A Little Wanting Song (25 page)
Read A Little Wanting Song Online
Authors: Cath Crowley
“That’s a relief.” She shifts closer and watches with me. “I wanted to give you such a good life.”
I have to tell her how it is, or I’ll be sitting here forever. “You have. But you and Dad used to be different. We read books and went for walks. But then you started working all the time. The old you would have let me go to the city. Don’t you remember what it was like to be excited?”
“Of course I remember. I felt it when I found out I was pregnant with you. I fought with my parents and told them nothing was going to stop me raising you. We were one person then.”
“But we’re not now. I want to be at that school. I want to learn things, read books, and have people talk to me about them.” I let out that thing I’ve been keeping in. “I don’t want to get pregnant by Luke and never leave here.”
She sucks in her breath. “Is there a real chance of that?”
“Not yet.”
She lets her breath out. “God. That’s a relief. I guess we haven’t talked much about anything lately.” She plays with a button on her cardigan and her face sags.
“Mum, don’t cry.”
“I wanted to talk, when I knew things weren’t right for you. But you’re so much like me, Rosie. When things go wrong,
the barriers go up, and it takes an army to get through. I was just too tired to try.”
“Me going doesn’t mean I don’t love you. It doesn’t mean I won’t come back.” The whole time we’ve been talking, the sky has been feeding on the sun.
“Okay, Rosie Butler,” Mum says. “We’ll work out a way.” She loops her fingers through mine. “You’d better come back once in a while.”
“I can go?”
She nods, and the sky explodes around the two of us. The world is fat with color. “I’ll come back and tell you all about school and the city and the things I’m doing there.” I stop. “Who’s going to tell Dad?”
“He knows. We made plans last night. ‘You have to let her go,’ he said, ‘or she’ll rip you in two.’” She laughs and wipes a few tears. “It’s hard to let you go.”
It feels good to hold Mum’s hand today. “I can’t wait to see the world,” I tell her.
“I couldn’t either at your age.”
“What happened?” I ask.
“I get to choose my life, too, you know.”
I think about that. “You choose working in a caravan park?”
She grabs me and pulls me close and smacks a kiss on my face. “I choose you and your dad and my friends and this gorgeous place.” She smacks another kiss. “There’s Charlie,” she says, and points at the old car making its way home. I raise my hand and wave. I know that she’s doing the same thing.
After the car has disappeared, I keep staring. “What are you looking at?” Mum asks.
I point ahead. “Those mountains at the back of the freeway.”
“The light makes them change color during the day,” she says. “You never noticed that?”
“I guess I never looked that closely. They’re pretty amazing.”
“You’re smiling again,” Mum says. “That’s nice.”
“I can’t help it,” I answer. “There’s so much to look forward to.”
I see two small figures at the edge of the freeway, and I know it’s Rose and her mum. I wave till they’re dots in the distance. Goodbyes are hard, but I’m not saying goodbye. I’ll be back. “See you next time, Charlie Brown,” Grandpa said when I kissed him.
The sun’s behind Dad and me when we leave this morning. I keep my eyes open. I smile at Dad. I smile at the thought of Dave sitting on the scoreboard listening to me. We pass that skeleton tree, bare branches covered in birds now, and I smile at the road ahead.
Thank you very much, Knopf Books for Young Readers. Special thanks to my editor, Allison Wortche—
A Little Wanting Song
has greatly benefited from your care and insight. Thank you, Pan Macmillan, especially Anna McFarlane, Brianne Tunnicliffe, Jo Jarrah, and Cate Paterson. And lastly, thank you to all the friends and family who let me talk constantly about Rose, Luke, Dave, and Charlie as if they were real.
Cath Crowley
grew up in rural Victoria, Australia. She studied professional writing and editing at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and works as both a freelance writer and a part-time teacher in Melbourne.
A Little Wanting Song
was short-listed for the Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Award.
To find out more about Cath, visit
www.cathcrowley.com.au
.
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2005 by Cath Crowley
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in different form in Australia by Pan Macmillan Australia in 2005 under the title
Chasing Charlie Duskin
.
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Crowley, Cath.
[Chasing Charlie Duskin]
A little wanting song / Cath Crowley. — 1st American ed.
p. cm.
“Originally published in different form in Australia by Pan Macmillan Australia in 2005 under the title Chasing Charlie Duskin.”
Summary: One Australian summer, two very different sixteen-year-old girls—Charlie, a talented but shy musician, and Rose, a confident student longing to escape her tiny town—are drawn into an unexpected friendship, as told in their alternating voices.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89703-0
[1. Friendship—Fiction. 2. Love—Juvenile fiction. 3. Self-esteem—Fiction. 4. Loneliness—Fiction. 5. Bashfulness—Fiction. 6. Musicians—Fiction. 7. Australia—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.C88682Ch 2010
[Fic]—dc22
2009020305
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
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