“CASH.” Rocky spoke over me.
“Someone’s in a hurry,” I muttered to Luke as he handed over the Buys Book. I asked for ID and Rocky gave me his license. I smirked at the photo, the way Dad always did, and jotted down his details. Then I counted out the money.
Rocky passed the wad to Otis, who put it in a money clip that was already pretty hefty. Otis snapped his fingers. “Let’s go, Rocky Raccoon.”
They left, slamming the door behind them so hard that the Barry Manilow cover with the speech bubble that said NO ID NO BUY plummeted to the floor.
Luke looked at me. “Nice guys.”
“Good records.” I shrugged. Patti Smith’s Easter stared at me from the top of the pile. I put it on. It was all pent-up-ness and yearning.
Luke picked up the box. “Should I put them out back?”
“Yes.” I said, then: “No!”
Luke waited with the box in his arms.
Suddenly I felt nervous. Dad was going to be shitty. Why had I thought I could buy? But there was no going back now. I’d even written it in the book. In my hungover daze and panic I made a decision. While Luke was out back, I ripped the page with Rocky’s deets out of the Buys Book and stuffed it in my pocket. For the next half hour I sat there scheming about how I could make the box disappear before Dad returned. In the end I simply reclaimed the box and lugged it up to my room. I put it next to the bin-bags of Mum’s stuff. Then I went to the bathroom and took a Tylenol. I washed my face and brushed my teeth. The last thing I saw before I walked out was my paper effigies of Nancy, Otis, and me and Luke, me, and Mia. Crazy Mia. Well, her eyes seemed to say, you wanted to know, and now you do.
UNDER THE SEA
THE DAY ROLLED SLOW. Luke didn’t talk anymore. He sat sketching while I wandered the shop floor, straightening the racks. I liked the records to all be leaning back, facing me, full of promise. As I looked at their shiny faces, I felt a mixture of awe and sadness. Music was everything: the whole stinging, ringing pulse of being human was in here. Even the g-sale stock, even Barry Gibb and Barbra Streisand.
How could we give it up? Music was memory, too. I could hear Jan and Dean doing “Pocketful of Rainbows” and be rocketed back to Mum pacing the flat with Gully in a sling. I could play “Incense and Peppermints” and revisit Nancy hippie-dancing in a Glomesh headband. If I really wanted to feel wistful, I could play Johnny Rivers’s “Secret Agent Man,” which was Gully’s theme song back when the spy stuff was cute and not evidence of dodgy neural wiring.
Luke took his turn on the stereo. We were back to Simon & Garfunkel. This time I knew better than to comment. I even turned the volume up so that I could drown out my thoughts. “The Boxer” came on and it was plaintive and forlorn and like the soundtrack for the few customers trundling around the shop. One hanging around World Music started singing along atonally. I smiled. I could feel Luke smiling too. I watched him sketch from the corner of my eye and I wondered if he was sketching me. After a minute he nudged the sketchbook across two inches so that it was right in front of me. I looked down and saw the customers. Luke’s rendering was realistic, tragi-comic. It was all there: arse cracks and adenoids, thinning pates and perfect recall of Countdown episodes; fifty-year-old men eating TV dinners with their mothers.
“You’re good,” I told him.
Luke shrugged, but I detected a glow. I tried to drag it out. “So, is this what you see yourself doing?”
“Sketching sad little men?”
“No . . .” I blushed. “Art, I don’t know.” Weren’t you supposed to ask guys about their interests? Wasn’t that the way in? “I’m just trying to get to know you,” I muttered.
Luke glanced up. Maybe he could see he’d hurt my feelings. “You’re sweet.”
“No. I’m not.”
“Yeah. You are.”
He stood up and shook his long legs out and did a circuit of the shop, coming to rest at Cardboard Elvis.
I pitched my voice above the music. “Gully says if you look into his eyes, you can see the future.”
But Luke wasn’t looking at Elvis’s eyes; he was staring at the Wishing Well cassettes. He picked one up. “Do a lot of people buy these?”
“If by a lot you mean half a dozen, then yes.”
He reached into his back pocket and brought out a cassette tape. It had our logo on it and a symbol: three lines meeting, like a primitive rake.
