The Incredible Adventures of Cinnamon Girl Read online

  In my head, I guess my memories are a hazy montage, coupled with some frozen, flash-panel highlights. I remember Daniel’s squealy, pre-pubescent voice. I remember weekend afternoons in the gazebo at Anzac Park, me and Daniel face-deep in comics, while Grady played Mario Golf on Anthony’s old Game Boy. But I’m staring into Daniel’s eyes, and, all of a sudden, I’m remembering other stuff, too. I remember the melancholy looks he used to give Grady and his brother as they bounced, shirtless, around the abandoned basketball court. I remember the random excuses he invented to get out of swimming at Merindale pool. I remember all those sleepovers at my house, Daniel hidden beneath oversized jammies, regardless of the weather.

  ‘Did I offend you?’ he says quietly.

  I shake my head. ‘No. I just never realised you were unhappy back then. I’m really sorry, Daniel.’ I give his cheek a fleeting kiss. ‘I should have noticed.’

  Daniel smiles. ‘I wasn’t unhappy. Not all the time. You and Grady … you two made everything okay. You probably don’t remember but … I didn’t have anyone until you guys let me in. Not sure I’ll ever be able to repay you both for that.’ His smile falters. ‘And Alba, sometimes we all suck at noticing what’s right in front of our face.’

  He takes a step towards me. ‘What happened to you Christmas Day?’ he says out of the blue. Like a switch has been flicked, the softness in his face is replaced by that calculating stare I know oh so well. ‘I looked everywhere for you after dinner. I even hauled my arse to the bakery, but by the time I got there your windows were dark.’

  ‘Oh. Yeah, that. The party got a bit too wild for some of us so Grady crashed at mine and then –’

  ‘Wait. You guys still have sleepovers?’

  I suck in a breath at the distinct whump! that punches behind my ribs. ‘Yeah. So?’

  ‘So – you don’t still sleep in the same bed, though. Right?’

  I feel my traitorous cheeks flush. ‘Mum bought a couch for Grady years ago,’ I stammer. ‘But, hey now, you never had a problem sleeping over –’

  ‘I never had a problem sleeping over when we were six, Sarah.’ He gives me his smug grin. ‘If you invited me for a “sleepover” now, I might have a few things in mind other than watching X-Men, know what I mean?’

  God. He even does the sucky little air quotes over the word ‘sleepover’.

  ‘Daniel, don’t be stupid. It’s not like that with Grady and me. He’s like my –’

  Daniel holds up a hand. ‘Sarah, don’t take this the wrong way, but if you finish that with “he’s like my brother”, I might vomit in my mouth. Jesus. You are the only one imagining siblingy blood between you and Domenic. Trust me on that.’

  ‘You’re delusional,’ I snap.

  ‘And you’re blind,’ he says back. ‘But, Sarah, the End of Days might be here. What does any of this stuff matter? If the planet being sucked into a black hole isn’t going to give you a shake-up, then nothing I say is gonna make a difference. Is it?’

  I jiggle my hands out at my sides, but I can’t feel anything in them other than pins and needles. Daniel squares his shoulders. The muscles beneath his T-shirt stretch in that particular boy-way that makes me forget for half a second this whole inexplicable Two-Face thing he seems to have going on. He narrows his eyes, his lips pursed together. There’s something oddly familiar in that expression. I just can’t put my finger on it –

  ‘You have a killer smile. You know that, right?’ he says.

  Well, actually Daniel, I do. My smile is one of my best features. But probably not a polite thing to admit.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say, clasping my hands behind my back. ‘Kind of random, but –’

  ‘And amazing lips,’ he says, his voice suddenly all weird and husky.

  Look, I’m cute as, I know this, and it’s not like I’ve ever had a shortage of guys buzzing around. I’m not Eddie, who freaks every time a girl so much as looks in his direction, or Caroline, who’s happily smooched dozens of boys, leaving a trail of broken hearts in her wake. Sue me for being sappy, but I haven’t kissed that many random guys because I decided I don’t want to kiss random guys. Kissing is supposed to be no big deal, but really? I just never liked being that smooshed together with any old someone. All that mingled breath and lips and stranger tongue – I realise kisses don’t ever happen like they do in stories, but I’m not ready to give up on the fantasy.

