The Bad Karma Diaries

by Bridget Hourican

  We said, ‘Can’t say!’ and then Anna looked at him fiercely and said, ‘Hey, you’re not to say we got paid, right? We’re in enough trouble.’

  A kind of electric charge passed between her and him. The fact is that round J.P. there are a lot of charges. He is like an electrical storm. But none from him to me, ever. (Damn! Damn! Damn!) He said, ‘Won’t say a thing – but imagine getting caught!’ And he gave his jeering, good-natured, dangerous laugh.

  At the end of lunch break, going back to class, I caught sight of Anna’s coat; it had a sticker saying: Lame-oid! on it. I peeled it off. She checked my back. Same sticker.

  This, as Anna says, is inevitable. But although we are acting very cool/relaxed/nonchalant/unconcerned and although this is nearly doing the trick – people aren’t getting a rise out of us so they’re not making as much of the whole thing as they could – still they’re making something of it, and it’s beginning to get us down. Back in Anna’s kitchen today, her mum said, ‘How are you two doing?’ in a nice, kind voice. I just looked at her suspiciously because I know about her secret desire to get rid of me. Anna made a sighing/grunting/fed-up noise.

  Her mum said, ‘Well the worst is over.’

  I said gloomily, ‘The whole school knows now.’

  Renata said, ‘A week is a long time in politics.’

  I’ve decided to come clean on the blog. Why not? Since everyone knows and we’ve given up the Instruments of Karma anyway, I might as well. So I wrote:

  The game is up. The racist stickers (see last week’s blog) have been rumbled. And… it is us! Bomb and Demise. Since the whole school now knows you might as well know.

  We put our hands up: we made a mistake! We’ve apologised. Here’s the letter we wrote to our victim, Y:

  [then I inserted our letter to Jayne]

  And now this chapter’s closed!

  (If I inform my readers it’s closed, perhaps it will be! (Hmm, what readers? Twenty hits, but no comments …)

  TUESDAY NOVEMBER 17TH

  I’m worried about our book and music choices. I think maybe

  they look a bit try-hard cool, so I texted Anna:

  name of a book you think is asap but you still egg (aka name me a book you think is crap but you still dig)

  She texted back:

  The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

  I texted:

  not asap enough!

  (Actually, not asap at all, Anna!)

  So then:

  The dc vinci code

  This will have to do. I will put it up on blog to make her look less try-hard. It is not as out there as Crime and Punishment. But how come she’s so obsessed with murders?

  I am also gonna put Britney in my Music because I think she’s asap but I still egg her …

  Declan came up to us at break.

  He said, ‘So Bomb and Demise … you’re the racist stickers!’

  I forgot he’d be following our blog, of course.

  Anna said, ‘Enough already,’ in a dangerous voice.

  He didn’t hear the danger. He said, ‘Did you plan the whole thing to spice up your blog?’

  Anna said scornfully, ‘We’re not that stupid.’

  And I said wittily, ‘And we’re not that smart.’

  And we both began to giggle. He looked at us in his confused, despairing, way. Then Anna suddenly said in a nice voice, ‘But you’re right, I mean, if we were really cunning, we could have planned it … Do you think it reads like a good story?’

  He said eagerly, ‘Yeah, well it had that element of surprise, didn’t it? And it’s something to follow, not just your likes and dislikes.’ He looked at me.

  I said, ‘Yeah, well it’s over now. Closed chapter,’ in a snappy kind of voice. He went off.

  Anna looked at me, ‘There’s no need … he’s not insulting you.’

  ‘I know!’ I felt really guilty. I was not behaving like that on purpose. There is something about him that makes me want to torture him is all.

  WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 18TH

  Actually Declan might be right that this incident has spiced up our blog – I logged on today and found a comment posted up!!

  well racist stickers, you HAVE let a bomb off. Or two bombs? Are x and y demised? who rumbled you?

