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  Blue Noise

  eISBN 9781742745701

  A Random House book

  Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd

  Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060

  www.randomhouse.com.au

  First published by Random House Australia in 2009

  Copyright © Debra Oswald 2009

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia.

  Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at www.randomhouse.com.au/offices.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry

  Author: Oswald, Debra

  Title: Blue noise / Debra Oswald

  ISBN: 978 1 74166 375 4 (pbk.)

  Target audience: For secondary school age

  Subjects: Bands (Music) – Juvenile fiction

  Dewey Number: A823.3

  Cover photographs: Boy with guitar photograph courtesy Photocase.com © sto.E, girl with microphone photograph courtesy Getty Images, wood type lettering © iStockphoto.com/kjohansen

  Cover design by Louise Davis, Mathematics www.xy-1.com

  For Jim Conway and Helen Martin

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Imprint Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Further Reading ‘Getting Air’

  Chapter One

  Ash Corrigan was in Guitar Heaven. He pretty much knew that was where he’d end up. The place generated a magnetic field, drawing in guys like him. He could always feel its power as he walked past on the way home from school. And some days, like today, he couldn’t resist going into the shop and drooling over guitars he could never afford in a billion years.

  On the level above, there was Drum Heaven. Ash could hear the muffled thoomp-thoomp of drums through the ceiling and it added to the atmosphere.

  He wandered slowly along the rows of electric guitars on display stands, with amplifiers lined up behind them like security guards. Some guitars – like the custom Gibson – had brain-fryingly huge price tags. Those ones were totally out of reach, beyond even crazy hoping. A person might as well be gawping at priceless jewels in a museum. But it was still fun to look at those guitars and imagine playing them.

  Ash liked to finish up looking at one particular Fender; the colour was ‘Butterscotch Blonde’ and it had a glossy black pickguard. It wasn’t the best instrument in the place, not by a long way. But for Ash, it was The One.

  Ash used to mooch round Guitar Heaven with his eldest brother, Ben. They’d always stop in front of that Fender.

  ‘That’s the one I’ll be getting next,’ Ben used to say. ‘Excellent sound, looks cool and that price is not a rip-off for the quality you get.’

  That was back when Ben was still teaching Ash to play. The lessons had started when Ash was given a second-hand guitar for his eleventh birthday. They’d worked their way through proper guitar-lesson books and Ben was a good teacher.

  Ash was sixteen now and the lessons with Ben had stopped a couple of years back. These days he just mucked around on the guitar on his own, teaching himself bits and pieces out of books and off YouTube clips.

  Ash stared at the Fender and he could practically feel the smooth weight of it in his hands, feel the scratch of the strings under his fingertips. He didn’t even realise his arm had reached out to touch the guitar until he saw that his fingers had left smudgy prints on the slick black pickguard.

  ‘Hey,’ said a sharp voice behind him.

  Ash yanked his hand back from the guitar with a guilty jerk. He turned round, expecting one of the shop assistants to rouse on him. (‘Hey mate, don’t put your sweaty paws on our shiny guitars that you can’t afford. In fact, you’d better quit hanging round this shop like a bad smell, never buying anything.’)

  But there was no shop assistant standing there. It was just a young guy who looked to be about the same age as Ash. He was short, with large brown circle eyes in a sharp face, like a marsupial rat. His hair was longish, mouse-coloured with bleached ends, and all of it was matted in clumps. But not matted in a cool, halfway-to-dreadlocks way. It was just knotty lumps with chunks missing, as if a rodent had been chewing at his head.

  He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt with writing in a curly language Ash didn’t recognise. His bare feet slid and hopped and darted around on the shop floor, never still. This little guy was wired up, fidgety, as if there was an electric current constantly zinging through his body.

  ‘Hey, ever played one of those?’ he asked, flicking his head towards the Fender. ‘Be good to give it a go, yeah?’

  ‘I guess so,’ Ash replied, ‘but I don’t think –’

  ‘I’m Charlie, by the way,’ announced the marsupial guy.

  ‘Ash.’

  Charlie shoved a guitar lead into Ash’s hand. ‘Plug the Fender into that amp there. Take it for a spin.’

  ‘What? Sorry? I don’t think you can do that without asking or –’ Ash began to say.

  But Charlie didn’t hear. He was darting across to grab one of the bass guitars off its stand. He plugged the bass into an amplifier near Ash, who was standing, frozen, holding the lead as if it was a bundle of stolen money.

  Charlie grinned. ‘Pick up that guitar and give it a play. You know you want to.’

  Ash glanced across at the two shop assistants behind the counter. They were the twenty-something guys who usually worked there, the skinny one and the one with the wispy goatee beard. Charlie waved to them and Goatee Guy nodded back.

