The Incredible Adventures of Cinnamon Girl (26 page)

‘Angela. You didn’t leave him alone in here?’

Mum’s face drains of colour. ‘I didn’t think – I was so busy – but he would have asked if he thought –’

‘Mum! When does Grady ever
ask
? You know he turns into Pac-Man when food’s in front of him! He trusts us to keep that stuff out of his reach! He trusts us –’

Mum leaps towards the counter, her hands grabbing for the landline.

But I’m already halfway down my bluestone path at a speed that would make Captain Marvel herself proud, the incongruous dance song blasting from the field like a terrible, pounding lament in my head.

•

I heave open the front door of the yellow house and barrel inside, almost braining myself after tripping over Clouseau in the doorway.

‘Grady! Cleo – Anthony? Is anyone here?’

I stare at the useless mobile in my hand, doubled over as I try to catch my breath. The entire house is flooded with light. Grady is always flicking the lights off after his mum; no way he would have left the house like this. I run down the hallway, past Anthony’s bombshell bedroom, and the hallway cupboard with the broken door that Grady’s in the middle of fixing.

I throw open his bedroom door. My eyes scan his unmade bed and Clouseau’s chewed doggy basket and the blue bookshelves, stacked with novels and lined with basketball trophies. One wall is covered with the New York canvas he bought on one of our city trips last year. Above his desk is the giant pinboard he’s had since forever, thick with random things. It’s been here for so long that I’ve never bothered looking at it closely, but Eddie’s gravel voice is suddenly bouncing in my head, so I stumble towards it and let my eyes run over the junk.

Grady seems to have no order for the stuff on here, just bits pinned on top of bits. There’s funny dog memes printed from the net, and our year-twelve graduation flyer with a half-circle coffee stain. There’s a few photos of Clouseau, and a black-and-white pic of Anthony from Merindale’s paper that time he won the basketball club meat raffle. There’s articles of the stuff Grady finds interesting enough to keep, and some law-school flyers from the uni sessions he’s been trekking out to all year.

On the far right of the pinboard is a badge we picked up at Melbourne Uni open day earlier this year; a white disc with ‘I ♥ Maths’ on it, which, for some reason, Grady seemed to find hilarious. Beneath that, peeking out from behind a Threadless receipt, is a tiny piece of green ribbon, twisted into a loop and secured with a pin.

I peer closer at the scrap. It’s familiar, in a brain-tingly way. I unpin it from the board and run it between my fingers. And then I remember.

It’s a bow from this dress I wore to Lucy and George Albington’s wedding when I was in grade six. I remember, cos Grady and I snuck out of the reception at the school hall to climb the new equipment in the playground. I remember, because I got the dress caught on the slide, and a giggly Grady had to cut me loose with a steak knife.

I stare at the slip in my hand. The distant music thumps through my feet, but I can’t move, and I can’t breathe.

I keep staring at the pinboard, at the stuff he has saved, and it’s like one of those magic-eye pictures coming into focus, fragments merging to form a clear image. There’s a fading postcard from the year-nine art show at Merindale, the very first nervy time I displayed one of my drawings. There’s the lanyard with my old bus pass, carefully held in place with a silver pin. There’s an unused pair of movie tickets, the comedy we never actually saw on our ill-fated Valentine’s dare-date. And in between Grady’s detritus are bits of my art; some nothing more than doodles on Albany’s napkins or scraps torn from the margins of his school notebooks. There’s half a seventh-birthday card with my inexpert drawing of a Labrador puppy, and a carefully flattened piece of sketchbook with a skeleton of superhero Pete, and a beer coaster duck-hat from all those years ago at the Junction pub.

I turn around. In the shelf of his nightstand sits the Paddington bear with the missing nose that I gave him for his birthday when we were five, and beneath his lamp, the tacky Big Banana snow-globe I bought for him on that road trip when we were eleven. Sitting carefully atop a basketball trophy is the teeny plastic Bambi I won from a machine in the city a few years ago; I tossed it at him, assuming he’d just bin it, because really, no-one needs a plastic Bambi.

And stuck on a skewy angle on the side of his desk lamp is a giant pink post-it: a sketch of Grady with a chalk outline, and my all-caps comic-book lettering:

STRAWBERRY BIOHAZARD. HANDS OFF D.G.

And I realise that my tears are bordering on the hysterical, but I draw upon whatever fraction of control I still have left, and run out of his room again.

