Yellow by Megan Jacobson Read Free Book Online Page B

deep stuff. The cheesy announcer called the next song – something by KC and the Sunshine Band. Mum did a small jolt and stumbled over to the radio as the opening funk beats sounded.
    â€˜Turn it off!’ She struggled with the dial before ripping the cord out from the socket. I wondered what box of memories that song pried open, and I knew that even with the radio silent the song was still sitting there like a ghost in our living room. The silence was fat with it.
    â€˜Can I have the five dollars now?’
    She didn’t answer.
    So I took it from her handbag and I left her there, with the spirits that lingered in songs, and with the ones that filled the bottles lined up in our liquor cabinet.
    I wanted some time with the living.
    Cassie and my group have come over now, and their faces are ashen. I don’t want to be here, holding my mother. No amount of hair draped over my face can hide me from this. I want to fling my mother to the ground and separate myself from her. I don’t want this drunken woman to have been the person who carried me inside of herself like a babushka doll for nine months and made me in her own image. I don’t want her to be my mother.
    â€˜Oh helloooo Casshie, Kirra’s having a party!’ chirps Mum.
    Cassie curls her lip upwards. ‘Kirra shouldn’t be throwing a party, Kirra should be throwing an intervention.’
    We’ve gathered quite a crowd now. Cassie pulls me over towards her so that my mother falls and becomes an awkward jumble of limbs on the ground.
    â€˜This is so embarrassing. How can you do this to me after I let you back into the group?’ she hisses.
    Willow appears from behind her, sipping from one plastic cup of water and holding another in her other hand. ‘What’s embarrassing, Cassie, is your ego.’
    â€˜What did you say?!’ Cassie directs her fury away from me and towards Willow, who obviously has a death wish because she keeps on talking.
    â€˜If you paid half as much attention in class as you do to worrying about your breast size you’d know that the earth revolves around the sun – not you. Newton’s law of gravitation and all tha–’
    Willow’s silenced by Cassie’s perfectly manicured hand reaching across and latching starfish-like across her mouth.
    â€˜Ugh, Parker. Can’t keep your legs shut, can’t keep your mouth shut.’
    Willow arches an eyebrow from above the hand, then calmly pours a cup of water over the front of Cassie’s white dress. Cassie’s not wearing a bra and the water makes the dress stick against her breasts, the pink outline of her nipples peering out at everyone through the fabric. Cassie screams and lets go of Willow to cover herself with her hands.
    â€˜Ooops. Who’s the big old tart now, then?’ quips Willow, and with a half smile still playing on her face she crouches down towards my mother and places the remaining cup of water against her lips. ‘Drink up, it’ll make you feel better.’
    I crouch beside her. ‘Mum, we’ve got to go home now.’
    â€˜But waddabout your party? I came here to give you a party, I have cupcakes for your party . . .’
    I begin to tell her there won’t be any party, but Noah Willis appears beside me. I notice the way he smells. Male. Sharp. So different from the mudpie and jelly-snake smell of when we were little.
    â€˜Of course we’re coming to your party, Mrs Barley. Can you show me the way?’
    He pulls her up, like a gentleman, and offers the crook of his arm for her to take. I put my arm around the other side of her, and Willow follows, chattering to her about parties and cupcakes, and the warm night blankets us, this strange quartet, as we follow our feet down the street towards my house.
    I look over to Noah. The starlight bounces off his freckles, and he looks like a part of the night sky himself, his freckles a mass of constellations. I