by Dave Leys
pocket.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Sarah.
‘You’ll see,’ said Alexa, concentrating on her writing. She crossed out the old message and wrote over it so that now the sign read:
FEEL AS MISERABLE AS YOU WANT
GO AHEAD, BE ANGRY ALL YOU LIKE,
WE WON’T TRY TO STOP YOU!!
Brought to you by the Be-Happy Campaign
Then before Sarah could stop her she started marching down the footpath holding the sign up high so that everyone could see it. It was then that strange things started to happen. A car passed by, slowed down, and a man poked his head out, read the sign, laughed and honked the horn while he gave them a big thumbs-up.
‘What the?’ said Alexa, but nothing was going to stop her and she marched ahead so fast Sarah had to skip along to catch up with her. She decided to play the recorder as she skipped, and with all the up and down the music coming out the end sounded like it was made by a pod of dolphins squeaking in the surf.
They continued on a way and a couple pushing a pram approached. The woman pointed out the sign to the man and they both laughed. ‘How clever,’ the man said, pushing up his sunglasses to get a better look. ‘I get it, feel how you want, yeah!’ His face broke into a huge grin. Then he gave the woman a hug and they both cheered the two girls.
Alexa shook her head in amazement. She couldn’t quite understand. All the way home the same thing kept happening – adults would see the sign, stop and break into chuckles, giggles and smiles. The Be-Happy Campaign was working!
It took them ages to get home in the end, what with people stopping them, laughing, shaking their hands and taking photos of them holding the sign. Finally they slumped down in Sarah’s front yard and amazed smiles stretched across their faces.
‘I will never, ever, ever understand adults,’ said Sarah as she shook her head with laughter.
Alexa laughed back and stuck the sign into the grass. ‘Totally,’ she said.
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It was a Thursday night when Alicia began to realise there was something seriously wrong with her older sister, Imogen. They were in the lounge room eating and watching TV when an ad for a new movie starring Ashton Kutcher came on. Imogen stopped mid-crunch and went into something like the position a cat takes when you open a can of cat food. That is, her whole body became stiff, her back arched and her eyes opened so wide it looked like she didn’t have any eyelids. Every time Ashton Kutcher’s hunky face smiled out of the screen she sighed and fluttered her hands up and down.
Alicia looked sideways at her and grabbed the packet of salt and vinegar chips out of her hands. Normally this was grounds for Imogen getting angry and pinching her or at least grabbing the bag back, but instead she didn’t even seem to notice.
‘Im?’ said Alicia. ‘Are you okay?’
Imogen didn’t answer. She was in fact humming something to herself. It was the theme to the movie. Alicia lowered her eyes and then she saw that in the thick shag carpet next to her left leg Imogen was tracing out a love heart, over and over again.
Yes, Imogen was, without explanation or warning, mad for love, insane for romance, boy-crazy.
Over the next couple of weeks things only got worse. Imogen began sticking up pictures of boy bands on her pink bedroom walls. She would circle one of the band members, usually the one with sunglasses on, and declare that he was hot. She would write it in gold texta and put the word hot in capitals, just in case you didn’t get the point. When they played with Alicia’s dolls it was no longer Barbie and Cindy go explore the moon. No, now Imogen would insist that Cindy was in fact Jimmy, an unemployed DJ, and she would make Barbie and Jimmy moon around each other, hold hands and make out in the car. When finally she tried to conduct a wedding ceremony between them Alicia cracked it and pulled Cindy-Jimmy’s head off and threw it out the window in disgust. ‘This is boring!’ she declared.
And it was, the whole love thing, it was tiresome, so tedious it made Alicia’s skin prickle, so dull it made her eyes water, so insipid it made washing up look fascinating by comparison.
The thing was, Imogen never used to be boring. This was the sister who had taught her how to do backflips into the pool! Who had organised a ‘Dance for Cancer’ event at school and raised one hundred dollars! This was the sister who had claimed that when she grew up she was going to be either a Formula One driver, a lion tamer or a ski instructor, whichever paid more.
It was just not on. Alicia decided to confront her sister about it. She padded purposefully down the hallway and knocked on Imogen’s door.
‘What?’ came the abrupt answer.
