If Paris doesn't work out, perhaps I'll drift on down to the French Riviera and cruise the coast in slick convertibles with Cary Grant lookalikes.

Book Review!

Here we are, a review I wrote! It is of a children's fantasy book by Kate Forsyth, The Wildkin's Curse. One of my writing tutors at Melbourne Uni, George Ivanoff, posted it on his blog. Find it here.

Nice, clean fun, chaps.

Moonface

Moonface

Here’s how it went.

I woke up that morning at 5:37am. I remember the time because I have a habit of waking up at something-thirty-seven, whatever the hour. Felix always said it must be because I have some psychic connection to that number I am yet to understand. Well, whatever, my body clock was fucked. I hadn’t really slept for five days so the two or so hours of sleep I’d just had were good enough for me. The funeral wasn’t until noon, so I watched six or seven episodes of Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, season one, which Felix had bought for me for US $10.90 off Amazon a week before. By the time I considered myself hungry enough to choke down some Coco Pops, I saw the clock and freaked because it was 11:47 and I wasn’t even dressed.

Em was supposed to pick me up at 11:30, and I wondered where she was. I didn’t have an outfit planned or anything, so I put on my black jeans and the Easy Rider t-shirt I stole off Felix ages ago, and then dug through my bag for my phone, which I eventually discovered was still in my jacket pocket from yesterday, and I’d left my jacket in the kitchen so I hadn’t heard the 12 missed calls from Em when I was dozily watching Dr. Quinn. Felix and I used to love watching Dr. Quinn together on the Hallmark channel. Every character in it was just so good, you know—deeply good—and that made me want to be good too. By then it was 11:56 and I didn’t even have time to look in the mirror. I grabbed my keys and hurried outside. My phone rang. 11:58. It was Em.

‘Hey,’ I answered.

‘Where the fuck are you! I was banging on your door for, like, half an hour.’

‘I know, I was watching Dr. Quinn. I didn’t hear you.’

‘Dr. who? Jesus, Soph.’ There was an angry pause, a growl of disbelief. ‘Do you want me to come pick you up?’

‘No, it’s okay.’

‘It’s already twelve!’

‘I’ll be there soon. Just—stop stressing.’

There was another pause, but it seemed sympathetic.

‘Are you okay, Soph?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Really?’

‘Well, no. But it’s fine. See you in a bit.’

‘Okay … love you.’

‘You too.’

I hung up and had to take a moment. My throat was tight, hot—my eyes stung. I took a shaky breath and tried to think of nothing. It was probably at this point, 12:01, when the numbness took over because everything from here onwards comes back in blurs. I know I jumped on my bike without a helmet and got honked at by a taxi I think I cut in front of. I know I reached the park in twenty minutes or so, and dropped my bike by our tree, the tree we etched out names into: Soph and Felix were here, 03. We even named our tree—Moonface, after Moonface in The Faraway Tree. We were kids when we did that, like, fourteen or fifteen. It didn’t feel so long ago, though.

Funerals are strange and unreal. While you’re there, your emotions and the emotions of everyone around you are so hazardous that you sort of drift along, your eyes glazed, as if in a dream. You stiffly embrace a lot of people you’ll later forget; fiddle nervously with your program which will be frayed and blotchy by the end of the day; listen absolutely attentively to the speeches, your face crumpling in sympathy when the speaker has to take a moment to recompose himself.

It was like this, exactly like this, at my grandparents’ funerals, at the funeral of an old classmate’s mother, at the funeral of my aunt who died of lung cancer. But at Felix’s funeral, it was something else entirely. To say that I felt in a dream would be a lie. I didn’t feel like I was asleep, or dreaming, or not entirely there—I felt dead. Truly dead. Dead as a doornail.

There were loads of black folding chairs set up at the park, so many that it’s the only decorative feature I really noticed. Black folding chairs and people, people all dressed up formally, and in black. My t-shirt, Felix’s t-shirt, was bright orange with a funny cartoon of Dennis Hopper on a motorcycle—I felt a bit stupid, and wished I’d put more thought into my attire. It was a pretty significant event—you’d think I could’ve made an effort. That’s what my mum wanted to say when she saw me. I could tell. When I approached her, her eyes shifted from sad and puffy, to puzzled and annoyed, to sad and puffy again in about five guilty seconds.

‘Oh, my darling,’ she greeted tearfully, stroking my hair and hugging me to her. ‘Tell me you’ve changed your mind?’

‘I’m fine, Mum, I told you.’

