"That was the first time she had me the Short Boy. The first time she met the Late Boy she was only fifteen. It was summer, and she remembers the white pants that came just below her knee and the cheerful aqua of her lace top. She would never wear those colours now, but they suited her sixteen year old personality perfectly."



"Melbourne Train Girl sat in the State Library near the magazines. Her red shoes lay in front of her chair, and she curled her stockinged feet up underneath her. Sitting some way across from her was a boy in a black jumper. Melbourne Train Girl watched him from where she sat."



"Melbourne Train Girl and one of the loveliest girls she knows parted ways on the corner of Exhibition and Little Collins Streets. Melbourne Train Girl turned left, the Lovely Girl right. Three lively forty-something women bustled through the doors of a large hotel foyer in a cloud of forty-something chiffon and forty-something perfume. they laughed and exclaimed their way into a waiting taxi, one giving Melbourne Train Girl's stockinged legs a disapproving glance as she passed."



"Tonight Melbourne Train Girl had banana in her fruit salad. Bananas are very expensive and therefore very sparse at her house. One night, after a very bad day some weeks ago she burst into tears at the sight of two tiny bananas sitting in the fruit bowl."

"Will you be watching the final episode of The OC?" Melbourne Train Girl's middle sister asked with a smile and raise of her eyebrow.

Melbourne Train Girl knew the look. She and her two sisters shared very few physical features. But mannerisms: all three were perfect reflections of each other.

"No, I can't say I was planning on it," Melbourne Train Girl returned the jocular smile. The Middle Sister knew very well that she didn't watch any of the episodes, let alone make plans in advance to do so.

"Well, if you change your mind, the Baby Sister and I will be downstairs. You can join the party."

Melbourne Train Girl laughed and went back to her work and red wine. She sat at the kitchen table for three minutes before deciding upstairs alone was much too quiet. She collected up her work, and her wine, and joined the two of them on the floor of the Middle Sister's bedroom.

"So, she decides to watch too," said the Baby Sister to the Middle Sister. She too ended her observation with the droll smile.

"Upstairs was too boring," replied Melbourne Train Girl, placing her wine carefully on the floor where she would not knock it over. The last glass of red wine she had taken into the Middle Sister's bedroom had ended up on the carpet.

"Oh no!" Melbourne Train Girl had cried that night, as the red stain had spread rapidly.

"Oh no...quick, clean it!" the Middle Sister had said from her bed.

Unable to find any carpet shampoo, Melbourne Train Girl had poured a very liberal amount of baking soda onto the dark red circle. The white baking soda had instantly turned an inky black that reminded Melbourne Train Girl of gangrenous flesh.

"That colour looks so foul..." the Middle Sister had observed, peering at the baking soda as she knelt beside Melbourne Train Girl.

"Maybe it needs more..." the two had watched as the black seeped up to colour Melbourne Train Girl's second pouring of baking soda.

"That didn't work so well..." the Middle Sister had said after Melbourne Train Girl had vaccuumed it up.

"No it didn't...I will buy carpet shampoo tomorrow."

Melbourne Train Girl never had bought carpet shampoo. Tonight she sat next to the pale pink stain still on the carpet.

"How long has she got?" the Baby Sister asked.

"Twenty five minutes," replied the Middle Sister.

The only thing Melbourne Train Girl knew about the show was that Marissa would die that episode. Her sisters were counting down the minutes she had left alive.

"Where is she supposed to be going?" Melbourne Train Girl asked, as they watched her say goodbye to her mother.

"To die," replied the Baby Sister. She was very matter of fact.

"I know she's going to die, but where is she supposed to be going?"

"It doesn't matter. She's going to die," the Middle Sister was just as matter of fact.

"If I didn't know she was going to die, where would I think she was going?"

"Sailing. On her dad's boat."

"Yes, she will be part of the crew."

The last time Melbourne Train Girl had seen an episode of The OC Marissa's father had not had a boat. In fact, she vaguely remembered him owning a restaurant. Melbourne Train Girl does not watch a lot of television.

"How long?" the Baby Sister asked as her mobile phone vibrated for the third time in five minutes.

