The next day I was in my room sorting through my things, determined to make more piles of stuff to give to the Learning Network for all those refugee kids who arrived here without anything. Don’t worry, I wasn’t becoming a Good Samaritan, it’s just that I couldn’t stop thinking about them having nothing. Barnaby popped his head into my room.
‘God, what a mess! Phone call for you.’
I dragged myself away from my piles of things, vaguely hoping it might be Caramella, because I still hadn’t heard from her since I slipped that letter under her door.
‘Hello,’ I say.
‘Hi, it’s Kite.’ (Voice slow and trickling.)
‘Kite! Wow. How are you?’ (I’m suddenly breathless.)
‘I’m good. (Laugh.) Hey, I just got your letter.’
‘Did you?’ (What a stupid thing to say; he just said he did.)
‘Yeah. And I figured by the time I got round to writing back it would be too late, so I’ve rung you up instead.’
‘That’s good.’
‘You still sound like you.’
‘So do you.’ (Luckily.)
‘Anyway, I wanted to tell you that I’m really stoked you’re going to come up.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. I reckon you’ve got a good chance of getting in. Only you have to work out a bit of an act, you know. Just the kind of stuff we were doing.’
‘Oh.’ (How would I do that on my own?)
‘But also I was thinking you could help me with mine, because I want to do some of our old moves. There’s a girl here, Lola. I’ve been practising with her and she’s pretty good. She really wants to do it, so I have to let her know.
But if you come, I’ll do it with you.’ (There’s a pause.) ‘You’re lighter.’
‘I bet she’s better, though.’
‘Nah, she probably knows more moves and she’s got a really hot hoop act, but for this stuff you’re just as good.’
‘Oh.’ (Is she really pretty though, like Marnie?)
‘Anyway, I think it would help you get in if they see you do adagio, ’cause you’re great at it.’
‘Adagio? What’s that?’
‘Double balancing – that’s what they call it here.’ (We never called it that.)
‘I see. Well, I’ll try. I’m not sure yet how I’ll get there…’ (What am I saying? I’m not even allowed to go.)
‘Aren’t you going to come with Barnaby?’
‘Barnaby? Is he going?’
‘Yeah. He and I were talking about it before I left. He’s doing a gig here at the Termo. I told him to bring you with him. That’s how I knew you’d be able to make it, ’cause the audition just happens to be in the same week.’ He laughs. ‘Must be meant to be.’
‘Yeah, right.’ (Pause, while I let all this sink in.) ‘Barnaby hasn’t mentioned it to me yet.’ (Maybe Ada doesn’t want me to go. Maybe he made a pact with Mum.)
‘Well, just tell him, tell him you’re coming.’
‘Okay, I’ll tell him.’
‘Yeah, great. It’ll be ace to see you.’
(I laugh nervously. Kite pauses. Perhaps there’s an awkward silence.)
‘Anyway, I’d better get off the phone,’ he says.
‘Yeah, it’s long distance.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Thanks for ringing.’
‘No worries.’
‘Bye.’
‘Bye, Cedar.’
I hang up. My heart is swelling up and down. Maybe I feel swoony. Maybe if I was in a movie, in a long white dress, I would faint right now, but instead I just swan back to my room and flop on my bed.
And then I remember: Lola. It jerks me out of my swoon in quite a disagreeable way. Lola who wants to be his adagio partner. Lola with the hot hoop act. If I don’t go, Lola will be his new partner and then one thing will lead to another, like it did with us, and soon she’ll be his new girlfriend (if she isn’t already).
I absolutely have to go.
And then I remember: I’m not allowed to go. It completely sinks me into despair. I won’t be able to live in Albury, I can’t join the Flying Fruit Flies. I’m only pretending to myself that I can because I’m a mad, mad dreamer.
This is a dangerous thing to do.
Must stop it.
Must stop being a mad, mad dreamer.
I get up off my bed. I need to talk to someone, someone who isn’t a mad, mad dreamer; someone sensible like Caramella. But then I remember that she doesn’t seem to want to talk to me. So I sit there, stuck halfway, with my legs dangling and droopy. Can’t dream, but can’t get sensible either. I look at Stinky curled up in a hairy pile; he doesn’t have to do either. Best thing to do when you’re in a pickle, particularly a hotted-up one, is take some time out and pat Stinky. He always makes you relax a little, and when you relax you get more ideas. So I get down on the floor and Stinky starts thumping his tail in anticipation and I rub his ears, and just then Aunt Squeezy pokes her head in the door.
‘Me and your mum are going down to the Learning Network. They’re having a party to celebrate the opening of their new back room. Want to come? It’ll only be for an hour, and there’ll be pizza, and you can bring that stuff you want to donate.’
Not really, I think.
‘I guess so,’ I say. After all, if you’re looking for an idea, and someone just makes an offer, there’s a good chance it might lead you somewhere.
We pile into the car and head down to Fitzroy. Barnaby doesn’t come because he’s too old for community parties. So am I, but I’ve got a potential new friend, so that’s different. I’m hoping she’ll be there and we can stand in some dusty corner and munch on pizza, and I’ll tell her all about my unusual life, though it’s going to sound just a little bit undramatic compared to hers. But still, a life’s a life, drama or not.
