A Letter from Luisa

by Rowena Mohr

  Take Kanisha Lamas, for instance. An uber-brain with the social skills of an agoraphobic mollusc, not to mention the fashion sense of a blind camel. No doubt that’s why Mr McGregor thought she might like to help Meko and me out with the Urban Tribes fashion show! Then there’s Edith Morton who, when not discussing the preferred suicide methods of the rich and famous throughout history, can usually be found reading Sylvia Plath to the Year Sevens. (It’s rumoured that one or two have needed counselling after their introduction to the works of Plath, but I suspect it has nothing to do with the poetry and more to do with Edith’s life-threatening allergy to shampoo.) And there’s Tiahna Theodoros, who failed her Year Nine Biology exam because, when asked to locate the diaphragm on a map of the human body, she wrote, Actually I am on the pill!

  So you see, compared to that lot Melissa and Shania were in a league of their own. I secretly called them the KGB – short for Kravitz/Goss Bitch-patrol – because being in the same school ground as them was what I imagined it must have been like in Stalinist Russia – constant surveillance, informers everywhere and a rotating schedule of interrogations.

  And when the Motherwell High KGB discovered that their twin missions in life – to ensure that no female got within twenty metres of Jet Lucas, and to make my existence a total misery – had just coincided, well, to say they were homicidally inclined towards me would be an understatement.

  Chapter 6

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON, I WAS waiting for Dad to come and pick me up after school. Meko wasn’t speaking to me since my lapse into full-on Jet Lucas-loves-me obsessive mode, which was a shame because I could have used the backup. I was tidying up my locker – I had no control over what people did to the outside of it, but I could at least take charge of the interior.

  I’d installed one of those IKEA shelving units. Melissa Kravitz told me I was a freak, but you know what? Stuff her. Just because her locker looks and smells like a couple of rodents had sex in it and died. Plus, my locker arrangement is very practical. There’s one big shelf at the bottom where my books are all lined up according to subject (and where I keep Nina’s ballet bag on the days she has class, because if she or Dad had to remember to bring it she’d be doing ballet in her Bata Scouts). On top there are three smaller compartments where I keep my stationery (pens, highlighters, stapler, paperclips), my personal hygiene items (deodorant, hair brush, neutral lip gloss) and various low-fat, high-GI snacks in case of emergency – not like the rubbish the tuckshop sells.

  Kravitz and Goss rocked up beside me just as I was trying to decide between a banana-apricot muesli bar and a carob-coated pecan slice to keep me going until dinnertime. Melissa slammed the door of my locker shut – nearly taking my fingers with it – and started to interrogate me about you-know-who. Shania let Melissa do the talking. She just stood there with her hands on her hips trying to act tough and popping disgusting prune-coloured bubbles at me, because not even she can get away with smoking inside.

  ‘So, Loser,’ Melissa sneered. ‘What’s this fete bullshit McGregor’s going on about? You are not serious.’

  Shania blew another purple bubble and snapped it like a gunshot.

  ‘Hey, so not my idea,’ I said, sticking my hands, carob-coated pecan slice and all, in my pockets for protection.

  ‘Really?’ Melissa cocked her head on one side and looked me up and down with her fake gypsy eyes as though I was something stinky she’d found on the bottom of her shoe. ‘See, I’d almost believe that – except for the fact that I know you’ve got an ulterior motive.’

  Melissa said ‘ulterior motive’ the way you might say ‘highly contagious suppurating skin disease’.

  I could feel my palms growing sweaty and some ridiculous part of my brain – obviously not the bit concerned with self-preservation – was trying to remember what kind of stain-remover might be useful for removing melted carob from cotton-polyester blend gingham. The other part of my brain – the functioning part – was going, oh no, she knows about Jet Lucas. She’s going to kill me. Lie! Lie! Like you’ve never lied before.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ was the best I could come up with. Pathetic, hey? It certainly didn’t convince Melissa. She grabbed me by the collar.

  ‘Don’t mess with me, Loser,’ she hissed. ‘I know all about your little plan to get up close and personal with Jet. But I’m warning you. You so much as lay a finger on him or try cracking one lame little joke and I will seriously hurt you.’

