The Incredible Adventures of Cinnamon Girl (18 page)

Somehow, I doubt the solution will prove to be so easy this time.

Grady closes his eyes, and I turn and stumble blindly towards home.

•

Granted, the shenanigans of this past week have been a little outside of my area of expertise.

But shepherding my inebriated best friend through the masses of partying strangers – while the band plays a novelty dance song in the background, and Mr Grey attempts to lead a crowd in the YMCA in front of the penis-covered hardware store, and a panel van with the words ‘Vegans for Jesus’ spray-painted on the side spills forth with a half-dozen people in robes handing out pamphlets, and Penny-Farthing Man on my front lawn salutes me with a line of solar Christmas lights threaded around the handlebars of his bike – is a little more than my brain is capable of processing.

Grady waves Eddie off, somehow managing to make it into my backyard and up the verandah steps. He braces his palms on my door and rests his forehead against the glass. Eddie and I hover uncertainly behind him – until Grady’s soft snores float beneath the sounds of shouting and laughing and a vuvuzela being enthusiastically honked near my fence.

Eddie rolls his eyes. He swings Grady into a fireman’s hold as I haul open my door, and the three of us tumble ungraciously inside.

Eddie dumps Grady onto my bed, his too-long legs dangling uselessly on the floorboards. Ed yanks off Grady’s Vans, and then hefts his legs up in one hand and flings them onto the bed like he’s tossing a bale of hay.

‘That’s it – I’m done,’ Eddie says, dusting his hands emphatically on his jeans. ‘No way I’m getting anywhere near that boy’s pants. You want him in his fecking smalls, you handle it, Alba.’

I tug off my Santa hat, and I grab a pillow and jam it under Grady’s head. ‘Ed – thank you. And sorry about the punching you in the throat thing.’

He shrugs. ‘Whatever. I’m not the one who’s gonna be cleaning sick off my floor come tomorrow morning.’

Grady mutters something under his breath. He rolls onto his stomach, shoving his face between the pillow and my sheets. His shoulders heave in a giant sigh before his breathing settles into a heavy cadence.

I sink onto the floor beside him. ‘Gah. And I’m gonna be awake all night making sure he doesn’t swallow his own tongue. Good times. Domenic Miles Grady, you are in for one seriously shouty lecture on the evils of alcohol when you sober up.’

Eddie scuffs his feet on the floor. Then he squats next to me, all uncomfortable and twitchy. ‘Hey, Alba? Maybe … take it easy on him. Dude’s got some stuff going on.’

‘Stuff? What stuff? Ed, this is
Grady
! He’s the most dependable person I know – jeez, he’s like the most dependable person ever
born
– but lately it’s as if he’s having some sort of giant Infinite Crisis. What’s he told you that he’s not telling me?’

‘Jesus. Grady doesn’t talk about serious shit with me, you know that. And I’m not a psychologist, Alba. Bad enough I have to talk my old man down every time the portaloos back up or someone steps in cow shit and threatens to sue.’ Eddie stands with a sigh. ‘Look, I gotta go. Think my brother was planning to put the moves on Caroline if I left them alone. Pretty sure Gresham’ll be wearing Brian’s wang round her neck like a lucky rabbit’s foot if he tries. It’d be hilarious. But Mum might be pissed …’ Eddie runs a hand along his head. ‘Just cut Grady a bit of slack. All right?’ He leaves before I can answer, the door clicking gently behind him.

I drop my eyes back to the bed. Grady rolls onto his side. He pulls his knees into his chest and bunches his hands under his chin with a soft sigh. He must be totally wiped, cos he only ever sleeps so foetal-positiony when he’s exhausted. In the dim light from my lamp, he looks so completely lost that every instinct in my body wants to huddle in beside him with my face squished into his neck, like I used to do when we were four.

I can’t remember when it was that we stopped sharing a bed. I don’t know why that thought flitters through my head. And I don’t know why, the moment it does, my knees do this jelly-dance, like they’re no longer concerned with keeping me standing.

I know I could sleep on my couch, or in the lounge, which is marginally cooler than my airless bedroom. But I kick off my shoes and crawl up behind him, resting my head on the edge of his pillow. My face is near the soft curls at the nape of his neck, a hand-span between us that seems suddenly impossible to cross.

