The Incredible Adventures of Cinnamon Girl (29 page)

‘They did what!’ I yelp.

He waves a dismissive hand. ‘Relax. They love you guys. And they figured an outside shove might work where their best hints had failed miserably.’ He gives us a wicked smile. ‘Remind your friend Caroline she owes me twenty bucks. And anyway – consider it payback. Red Bull drinking game? I’m hurt, Alba. My abs have to be worth at least two shots.’

Daniel laughs at my blazing face, his muscly arms folding me into a hug. ‘Keep in touch, okay? Look me up if you ever make it out my way. I’ll show you round. There’s a couple of comic-book stores I think you’ll love.’

‘Daniel, you are an arse,’ I say as I hug him back. ‘Find me on Facebook. Don’t … disappear again, okay?’

He kisses the top of my head, and then he tugs gently on the end of my hair. ‘Promise. You know, you really are brilliant, Alba. Go forth and be even brillianter.’

Daniel holds out a hand to Grady. Grady shakes it, his face still bewildered. ‘Yeah … see ya?’ he says vaguely.

‘You’re welcome, dude,’ Daniel says, punching Grady in the arm with a boomy laugh.

Daniel contemplates the plate of baked deliciousness with a thoughtful tilt of his head. And then he grabs a couple of salted caramel slices, and walks away with a backwards wave.

Grady stares in Daniel’s wake until I wrap my arms around him. He shakes his head, then drapes an arm around my shoulder and hugs me back.

‘Whaddya know?’ I say. ‘Seems like the entire universe was conspiring against us. Or for us. What do you call that, Grady? A destinyish conspiracy?’

‘Fate-ally meddling?’ he says with a grin. ‘And I dunno. I think it just worked out handy for me that you have good taste. I still think Dan would’ve taken a shot if you gave him half a chance.’

I give his side a pinch. ‘It’s nice to know I have options. I could
so
be a telly WAG.’

Grady rolls his eyes, and he spins me around so I’m pressed tightly against him. ‘Alba, you have as much chance of becoming a generic wife-or-girlfriend as I have of winning a Superman look-alike contest.’

‘Aw, don’t be so hard on yourself. You have muscle. Add some spandex, and you’d at least place. Maybe in the junior division. I could so draw you like that.’

‘Woman, seriously? Sometimes, you can be really mean,’ he says as he leans down to kiss me.

We watch as Daniel ambles towards his waiting car, his manager giving us the death stare. Daniel pauses with his hand on the door. He glances briefly at Albany’s, his face set in a contemplative half-smile. Then he shoves a caramel slice into his mouth and climbs into the car, and, just like that, he is gone.

Well. I
did
say it’s not what you think.

Life goes on. The crowds depart soon after New Year’s, taking with them most of our road signs, the Eversons’ bench, and all of the penis-covered boards from the hardware store. The only hint that Penny-Farthing Man ever existed is a rusted bicycle bell left balanced on Albany’s verandah railing. I store the bell between the mementos on my bookshelf; it’s nice to have something tangible that keeps him from becoming just another character in my comics.

The clean-up lasts a while. We never do find Frida, my gnome, though sometime in January, an envelope arrives at Albany’s. It’s stamped from Morocco, and contains a single photo printed on copy paper. And there is Frida, looking haughty as she poses with a lopsided fez on her head, a blurry, colourful market in the background. I’m happy for her. I think everyone deserves to see the world at least once.

Tia and Petey fumble along in their sweetly inept bubble – until the day Tia receives an acceptance letter from the Wane Institute of Design in Sydney. Tia does this bug-eyed thingo as she flips through the welcome pack, which I can only describe as the look of someone falling madly in love. Poor Petey never stood a chance. After some weeks of awkwardness, involving many tear-fests at the fish-and-chip shop, and way too much poetry, they settle into a timid, tentative friendship.

Pete still has no idea what he wants to do with his life. But he surprises everyone by getting into a Bachelor of Arts in Newcastle. He gets way excited about studying philosophy and learning to surf, and makes plans to meet up with Tia in Sydney for mid-year holidays, which Tia seems genuinely pleased by. Who knows what will happen there?

Eddie decides to give year twelve a go, resolving to get through the year without making any teachers cry. It lasts all of a month, until this one class where Ed cheerfully declares that ‘Macbeth’s a pussy’ and the vein on Mr Baxter’s temple explodes, and Eddie decides that the classroom isn’t for him after all. But he doesn’t go back to the farm. Instead, he starts training at the garage with Anthony and all those guys. Ed texts me a selfie on his first day, looking handsome and so
grown-up
in his overalls. Even Caroline is forced to admit that, as life decisions go, Francis Edwin Palmer could have done a lot worse.

Caroline continues as she always has, on a one-way path straight out of town. She’s a little deflated when our visitors clear out, until she snags a temp job in Sydney, and bullies her parents into fronting the rest of the cash for her car. She refuses to let me throw her a going-away party, and simply drives off one quiet night, leaving a giant gap in the Valley where her surly, purple-haired presence should be. But she texts, like, every day, and fills our Facebook feeds with photos of cute guys from the hostel where she’s landed. I express-post her a box of treats from Albany’s. I like to think that the smiley faces in her texts are just a teeny bit smilier when she receives them.

As predicted,
A Home Among the Gum Trees
is cancelled a few weeks into the new year, disappearing with zero fanfare. But Daniel does keep in contact; last we heard, he was heading to Korea to shoot a commercial for seaweed ice-cream. Call me crazy, but I have this feeling that Daniel Gordon has the potential to be huge in Korea.

