I Am Out With Lanterns Page 3

  I log into his account now, bring up the sneaky shot I took earlier of Summer playing guitar, choose Inkwell and post it for Floyd. Then I log out.

  Scroll, scroll, scroll. There are some good photos of my friend Hari from school. She goes to a lot of gigs with her boyfriend, Luca. Then I come to one of Summer, a selfie taken in her bedroom, posted two hours ago. Sweet lopsided smile, eyes off-camera, black-and-white. She looks stunning. But the idea of her taking it makes me mad. I don’t want her to buy into that crap. Three hundred and seven people have ‘liked’ it already and there are over twenty comments underneath about how pretty she is. She is pretty, but when tomorrow comes, will she need another three hundred and seven people to tell her? Will the same three hundred and seven do, or is the idea to always be acquiring more and more admirers?

  The last photo I posted on my own account – of some fungi growing on a nature strip – got eighteen likes. I don’t know any of the likers in real life apart from Milo. How am I supposed to feel about that? I have no idea. I don’t feel anything.

  I take a blurred photo of my middle finger, whack on a heap of shadow, vignette the living hell out of it and press ‘share’.

  I’m lying under a tree in the park at the end of our road. I’ve been everywhere today, by foot and tram. The Polly Waffle didn’t bring back any more memories. I bought hot chips for dinner and drank from water fountains. I’m so tired my head is spinning.

  Midnight. That’s it, Dad and Dara have had enough time to themselves. I get up off the ground and walk slowly.

  I’ve worked out that the middle of Melbourne is made up of long, straight roads that form a grid. I’m sure I didn’t know that when I was six. All I can remember is that there was a street with a donut shop and a park with a dragon slide. I didn’t find either of those today, but I did decide what I want to do. Now I just have to convince Dad.

  Outside the house next door to ours there’s a small tabby cat. She comes closer and weaves her body around my bare legs. As I bend to stroke her, she sits up like a meerkat and paws at me. Her eyes are intensely green. I lift her onto my shoulder and unlatch the gate.

  The first bedroom is open and Dara is asleep.

  The air in the hall is thick and warm. Tinkling sounds come from the kitchen, so with the cat still balanced I go towards it and lurk in the arched doorway. Dad’s at the half-moon table, drinking coffee. That means he’s going to paint all night. When he looks up at me, I can’t help picturing what he sees, framed by this arch. Always in a frame, waiting for his opinion.

  ‘Dad, I want to go to school here. Can I?’

  ‘Ye-e-es.’ He draws out the word as if I didn’t need to ask permission. That’s good. Maybe it means he plans to stay here whether he wins the portrait prize or not. ‘I certainly can’t deal with you any more. Maybe school can do something with you.’

  ‘What? I sat for you for three hours today and then you forced me out.’

  ‘Don’t go thinking you’ve done me any favours, Adie. You modelled like a sack of potatoes.’

  So that’s it. The portrait today is no good and it’s my fault. Like that he turns me into a tiny speck. Dad lights a cigarette and pinches the bridge of his nose.

  ‘Sorry, kiddo. I didn’t mean it. You know it’s difficult for me at the moment, all this waiting around for the prize to be announced. School, you say – yes, fine. You’ll need things, then. A computer.’

  I tweak my shoulder. He sold my last one, but I didn’t mind because it was to get us here. ‘I’ll manage,’ I say.

  ‘No, you won’t. Leave it with me. Easy.’

  Nothing about this is going to be easy. Nothing with Dad ever is. I’ll have to do everything: choose the school, fill out the forms; there might be money to pay, a uniform, books. The idea is already heavy in my arms. But I need this.

  Dad gets up. ‘Where’d you find that thing?’ He rubs his forefinger under the cat’s chin and she purrs.

  ‘Outside our door. She’s friendly.’

  ‘God, I thought it would be dead by now.’

  ‘You know this cat?’

  ‘Lived next door. Used to belong to a right nosy cow, but she doesn’t live there any more. Bloody cat must have hated her as much as I did.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The cat.’

  ‘Who knows?’

  ‘What about the woman? Should I remember her?’

  ‘No,’ he says bluntly. ‘It’s late, go to bed.’ His voice is rough again as he goes out the no-door doorway. ‘I need to work.’

