The Life and Times of Gracie Faltrain Read Online Free

eyes on the concrete. If I don’t step on one crack then Dad will be home when I get there. Maybe if I wish hard enough he’ll be home for good.
    But Dad’s coat isn’t in the hallway when I walk in. Mum’s home early from the nursery but she’s forgotten to put the heater on. It’s colder inside than it is on the street.
    It’s so quiet as we eat that I can hear the rattle of the fridge. The clock ticking.
    â€˜I’ll call Dad after dinner, Mum, to tell him about the Championships.’
    â€˜Sounds like a good plan.’
    â€˜How good would it be if we won it? Mum? Martin says that we have to practise on the weekends now. I’ll practise more if I have to –’
    She cuts me off: ‘How much is it going to cost?’
    â€˜Three hundred dollars.’
    â€˜Gracie, I don’t think we can afford it.’ Her hands reach across the table, dirt from the nursery ground into the rough lines around her fingers.
    I fold my arms. ‘But it’s only three hundred dollars.’
    â€˜Gracie, if I had the money I’d send you. It’s just that business isn’t so good at the moment.’
    I look out of the window at the faded lines of Dad’s goalposts.
    â€˜I can’t even afford to keep Sam on, Gracie.’ I hate that her voice is pleading. Sad. It belongs to someone else. Someone I’ve never met.
    â€˜If Dad were here he’d let me go,’ I whisper.
    Clouds roll in over her face, and not the harmless ones you yawn over in science, like the cumulus. My mother is quickly becoming the twister cloud formation, capable of picking up whole couches and throwing them across the room with a look.
    â€˜Well, he’s not here, Gracie Faltrain. I am. I am here to wash your socks and your undies . . .’ (It’s a low blow when they bring up your underwear in a fight.) ‘I am here to listen to you talk about your day . . .’ Her voice is dropping in pitch and volume when it should be rising. ‘And I say we simply do not have the money to send you to New South Wales.’ And then she starts to read the paper, the pages shaking slightly in the wake of her storm.
    I sit in my room. And then I cry. ‘Gracie Faltrain pushes her mother over the edge’, I imagine the headlines saying. I get up for a drink once and see her, sitting in the dark, still looking at the paper. I turn the light on in the kitchen and go back to bed.
    Crazy dreams fill the Faltrain house that night. I’m in the sea and it’s stormy. Mum is bailing out water but all the time I’m calling for my dad. Where is he? The water levels are rising and I’m shouting, ‘There’s a fin, a fin.’ I wake to feel my mother cradling me, stroking my hair. I fall asleep with the buttons of her dressing gown gently pressing half-moons into my face.
    Â 
HELEN FALTRAIN
    I read somewhere that spiders can spin silk strong enough to hold the weight of a thousand trucks. I tried to imagine those lines of silver, thinner than air, stronger than steel. Sometimes I think that a hundred webs, invisible gossamers, connect Gracie and me. They coat our bodies, tie our limbs together, link our hearts. They can stretch across cities, countries – even anger. Unbreakable. I felt them that first time I watched her play soccer.
    She needed to win so badly. I watched a new Gracie crack out of her cocoon that day. Grey, moth-like, she seemed covered in a dust that let her take to the air. Fly. They’re beautiful things, moths, with their dark patterned wings hooking on wind to push them forward. You have to be careful with them, though. Brush them just lightly, and they can’t fly anymore.
    I know how important soccer is to Gracie. She found a piece of herself during that match that was so real, so tangible, that she’s been able to carry it with her ever since. It’s her talisman, protecting her against all the hard times.
    â€˜Hold