‘Even just a week, so you don’t have to worry about food or work or—clothes.’ Her eyes fell on my t-shirt. ‘It would do you good to get out of that house, help you forget about—’

‘I’m okay by myself, Mum, so—just—drop it.’

As I hovered away, I could feel eyes, polka dots of eyes all following me sadly, pitifully, like I was a homeless person or an orphan with a wooden leg. I was engulfed by a tsunami of condolences—

‘Sophie, honey. How are you holding up?’ ‘… such a shock …’

‘…he was so young …’ ‘… always liked to live a little dangerously, our Felix did …’ ‘… oh, how he adored you, Sophie. You were so good for him.’

At some point, Em must have steered me away. I guess I looked pretty damn rugged. I hadn’t showered in a while, or eaten, or slept; my fringe was plastered to my forehead from the stress of being late; I wasn’t saying anything to anyone. So Em led me off, and I remember her grabbing my shoulders in manner of a coach preparing his star footballer for the upcoming match.

‘How’s your speech?’

Oh God, speech. I had written one too, but I hadn’t printed it out. I could not believe it—I had forgotten my fucking funeral speech.

‘You’ve forgotten your fucking funeral speech,’ Em deadpanned. She must’ve read between the lines of my alarmed expression. She put her hands behind her head then dropped them frantically.

‘Shit,’ she breathed. ‘Shit. Can you remember what it said?’

I searched my brain—blank. Blank blank blank. I shook my head a little manically. I was crumpling now, teetering, swaying. I couldn’t speak. I was determined not to break down—I didn’t want all those weird people groping me with sympathy again.

Em’s eyes probed mine. She gave a weak smile and drew me into a bear hug.

‘You fucking dunce,’ she almost laughed, and her tears wet my hair.

I didn’t reply. I collapsed into her and sobbed like a little kid.

Throughout the service, I was sitting up the front next to Felix’s family, staring at old Moonface in the distance. My best friend was dead. Dead. That word didn’t seem right, or real. I got a call from Sandra, his mum, five days before. I was in Aisle 6 at the supermarket, trying to decide on a brand of toothpaste.

‘Sophie? It’s Sandra … Felix is dead.’

That was it. Three words. Felix is dead. Sandra’s voice was so quiet and hollow I don’t know how I caught it. I just felt a ringing in my ears. My mouth dried up. I heard what she was saying but I didn’t understand what she meant by dead.

‘They think he was drinking. His body washed up on the back beach this morning. He drowned.’

Her words were raspy whispers that came out slowly, slowly as I dropped to the floor. It was rubbery and shiny and off-white and kind of sticky. My phone slipped out of my hand.

‘Sophie? Are you there? Hello?’

I stared up at the toothpaste. Colgate? Macleans? Gel Strip? Ultimate Whitening? Junior Jaws? I had no clue what to pick.

‘Sophie, are you there?’

I lowered my gaze and reached for the phone. It felt heavy, like lead, and my hand was shaking so badly that it took me a few tries to put it back to my ear.

‘Sandra? I’m going to have to call you back.’

In the end, I settled for Junior Jaws. The awful irony of “Mac The Shark” popping his head out of the surf was too beautiful to ignore.

The last thing I remember about the funeral service was “Hey Jude” by The Beatles playing out of scratchy speakers. Felix’s dad used to play it on the piano all the time when he was a kid, so he always had a sentimental spot for it, I guess. Everyone around me seemed to be crying now; I could hear lots of sniffling at the line: take a sad song and make it better. I wasn’t crying. I always thought that song was overplayed and annoying so I rode my bike back home without really saying goodbye to anyone. I could have thought of a thousand better songs to play while they took Felix’s coffin away.

When I got home, I felt instantly ashamed of myself and cried for an hour. A week went by after the funeral, and I didn’t leave the house. Em eventually broke in and force-fed me vegetables.

‘You’ll die too if you carry on like this,’ she said, poking a stem of broccoli in my face. It was hard to even muster the energy to open my mouth, let alone chew. I took the fork from her and just looked at it.

‘Eat!’ Em ordered, as she pulled a lump of envelopes out of her bag. ‘By the way, this is probably two weeks’ worth of mail that was exploding out of your letterbox.’

She sifted through the pile and I furtively ditched the broccoli.

‘Phone, phone, bank, Uni, phone, bank, Country Road catalogue, phone—Jesus, paid your phone bills lately?—Indian Harvest takeaway menu, letter …’

She tossed half the pile in front of me and continued with the other half, mumbling to herself. I glanced down at the letter on top of the pile and my gut wrenched.