“This was in my sister’s stuff.”
“What’s on it?”
“Weird shit. Old songs. I don’t know anything about music, remember?”
“I saw you listening to it.”
“When?”
I answered without thinking. “CCTV.”
Luke looked at me, looked away, then looked at me again.
“I was looking for the white Jeep!” I protested. But we both knew I was lying. And suddenly it struck me: how much I’d seen. How much I’d already speculated upon. I thought about the photograph of Mia on Otisworld. I didn’t know what Luke knew, but I wasn’t about to introduce the subject now.
“Can I hear it?” I asked.
Luke looked around, unsure. Then he handed me the tape. I put it in the player. The Buzzcocks came on like a preteen with a power drill. Luke was picking up the Wishing Well tapes and putting them down again. Somehow he managed to dislodge the tray. Cardboard Elvis toppled and the tapes scattered over the counter and floor. I crouched to pick them up, and then we were both down there. That moment, under the counter, was like being under the sea, and realizing you can breathe underwater. Our hands brushed as we reached for the same tape at the same time. Our eyes met and I clumsily leaned over and kissed him. Luke’s lips felt cool. He didn’t do anything for a second, and then he kissed me back. Smoke and Polo mints, stuff unsaid. It was more than nice. It made me feel weightless, adrift, but then Gully’s voice booming, high above sea level, reeled me back in.
“Guys—where are you?”
Luke and I emerged, miles apart, red-faced. We had failed to gather the Wishing Well cassettes, and Cardboard Elvis lay at an awkward angle, still smiling, always smiling. Dad was standing behind Gully, looking perturbed. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
Gully shook his head at the fallout. “You’ve made a real mess.” He scanned the shop. “Where’s my sign?”
“I haven’t put it up yet.”
Luke pressed the stop button and slipped the tape back in his pocket. Then he shoved a cigarette in his mouth and walked outside with his head low.
I watched him out there, leaning one foot back against the plane tree, smoking and radiating sadness. When he came back in, he acted as if nothing had happened. I couldn’t help thinking I’d wrecked things somehow. If I were Nancy, this wouldn’t have happened. If I were Nancy, we’d still be down there.
LOVE LIVE LOCAL
IT WAS MARTIN FAMILY tradition to leave presents behind the door of the birthday person. On Sunday morning I opened mine to find a card and a parcel. The card was handmade with a sketch of Gully and me on stakeout—but it was way too professional to be my brother’s handiwork. He still did stick figures. Knowing that Luke had drawn the picture made me feel slightly thrilled and slightly sick. He’d drawn me even prettier than last time. I checked my reflection in the mirror, but if some magic transformation had happened, I couldn’t see it.
I opened the card.
Agent Skylark Martin,
You are now sixteen. Under Victorian law you are legally allowed to fornicate (as long as your partner isn’t more than two years older or your legal guardian). You can get your ears, nose, and cheeks pierced without a note from your parents. You can attain a probationary driver’s license (I recommend this). If the police want to search you for whatever reason, they are limited to patting you down. You can’t leave home legally, but, should you choose to, as long as you can prove you’re not in serious danger, the cops will walk soft. I hope this information is helpful. And that you have a great day.
Affectionately yours,
Agent Seagull Martin (Gully)
I unwrapped the parcel to find the Nuggets compilation—Dad didn’t mind if I cheated—twenty-four psych-rock freak-outs by bands with names like Mouse and the Magic Mushrooms. I put on side one and lurched about to the jangly guitars and schizophrenic drums. I was thinking about Luke. It was Gully’s card that did it. I can have sex with Luke Casey—he’s eighteen, so it’s okay. Not that we had to go straight from zero to sixty. There was a world of things we could do. I accessed my mind file of Nancy’s Kama Sutra, changing the faces to fit Luke’s and mine. I imagined him kissing me and kissing me and kissing me. Luke Casey’s tongue would not be sandpapery or slimy. I would not be able to taste what he’d had for lunch.
I considered my wardrobe, returning to the green dress. I added the bead necklace, Luke’s wristband, and Nancy’s hat.
