteen, remember. You can never be too careful.’ I say it so seriously that she cracks up and we both end up laughing.
I wipe my eyes before my face becomes serious again. Lucy’s shared something with me, so I feel I should be honest with her too. ‘Actually, I’ve been thinking about asking Oliver too.’
Lucy looks at me in surprise. ‘I thought you weren’t ready yet?’
That’s what I had told her in the bakery only last week. But I’m sick of Oliver and I taking it slow. ‘Yeah. I think I’m ready.’
We smile at each other, and I’m so happy I have a friend like Lucy to share these things with.
Our table is in the outdoor seating area and it’s adorned with hanging lanterns that colour the light. Oliver pulls my seat out for me and I sit down. The tables around us are all higgledy-piggledy and decorated with old glass bottles that hold variations of wild grasses while the plates are mismatched vintage china. It’s all a little like the style Lucy has going on in her own home, but this one is artfully curated while hers seems more accidental.
I feel like an adult, finally out of boring West Creek and in the city.
‘Look!’ Oliver points to the menu. ‘There’s a symbol to mark the ones that are vegan.’
Oliver found the restaurant online, searching for a place that declared itself to be veg friendly. The food is Mediterranean style and much cheaper than the decor suggests. I marvel at the menu, seeing many dishes I can choose from—far more than in West Creek. If we stick to the starters, it’s not going to be too expensive at all.
Oliver starts talking. He’s so excited about Keep Kind and his video work being recognised at last. Every new subscriber is charging up his enthusiasm, and we try to work out how he can buy that editing program himself.
‘You could sell your woodworking equipment,’ Lucy suggests.
‘Is it worth a lot second-hand?’ I ask, although I can hardly concentrate on the conversation. I’m too busy trying to work out how to ask Oliver about tonight.
Oliver scratches his neck. ‘Could bring in at least some cash, that’s true.’
Lucy picks up her phone. According to eBay, she tells him, it could get him about half the money he needs.
Malcolm virtually pulls Lucy into his lap for a cuddle. ‘I heard this restaurant got a 5.6 on the Richter scale,’ he says, which makes Lucy giggle. After yet another kiss, she extricates herself and sits back down on her own chair.
The waitress motions that she’ll be with us in a minute, and we continue browsing the menu.
The air is cool, and I rub the goosebumps on my arm. Oliver hands me a soft blue throw from the pile the restaurant has for chilly customers. He’s being such a gentleman.
‘Thanks.’ I wrap it around my shoulders, pulling the end of my ponytail free. This evening is going so well; I knew Melbourne would be the right move. We’re finally getting back to us.
‘Did you ask your family about a job for Mark?’ I ask Malcolm.
‘Not yet.’ He runs his hand through his hair.
‘How about your mum?’ I ask Oliver.
‘She’s on the lookout.’
I can rely on Oliver at least.
‘So, what do you feel like?’ Lucy asks Malcolm. She’s clearly changing the topic, and I immediately regret bringing this up again. It just makes Lucy stressed.
‘Whatever you’re having sounds good to me.’ Malcolm leans over to kiss her again. ‘Remember that dessert we had on our first date at that Greek cafe?’ He points to the menu. ‘They have it here, baklava. We should totally get it again.’
I think of the first time I saw Oliver; he was sitting in front of me on my first day at West Creek School when my pencil tip broke and he offered me his sharpener. Time stopped, I gasped—literally—and I had to consciously stop myself from reaching out to touch him, like he was an apparition.
I put my hand to my face; I can feel a blush spreading.
‘What’s wrong?’ Oliver asks me.
I stare at the menu. ‘Just wondering what to choose.’
‘Well, you can have whatever you like; tonight’s on me.’ Oliver takes my hand and a short pulse of electricity rushes through my body, just like it did when our legs first accidentally touched. I stare at his fine face, the freckle, his to-die-for eyes, caramel skin glowing in the light. He’s sweet and funny and smart and ambitious. And he loves me. It’s time to make the first move—women empowerment, fourth-wave feminism and all that.