  ‘Do you know them?’ Ash asked.

  ‘Never seen them before. But they won’t mind if we play,’ Charlie reckoned. ‘It helps sell stuff if people play the instruments
.’

  Charlie switched on the amp and started playing a slow, rolling bass riff. Ash kept an eye on the shop guys. He was worried they’d get mad if they saw Charlie handling this gear like he owned it. Sure, people were allowed to test-drive the instruments if they were genuinely shopping and buying. But anyone could tell two sixteen-year-old nuisances were not about to buy any of this stuff. And Ash did not want to annoy those shop guys and get himself barred from Guitar Heaven.

  But then again, then again … his foot was tapping involuntarily to the bassline Charlie was playing. He knew the Fender would feel mighty good in his hands. And this weird little guy with the chewed hair seemed confident it would be okay. So why not? With one swift sweeping movement, Ash grabbed the guitar off its stand and plugged it into an amp.

  Ash tried out a few chords and noodled around a bit, getting the feel of the instrument.

  ‘What kind of stuff do you play?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘Oh well … you know … the usual stuff,’ mumbled Ash.

  ‘Know any bluesy stuff?’

  ‘Some,’ Ash replied. ‘But mostly rock.’

  ‘That’s cool. The rock stuff came from the blues originally,’ raved Charlie. ‘The best rock stuff, anyway. Jazz, country, rock, soul, everything – it all started with the blues.’

  Charlie blathered on like that a bit more. This guy could talk. He used odd little expressions like ‘delish’ and ‘too saucy for words’ when he described things.

  ‘Oh,’ said Ash, suddenly remembering, ‘I sort of know an Eric Clapton number.’

  ‘Delish. Eric is The Man,’ declared Charlie and immediately switched into playing a new bassline. The guy could talk but he could also play. Ash did his best to remember the Clapton song he’d learned but hadn’t played for ages. It got dead wobbly in the middle but they struggled through it. And a couple of times – for a few bars – it sounded bearable.

  That afternoon in Guitar Heaven, Ash Corrigan jammed with this complete stranger for nearly an hour. Once they’d played every vaguely bluesy number Ash knew, Charlie started teaching him a couple of what he called ‘blues classics’ – ‘Help Me’ and ‘Rollin’ and Tumblin”.

  So Ash could get an idea of how the songs went, Charlie did his best to sing the lyrics. But the truth was, he was a shocking singer. He sang like a cat in a tumble-dryer. It was so bad the two of them cracked up laughing and had to stop playing until they could control themselves.

  ‘Okay, okay, as a singer I make a good bass player. Imagine someone with a good voice singing these bits, yeah?’ he said.

  Even with Charlie’s strangled-cat singing, the two of them didn’t sound too bad. Sure, it was rough and there were lots of mistakes. The worst stuff-ups, the howling mistakes, made them fall about laughing. But the shop assistants must have thought it was okay – Goatee Guy gave them the thumbs up and Skinny Guy nodded in agreement.

  Ash loved it. He loved every second of jamming in that shop: the smooth sections and the wonky bits, the laughs and the moments when they managed to get a number sounding good. Charlie said they were ‘cooking with gas’ in those bits. Playing with a real person in front of you was so much better than playing along to backing tracks off the computer. Ash couldn’t believe how fantastic it felt.

  As quickly as it started, the jam session ended when Charlie glanced at his watch.

  ‘Damnation!’ he said. ‘I was supposed to be out of here ten minutes ago.’

  He plonked the bass back on its stand and shoved the lead into Ash’s hand. That’s when he noticed Ash’s school backpack on the floor between the amps. Charlie pointed to the emblem on the backpack.

  ‘Mulvaney High – you go there?’ he asked.

  Ash nodded. ‘Year 10.’

  ‘I’m starting there next week. Also Year 10,’ Charlie announced. ‘So that’s excellent. You can be in the band.’

  Then Charlie scooted across the lino on his bare feet, waved goodbye backwards and disappeared out of the store in ten seconds flat.

  Band? What band? Weird Charlie with the chewed hair was going to start a new band at Mulvaney High? Well, he thought he was going to.

  Ever since Ash started there in Year 7, he’d watched kids try to get rock bands going. There’d always be arguments, heaps of arguments. Someone would have an out-of-control ego attack and the whole thing would fall apart, with people mouthing off, sulking, even crying sometimes. Or no one would organise the band decently and general slackness would kill it off. From what Ash had observed, school rock bands never seemed to work out too well.

  Before heading out of the shop that afternoon, Ash decided to buy a guitar pick. He should buy something – to say a kind of thankyou to the shop guys – and a pick was all he could afford.

