The Unexpected Life of Carnegie Lane Read Online Free PDF

songs that he loved. It was then he decided to sing another song, one he himself had loved, yet never attempted on stage. He walked over and grabbed a stool that was in the wings and headed back to the microphone in the middle of the stage. He sat down and began to speak.
    “This is a song, for a girl I haven’t met yet. It’s her favorite song, by her favorite band, The Cure… It’s called… ‘ To wish Impossible Things ’. ”
    The crowd went wild and some even sang along, overjoyed they knew the words. Others just wished they had heard of it and were determined to go home and look it up on YouTube. Never the less, there wasn’t a lighter that remained unlit or a mobile phone not held up above heads in the entire venue at that point in time.
    On the other side of the world, in the middle of the day, Carnegie was performing a routine concert of her own as she dusted and cleaned her humble little home. At the exact same time, if time was exact, and holding a can of furniture cleaner in her hand as a makeshift microphone, she engaged her ornamental audience with her eyes. She sang the verse that had for all time meant the most to her. It became a harmony of sound between two voices that no one would ever know had happened, except for the angel of fate that had allowed it in the first place.
“ It was the sweetness of her skin, it was the hope of all we might have been, that filled me with the hope to wish, impossible things….to wish impossible things….to wish impossible things.”
    Nate Bowman finished the song to a roar of applause, just as she did in her head. She took a bow and thanked the books and statues for being such a great audience. The drums began to beat out a solo just as Nate’s band hooked into the second last song of the night. He gave his acoustic guitar to a roadie and someone removed the chair. Her washing machine rang out a series of chimes reminding her to go hang the clothes on the line. From that moment on, everything he sang reminded him of the girl he had never met and the story that had changed his life.
    Carnegie Lane, single mother of four, idol to inanimate objects, and almost Author, had suddenly and unexpectedly, acquired her very…first…fan.

Sweet dreams are made of this
    Who am I to disagree
    I travel the world and the seven seas
    Everybody’s looking for something.
    “ Sweet Dreams”
    Written by Annie Lennox and David A Stewart
    Eurythmics – Sweet Dreams Album –1983

4
    Two months later and life went on, with still no word about her book from anyone. In fact she had almost forgotten about it in a way. That didn’t change the fact that the effort made to do what she did had healed her to some degree. Carnegie was having a great day at home, doing what she did best. Somewhere in this journey she had come out from under the rock she had been coveting, and glimpses of who she really was, started shining through.
    The daggy sneakers made way for her beloved Doc Martin boots, the overgrown shirts became red and white striped stretch shirts, with a vintage jacket over the top. Her hair became a focal point in her life again, strangely braided in unlikely places, tied with ribbons and bows. The eyeliner came out, and those blue eyes were framed in perfect black.
    It wasn’t that it looked bad, in fact if she had still been living in Paddington, no one would have batted an eye lid. Only she wasn’t in Paddington, she was in Bundaberg. A town where flannelette shirts ruled supreme, and anything slightly off-beat could almost have been viewed as satanic. At least, it was in the street she lived in.
    Her twin daughters had started spending more time at home, studying and preparing for their trial Higher School Certificate exams. She fussed over them, made them lots of their favorite food, and when their music blasted from the bedroom, she bit her tongue. Switching off the sound button in her brain and turning on the memory button to the music that was her life line, she could