I shiver—out of nerves or anticipation, I’m not sure— and Oliver drags his chair closer to mine.
We order, and shortly after, the waitress brings out our drinks. Malcolm takes a swig from his schooner; he’s almost eighteen, but just in case he’s carded he has his cousin’s driving licence and they look remarkably alike. Lucy surprises me yet again by sharing his beer.
An array of small sharing plates soon arrives and we pounce on the food. The fried cauliflower drizzled with tahini and—what is that, agave syrup?—it’s beyond. I want to enjoy every mouthful, but dinner suddenly feels no longer a priority.
My heart is beating fast. Expectation, excitement and fear. I take out my phone and quickly text under the table.
You know Lucy and Malcolm have got their own room tonight?
Oliver’s phone beeps mid-mouthful and I watch as he takes it out of his pocket. He looks at me, eyes wide. I grin back and return to my phone. My fingers work quickly as I feel my face flush again. Thank goodness for the low lighting.
So my room is free. Just me. I add a single heart.
Oliver stares at his phone a little longer than I would have liked. He looks at me, his expression now unreadable, before returning to type. Let me check with my father. He’s expecting me back by midnight. He adds two hearts.
I was hoping it would be an instant yes, but maybe he’s just being extra cautious because of his dad. He did say he was old school.
Oliver gets to his feet and excuses himself to make a phone call. I watch as he walks to the end of the laneway and turns the corner.
When I turn back to the table, Lucy’s looking at me, eyebrows raised. I nod slowly. She smiles, knowing what it means.
I glance back towards the laneway, but there’s no sign of Oliver yet. I push the cauliflower around my plate, thoughts beginning to buzz around my head. What I’m planning to do tonight is exactly what Paula feared might happen, and I feel bad for misleading her. I do. But at the same time, this is my business and I know how to be responsible.
Oliver sits back down, snapping me out of my thoughts. I look at him expectantly and a small smile plays on his lips as he taps out a message on his phone. My phone bings.
I’ll just head back to Dad’s and get a few things. Meet you there.
Yes. A rush of tingles rises from my toes. As the waitress clears our dishes, I’m so nervous that I’m biting my lip.
Our shared dessert plate arrives and I take a bite of the syrupy vegan baklava. Sugar saturates my blood and I just want to run back to the hotel and into my boyfriend’s arms.
I’m so ready for tonight.
Chapter 12
Early the next morning, Lucy, Malcolm and I are on the tram heading towards the conference and museum. Oliver’s meeting me there. With no available seats, the three of us stand bunched together by the electric doors as the tram clanks and shrieks its way through central Melbourne. It’s my first time on a tram, which looks like the offspring of a bus and a train and is connected to a spider web of cables suspended in the air.
We take a sharp turn to the left and I bump into the person next to me, my hand gripping the canary-yellow metal bar above my head. Malcolm, meanwhile, towers over all the action.
An automated voice announces the next series
of stops. I’m getting out soon, but Lucy and Malcolm are staying on to the end of the line, to the museum. I can smell Malcolm’s spicy cologne and I bet half the bus can too.
I yawn, tired.
I think back to last night. I’ll remember it forever, but not for the reasons I’d wanted to.
We got back to the hotel around 11pm, then Lucy and Malcolm disappeared into another room.
Alone in the hotel room, I put on my pyjamas, then changed my mind. Super unsexy. So I put on my other clean clothes, but then I thought it would look weird that I’d randomly changed. I returned to what I was wearing, but I wanted to smell fresh, so I had another shower. When I got out, a new idea popped into my mind: Maybe I should open the door in my towel. Very rom-com style, like the nineties films I used to watch with Mum. Sexy or not sexy?
I abandoned the idea as too try-hard, and returned to my dinner clothes. I’d just started brushing out my hair when my phone sounded.
I’m sorry. Dad won’t let me come.
I stared at the words for what felt like ages before I replied. I thought you asked him?
I did. But he wants to go to the gym with me early.
Okay. What else was I meant to say?
