‘What? No! I found this.’ He fiddled on his phone for a second then swung it around and came and stood next to her—their shoulders were touching and he wasn’t even leaping backwards like she’d poisoned him—and started scrolling through screen after screen of images. Graphic drawings of …?
She tried to focus on what he was showing her but he was scrolling so quick, she wasn’t getting the gist.
‘Slow down a bit,’ she said. ‘And give me a clue here. What am I looking at?’
‘Mum, this is that graphic novel series I’m always telling you about! You know, the main character is this guy who’s always telling everyone he’s not a hero but he kinda is. He’s into solving crime and stuff, but he’s always getting himself in situations that seem like there’s no way he can save himself, like no way, but then he does something lucky or stupid or brave. And there’s this chick, she istotallybadass, and there’s a kid, like a niece or something, who’s badass too even though she, like, refuses to speak for some reason that’sneverexplained, who lives in the same apartment block as him and who’s, like, a science genius or something and helps him out with forensics.’
Wow. That was the most Luke had said to her in months, and again with the joy! ‘You know forensics is science, right?’ she reminded him.Shewas a scientist. Why did she never hear Luke describing her as totally badass?
‘Mum,Clueless Jonesis, like,huge.’ He was on a roll. ‘This was the reason me and my friends wanted to go to Supanova last year on the Gold Coast, because the guy who wrote it was therein personsigning autographs and everything and he’s so cool. Gavin Gunn always wears this grey hat, it’s called a fedora, and it’s like old school but, like,cool.’
‘Gavin … Gunn.’ No way. The thought was ridiculous.Shewas being ridiculous.
But a little memory cell in her head was jumping up and down and asking a question: Hadn’t the Gavin from Yindi Creek, the bloke she knew as Hux, grown up on a property called Gunn Station?
‘You said I was too young to go.’ Luke sounded like she’d ordered him to stand before a firing squad.
‘Just back track a little. Did you sayClueless Jones?’ That sounded familiar, too, for some reason. Maybe she’d heard Luke talk about the character before, but … her memory seemed older than that. Like fourteen years older.
No way.
‘Yeah, I did. And guess what just came up on BookTok?’
She took the phone out of Luke’s hands and scrolled back, back, back until the reading app returned to the cover of the graphic novel he’d been showing her. She was fairly sure you were supposed to be thirteen to have social media accounts but this didn’t seem to be the moment to throw a spanner in the Luke relationship works.
The sketch showed a man, his face angular and partially shadowed, leaping from a structure that was recognisably the heritage-listed Walter Taylor Bridge, which spanned the Brisbane River in Indooroopilly. A torch in the man’s hand lit the water below: an upturned rowing skiff, a body floating face down, the fin of an improbably large bull shark, given the distance upriver from Moreton Bay, and a root of mangrove or fig tree drawn like a creepy, long-fingered hand reared up from the shallows …
And unmissable across the top in loud, lurid font: CLUELESSJONES: UP THECREEK. STORYANDILLUSTRATIONSBYGAVINGUNN.
‘Can you find me a picture of the author?’
‘Sure, Mum, and just you wait. Whenever he does a talk, or goes to GenreCon or Supanova or whatever, he’s always wearing a hat just like this one on the cover—that’s Tyson Jones, the hero. Canon says it was a gift from Lana—she’s the chick who broke his heart, but he’s always pretending he doesn’t even care about that even though he totally does.’
The hat was sending a ding-ding-ding through her memory cells, too, but even so … ‘Who’s Canon?’
Luke fake-staggered backwards (his typical reaction to the unbelievable obtuseness of adults in general and his mother in particular). ‘Geez, Mum. Canon isn’t a person. Canon is, like, the original world invented by an author that fans like to talk about. It differentiates it from fan fiction. You know what fan fiction is, right?’
His tone indicated that if she didn’t, she’d forevermore be branded as the uncoolest mother on the planet, so she nodded. ‘Fanfic. Oh, yeah. Totally.’
‘Anyway. Gavin always wears this hat like old-school detectives wore back in the day, and Lana bought it as a joke from an op shop when she first met Tyson, but he’s worn it every day since.’
‘A photo of Gavin Gunn, Luke. Can you find me one?’
‘Hang on. His website just has illustrations on it—you know, bloopers or stuff that didn’t make it into the books—so I’m not sure if … Oh. Here’s one. This was the post that came up on my feed today, Mum. The one that mentioned Yindi Creek! How cool is that? He’s been in the same place as you and you didn’t even know. You might even have walked past him on the street!’
The photo was taken at an oblique angle and the man in it was indeed wearing a dark hat. A retro, grey, felt number that looked like something a musician might wear. And he had stubble on his face, maybe a week’s worth, that she’d never seen in person, but she’d have recognised him even if he’d been decked out in a cape, mask and tights.
Gavin Huxtable, her once-upon-a-time friend and lover, was Gavin Gunn. Writer. Famous person. And—even more mind-blowing—her son Luke was, apparently, his biggest fan.
How could she not have known?
The digital reading age was to blame. If Luke had been leaving paperbacks all over the house, with photos of the author like this one visible, she might have clued in sooner. Or if she took more of an interest. A sobering thought. Maybe she reallywaseverything Craig said she was: the worst-behaved mother he’d ever met.
‘Yeah, this Yindi Creek place is all over, even on thenews, Mum. Can you believe it? Gavin’s up there doing research on some missing man that no-one’s been able to find and—get this, Mum—he knows all about missing people because when he was a kid his sister went missing and no-one ever found her! And that’s why he writes mysteries now!’
‘I’m sorry, what? His sister?’ She snatched the phone from Luke’s hands, but he was on some fan wiki page and the information was so littered with Tyson Jones references she couldn’t make head or tail of it.
‘If only I’d known you were both in the same place, I could have asked you to get an autograph for me.’