  The comment was from curiousinDenver. Amazing!! We have an interested and witty reader a million miles away!!

  I uploaded:

  Our intentions were good. We thought we were clearing the school of racism! We thought the situation needed a bomb. But we were mistaken. The racist wasn’t so racist and our informer wasn’t informing right… So now we know (cause we’ve been told), we’re: well-meaning but misguided, interfering, egocentric, secretive, bullying, anarchistic, naive, foolish, sloppy, lucky, intelligent, contrite, mercenary, ruthless, deluded, wasteful, narcissistic messers!!

  This is a lot to take in!

  We’re grounded and we’re doing community service and we’re giving money to charity and we’re putting up with the whole school jeering.

  Our bombs did not cause demises! X and Y are just fine.

  But maybe we’ll be demised …!

  And maybe this chapter is not closed after all!

  THURSDAY NoVEMBER 19TH

  There is actually a discussion about us on the blog! Three people are in on it. This is just incredible!

  And they seem to be on our side!

  From Heimlich manoeuvre:

  well at least you have taken some action against perceived injustice!

  From curiousinDenver:

  yeah, you guys acted a bit hastily, but it’s cool you got indignant and didn’t just sit on your asses about it!

  From Pippa:

  I don’t think this is the demise of you! (hope not!!!)

  Anna just called and said (in a German accent), ‘Vell, at least vee hof taken zum ack-tchung against perceived injustice, yah!’

  I said (in an American accent), ‘Yeah, man, we din jus sit around on our asses, man.’

  We are big in Denver and Germany!

  FRIDAY NOVEMBER 20TH

  A new and pertinent question from xenawarrior cleaner:

  do you two get paid for hiding homework/sticker-ing, or do you just have a superhero complex???

  Not sure how to answer this.

  Now Anna’s getting into the blog. She has been leaving it all to me but the thought of our global supporters is getting her going. She did a quite funny thing. She took photos of the stickers and uploaded them:

  1. A photo of the sticker saying RACIST! (black on yellow) and an arrow:

  what we stuck on Y’s back!

  2. Then: photo of the sticker saying Lame-Oid! and an arrow:

  what was stuck on our backs!

  Oh – good news! Heeun is having a party next Saturday. And I won’t be grounded by then so I can go. And David Leydon might be there! (He is invited but of course he might not come. He might think it sounds too babyish. He might be going to a Death Metal club or be spending the night in a graveyard).

  SATURDAY NOVEMBER 21ST

  I am off to do my community service. I have to do two and a half hours today and two and a half tomorrow. The school arranged it. I think they spoke to a) Fr Bailey (our religion teacher) and b) the youth club, and c) our parents. So I am helping in a soup kitchen in town and Anna is helping asylum-seeker families learn English.

  I can’t believe we’re not in the same place! This is way hard! I have the feeling our parents insisted on this. Anna’s mum rang my mum the other day and I tried to eavesdrop but she took the phone into her bedroom so I couldn’t but I bet they agreed we were seeing too much of each other.

  We are not going to crumble in the face of their pathetic attempts to separate us!

  Later

  It is very hard work making soup for two hundred people. I had just one job which was chopping carrots. The carrots are donated by kind shops. It is a pity they aren’t donated by supermarkets, where they’re ready-chopped! But now I
am wondering whose job it is to ready-chop all the carrots in the bags in supermarkets. I now feel very sorry for these people. But maybe supermarkets have machines to do it? It would be nice if they donated these machines to the soup kitchens!

  But except for my arm dropping off – and the fact that I will never again be able to eat a carrot – it was fine, actually quite fun. The other volunteers were nice. They were a lot older than me. They asked me what I was doing there. Obviously it is not usual for 2nd Years to help in soup kitchens and they thought I was a very religious person. I considered playing up to this and saying in a very pious voice that I was there to help my fellow man who was less fortunate than myself but I didn’t because a) it would have sounded nauseating and b) it is not very religious to lie about being religious. So I told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It was a good story to amuse us while we chopped and peeled and grated. They thought it was hilarious, except one of them said in a sniffy voice that she didn’t see that this – working in the soup kitchen – was a punishment and I realised that it wasn’t very tactful of me to put it like that, but then Agnes – she’s the lady who organises things and tells us what to do – rolled her eyes at me, so that was okay.

