Cath Crowley - Graffiti Moon

To Teresa and everyone in the room.
And to Esther, who read it first.

Acknowledgements

Thank you very much Claire Craig, Brianne Collins and Simone Ford. Your careful editing is much appreciated. Thank you Elizabeth Abbot, Marcus Jobling, Duro Jovicic, Kirsten Matthews and Karen Murphy for talking to me about art. Thank you Bethany Wheeler for generously donating your time and knowledge about glass. Any errors are mine. Any good stuff is yours. Special thanks to the young adults who shared their stories with me. A big thanks to my nieces and nephews who let me ask all the questions I want and never tell me to go away. Thanks Alison Arnold for plotting in the car, Diana Francavilla for your scary amount of knowledge about young adult fiction and film, Emma Schwartz for your writing advice and Ange Maiden for always laughing. And lastly, thanks to my brothers, to Cate, Cella and Ras, and of course, to my mum and dad.

Lucy

I pedal fast. Down Rose Drive where houses swim in pools of orange streetlight. Where people sit on verandahs, hoping to catch a breeze. Let me make it in time. Please let me make it in time.

Just arrived at the studio. Your graffiti guys Shadow and Poet are here , Al texted, and I took off across the night. Took off under a sky bleeding out and turning black. Left Dad sitting outside his shed yelling, I thought you werent meeting Jazz till later. Wheres the fire, Lucy Dervish?

In me. Under my skin.

Let me make it in time. Let me meet Shadow. Let me meet Poet, too, but mainly Shadow. The guy who paints in the dark. Paints birds trapped on brick walls and people lost in ghost forests. Paints guys with grass growing from their hearts and girls with buzzing lawn mowers. A guy who paints things like that is a guy I could fall for. Really fall for.

Im so close to meeting him and I want it so bad. Mum says when wanting collides with getting, thats the moment of truth. I want to collide. I want to run right into Shadow and let the force spill our thoughts so we can pick each other up and pass each other back like piles of shiny stones.

At the top of Singer Street I see the city, neon blue and rising. Theres lightning deep in the sky, working its way through the heat to the surface. Theres laughter somewhere far away. Theres one of Shadows pieces, a painting on a crumbling wall of a heart cracked by earthquake with the words: Beyond the Richter scale written underneath. Its not a heart like you see on a Valentines Day card. Its the heart how it really is: fine veins and atriums and arteries. A fist-sized forest in our chest.

I take my hands off the brake and let go. The trees and the fences mess together and the concrete could be the sky and the sky could be the concrete and the factories spread out before me like a light-scattered dream.

I turn a corner and fly down Als street. Towards his studio, towards him sitting on the steps, little moths above him, playing in the light. Towards a shadow in the distance. A shadow of Shadow. Theres collision up ahead.

I spin the last stretch and slide to a stop. Im here. I made it. Do I look okay? How do I look?

Al drains his coffee and puts the cup on the step beside him. Like a girl who missed them by about five minutes.

Ed

I spray the sky fast. Eyes ahead and behind. Looking for cops. Looking for anyone I dont want to be here. Paint sails and the things that kick in my head scream from can to brick. See this, see this, see this. See me emptied onto a wall.

First thing I ever painted was a girl. Second thing I ever painted was a doorway on a brick wall. Went on to paint huge doorways. Moved on to skies. Open skies painted above painted doorways and painted birds skimming across bricks trying to fly away. Little bird, what are you thinking? You come from a can.

Tonight Im doing this bird thats been in my head all day. Hes a little yellow guy lying on sweet green grass. Belly to sky, legs facing the same direction. He could be sleeping. He could be dead. The yellows right. The green, too. The skys all wrong. I need the sort of blue that rips your inside out. You dont see blue like that round here.

Bert was always looking for it. Every week or so at the paint store hed show me a blue hed special-ordered. Close, boss, Id say. But not close enough.

He still hadnt found it when he died two months ago. He got all the other colours I wanted. The green this birds lying on is a shade he found about two years back. You had a good first day, he told me when he handed it over. Real good.

That is very fucking nice, I said, spraying some on a card and taking it as a sign that leaving school to work for him was the right thing to do.

It is very fucking nice, Bert looked over his shoulder, but dont say fuck when my wife Valeries around. Bert always swore like a kid scared of getting caught. I laughed about it till Val heard me swearing. Bert had the last chuckle that day.