"Only ten minutes left..." the Middle Sister replied.

Three collective cringes, two collective laughs, and one collective eyebrow raise later, it happened.

Melbourne Train Girl looked over at the Baby Sister's face, "was it really that distressing? Your face looks very distraught..."

"It's not distraught. It was more like this:" the Baby Sister pulled an odd confused face that looked nothing like that she had made when Marissa had died.

Melbourne Train Girl frowned, and then laughed.

The Middle Sister got up from her bed and left her bedroom. The Baby Sister followed suit, and Melbourne Train Girl thought she should do the same. The Middle Sister went to her computer, the Baby Sister to call her boyfriend who had been sending SMS's all through the episode. Melbourne Train Girl sat at her own computer to finish her work and her wine, wondering how exactly Marissa had actually died. There had not been any blood. Not even a scratch on her perfect face. And her lips had been in the most perfect shape. Melbourne Train Girl was quite positive that no one died that perfectly in a car accident.

It was several hours later, while her sisters talked to their boyfriends online and on the phone, that her phone beeped from upstairs. She couldn't think who would send an SMS at 11pm on a Tuesday.

The Short Boy, that is who.

Melbourne Train Girl, on her second glass of wine, skipped to tell her sisters, not minding one bit that they wouldn't be so interested.

Tonight Melbourne Train Girl had banana in her fruit salad. Bananas are very expensive and therefore very sparse at her house. One night, after a very bad day some weeks ago she burst into tears at the sight of two tiny bananas sitting in the fruit bowl.

"There are bananas..." she said through the sobs and cradled one as though it were the finest and rarest of all delicacies, before peeling it and eating it very very slowly. The taste was comfort. As each mouthful was chewed and swallowed, so too were the bad events of that day removed from where they had been sitting heavy and squat at the bottom of her stomach.

Just past 8am. Melbourne's sky was a fresh clear blue, Melbourne Train Girl's hair freshly red. She dyes it herself with henna, spreading the thick green mud onto her hair and then sitting for five hours, her head wrapped in cling wrap, a shower cap and a thick towel. Her new fringe covers the orange stain in her hairline.

She has not slept since the night before last, and her stomach churns with too much chocolate and nowhere near enough substantial food. At just past 9am she will arrive home, but she will not go to bed. Instead she will email the Short Boy. She lets the sentences she will write meander and form in her mind as she sits watching the neglected backs of brick buildings go by the train window.

It has been more than three weeks. And less than two until he is back. In that time he has sent two SMS messages, one exlusively to her, and two emails, one exclusively to her. She: three SMS's and two emails. He is always playful and funny with his words, and Melbourne Train Girl uses too many and makes jokes in her replies.

On Tuesday the friend who introduced Melbourne Train Girl to the Short Boy had returned from overseas. On Thursday fancy coffees and pots of tea were spread on a table in a local café to welcome her home.

"You have nothing to worry about," Long Legged Friend said to Melbourne Train Girl with a smile as she added milk to her tea, "the Short Boy is really into you."

She had met up with him in Berlin, where they had apparently talked of Melbourne Train Girl quite a bit.

By the time Melbourne Train Girl reached her stop, clouds had begun to gather in the west to sprinkle themselves across the sky. Melbourne Train Girl predicted that before 11 it would be grey and like winter again. The weather never setlles in Melbourne. She sat on the train distracted by her thoughts, and it wasn't until she saw the sign of her station disappearing into the distance that she realised she had missed it. She caught the train back from the next stop and was at her car, after that short detour.

Things and places and people and names no longer remind Melbourne Train Girl of the Short Boy. Instead he sits perched constantly in the back of her mind, smiling the silly way he does. Melbourne Train Girl can never recall faces, but his dances like a photograph.

The first time they had met was on Friday the 24th of March. Melbourne Train Girl had liked his lego shirt, and he had liked her red shoes and the matching red lace she had safety-pinned around her wrist. Those tipsily exchanged compliments at the start of the night and about ten minutes of conversation at the end were the only words that they had spoke.