  Which is why, I think, when Daniel Gordon – who got seven votes in that uni web poll of sexy unknown TV stars, and who used to make me laugh so hard in kinder that I snorted orange cordial out my nose, twice – leans hesitantly towards me, and his lips come within brushing distance of mine, my lips twitch experimentally back for, like, a millisecond, before my body does this spasmy leap backwards, almost tripping over a kitchen stool. And the words that tumble out of my apparently amazing lips are:

  ‘Ew, gross!’

  O-kay. Possibly not my finest moment here.

  Daniel takes a hurried step backwards. The scarlet in his ears spills over his cheeks. ‘Well. Can honestly say I’ve never received that reaction before.’

  ‘Daniel, I’m sorry,’ I choke out. ‘The gross bit, I mean. That might have been rude –’

  He laughs. ‘Rude? Um, that’s not the word I would’ve used. Ego-shattering, maybe. Confusing, for sure –’

  I stamp my foot. ‘Hey! I wasn’t asking you to kiss me, Daniel! I mean, hello – what were you thinking? It’s me. It’s as weird as making out with – who’s that chick who plays your sister on Gum Trees?’

  He snorts and laughs and looks exasperated, all at the same time. ‘Sarah Jane. Firstly, kissing you would be nothing even remotely like kissing a sister. Dunno if you’ve noticed, but neither of us is six anymore. You are one of my oldest friends. Pretty sure we aren’t related. There’d be nothing wrong, or weird, about giving it a shot. And secondly, I have totally made out with the chick who plays my sister on Gum Trees. She has a tongue piercing.’ He grins. ‘So hot.’

  I realise, as he has been talking, that I have backed myself against his breakfast bar, a kitchen stool between us like a force field. But he looks less embarrased now, and more bemused than anything, which just makes me even more pissed. I stomp forward again till we’re toe-to-toe.

  ‘Daniel, after everything I’ve told you, all the stuff you know is in my head – what makes you think that kissing you would be the answer to any of my problems?’

  He crosses his arms, his ears becoming pink again. ‘I don’t think I actually said that, Sarah. What I think I said was that there would be nothing weird if you wanted to give it a shot. But if kissing me is – well, in your words, so unspeakably gross that you’d rather have your tongue gnawed out by a rabid possum – maybe it wouldn’t hurt to think about why exactly that might be –’

  I grab my sketchpad. ‘Okay. Thanks for the advice. I’m going to go away now.’

  ‘Alba, wait –’

  ‘No really, Daniel, I’m just about done with the smarm. I can’t figure out what the hell is going on with you. Sometimes you are the you I remember – the you who I missed like crazy – and sometimes I think you are messing with me for fun. Only, I can’t for the life of me figure out why.’

  He grabs the paper bag of comics, and he walks backwards in front of me as I push towards his door. ‘Alba, I’m sorry, that was rash and probably … ill-conceived.’ He stops me with a light hand on my elbow and shoves the books into my limp hands. ‘But you wanna know what happened to me? What happened was, I figured out that being comfortable isn’t always a good thing. And an outside shove was exactly what I needed.’

  I step outside and turn around, only to find Daniel staring at me pensively, his jaw working back and forth like he’s holding back a raft of word spewage.

  ‘Daniel, I’m sorry if I confused you, or whatever. I’ll … see you around, okay?’

  I walk away before he can answer. Under the white sky, the messy human sounds of the Valley swirl around me. I suppose that snubbing
the lips of a gorgeous boy with perfect muscles and piercing eyes – the boy who has always been a missing part of my story – might be considered by some people to be one of the portents of the coming End of Days. Maybe there is something seriously wrong with me.

  I slip into my backyard and sit on my steps, my heartbeat drumming a steady, solid beat. Daniel’s blushing face floats in front of me, but I can’t make myself feel sorry for saying no. Maybe lips, and spectacular abs, are not going to solve any of my problems right now.

  And maybe, just maybe, there is nothing wrong with me at all.

  I open my eyes at 5.22 the next morning to a chorus of gentle singing coming from the farm. In the heat and dark, it’s a little like waking in the midst of a shamanic ritual. It is, weirdly, sort of peaceful. I close my eyes, trying to coax my brain into a serene, zen-like state. Until I realise the song drifting into my room is a badly harmonised version of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, at which point I haul arse out of bed.

