Colour of Trouble Chapter Sampler

7/31/2019 Colour of Trouble Chapter Sampler

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Text © 2012 Gerry Bobsien. All rights reserved.



NB. This is an ADVANCE UNCORRECTEDCHAPTER SAMPLE. Please note contents andpublishing in ormation are subject to change.When quoting rom this book, please check

publishing details and re er to the fnal printedbook or editorial accuracy.

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7

PrologueCompare and contrast two unlikelycharacters in a moment of crisis.

Provide examples. (10 marks)

Maddy felt the ground reverberating up her shins. If she wore shoes, this wouldn’t happen, but that would

be too sensible. That sort of decision-making sheleft to people like Mum and Granny and most of herteachers and some of her friends. The more sensible

women in her life.Her legs were ying under her, doing a cracking

job after years of cross-country practice. She was infull Little Athletics ight as she passed the abandonedsandstone post of ce. She looked through what wasonce the front door – now nothing more than a black hole breathing in and out with the sour breath of squatters and pigeons.

A block past the post of ce the streets grew




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narrow, spotted with cafes, and tiny laneways withfunny little shops full of vintage clothes, zines andmusic. She whizzed between a pram and a skater andsuddenly fell straight into someone sitting in front of the bakery. It all happened in slow motion, movie-like and interrupted by the footpath. She saw himtrying to stop her fall, saw the ground coming up tomeet her and then everything stopped. She registered

her position rst before slowly moving her ngersand toes for anything painful.

With her head still resting on the footpath, shenoticed an army of gold coins rolling into the street.

That was the only noise she could hear, the smallclinking as the coins nished their journey and spunonto the street. She registered the sound. It was likemusic, and then her mind was clouded in a haze of blue pulling her out of herself for a split second,a moment when the world around her turned tonothing more than sound and colour. Max. Of allpeople.

He put down his clarinet and moved to help herup. Maddy wiped the blood off her grazed arm. Don’t cry . She’d scratched her watch, the one Granny andNorm had given her for her birthday. It had taken hertwenty- ve minutes to run from her grandparents’house to the city. She put her hands on her hips and




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bent forwards to catch her breath. Max leaned overher, fussing about and trying to get her attention. Shecaught the fresh, scrubbed smell of sandalwood soapbefore looking up. She really didn’t want him to seeher like this – dressed like she didn’t care. She lookedlike a freak.

“Sorry,” she said.He smiled at her shyly, and despite the package now

digging into her thigh and the spectacular fall overthe concrete, she couldn’t help checking him out. She

wondered if it was really obvious. She couldn’t seem tohide it. Call it a weakness, but this was her thing. Whereall her senses took over like a mad itch just under herskin. She made a quick evaluation of his out t, hair andshoes and gave him a 9/10 rating. He was tall – butthen anyone standing next to Maddy was tall – thinand gangly, with a big head of hair all swept up in aromantic-looking tumble. He looked like he was sort of from an era . Certainly not this one. Maddy felt feverish.

This wasn’t how she wanted to get to know him. Notlike this, with other crazy things rushing through herhead. But his big smile made her feel suddenly muchmore comfortable than the other awkward collisionsthey’d experienced over the last few weeks.

“Sorry about your money,” Maddy said, picking upa few coins.




10

“You okay?” He icked off a bit of gravel stuck toMaddy’s arm.

She shivered.“Not really.”“Running from the media again?”Maddy stood up and put her hand protectively on

her thigh. She felt the edge of the canvas tucked intoher trackpants.

“Not this time.”“Did you vandalise more of our ne city of

Sancastle’s streets? Or is it the portrait thing?”Maddy took a deep breath and examined his face

for a smile. Nothing. He was serious. He was hard toread, his face kind of tricky and interesting. That facehad been in the back of her mind for weeks.

“You heard about that?” she asked.“Um, which art crime would that be? Vandalism or

fraud?”“We weren’t tagging,” she said defensively. “We

were doing an art project and the paper totally beatit up.”

