CHAPTER ELEVEN
My astonishment at being tricked passed pretty quickly. It was weird before, when Georgia and Hannah were being nice to me, but now that they were being manipulative and two-faced, things felt just right. Furiously I tried to turn the door handle, but it was no use. The door was locked solid.
I kicked the door in frustration. I should have known better than to trust those two. When was the last time they were nice to anyone, let alone me? Not that I wanted to get back to the lame party anyway. I had no desire to mingle with Carly's friends, and my friends were so busy drooling over everyone else at the party that they weren't going to miss me.
I slumped down on Carly's bed. She had a frilly pink queen mattress with plump pink and white cushions. Her bedroom looked like the set from an American high school movie.
Typical.
I sighed, but the sound from my mouth was overwhelmed as the music downstairs suddenly tripled in volume. The vibrations from the base trembled through my body from the floor below. Georgia and Hannah were probably trying to drown out my cries for help.
They needn't have worried. I wasn't going to give them the satisfaction of crying out. Besides, I didn't want my brother, or worse still, Shane, coming to my rescue. I would die of embarrassment, and Shane's already inflated ego would be at serious risk of exploding.
I wondered if Carly was behind my kidnapping. I doubted it. Carly usually operated in a more subtle way, with snide put downs and well placed looks. This caper was definitely more Hannah's style, with a touch of Georgia's aggression.
I rolled over on the bed and buried my face in my arms. It was the first weekend of term. I couldn't believe that things had managed to go so wrong already. Less than one week in and, somehow, I'd ended up trapped in the lair of one of my least favourite people from school while her friends gloated.
Suddenly I bolted upright. Retake. Maybe my luck wasn't so bad after all. I was locked in Carly's room—aka headquarters of Carly's gang. Base camp of the enemy. This was a golden snooping opportunity, and it wouldn't even count as snooping because I was locked here against my will. Even prisoners get to check out the furniture in their cell. Maybe I could find out what had happened to turn the Grammar boys against Carly.
I jumped off the bed, revitalised. If there was something juicy in Carly's room, it would be hidden. Kneeling down beside the bed, I slid my hand between box spring and mattress.
That's not as easy as it sounds. Let me remind you, Carly's bed was a queen, and it wasn't made out of foam. I could barely lift the mattress up high enough to slip my hand in. The weight of the mattress pressed down on my hand so that it couldn't move. I dragged my hand out of its mattress sandwich, feeling like a fool. Carly wasn't an old grandma, hiding love letters and savings under the mattress. It wasn't the 1800s. If Carly had something she wanted to hide, it would be on her computer.
Sitting on Carly's desk was a slim, black laptop. I sat down at her desk, and lifted the lid. Luckily, the laptop was switched on and logged in, so no password was needed.
First things first. I went straight to Carly's picture folder. Carly clearly wasn't the most organised person in the world. She had thousands of unnamed photos, and all were dumped into one folder. I clicked on the first file. A self-portrait photo of Carly in her bedroom wearing a formal dress popped up. Boring. She'd taken it from above to make herself look as skeletal as possible.
Next…
Carly in her formal dress, pouting.
Next…
Carly in her formal dress, licking her lips.
Next…
Carly in her formal dress, flicking her hair.
Next, next, next, next, next…
How many of these self-portraits did she take? I checked the date on the file. All the shots had been taken on the same day. Obviously it had been quite a photo session!
Next, next, next, next…
The self-posed photo shoot continued. This was starting to get really tedious. I don't know what I'd expected to find, but so far, all I'd done was confirm what I already knew—that Carly was in love with herself.
Banging on the arrow key, half my focus was on the screen, the rest looking idly around the room, when suddenly a movie popped up on the computer screen.
Screen-Carly and Screen-Hannah were dressed in cute, matching baby-blue pyjama singlet and shorts sets. Each girl had her identically coloured, bleached hair tied back in a ponytail with the front fringe held back by a pale pink headband. They were posed in a pseudo-playful position—backs pressing against each other and arms crossed in that classic, mock-troublemaking pose they always put on movie posters.
'Ready, and … action!' I recognised Georgia's voice from behind the camera.
Immediately Carly and Hannah sprang into life. Carly hip-bumped Hannah playfully. Hannah gave a mechanical fake giggle and hip-bumped Carly back with her arms in the air with studied jauntiness. Carly gave an easy laugh and put her arm around Hannah in a best-girlfriends style hug.
