Alyzon Whitestarr (9 page)

Listening to that strange, beautiful, difficult music he
played, I realized, maybe for the first time, what Da had been trying to do with it. He was trying to make people see the world differently, just like the people who made those art-house movies did. And that bending of the air I had noticed at home grew and grew until everyone in the audience must have felt it. It was like, for that bit of time, everything was altered slightly. Anything you felt bad or unhappy about was measured against this blissful sense of space and timelessness Da and the band were projecting, and you could see your troubles from this high lovely vantage point.

Mirandah and Ricki dived in and started dancing, flinging their arms around and swaying and leaping in a way that would usually have mortified me, except that half the audience was dancing wildly by now, as if they just wanted to be part of the music.

“You want to do that?” Jesse asked me, obviously reluctant but willing enough.

I shook my head, yelling into his ear that I’d rather listen and watch. He nodded and turned back to watch the band.

When Losing the Rope finished its set and went offstage, the audience screamed and thumped and thundered for more, until the organizers came out and announced Urban Dingo. A lot of the yelling died away then, but even when Urban Dingo was coming onstage, some people still called out for Losing the Rope. We stayed for the start of Urban Dingo’s set, but I was glad when Jesse shouted that we ought to leave. The music seemed gloomy and pompous to me, although at least it wasn’t earwig music or dopey pop. Jesse and I left Mirandah and
Ricki, who wanted to say goodbye to friends and said they would meet up with us for hot chocolate at a nearby cafe.

* * *

As we were making our way toward the exit, I saw the announcer who had put down Da’s band talking to a tall man in a designer tracksuit and green sneakers and a big white-haired guy in a sleek suit. They looked like they were arguing; at least, the announcer and the guy in the green shoes did. The big guy in the suit was just listening. Then I saw a movement beyond them and recognized the journalist who had spoken to my English class before my accident: Gary Soloman. He was at the bar, but instead of watching Urban Dingo on the screens set up, like others waiting for drinks or food, his attention was riveted on the big white-haired man, Mr. Track-suit, and the announcer.

The journalist turned his head and looked right at me. He was too far away for me to get a hint of his scents, but I saw puzzlement flicker across his face and guessed he was trying to remember where he had seen me. Before he could figure it out, a little crowd of people came, yelling and shouting and waving their tickets, and he and the others were all lost to view.

* * *

Sitting in the cafe an hour later, we were all so excited we could hardly sit still.

“Your da was awesome,” Ricki enthused.

“Urban Dingo must feel kind of upstaged,” I said. “I mean, how often does an unknown opening band outshine the stars?”

“Exactly,” Mirandah said. “It’s practically illegal. Like the bride being outshone by her old maid.”

“Old maid! You mean maid of honor,” I said.

“Whatever,” she said, tossing her gilt hair.

“Da must be so happy,” I said, smiling to think of it.

“I think he found himself tonight,” Jesse said softly. “It was like he just hit his stride.”

“Oh man, can you imagine having someone really famous as a father?” Mirandah said.

“You’ll have to have security systems and bodyguards. Hey, maybe I can be your bodyguard,” Ricki told her. She giggled and said it was him her body needed guarding from.

Jesse frowned. “I wonder if that’s what Da wants. Fame like that. It can be a pretty fickle thing, and Da’s a deep kind of guy.”

“Don’t be a moron,” Mirandah snapped, but I thought Jesse had a good point.

“I wish he was here,” I sighed.

“He won’t be back until dawn, I reckon,” Jesse said. “The band’ll celebrate and hobnob.”

“We ought to go home and tell Mum what happened,” Mirandah said.

So we slurped down our hot chocolates and Mirandah went into a ten-minute farewell clinch with Ricki that wouldn’t have been out of place on the
Titanic
, then we headed off. Mum was up, of course, although Serenity had gone to bed. We told her what had happened, eating Vegemite toast in her studio and watching her put a base coat on a
newly stretched canvas. The clouds around her were this interesting green color shot through with rose streaks, and I wondered if it was her aura I was seeing and if other artists would have one like that, too. Then Luke woke up wanting to be fed, and I suddenly felt overwhelmingly tired.

My last thought in bed before I dropped off was of the
Coastal Telegraph
journalist, the way he had suddenly looked over at me. I would once have dismissed it as coincidence, but it seemed to me that Gary Soloman might have felt my attention, like two fingers pushing lightly against the side of his head.

* * *

“Ah well, I guess that was my five minutes of fame,” Da said cheerfully over breakfast on Monday. He was still radiating a few sparks. He had said enough about the second gig for me to guess it had been even better than the first.

As for the rest of us, we had jittered and reveled in his success all weekend, but Monday morning was Monday morning, and so we were pretty much back to normal.

I looked out at the rain-washed pavement as we trundled out for school and thought how empty streets looked in the rain. We could have been the only people in the world. I suddenly felt melancholy. I thought it was probably because no matter how exciting the weekend had been, that was basically that.

As if we had made some sort of agreement, none of us mentioned Da’s gig at school. The funny thing was that I heard a couple of kids at the lockers talking about Urban Dingo being upstaged by a local band. That drove away the glum feeling that had come over me in the morning, and I started wondering how it would be for our family if Da’s band actually started getting regular work. Maybe even a recording contract.

It was hard to imagine Da being famous, though, because like Jesse had said, Da didn’t care about fame. He thought it was stupid to care if a lot of people knew your name and face. But maybe I was wrong about Da not wanting that kind of success, because over the past few weeks my abilities had shown me something about him I hadn’t known before: Da worried a lot about money, no matter what he said about it being good for us to live on the edge. Whenever he got a bill in the mail, he gave off the ammonia smell, and sometimes he smelled of it when he was talking about not having a gig for a few days.