I fall into a fitful, restless sleep, with the ghosts of all my stories swirling in my head.

I know it’s not yet properly morning, but the godforsaken never-ending heat is baking my bedroom, and yesterday’s dress is sticking to my sweaty back, and without opening my eyes, I can tell it’s gonna be a totally rubbish day. Cos I wake up to the foggy realisation that it’s only five more sleeps till the Rapture, and the
Grease
megamix is blasting from carspeakers near my fence, and Grady is gone.

I check the bathroom, half-expecting him to be sleeping in the tub like the morning after
Gum Trees
vodka shenanigans. But my bathroom is empty. He’s not rifling through the fridges in the kitchen, or scoffing our food in his blue booth. I grab my phone, but before I can dial Grady’s number, something freezes my hand. It’s like this montagey flashback of the last few days flies through my consciousness; his stubborn face and totally out-of-character temper and sad, sad eyes. And I feel woozy and nauseated, as if I’m nursing a mother of a hangover myself.

I kinda feel like eating popcorn for breakfast, and moping.

I sort of want to hide under my sheets with a torch and my longbox of
Y: The Last Man
to keep me company.

I’m half in the mood to run to Grady’s house and punch him in the head for making me stress.

But maybe it’s not Grady I’m stressed at. Not directly, anyway. And maybe punching him in the head isn’t exactly going to solve my problems.

I crawl back into bed and send him a text.

Are you dead? Have you woken in an alley with a body at your feet and no memory of the last twenty-four hours? If you are wearing a blood-splattered trench coat – run! Run now! Avoid all dames and broads, and anyone who looks like Orson Welles. Alternatively, you could just mosey back here and watch The Avengers with me. I know it’s not Christmassy, but we can festive it up with Santa hats and figgy pudding. Okay, I don’t know what figgy pudding is. I’ll google it. Or maybe you can make me pancakes as payment for dragging your beer-soaked butt halfway across the Valley. I always thought you’d turn out to be more of a port-and-lemonade guy, you know? Kinda like Mrs Garabaldi. Only, less testosteroney. Anyway. Avengers?

Okay, admittedly, that takes me while to type.

And it takes Grady a good forty-five minutes to respond. My phone lights up with that close-up of his eyeball, and a curt message that makes my toes curl:

Not dead. Feel dead. Talk later.

And then nothing. Nada. Complete silence from the only other person on the planet who can talk and text while simultaneously brushing his teeth and juggling small cats.

I fling my phone across the room, only half-aiming for the couch. ‘Okay, Domenic,’ I hiss. ‘Be a sulky arsebag! But don’t think I’m gonna be chasing you to the end of the earth!’

I stomp into the bathroom and shower under sub-zero water. I sweep my hair into a messy bun, and I layer on my brightest red lipstick. I dig out a black dress from the back of my wardrobe, the one with the pink skulls on the bodice and skirt, cos it totally feels like a skulls-and-blood-lips sort of day.

Mum takes one look at me as I hurtle into the kitchen, and she grimaces.

‘Uh-oh. Them’s fighting clothes. What’s going on?’

I yank my apron from the hook near the sinks. ‘Nothing’s going on. I’m tired. I’m sick of the noise, and this whole town smelling of pit-sweat and car fumes, and falling over drunk-arse morons every time I step out of my house! I want to be in bed with
Best American Comics
, not busting my bits in here serving coffee to people who are waiting to be abducted by aliens and whatnot! And you know what? The only thing I really want to do right now is punch Original Ned Zebidiah in his stupid Fu-Manchu face!
Gah!
’ I give up trying to tie the stupid strings of my stupid apron, and I scrunch it into a ball and toss it in the sink. ‘Has anyone even
seen
Original Ned? For all we know, this whole instalment could’ve been caused by the dude eating dodgy mushrooms or forgetting to take his lithium –’

‘O-
kay
,’ Mum says lightly. She grabs my elbow and steers me into the house, shutting the bakery door behind her. ‘As much as I enjoy a good dummy-spit, Sarah, the rest of the kitchen might prefer to come to work and not be assaulted by a scene from
Glengarry Glen Ross
.’ She plonks us both down at the dining table. ‘You want to tell me what’s got you so huffy?’

