Graffiti Moon by Cath Crowley Page B

brainwave in the coordinator’s office. Told me to sit there and write the sentence This essay is not mine so he could compare handwriting. He’d had Leo in Woodwork for years so he knew whose handwriting it was. The essay was mine so I gave him some suggestions about where he could put it for safekeeping. ‘Till Mrs J comes back.’ He didn’t think much of them so he dragged Leo in.
    ‘Not my writing,’ Leo said. ‘It’s Ed’s.’ He sat there with his legs stuck out and his arms crossed, staring Fennel down. We both got suspended, more for the suggestions we gave Fennel about where he could shove the essay than anything else. Leo went back after a week.
    I trawled paint stores for blue during the day and I painted skies at night. Found a blue close to what I wanted in Bert’s shop, only it was in a tin so I had to keep going back for more.
    ‘I hope you’re not one of those little delinquents who’ve been vandalising the side of my shop,’ he said one day as he was ringing up my stuff.
    ‘If I was I doubt I’d tell you,’ I said, expecting him to kick me out.
    ‘You get those two black eyes because you got a smart mouth?’ he asked.
    ‘I got two black eyes because I don’t have a smart mouth,’ I said, and when he laughed I told him about Lucy. He kept laughing till Valerie walked in and then he invited me to stay for lunch.
    ‘I’m not bombing the side of your store with paint from a tin,’ I told him while we were eating. ‘You should stop selling the stuff in cans if you don’t want people writing on your place.’
    ‘I stock it for the art studio down the road.’ He stared at me for a while. ‘Why aren’t you in school?’
    ‘I quit.’
    ‘No future in quitting.’
    ‘I got a future in art.’ I pulled out my sketchbook.
    He looked through it slowly, creaky old hands turning the pages. After a while he pulled out his book. By the end of the day I was a subversive with a solid career in home decoration retail and a discount on my paint.
    Mrs J visited after a week or two. Leo told her where to find me. She walked in and pretended to look at the paint. When I said hello she opened her eyes wide. ‘Ed, what a lovely surprise. I’m glad I caught up with you. I read your essay.’ I didn’t even have to tell her it was mine.
    Bert made her a cup of tea and gave her a chair and we talked about the colours of Rothko’s paintings, how they took you some other place that was all hazy sky. ‘You could come back,’ she said. ‘I could help and there’s a department in the school that can make things easier.’
    ‘Thanks but no thanks. I got everything I need here.’
    ‘For now,’ she said, and I shrugged. I knew what she meant. The days were already dragging but Bert was a good boss and I figured that was the price I had to pay for being safe.
    ‘You got lucky,’ Mrs J told Bert on her way out.
    ‘You don’t have to tell me,’ he said.
     

     
    The train stops and people get out. Lucy’s in the same place she was before. There’s no one between us but she doesn’t ask the question again. She looks out the window, maybe at that hanging moon or the shooting flames and tells me, ‘I like that the skies go nowhere. In that painting. I like that the birds want to get away but they can’t. I like the reflection of paint in the dark.’ The train starts again and I hold tight to stay steady.
     

     
    The party’s on Mason Street, a few minutes from the station. Leo takes the long way there, though, and I know it’s to show Jazz one of his poems called The daytime things .
    While the girls are reading it I give him a what-do-you-think-you’re-doing? look. ‘It’s the plan,’ he mouths. But he’s not showing her this piece so she can think some other guy did it. Sooner or later he’s planning on telling her he wrote the poem.
    ‘I like it,’ Jazz says. ‘I like that he cares about the world.’
    Leo grins. ‘Yeah,’ he says, looking thoughtful. ‘He seems like a good