There was no stamp or address, only my name, Soph, handwritten. I recognized the handwriting immediately and dropped the letter as if it was dry ice burning off a wart. Em didn’t notice. She was still grumbling about how many phone bills I had.

This was impossible. Hibernation was getting to my head. I picked up the letter again as quickly as I had dropped it, and ripped it open. It contained one piece of lined paper, folded twice.

I unfolded it and read, and as I read, I was sure I was going to throw up.

‘What’s that?’ came Em’s voice distantly, as if through a tunnel. I jumped up.

‘Just junk mail. Neighbourhood Watch notice or something.’

Em grunted and started opening my bills.

I clenched the piece of paper and walked stiffly into my room. I sat down on my bed and read the letter again. It was dated yesterday:

I’m not dead. Meet me at Moonface tomorrow night. 12.37am.

Tell no one.

F.

The Choking Game

Vera Halswitte had a sister, Ebony. But if you saw them standing side by side you wouldn’t have thought they were sisters at all. That’s what everyone said, at least. Vera disagreed. They had the same smile—a smile that made their top lip curl back and shyly disappear, a smile that emphasized their off-white, braces-straight, tidy teeth. They shared a nose—a button-cute nose with a shiny, rounded tip that curved ever so slightly upward. When Vera listened carefully, she could hear that she and her sister’s laughter was in the same key. But most of all, Vera saw her sister’s eyes in her own—hazy hazel eyes with a flash of gumtree green. They matched hers in every way, except for what they saw.

For a long time, the two sisters had a ritual of brushing their teeth together every morning. They would look at each other in the bathroom mirror, make silly faces, see who would be the first to laugh and splutter toothpaste all over the sink. It was always Vera who laughed first—Ebony was good at those kinds of games. Vera felt a warm, ticklish love for Ebony in these moments, and chose them to tell her sister how alike she thought they were. But when Vera effervesced over their resemblance—their hazy hazel eyes with a flash of gumtree green, their harmonized laughter, Ebony would only scoff as if Vera had told her a bad joke. After a time, the two sisters stopped brushing their teeth together in the mornings, stopped making silly faces at each other in the mirror, and Vera stopped telling Ebony how alike she thought they were.

‘You can’t tell we’re sisters,’ Ebony often said around her friends. ‘We don’t look anything alike, do we?’

Vera felt a little sad when Ebony said things like this, but she supposed that at first glance, the two girls didn’t really look like sisters at all.

Vera was tall, a beanpole straight up and down, while her sister was what their Aunt Faye celebrated as voluptuous. Ebony was dark and Vera was fair. Ebony’s hair overflowed with black ringlets that danced and flailed about her chin while Vera’s hair was dirty blonde and hung limp as dead daffodils below her shoulders. Her sister loved playing with her hair. She would braid it and plait it and twist it and tug it and delighted in comparing it to her own.

‘Look at all these split ends,’ she once said to Vera, sifting gently through her thin locks. ‘Here—’ she grabbed Vera’s hand and put it to one of her curls.

‘How does mine feel?’

Vera wasn’t quite sure how it felt. ‘I suppose it’s—well, soft?’

‘Yes, soft. Bravo, cherie!’ And Ebony laughed like a bell and pinched Vera’s cheeks and gave her a kiss and hugged her so tight she could hardly breathe.

‘You’re so cute, my baby sis,’ Ebony cooed. ‘The loop in my hoop, the apple of my eye.’

Vera couldn’t stand it when Ebony talked to her in that gooey voice— it made her chest tighten like a shoelace being double-knotted. She wasn’t Ebony’s baby sister. Vera was only two years younger and sometimes, when they were alone, Vera was Ebony’s best friend. Yet when Ebony had other friends around, Vera was reduced to the role of callow, lacklustre little sister, twining and climbing like a blue morning glory.

***

The weather that day was pleasantly balmy, even in the late afternoon. The Halswittes’ spacious backyard was brimming with life—ivory white roses teetered beside the garage; vivid pink and red azaleas winked by the gate; tiny butter yellow daisies erupted all over the lawn; and a bountiful array of brilliant indigo hydrangeas—Vera’s favourites—were blooming outside her bedroom window.

It was Ebony’s sixteenth birthday, and those who had yet to wander home were lazing about the backyard, relishing the afternoon sun. Trestle tables stood abandoned, the remnants of the party scattered on their surfaces—empty bottles of Coca Cola; crumbs on plastic plates; a half eaten ice cream cake melting onto the floral tablecloth.

