A Little Wanting Song (11 page)

“What about you? You don’t ever get sad?” she asks.

“Angry, sometimes,” I say. “That’s better than sad.”

We watch the moon for a while. It’s almost red, a fiery sun somewhere giving out light so it can shine.

Canary Moon

Sing, canary moon
Sing me sweet and yellow notes
Let them circle in the sky
Let them drift into my throat
I’ll take them in
I’ll swallow songs
I’ll let them feather up my lungs
Let them feather up my blood

Sing, canary moon
Let me steal a little tune
And you won’t even notice that it’s gone
And when my belly’s full
I’ll canary into air
I’ll canary with you, moon
And let all the people stare
I just won’t care
I just won’t care
I’ll sing your yellow song
I’ll sing it sweet
And loud and long
I’ll sing it so it’s heard
A million miles away from here

Sing, canary moon
Let me steal a little tune
And you won’t even notice that it’s gone

Rose and I sit in the shade of her porch and eat ice. It’s the twenty-seventh of December, and instead of counting the days till I go I’m wishing there were more days I could stay.

“You must miss Dahlia,” Rose says.

“Yeah, but she rings me a lot. She e-mails, too. The first weekend I get back I’ll sleep over at her place, talk about the summer. We might see a band that weekend.”

“I wish I’d been born in the city. I should have been. Mum was in London when she found out she was pregnant.”

“I don’t know where Mum was when she found out about me,” I say.

“You two look serious,” Dave calls from a little way up the street. “Cheer up. Come for a ride.” Rose points at two bikes
lounging on her lawn. She grabs hers and turns circles around me.

“It’s been a while since I rode. You two go; I might help Dad in the shop.” I haven’t been on a bike since mine rusted in the shed. “Time to get back on,” Mum says.

Rose gets off her bike and holds out a helmet. “Hop on.” I search for balance and all the time I’m swaying Rose runs behind me, holding the back of the bike. I nearly drag her through the gravel, but she keeps up and runs till the rhythm becomes mine and I’m hypnotized by the shaky shapes I’m drawing. She lets go, and I glide. “You’ve got it!” she calls.

I’m not exactly sure what she thinks I’ve got as I jerk around the road, but whatever it is, I love it. I love the sound of the wheels purring like they did when I was a kid. “Miss me, miss me, miss me,” they still say, but it’s not sad. It’s fast and full of blue sky whirring in the background.

All the sounds of the day mix together as I ride: Dave and Rose clapping, wind singing past my ears, laughter. My laughter. “There you go!” she yells as the wheels stop shaking. “That’s it. Keep going. You’ve got it!”

“What exactly has she got?” Dave asks.

“I don’t know, but I hope it’s not catching.”

He covers his eyes. “Is she doing a wheelie?”

“Not on purpose. She’s funny, isn’t she?”

“You just noticing that now?” he asks. I guess Dave’s been watching her longer than me.

“Let’s take her to the falls.” The words are out of my mouth almost before I’ve thought them. The falls is the only place that’s not quiet here. Dave and Luke don’t know it, but sometimes I go there on my own. I go to scream. I go to tell the world to get lost under the run of the water. I stand till I’m drowning in something other than this place.

“Why, Rose?” Dave asks.

“I don’t know,” I say, and that’s not a lie. “It feels like a place she should see.” Charlie veers to the left in front of us, then straightens out at the last minute. “You make her ride to the falls, she’ll kill herself,” Dave says.

“Relax a little,” I call.

“It’s okay, Rose.” She takes one hand off the handlebars to wave.

“Don’t take your hands off the bars!” I yell too late. A rock kicks at the bike and sends her spinning across air with nothing to hold on to.

“Mayday, Mayday, she’s going down,” Dave laughs, and I close my eyes along with him. I can’t look as she’s forced into a tailspin and collides with the ground. “Maybe she should ride on my handlebars,” he says.

“I think that’s a very good idea.”

“We should wait for Luke.” He leans down to test the air pressure in his tires. “He finishes work in an hour.”

“Not enough time if we want to get there and back before it rains.” The three of us start out across the fields. Dave doesn’t say a word as we ride into what we both know is a cloudless sky.

“Hold your feet higher, Charlie,” Dave says, pedaling up the hill.

“Maybe I could walk and meet you there?” My voice jumps with the bike over stones and dirt.

“It’d take too long. Just keep your feet off the ground.” I turn to nod. “Shit, Charlie, no.” He swerves sideways and hits a rock. The side of my arm slides across gravel and my front tooth sinks through skin.

“You two okay?” Rose calls back.

“I’m fine,” I say, and haul my aching arse back onto the bars.