Original Ned Zebidiah is booted off community television, presumably for giving the station that broadcasts
Naked Table Tennis
a bad name. The next time he rears his head, he has reverted to his god-given moniker of Alvin Smith, and is hosting a show on YouTube called
Card Tricks and Cooking
. Alvin does card tricks. And Frank makes soup. It is, weirdly, entertaining.

And Grady and me? We spend the summer like we have every other since we were born. Together. We’re still us, only now there’s an awful lot of kissing involved. Like,
a lot
a lot of kissing, and, well, let’s just say our sleepovers become – ahem – more
experimental
than they used to be. Grady discovers a temporary cure for his insomnia when he spoons behind me, napping with his knees tucked behind mine while I read on his iPad. I don’t know how I ever lived without this; downloading comics has
totally
revolutionised my life. And eventually other stuff happens between us too, which is strange and wonderful and something I am so
not
discussing any further.

Grady gets into law with marks to spare, as we all knew he would. Though he’s sombre when he receives the news; he doesn’t happy-dance like I expected he would, but he does hug me tightly, and he doesn’t let go for ages. I know he’s nervous and eager and wistful, too. I see it in his face as we hang out with our friends at Anzac Park, and as we squish into our table for Thai Thursdays at the Junction, and as we walk hand-in-hand through the streets that have been our home for forever. I can tell he’s absorbing every detail as if his eyes are seeing the Valley for the very first time.

The approaching end of summer makes me randomly teary as well; the awareness of something slipping through my fingers that no amount of wishing can preserve. I can’t help but feel like a giant piece of my heart is breaking, knowing this part of my life I’ve loved so much is coming to an end.

But honestly? I’m also freakishly excited about the fine arts course I’ve been accepted into. I think I might even dabble in some animation stuff as well. Who knows? I guess I have to trust that my gut knows what it’s doing. For now, I’m just buzzed to be heading into the big wide unknown.

As it turns out, nothing in my box of Cinnamon Girl sketches really goes to waste. I’m able to create a pretty wicked folio of her development, demonstrating the hell out of the ‘engagement in drawing’ requirement that’ll be needed in my first-semester class. Her new comic is not what I was expecting. At the moment, she exists in dozens of black-and-white panels, the only colour, a splash of red-and-blue ink in her hair. I’m not sure who, or what, I can compare her to. She is neither a superhero, nor an ordinary girl. I think she’s going to kick arse, regardless of where her story goes.

Grady has a bunch of prep stuff to do before uni, and he finally relents and decides to spend some time with his dad. But I want to stick around till Paulette’s cousin, our new waitress, starts at the bakery. So he goes ahead without me. The morning he leaves is muggy and overcast, a blanket covering Eden Valley that makes the fields even more vibrant than normal. He pulls up at Albany’s in an ancient Holden EK Special that Anthony had secretly been restoring for him, its back seats packed with boxes, my computer and Wacom nestled safely under bubble wrap.

I know that Angie and Cleo have been counting down the days with cheerful stoicism. But on the morning Grady is due to go, they both totally lose it; our mothers reduced to tearful messes by the time Anthony tugs them inside so that Grady can say a proper goodbye to me, and a huggy, prolonged goodbye to Clouseau.

Two weeks is the longest we have ever been apart, but hey, no-one is dying. And it’s kinda nice to have Eden Valley all to myself and my mums for just a little while.

After endlessly debating online ads, we finally just tossed a coin to pick a share-house in Northcote, an old place with peeling blue paint and a jungle-dense yard. Grady says the photos on the net don’t do the house justice, cos inside it’s huge, with high ceilings and amazing light in the bedroom that will be ours. Our housemates’ odd bits of furniture give the place an op-shop-meets-music-store vibe but, at least via Skype, I love it. We’ll be sharing with two first-year uni students who’ve just moved in together, some musician chick and her film-student boyfriend. They seem to have adopted Grady like an orphaned puppy, and I think he might be slightly in love with both of them, the way he gushes. I’m nervy; they sound way too cool for me. But Grady insists I’ll like them. I suppose it can’t hurt to try.

•

I have no idea when my story started. Maybe it was the first time Dad sat beside me with a stack of
Wonder Woman
comics, reverential and hushed, while I flipped, spellbound, through the pages. Maybe it started the moment Cleo dragged my mum out of a uni party and let Angie sleep it off in her car – a story that, according to Mum, I’m not even supposed to know. Or maybe it was the first time I picked up a pencil. Was it the time Cleo dumped a screaming Grady in my playpen and he fell asleep squished up beside me, or was it a lifetime later, the very first time I kissed him?

Maybe my story will start when I leave here. I suppose it’s possible that it hasn’t started yet. But honestly? I think it’s more likely it started eons before I was born.

I may have said that stories can have a multitude of false starts. But now that I think about it, I’m not sure there’s any such thing. It’s sort of like the best comics – frames burst into one another, and colours bleed between lines, and the richness of a universe is only fully graspable when you understand the prequels and crossovers and spin-offs and stuff. Like the superhero stories that veer through a thousand different incarnations, with no beginning or end. It’s possible that this is a rubbish metaphor. My point is, most stories can only start when you place yourself in them.

And I think I’m ready, finally, to draw myself in mine.

As always, thank you to the incredible team at Hardie Grant Egmont for their tireless dedication, feedback, enthusiasm, encouragement, coffees, wines and Skype sessions – Karri Hedge, Niki Horin, Kate O’Donnell, Marisa Pintado and Hilary Rogers – superheroes, each and every one.

And, as always, a giant thank you to my beta reader, Sophie Splatt, for your insightful advice, diverting sloth emails, and for letting me pick your brain about the minutiae of rural life. Extra thanks also to Sandra and Graeme Splatt for letting me hang out on the farm, and for fielding random questions about motorbikes and canola.