I cringed.
'Our skin is so clean and fresh ever since we started using Adachi Fresh Face Wash,' Carly sing-songed in perfect imitation of a skin-care commercial.
Typical. Carly was a natural in front of the camera. Meanwhile, Hannah looked about as natural as a frozen hamburger.
At the mention of Adachi, I suddenly knew what this video was about. Over the summer holidays the Japanese skin-care company had run a big campaign for their new face wash. The best homemade commercial received would be aired on TV for a year, and the makers would get an Adachi modelling contract. Carly and Hannah must have entered the competition, and this was their commercial.
Screen-Hannah gave an uncomfortable laugh. 'That's. Right. Carlz,' she said stiffly, sounding as if she was reading from a script. 'Our. Skin. Used. To. Be. So. Pimply. Oily. And. Full. Of. Blackheads. But. Now. After. Using. Adachi. Fresh. Face. Wash. We. Can … ummm … ummm … ummm …'
Carly's camera smile transformed into a scowl of annoyance. Hannah's dismal performance was hindering Carly's dreams of becoming a famous face-wash model. It must be so hard having aspirations.
'Hannah! It's not that difficult. You only have two lines to remember!' she said in exasperation. 'Let's take a break.' She huffily grabbed her iPhone from a nearby table and tapped on the screen impatiently. At first glance, I'd mistaken the phone for a block of chocolate as it was housed in an unusual chocolate-block phone cover.
Hannah had the good sense to look embarrassed by her poor performance. It felt strange to see it. I'd never seen Hannah look anything but smug.
Hannah tried to make amends for letting down her co-star. 'I love your iPhone case, Carlz. It's awesome,' she said.
Carly didn't even look up from the screen. 'I know,' she replied in an irritated voice. 'You keep telling me. Why don't you just eat it already?'
Hannah ignored Carly's comment. She pulled off her pink headband and smoothed out her hair before replacing the band on her head. 'You're just grumpy today because Derrick dumped you,' she said.
Carly scowled at her phone screen. After a moment's pause she sighed and put down the phone.
'You're right. I'm sorry. I just can't believe the way those Grammar boys have all turned on me. This year is going to suck.' Her voice went whiney with self-pity.
Georgia's obnoxious voice came from behind the camera. 'Yeah, that final showdown with Derrick … it was so brutal.'
Carly shrugged her shoulders dismissively, but even from the video it was obvious that she was annoyed by the memory.
'It was just bad luck, that's all,' Hannah consoled Carly. 'There was no way you could have known when you started dating him that Paino was Mr Crusty-Pants' son.'
I blinked and sat up straighter. Mr Crusty-Pants? I'd heard that name before. It was a derogatory nickname for one of the teachers at school. And Paino was Derrick Paine, a Grammar School boy Carly's friends were always talking about.
Now I was finally getting into some good stuff. Paino had kept his embarrassing f
amily connection to a teacher hidden from Carly and her friends. So Carly had dated Paino without realising he was one of our teachers' sons. How unfortunate. Whilst making her popular with the other students, Carly's consistent tardiness, snotty attitude in class, sarcastic wisecracks, and disregard for the dress code caused her to be widely disliked by the teachers. My mind trawled, trying to recall a Mr Paine or Crusty-Pants from school, but before it could find a match, the conversation continued.
'At least I know now that I really ticked Crusty-Pants off,' Carly said. 'He was always pretending be to so indifferent to my antics in class, but now I know that I got to him.'
Georgia sniggered again from behind the camera. 'Yeah, having a heart attack when he found out his son was dating you? You ticked him off all right.'
Carly's heavily made-up face broke into a triumphant smile at the thought of Mr Crusty-Pants' heart attack. The girl was cold.
'You must have missed Paino so much when he dumped you, though,' Hannah tried to commiserate. 'I mean, you'd been going out for three months.'
Carly's face flashed with annoyance. It seemed that Hannah couldn't say anything right.
'I wasn't sad! I was just using him to make sure I had a Grammar boy to show off at the year ten formal. And he wasn't exactly my only option. Or at least he wasn't until he turned all the other Grammar guys against me.'
'But the year ten formal is ages away,' Hannah pointed out to Carly.
Carly turned to her, shaking her head in disgust. Her head band slipped out of place at the motion. Carly ripped it off and held it in her hand. It waved around, punctuating her words as she spoke.