The birthday girl was clad in a loose navy dress, its lace hem falling just above her knees. Cradling her sprightly black curls was a silk scarf. It had belonged to the sisters’ grandmother, and Vera was furious that their mother had given it to Ebony as a birthday present when she’d barely ever noticed it. Vera, on the other hand, had always admired it—the silk had a lovely transparent quality and was a soft yellow with light shades of green and orange bleeding throughout. But her sister did look beautiful wearing it as she stepped up to bat. Ebony and her friends Larissa, Tom and Jill had started a game of cricket, and Ebony was now scampering around in bare feet, having long abandoned her mother’s high heels. Vera didn’t much like Larissa, Tom and Jill. They never talked to her, never said hi to be polite or anything.

It was 4 o’clock and most of the guests had gone home. Vera’s parents were sitting on the porch drinking Bloody Marys with Larissa’s parents. She could hear their muffled laughter from the other side of the yard. She knew Ebony wouldn’t want Vera joining her cricket game, so she was sitting in the tyre swing they had attached to the big old Ash tree when she was a little girl. Vera slowly spun around and around, twisting the rope tightly so that it spun out the other way again, making her head spin.

‘Vera!’ her mother called, and Vera could hear a slur in her voice. ‘Sweetheart?’

‘What?’ she called back, annoyed.

‘Come over here, please!’

Vera jumped to the ground, and trudged over to the porch. Drunk parents got on her nerves. She approached her mother warily, digging her foot into the dirt.

‘Ooh, aren’t you gorgeous!’ Larissa’s mother sung.

Vera forced a smile and turned to her mother.

‘What do you want?’

Her mother laughed warmly and grabbed her daughter around the waist.

‘Oh Vera, don’t be such a sour puss. I just want to show Sybil and Peter how beautiful you are!’

Sybil and Peter chuckled.

‘It’s funny, you know,’ Sybil said, her hands flouncing about like a queen. ‘You and your sister don’t look anything alike.’

Vera stopped listening. A teenage boy she hadn’t noticed before was sitting in a deck chair next to Peter, gazing out at the backyard. She couldn’t help but stare at him. He was beautiful. He caught her eye and she turned away, embarrassed.

‘What’s going on?’ Ebony asked breathlessly, gambolling over. She winked at Vera as she stole a sip of their mother’s Bloody Mary.

‘Your sister has become a lady overnight, Ebony!’ Peter said. ‘What do you say, Casper?’

The teenage boy leisurely turned to Peter, stretching his arms.

‘Well? How about these sisters, eh?’ Peter went on, slapping him on the back. The adults laughed. Vera looked at him again. His eyes were blue glaciers, diamonds, the lapis lazuli in her mother’s ring.

‘They’re pretty girls,’ he said, smooth as polished floorboards. His eyes rested on Vera and she looked hurriedly at the ground. Her fingers were tingling. She could feel Ebony watching her.

‘Well, which one of us is prettier?’ Ebony asked, putting her arm around Vera. The adults laughed again. Vera’s shoulders tensed. ‘Keeping in mind that it is my birthday,’ she added, and poked him. He laughed, and Vera felt a burning in her chest.

‘I suppose I’ll have to say you, will I?’

Ebony scoffed. ‘Don’t you dare insult my sister!’ She poked him again and capered off towards her friends, squealing as he chased after her.

Anger coursed through Vera and she ran back to the tyre swing, climbing in clumsily and twisting the rope now as tight as she possibly could, spinning around until she felt she might throw up, then doing it again.

‘Having fun?’

She glanced up to see Casper smiling. His light brown hair was falling into his eyes but he didn’t care to brush it away. Vera longed to reach out and do it herself, but she had to hold her hands together, they were shaking so badly.

‘Do you like making yourself sick?’ he asked, standing so close to her now she could smell his sweat. His smile widened. ‘That’s pretty dangerous, don’t you think?’

Vera tried to think of something to say but she was still dizzy. Her hands were getting clammier by the second.

‘Look,’ Casper continued. ‘We’re gonna go for a walk.’ Vera looked up at him and his eyes dazzled her. ‘Thought you might like to come.’

‘Okay,’ Vera mumbled, awkwardly removing herself from the tyre and adjusting her shorts. She felt cross with herself for being so self-conscious as she followed him across the garden.

‘How do you know my sister?’

‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘Well, I didn’t before today. Larissa’s my cousin, and her folks are minding me while mine are out of town.’ He shook his head irritably. ‘It’s pretty shit.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Too old for a fucking babysitter.’ Casper squinted into the sunlight, and laughed. ‘It’s embarrassing.’

