The Bad Karma Diaries

by Bridget Hourican

i) lucky, because if we hadn’t been found out, we would have been set on a murky path that would ended with us as mafia crime lords, like The General or The Penguin (doesn’t sound too bad! What a blog I could write then!)

  And (faint praise!), we’re also:

  j) intelligent and contrite, because we came forward.

  So we have to take our well-meaning, misguided, egocentric, secretive, bullying, anarchistic, naïve, foolish, sloppy, lucky, intelligent and contrite selves off to see Lucas on Monday …

  I got the distinct feeling that O’Toole is well pleased to be reporting how he’s solved the Mystery of the Racist Stickers to Lucas. He could not keep a certain satisfaction about how well he’s handled this off his (otherwise concerned/grave/sympathetic) face.

  SATURDAY NOVEMBER 7TH

  Oh, there are more letters in our catalogue. We forgot what Tommy and Renata said about us. So we’re also:

  k) mercenary, counting our pennies;

  l) ruthless capitalists, gradually compromising our standards in pursuit of profit.

  Anna says she has hopes we’ll make it to z) yet. Our parents will come up trumps! Our parents are going to be informed. Obviously.

  SUNDAY NOVEMBER 8TH

  It has occurred to me:

  a) Tommy and Renata encouraged – made! – us confess because they decided to act like responsible elders, and thought this was the right thing to do. They were not acting like our equals. I think this is part of Anna’s Family Code. You don’t tell the parents, but sometimes you act like the parents. Probably Anna will be giving moralistic / Do the Right Thing advice to Charlie when he’s older. But what a pain – maybe we could have got away with not telling!

  b) Anna told Renata because she wanted to impress her, because somewhere she (Anna) thought what we did was cool. And even though sometimes she hates Renata, she is totally dependent on her good opinion. Maybe that’s what it’s like having an older brother or sister. Maybe Justine is totally dependent on my good opinion (ha!)

  None of this matters of course. Or makes any difference. I am just noting it down for future reference. So when I read over this in twenty years’ time I will remember everything.

  MONDAY NOVEMBER 9TH

  So today we got the lecture from a) to j) all over again from Lucas. He did not manage to add any new letters, which, I said to Anna, seemed a bit lax of him – I thought he’d bring it to m) at least! Anna said, yeah, but it’s been pretty well covered already! Well maybe our parents will add some more letters …

  We also have to do five hours community service. This is just the kind of very hip/right-on punishment Lucas would come up with.

  We also have to write an apology to Jayne O’Keeffe.

  But we are not going to be named and shamed in front of the whole school. Apparently this isn’t necessary, since we confessed.

  Big deal! Like it won’t get out anyway. Jayne O’Keeffe will tell everyone.

  Fed up and gloomy. This is the sort of situation which could set me and Anna fighting, but luckily we’ve fought already so we’re united in truculence instead (this is Renata’s phrase for us – I am thinking of forming a new club to overtake the now-I-suppose-defunct Instruments of Karma: United in Truculence. As United in Truculence we would just go round looking fed-up and stubborn and refusing to get involved in things. It would be quite easy and undemanding).

  Oh – and we told Heeun. It will be all over the school – I bet! – next week, and I didn’t want her just finding out in the playground. She is starting to become our friend. When we told her, she went ‘Oh-my-God!’ and then she began to laugh. In fact she was helpless with laughter. ‘That was you two?’ She could hardly stand up. She seems to be an enthusiastic person. I do not think she would be very good at being truculent.

  TUESDAY NOVEMBER 10TH

  Here is our letter to Jayne O’Keeffe:

  Dear Jayne,

  We are the racist stickers and we are sorry. We thought you’d been racist and that we were doing the right thing, but now it seems maybe we blackened your name for no good reason. This was misguided of us and the consequences could have been disastrous for you. So now we (the culprits) are coming forward and 132we’re getting seriously punished for it. We hope that you will consider us well served and that you will accept our apology,

  Yours,

  Denise Nelson, Anna Power

  I guess we’ll have to check this apology with someone, probably Lucas. But we think it’s fine. It is sincerely meant but dignified and not too grovelling or chest-beating. I mean we’re being properly punished. I don’t see why we should have to grovel too. Like Anna says, it is demeaning to have to write such a letter to a First Year. The shame could kill us. If we were those Japanese prisoners of war that McMahon told us about we would commit suicide rather than face the shame.

  WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 11TH

  We were right that our parents would add more letters to the catalogue. Here’s what mine added:

  m) deluded, living in a fantasy world, thinking I’m the star of some third-rate soap opera;

  n) altogether-too-pleased-with-myself – (this one could come under b) egocentric, but it seems to have a meaning beyond that even, so I’m giving it a letter of its own. Apparently all I ever consider is my own enjoyment. I ride rough-shod over anyone and everyone in the pursuit of my own pleasure. Golly!)

  And, of course,

  o) showing off. I am surprised it took till o) for someone to mention showing-off, because that is normally the first thing hurled at you. I was about to argue – how could we be showing off when it was anonymous – but I didn’t because a) we – me and Anna – had agreed our strategy with our parents: hang our heads and act meek, this is the quickest way for the storm to pass; and b) I suddenly remembered the blog, I guess I was kind of anonymously showing off in the blog…

  To add to the five hours community service, here is my home punishment: Grounded for a week, and No Telly.

  Texted Anna:

  we are also deluded show odds…

  I wonder how she is getting on? They can’t deny her telly because she’s permanently denied telly. So her punishment is probably more elaborate (and worse) than mine.

  Later

  We have reached r)! I think if we did a vox pop – you know asking random people in the street what they think – we would reach z). Easy.

  According to Anna’s parents, we are:

  p) wasteful – expending our energy on something that pays no profit. That was from her Dad (of course) and that’s the one that really hurt Anna. Of course she was dying to explain that it was anything but wasteful, but she didn’t (thank God!).

  q) irresponsible, throwing the cat among the pigeons in a class of people younger and therefore more vulnerable than ourselves;

  r) suffering égoisme à deux. This is a French sigh-chiatrist’s way of saying we’re too wrapped up in each other. It means: ‘two people neurotically ‘in love’ who feel no love for anybody else’. Whoa!! Calm down! We do so love other people! Anna loves Charlie and Tommy and I love … hmm? … David Leydon … J.P… (not seriously, though!) Well I love my parents – obviously!

  Anna said her mum took it really seriously. In fact, as she was talking about égoisme à deux she began to wonder out loud if maybe we were spending too much time together and if we should be separated!!!

  Huh!! And I thought her mum was my friend!

  Well if that were my mum saying that I’d have gone nuts, but Anna managed to be (unusually) diplomatic. She just kept quiet and waited for her mum to argue the whole thing around. Apparently she started off saying we should be ‘forcibly separated’ but then argued that this might be ‘counterproductive’ and make us ‘stubbornly refuse to move on’. She concluded that it was better ‘not to force the issue. They’ll probably outgrow each other.’

  Why, thanks Mrs Power!! I love you too!

  Anna’s punishment is to give the next takings of a children’s party – we have one on Sunday – to a charity. We
ll, not a charity, Amnesty International since they combat racism, bullying, persecution of the weak, the interfering by strong states into the affairs of the weak and all the other things we’re guilty of.

  There is something – I dunno – creepy about this punishment. But Anna doesn’t seem to mind too much. Perhaps because of her social conscience. The flip side of her greed to make money is her desire to give it away (to charity). This is not like me. I don’t care about making it so much, and I’m not that motivated to give it away.

  THURSDAY NOVEMBER 12TH

  Today we had to give Jayne O’Keeffe our letter. O’Toole made us re-write it. He said, ‘That is a totally inadequate letter. Your use of the word “blackened” shows inappropriate levity. Your apology is self-regarding. You contributed to a major upset and you need to grovel. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!’ and he thumped his heart theatrically each time he said ‘mea culpa’. Whatever all that meant. Well, what it meant was we had to re-write.