  Two weeks later

  It’s the night before Year Ten. I’ve got a racing heart and a sense of dread. Milo was on lockdown all weekend with relatives visiting, so I’ve spent my last forty-eight hours of freedom switching between drifting, sulking, moping and mooching. Now it’s six o’clock and the whole holiday has been vacuum-sealed and tossed into the wardrobe. Dad’s ironed our school dresses and hung them on the bookcase in the living room.

  Sometime after dinner, I find Mum in my bedroom. Odd, I don’t remember issuing a formal invitation. She has her back to me and my sketchpad held in front of her face, looking at my latest portrait.

  ‘Wren … all these sketches …’

  I know what the rest of the sentence is. I’ve been sprung.

  ‘Get out, Mum.’ I step forward and take the sketchpad from her hands.

  ‘I thought you were doing well, sweetheart. But … every single sketch …’

  All the things I could say to her are closing up my throat. Yes, they’re all Floyd. What’s the problem with that? How dare you invade my space. Why do you always have to suck all the oxygen out of a room?

  I don’t mean that last bit.

  I bloody do, though.

  ‘Wren?’

  It’s been understood for ages that we all have different ways of dealing with Floyd being gone. Dad’s the rock. He has work, plus a chaotic relationship with long-distance running and health food. If you need something emotional from Dad, you give him very specific instructions and maybe some kind of allen key. He’s also grown a beard; I’m not sure if that’s relevant.

  Mum’s the one with the feelers. If you don’t want an emotion detected, you avoid being in the same room. Meanwhile, she has her pills and regularly sees Wonderful Jenny (You should go and see Jenny, my therapist. She’s wonderful). Mum often hangs her feelings all over the house like underwear, so there’s nowhere you can look that isn’t confronting.

  Summer has her music and a peachy kind of optimism that you’re either born with or without. She taught herself to play Floyd’s guitar as if his spirit was left behind in it.

  And I draw him. If it (sometimes) makes me happy, it can’t be that bad.

  Can it?

  Only, a few times lately I’ve forgotten that Floyd is dead. It’s a different sort of forgetting, followed by the worst kind of remembering. Like holding someone’s hand and being unable to imagine ever not holding their hand, then suddenly your hand is empty. You don’t know how long it’s been empty, you don’t know if you let go or if they did. But there it is: your empty hand.

  When my hand feels empty, I pick up a pencil.

  ‘Wren, is this why you never let me look at your sketchpad?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Well, it makes sense now.’

  ‘That’s not it, Mum!’ I have to get her off the scent. ‘It’s because … well, it’s obvious.’ A half-viable idea comes to me. ‘I don’t want you to look because I’m not good enough yet. And you’re an artist. It’s intimidating.’

  I’ve never actually had these thoughts before saying them out loud, but they feel almost true. From the look on her face, she’s buying it.

  ‘Oh, sweetheart, I wish you wouldn’t feel that way. You’re so talented.’

  I press my lips together and indicate the doorway, hoping she’ll take the hint.

  The truth is, I don’t sketch anyone but Floyd. I picture him in a moment, and
capture him, as if I’ve got secret access to the other world where he has to be now. After he’d been gone a year, I saw that my face was changing while his never would. I started to age each new portrait of him: darkening the shadow around his jawline, making his cheekbones more defined, lengthening his nose, growing his hair.

  It’s like a conversation with him where I do all the talking. Grow up with me, Floyd. Make mistakes with me. I’m going to make so many, I can feel it. Listen to me. Laugh at me. I talk to him in charcoal, rub out things I didn’t mean to say. I gave him acne one night because I had the biggest zit on my chin and if he’d been here he’d have teased me about it. We had wicked banter, him and me. The next day I gave him a miracle cure. I put him in a beanie when the heating broke in July and the house was cold. One time I pierced his eyebrow.

  He should have turned eighteen this week. We seemed all right on the day, even Mum. She bought a cake and asked me and Summer to blow out the candle. The four of us cried, held hands, hugged, and then it was over for another year.

  But later, when I was alone, I made Floyd turn eighteen in pencil. I gave him celebratory eyeliner, black lips like mine. Floyd used to let me put goth make-up on him. He’d wash off most of it before he went out, but he never minded me doing it and he’d smile when I passed him the mirror. The little sod knew he was pretty.