About halfway up the hill, Dave works out how to keep us steady. Instead of trying to ride in a straight line and hold the
bike upright, he angles us toward the ground and swerves all over the road. “That’s it,” he says. “Perfect.” Perfectly crooked. It’s all in the way you look at things, I guess.

We make it to flat ground and he gets his breath back. “So, have you finished my CD?” he asks.

“Almost.”

“How about you sing me one of the songs on it to pass the time?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’d say no to a guy who’s busting his arse to get you up a hill? That’s cold, Charlie.”

It is cold to say no to Dave. He does stuff all the time for people, like riding up hills and carrying Christmas trees. He even came to Gran’s funeral with his mum and dad. I turned around before the service started and saw him sitting there. He didn’t pull at his tie or scratch where his shirt itched him like some of the other guys. He was so still, staring at his hands. Afterward he stood beside his parents and nodded when they said sorry.

“I’m waiting,” he tells me.

“You sing me a song.”

“I’m pedaling,” he says, but then he starts like a dog going crazy at the moon.

“Okay, stop. I’ll sing.”

“Too late. I’ve started.”

“You sound like you’re in pain.”

“I’m pedaling up a hill with a girl on the handlebars while I’m singing. I am in fucking pain. No, don’t laugh. Don’t, you’ll tip us. Don’t. Shit.”

We hit the ground again. “Bad things happen when you sing like that,” I say.

“You’re not wrong. I think I pulled a hamstring. Let’s rest a bit before we climb to the falls.”

“Climb?”

He points toward a figure on the edge of the hill waving to us.

“She’s going up a cliff?”

For about five minutes, I try to walk upright and keep a safe distance between Dave and me. After the first fall, dignity goes out the window. I stumble over rocks and tree roots. Dave doesn’t complain. He keeps catching me and saying it’s not far. By the time we get to the top, we’re covered in dirt.

Not for long. I stand under the waterfall while it smashes at rocks and skin and memory. Gus and Beth take me to bands when they can, when it’s underage or they know the people running the gig. You walk inside, and the music’s so loud the world shatters and the things that didn’t make sense before still don’t make sense but they don’t have to while you’re in there. That’s what it’s like here. The water makes everything ice and cracks it. I’m standing under bits of falling me. Dave and Rose are screaming, but I can’t hear them. I scream back all the things I want in this world that I can’t have. The water’s making me cold and Dave’s making me burn and I’m writing songs played with strings of sun and ice and honey.

“The best bit’s not over,” Dave says after we climb out. “Get on the bike and hold on. And don’t think too much about it.”

The three of us speed down the hill, Rose ahead and me on the bars of Dave’s bike. I write a little tune on the way down that I call “The Screaming Song” because that’s the only sound in it. “We’re flying!” Dave yells as we move. “We are flying.”

Charlie’s screaming under the falls and Dave’s yelling and I can’t hear a word they’re saying and it doesn’t matter. All that matters here is letting go. Fuck boredom. Fuck being stuck in the middle of nowhere. Fuck being born with
MADE IN THE BACK OF A HOLDEN
stamped on your back. Fuck paddocks and plastic chairs.

I leave Charlie and Dave under the water and stand on the grass shaking my head, watching the last bits of the falls hit the air. I did an assignment on water at the end of this year. Luke and Dave were my partners, and I was doing most of the work, but Luke still complained the whole time. “Why do we have to do this? I already know about water. You drink it. End of story.”

“Some people use it to wash occasionally, Luke,” I said. “Which might be helpful for you to know.” But then I tried to explain to him why I was so interested in it. “See, the water molecules are attracted to each other so much that they hold on for as long as they can. They grip at each other till they’re too heavy and then they break. It’s why water falls in tears.” I wanted him to get it. I wanted him to see what it had to do with him and me. “Tell you what, Rosie,” he said. “You finish the assignment and I’ll go get us some fish and chips.”

I ride down the hill in front of Charlie and Dave, the last of the water flying as I go. This bit’s almost as good as the falls. It’s the closest I can imagine to leaving.

We’re dry by the time we hit town. We drop Charlie off and then Dave and I ride into my yard. Luke’s waiting for us. “Where’ve you been?”

“We took Charlie to the falls. I think Dave likes her,” I say, and Dave blushes.

“Right. She bent my handlebars.”

“Isn’t it about time a girl bent your handlebars?”

“Shut up, Rose.”

“Maybe if you’re nice to her, she’ll let you bend her handlebars.”

“Not interested.”

“Liar. Here. She left her hat at my place.” I throw it at him. “You should take it back to her.”

“Why didn’t you wait for me?” Luke kicks at the dirt. Dave doesn’t tell him I said it would rain and I’m glad. The day’s too bright for my lie. “We didn’t think. I was so excited about taking her there. I didn’t want to wait.”