Vera laughed sympathetically, her spirits rising. She kept close to him, could feel heat radiating from his skin. The others were dallying by the gate. Ebony was fiddling with their grandmother’s silk scarf, and it now draped gracefully around her neck.

As Vera approached, Ebony gave her a cold look. ‘Oh, do you want to come?’ she asked.

‘That a problem?’ said Casper.

‘I was talking to my sister.’

Ebony’s hazy hazel eyes bore into Vera’s.

‘I want to come,’ Vera muttered.

‘Fine,’ Ebony said. ‘If I don’t let you, you’ll just run and tell Mum, anyway.’ She looked around impatiently and grabbed Tom’s hand. ‘Race you there?’ She scampered off down the road, Tom following.

Casper glanced at Vera. ‘You’ve got one intense sister there.’

Vera looked down at the ground and tried to smile. ‘Mm. She’s the confident one.’

Casper put his arm around her and pulled her towards him. ‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that,’ he mused, ruffling her hair and shoving her forward playfully.

***

Morton Park was empty. Ebony was dancing, weaving through the trees, flourishing her yellow scarf in the air and humming. Tom was watching her. Larissa and Jill were gossiping about girls at school. Casper was walking on the outskirts of the group. Vera had been collecting daisies on the way to the park and was now piecing together a daisy chain.

Ebony leapt onto her and tackled her to the ground in a ferocious hug. Vera screamed and fell over, and the two sisters burst into peals of laughter.

‘You—are—insane!’ Vera panted.

They looked at each other very seriously before their faces crumpled and they were again gasping for air. Ebony drew Vera close and lay next to her, their heads touching. It was the first time they had been alone all day.

‘Sometimes—sometimes I love you so much, Vera,’ Ebony whispered. ‘Sometimes I think I could burst from loving you so much.’ She snatched up Vera’s hand, interlocked their fingers. ‘But then—I don’t know—then I can turn around and hate you, hate you so much that I want to hurt you. And I don’t know why.’

Ebony let go of Vera’s hand and rolled over so that she was lying on her stomach, her face buried in the grass. Vera didn’t move. She felt uncomfortable. She didn’t know if she should say anything, or what she should say if she did. She decided instead to tie her daisy chain around Ebony’s wrist.

‘STACKS!’

Larissa had jumped on Ebony, and was joined in a jumbled heap by the others. They all toppled off and Ebony emerged, looking perfectly happy and rather as if she hadn’t been upset at all. Had she been upset? She said nothing but reached for her bag and held it to her chest.

‘Look what I found!’ she said in a singsong voice, pulling out a bottle of vodka. The others cheered.

Casper grinned. ‘Nice one, sweet sixteen.’

Vera felt shaky again. Casper was sitting so close that his knee was touching hers. She’d never tried alcohol, and didn’t think she wanted to.

‘Why so tense?’ Casper said quietly, as the others took swigs of the vodka. He picked up Vera’s hand and held it gently in his own. ‘Jesus, you’re shaking. What’s wrong? Don’t like vodka or something?’

Vera shook her head, and tried to ignore the jelly-like sensation in her knees. She was glad she was sitting down.

‘Here—’ snapped Ebony. Vera dropped Casper’s hand and caught the heavy bottle flying in her direction. She held it for a moment, looking gingerly at the quartz-clear liquid inside.

‘Come on, Vera,’ coaxed Ebony, her eyes flashing. ‘You’re the one who wanted to come with us, so you’re just going to have to be a big girl now, okay?’

Jill and Larissa were giggling. Vera’s face turned red. She glared at her sister, trying to ignore the moisture forming in her eyes.

‘Look,’ said Casper. ‘You don’t have to—’

Vera twisted the lid off the bottle, squeezed her eyes shut, and took in a large mouthful of vodka. Before she could even taste anything, she retched violently and spat it out.

Everyone edged back. Ebony was laughing. Casper put his arm around Vera and pulled her up carefully. He kicked away the open bottle of vodka, which emptied out onto the grass.

‘What’s your problem?’ hissed Ebony, snatching up the bottle and trying to save the remains. ‘What are we going to do now, play Hide and Seek?’

Casper smiled. ‘Want a more natural way to get high?’ he said softly, and an odd glazed look came over him. ‘I think your sister will like it.’

Once again, he rested his beautiful blue eyes to Vera’s. Her stomach twisted unpleasantly. Something about his tone unsettled her.