Gilly hadn’t arrived by roll call, and I was disappointed because I’d been looking forward to telling her about Da’s triumph. But she turned up halfway through third period and explained to Mr. Rackett that she had been to the dentist. He grunted in disbelief and told her to sit.

“How come teachers always act like everything you tell them is a lie?” she whispered as she slid into the chair next to me.

“They think everyone is trying to put something over on them,” I said, opening myself to her gentle sea smell.

Mr. Rackett shot us a look, so we fell silent. After a while he turned to fiddle with the computer so he could show us more historical documents, and Gilly said softly, “I’ve heard a rumor about you.”

“What did you hear?” I whispered, stepping up my number screen slightly.

She leaned closer. “I heard that you can read people’s minds.”

“OK, I confess. Who told you?”

“Can’t you read my mind to find out?” she asked. Then she burst into soft laughter. I laughed, too, mostly out of relief that she had been joking. “But seriously,” she said, “Sylvia told me you’re possessed by a witch and that you’re trying to find other people for your witch friends to take over.”

“Great,” I said dryly. “What comes next? Witch burnings?”

Gilly shrugged. “It’s just that everyone’s noticed how you’ve changed since … well, you know.”

I sighed and tried to look as though my heart was not doing a war dance. “Being asleep for a month kind of alters your perspective.”

“I can imagine,” Gilly murmured. Mr. Rackett was cursing, which meant that any minute he would lose his temper and go stomping off to shout at someone in the audiovisual department. He had been warring with the A/V people all year. He thought they deliberately gave him the worst equipment. The truth is he’s just one of those people who can’t deal with technology. Once, when I was passing the staff room, I heard him shouting at the coffeemaker.

I realized that Gilly was still looking at me, so I said, “I don’t think about being in a coma until someone mentions something that happened before the accident, then I remember I was asleep for a month.” I kept my voice low because it was a bad move to give Mr. Rackett a human target for his anti-technology frenzy. “It feels … I don’t know …” I stopped, realizing that I still hadn’t completely come to terms with the lost month. Maybe because a sleep that deep was a little too like being dead for a while.

“When it first happened, they announced it in school,” Gilly said. “Everyone thought you’d be back in a day or so. Only it went on and on, and someone said you were on some sort of life-support system.”

We didn’t say anything for a while, then Gilly asked if I wanted to do something outside of school sometime. I grinned and asked if she wasn’t scared I would drag her off to be possessed by one of my witch buddies, and she said
she’d take the risk. Then Mr. Rackett lost it, but instead of stomping out as usual, he told us he would hand out photocopies next class. Maybe he had started therapy or something.

He began talking about the American Civil War, and I let myself focus on the way the sun was lighting up some motes of dust in front of my chair.

“You can borrow my notes,” Gilly said dryly, after the bell rang. I blinked at her stupidly. “For the Civil War questionnaire. You didn’t take any.”

“Oh. I … I have a good memory,” I said.

“But you didn’t even listen,” Gilly objected.

“A little bit of me was listening,” I told her.

* * *

On my way down the hall to the last class of the day, I caught sight of Harlen coming out of the front office. He looked taller and more handsome than ever, with his hair shining dark as the pelt of a mink and his slow, delicious curve of a smile directed at the principal. If he had been sick, he looked perfectly, wonderfully healthy now.

The principal went back into the office, and Harlen turned to speak to a beautiful, stylish woman wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase, whom I had not noticed standing behind him. I thought at first that she must be his mother, because she had the same dark, sleek hair, but as I focused in on her, I saw from her lovely hair and her almond-shaped eyes that she was probably Asian. She was listening to Harlen with a remoteness that did not look at all motherly.

“Dream on and join the queue,” Gilly whispered into my ear.

I made a face at her, and we went on to our next class.

* * *

That afternoon I caught the bus home because it was raining hard. I soon bitterly regretted it because it was packed, and I spent the whole trip jammed too close to other people. I screened hard, of course, but the boy nearest me was horsing around with two others and I was scared his flailing, dirty hand would hit my bare skin.

By the time I got home, I was so wound up that I knew I wouldn’t be able to do my homework right away. I decided to make toasted sandwiches for dinner even though it wasn’t my night to cook. The activity worked the kinks out of me so that by the time Jesse came down, having smelled food, I felt calm and ready for conversation. But Jesse seemed totally distracted as he ate his sandwich, and the second he finished, he went up to his room again. I was still staring after him, wondering what the matter was, when Da came in the back door with Neil, Mel, and Tich. They didn’t stay either, but collected their sandwiches as I made them and trooped out to the shed. Mirandah came down and talked to Ricki on the phone while jiggling Luke in his bouncer. But when I’d finished cooking, she hung up and took Luke up to Mum, and then we carried our plates out to the front veranda.

It was a cool night, but the air smelled sweet and we ate while watching people go by. There were more walkers and joggers than usual, because everyone who had been cooped
up all day on account of the rain was making use of the sliver of time before night set in.

Mrs. Frizzel from up the street wheeled past the gate, her fat little pug close by her heels. She nodded when she caught sight of us, and, curious, I focused my attention until I could just smell her vinegary odor. She looked disapproving, and I guessed she thought it was uncouth to eat on the veranda.

“The thing is,” Mirandah said suddenly, “if Da does become famous, it doesn’t have to mean all the things that being famous usually means. I mean, Da isn’t like other people who get famous and can’t handle it so they take drugs.”

“Da would never take drugs,” I said.

“That’s what I mean, you idiot,” she laughed. “I mean famous people go off the rails because there’s something about so many people watching them that messes them up. A lot of famous people kill themselves.”