The Bad Karma Diaries

by Bridget Hourican

  I do not like to pour scorn on my best friend’s ideas, but I was Not Impressed. It didn’t sound like much of an idea for a blog.

  I said (in my best impersonation of Renata), ‘Who wants to read about us playing pass the parcel with a load of six year olds?’

  Anna said, ‘Maybe something will go wrong and it will be a comedy blog.’

  I said, ‘We can’t go into it hoping something will go wrong!’

  She said, ‘We won’t be hoping something will go wrong! It just will, that’s what happens with kids. The Birthday Boy will vomit, or some little pig will smear chocolate cake all over the Little Princess’s pink party dress.’

  So then I started to laugh, although I didn’t want to because once you start to laugh, you’ve lost the argument, but it was the thought of a Fat Little Princess in Pigtails with dark chocolate smears all down her frilly pink dress, bawling … ha!

  But then I recovered with a good argument, ‘Yeah, well, we can’t put that on the blog though! People will find out and not hire us!’

  Anna said, ‘Oh shut up! We’ll make money anyway!’

  This, as they say in Anna’s house, was UN-ANSWER-ABLE.

  Apparently we are going to charge €60 for our services. This seems a lot to me, but Anna says it’s not because we will have to arrange all the party games beforehand, and wrap the Parcel, and fill the Going Home Bags and choose the music (big deal!) If we do the food, it’s extra apparently, €20 extra, because cutting sandwiches and making rice crispy cakes can take forever (true!)

  I said, ‘Who is going to spend €80 on a six-year-old’s party???’

  Anna said, ‘You’d be surprised!’

  Apparently it costs way more to rent one of those leisure centres for parties – you pay more than €15 per child! Well, OK, I am surprised …

  Anna is making up posters to advertise our services.

  WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 16TH

  A mad thing happened at lunchtime today. Emma came up to us and said, ‘Will you do something to Elaine for me? She was mean to me.’

  Elaine is in our class. She is fine, I guess, but deeply boring, except that she has a bad temper. When she loses her temper, it is not deeply boring! I guess she lost it with Emma, and Emma is like jelly, she’s so nervous, but still – we were amazed. What did she want us to do about it?

  But Anna said, ‘We’ll think about it,’ in a grand voice.

  When Emma went off we were laughing because we couldn’t believe it.

  I said, ‘She’s crazy, but maybe we’re like Robin Hood, protecting the weak. Emma is definitely the Weak and Elaine is the Strong.’

  Anna said, ‘If we do do something mean, she’ll have to pay us, we’ll be risking our necks for her.’

  I said, ‘Yeah’, though Robin Hood didn’t get paid, I don’t think, but then he only worked for the Poor, and Emma is not the Poor. She gets quite a lot of pocket money.

  Anna hardly gets any pocket money, which is why she is always thinking of ways to earn it. I don’t know why she hardly gets any pocket money when she lives in a big house. Maybe because a) she has too many brothers and sisters so there isn’t any money left over, or b) her parents are against pocket money like they are against telly, or c) the recession stopped her pocket money. The recession hasn’t stopped my pocket money yet but it has entered our house – the words ‘we can’t afford it’ are now used quite a lot. For instance I want an iPod but ‘we can’t afford it’ and we only went for one week to France this year because we ‘couldn’t afford’ the second week and Dad ‘couldn’t afford’ more time off work. If the recession is forcing an entry into my house, it has probably taken over Anna’s, since that’s her Dad’s job. I’m pretty sure she’s so obsessed about starting a business because she’s afraid that all the money is leaking out of the country and can only be halted by people starting up new businesses (well I think this is what her Dad says).

  We still haven’t thought of anything to do to Elaine yet.

  THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 17TH

  We are going to hide Elaine’s gym bag. I thought of this. It’s quite clever – she will get into trouble, but not too much trouble, and no one will know it’s us. We told Emma what we were going to do and Anna said, ‘That will cost you €9.50,’ in a very professional voice.