"My friend the Short Boy really liked you Melbourne Train Girl!" Long Legged friend had said several days after that night.

"The Short Boy...which one was he?" Melbourne Train Girl never remembers names.

Long Legged Friend had described him, and Melbourne Train Girl had remembered him by his T-Shirt.

That was the first time they had met. All Melbourne Train Girl's friends now know that story. Some have possibly heard it more than once.

Finally, Melbourne Train Girl arrived home and opened her email.

"Quick, run!" Melbourne Train Girl's friend cried as he looked at the screen and saw that the last train was leaving in one minute. She fumbled for her ticket before realising the barrier was open and she didn't need it to get through.

"Bye!" she shouted as she ran towards the escalators. Down and down and down she ran. She thought it would never end, and when it finally did she started on the second.

Down and down and down again.

As she reached the final step the beep of the doors closing gave her legs speed she never knew they had. She was too late. The last train began to move just as her hand grasped the handle. Dropping her arms to her sides she stepped back from the edge of the platform and began to turn back, shoulders dropped, to return up the imposing escalators to the top of Parliament Station. Up to where her friend was most probably still waiting to see if she had made the train.

As she turned, she heard the brakes of the train hiss, and the soft yet familiar thud of the doors releasing. Waving in the air, to whoever was responsible for the train stopping, she ran inside and sat down.

Up at the top of the escalators she was told, another man had not been blessed with Melbourne Train Girl's luck. he had looked at the screen to see the word "now" staring defiantly back at him. His shoulders slumped with what was obviously the realisation of no place to go.

Melbourne Train Girl has always had surprisingly good luck. Although she admitted to feeling just the slightest bit disappointed the train had stopped for her. She had been having fun playing cards with her friend, and could have taken the escalators back up to continue.

Melbourne Train Girl's hair has not been cut in over a year. It used to be rather cropped, but now twelve months' growth sees it reaching almost past her shoulders.

She sat in the half darkness of her bedroom and folded the front section of her hair across her forehead. Standing back from the mirror, she tried to imagine that tucked under piece of hair as a fringe. With a sudden snap her mind clicked and locked itself into decision. She stood. Determinedly. And walked to the bathroom.

Turning on the tap, she ran her hands first under the cold water and then through her hair. With delicate precision she took a black comb with six missing teeth and sectioned off a perfectly symmetrical portion of hair at the front of her head, tying the rest back.

Finally, with the only sharp pair of scissors she owned; a pair of stainless steel dressmakers' scissors; she made one defiant cut exactly level with her nose. She then took her comb and two fingers, and began to snip along the width of the fringe until it sat just above her eyebrows. Once satisfied it was as even as she could make it with the cumbersome scissors, she dried it with her sister's hairdryer and then stood back to look.

She thinks she liked it.

With a slightly hysterical laugh, Melbourne Train Girl stared at herself, turning left and then right, combing the new fringe with her fingers. Then, realising the haircut had made her late, she hastily threw on her red coat and left for the train station.

"We thought you weren't coming! And you've brought a fringe!" she was greeted at the bar.

The first time she went to the bathroom that evening she shocked herself when she looked up into the mirror from washing her hands.

The second time she was more prepared, and smiled at her reflection.

Later, as she walked towards Cookie with a friend she mused aloud "I've never been here before, but I've heard about it. And from what I've heard I think my new fringe will fit in quite well."

On the train home a shifty looking man with a shaved head and large red bag at his feet sat opposite Melbourne Train Girl and stared at her with red, swollen eyes. The door between the carriages opened with a dull thunk and three Connex officers walked through. The man began to shift nervously in his seat, moving is head from left to right whilst covering his forehead and eyes with his hand. Melbourne Train Girl decided he either had no ticket or was worried about something entirely different and much more serious and exciting.

She waited for the officers to ask passengers for their tickets, but they never did. Instead they chatted to each other before one decided he would try and fix the broken door closer on the door they had come through. One minute later the second male officer went to help, and in ten minutes time the three of them left the train, one carrying the now broken off piece of door hardware in his coat pocket.

