Graffiti Moon Read Free Page B

ears and juggle fire.
    But they were always typical when it came to love and marriage. Dad’s been out of the house for about six months now. He visits us quite a bit; he just lives in the shed. They seem happy but, if you ask me, the whole thing is weird.
    ‘Who gets to say what’s weird?’ Mum asks when I bring up the subject.
    ‘Me,’ I tell her. ‘I get to say.’
    She rolls her eyes.
     

     
    I wheel my bike to the wall before I leave Al’s. When I touch the painting some clear blue sky comes off on my hands. I didn’t notice before, but in the corner there’s a confused kid staring at the bird. ‘There’s a kid, did you see?’ I call.
    ‘I saw,’ he says.
    I wave goodbye and push my bike up the hill. Jazz phones when I’m halfway to the top. ‘Daisy and I are already here. How far away are you?’
    ‘I’m close. I took a detour because Shadow and Poet were at Al’s.’
    ‘You saw them?’
    ‘I missed them by five minutes but I have even more proof now that Shadow exists and that he’s my age.’ I know exactly what she’s going to say.
    ‘Luce, his art’s definitely cool and I’m not saying don’t make it with him if you meet him. But in the meantime, I could name at least one and a half guys who’d like to go out with you.’
    Okay, so I almost knew what she was going to say. ‘One and a half ? Did some guy get caught in a bus door?’
    ‘Simon Mattskey might be interested but he’s worried about the nose thing. I told him it was urban legend.’
    ‘I’m hanging up.’
    ‘Just remember, paintings proved that cavemen existed, too. Shadow might not be the guy you’ve been waiting for.’
    I click my phone shut and take my time walking. Jazz thinks I haven’t had enough action in the guy department. I’ve had action with other guys around here and that’s how I know that I don’t want action with them again. The nose thing happened before Jazz started at our school. She never heard the real story because by the time she arrived it had been mixed up, made bigger and half forgotten, and I wanted it to stay that way.
    The guy was a sheddy, one of the kids who spent a lot of time leaning against the back sheds skipping classes. Every time he looked at me I felt like I’d touched my tongue to the tip of a battery. In Art class I’d watch him lean back and listen and I was nothing but zing and tingle. After a while the tingle turned to electricity, and when he asked me out my whole body amped to a level where technically I should have been dead. I had nothing in common with a sheddy like him, but a girl doesn’t think straight when she’s that close to electrocution.
    I liked that he had hair that was growing without a plan. A grin that came out of nowhere and left the same way. That he was tall enough so I had to look up at him in my dream sequences. I really liked his t-shirts. When he asked me out he was wearing this one with a dog walking a man on a leash. And there was always this space around him. The sort of space you’d queue to get into. I saw other girls trying but they didn’t get past the bouncer at the door.
    Anyway. The night didn’t go so well because I broke his nose, which was an accident that happened when I hit him in the face because he touched my arse.
    Dad was still living in the house then and before I left for the date I told him all the things I hoped this guy and I would talk about. ‘Maybe To Kill a Mockingbird , the book we’re studying. Maybe Rothko, the painter Mrs J showed us.’
    ‘Sounds like it’ll be romantic,’ Dad said. ‘Your mum and I had a romantic first date. She was studying serious writing and I was studying comedy, so we went to a Woody Allen film that was somewhere in between. I don’t remember the film but I remember she smelt like sweet green tea.’
    I had that story in my head when I turned up for my date at Barry’s, the all-night café where the sheddies hang out. There wasn’t any cool conversation, though. We sat in a