  ‘So what about everything else?’ says Mum. ‘Any gossip to tell me about … anything or … any … one?’

  ‘Right, that’s it, out you go.’ I try to remove my mother but she’s unfeasibly strong.

  ‘Wren, I’m only trying to …’ she says, as I continue to gently but firmly budge her from the spot. ‘Stop, I just want us to be …’

  I let go and shout, ‘We would be whatever it is you want us to be if you would not snoop in my stuff or constantly try to find out if I have a bloody boyfriend.’

  She waits a few beats, then says, ‘Or a girlfriend.’

  ‘Yes, Mum.’

  Mum and Dad have always said ‘be whoever you are’ – especially Mum. Not long ago I told her I was bi and said she could tell Dad. Summer knew already. Mum was about as loving and understanding as it’s possible to be without making me projectile vomit. But ever since that day she’s been acting more concerned around me, prying more, as if telling her wasn’t enough and I should keep her constantly updated on my wildly complicated love life.

  But there’s nothing to tell … unless she really needs to know who I picture when I masturbate.

  Jen Taylor in Year Twelve. Just saying.

  I’ve never been in love. I’m at the theory stage. Everyone I’ve liked has been too remote to count. It’s like I had to experience telling Mum I’m bi simply because the onus is on the defendant to prove she’s not guilty of being hetero. But now I want my parents to unknow the fact so I can get on with my life without them watching. And by ‘them’ I mean Mum.

  Summer is one hundred per cent straight and bonkers in love with our family friend Gabe – has been for a while. Top secret: I may have briefly toyed with the idea of Gabe ages ago. But then I saw how Summer felt and the idea of him and me became as appealing as rancid milk. My guess is that Gabe sees us both as sisters. So Summer is completely screwed. Or, rather, she’s not screwed at all. She’s as much of a virgin as I am. Though I reckon being an optimistic virgin puts her one step ahead.

  ‘Let’s not fight, Wren.’ Mum holds out her arms.

  Resist.

  Resist.

  Eyes on the ground, soldier.

  ‘Wren?’

  I crack and look at her. Her face is soft and genuine and it kills me. The anger blocking my throat dissolves, which makes me think I’m all kinds of wrong besides being too hard on Mum. And makes me wonder if drawing Floyd so often is a kind of madness.

  After the sun has lost its final bite I go to the garden, walk down the side passage to throw a stone at Milo’s window.

  Now we’re back to back, the garden fence between us with its ear-shaped hole at the right height.

  ‘Milo, how many times have we sat here and talked like this?’

  ‘Erm … hang on … roughly eight hundred and fifty times.’

  ‘Be serious.’

  ‘That’s my serious answer, eight hundred and fifty … Wren?’ He knocks on the fence.

  ‘Sorry, I’m processing. Numbers make everything scary.’

  ‘Not to me. Why did you ask, anyway?’

  ‘It’s not healthy to keep doing the same thing. Is it?’

  ‘I do the same things a lot. Wait, are you saying it’s not healthy to sit here and talk all the time?’

  ‘No! Never.’

  ‘What is it, then? You don’t want to be as much of a weirdo as I am?’

  ‘I want to be a much, much bigger weirdo than you, Milo. That’s not it … Okay … I draw Floyd nearly every day. By your count that’s at least eight hundred and fifty drawings since we left London. Bloody hell.’

  ‘You’re an artist. You specialise in portraits. And you loved your brother. It makes sense.’

  ‘Does it? It’s a lot, Milo. Something has to change.’

  I start to cry it out, quietly, the way I’m good at. Milo is telling me about a new world he and Daniel are building on Minecraft. At first I’m confused, wondering how there’s going to be a connecting point between what he’s talking about and what I’ve been telling him, but as the minutes pass and the details about his world run on and on, I realise he has no idea how upset I am. Why would he? I’m on the other side of a fence. Grief is long and lonely – but I can do this, I can.

  It’s turned to night while we’ve been talking and I’ve made a promise. For the whole of Year Ten, I will not draw my brother.

  God, really, Wren?

  Really.

  I promise. Quick and dirty like an instinct, which means it’s right. An artist’s challenge.