The man opposite Melbourne Train Girl resumed his staring. She tried to ignore it and kept writing.

The train pulled into her station, and as she stood up to leave the man spoke. In a drawl, slow and thick like golden syrup, he said "Your hair is awesome man..."

"Thanks!" she replied as she smiled and jumped off the train. Once at her car she saw her reflection in the dark windows and decided he was right.

She wonders how the Short Boy feels about Bettie Page...

Melbourne Train Girl has always been scattered and somewhat disorganised. She lamented this as she searched through her handbag, purse, bedroom, studio, car and finally the pockets of all her coats, collecting up receipts. She sat on the floor amongst at least eight piles of papers and attempted to catch up on three months' record keeping before beginning her tax.

Really, Melbourne Train Girl has no idea what she is doing.

She sat, and sifted, and shifted papers from one pile to another until, frustrated almost to the point of tears, she stood abruptly and chose to leave her house.

She walked in the direction of the early setting sun, with no real destination in mind. When she arrived at the supermarket she went inside, intending to look for some inspiration as to what to cook for dinner. She began in search of ingredients for a stir fry, and left instead with those for wontons.

Melbourne Train Girl never uses plastic bags. Instead she fills her much too large handbag and then carries that which won't fit in her other hand.

She frowned at finding another crumpled, half faded receipt in the pocket of her jeans while looking for change. At least the ink of the date on this one had not yet completely disappeared. Unlike others...

Melbourne Train Girl had never made wontons before. They turned out better than expected, although she perhaps used a little too much ginger and not quite enough salt.

Lately Melbourne Train Girl has been practicing eating with chopsticks. She has never been very good, and is determined to master even the slipperiest of morsels. When she and the Short Boy had eaten at a bright and lively Vietnamese restaurant where there was a thermos of scalding green tea on each table, Melbourne Train Girl had not been able to pick up the slices of giant mushroom from one of the dishes they had shared. The Short Boy had laughed and showed off his own skills, although not without a piece of snow pea leaf missing his mouth and landing with a plop on the sky blue laminate table next to his plate. But apart from that spill he was very proficient. He had lived in Japan for a year, after all.

Melbourne Train Girl wrestled with a particularly stubborn wonton, re-adjusting the position of the cream plastic chopsticks in her hand. Her red wine fingernails were almost naked once again, except for small chipped portions of polish in the centre of six of them. She'd painted them on the train before her first real date with the Short Boy. She has to paint her right hand when the train is stopped at stations, as her left hand is too shaky.

She wonders whether there will still be fragments of polish left when the Short Boy returns. In her superstitious way she decrees she will not scratch it off with her fingernail. If the dark burgundy completely chips away, she decides that it means the Short Boy has forgotten her...

There was a stilness in the air that only comes with late hours and quiet suburbs. Wrapped in her thick grey coat, Melbourne Train Girl walked up the hill toward the roundabout where she had plans to meet her Almost Best Friend at midnight. The mist of gauzy drizzle that hung in the air thickened as she walked, and she pulled her hood over her head and buttoned her coat to the top.

She remembered the day she had bought that coat. The Late Boy had given her an incredulous look as she bounded up to him, showing off her new purchase.

"You look like an eskimo!" he had said, laughing and shaking his head.

This has always been one of Melbourne Train Girl's favourite coats.

Passing one house she caught a faint hint of cigar smoke on the breeze. At another a laugh rose up to bubble in the air before bursting back into silience once again. As she neared the roundabout her Almost Best Friend appeared over the hill and waved. He pulled his own hood up and mocked Melbourne Train Girl's silly skipping strides.

They walked in the dark and the drizzle, their words and laughter cutting through the midnight stillness. After half an hour or so they wandered through a metal gate and into Melbourne Train Girl's old primary school. The wooden playground that used to stand out the back has long since been replaced by plastic, but the buildings are still the same. Melbourne Train Girl ran her hand along the curved stone wall, and let the long forgotten memories of lining up two by two and hand in hand when the bell sounded surface once again in her mind.

The wooden logs behind the portable were still in the same spot. If they weren't so slicked and slippery with rain she would have walked along them.