Alicia walked in and saw Imogen lying on her bed looking up at her wall and curling her hair in strands through her fingers. The boys in the posters were simpering pretty hard and Imogen was simpering back at them even more.
‘Ughh,’ said Alicia. ‘What are you doing?’
Imogen closed her eyes and murmured, ‘I’m just … nothing.’
Alicia crossed her arms and began the interrogation. ‘Are you in love or something?’
Imogen smiled like she had just drank a saucer full of cream. ‘Yes, I guess so.’
‘Who with?’
Imogen, without even opening her eyes, pointed up at one of the teen idols. He was wearing a red polka dot shirt and a really stupid little black hat.
‘Him?’ Alicia resisted the urge to laugh, and instead ground her toe into the floor.
‘Mmm hmm.’ Imogen fluttered her hands up and down as if she were a swan caught in a net.
‘But you haven’t met him!’ protested Alicia. ‘I mean, have you actually met him?’
Imogen rolled over and opened one eye suspiciously to glare at her sister. ‘Have you?’
This seemed like a really idiotic question to Alicia so she decided to ignore it and press on. ‘What does it feel like?’
Imogen smiled to herself as if she had just heard a joke told only to her and then her face changed and she said, a little sadly, ‘It’s so hard to explain.’
Alicia’s arms became, if it were possible, even more crossed. ‘Try.’
Imogen’s head sunk into her pillow and she began in a breathy voice to intone her symptoms. ‘My stomach feels fluttery … a tingle up and down my arms. I feel a little sweaty.’ She raised her head and looked at her sister. ‘Come and feel my forehead.’
Alicia walked over and put her hand on Imogen’s brow. It did indeed feel damp. ‘Sounds like you’ve got the flu,’ she muttered.
Imogen only laughed at her. ‘Never mind, sweetie, you’re too young to understand anyway.’
Alicia’s face grew red as she clenched her fists and fled the room. That was it. Imogen never told her she was too young, and never, ever called her sweetie. The interrogation was over. The intervention was about to begin.
She retired to her room to plan how she was going to show Imogen that she was being trite and idiotic all at once. By the time she was done Imogen would never make gross moon-eyed faces or draw soppy love hearts or stare at pouting boys in pathetic headwear ever again. Well, at least that was the idea.
But how was she to do it? She knew she couldn’t persuade her that love was a waste of time; it was too late for that. She went to bed unsure of what to do but certain that she had to do something.
The next day she visited her friend Natasha to seek advice.
‘I’m on a mission,’ was all she said when Natasha opened the door.
When Alicia told her about Imogen Natasha just rolled her eyes. She had seen the same thing happen to her cousins as well, and it was really aggravating.
They sat in Natasha’s room stewing on the unfairness of it all. The room started to feel stuffy, and when Alicia went to open the window, she discovered that if you looked out and across the street, you were staring straight into Imogen’s window. This gave her an idea.
She turned back to Natasha. ‘
Suppose we played a trick on her?’ she suggested.
Natasha stopped slumping and sat up straight. She loved tricks. ‘How do you mean?’ she asked.
Alicia began to pace back and forth, swinging her arms up and down to get her brain working. ‘We could put something in your room that Imogen could see through the window.’ She could feel her brain warming up. ‘A boy!’
Natasha’s face fell. ‘But we don’t have a boy. I don’t have any brothers, remember?’
‘Not a real boy!’ cried Alicia. ‘A fake one, one we make ourselves. We’ll make Imogen fall in love with him, and then …’
Natasha was starting to catch on. ‘And then we’ll reveal him as a fake …’
‘… and she’ll never fall in love again,’ finished Alicia in a breathless voice. It was so perfect she felt a little scared.
But how to make one? They began to wander the house looking for things and came across a bag of old family clothes in the hallway cupboard. Then they found an old mop, half-eaten by the dog, sitting in the laundry. Next they raided Natasha’s toy box, one she hadn’t opened for years, and found some Halloween masks. There was a witch, a skull and a rabbit. It had to be the skull.
A couple of hours later, as if by magic, there was a boy sitting between the two of them in Natasha’s room. He was of a simple but effective design – they had chosen a green jumper and blue jeans, white gloves and black boots, topped off by a floppy straw hat. They stuffed him with newspaper, fixed the skull mask round the head of the mop, used an old