Main Street is chaos. I push through the crowds, past the Taco Truck, and Mrs Garabaldi’s homemade barricades that are now covered with multiple penises in assorted sizes. And then I skid to a dead stop, my pathway blocked, my blood throbbing so hard I swear I can see it burbling behind my eyes.

My nemesis, the penny-farthing, is wedged right in my path.

‘Get your stupid dumb-arse hipster poser bike out of my way, arsebag!’ I yell. Bike-man looks down at me blankly.

‘Chill out, little lady,’ he says. ‘You’re messing with the vibe.’

‘Feck.
Off
!’ I scream, except I don’t say
feck
, and I kick his stupid oversized tyre for emphasis as I hurl myself over the footpath barricades and tear past him. I think I detect some alarmed looks, but I don’t stop to think about them.

Because all I can think about is Grady.

Grady, who slept in my bed for weeks when his dad left, curled against me like a puppy, his face damp with tears. Grady, who camped in my room for months after my dad died, awkward and insomnia-plagued but right there beside me whenever I woke from a nightmare. Grady, who moved out of the house he was born in when me and Mum moved in, but who was only ever happy that I coopted the bedroom that was once his. Grady, who took me to
South Pacific
for my birthday in year eleven, even though he looked like he was being waterboarded for most of it, and who trekked with me to every comic store in every corner of the city, even though he’s never really been into comics. Grady, whose face gets all glimmery when he looks at my art and who waits for hours while I draw without getting antsy or bored. Grady, who would do anything not to see me cry.

Dr Lucas’s office appears before me. Across the road, the Corner Arms is spewing forth a mess of sweaty people in sparkly wigs and matching bathing suits. In a distant corner of my brain, I have this flash of them stranded in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, huddled together in a baffled mass with nothing but pints of cider and noisemakers in hand.

I barrel into the doctor’s building. Even though it’s way past office hours, the tiny waiting room is choked with sunburnt people. A St John’s Ambulance man is holding an ice pack over the head of a groaning guy who has an inflatable frog floatie clasped around his waist. I’m not even going to ask –

Cleo is behind the reception desk. She stands hurriedly when I push aside a woman in a kaftan and stumble towards her.

‘Where is he? Where’s Grady?’ I gasp. I can’t catch my breath.

Cleo’s eyes are wide. ‘He’s gone,’ she says quietly.

I close my eyes. In my head, I’m floating in a jumping castle. Maybe I am experiencing a dissociative episode or whatnot, but out of all the places I could check out to, I’m not sure why my subconscious has picked this one. Suddenly, I realise where I am. It’s Merindale show, and I’m six years old. It’s getting dark, and the show is closing, and I have no idea where my parents are, but I can’t seem to make myself care. I can hear Grady calling me; he’s stuck somewhere outside, and his voice is getting frantic, but I’m having way too much fun bouncing around in here. And anyway, I know he’ll wait as long as he needs to. I can take as much time as I like, cos even though he’s mad, there’s just no way he’d go anywhere without me.

The earth is shifting, the ground tumbling beneath me. So it takes me several moments to process that Cleo didn’t seem too fazed that her youngest son has passed into the great beyond. Cleo seemed to have been flipping through a copy of
Craft Weekly
, and eating a licorice whip.

I drift to the reception desk. ‘Cleo? Answer me carefully. Grady. Has. Gone. Where?’

She shakes her head. ‘Beats me. He took of like his bum was on fire about half an hour ago. My guess is he’s home, though judging by the mood he was in when he tore out of here, who knows?’

‘You mean he’s okay?’

Cleo snorts. ‘Well, he’s vying with Mrs Garabaldi for the title of craziest cranky pants in the Valley. But apart from a bruised ego and a sore head, he’s fine.’

‘Jesus Christ! Cleo! Be specific!’ I yell. And then I burst into tears.

Cleo hurries around the desk. ‘Alba, honey, what on earth is going on with you two? Domenic has been moping around the house like the world’s already ended, and tonight, my eldest son hauls my baby in here, apparently after dragging him out of an actual
fight
. In his entire life, Domenic has barely raised his voice. And now I find myself playing mother to a character from
Sons of Anarchy
. Help me out here?’

She rubs my back until my hitchy sobs peter out. I grab a handful of tissues from the counter and blow my nose. When my eyes clear enough for me to look at Cleo, she’s watching me with that mum-look of knowing sympathy, and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t need an answer.