  I get up, I get dressed, and I clean. Armageddon or not, I don’t think I can stand living in the middle of my own refuse for another second.

  I pull down the Cinnamon Girl scraps from my walls and bookshelf, and I carefully bundle them together in a spare archive box. I lay my sketchpads on top; all but my first one, filled with the rough, hopeful plans for the beginning of her story. I think I might be able to salvage some bits from this one. It may be premature to consider a revised origin or post-Crisis story for her, but jeez – it’s not like I’m gonna be panned for messing with her mythology just yet.

  Beneath my piles of shoes and clothes, last year’s school stuff is still scattered. I’d chucked a few things into the bonfire my class had up on the hill after exams, and yet year-twelve debris remain strewn across my room. I gather up the books, and my school diary that’s covered in more photos of my friends and me than any actual school business. On the cover is a pic of me, Caroline and Tia; Tia’s face peeking up in the background, behind a close-up of my cheek and lips, and Caroline mugging with chocolate brownie mashed in her front teeth. I rip off the cover and balance it on my bookshelf. And then I archive the rest.

  The morning sky is streaked the colour of whiskey when I eventually emerge outside. I drag my banana lounge beneath Dad’s plum trees, with my pencils scattered around me. I open a clean pad of Bristol board, but instead of drawing straight away, I just hang out, and I watch for a while.

  I can’t describe the mood as the farm wakes; the best I can capture it on my page is a layered mess of human beings, a bit like Moses, this Frida Kahlo painting in one of Mum’s art books.

  I draw as the sun struggles above the blanket of white. At some point Angie wanders out with a plate of cheese muffins, and she sits beside me in silence as we contemplate my pages. I’m not entirely sure of the storyboard that’s emerging. I suppose I just have to trust that my subconscious knows something the rest of my brain is still catching up on. I kinda like this new version of Cinnamon Girl though; her lines are simpler, sort of naïve in style, but somehow I think she might be okay with that.

  I fall onto my green couch that night and pass out before my head hits the cushions. When I jump up the next morning, I install myself at the edge of my plastic garden and I keep working.

  In between, when I feel like a change of perspective, I wander through the secret gate and out into the Palmers’ field. I don’t head anywhere in particular, just kind of soak up the atmosphere as I meander alone. A non-denominational prayer circle has sprung from the T-shirt rubble of the Thunderdome; as it turns out, not everyone has shown up here just to get tanked. The people who have taken over this spot are quiet, and introspective. I sit under a tree and chat to a couple of Buddhist women who tell me all about impermanence and interconnectedness and stuff. And then someone on stage announces that naked Battleship is about to begin beneath the water tanks, and they take off with cheery waves.

  Strangely, as I mosey through the farm, I bump into a bunch of people I know. New faces who have become regulars at the bakery, and a few arsebags I recognise from Merindale, and a handful of friends from school who are still hanging around the Valley, all of whom are embracing the End Times with varying levels of enthusiasm.

  I fly a kite. I toss a frisbee. I graciously decline to participate in a nudie dance-off. Once, as I’m weaving through the caravans and cars, I stumble upon an orange-and-blue VW Kombi with fraying purple curtains, and my feet come to a stop.

  Thumbing through a magazine in the doorway is dreadlocked bikini girl, one of the visitors who’s become a fixture at Albany’s. Her name, it turns out, is Lizzy Warren, and she is a second-year graphic-design student in the city. Lizzy lets me sit in the shade of her doorway, happy, she tells me, just to talk to someone who’s showered in the past week. We yammer about Marjane Satrapi and Georgia O’Keeffe, and Julie Doucet, who we have, like, irreconcilable opinions on. Apart from Mum, there isn’t anyone in the Valley who really gets the stuff that I love. It’s kind of nice, if a bit incongruous. I leave with Lizzy’s number, and a promise to look her up if I ever do make it to the city. Neither of us points out that this is contingent on the city still existing come midnight tomorrow.