A sound like hasty footsteps stopped Melbourne Train Girl mid sentence, and she turned her eyes distractedly to the right.

"I think that was just rain," her Almost Best Friend said, but they both began to walk again. Just in case.

They sat at the side of the basketball court on a log that was only slightly damp until he said "do you think it is kind of creepy here?" Looking around at the deserted buildings with their big empty eyes as windows Melbourne Train Girl agreed, and they continued to walk.

Melbourne Train Girl and her Almost Best Friend live very close. In their suburb there is nothing to do except to walk. The supermarket had closed some hours ago, and there were no more trams to take them up the road to the one that stayed open all night. So they wandered, in the dark and the rain, laughing and talking of all manner of things until they both got too cold and decided to call it a night.

He walked Melbourne Train Girl back to her house (for safety of course - his just as much as her own), and then Melbourne Train Girl drove him the three minutes back up to his house. She thinks she managed to forget about thinking of the Short Boy for the whole evening. She is very grateful for that night of clarity.

Melbourne Train Girl had heard her phone beep that morning, but, too tired to look, rolled over and closed her eyes to get just a little bit more sleep. It wasn't until much later in the day that she remembered and checked her messages.

It was the Short Boy.

She read his friendly greeting from sunny Deutschland and when she got to the end of the final "wish you were here" jumped up and danced around in an erratic little circle, clutching the hem of her cream tartan skirt and shaking it as she ran on the spot.

Once her little fit of euphoric dancing was over, Melbourne Train Girl ran and skipped to find someone to share her excitement with. Her sister was not very impressed when Melbourne Train Girl chanted "I got an SMS, I got an SMS, I got an SMS!" over and over whilst jumping up and down in her long black boots, waving her phone in the air.

Her sister's indifference didn't matter one bit, however, as Melbourne Train Girl had enough excitement pouring out of her toes to keep a small dance troupe energised for at least several performances.

She had the palest white skin, her cheeks glowing pink in their porcelain setting. Her hair fell long and strawberry blonde down the sides of her face, tumbling over her shoulders as she moved her head to laugh and smile. Her face looked no older than fourteen. One day she would be stunning.

Her tiny pale fingers touched the cheek of the Asian boy she stood with, who looked not very much older. Their movements were shy yet familiar, and Melbourne Train Girl wondered how long they had been calling each other boyfriend and girlfriend. They looked so young. Too young.

Yet Melbourne Train Girl remembers how she felt at that age. This girl reminded her of herself. Pale and slender, with a shy mouth. And Melbourne Train Girl would have worn lilac too.

At that age every akwardly put together piece of Melbourne Train Girl had ached for a boyfriend. Some days she found it hard to think of much else; the rest of the days it was all she thought about. She thought about who he would be, how they would meet, and in tiny, exruciating detail, what their first kiss would be like. What her first kiss would be like.

(It hadn't been that great...he had opened his mouth too wide and she felt as though she were being engulfed by a small octopus)

The first kiss is always easy and wonderful. It is after the first kiss that the first relationship steers out of control onto treacherous and uncertain ground. Decisions are made when the decision makers are truly not ready, and for too many of the wrong reasons. Melbourne Train Girl hopes that this little red haired thing hasn't yet reached that point of confusion. She hopes that for now it will be holding hands and kissing in doorways for so long that their lips tingle as feeling leaves them. Melbourne Train Girl is very glad she is well past that point herself.

The Short Boy was a gentleman. Their last night together it had been very very late, and he had looked very very tired. "You are welcome to sleep here, although my bedroom is very messy..." she had said, her voice not quite managing to cover the shyness he seemed to make her feel. She got the feeling he didn't think she was quite that shy, however. Perhaps it was the look in her eyes as she bit the skin on his collar bone lightly with her teeth, and ran her fingernails down his spine not so lightly.

"A very tempting offer..." he had replied, "but I will have to decline."

He had smiled at her and kissed her once more. A little later he had told her he wouldn't want to run into any members of her family in her house at that time of night.

Melbourne Train Girl can't help sighing when she thinks of that. Almost a week has gone by since he left, but still her inbox sits empty...