  (Apparently €9.50 is the psychologically correct way to ask for €10). Emma said OK!

  FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 18TH

  At break we found Elaine’s gym bag by the lockers and took it away and hid it beside the upstairs toilets in the store-room where the cleaning ladies keep the cleaning things.

  At gym later on Elaine couldn’t find her gym bag. First she was confused, and then she began to lose her temper. She stomped about, throwing things around, trying to uncover her bag. The rest of us all changed into our sports gear and then Mrs Moloney (our gym teacher) arrived and said to Elaine what was the problem? Was she sick?

  Elaine shouted then, really loudly, ‘NO! I’m not sick! My bag is gone! Someone must have stolen it!!’

  She is extremely fierce when she loses her temper.

  Mrs Moloney didn’t give out to her. She said, ‘All right, Elaine, well, have a good look for it. Maybe you left it at home?’

  ‘I did NOT leave it at home!!’ shouted Elaine.

  Then Mrs Moloney said sharply, ‘Calm down. Take another look and then you’d better go to Study.’

  So we left Elaine and went and picked teams for netball. Anna was one of the first to be picked. She is good at sport. Well, she is not particularly fast at running, but she is very good at throwing and catching and kicking – hand-eye coordination, it’s called. She throws the ball like a boy, over-arm. I bowl it under-arm. I am not so gifted with hand-eye coordination, but I am good at gymnastics because I’m pretty bendy, I can do cartwheels and handstands and I’m brave – I have no fear of vaulting over the horse (on which Emma, for instance, always gets stuck!) But that’s not much use in netball. Luckily Anna got me picked so I wasn’t left till last. It is highly embarrassing to be left till last.

  I played safe making little passes for other people to sort out, but I missed quite a few balls, I admit. I thought about Elaine stomping her way to study and I was glad she lost her temper because it made me not have to be (too) sorry for her or feel (too) guilty.

  Afterwards I asked Anna, shouldn’t Elaine know that it was because of what she did to Emma that her gym bag disappeared, otherwise how would she learn her lesson? But Anna said no, it was Karma and she’d start to understand that herself. I asked what ‘Karma’ was, and Anna said it was the circle of your deeds: if you do something good, it comes back round to you, and if you do something bad, it came back round to you as well. It’s Indian philosophy apparently. I said, well maybe we’d better tell Elaine about Karma so she knows what’s going on. Then Anna got annoyed and said that wasn’t necessary, Karma happened anyway whether you knew what it was or not, and you understood it subconsciously.

  Subconsciously! That proved it – she didn’t know what she was talking about, it was something she got from home. In Anna’s house they are always talking about subconscious-es, and unconscious-es and conscience-s. This is sigh-chiatrists’ language.

  I said, ‘If Karma happens anyway, then how come it wouldn’t have happened to Elaine if we hadn’t made it happen?’

  I said it in an arguing way, but Anna started to laugh and said, ‘Sometimes you have to give Karma a big, fat shove!’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘and sometimes you have to hide the Gym Bag of Karma!’

  So then Anna howled and shoved me, ‘Stupid!’

  We were doubled up in hysterics, but Anna managed to say grandly between the hysterics, ‘We are the Instruments of Karma!’, which made us have more hysterics.

  SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 20TH

  So now we have two businesses! As ‘The Party People’ we arrange children’s parties. As ‘The Instruments of Karma’ we do nasty things to people who deserve it.

  We have made up a p
oster for The Party People. It goes like this:

  THE PARTY PEOPLE!

  Is it your kid’s birthday? Dreading the day? Have you time to: cut sandwiches, ice cakes, chocolate-cover rice crispies, wrap the parcel, draw the donkey, fill the Goody Bags…? Can you cope with crying kids, hair pulling, snotty noses, ripped dresses, food fights …?

  Or is the thought bringing you out in a COLD SWEAT?

  Have no fear! THE PARTY PEOPLE will take it out of your hands! We will: cut sandwiches, ice cakes, wrap the parcel, draw the donkey, fill Goody Bags. And we’ll also: dry tears, wipe noses, brush hair, mend dresses, and lead the singing of Happy Birthday… (Oh and we’ll clear up too!)