  Here is our final attempt (fourth draft). It is more O’Toole than us. It is a forced confession. It was practically beaten out of us:

  Dear Jayne,

  We are the racist stickers and we are truly sorry. We believed you’d been racist and that we were doing the right thing, but now we understand that we libelled you on insufficient evidence. This was misguided and stupid and unfair of us and the consequences could have been disastrous for you. We understand that we must never ever ever accuse anyone ever without hearing their side of the story. We are glad we learnt this lesson young but are so sorry that it was at your expense. As punishment we are doing community service. We hope that you will consider us well served and that you will accept this apology, which is sincerely meant,

  Yours,

  Denise Nelson, Anna Power

  So then O’Toole took us to Lucas’ office for the All Apologies Session. Jayne was called in.

  Lucas said, ‘Denise and Anna have something to say.’

  We said, ‘It was us, sorry,’ and handed her the letter.

  She looked quite shocked and suddenly I looked at her and she wasn’t oozing popularity and bitchiness. She looked awful. She looked like she’d had a worse week than me even. So I said sorry again and this time I meant it.

  Afterwards Anna said, ‘Well, I do feel bad actually …’

  I said ‘Yeah, because she looked … but she is a bully!’

  And Anna said, ‘Yeah, but we don’t know what happened exactly. We’ll never know. Probably Jayne and Gita don’t even know any more, the story’s got so confused. But the thing is … there are people in this school who are always going to think she’s racist and that’s because of us making a big deal of it.’

  ‘Maybe she’s learnt a valuable lesson,’ I said hopefully, ‘never put yourself in a position where people can accuse you.’

  ‘Maybe we’ve learnt a valuable lesson.’

  ‘Well, of course we have! No telly and no money and public humiliation, probably …’

  FRIDAY NOVEMBER 13TH

  Well I was right about the public humiliation. Jayne has told everyone. I can’t really blame her. We are trying to keep our dignity but it’s not that easy. Most people are treating it as hilarious. ‘Ooh,’ they say when we approach, ‘careful! It’s the vigilantes!’

  Is it better to be a) a laughing stock, or b) have people despise you, or c) scared of you?

  a) is better than b) but I think I’d prefer c).

  SATURDAY NOVEMBER 14TH

  Well the school might think we’re a) a laughing stock, but it seems that my own little sister b) despises us!

  After breakfast today, she came up and said, ‘So it was you and Anna?’

  And I said, ‘Yeah, okay! We messed up! Don’t rub it in!’ in a pretty nasty, snappy voice, but it is hard being laughed at and I needed to snap at someone, and what else are little sisters for?

  She said, ‘You really did mess up. You couldn’t do it right and then you got found out.’

  I said, ‘Enough already! If I wanted a lecture at home, I’d have invited Lucas and O’Toole to dinner.’

  She said, ‘Yeah, well you’ve just made it worse.’ And she stomped upstairs.

  I was pissed off – families should stand up for each other! – but now it’s occurred to me that Justine has added another letter, so we’re also:

  s) Incompetent messers, not able to do a job properly without being found out.

  It’s pretty smart of Justine to have worked that out. In fact, now that I think about it, we owe Gita her money back. We didn’t carry out our mission properly. Obviously it will kill Anna to do this, but she is very fair-minded. She is (probably) more fair-minded than she is mercenary.

  SUNDAY NOVEMBER 15TH

  There was actually an issue about my doing the children’s party today, because I’m grounded. I was amazed.

  I said, ‘It’s work, not fun, how can that be grounded?’ Mum said, ‘I think you get quite a lot of fun out of it, and grounded means grounded, means not leaving the house.’

  So I thought incredibly fast and said, ‘Well, yes, but that would mean letting these people down when I made a commitment to them’ – she is big into not letting people down and keeping to your commitments – ‘and,’ I said, ‘I’ll give half to charity!’