It was called The Choking Game, Casper told them, though he liked to call it Cloud 9 because that’s what it felt like—floating up on a cloud in the sky, dozing, drifting, dreaming.

‘It’s like when you spin around really, really fast on a swing,’ he explained, eyeing Vera. ‘But instead of feeling sick or nauseous, you get this super high, as if you were dreaming while you’re awake. It’s like—’ He grappled for the right words. ‘It’s like the rush you get on a really big rollercoaster, but a hundred times better.’

Everyone was silent. Vera listened to the faint hum of cars in the distance, and a dog barking from somewhere. She could smell freshly mown grass and honeysuckle.

‘It sounds kind of—dangerous,’ Tom finally said, scratching his head. ‘Couldn’t that go majorly wrong?’

Casper shook his head. ‘Nah, man. It’s pretty obvious when you need to—you know—let go. I must’ve done this at least fifty times. It only gets dangerous when kids start thinking they can do it alone—then you get accidental suicides and shit.’ He grinned crookedly, and Vera felt the hairs on her arm prick up.

‘Trust me, you’ve practically done it already Vera,’ Casper said calmly, noticing her unease and brushing her arm lightly with his hand. ‘The worst that could happen is that you’ll pass out for a few seconds, and get a headache afterwards. But I’ll be right there if you do.’

Her stomach lurched, and all she wanted was for him to take her hand again.

‘I’ll go first,’ Ebony said staunchly. ‘Let’s just—go somewhere quiet.’

They followed Ebony towards a huge yew tree that shaded the vast surrounding area and Vera noticed that it was going to be dark soon.

Ebony stood at the base of the tree and turned towards everyone. Vera expected her to giggle but she didn’t. Her feet were now black, as she still hadn’t put on any shoes, and looking at her delicate frame next to the ancient yew, Vera had never seen her sister look so small.

Casper edged towards her.

‘Wait,’ Vera said quickly. He stopped and turned to look at her and her heart leapt. ‘Can I go first? I won’t back out this time, I swear.’

Ebony shook her head.

‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s my birthday. And I’m older. I’m going first. Casper, will it work with this?’ She held out her grandmother’s yellow scarf to him and he nodded, beginning to coil it gently around her neck.

‘Don’t—’ Vera began softly. ‘Don’t use the scarf, Ebony. What if it rips?’

Ebony breathed out irritably. ‘Vera, get over the scarf. It’s mine. And it won’t rip. Just—just shut up for a minute.’

‘Let me know when you want me to stop, okay?’ Casper said softly, as if they were in danger of being overheard. ‘It’s different for everyone.’

Ebony breathed out a little shakily, closed her eyes, and nodded.

Vera watched the game with blind rage. Never had she hated anyone so much as she hated her sister in that moment. She watched Casper’s hands sidle near her neck and she wanted Ebony to hurt, to hurt the way she liked to hurt Vera but worse. She dug her nails into her palms and blinked back tears and tried to block out the heavy silence that had fallen upon them. No one moved. Ebony’s face was turning a pretty purplish colour, and Vera hated that she looked beautiful, even then. Vera stared at her sister, and her sister stared back—hazy hazel eyes versus hazy hazel eyes, both with a flash of gumtree green, both expressing a fusion of love and hate—and then the game ended.

Do you like bicycles?

I’ve Got A Bike, You Can Ride It If You Like

Bikes are sweet as. They’re entertaining, health-happy, eco-friendly, and they’ve got soul, that’s for damn sure. In the likes of Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Tokyo, bikes are scattered all over the streets like spilt confetti, and all shapes and sizes and colours are literally piled on top of each another in immaculately chaotic bike harmony. For cities such as Amsterdam, where cycling is just about the most popular form of transportation, you see a pretty wacky range of people brandishing a set of two wheels: students with books, businessmen with briefcases, bohemians with groovy love flowers in their hair, mothers carrying kids, kids carrying pets, grandmothers carrying groceries, grandfathers carrying grandmothers, Anne Frank’s ghost; indeed, rather than cyclists watching out for cars, it is pedestrians who need to be on bike-alert at all time, as they truly dominate the squashy, cobbled streets.

Undoubtedly, Melbourne is catching up on the trend. We may not have the most bike-friendly roads, with traffic congestion becoming more and more like an oversized bowl of spaghetti these days, but the City of Melbourne’s 2007-2011 bike plan has ensured an increase in cycling paths, upgraded sign posting, and accessible parking facilities for cyclists. So hopefully, by 2012, our bikes will have more rights! Politics aside, however, the biking culture in Melbourne over the last few years seems to have erupted as sporadically as Susan Boyle—it’s big, it’s bold, and its popularity is growing as voluminously as Susan’s eyebrows.

