Read Online The Boundless Sublime by Lili Wilkinson - Free Book Online Page A

sipped craft beers and munched hand-cut fries. It seemed scented with desperation. When it finally shut the doors for the last time and boarded up the windows, the car park became a dumping ground for rubbish. It wasn’t near anything else, so there were never any cars. Just junk, and my friends.
    I tried to see them through Fox’s eyes as we approached, and I started to feel a little uneasy. They were sitting on an abandoned couch, surrounded by empty soft drink cans and rusted shopping trolleys. Minah was carelessly smeared with paint as usual. Ali was in his trademark skinny jeans and sloppy flannelette shirt, a cigarette hanging from his bottom lip. Harrison wore an op-shop cardigan over an ironically cheerful Peppa Pig T-shirt, and Flick was all in black, her nose and eyebrow glinting with silver studs, teal slashes on her fingernails.
    I took Fox’s hand as we approached, as much for myself as for him. It had been a long time since I’d been to the Wasteland.
    ‘Hey,’ said Minah, looking up. ‘You must be Fox.’
    Fox ran his free hand through his hair, pushing it back away from his eyes, and for the first time I realised he might be nervous too. He smiled at Minah.
    Minah turned to me. ‘I thought I’d exaggerated that face in my mind,’ she said. ‘But he really does look like an angel, doesn’t he?’
    I introduced Minah, and then the others. I left Ali until last. Seeing him brought back the taste of cigarette smoke, the false laughter of flirtation, the chilling pit opening up inside me as I answered the phone and listened to my mother’s shaking voice. I couldn’t even recognise the girl who had flirted with him. Who was she? Why was she taken in by his skinny jeans, his heavy-lidded eyes, his lazy grip on a cigarette? My voice faltered as I said his name, and Fox squeezed my hand and greeted Ali as politely as he had the others.
    Ali didn’t look at me. We’d pretty much ignored each other since Anton died. I saw Flick glance from Ali’s face to mine, her expression tight.
    ‘I’m so pleased to meet you all,’ said Fox. ‘If Ruby’s friends are anything like as wonderful as she is, you must be pretty special.’
    There was an awkward pause as we took our seats on a pair of milk crates. ‘So,’ I said, feeling jangly and exposed. ‘What were you guys talking about?’
    Flick grinned, white teeth flashing under black-red lips, and swept a hand to indicate an ancient cassette deck, the kind rappers carried around on their shoulders in the eighties.
    ‘Listen,’ she said, and reached over to press play.
    Music warbled out, muddy and twisted. The tape was so old and mangled that it was barely comprehensible, but I dimly recognised it as a croony eighties pop song that Mum used to listen to, in the days when Mum still listened to music.
    ‘Isn’t it amazing?’ Flick said, closing her eyes and swaying to the dull, slow hiss of it.
    Fox leaned forward, fascinated. ‘It’s beautiful,’ he said, and I wondered if he’d ever heard recorded music before.
    Flick nodded. ‘So warped,’ she said. ‘Like, you’re listening to something decay and die. Every time I play it, it gets worse, more distorted. I love it.’
    ‘Who is singing?’ asked Fox. ‘What’s his name?’
    ‘Who cares?’ Flick shrugged. ‘That’s not the point. It’s the act of death, the process of atrophy. The original source material is irrelevant.’
    A flash of irritation passed over Fox’s features. ‘But he was a person,’ he said. ‘A person with a name and an actuality. A person who felt something, who turned his feelings into a song. Isn’t that worth caring about?’
    Flick and Minah exchanged a look which spoke volumes.
    ‘Sure,’ said Flick. ‘I guess, if you’re into that.’
    Flick definitely wasn’t into that. Was I? I wasn’t sure anymore. I’d been split in two. Half of me was ashamed of Fox’s naivety and childlike wonder. It was too much, too earnest, too open. The other half was