Let’s take a raincheck. He added a series of sad faces and love hearts.
I threw off my clothes and put my pyjamas back on, then, to stop my head from exploding with self-doubt, I watched re-runs of Keeping Up with the Kardashians until 3am, tossing and turning before I eventually fell asleep still holding my phone. This morning I left my grandmother a message apologising profusely—I totally forgot about our call.
‘Eat like an elephant?’ Malcolm jolts me back to the present. He points at the T-shirt of a guy who’s sitting in one of the tram’s reverse seats at the back, facing us. ‘That makes zero sense. Elephants eat grass; they are one hundred per cent herbivores, but humans are omnivores. Is he saying we should eat grass and trees too? Look at this ...’ He taps on his incisor tooth before returning his hand to the handrail. ‘Designed for tearing through flesh.’
‘If that’s your thing, birthday boy,’ I say, flatly. ‘I find them useful for eating carrots personally.’ I’m still preoccupied with my thoughts. Does last night’s excuse mean Oliver doesn’t want to do it? That he doesn’t want me?
The tram stops and starts again.
‘We’re top of the food chain, Sky,’ Malcolm replies. ‘Apex predators.’
I’ve heard Malcolm’s argument a million times before from a squillion kids and adults. He thinks he’s being original, but since it’s his birthday, and it’s only thanks to him agreeing to come to Melbourne with Lucy that I’m here, I keep my tone light.
‘Have you ever killed an animal yourself and eaten it, Mr Apex Predator?’
Malcolm grins. ‘Well, obviously we pay people to do that for us. Civilised society and all that. I don’t grow my own vegetables either.’
The tram stops. Out the window I see a large historic building with high arches and in front of it a fountain and a fancy cafe with sprawling white umbrellas.
Given Malcolm is knowledgeable about geology and bush regeneration, I would have thought he’d be more understanding.
‘Check this one out,’ Malcolm says, not bothering to whisper. He’s looking at a girl who just got on. The bridge of her nose is pierced with silver, and her hair is bleached white and cropped military style.
‘Malcolm!’ Lucy pokes him.
‘Sorry, Lu.’ He bends down low to kiss her.
I take a deep breath and remind myself that I’ve lived in Sydney and seen many different kinds of people. Between Mum and Melody, I know what alternative looks like. Malcolm, on the other hand, was born and bred in a country town. The only diversity at school is the colour of one’s pencil case.
I glance at Lucy to see if she’s bothered by Malcolm’s comments, but she doesn’t seem to care, and they’re now holding hands. She came to tell me this morning about what happened between them last night. I made sure she was okay, and she reassured me she was—and she did seem very happy over breakfast, smiling into her toast. I’m so happy for her, but at the same time, it’s a punch to my stomach.
The tram fills with more people—certainly not the kind we would normally see on the streets of West Creek. It seems I’m not the only one going to IAAD today.
Lucy’s still looking at the girl, squinting at her through her glasses. ‘What does it say on her T-shirt?’
The tram turns right, Lucy loses her balance and Malcolm catches her. He insists on holding her bag and giving her his prime spot by the handrail. ‘Vegan from my head tomatoes,’ he says after they’ve reshuffled. ‘What the?’
‘Head tomatoes?’ Lucy scrunches her nose.
I look closer. ‘Oh! I get it!’ I didn’t get the geology joke Lucy shared with me, but I know a good vegan wordplay when I see one.
Lucy inclines her head, indicating a girl standing at the front of the tram. Her dark hair is clipped short on one side, long on the other. ‘What do you think, Malcolm? Would that suit me?’
Malcolm studies her. ‘No.’
‘Why?’ She sounds offended.
‘You’re perfect as you are.’
They share a quick kiss. Despite my worries for her, Malcolm has been especially doting all day. At breakfast, he even took off his sweater and insisted Lucy wear it so she didn’t catch a chill.
‘You should print some of your drawings onto T-shirts too,’ Malcolm tells her. ‘The hipsters would gobble them up.’