“What’s that?” He pointed his clarinet at her thigh.“A book.”Maddy lifted her elbow and inspected the cut on

her arm, now bleeding onto his shoes. He popped theclarinet in his mouth and played a little dramatic ditty,




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like the music you hear in a scary movie. The edge of that sound lifted her mind, clouding it in light blue asclear as the sky.

“Sorry about your shoes,” she said.He smiled and shrugged like it was no biggie before

picking up his runaway money. His shoe was dotted with her blood and, although he was probably about

fteen like her, they were the kind Norm would wear:

brown shiny leather, laced up perfectly.“I’ve gotta go,” she said, backing away from

him and running again towards the top of townto Darcy’s place. She thought that clumsy moment

with Max was a bit weird but kind of awesome. Butthen everything was freaky right now and not really all that awesome. She tried to focus on what sheneeded to do. She needed to nd Darcy and sheknew he was home wagging sport. He’d rather print

T-shirts than sit around trying to look interested inbeach volleyball.

Her sprint was the kind you usually put in after thehard work’s been done, cross-country speaking. Herchest felt tight and she wondered for a moment how long she could keep it up. What if I just kept going? she thought. She could hear the sound of the clarinetpealing out behind her the theme song from Mission Impossible . She should have been at school taking her




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place diligently, sensibly at sport. But that was beforeshe was suspended.

She was getting close to the beach now. The restof her class would be there throwing volleyballsaround in the sand. Her brother would be downthere somewhere, and for a moment she consideredheading towards him. He may have just freezed herout, but she knew he’d come around eventually.

He was too loyal to hold a grudge. She picked upthe pace again and made a quick turn into AlfredStreet where the houses were as wide as surfboards,all wedged in together down a little lane. She ranstraight into the open door of Darcy’s tiny terraceand, shutting it behind her, slumped down againstthe cool timber.

Darcy appeared above Maddy at the top of thestairs.

She tucked her hair behind her ears and caughther breath. She felt anxious and out of control. Likeall her nerve endings were sending jumpy little signalsto each other. Her feet were lthy and her T-shirtstreaked with the blood from her arm.

“What are you doing here?” he asked coldly. “Ithought I’d made it pretty clear when I took the keysoff you that I didn’t want you coming around.”

Maddy was too scared and confused to buy into any




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of this stuff any more. They’d known each other way too long.

“I think we’ve done it again.” She pulled the packageout of her pants and threw it on the couch.

“You mean you’ve done it again. Like I’ve said allalong, you can deal with this one on your own.”




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1Contemporary art: more trouble than

it’s worth? Discuss. (10 marks)

A month before her mad run to Darcy’s place, Maddy Macarthy was in trouble for a different reason. It’s notan unusual thing to happen, but four weeks before

the epic stack in front of Max, and before the wholeproblem that was tucked into her trackpants, Maddy

was caught up in another kind of trouble.She was sitting in a silent car, the air bristling with

the fury only mothers can brew. Mum gripped thesteering wheel and every now and then she turned andglared at Maddy like she was about to say something but then decided not to.

“I didn’t have time to drive ve hours for this today,”she said, slicing the air with Mum-rage.

“I don’t know how many times I need to say sorry.”Mum really knew how to do “mad”. Her silence




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Where’s Darcy? Maddy icked her head around,scanning the yard for him.

The school was almost empty with only a few early starters hanging around.

Mum reached into her bag and pulled out anewspaper article with a picture of Maddy and Darcy sitting cross-legged on the footpath. The public footpath ,they kept telling her. Ratepayers’ footpath . Maddy and

Darcy had taken a photograph of a model, scanned itand made a stencil out of her face that was now all eyesand lips. They then printed the face onto massive sheetsof poster paper and pasted them onto the ground inreally busy parts of town. Maddy couldn’t help smiling at the photo in the paper. Her and Darcy beamed upfrom the big face below them on the ground. Justunderneath the face were the words DON’T LOOK UP stencilled directly onto the footpath.

Maddy laughed, looking over her Mum’s shoulder.“They all looked up,” she said. No response fromMum. She must have left her sense of humour back inthe emergency ward.

As they got out, Maddy noticed the red dirt caked allover the car. She imagined Mum roaring into town in acloud of red dust and fury, her hair ying behind her,eyes wild like a banshee. Even Maddy’s twin brother

Jack was scared and he hadn’t done anything.