We moseyed to the gardens and found our bench. I was lost in Luke-land. Every time an unpleasant thought popped up, I papered over it with the memory of Luke’s face just before he kissed me. You’re sweet, he said it on a loop, and it didn’t sound so sucky.
It was a gray day. There were plenty of gaps in the market line. The Fugg was there, but I couldn’t see Ray. I checked my phone. There was nothing from Nancy—no birthday greeting, no invite to a wild night out. I wondered if she’d forgotten. My mind returned to Luke—Luke reaching to reposition a lock of my hair. Meanwhile, Gully pulled the tomato out of his toastie and flung it to the seagulls. One came and then twenty, and he became overwhelmed and had to bury his head in his hands. But he wasn’t vanquished for long. When he came back up, he had his notebook out. He made the fist. Chh!
“Date: Sunday, December fourteenth. Time: 0935 hours. Location: O’Donnell Gardens. House Meeting Actioned.”
There was a huge pause.
Dad looked at Gully. “Item?” he coached, but Gully was somewhere else, his blue eyes staring into the distance. All of a sudden he was up and running. Dad groaned. “What now?” I threw down my toastie and hurried after him.
He’d stopped at the entrance to Luna Park. He was staring at a sign, his face frozen. I saw what he saw: the sign, the stack of flyers.
LOVE LIVE LOCAL—TONIGHT 6 PM—OTIS, THE BIG RACKET, MOMO—FREE ENTRY. ALL AGES.
Gully turned to me, his face incandescent. He drummed his finger over his snout, fast in the manner of Monkey.
“We have to go!” he shouted.
I took a step back and shook my head. “Sorry. It’s my birthday. I’ve got plans.”
“Change them.” Gully bolted back to Dad. I followed slowly, feeling as if my feet were sinking with each step. Nancy’s absence nagged at me. I could see Gully pleading and wheedling. Bill the Patriarch and traitor kept trying to catch my eye, but I refused to let him.
“Sky?”
“What if I don’t want to go? What if I have other plans?”
“Well, do you?”
I turned away. I could see the edge of Mia where Luke had been busted pasting her up. All that remained was one black eye and three black tears.
“I suspect the Bricker will be there,” Gully said.
“I. Don’t. Care.”
“Sky!” Dad scolded. “What’s the matter with you?”
I could think of a few things: my best friend had gone AWOL, my mother was a bitch, my dad was a liar, and my brother was a kook.
I checked my phone again. It was like a dead thing in my hand. I started punching out a text to Nancy. “Are we going out, or what?” but then I deleted it. I didn’t need to look in Elvis’s eyes to know what lay ahead. I was going to Luna Park with my crazy brother, in search of a mythical white Jeep. Happy birthday to me.
At the shop I avoided Luke’s eyes. I stayed on the back counter with my head in Record Collector, and now I let all the thoughts in: I thought about Otis’s records planted in my room. I thought about Nancy posing naked on penthouse balconies. I thought about Quinn saying, “She got gypped,” and I thought, she could have been talking about me. Gully chattered the day away, filling Luke in about the Bricker. He gave him a flyer. “LOVE LIVE LOCAL!” He said it like a mantra. “You can come too!”
Luke looked at me; his lips hid a smile. “Maybe I will.” And for the first time I felt a crack in the gloom.
But Nancy turned up after all. At five to six she burled through the door all lit up like an oil refinery. She had the biker boots, the spandex, the tiny black vest. And the scarf—of course, the scarf. It caught the light like sparks off a side grinder.
“Happy birthday, Sky!” Nancy came around the counter and squeezed between me and Dad and Gully. We were in the middle of negotiations for the night ahead. Luke came out from the back room. I saw him clock Nancy. His eyes opened a tad wider and he didn’t look away.
“Who’s the bright boy?” Nancy asked, sounding for all the world like a gangster’s moll.
“That’s Luke,” Dad said.
“What’s his angle?” She cracked a smile. “Just kidding. Hi, I’m Nancy. I’ve heard about you.” She held out her hand, not to shake but to kiss. It was a jokey-presumptuous gesture. Nancy was playing for laughs, but Luke still had the stares. Nancy turned to me, arced an eyebrow, then moved on, clapping her hands. “Let’s go, little sister.”