  But then this guy came in and he was quite mad, as in mad insane, not mad angry. He had a big box of potatoes which he dumped triumphantly on the table. He had an enormous amount of energy – even before he spoke, you knew he’d shout, and shout he did.

  ‘How are you today?’ he shouted at Agnes, and then before she had a chance to answer, he shouted, ‘All new potatoes!’

  He was just like Mr Noisy. I looked at his feet to see if he was wearing big clumpy shoes, but in fact he was just wearing runners with quiet, rubber soles. Maybe someone insisted he wore them to tone him down? Then he went to the sink and began washing the potatoes with maximum noise – splosh! splash! scrub! – and he broke into a cheerful song all about sheeps, or sheets, or sheaves. He did not have such a brilliant voice.

  His presence was a disturbance in the force. No place for our nice, quiet chat now. But he didn’t stay long. He finished those potatoes with maximum speed – I have to admit, his scrubbing technique was much more impressive than mine – and then he was off, whistling loudly. Nobody said anything bad about him when he was gone because a) this was a soup kitchen where people don’t say bad things about people, and b) he is obviously a helpful person – but everybody relaxed as soon as he left the room, I did notice that.

  He was back again to serve the soup though. They let me serve the soup too, and this was a nice change from chopping carrots. Most of the people getting soup were men. They were nice to us. They said ‘Thanks love’. Some of them looked like homeless people you see on the street, but some of them looked completely normal. Agnes says since the recession, there are many more people coming in who used to do normal jobs and it is not their fault their jobs disappeared. It’s a bit like if no one had any money they wouldn’t be able to hire Anna and me to do their children’s parties, which would mean we wouldn’t have a job and it wouldn’t be our fault. (But when our job as the Instruments of Karm ended, it was our fault).

  Afterwards we cleared up and stacked this enormous dishwasher (it is lucky someone donated an enormous dishwasher, the washing-up would have taken forever!) Then Agnes made some tea. I do not normally like tea, but this tea was delicious because I was so tired after all the work.

  I discovered that I actually did three and a half hours, but I am not counting. Well I am counting, but I am not holding to account.

  Wonder how Anna got on?

  SUNDAY NOVEMBER 22ND

  Came back very tired this afternoon, very tired. I love Agnes, but it is very tiring chopping, and scrubbing, and serving, and clearing, and stacking.

  When I came in the door, Dad said, ‘Carrots?’

  I said tragically, ‘Onions!’ and raised my reddened eyes to his.

  It was a good moment between us.

  When we sat down to table, Mum said brightly, ‘Carrot soup for starters!’

  I said, ‘Waa-ugh!’

  They all started laughing, even Justine. She sometimes has a good sense of humour in a quiet way. She is quiet like Dad and I am chatty like Mum. It wasn’t carrot soup, obviously. It was fish pie, which I devoured because I was starving. Justine said she didn’t really like fish pie, but she ate some of the potato top.

  Mum said, ‘But darling, you hardly like anything, it seems.’

  I was about to give Justine a lecture on the homeless and how grateful they’d be to get something that wasn’t carrot soup, but I didn’t. I was feeling tired and suddenly I thought Agnes wouldn’t like me saying that.

  After dinner I decided to write up my soup kitchen experiences on the blog. I think our readers must be done debating our vigilante-ism. They need some new entries. But Anna had got there before me. This is what she wrote:

  As punishment for stickering Y, we have been sent on community service. We have been sent to serve different communities because they [our parents and teachers] are afraid that the combination of bomb and demise is too explosive. So I (Bomb) went off to give English conversation classes to asylum-seekers and she (Demise) went to a soup kitchen.