But why is it that suddenly everybody is talking about bikes?

‘Trends? Fixie fags?’ suggests Laura Choong, who prefers to go solely by “Choong”. ‘Parking is free? I can eat more chocolate?’

A bike-advocate with unaffected attitude, Choong has been into bikes, really into bikes, since having a revelation—ironically, whilst in front of the television.

‘I was watching the Tour de France and riding the exercise bike at the same time,’ she recalls. ‘I realized I was riding at least the distance of my normal commute now—about 12 km—nightly.’

Choong is a university student, but only by default—not by nature. Bikes have given her a reason to go.

‘I never went to uni because I hated how long it took me to get there by public transport, considering the distance,’ she explains in the one breath, but with a casual languor. She lights up a cigarette and looks distractedly into the distance. ‘Figured a bike would be quicker,’ she continues. ‘So I bought a bike. And then another bike. And then put most of the parts onto another frame. And then bought another frame and some cheap bits to make another bike.’ She laughs gruffly. ‘It's addictive.’

Bikes may be sidling their way into the hearts of the common man, but have we forgotten how familiar this all is? Don’t we remember that we actually discovered bikes a long time ago, in the far off Jumping Castles of our childhood? What’s changed? It appears that as adults, we appreciate bikes in a totally different way to how we saw them as kids. Back in the yesteryears, when our little brains were dazzled by undiscovered delights every day, it was simpler. Bikes were big, and shiny, and fast—that was all. Had we known what they really were, we might have given them a miss altogether and gone happily back to our Cartoons and Lego and Milk-snorting. As it was, ‘Cool’ wasn’t yet in our vocabulary; and ‘Healthy’ was a word associated with gross things like Brussels sprouts and dentists, things that should be avoided; ‘Exercise’ was some boring thing that grown-ups did; and—‘Eco-friendly’? What is that, a Pokémon?

When I got my first bike, it was pretty much the most important thing that had ever happened to me, aside from being born, I guess—and maybe learning to walk—but it’s not like either of those experiences were nearly as pink and shiny (with possible exception to the birth). I mean, who doesn’t remember receiving their first bike? It’s a wonder I’ll ever feel the same dizzy excitement of that glorious day again in my life. I had just turned six, and had always associated bikes with the cool twelve-year-olds who rode around their neighbourhoods in American movies such as E.T., The Little Rascals, Pippi Longstocking, Hocus Pocus and all those Olsen Twins films. I was all dressed up nice and snug in my school uniform. It was 7am. The morning was crisp and cold with blue cornflower sky and brilliant lemon sun high-fiving each other because, well, it was my birthday, and I was turning six, and Mum and Nanny had made me pancakes, and older sister Hayley had plaited my hair, and even Dad was up in his dressing-gown to give me a big birthday bear hug, and everything was just really good that day, I recall. Mum and Hayley and Nanny all played dumb for the sake of six-year-old me and said things over breakfast like,

‘Now, where has Charlotte’s birthday present gone?’

‘Hmm, I don’t know. It must be hiding.’

‘Where could it be?’

‘Well, a little bird told me this morning that he saw something with a big red bow hiding in the garage.’

‘Really? I wonder if that could be it? Charlotte, you better go out and see!’

So, of course, I ran eagerly, like a puppy following a tennis ball, out the back door, around the back of the car—and there it was.

It was the loveliest, prettiest, most extraordinary creature I’d ever seen. Gleams of fairy-petal-pink, mermaid-tail-purple and unicorn-hair-silver winked at me in the sunlight as I stood there in awestruck, out-of-this-world, giddy, kiddy delight.

‘Ooh, what a lucky girl!’ Nanny exclaimed in faux-surprise. ‘But are you sure you’re quite old enough for such a big girl’s present?’

Pardon, Nanny? If scoffing was commonplace for a six-year-old, I would have scoffed the greatest scoff anyone ever scoffed. Was I quite old enough? If she was old enough, I was old enough. Nothing in the world was as beautiful as that bike: rainbow tassels dangling from the handlebars, radical hot-pink seat, white and unblemished wheels that would never look as clean as they did in that moment —this was the whole package —and it was mine.

Yep, bike-riding back then seemed a sure-fire step towards being awesome and twelve, and that was mighty exciting. What could possibly be better?