‘Yeah, that’s a great idea,’ I say. At least we agree on something.
‘Sky, you really want to go to this thing today with all these ...’ Malcolm gestures around the tram, his eyes wide. ‘I mean, I know you’re veggo or whatever, but you’re mostly normal. You’re not like super preachy.’
I raise my eyebrows. ‘Gee, thanks. Some people are trying to help the world, you know.’
‘What I eat shouldn’t be anyone’s business. Each to their own.’
I go to argue back, but swallow my words. If I tell him what I think, I know it’ll sound judgemental—that what he eats is someone’s business because it causes pain and suffering to others.
The tram stops and a group of people squeeze into the last spots by the back door. I watch as two guys with groomed beards look for a place to stand. One wears a fitted black T-shirt with Clark Kent was vegan splashed across the front. Two girls follow them, Instagram stylish; one has ruby-red lipstick and a cap emblazoned with a single word: Kale.
Malcolm stifles a laugh and Lucy gives him a stern look.
He turns back to me, running his fingers through his hair. ‘Chill, Sky. The cows are fine. They live better lives than all of us, hanging out all day munching grass. Anyway, we have bigger fish to fry, don’t we? Like climate change. If you’re going to get obsessed with anything, start one of those strikes like that European girl does. Then we can all have a day off school. Win–win.’
‘You mean Greta Thunberg?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘You know she’s vegan, right? Being vegan can actually help stop climate change,’ I say.
‘Er, I don’t know about that.’
‘Animal agriculture is really polluting; it’s actually more harmful to the climate than all the transport industries in the whole world.’ I grip the rail slightly tighter trying to remember the figure I read. ‘A vegan diet makes thirty-five per cent less greenhouse gases than a meat-eater’s.’
‘But these people just overdo it, Sky.’ He nods towards the group. ‘You get what I mean, right?’
Argh. This conversation’s going nowhere but, still, I want the last word.
‘Anyway, cows don’t spend all day eating grass. Not when they’re in feedlots being fattened up. There’s no grass there.’
I watch as Malcolm shrugs, then I look back at the other people on the tram. Rather than finding anyone weird, I want to join them. They feel like my people.
I can’t say I’m not gla
d when my stop appears on the electric sign above. If I stay around Malcolm much longer, I get the feeling I might say something I regret. Even Lucy, lover of wildlife, feels far away from me today.
I press the red button and join the crowd waiting to exit the tram. I bite my nails. What will Oliver be like around me after last night? Will things be awkward between us? Was he lying about his dad not letting him go to spare my feelings?
I spot him waiting across the street, and walk towards him nervously. But he immediately smiles and hugs me hard, lifting me off my feet. He wasn’t lying. We are okay. My heart sings.
He pulls back and stares at me. ‘Sixteen thousand views!’
Okay, I was expecting some mention of last night, but I guess he’s just excited. I am too.
‘We’re nearly at a thousand subscribers!’ I say.
Our fingers entwine and we start to walk the streets towards the large convention centre. It’s not hard to find our way; we are two in an enormous river of people all walking the same path.
Oliver continues talking as we walk. ‘Actually, I’ve got good news. Dad agreed to pay for the program.’
I look at him in disbelief. ‘He did? All of it?’ Things must have really picked up with his dad.
‘I already downloaded it. Can’t wait to start playing around with the features.’
‘That’s awesome.’
‘Now I can get to work making my portfolio even better. Viola Films, here I come!’
It’s so nice seeing him happy again. This day is looking even better than I imagined.
The conference is being held in a large venue with multiple buildings. On the right is a big old church, green ivy crawling up the walls to reach the tall grey spire.
We wait in a line at the registration desk, taking out our phones to show our e-tickets, before following the crowd around the back and into a huge outdoor space.
I clutch the conference booklet as I drink in the atmosphere. The area is buzzing with hundreds of people, young and old, speaking multiple languages. They wear a variety of looks from punk to preppie, emo to boho. I see an older woman in a tweed suit and a man with a shaved head wearing orange Buddhist robes.
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