  ‘I’m just his sound-tech.’ My voice sounded like Mickey Mouse on helium. ‘It’s not like we’re going on a date or anything.’

  Kravitz stuck her mulberry-glossed lips next to my ear and purred, ‘If I thought you were going on a date with him, Loser, we wouldn’t be having this conversation because you’d already be dead.’ She twisted my collar even tighter around my throat like she’d decided to kill me anyway, but then Shania saved my neck – literally.

  ‘Hey, check this out!’ she shouted gleefully to the whole corridor. ‘Loser is into Barbie. Isn’t that sweet?’ And she pulled Nina’s Barbie Ballerina bag out of my locker and tossed it to Melissa who, fortunately, stopped strangling me so she could catch it.

  ‘Put that back,’ I croaked. ‘That’s my little sister’s ballet stuff.’

  ‘Really?’ Kravitz could have sneered for Australia, she was so good at it. ‘I didn’t know there was a little Loser running around as well. Let’s see, does that make her less of a Loser than you, or more of a Loser than you?’

  I couldn’t think of anything even remotely clever to say to that, so I said, very stupidly, ‘Her name’s Nina.’

  Shania shrieked with fake laughter. ‘Nina Ballerina! Oh, please tell me you’re making this up?’ She began pirouetting drunkenly around the corridor, singing that old ABBA song that Dad used to sing to Nina when she was a baby.

  Melissa was not so easily distracted. She’d been going through Nina’s bag and had found a notice from her dance teacher.

  ‘Oh, look,’ she crowed to the still-prancing Shania, ‘Nina Ballerina’s going to be playing a Thistledown Fairy in the end-of-year concert. Sweet!’ She grinned at me, malice shining from her eyes like a comic-book death-ray. ‘Gee, it would be such a shame if little Nina didn’t make it to the concert, wouldn’t it? If she had some terrible accident between now and then? Maybe, and this is just a suggestion, maybe it would be better if you spent your time keeping a close eye on your sister instead of hanging around Jet Lucas like a bad smell.’

  I guess it’s pretty obvious that Melissa Kravitz has seen one too many episodes of The Sopranos. But still there was a part of me that was worried she was just crazy enough to carry out her threat.

  By the time Dad arrived, a little movie was playing in my head: awful visions of Melissa Kravitz and Shania Goss tiptoeing up behind Nina as she waited for Dad after class and throwing a sack over her; Melissa and Shania tossing Nina, trussed up like a Sunday roast, into the back of a van and screeching off around the corner; Melissa and Shania tying Nina to a chair and torturing her with giant purple bubbles while she screamed for me and Dad to rescue her.

  As we drove to Nina’s dance school, I was quietly hyperventilating, seeing little black and grey spots before my eyes, and Nina was staring at me as if I was a complete fruitcake. Suddenly, and I know this sounds ridiculous, I had a feeling that if Nina got out of the car I was never going to see her again. As she reached for the handle of the door, I shouted, ‘Hey, I’m starving. Let’s all go and get pizza.’

  Nina scowled at me from beneath her perfect little ballerina bun. ‘Don’t be stupid, Lu. I’ve got a ballet class – in case you hadn’t noticed.’

  ‘It won’t hurt you to miss one week, will it?’

  ‘We’ve got rehearsals for the concert. Madame Olga’ll kill me.’

  ‘You’re playing a piece of thistledown. How hard can it be? You just waft here and waft there – don’t you?’

  ‘Ha ha, very funny.’ Nina narrowed her eyes suspiciou
sly, trying to figure out what I was up to. ‘Forget it, Loopy Lu. I’m going to class.’ She grabbed the Barbie Ballerina bag that was the cause of this whole freak-out and jumped out of the car, slamming the door behind her.

  Dad turned to look at me as if he’d just noticed that something was going on. ‘What was all that about, Luie?’

  Suddenly I had a brilliant idea. It was perfect. I could just tell Dad that we couldn’t afford Nina’s ballet lessons anymore and that would be that. I do all the accounts at home and pay all the bills – Dad doesn’t have a clue about any of that stuff – so he’d just take my word for it. Like I said, perfect!