  Floyd, my beautiful brother, I miss you like sheer burning hell, but I have to start drawing other people.

  First day of Year Ten

  ‘Ben …’

  Sleeping.

  ‘Mate … five-o-five.’

  Sshh.

  ‘I said get your arse up!’

  Crap. Dad pushes my shoulder into the mattress and I make a noise like a leaf-blower. I open one eye and the side of my mouth that isn’t glued to the pillow. ‘Kermin, nerneetasha.’ That was: Coming, no need to shout.

  ‘Down to the pool, pronto.’ He flicks on the light as he leaves.

  Five-o-five. Sadist.

  Captain walks over my back and settles near my face. He rams his furry skull into my cheek. His whiskers find their way up my nose and he’s purring like mad. I twist onto my back and rub the sleep out of my eyes. Captain glares at me. He’s ginger, the size of a wombat. Wise as hell.

  ‘Okay, I’m up.’

  If I don’t put some serious hours into training, I won’t make the water polo team. Dad’s already told everyone I’m in it. He’s an alumni. I might as well tie a besser brick to my ankle and chuck myself in the Yarra if I fail.

  I should make it, though. I’m good enough.

  I grab my swimmers off the floor. They’re still damp from the race last night. Pops was over for dinner and challenged Dad and I to a post-pavlova sprint in the pool. He called Dad ‘Podge’, which Dad firmly denies was his high-school nickname. Usually, Dad would’ve laughed it off – he can take a joke, he cracks enough of them – but I guess he put on a bit of weight this summer.

  I didn’t have to try very hard to beat them. Dad came second but he puked afterwards. Pops was still laughing as he got into his car to drive home.

  Down in the garden, it’s still dark. From the patio, the sun rises over the city, while the garden slopes away to darker places that still think it’s night. Dad’s already in the pool. He’s a big guy but a neat swimmer who leaves a smooth wake. It looks like the water is getting out of his way. I stand by the edge and stretch. When Dad makes it back to my end, he stands up and his chest puffs out and
in like he’s attached to a foot pump.

  ‘Hop in,’ he says, red-faced. ‘I’ve already done twenty.’ Twenty, my arse. He’d have had to break every world record to do that in the time it’s taken me to get down here.

  I dive in and get to it. Twenty laps, then sprints. I reckon I’m going faster with Dad watching. My muscles fill with blood, drink it in and power me on.

  Dad’s sitting on the side when I stop, dried out. His torso is a solid block with a deep crease that crosses his navel where the muscle has turned to fat. He could eat three of me.

  ‘You finished already?’ I say.

  ‘Told ya, did mine before you got your lazy butt out of bed. Now, listen, Ben. First of all, your elbows aren’t coming up high enough out of the water. And your hand is entering the water too early.’

  ‘Coach says that a bit.’

  ‘Right. Well, now I’m telling you.’

  ‘I’ll work on it.’

  ‘Good. And we need to do something about your strength. Water polo isn’t for girls, Ben. They’ll drown you if you’re not strong enough. Here, I’ll show you what we used to do. Give me your ankles.’ He’s back in the water. ‘Tow me to the end.’

  Jesus. He holds on tight to my ankles. After a few strokes I feel like telling him to lay off the beers, but I think better of it. I manage four laps and sink in the middle of the pool on the fifth. Dad lets go, and when I come back up, he’s smiling.

  ‘Good job, mate. That’s enough for one morning.’

  Thank God. I couldn’t do that again in a hurry.

  Dad heads inside. The sun’s coming up as I’m drying off. I feel amazing now my lungs have stopped burning. Maybe training with Dad is going to be all right.

  When I look back at the house, Mum’s in the kitchen. It’s golden inside and peaceful out, just the sound of my breathing after a good effort, the faraway drone of the freeway. Dad’s there now, working the coffee machine with his back to me while Mum makes lunches for me and Noah, who starts Year Six today. By the occasional turn of their heads I can see Mum and Dad are talking to each other. Dad goes to the fridge. Mum’s facing out, washing something in the sink. She can’t see me. Dad holds up a milk carton. Mum turns her head to him. Dad wiggles it. It’s empty. Mum turns back to the sink, but Dad’s frozen in that position with the carton, staring at Mum.