When we get there, Aunt Squeezy goes directly to the bathroom because she has bad morning sickness and every now and then she has to spew. So Mum and I are left hovering in the hallway until Maude, who’s wearing a red paper crown, ushers us into the computer club room, which has been transformed into a spread of large coloured cushions with seated Muslim ladies, who are wearing colourless robes and scarves and fussing over children.
Maude says, ‘This is the women’s room, but the food will be served in our new hall. Come and see.’
I scan the room for Inisiya, but she isn’t there.
Out the back is a courtyard with a big old tree in the corner, an overhanging verandah and an old shed. There’s a barbecue and trestle tables with plates of cake and dips and spring rolls and falafels and spinach cheesy things – but no pizza (never mind). Behind one table stands an old woman with a gumnut bob and a large nametag saying ‘Elspeth’. She’s serving drinks. Mum gets a wine and I get a lemon fizzy thing. The courtyard is full of people. Some are volunteers, others are refugees, and many of them are children. I watch a couple with a baby. The woman wears a lavender-coloured headscarf. She leans close to her husband and lowers her eyes, as if she’s too shy to look at anyone. Clumps of men stand with hands in pockets. A very small Asian woman walks around with a platter of spring rolls, explaining, ‘I make them dis morning.’ She smiles at everyone, even me, as if she really likes me, which makes me instantly like her. I grab some cheesecake, because who can resist, and follow Mum to peek in at the hall. A small girl on a bright yellow plastic tractor pushes her way through the legs. There are children everywhere, wandering, playing, tugging, weaving an invisible thread through the adults.
I think how adults can’t take off their shoes and play chasey, so they don’t get to loosen their thoughts and their recipes for how to behave. They just stand still in one place, and the air around doesn’t move them or bend them. Not like kids. Kids are kids before they’re anything else; before they’re Muslims, or Eskimos, or future Kings of England. Because their beliefs haven’t set hard yet, and they can still play, still be caught in a whoosh or a bang. If playing was a language, all the kids all over the world would be able to talk to each other, even if they were from the Mongolian desert, or the Bronx, or some toffy boarding school. Then I thought: once I’m Prime Minister there may not be wars, because no one will have to be so serious and dead-set about their beliefs, not if they can play.
I gallop on with this thinking because, boy, the ideas are flowing, and of course then I have the very best and most useful thought of the whole day. Here it is: since I’m not quite Prime Minister and I haven’t got a country to fix, what if I could use the back room to teach circus skills to all the refugee kids, and Caramella and Oscar could come and help, and slowly we’d build up a new crew of Acrobrats? And, in the meantime, all the kids could learn something that would make them happy, just like it made me happy. And all the adults would come and watch and they’d see how good it is to play together.
I literally bounce out of the hall, just as if I’ve grown angel legs, to look for Aunt Squeezy and tell her my new great thought, leaving poor Mum in there to serve apple juice and act like an adult. I find Inisiya instead. She’s sitting on a bench in the courtyard under the tree with another girl. They are both wearing the same school uniform: blue daks, sneakers and V-necked jumpers. But since I’m feeling all lion-hearted and brave, I just lumber over and say, ‘Hi.’
Inisiya jumps up and beams and hugs me, just as if I’m an old friend. Then she turns to her friend and says, ‘Remember I tell you about Cedar, who comes down here to volunteer? This is her!’ She turns back to me. ‘This is my best friend, Nidal.’
Nidal leaps up with a grin and hugs me too. I’m not sure if it was the roar of my newly forged lion-heart that makes them hug me, or if they just have a hugging custom, but it makes me feel so happy in a startled way that I almost forget who I usually am. Am I really so infected by the rules of cool that it could throw me, even in an upward direction, when someone is instantly warm? I shudder at the thought and quickly let myself soak up the warmth so that it will stay with me, like a suntan. I tell them my idea. Inisiya has her arm around Nidal, and leans into her every now and then.
When I’ve finished, Nidal says, ‘It is a great idea.’
‘I am double jointed,’ Inisiya says, and she holds up her hand and bends her thumb back to touch her wrist.
‘You can be the contortionist,’ I say.
‘Your aunt, she already ask me if I am interested in learning circus.’
‘Did she really?’
‘Yes, before she introduce us.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I say I think it would be great. Did she not tell you?’
‘Nope, she didn’t.’
I have to admit I felt a bit flattened. I felt like, all along, Aunt Squeezy was really the one with the idea and somehow she’d been gently nudging me towards it. But still…I shrugged. Who cares about that? I was the one who could pull it all together. That’s something. It’s all very well to have ideas, that’s just like starting the engine, but someone’s got to drive the car, know when to change the gears, turn a corner and how to fix a leak, and that’s the hard part.
When we get home, I start to fix the leak. I ring Caramella.
‘Guess what,’ I say, and then I just go ahead and say it, because we all know Caramella never guesses anyway. ‘The Acrobrats are back on the road.’
‘Really?’ she says, and by the sweet, rising sound of her voice, I know I’m forgiven.