  Dad didn’t seem to see it that way.

  ‘But Nina loves going to ballet. And she looks so sweet in her little tutus.’

  ‘Do you know how much those sweet little tutus cost, Dad? And you’re not the one who nearly goes blind sewing on the damned sequins every year.’

  ‘I know it’s a lot of work for you … but it means so much to Nina. If money’s the issue we’ll just have to find a way to save money on something else. Okay, kiddo?’ He reached over and patted my arm as if to say I should stop worrying about nasty grown-up things like money and maybe think more about boys or clothes or something.

  Great. My little sister was going to end up at the bottom of the river but at least she’d be wearing the best tutu that money could buy.

  Chapter 7

  DO YOU KNOW THE FUNNIEST part of that whole scene with the KGB? I hadn’t even called Jet Lucas yet.

  I’d looked at that piece of paper with his phone number on it maybe fifty times, but I couldn’t muster up the courage to actually call him. I kept thinking there had to be a catch somewhere – a trick, a joke, like Carrie being invited to the prom and ending up covered in pig’s blood. Which just goes to show you what was going on in my head. All Jet had said was that he wanted to talk to me about his concert – and here I was acting as if he’d asked me to elope with him. But I still could not make myself call the number.

  And then the day after my interrogation session with the KGB, I was sitting in the library trying to think of a way to keep my sister out of their evil clutches and pursue my Jet Lucas dream … when he slid into the seat next to mine.

  ‘Hi, Luisa.’ He grabbed one of my books, flipped it open in front of his face and sort of ducked down behind it. ‘You never called me.’

  Inside me, the tsunami was building again. Out loud, in a remarkably calm voice, I said, ‘I know, I’m sorry. I was going to, but …’

  ‘But … you were too busy? Washing your hair? Hanging out with the cool people?’ He was pretending to be hurt, which I didn’t buy for a minute.

  I decided to tell the truth.

  ‘I wasn’t sure that you were serious.’

  Now he was acting shocked. ‘You’re kidding? Why wouldn’t I be serious? What kind of guy do you think I am?’

  Did he really want to know the answer to that? Maybe not, because he hurried on. ‘Why would I not be serious …’ He paused and turned his head to look at me for the first time. ‘Why would I not be serious about La Sombrita?’

  He pronounced the name exactly right, rolling the r brightly and hitting the t so it was almost a d. It was so unexpected I forgot to act like I didn’t know what he was talking about.

  ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ he said. ‘You are La Sombrita?’

  I suddenly felt as if someone had ripped me open and everything hidden inside me had fallen out into the light. It wasn’t a good feeling.

  ‘How did you find out?’ I hissed. ‘No one knows about that site. Not even my family.’

  He shrugged. ‘I just put two and two together from your blog. Musician father, the Spanish thing … it wasn’t that hard.’

  I couldn’t look at him.

  ‘La sombrita. “The little shadow” in Spanish, right?’

  Still I didn’t say anything and for a second he seemed worried, as if this wasn’t going the way he’d planned.

  ‘Hey,’ he said and his voice was softer now, kinder. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you. I think your stuff is great. I think …’ and he leant closer so that I could feel his breath on my cheek, ‘… we could make a great team.’

  What did that mean? What did he want from me? I should have been ecstatic that Jet was even in the same building as me, but all I was was confused.

  He seemed to be checking the room as though to make sure no one was listening in, something I should have found strange but didn’t. ‘I was thinking,’ he murmured, ‘maybe we could write some songs together? You and me? La Sombrita and Jet?’

  By this time, I was way past confused and well on my way to total neural meltdown. I thought I managed to cover it pretty well though. ‘Why?’ I asked, with only a slight tremor in my voice – probably only about 5.5 on the Richter scale. ‘You don’t need me.’

  He shrugged again. ‘Maybe I don’t need you. But,’ he went on, dropping into a sexy purr that made my whole body vibrate, ‘maybe I want you. Maybe I want to spend some time with my little shadow.’

  Boy, was he a piece of work! And boy, was I far gone.