  I will tell you something: the situation of asylum seekers is a disgrace! My blood is boiling!! I think that I am going to make some more racist stickers and stick them on the backs of all of the ministers and on the Taoiseach [our prime minister].

  No, seriously, the only thing I can do at the moment is teach asylum seekers better English so they can express themselves, but when I grow up I am gonna be a lawyer and then I will argue racism upfront in court instead of having to make behind the back accusations (well, stuck on the back accusations!)

  Wow! I do not even need to speak to Anna anymore. I can follow her life on the blog.

  MONDAY NOVEMBER 23RD

  Well, Anna must have spent all weekend talking to her family about asylum-seekers because she bombarded me with a load of information as soon as I got into school. I cannot remember all of it, but apparently their situation is a disgrace (which I already knew from the blog). I wished I had something about homeless people to give her but unfortunately I did not spend all weekend getting information on them. So it seemed from our conversation that asylum-seekers were much worse off than homeless people. This doesn’t seem fair. I feel I am letting my homeless people down by not sticking up for them as being the worst off.

  Anna says she is going back next weekend to continue her classes. That figures. But actually, although I do not have such a strong social conscience, I know what she means and I might even go back myself. I would like to see Agnes. Probably she is a saint. Anyone who puts up with Mr Noisy must be a saint.

  TUESDAY NOVEMBER 24TH

  Dissent on the blog!

  Pippa has posted up:

  you girls need to get out more! targeting racists and helping asylum seekers … it’s cool but stop carrying the cares of the world on your shoulders. go play in the traffic …

  From Xenawarrior cleaner:

  yeah, paint your nails electric blue, backcomb your hair …

  But from curiousinDenver:

  no! your idealism is inspiring!

  From Glasshouses:

  you don’t know what you are talking about about Asylum Seekers. These people should not be let in!

  I feel dizzy. I think I agree with Pippa and Xena.

  Did not write anything back.

  It’s lucky Heeun is having a party this Saturday. We can get out and backcomb our hair and drop the cares of the world from our shoulders, and our readers will realise we have a life and are not just do-gooders.

  WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 25TH

  Oh God! Our blog is a writhing mass. It has spawned! I mean the comments are giving birth to more comments and those comments to more comments … New add-ons are Hirohito and ZeeZee and Eloise at the Holiday Inn. They are all having a good old debate about us! O’Toole would be very impressed: every
one is marshalling their arguments and all sides are covered.

  Hirohito:

  I wish you would come to my school because nobody is making a stand here!

  ZeeZee:

  Maybe you mean well, Bomb and Demise, but I am afraid you are patronising little colonialists.

  Eloise at the Holiday Inn:

  Well what can you expect from someone who likes Britney?

  Miaaow, Eloise!

  I’m afraid we have created a monster. I am terrified to write anything. They’ll all dive on it and they’ll be a feeding frenzy and my poor little comment will end up covered in blood and ripped apart … But Anna has got stuck in.

  She has posted up:

  It is better to risk looking like an idiot than to do nothing p.s. it’s called irony Eloise

  That is quite good, especially the p.s., but I think I am going to warn Anna not to get involved. It is brave, but reckless. They might come and get us! Probably they are all excellent hackers, and they know where we live …

  THURSDAY NOVEMBER 26TH

  Had nervous dream. I do not remember much about it now but it was very frenzied and all the way through a voice was intoning gravely: ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’. That is what I woke up saying: ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater.’

  This does not make any kind of sense.

  But someone was definitely pursuing me in the dream. And that does make sense.

  I think I am terrified of our blog. Did not log on today.

  FRIDAY NOVEMBER 27TH

  I am gonna help Heeun prepare her party tomorrow. This means I cannot go to the soup kitchen. There is not time to help two people, and it’s important to help your friends (I think). Anna is going to the asylum-seekers (of course).