Girl Defective Read Online Free Page B

SECOND: One of them was wheezy and kept puffing on an inhaler.
    POINT THE THIRD: Another didn’t want to kick me—his friends called him a pussy.
    POINT THE FOURTH: They all had skateboards.
    The next day Dad and Tony Trucker, a regular who loved Merle Haggard and was built like a Hummer, went down to the chip shop and found Derek and two of his “boys” eating calamari rings and kicking their boards around. I don’t know what Dad and Tony did, but Derek never bothered Gully again.
    â€œWe’re Family,” Dad said. “And Family sticks together.”
    After the spectacular bruise, we had a visit from a social worker. Paul Bean had a kind face but defeated eyes. He said no to the beer (it was ten thirty in the morning) and delicately moved the festy stacks of Mojo and Record Collector so that he could sit in the broken seat of the wicker chair. He asked halting questionsabout health and family history. He gave Dad information sheets and a speech about how the “functional family unit” thrives on “routine” and “structure” and “support networks.”
    Dad had Sgt. Pepper’s on the record player. He must have seen the glint in Paul’s eye, because he cranked it up and by the time “She’s Leaving Home” had made us all choky, we knew that Paul Bean the Social Worker had been named after Paul McCartney the Beatle. That in 1964 Paul Bean’s mother had snuck into the Southern Cross Hotel, where the Beatles were staying on their first Australian tour. That she had stood in the lift with Paul McCartney and never fully recovered. Dad put Sgt. Pepper’s (near mint, Australian pressing) back in its cover and into Paul Bean’s hand, and we never saw him again.
    At breakfast Dad was a happy man. “Sky, my girl,” he said, crunching his toast in triumph. “Always remember, if you can get a man talking about the thing he loves, you can make him forget the thing he came for.”
    Dad always told the truth. And he always had a way to say it that made it seem less scary than it was. When I asked him what he thought Paul Bean wanted, he said, “Oh. Just to see how you kids are doing. People can get funny when the mother is out of the picture.”

    Mum left in the winter, when everything was dull and gray. Gully and I had our breakfast porridge and trottedoff to school with our cheese-and-pickle sandwiches in recycled brown paper bags, and the day was the day was the day. When we came home, she was gone. She’d left notes for each of us, pinned them to the mantel like Santa stockings. Mine said this:
    Become the change you want to see in the world.
    Skylark,
    I don’t remember if it was Gandhi who said that or Uma Thurman. I used to think words become yours, ideas become yours, as soon as you use them. Lately I’m thinking about: how it works that Gully’s still wetting the bed; how you’ve turned out to be this dad-happy whirl of a girl and you don’t need me; how your father is. I don’t like his beard, do you? And I never liked Nick Cave. I need you to know that this isn’t good-bye, but I want to live the kind of life where my thoughts and ideas come first so that I know they are truly mine. I am reconciled to the fact that you will hate me. I hope not forever. Hug Gully every day for me. I know he can’t stand it, but do it anyway. There’s a reason I named you two after birds, you know. Tell your father to buck up and stop crying. He was always a better mother than I was.
    Love,
    Galaxy
    Mum’s letter had infinite creases from being folded and refolded and scrunched and pitched and saved. I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. Mum was glamorous and heartless, but the weird thing was, she was right. We coped. We were okay. Better than okay, we were fine. Dad stopped crying. Gully let me hug him. For a while there I couldn’t stop. He drew a portrait of us that Dad ended