  Prices on request – lower than the Leisureplexes!

  Call Anna and Denise, two very responsible 2nd Years with huge experience (references available on request)

  That’s just the text – we are going to add pictures, of course. It is quite a good text, I think. We worked it all out in Anna’s kitchen yesterday. Renata helped. She got quite into it. We kind of suspected she might which is why we started on it in the kitchen. Renata is actually a genius. She was queen of the school until she left last year. Just the way she wore her uniform you could tell she had a very wild, funky and original fashion sense. And everything she wrote in the school magazine was wild, funky and original as well. Me and Anna know that she is actually a BITCH, but Anna also thinks she is brilliant, which makes her a brilliant bitch, I guess. But anyway we did want her help for our poster.

  In the beginning we were just listing the games we’d organise and making it sound like fun, but then Renata cut in, ‘No! Cut the fun – you need the Climate of Fear!’

  We said, ‘Climate of Fear?’

  ‘Ummm, yeah, make ’em scared, that’s how to sell it – snotty noses, black eyes, tears before bedtime, mess, mess and more mess. Terrify the house-proud!’

  Apparently if people feel nervous, they’re more likely to buy their way out of the problem. But they want to get a deal too, so, ‘Undercut the leisureplexes,’ said Renata.

  Anna’s mum said, ‘Oh, Renata! That’s all so cynical!’

  Renata said, ‘That’s life.’

  This afternoon we showed the poster to my mum. Anna phoned to say she was coming round to my house, so I said automatically, ‘No, I’ll come round to yours.’

  She said, ‘No, we always go to mine, let’s go to yours, I’m fed up of mine.’

  I was surprised. My house is deeply boring and hers is the Lotto numbers – why would she rather go to mine? But since it’s true, we do always go to hers, I had to give in. My parents were out shopping when she arrived. There was just Justine watching telly in our front room, which was clean and tidy as usual. Our house is okay. There is nothing very unique about it. Possibly you could use it in an ad for, say, breakfast cereal or washing-up powder or yoghurt. There’s nothing to alarm you in any of the corners – no dirty runners, or discarded coats, or broken toys, or just mess like there is in Anna’s house. But you couldn’t use it in an ad for mobile phones or bottled beer or anything cool because, for instance, we don’t have a long sunny room with a long white sofa where girls with shiny nails can cuddle boys with stubble. Anna chatted to Justine till I dragged her upstairs to my room.

  Then she sat on the twirly chair by my desk and twirled round in circles criticising the posters on my walls: ‘That has to go’ (twirl), and ‘that’s so last year’ (twirl), and ‘not more dolphins!’ (twirl), until I said, ‘You sound like Renata’ and she said, ‘No!’ and I said, ‘Yes! It must be contagious or maybe it’s in your genes,’ and she said, ‘No!’

  But I could see that secretly she was flattered to sound like Renata.

  Then she said, ‘Why don’t we ask Justine what she thinks of The Party People?’

  I said, ‘What would she know?’ and Anna said, ‘Now, you sound like Renata.’

  Then we heard my mum come in and Anna insisted we go down and show her the poster. Mum was really impressed actually, she laughed and laughed at the poster. Then she said she’d make us up business cards at work. They will be condensed versions of the poster.

  Mum said, ‘A card travels faster than a poster, it travels from hand to hand.’

  She is right, and we are very pleased, actually.

  We are not doing up a poster or business cards for the Instruments of Karma – of course not! It is top secret. But Anna thought if Emma was ready to pay us to be mean to someone, other people would too. We are going to spread our services by word of mouth. I think Anna is mostly interested by the extra cash. I am mostly interested because suddenly I realised: this could work for the blog! As the Instruments of Karma, we will have marvellous adventures that people will want to read about. Of course we can’t put our real names – we’ll be Demise and Bomb, under cover of secrecy. But that could make it more fun. We are going to put up cunning photos of the backs – or sides – of our heads, so you can’t really make out who we are. I think this blog may have a cult following.

