Graffiti Moon Read Free Page A

out. I’d never wanted to do something so bad.
    Al offered a free six-week glassblowing course to one of Mrs J’s students and she gave it to me. After the course was done Al said he’d keep being my teacher. I worked off half my costs by cleaning his studio every week. Mum and Dad paid the other half. I’ve been cleaning and taking lessons here ever since. Yesterday, thanks to Al, I finished my Year 12 Art folio.
    ‘Concentrate,’ he says, and uses wet newspaper to turn and shape the shiny mass. He nods, and I blow into the mouthpiece and cover the opening with my thumb to trap the air; the vase inflates with my breath. He uses the newspaper to turn and shape some more. The paper heats and burns, flecking the air with stars.
    His old hands move smooth as water as he cracks the glass off the end without breaking it. After we put it in the annealer to cool, he says, ‘So, I think you’re ready for a promotion. I thought you could keep working here while you’re at uni and I’d pay you in cash instead of in classes. No cleaning. Strictly glasswork.’
    ‘You’re serious? I’d be your assistant?’
    ‘You’d work with Jack and Liz. You interested?’
    Al’s one of the top glass artists in the city. I nod so much there’s a nodding festival going on. ‘Good,’ he says. ‘Good.’
    We sit outside for a bit longer, me hoping that Shadow will make a return appearance. I get this heavy feeling when I daydream about him. I’m not awake and I’m not asleep. I’m in a soft blue corridor that runs between the two.
    ‘How are things at home?’ Al asks.
    ‘Okay. Better. Dad’s still living in the shed but he comes into the house more and more, and not just to use the bathroom. I really think he’ll be moving back in soon.’
    ‘That’s great news.’
    ‘Yep. It was only ever meant to be a temporary move. And now they’re not fighting anymore, so, you know.’ I look across at that sleeping bird. I imagine Shadow arcing his arm and spilling yellow across the grey. Spilling sunshine.
    For a couple of months before Dad moved into the shed, he and Mum had huge fights about stupid things. Mum’s a part-time dental nurse and part-time novelist. Dad’s a comedian/magician and a part-time taxi-driver. They had some imaginative ideas about where the other person could stick the remote control.
    Then they just stopped fighting. I came home from school one day and felt the quiet drifting along the street. When I walked into the yard Dad was standing in front of the shed, sipping lemonade and cooking sausages and dehydrated potatoes over a little camp stove.
    ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
    ‘I’m moving into the shed for a while. Just till your mother finishes her novel and I get my next show written.’ He waved the barbeque tongs. ‘You want to have dinner at my place?’
    ‘Your place is my place, Dad.’ I sat next to him while he cooked and tried to figure things out. Sure they’d been fighting, but Dad and Mum had been together for thirty years. Dad was always going on about how romantic it was that they met in the university cafeteria. He asked for Mum’s salt and she asked for his sugar. ‘Romance like that can’t end in dehydrated potatoes,’ I said to Mum.
    She answered, ‘Lucy, you’re lucky if romance ends in something you can add water to and rehydrate.’
    This did not comfort me.
    She ate dinner with us that night when she got home, which was even more confusing. They didn’t fight. Mum told Dad the potatoes were delicious. ‘Stop looking at me like that,’ she said. ‘Your dad and I need space to write. I can’t suck the saliva out of people’s mouths for the rest of my life and your dad can’t drive a taxi.’
    I could understand that. Mum and Dad aren’t exactly typical. Mum’s got a picture of Orson Welles on her wall and she wears a t-shirt to parent–teacher interviews that says: If you don’t want a generation of robots, fund the arts . Dad can pull flowers out of his