'How many hot Grammar Boys do you think there are? Do you think they just wait around, available, until a week before formal season? I'm Carly Taylor! Not some loser from another group.'
I bristled at her reference. By 'another group', Carly meant groups like my friends and me. She thought she was so much better than us—but she was the loser for being so superficial as to think anyone cared who she took to the formal.
'How would it look if I turned up with no formal date? Or worse still, with an ugly date? I've been working on this for months! I've got a plan. This is just a minor setback. I'll have a Grammar boy to take to the formal before you know it.' With a self-satisfied smile, she worked the headband back into position on her head. The Adachi Face Wash Queen had been re-crowned.
'What are you going to do, Carlz?' Georgia said from behind the camera. 'I knew you'd get the upper hand again.'
Carly turned to Georgia and smiled smugly. 'Turn off the video and I'll tell you. If this gets out, I'll be in big trouble.'
'Awesome. Sounds juicy,' I heard. The ground shifted as the camera was turned on its side then, frustratingly, the movie ended. Aargh! If only Georgia had let it record for a little longer.
I took a moment to reflect on what I'd just learnt. Carly had been dating Derrick, aka Paino, the son of one of the teachers at our school, until his father Mr Paine aka Crusty-Pants had found out. Crusty-Pants had suffered a heart attack at the thought of his precious son dating Carly. After that, Derrick had dumped Carly in a big showdown in front of the other Grammar guys.
Wow. Totally humiliating. I tried not to smile.
According to what Shane had said downstairs, now none of the Grammar School boys wanted to go near Carly. She was Derrick's seconds and off limits. No wonder Carly had been so aggressively chasing after Shane. Without a Grammar School boyfriend, she was panicked that she'd lose precious social status points. As if anyone outside her group of social climbers cared. So she'd come up with a plan to reinstate her popularity with the Grammar boys.
But who was Derrick's father, Crusty-Pants? I was pretty sure there was no teacher called Mr Paine at our school. And what was Carly's plan? Chris went to Grammar too. Could any of this have to do with him?
All of this required further contemplation, but I was wasting precious snooping time. There was only one thing I could do with this discovery—email it to myself for future reference. I logged into my Gmail account and sent myself the movie as an attachment. I then closed all the windows I'd been using, deleted the web history, logged out of Gmail, and closed the laptop. I probably hadn't completely covered my tracks, but Carly was no more a computer whiz than I was. Chances were she would never discover my snooping.
I glanced around the room and wondered what to do next. That had been such an interesting discovery that it felt almost greedy to keep looking for more dirt.
That was when my eye caught sight of something else. Half-hidden below Carly's maths textbook was a class photo—only it didn't look like it was from our school. After memorising the exact position of the photo under the textbook, I gingerly pulled it free.
Canberra Grammar School, Year 11
It was a photo from last year, graffitied with thick black marker. Two faces on the top row were viciously obliterated. I tried to make them out, but Carly had done such a good job with the marker that it was impossible to tell. It was obvious from the uniforms below the faces that they were boys—and tall boys, too, since they were in the top row. Farther along the same row, another boy's face had been altered too, but this one, unlike the others, had been circled, with giant arrows pointing towards it. Unfortunately, the thick black line of the pen partially obscured the face, masking the boy's identity.
Carly may have hidden their faces, but I could still work out their names. I counted the heads in the top row. Scribble-head number one was third from the right, scribble-head number two was fifth and circle-head was seventh. I counted along the row of names printed at the bottom of the photo. Scribble-head number one was…
Derrick Paine.
Her ex-boyfriend. Scribbling over his face? It was obvious that Carly still held a grudge for what had happened last year. The question was, what was she planning to do about it? I checked the next name. Scribble head number two was…
Chris Reynolds.
So Carly knew Chris! How was she connected to him? I continued counting, hoping the next name would give me a further clue. The third faceless boy, the one with large arrows pointing to him was…
Shane Harris.
I wasn't really surprised. After the way Carly had asked about him at the ice cream shop, and her flirtatious behaviour when Shane had visited our maths class this week, it was obvious by now that Carly was after Shane. Carly's fixation on Chris was a much more disturbing discovery. Did she know something about his death? Surely she hadn't killed him! She was more of a killer-glare and reputation-murderer than an icky blood-and-guts killer—at least so far as I could tell.
Aaaaaargh!
An icy hand down my back told me that my knight in shining armour had just arrived.
The Ghostly Grammar Boy Page 11