I drop my head into my hands. ‘Mum, everything is just getting so … muddled.
Messy
. I’m tired of thinking, and stressing, and not knowing what’s happening with … people. With me. I really don’t think I can cope with much more of this. I just need everything to go back to the way it was. I need everything to just … stop now.’

Mum crosses her arms. ‘Well. Too bad,’ she says with a shrug.

I drag my head up. ‘Jeez. Way to be sympathetic, Angela.’

Mum laughs. ‘What do you want me to say? That you can hole up in your room forever? I’m not booting you out. Stay if you want. We can invest in matching cardigans and spend our nights at the Junction having vaguely racist conversations with the Alberts’ aunts. Stay, Sarah, till you’re old and incontinent. Or until the mole people return to rule over humanity.
If
that’s what you really want.’

I hug my knees into my chest and cover my face with my hands. Honestly? Right now, the only thing I am certain I want is the blissful unconsciousness of sleep. Because if I let myself think about it – really allow myself to imagine living this little life forever – all I feel is that nameless, belly-churning panic again.

I’m merrily sinking into a haze of my own confusion, so it takes a good few minute of staring through my fingers to realise that the light in the lounge is a little … odd. I glance through the window. And, unthinkingly, I float to my feet.

‘Mum … look at that.’

Mum swivels around and peers out the window as well. ‘Oh,’ she says softly.

The vivid cerulean sky of the past few weeks has disappeared. Over the farmland the sky is white, as blank and featureless as winter. It looks like it should be cool, but I head out to the verandah with Mum in my wake and the heat hits me the moment I crack open the door. There are a few people sitting on the hay bales near my back fence, but the atmosphere is weirdly subdued. There’s something about the low sky that feels insanely claustrophobic. Almost like this hushed dome has descended over the Valley.

‘Maybe a storm’s on its way?’ Mum says uncertainly.

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Maybe.’

But there is none of that ozoney smell of brewing dry lightning in the air, the scary harbinger of bushfires. If anything, it’s … even more unsettling.

I pull Mum inside and close the door quickly. ‘Mum, do you need me today?’

Mum drags her eyes away from the sky. She sighs. ‘We’ll cope. I’m cutting the menu to staples since now Merindale’s basically run out of everything as well. We should be able to churn out enough rolls and vegan brownies to keep the masses from rioting. Go. Do what you need to do, bub.’

I skulk back to my room and grab a sketchpad from beneath the piles of dirty clothes. I pull my curtains shut and crawl into bed with a handful of 2Bs. This sketchpad is an old one that I haven’t touched in months. Half of it is covered in a rough storyboard, some panels of which eventually found their way into my Cinnamon Girl folio. She’s scattered in spirited poses, her face beaming out of the page, back when she still looked cheerful, and hopeful, and not so – well, deranged.

I glance at the sketches that are now littering my bookshelf and walls. Her face is scrunched in expressions that, if she had superpowers, would suggest she might be exploding a planetoid shortly, or vaporising a baddie into his component atoms. Maybe I should give her superpowers. Hey, she’s mine, and I can do whatever the hell I want with her. Despite the fact that, across my room, she’s insisting on remaining pissy, and antsy, and bored, and annoyed, and something else, too.

I lean against the wall behind my bed with the sketchpad on my knees. My hands fly over the page, a scratchy storyboard in uneven panels. I draw her in giant boots and a kick-arse dress, a snarly frown on her square-jawed face. I draw her as a roaring Goliath, dangling from the side of the Empire State Building, and I draw her as a pocket-sized warrior in a costume just like the Wasp’s. I draw her hunched over a bar in a smoky cocktail lounge like one of Grady’s noir heroines. I draw her as a clichéd chick superhero, all anatomically stupid pose and giant bazongas, which almost makes my fingers fall off in loathing. I draw her in her warehouse apartment, staring through her windows as the sky explodes in the distance. I draw her soaring, arms stretched, through a wide pale sky, and stomping her way purposelessly across the moon.