  MONDAY SEPTEMBER 21ST

  Emma paid us today. €9.50. She said, ‘It was great when Mrs Moloney got mad with Elaine!’

  I thought she was a bit too enthusiastic about this! But then she is Elaine’s victim.

  She said, ‘Shouldn’t Elaine know that it was because of being mean to me she got into trouble?’

  So I said, in a ‘talking-to-an-idiot’ voice, ‘No. It’s Karma.’

  As the Instruments of Karma, we also lend money. But with Interest. Interest means you get back more money than you loaned.

  This happened because at lunch Pierce asked did I have a lend of €5 and I was about to say ‘yes’, when Anna said, ‘Yes, but that will be 10 per cent interest’, so Pierce and I both said, ‘Interest?’ and she said, ‘That means you have to pay back €5.50.’

  Pierce thought this was quite funny. He said, ‘Sure’.

  Lending is a subsidiary of our main business, Anna says. We are branching out. I think that these are economical terms she gets from her father. Our main business – being nasty to people who deserve it – is the trunk of the tree, but branches can grow from the trunk. I think a tree is a good image for the Instruments of Karma. I think we should draw one, and then photocopy it on loads of pages and whenever we do something nasty we can leave a photocopy of the Karmic Tree at the scene of the crime.

  We can get Tommy to draw the tree. Tommy is very good at art and music and acting. He is not an intellectual genius like Renata and John (John is Anna’s eldest brother. I don’t really know him, but he’s obviously very smart because a) he’s at Oxford now, and b) all the teachers are always asking Anna about him in an interested way). Tommy is just average in school, like Anna. But he played Puck in A Midsummer’s Night Dream last year and he was AMAZING. And he’s in a band. And he’s pretty good-looking, so all the girls in the school are in love with him. I might be in love with him too, but he’s Anna’s brother so if I was in love with him then every time I saw him I’d blush and stammer which would make going round to her house not easy.

  But Anna is not sure about the Karmic Tree. She says it might compromise our anonymity. I don’t see how it can if we don’t put our names. I think it’s good to have a symbol. Like a panda (that means World Wild Life Fund) or a Shamrock (that means Ireland), or a tick ‘yes’ (that means Nike). I like these symbols. The tree can be the homepage of our blog, so people say what’s this? Then they click on a branch and a photo of me and Anna in black silhouette will come up and a description of whatever nasty thing we did.

  We need to get going on this blog. But Anna is not so into it as me. She is only thinking about new branches for our business that will make us more money.

  WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 23RD

  Just back from Anna’s. It is late. They asked me to stay over for dinner! We were sitting in the kitchen and there were these delicious smells from the oven and maybe her mum saw me looking longingly over because she said, ‘Would you like to stay for dinner?’


  So then I was extremely helpful about peeling potatoes and everything.

  Guess what was for dinner? It was ostrich stew! I am not joking, but I thought they were joking when they said it. It was a very nice stew but it tasted like any stew, I mean like beef or lamb stew, but then Anna’s mum and dad started a very long conversation all about the ostrich and did it work in the stew.

  Anna’s dad said, ‘Not as good as the antelope,’ and Anna’s mum said, ‘The antelope was dry,’ then Anna joined in and said, ‘The venison was best.’

  I was trying to keep up. I said, ‘What is venison?’ and they all said, ‘Deer.’

  It sounded like a zoo. Ostriches and antelopes and deer. I mean, I know there are deer in Phoenix Park, but I didn’t think you’re allowed to eat them and I was sure there were no antelopes, and definitely no ostriches anywhere in Ireland.

  So I said, ‘Did you get it from the zoo?’

  So then they all laughed. (I meant them to.)

  Anna’s mum said, no, the antelope was imported, but the ostrich came from an ostrich farm outside Dublin. I said no way! I really want to see this farm!

  Then I said, ‘But what’s wrong with beef?’

  Anna said, ‘Renata doesn’t eat beef.’