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Mrs Razmanovich welcomed Mum into the visualarts room, smiled at Maddy and closed the door. She

was in the process of emptying paint pots, so theroom smelled like sugary chemicals, linseed oil andturps. The teacher smiled warmly, a couple of silverzippers ashing from her ears as she moved. She worea blue dress like the uniforms of the old tea ladies yousee in movies, only it was covered in layers of pastel

blue and pink acrylic. The Razz had her own personalpalette. She was one of a kind. Maddy looked at Mumin her sensible clean jeans and white T-shirt. She really

wanted to paint that shirt or print something on it.It was like Maddy had this urge to put her mark oneverything and make it better or prettier or smarter.

The Razz got stuck right into it. No messing around.“This whole business,” she said, waving to a series

of large photographs pinned to the wall, “is not as badas they all made out.”

Mum’s expression was blank, like she’d already made up her mind about the “whole business”.

“How can you say that? It was all over the papers.Maddy was made to clean every bit of it up, andshe still gets a hard time when she’s seen in town.”Mum looked at the pictures. Everything in her body language said she was still angry. It wasn’t like her to beso wound up about this stuff, and even though it was




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all totally fun and they’d made it into the paper andeverything, Maddy felt bad about dragging her home.

The photographs covered an entire wall of the artroom. Maddy and Darcy had taken over the place.

The photographs were shot in different spots aroundthe city, but each location had that same stencil sprayedonto the footpath.

DON’T LOOK UP.

Then in the spirit of mischief and “art”, as Maddy had declared, they’d set themselves up opposite theartwork, hidden in a cafe or a park and photographedthe reactions of people walking over the stencil. Thephotographs were placed along the wall in the art roomlike a lm sequence: a stream of people walking by looking curious and surprised. Maddy thought there

was something beautiful about them. They were so into it. Everyone else seemed to like it, despite the grilling they got in the newspaper.

“I’m really glad you came in today. I think youshould know this was part of an assessment for thisclass and not some random act of de ance.” TheRazz paused for effect. “Although Maddy has beenknown to take the unorthodox path on occasion.”

Both women laughed politely as the Razz led Mumto a row of canvases leaning against another wall.“These are also Maddy’s.”




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Maddy felt like she was part of some art studiojudicial process. Had they forgotten she was in theroom?

“She’s always drawing things or making something,”Mum said, nodding towards one of the pictures. It

was an abstract painting washed with blue, and it took Mum a few moments before she gured out what it

was. “It’s a map!” she said in a pleased kind of way.

Like she’d cracked some kind of art code.“Of the city,” the Razz added. Maddy liked this

painting most of all. It was ooded in Brett Whiteley blue.

“Maddy uses this colour all the time,” the Razzcontinued.

Maddy nodded and closed her eyes for a moment. This was the blue that lled her mind whenever sheheard really high-pitched sounds. The noises weren’tthat speci c but they all had a common frequency, likea loud scream or an electronic sound. It was always likethat, ever since she could remember.

“Her synaesthesia has a very marked effect on her work in this class. I know it can be distracting forher sometimes, but as an art teacher I have to say it’sfascinating.”

Mum gave Maddy a small smile.“I’ve started to taste some of the colours,” Maddy




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said. “I’ve had that on and off, but lately I just seem tonotice it more. Like I’m more aware of it or something.

As I was painting that blue wash, I had this sensationin the back of my mouth, and I could almost smell it.It was watermelon.”

“Does she see anyone about it?” the Razz asked.Hello, I’m still here , Maddy felt like saying.“No,” Mum said. “She occasionally speaks to a

researcher at the university, but for the most part, shegets on with it. All that’s happening is a cross-wiring of her senses. She sees colour when she hears certainnoises. There are other people around who have itand because they’ve always had it, it becomes just anormal way of life. Maddy was about twelve whenshe realised not everybody sees and hears things likeshe does.”

“What a gift! Especially for a creative kid likeMaddy.”

Maddy felt odd when people talked about thecolour stuff. And although everyone was really intohearing about it, she tried to keep it quiet. It infectedher thoughts but it wasn’t a bad thing. She liked being different.

