Music From Standing Waves Read Online Free PDF

the afterthought.
    I was determined that Sarah’s colourless life
wouldn’t be mine. My sunny grandma was everything my mother was
not. If it weren’t for their shared narrow nose and coffee brown
eyes- traits I’d been handed as well- I’d have doubted they were
even related. I wondered if Sarah’s bristly shell was a product of
her dreary life, or a legacy of her long-dead father. Either way,
my grandma went some way to allaying my fear that becoming my
mother was inevitable.
    “I’m going to be a concert violinist,” I
announced suddenly, peel dangling off my fingers. Grandma looked up
from her saucepan.
    “A concert violinist! Isn’t that lovely. Your
mum must be happy you’re so musical, mustn’t she.”
    I huffed. “She hates it. Why did you think
she’d be happy?”
    Grandma raised her fluffy grey eyebrows, deep
folds setting in her forehead. “Well she used to do music when she
was a little girl. I thought she would have liked to have another
musician in the family.”
    “Mum did music?”
    “Oh yes.” Grandma went back to stirring her
gravy. “She was quite the Liberace.”
    I chewed my lip. “She never said.”
    “Damn lumps,” said Grandma.
     
    Mum came to kiss me goodnight. She pottered
around the bedroom in the dark, picking up clothes off the floor
and folding them over the back of my desk chair.
    “This room is a pig-sty,” she said.
    I rolled onto my side and watched her through
the mosquito net. “How come you never told me you did music?”
    Mum turned around and put her hands on her
hips. “Who told you that?”
    “Grandma said you were quite the
Liberace.”
    Mum gave a short, unenthused chuckle and
stepped under the netting. She gave me a quick kiss. I felt a
strand of hair that had fallen loose from her bun tickle my cheek.
She had done her hair nicely to go and visit her mother. She had
even worn a dress. It was plain blue, not as exciting as Grandma’s,
but I was still glad she had made an effort. Her dark hair was
turning grey around her ears but she looked younger when she was
out of her baggy shorts and shirt.
    Mum tucked the bottom of the sheets under the
mattress. I wriggled my legs to try and loosen them again.
    “Abigail… Stop it.”
    “But I like my sheets untucked. I can move
around more.”
    “What do you need to move around for in your
sleep?”
    “Can you still play?” I asked suddenly.
    “No,” said Mum, climbing out from underneath
the net. “I didn’t learn for very long. It was nothing really.”
    “Oh.”
    “Goodnight,” said Mum. I watched the shadows
change as a car drove under the street light outside my room.
    “Goodnight.”

FIVE
     
     
    We brought in the New Year in a fairly
unfestive way. Rachel grabbed a pot out of her kitchen cupboard and
ran down the street belting it with a spoon until the neighbours
told her to shut up. Justin and I lay on our backs across the
footpath and watched the world’s lamest fireworks trickle above the
road. Suddenly he leant over and pecked my lips. My heart banged
against my ribs.
    “What was that for?”
    “Dunno. It’s New Years. I just thought…”
    “Do you feel any different?” I asked.
    Justin rolled his head to one side so his
eyes met mine. “Not really. Do you?”
    I didn’t answer. My head was tingling like
there was fizzy drink in it.
    “What now?” I asked.
    “What do you mean ‘what now’?”
    “You and me,” I said, excited that there
suddenly seemed to be a ‘you and me’ to speak of.
    Justin just shrugged.
    I should have seen it coming even then.
Should have got up off the footpath and left him lying alone in the
dust. Instead, I lay awake all night and twitched my mouth around,
feeling the place where Justin’s lips had touched mine.
    After that night, I began to think of him as
my boyfriend, though I only ever said it to myself. We started to
sit a little closer when we played Nintendo. Started to wrestle in
the rock pool a little more often.
    I was busting with