  So she agreed, but then she said, ‘Charity begins at home,’ so I said, ‘How do you mean?’ wondering did she want me to give half to her and Dad because the recession had taken all our money, which seemed a bit weird and a bit scary, but she said, ‘When you were trying to find out what was happening with Jayne and Gita I noticed you talking more to Justine and trying to engage her, but now … you’re just ignoring her again, aren’t you? I think a little more charity to your younger sister is in order.’ So I said, ‘Oh!’ quite relieved because we aren’t actually poor, it was just the same old parent complaint, so I said, ‘OK, sure, of course – I can talk to her!’ like it was no big deal. I didn’t say that Justine had insulted me and added another letter to the catalogue, because I knew one word would set my mother off and I wanted to get to the party.

  It was another really easy party to manage, which was good at the time but means I’ve nothing to feed the blog with. It’s strange that our first party was such a disaster. It’s like we passed a test and now it will never be so hard again. Maybe it’s because we’re more experienced – for instance we’d never arrive now with the cake we baked for Chloe – but it’s not just that. Chloe’s party had a lot of difficult characters (including her parents!) whereas today there were only seven guests and they were all angelic. It was like they’d been brought up by Barney to love each other, and hadn’t yet realised that he’s actually a sinister dinosaur who is brainwashing children for some nasty purpose of his own. But the birthday girl’s parents were really cool. And we got a tip! The dad gave us an extra €10! He was really nice and actually quite young and actually quite handsome – I said he looked like Colin Farrell, and Anna said, no, Jonathan Rhys Myers. I do not see how he could look like both and anyway, I said, he had dark hair, not light; ‘Try looking beyond the obvious’ said Anna in a very superior voice, ‘so if I put on a long, black wig, I’d be Angelina Jolie, would I?’ Then we both dissolved laughing cause Anna could not look less like Angelina Jolie. One of those indie actresses maybe, but not remotely like Angelina Jolie! Anyway whoever he looked like, the dad was quite handsome and quite rich and quite generous and is not suffering in the recession!

  So then we had to work out did Anna have to give all her tip up to Amnesty International, and me half my tip up? I said, no, that definitely wasn’t in the contract. She said she knew she wasn’t legally obliged, but morally she felt she was.

  I said, ‘If you want to know about morals, go ask a priest.’

  She laughed. This is becoming my catch-phrase.

  Anyway she is giving all her tip up and she has a holier-than-thou look (according to me). I’m not giving any of my tip and I have a cunning, greedy look (according to her)
.

  MONDAY NOVEMBER 16TH

  Actually we don’t have to give Gita her money back.

  This morning Anna said, ‘Gita lied to us, right? Saying Jayne was a racist?’

  I said, ‘Yeah! Well, I suppose she might have misunderstood Jayne …’

  ‘Whatever! Lucas has decided Jayne was falsely accused, so really Gita should be paying us!’

  ‘Yeah! Right!’ I said again, ‘and anyway she’s managed to keep out of this and get no blame … if we approach her, we’ll compromise her …’

  ‘She’ll probably run away screaming …’

  So at least we make €10.50 from this!

  Trust Anna to find a way out of paying back!

  J.P. has rumbled us! At break he came up to us and said, ‘Tell me you got paid for that?’

  He was looking down at us (he is quite tall) with his small, red eyes (I mean they are not actually red, he isn’t a demon, they are pale blue, but red-rimmed). I looked at his arms. His sleeves were rolled up and he’d no coat though it was pretty windy, but he never wears a coat. His arms are the only conventionally handsome thing about him, they are long and tanned and vein-y. It is funny his arms are tanned when his face is white. I got the goosebumps and felt myself turning into a flailing mess. This is the effect he has on me. It is a real tragedy that I can’t feel cruel and powerful like I do with Declan.

  Then both me and Anna admitted (proudly, defiantly), ‘Well, yeah …’

  ‘So who paid you?’ His eyes gleamed red. He looks like a member of the rodent family, definitely. Not a rat, but maybe a stoat or a weasel. Luckily we weren’t so far gone as to say who paid us (we shouldn’t even have admitted we got paid, but no way was I gonna come across as a do-gooder to J.P. and even Anna wasn’t).