“Hold on, go where?”
“I’m taking you out, remember?”
Gully cut in, giving Nancy the full snout. “Agent Skylark has other commitments. This is big, Agent Cole. This is a breakthrough!”
“Calm down,” Dad ordered. “Calm.”
“We’re going to Luna Park,” I explained. “You never rang, so I thought—”
“Synchronicity!” Nancy cried. “That’s where I was going to take you!”
“Now, hold on,” Dad said. “What’s happening here?”
“I think we’re all going,” I said. “Is that okay?”
How could he refuse? He gave me a fifty from the till. “Look after your brother.” To Gully he said, “Stay with your sister. No going rogue.”
“I won’t.” Gully raced for the door. I followed, and at the last minute flung a look at Luke that was as good as a wave forward.
“Is he coming?” Nancy sounded confused. She winched my arm as we walked out. “What’s going on?” she hissed. “Are you two—”
“Shut up!”
“Okay.” She pressed her lips into a sort of smile.
“I thought you were over Otis,” I said.
“It’s different when he plays.”
When we reached the gardens, Nancy dive-bombed Gully to the grass and tickled him, until he was just a blur of snout and gap teeth and half-moon eyes. Gully’s laugh was like helium, or the first dip on the Scenic Railway. I tumbled down next to them. We lay in the grass, silent, breathless. Clouds rolled fast across the sky. And I remember thinking, beautiful things move fast.
RECON #3: LUNA PARK
DAD CALLED LUNA PARK the Mouth of Hell. This was because if you hadn’t been seduced by the tizz and cotton candy, if you looked with clear eyes, you’d see it as it was: ugly, aimless, noisy, tacky. I stood at the ticket booth and watched Nancy work her magic. The guy didn’t have a prayer, but he held her wrist anyway, shouting against the din that he got off at nine.
“Awesome!” Nancy shouted back. She smiled big and fake and walked away. She got a lot of twice-overs. Guys drooled; girls clawed up.
“What’s it like?” I asked her.
“What’s what like?”
“Having guys look at you all the time.”
“I don’t even see them, dollbaby.” But her eyes shifted left. “Sometimes if the guy’s really ugly, I smile at him. Because you’ve got to have some hope in the world.”
“That’s nice,” I said. “You’re like a community service.”
She put her palms out. “I do what I can.”
Luke and Gully were waiting for us. Gully had his head cocked, snout at the fore, tool belt primed. His plan to stalk the car park first crumpled in t
he face of the bumper cars. At the southern end a stage was set up, the sign prominent: LOVE LIVE LOCAL. Roadies tooled around trailing cords. A group of girls was hovering. Two of them wore silver scarves. They huddled and murmured and sent dirty looks in our direction. Luke looked perturbed. His eyes sought mine and he gave me a lost sort of smile. Nancy grabbed Gully’s hand. Luke and I followed.
Gully was fearless on the bumper cars. Meat-faced dudes raged at him, but he just set his jaw and turned to the next collision. Nancy was laughing hard. I watched her head jerking around. When the siren came, she kissed Gully full on the mouth and his face went bright red. Something like jealousy swept all my corners. Luke said, “Your friend’s something.” I felt like Nancy was playing all of us.
Gully and Nancy stormed the park, ride after ride after game after game. Luke and I dragged, catching up with them just as they were moving off to the next buzz. I don’t know what happened to make us so separate from them, but once I felt it, I couldn’t ignore it. And Luke kept looking around, looking worried.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
He nodded, his face a mask.
“The band that’s playing. That’s Otis. Remember the guy who sold in the records?” It was on the tip of my tongue to say, “Your sister knew him.” It struck me as odd that Luke didn’t know about Otis. If Mia had been with him, surely he would have known. Luna Park was a lot of things, but it wasn’t the place to ask such questions, even though every minute my mind floated out a new one.
Finally Nancy was tired. We grabbed a booth in the fake tram, and I waved Gully and Luke off to shoot ducks or extract something cheap and flammable by way of the Claw. I pulled a thread out of the stitching of my dress while Nancy filled the water pistol she’d won on the laughing clowns.
“Looks real, doesn’t it?”
She pointed it at me and I flinched.
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