  I suppose I should tell you about La Sombrita. That’s my songwriting name. At least, it’s the name I use on my MySpace site. It’s kind of dumb, I know, but I never thought anyone would figure out it was me. Like I told Jet, no one even knew that I wrote songs anymore. I did tell Meko, but I didn’t really explain what I meant so I don’t think she thought I was serious. She thought I wrote songs the way most teenagers write songs – because it sounds cool or romantic or something.

  Dad and Nina didn’t know. I only ever picked up my guitar when they were out and I guess they just thought I’d given it up for good. I did give it up for a long time – I’m not sure why. At first it seemed almost disrespectful, somehow. Too frivolous or trivial. I always felt I should be doing something more practical. There was so much to do and nobody else seemed to want to do it.

  But then something happened. Not that I had some great epiphany or anything, but I felt so hollow – so vacant and empty, like a big chunk of me had been surgically removed – I knew I had to try and fill the hole with something before it got so big I disappeared completely. I also knew music was the only thing that would work.

  I used to look at myself in the mirror sometimes – mostly just to check that I was still there. And maybe I was imagining it, but I thought I could actually see the empty place inside me – like looking at an X-ray of yourself and only seeing shadow where your insides should be. And I remembered that I’d seen that same emptiness somewhere before – in Grandma Abbie.

  Poor Abbie. I called her that, remember, because I couldn’t pronounce abuelita properly – but then it caught on and everyone called her Grandma Abbie, even the next-door neighbours.

  I loved going to Abbie’s house. It was so different from ours – always dark and gloomy inside with lots of big old wooden chests and cupboards full of strange and interesting things. To me, it was like another world – magical and mysterious and exciting.

  One day I asked Abbie why her house was so dark and she told me it was because she’d left the sun behind in Spain. She said she only had room in her suitcase for a few belongings, and the sun was so big and hot there wasn’t enough space for it.

  ‘But Abbie,’ I said, ‘the sun is right there. Out the window. You just need to open the curtains.’

  ‘Ah, Lulu,’ Abbie sighed, ‘ees not my sun. Ees not the real sun. Ees not the same thing at all.’ And she would sit in her chair with her back firmly to the blacked-out windows and peer sadly at me through the gloom.

  That’s what Abbie’s emptiness was made of – a hole where the sun should be.

  I think that must have been when I decided I would go to Spain one day and see the real Spanish sun – Abbie’s sun, which she sighed for every day but never saw again.

  And that’s kind of why I started playing again. So I would never be like Abbie and regret losing something for the rest of my life.


  At first, I would only play other people’s songs – it seemed safer, somehow. But then all this stuff began to erupt out of me – stuff I didn’t even know was there. I couldn’t stop it, so I just poured it all out into my notebooks and locked them away. It was almost as if my guitar was some sort of lightning rod, channelling all the energy bottled up inside me. For an hour or two when I had that guitar in my hands I’d feel stitched back together again. For a while I would actually feel like the old, solid Luisa and not the strange, brittle, hollowed-out Luisa I seemed to have become.

  And now Jet knew. In some ways it was a relief. Secrets are horrible. Real secrets, I mean. They’re like lead weights that someone’s sewn into the lining of your clothes when you weren’t looking – and they get heavier and heavier the longer you carry them around.

  Perhaps I should have told Dad I was playing again – but it seemed cruel somehow to even talk to him about it. Since he’d stopped writing real music himself, he didn’t listen to his old vinyl records anymore and he never played his guitar, not even for work. He wrote his jingles on a keyboard instead. I know he must have missed it as much as I did – more, probably – but he just couldn’t bear to go there.

  I can remember so clearly how Dad’s face would change when he talked about music. It was as though a light would go on inside him, like when you open the fridge door. The light was there on the nights when Dad’s old band-mates would come over and drink too many beers, thumping their guitars and bellowing away in the back yard until grumpy old Mr Pirelli next door threatened to call the cops – and it was there on those Sunday afternoons out in the back shed.

  I guess I thought that if Dad knew that I still wrote, it would just make it worse for him and I couldn’t do it to him.