Girl Defective (28 page)

After lunch we spread out, leaning back in our chairs, bloated and happy. Sunlight bathed the kitchen table in a gentle haze. Eve told the one about the guy who found a cracker with a message in it that said, “Help! I'm trapped in the cracker factory!” Dad told the story of Chuck Berry throwing his rings into Sydney Harbor. Gully went on an extended ramble about Garbo, the world's most famous spy. I told the one about the blithe psychopath and the Hare Krishna's finger, but then Luke said he didn't have any stories and we all went quiet.

Dad cleared his throat. “Do you want to ring your parents, son?”

It was so strange to hear him say “son”—and even stranger to see Luke accept it.

Dispersion, television, cups of tea. At five the Fugg
made moving noises. He kissed Eve's hand and bowed to Dad. “I thank you.” He gave Gully a monster hug and gripped my hands. He said: “I have become the thingness of all the things I've seen.”

“Is that yours?” I asked.

The Fugg winked at me. “It's yours.”

Later I wrote it on Gully's cast. It seemed right.

A
FTER THE MESS, AFTER
Christmas, after she'd moved out of Ray's and secured a fistful of traveler's checks, Nancy Cole, KGB, pushed her face against the window of the Wishing Well. It was late February and the signs that summer was ending were everywhere: gray mornings, where the sea rolled cold across the foreshore. Racks of cheap summer dresses dominated the strip. The leaves on the plane tree began to crack and curl. The Purple Onion disappeared overnight. The tourists still clung to the odd beach day, but the scent of tanning oil waned as the days grew shorter.

Nancy owled her eyes at the glass. I saw her looking straight at me. She gave me a sad sort of smile. I motioned that she should come in, but she shook her head, a swift, small shake that seemed like a waste of her glorious tresses. I put down
Record Collector
, picked up my bag, and went out to meet her. We moseyed down to the park and sat on the swings.

“No neck brace?” I asked, a smile slipping out.

“That old thing?” Nancy sniffed. “No, I'm good as
new. I'm going to get a business card that says ‘traveling,' like Holly Golightly in
Breakfast at Tiffany's
.” She lit a cigarette and blew a plume of smoke into the blue. “We had some adventures, didn't we?”

I pushed dirt around with the toes of my sneakers and didn't say anything. Nancy already looked far away, like someone I'd only known in a dream.

“How's Luke?” she asked.

“How's Otis?” I countered.

“Ha!” Nancy raised her eyes to the scudding clouds. “Gone the way of all things.” She scrunched her face and put her hand out to stop my swing. “I wanted to say sorry. You were a good friend to me. I'll send you postcards.” She paused. “I don't know why I am the way I am. I was thinking about it. I remember when I was little, the first time I ever heard the word ‘opportunistic,' I thought, I want to be that. I didn't know it was a bad thing.” She nodded and her face was as serious as I'd ever seen it. “I'm not bad, you know.”

“I know,” I said softly. “Yeah, we had some adventures.”

Nancy started swinging, kicking her legs higher and higher. I swung again too. We were out of sync. Nancy went up when I went down. After a while I jumped off. I rooted around in my bag for paper and a pen and wrote down the Newport address. “Send the postcards here,” I told her, and made my way back to the shop.

The campervans had gone; the feral travelers and laughing clowns had moved on, chasing the sun. I used to look at them and wonder what it would be like to just pick up and leave, to fade and then bloom somewhere else.

I was about to find out.

On the last day of February I was on the roof. I had swept up the cigarette butts and Dunlops caps, and I was putting Mum's records in a cardboard box. Out of habit I popped the opera glasses. It was early evening, and the parrots were shrieking from tree to tree. I looked at the green and the sea and the sky. Mia Casey was still on the wall, but she was looking a little worse for wear. Soon she'd be gone altogether. Dad and Gully and I had packed our lives into 237 cardboard boxes. All the memories and music and minutiae; the bits and scraps of our existence. Across the water the Newport house waited, along with a shop that was half the size of the Wishing Well and smelled like fresh paint. And promise.

The sun went down like a big eye closing. Down below the night people were coming out, all flashy earrings and cheap pashminas. And through the wind in the boat masts and the distant dogs barking, something else rose up.

“Sky, Sky, Sky, Sky!”

I looked down and saw three smiling faces: one cautious but crackable; one weathered and wry; one
obscured by night-vision goggles. Luke and Dad and Gully. Gully was holding the fish and chips. I ran down to meet them. I was starving.

T
HANKS TO MY FAMILY
for love and music; to Namrata Tripathi and all at Atheneum for making my day (year!) when they decided to publish
Girl Defective
; to Jill Grinberg (and all at Jill Grinberg Literary) for keeping the faith; to Claire Craig for her early love of Sky and Gully; to Melita Granger, who provided support and wisdom and structural advice; and to my writerly friends, who remind me why it's all worth it. When I was eighteen, I dropped out of university and got a job in a record store; it was the best education I could have had. So thanks to Dixons, with a special shout-out to Sarah Carroll and Val Davis.

ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 by Simmone Howell

Originally published 2013 in Australia by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited^

Jacket illustration of album copyright © 2014 by Jeffrey Everitt, jacket flaps' photographs copyright © 2014 by Henry Beer

Jacket Design by Debra Sfetsios-Conover

Jacket Illustration Copyright © 2014 by Jeffrey Everett

Jacket Flaps' Photographs Copyright © 2014 by Henry Beer

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The text for this book is set in New Century Schoolbook LT Std.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Howell, Simmone.

Girl defective / Simmone Howell. — First US edition.

pages cm

“Originally published 2013 in Australia by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited”—Copyright page.

Summary: Friendship, love, and a mystery fill the life-changing summer of fifteen-year-old Sky, who lives with her unconventional family in a run-down record store in St. Kilda, a seaside suburb of Melbourne, Australia.

ISBN 978-1-4424-9760-3 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4424-9762-7 (eBook)

[1. Coming of age—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction. 3. Family life—Australia—Fiction. 4. Mystery and detective stories. 5. Record stores—Fiction. 6. Saint Kilda (Vic.)—Fiction. 7. Australia—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.H8383Gi 2014

[Fic]—dc23 2013032738