‘Cleo, I have to go,’ I say through sniffles. ‘When you see my mum –’

‘I’ll tell her you’ve been waylaid. Vital End of Days stuff,’ she says with a grin. ‘Angie’ll understand. Hey, if we don’t make it to tomorrow, you’re probably safe from a bollocking anyway.’

I give her a hug. ‘Thanks, Second Mama. Sorry for the hysterics. For what it’s worth, I think you’ll kick arse in a dystopian future. Like Sarah Connor, or Tank Girl.’

‘Really? Always pictured myself more Tina Turner in
Mad Max
,’ Cleo says as she steers me gently out the door. ‘It’s the outfit,’ she yells as I scoot away into the glowstick-lit crowds. ‘I’d totally rock that chain-mail suit!’

•

I check his house, where the lights are still blazing, and Albany’s, where Mum is belting a cheery Smashing Pumpkins song in the bathroom. I stick my head in at the Junction, where a beaming Mr Grey is bustling at the door in a T-shirt that says
Charlie Don’t Surf
on it. The atmosphere is heavy with this frenzied eagerness as I hurry through my streets, like, everyone is determined to prove to everyone else that they are having a really
really
amazing time. But every now and then I pass some people – a couple, or a group of friends, or this dad with a gaggle of kids – who are huddled together in their own private bubbles, cocooned in their little worlds against the mess and madness. Every so often, I pass someone glancing surreptitiously up at the sky.

I suppose my friends will be somewhere in the middle of the Palmers’ farm by now. A part of my brain whispers at me that I should be down there with them, that without Tia and Caroline and Petey and Ed, I’m all unanchored and adrift.

I take the road past the garage, and I quicken my pace.

I turn around briefly to face the Valley. The view from the top of the hill is epic; so much light and colour, one rolling sea of people-energy. A laser clock is beaming numbers onto the screen behind the stage – a thirteen-minute-and-thirty-one-second countdown, visible even from way up here. The clock fizzles into a school of laser fish that shimmies into the darkness, before splashing back on the screen again. I think I saw something like that on the last Grammy Awards. At some point, Mr Palmer is
really
gonna have some explaining to do.

I keep moving. It’s quieter up here, and calmer. There are people chilling on picnic blankets, locals and strangers just taking in the view. A handful of kids are running around with sparklers, oblivious to the expectancy around them. I scan my eyes over them as I hustle past, but honestly? I think I know where I’m headed. The face I’m looking for might as well have a neon Bat Signal flashing right above it. Pretty sure I could find it anywhere in the dark.

He’s sitting beneath a tree in his grey jeans and flying squirrel T-shirt and worn Vans that really need to be replaced one of these days. He’s staring, unfocused, over the Valley, as he scuffs a stick absent-mindedly in the dirt. His curls seem to be more lifeless than normal. And on his right cheek, the telltale bruisey sign of boy-stupidity.

He sees me as I step out of the shadows, and he stands up quickly. But he doesn’t meet my eye.

‘Well. There you are.’ I clear my throat. ‘Here I am, worried sick, while you’ve been gallivanting around town with your no-good pals, getting up to mischief …’ I take a deep breath. ‘Wanna tell me what happened?’

He’s looking somewhere to the left of my face. ‘Nothing happened,’ he says sullenly. ‘I went looking for Daniel. Obviously, my reflexes suck arse.’

I baulk. ‘
Daniel
hit you?’

Grady winces as he touches the raw spot on his cheekbone. ‘Naw. His manager did.’

‘His manager! Jesus –’

‘Yeah. He said, and I quote, “there’s no way some punk from the boondocks is messing up my star client’s money maker.” I think even Gordon seemed surprised at the dodge cliché. Not as surprised as me and my face, but –’

‘Grady, are you completely stupid! What the hell were you thinking?’

He finally snaps his eyes to me. ‘What was I thinking? I was thinking, Alba, that Daniel Gordon is a moronic butt-monkey who deserves several punches to the testicles. I was thinking that if I didn’t smack the smug right off his arsebag face, I was going to bust a blood vessel. He had no right to even
dare
give that book to you –’

I stamp my foot in the dirt. It’s juvenile, I know, but sue me, I’m pissed. ‘Domenic,’ I growl. ‘I’m
fine
. You really thought I was going to freak out and, like, develop an eating disorder or something? Have you
met
me?’

He runs his hand frantically across the back of his neck. ‘No. I guess not. You’re smarter than he is, though that’s not saying much. But Alba, you have to know, you are amazing and Daniel Gordon’s eyesight is worse than his shit acting if he can’t see that. You are perfect and beautiful and –’