The answer was Super Nintendo. Videogames basked in the glory of my easily diverted attention for years to come, and thoroughly annihilated any desire to be outside. Thus, my bike frenzy was short-lived. Why did I need to go outside if Mario and Donkey Kong and Sid the Hedgehog and Zelda were inside? I was controlling them, after all, so when they fought ghosts and travelled to distant lands and breathed fresh air, so did I. Yeah, bikes were old news. Between that era and about a year ago—a solid decade and a half—I really hadn’t given bikes much more thought than casual observation warranted.

But now, now, bikes represent a whole new way of thinking, of living. It’s freedom at its most natural. With a bike it’s just you and the wind and the bare minimum of material objects. You can glide through traffic jams, encounter the thrill of zipping down hills, never have to step into a gym again, and know that you’re helping out the environment, even a little bit. Maybe bike-riding won’t get you a Nobel Peace Prize, but it will get you moving, and that’s a start.

While the culture of bikes has become somewhat of a global phenomenon, there are also sub-cultures emerging within the bike world. Fixies, for instance, or Fixie Fags, are the latest bikes to gain you street cred. They have all but launched onto the hipster scene, and anyone who’s anyone will elect to ride one.

A “Fixie” is a fixed gear bike, that is, a bike with one gear, no freewheel and no brakes—in short—a lighter, faster, and more aesthetically-pleasing bike to manoeuvre.

Cam McKenzie, a seventeen-year-old high school kid who made his own Fixie out of a ten-dollar chrome frame he found at a garage sale, gives me his opinion of the trend.

‘They’re sweet-looking for one,’ he says, his rusty blonde hair falling in sharp tufts over his eyes. ‘You take total control of the bike: jarring the pedals back to stop, skidding around corners in the rain—and they are really easy to ride, with no noise and shit.

‘Only bad thing is skidding is a slow way to stop, so you have to be watching way ahead to anticipate danger and shit, like car doors on St. Kilda road.’

‘At the moment I want a Fixie with an Old-Road-Bike-style steel frame and drop bars,’ gushes Justina Lui, a jittery twinkle in her eye. ‘That, or a Schwinn Madison.’

Justina is a twenty-year-old university student who also really loves bikes. She takes Law/Engineering but spends the majority of her time riding absolutely everywhere or else embroidering, ‘HOME IS WHERE THE BIKE IS’ on cushions, rather than devoting time to study. She speaks with the same zeal that would have inhabited my six-year-old self when looking upon my birthday present in the garage—but this is everyday bike excitement for her, and is unlikely to be replaced by a Super Nintendo.

Justina has been a solid friend of mine ever since our first day of primary school. I stepped into the classroom, awkward and shy and wide-eyed, and, well, the two of us fit together like the perfect Fixie. It’s been fifteen years since then, and while she’s still somewhat of a mystery to me, I sure as hell know she loves bikes, and would be hard-pressed to ever see her further than 100 meters away from one. Her garage has become a bike junk-yard so to speak—a cluttered, convivial adoption agency for bikes where she and her Dad collect unwanted parts and second-hand rides and broken lights and rusty racks and wobbly wicker baskets and just about any gadget and gizmo and whoozit and whatzit that relates to our two-wheeled friends.

Ah, it’s true, though. Bikes are friends who carry us round on their backs. Do bikes have souls?

‘Nah they don’t,’ Cam grumbles, flicking his head irritably until the hair gets out of his eyes. ‘Unless you're a pretentious prick. Bikes are useful pieces of junk that do their job fine.’

I ask Justina whether she’s named her bike.

‘Hmm, they do add up to the sum of their parts?’ She grins widely then adds, with a squeaky laugh, ‘Justin called my bike, “3rd Wheel”, but that was just a terrible pun.’

Justin is her ex-boyfriend. I suggest that terrible bike puns must have been the only thing they had in common, aside from the first six letters of their name. Justina agrees.

Choong doesn’t think bikes have souls, but she does think that they should have names.

‘Felix, Leonie, Burton and Clarence are some of the bikes I have or have had,’ she recalls, flicking away her cigarette.

Whether one elects to name their bike or not, they nonetheless remain a healthy, peaceful alternative to the claustrophobic stench of the daily grind. Bikes have always been around—they’re nothing new—but it seems in this day and age, what with the explosions of technology keeping us locked away inside with our computers, sometimes it’s nice to be able to take a few steps back in order to move forward. It’s a better time than ever to take a fresh look at the bicycle and join the cultural phenomenon that’s taking Melbourne by storm. It beats videogames, that’s for sure.