  Waiting at the counter to pay for the blood-red pick, Ash eavesdropped on a conversation going on between Skinny Guy and a middle-aged gent. They were discussing guitar effects pedals and it sounded like this man was spending up big.

  Then Goatee Guy brought over the Fender. So, the big spender was buying the exact guitar Ash dreamed of owning. Ash stared at the butterscotch-and-black guitar sitting there on the counter. He must’ve had a weird expression on his face because the man smiled at him.

  ‘I had to choose this one,’ said Middle-aged Gent with a friendly laugh. ‘You made it sound so good.’

  Ash smiled back but couldn’t think of anything to say. Lucky bastard. Must be another grey-haired bloke having a midlife crisis and rediscovering his guitar-hero fantasies. Good luck to him.

  But then Ash realised that the man wasn’t buying the $950 guitar plus hundreds of bucks’ worth of extra gear for himself. He was buying it for his son, a boy who looked about twelve, scuffing around near the door, bored out his mind.

  ‘How long have you been playing, mate?’ Skinny Guy asked the boy. He was trying to be friendly to these people who were spending so much money.

  The kid didn’t answer. He just flicked Skinny Guy a look with a sullen twist to his mouth. He was that kind of kid.

  The father laughed again, embarrassed about his son being so rude. ‘He’s just starting out. Has his first lesson next week. With a terrific teacher, actually – a top session guitarist. That’s why we’re buying the whole kit and caboodle. Get him set up properly to start playing.’

  ‘Oh right, fair enough,’ said Skinny Guy politely. But Ash saw him flash a quick look to Goatee Guy and they both rolled their eyes. They thought Sulky Kid was a snotty little creep who didn’t deserve that Fender, let alone lessons with some fantastic muso.

  Walking home, Ash didn’t want to think about the kid and his father. He didn’t want his brain to burn with envious thoughts. He didn’t want to keep imagining the scene where Goatee Guy and Skinny Guy speared Sulky Kid through the guts with the neck of the Fender. He’d much rather keep thinking about the impromptu jam session and how good it felt to play with weird Charlie.

  But sometimes a person can’t control their brain so well. Ash’s mind kept churning around, back to miserable thoughts. And the truth was, he envied the hell out of that kid.

  Ash believed there was a lot of luck involved in which family you were born into. It was like buying a ticket for a lucky dip. Some kids got winning tickets and some kids got dud ones. Ash could just as easily have been born into a family with rich parents or parents who fussed over their kids and spoiled them. But that’s not how it worked out for him. Instead, he got the family he got.

  Chapter Two

  Ash walked up the steps and fished the front door key out of his pocket. It was getting dark outside and the interior of the Corrigan house was even darker because no one had turned any lights on.

  This was a clue that Ash’s mother, Marion, had a vicious headache, probably a migraine. That meant Ash had to slip his shoes off and pad quietly down the hall in his socks. He peeked into his mum’s room and saw she was lying down, eyes closed, pinned to the bed like a dead insect.

  Marion was a very anxious person. She worr
ied about a large mass of things and worried about those things massively. Being stuck on her own to look after Ash and his two elder brothers can’t have been easy, plus she had major stress about money, her job, all that. On her bad worry days, she’d have to miss work.

  ‘You okay, Mum?’ Ash whispered, in case she was asleep.

  Marion didn’t respond and he realised she was wearing headphones. Some doctor had suggested she buy special headphones that produced a constant stream of white noise and cut out all other sounds. Noise was a serious stress for his mum. For her, the whole world was too noisy, sounds grating in her skull; her brain was wired with the volume knob set too high.

  Ash had tried out the white-noise headphones when she first bought them. The sensation was weird, as if his body was moving normally around the world but his head was floating in a bubble, separate from everything.

  His mum claimed the headphones helped but it didn’t appear to Ash that she was any happier. He’d hear her crying sometimes in the shower when she thought the whoosh of the water would cover up her sobbing noises. If Ash had known a way to make his mum happier, he’d have busted a gut to do it. But he couldn’t think what to do, except avoid doing anything that would make her worry more.

  Ash heard the squeak of bare feet on the hallway floorboards and was surprised to see Luke emerging from his bedroom. Ash could go for several days at a time not seeing his brother at all, even though they lived in the same house. Halfway through Year 11, Luke had saved up enough money to buy his own computer. From the day he took the computer out of its polystyrene packing, he never went back to school. Now Luke Corrigan was eighteen and one computer game, Clash of the Titans, was his whole life. Well, except for sleeping. Luke slept twelve hours out of every twenty-four, mostly in the daytime. The other twelve hours, he’d stay in his room, playing the game.