  In between, my friends drift in and out of Albany’s. Caroline and Tia drag me away from my pencils to hang out at Anzac Park with some random surfer chicks from Perth that they have made friends with. Petey drops by with a parcel of greasy chips and classic TV episodes of Wonder Woman loaded on his laptop. He makes himself at home on my bedroom floor while I work up colour-palette options on my Wacom. Even Eddie manages to find an hour free in between chores. He hunkers in my backyard, falling asleep on my banana lounge with an Akubra on his face and a mumbled promise to ‘deck the feck-stick’ who sprayed one of his cows blue.

  No-one discusses the end of the world, or the missing member of our group, leaving my imagination to construct scenarios involving him being abducted by a red-headed siren who looks like a mash-up of Mary Janes from different Spider-mans. But there is an uneasiness to my friends as the clock ticks, a nerviness that, if I were to draw it, would look something like lengthening shadows moving in over their frames.

  •

  I wake up late on the final day of the year to the whirl of helicopters hovering overhead and music already playing. The sounds of the Valley are way different this morning. A buzziness filters into my bedroom as I open my eyes, my head filled with that last-day-of-school feeling of excitement and melancholy.

  I swipe at the drool puddle that has formed beneath my cheek. I seem to have fallen asleep facedown at my desk. I remember waking up at two in the morning with this crazy urgency that made me leap out of bed and hurry to my bookshelf. I may have been dreaming, but I remembered this sequence of frames in one of my dad’s Gods and Mortals Wonder Woman books that I just had to find.

  I push my chair away from my desk. Around me are the teetering stacks of Dad’s and my comics; some of his so thumbed that the pages are barely attached. I never did find the art I was looking for. I got distracted when I stumbled on Dad’s copy of Batman: Year One, bookmarked a third of the way through with a receipt from the Wasileskis’ service station. Dad was always obsessed with this book. I don’t know how many times we’d swapped it between us, Dad grilling me about my opinion on the art style and Miller’s take on Catwoman and stuff. I hadn’t read his copy in ages though, not since I bought my own hardcover a few years back. I always wondered what Dad would have said about the reworked colouring in my edition.

  I glance at the clock on my desk. The pink numbers seem to crackle with an intensity way more insistent than normal. I grab a dress from my wardrobe, and I hurry into the shower.

  •

  I’m towelling my hair as I slip back into my room, and my elbows are blocking my face, so for all of three seconds I fail to process that Grady is sitting on the armrest of my couch.

  He leaps to his feet when he sees me, but then he sort of hovers, like he’s not sure what to do next.

 
I freeze, and I drink in his presence in my room; dishevelled curls and rumpled Cutty’s Boxing Gym T-shirt and old jeans, and dirty hands, which I know means he’s in the middle of work. His face is shadowy with stubble. He looks exhausted.

  ‘Grady. What are you doing here?’

  He runs a hand madly through his hair. ‘I don’t know. I was dropping off some boxes but then … I found myself here. I was going to leave. And then I didn’t.’ He falls into my desk chair and buries his face in his hands. ‘Alba. What’s going on with us?’

  I toss my towel onto the floor, fizzy frustration sending my voice stratospheric. ‘What’s going on? I dunno, Domenic. You are the one who was all, like, nice knowing you, have a great life and whatnot. And, you know, you are the one hankering after the first chick you meet with a city address who gives you the side eye –’ I suck in a giant, shaky breath. ‘Now you’re asking me that question?’

  Grady’s face flushes. ‘Alba, Jesus, it’s not like … I don’t know what I’m doing! I was right, I think, about me needing to work through my own stuff, and you were right when you said that you needed to figure things out, but –’

  ‘But what? What, Grady?’ I snap.

  ‘But why do we have to do that apart?’ he yells.

  I fall onto my bed and hug a pillow to my chest. Outside, a shouty song is blasting from the band. Inside, the silence hangs, full of finality. Cold water trickles from my hair and down my back. Part of my brain is yelling at me to speak; the other part knows it’s just not ready to say the things it needs to say.

  Grady’s tired eyes fall onto my desk. I’d tossed Daniel’s presents there, and then forgotten about them; right now, his hardcover book is sitting on top of a pile of comics like a cheerful, flab-free trophy.

  ‘What’s this?’ Grady says. He picks up the book and flips it over, and then he looks up at me blankly. ‘Alba? Why are you reading a diet book?’ he says quietly.