The Razz turned back to the painting. “So those words painted on the footpaths correspond with thedots in this painting. They indicate the location of each




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stencil throughout the city.” She raised her eyebrowsas she went in for the defence: “Everything Maddy does has a connection or a bigger idea behind it.”

Mum took hold of the Razz and led her away fromMaddy, as if she was interested in whatever was at theback of the room. Maddy could still hear them despiteMum’s attempts at whispering.

“I worry about her sometimes. She can be a bit

obsessive . I’m not sure if Maddy’s told you, but the kidsare living with their grandparents at the moment.”

Mum stopped talking and looked around to see if Maddy was listening. “I’ve had to go west and work for a year or so. It’s a little disruptive for them.” Shelooked guilty – like she was partly to blame for all this.

“I wouldn’t worry too much about it. I’ve noticedher active attention for particular things, but I think she has a healthy inquiring mind. She just needs to try and keep out of trouble,” said the Razz.

The Razz moved towards a chair and invitedthem to sit down. “This project,” she pointed to thephotographs, “was partly inspired by some artists welooked at in class. We were talking about the Fluxusgroup and the whole history of happenings, fromthe Guerilla Girls of the eighties to performance art.Maddy really took to the idea and just extended it a bittoo far.”




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Mum looked blankly at the Razz. It was as thoughher polite banter was already cashed in and used up.

“She vandalised public property,” Mum said bluntly,“no matter what artists or –” she split the air with her

ngers, “– ‘happenings’ inspired her.”“I know,” the Razz conceded, “but what she did

was part of a tradition of art-making that had moreto do with creating a level of surprise and delight in

the community than wasting taxpayers’ money.” Shepicked one of the zippers out of her ear and startedpolishing it with her dress. “It’s not as if she wasrandomly tagging the city like a vandal.” She put theearring back in place.

Mum sighed and looked around the room. Maddy felt a mixture of pride and worry. She adored the Razzmore than ever.

“Are you saying I should take all this a bit moreseriously?” Mum waved her hand at the variouscanvases.

“You know Maddy better than anyone, but here we see a very real interest in art and design and herindustrial arts teacher can also talk to you about that.”

“The clothes business? The dresses and T-shirts?” The Razz nodded.“Well. I’m not really sure what to make of it all.

I understand this project may be worthwhile, but I




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think my daughter needs to learn a lesson about whathappens if she breaks the law.”

The Razz sat up all formal for a moment. She foldedher arms and said very seriously, “I’m sorry if this gota little out of hand. I’ll make sure her next project ismonitored.”

Maddy stayed quiet and waited till they were outsidebefore looking at Mum.

“Can we go and get a milkshake now?”Mum looked defeated.“I really have no idea what to make of all that …

I’m meant to be grounding you for three years orsomething, but instead I feel like I need to congratulateyou. Maybe I should just quit and come home.”

That afternoon, Maddy sat on the lawn with herbrother and watched Mum drive back to the country.She looked at the spot where the car had been idling moments before. Although she’d narrowly escaped apotentially style-cramping punishment, she felt weird.

“I think I’ve got the peculiars,” she said, borrowing an expression of Granny’s. Her brother Jack picked atsome grass. The little space on the lawn where Mumhad sat chatting to them was like an empty hole. It wasas if someone had taken the scissors to their happy




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family picture and snipped a Mum-shaped space outof their lives.

Jack was crunching on something. An apple maybe.Hard to tell, but there was a lot of it crammed in thereat once. Jack had awesome digestive abilities. It shouldhave been part of his résumé. Can eat like a horse if required. Useful for scraps .

“I dunno how you got away with that one,” he said

with his mouth full.“I miss her,” Maddy said before walking inside.




THE COLOUR OF TROUBLE by Gerry BobsienISBN: 9781921720840

Arrp: $18.95 • NZrrp: $21.99



SURF ACHE by Gerry BobsienISBN: 9781921150920

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CINNAMON RAIN by Emma CameronISBN: 9781921720451

Arrp: $22.95 • NZrrp: $24.99



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Colour of Trouble Chapter Sampler

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