Yellow by Megan Jacobson Read Free Book Online Page A

drunk and the insane. The suddenness of her gestures makes her lose her balance, so the kids take it in turns catching her and placing her neatly back against the frame. From a few metres away I can hear her laughter, horsey and forced, like she’s coughing up laughs. The other kids laugh too, and it injures me, the way that she doesn’t realise they’re laughing at her, not with her.
    â€˜Kirra!’
    She lunges towards me and I have to grab her. Her breath has that sour smell of gin and beer and her top’s been pulled on inside out and back to front so the tag pokes out at me like a mocking tongue.
    â€˜I wann’ed to say . . .’
    She forgets what she wants to say for a moment and looks confused, then catches the end of her thoughts by the tail and continues.
    â€˜I wann’ed to say we should have an afterparty! With all your friends!’
    She flings her arm out and grabs the flannel collar of some nearby eleventh grader with stoner eyes and an eyebrow ring, pulling his ear towards her foul breath.
    â€˜Whass yer name?’
    â€˜Dave.’
    â€˜Dave, you should come to our party!’
    She lets him go and leans against me, speaking in a loud, conspiratorial whisper. ‘Youse can even drink alcohol if we keep it a secret! Shhhhhhhhhhh!’ With her index finger pressed against her lips she ‘shooshes’ everyone, which she obviously finds hilarious because she loses herself in a fit of giggles and I struggle to keep her on her feet.
    It’s the least funny thing in the world.
    I should have known Mum wasn’t in a good way when I left the house. She was sitting cross-legged on the fish-gut coloured carpet, leaning against the couch with her head back, eyes closed, listening to her favourite radio station – hits of the 70s and 80s. Her face was relaxed, almost happy, as she was taken away by the music to a time when the world dangled before her nose, when it was her wearing the Prussian blue jumpsuit, laughter bubbling up from her throat.
    Leaning against the couch like that she looked softer and younger, except that around her eyes were little creases that people call laugh lines, but they’re not laugh lines, not on her.
    â€˜Can I have five dollars for the school social?’
    I’d pulled her back into the present, and she frowned for a second, like she didn’t want to be there, like she’d gotten lost and there was nobody around to ask for directions.
    â€˜You have to listen to this song first.’ The ice clinked as she pointed her glass towards the radio. She gets like that with songs, especially when she’s been drinking, which is all the time now. She wants me to feel them in the same way she does, and she gets upset when I can’t; that even though I’m half her, I don’t have the memories that she does, and a particular set of lyrics can’t open a box inside of me where memories curl out like wisps of smoke – first kisses or the way I looked at her when I was first born. She can’t understand that it’s not the song that’s making her feel, it’s the memories. She thinks I’m just not listening hard enough and that I need to open my ears like the way a fish opens up its gills.
    â€˜Are you listening?’
    It was ‘One’ by Metallica. The song’s about a soldier who was fighting in a war when a mortar blew up in his face. He can’t see or hear or taste or smell or talk, and he’s lost his arms and legs, so he’s stuck in this dark, frightening prison which is his own body. Mum listens to that song a lot. She’ll grasp my hand tight when she’s listening to it.
    â€˜Did you really listen?’
    â€˜Yes, Mum. I listened.’
    I thought she was going to make me listen to another one – most songs from the 70s or 80s will be terribly meaningful to her, which is funny because it was the era of disco and power ballads, not particularly