Melbourne Train Girl walked through Melbourne Central right on the hour. Tourists with cameras got to their feet under the clock as it began to chime. Couples smiled and wrapped their arms around each other as the galahs appeared and the sounds of Waltzing Matilda filled the air. Melbourne Train Girl has never taken that kind of notice of the clock before. To her it has always been small and insignificant.

To those who have come long distances to experience Melbourne, however, it is something very notable indeed. It is a reason to turn to briefly meet their loved ones eyes, and smile with an uncontained excitement. A reason to squeeze their dearest's hand a little tighter, and draw them just a little closer. And they will remember that night under the old clock with fond sighs and misty eyes.

Melbourne Train Girl has never really been away anywhere with someone significant. Just before her last relationship ended, she and the Late Boy had gone camping with friends. But that was when things were not going so well. The afternoon they arrived was bright and sunny but quickly turned to heavy rain, converting the soft grass of the camp site to thick, wet mud. The Late Boy had left their tent unzipped, and Melbourne Train Girl had discovered their sleeping bags and blankets soaked through. They slept that first night on opposite sides of the small tent, damp and uncomfortable.

The second night they slept dry. Melbourne Train Girl had hung their bedding in the sun when they woke. The Late Boy rolled over to place his arm across Melbourne Train Girl's chest, and she had turned over onto her side. Pretending to be asleep. For a second night they slept on opposite sides of the small tent.

On the third night, as a drunk Melbourne Train Girl buttoned her pyjamas, he began to unbutton them. She laughed and did them up again, and flopped down into her sleeping bag and closed her eyes. Without saying a word he crawled out of the tent and stalked off somewhere. Melbourne Train Girl doesn't know where he went, or when he returned, but she knows that they slept that last night on opposite sides of the small tent.

Melbourne Train Girl hadn't wanted a holiday like that. She has always romanticised about the trips she will take. About sitting under a completely insignificant landmark and feeling as though it were the most magical thing in the world. She has wanted weekend car trips, plane rides interstate, and perhaps even wandering adventures overseas. For almost three and a half years there were no holidays. The Late Boy was too late, and too disorganised.

Melbourne Train Girl has a feeling growing slowly and delicately from somewhere deep inside her abdomen. She is quite certain she has taken several tentative steps onto a path leading to her clock.

A girl in a brightly coloured chiffon dress trod bare foot down the opposite platform. In one hand she carried her shoes and a bottle of water, in the other a dainty leather handbag. The dark skin under her eyes told tales of a night not slept, and the hesitancy in her footsteps of a few too many glasses of something not so good for her.

This girl's night was ending, as Melbourne Train Girl's day was only just beginning. It should have started almost an hour ago, but Melbourne Train Girl was running late. So was the train.

A spindly legged man got on at the next stop hefting an akwardly large suitcase. The worn, soft paper of the tag told her he was from Darwin. He must be finding Melbourne very, very cold today.

Melbourne Train Girl takes her own suitcase on Saturdays. It is small and light, but still akward. For fifteen train stops and a tram ride she sits in the biting cold and writes.

Last night she had a dream about the Short Boy. He looked diferent, but her mind told her it was him. He gave her flowers before he got on a bus to leave somewhere, and told her they would remind her the two were meant to be together. In the dream Melbourne Train Girl hadn't been able to find a vase the right size. They were all too big. The petals began to soften and wilt, before turning brown and falling one by one to the ground. She ran and ran until she found a sink, and submerged the flowers, desperately hoping and wishing them back to life.

When she woke the dream haze made her smile. She believed for a minute or two that the Short Boy really had given her flowers. She could imagine them sitting in a too big vase on her chest of drawers. Then as her alarm clock chased the fog from her mind she realised it was a dream. That was disappointing.

But then she remembered that he had sent her an SMS just as he was about to get on the plane. That has made her confident he will remember her once he gets back. She knows he will.

Melbourne Train Girl shall wait out the next five weeks until he returns with delicious anticipation. And she has decided she will not write about the Short Boy anymore until then.