A Letter from Luisa

by Rowena Mohr

  Before Shania could say or do anything, Meko, inexplicably infected by the Lara Croft kick-arse virus – or the slightly less aggressive Hello Kitty version of it – stalked over to her, grabbed the cigarette from her fingers, threw it on the ground beside the smashed CDs and stomped on it. ‘Smoking is bad for you,’ she said crossly.

  Leaving Melissa and Shania screaming at each other like a couple of Wonder-Bra’d banshees, Meko and I skipped off towards the Yellow Brick Toxic Industrial Spill to drop Toto’s costume in to Edith and Tiahna. Then we headed across to the Auditorium to see how Kanisha’s diplomatic skills were holding up. There had already been, so Kanisha told us tearfully, a skirmish between the Death-Rockers and the Goth-Punks – something to do with PVC pants – but for the moment there was a temporary truce and the warring tribes had retreated to their various dressing-rooms.

  I probably should have been more worried about leaving Meko alone with only Kanisha for protection – especially since I could imagine how the Death-Rockers would respond to Meko and her friends in their Goth-Loli outfits. I probably should have also taken that opportunity to inform Meko that I wasn’t planning on coming back because I would be commandeering a sound desk from Danny Baldassarro in order to convince Jet Lucas that he’d made a terrible mistake in dumping me. But it didn’t seem like the kind of conversation one could have quickly and calmly, given Meko’s opinion of Jet, so I decided to give it a miss.

  The stage had been set up in the gap between the Science block and the Admin building, to provide better acoustics but also to prevent people walking through the backstage area and tripping over all the leads for the lighting and sound equipment. Dad’s station wagon sat in the shadow of the wall, looking totally innocent and not even remotely like it had just been involved in a suburban crime spree. And on the stage, guitar slung over one hip and the late-afternoon sun setting fire to his golden hair, stood Jet Lucas.

  I stood frozen to the spot, unable to move or speak, drinking in the glory that was Jet. The reality of everything that had happened between us evaporated. All that was left was the fact that I still thought he was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen.

  All those nights we had spent together in his room, sitting face-to-face on the bed and singing about love and loss and betrayal, came flooding back. I could smell the sandalwood incense that he burned and taste the lemony tang of his kisses. In candlelight, I remembered, his eyes became dark violet wells. Sometimes he would stare at me so long, so intensely, I thought I might drown. In that room, hidden away from the world, I had felt more a part of something than I ever had in my life.

  Until Danny interrupted my little reverie.

  He pushed past me impatiently and walked over to the edge of the stage.

  ‘Hi, Jet,’ he said. ‘Have you got your final set list?’

  As Jet rummaged in his jeans pocket for the list, he glanced across to where I was standing. Even in the fading daylight I could see the colour leach from his face.

  ‘What’s she doing here?’ he spat, jerking his head in my direction.

  Danny didn’t have time to reply before I bounded towards them.

  ‘Actually, Jet,’ I said, turning to give Danny my sweetest smile, ‘there’s been a change of plans. I will be your sound engineer this evening. Danny is simply here to assist.’ I raised my voice a notch to make myself sound more authoritative. ‘Useful for carrying the heavy stuff, but not quite ready to run the whole show by himself – if you know what I mean.’

  Jet Lucas examined the scuffed surface of the rostrum intently for a moment, and then gazed out over the quadrangle towards the road. ‘Whatever,’ he muttered. Shrugging his muscular shoulders beneath his T-shirt, he turned his back on us.

  Completely unfazed, I scrambled up the stairs onto the stage – partly because I wanted to stay as close to Jet as possible, and partly because I didn’t want to have to look Danny in the eye.

  But Danny wasn’t going to let me off quite that easily. As I seated myself behind the sound desk – my sound desk, I kept telling myself – he leant over my shoulder and said softly, ‘You know, Luisa, all you had to do was ask.’

  That was all. Nothing else. Just enough to make me feel stupid, selfish, ungrateful and about a million other things. But nowhere near enough to distract me from Plan D.

  Then disaster struck! Kanisha Lamas came running to the stage, glasses all fogged up and cardigan torn, shouting incoherently about guns. At first I thought there’d been a Columbine-style massacre in the Auditorium, but then I listened to what she was actually saying. The Year Nine boys – criminals in the making every single one of them, and no doubt in the pay of the Death-Rockers – had descended upon the fashion show rehearsal with Super Soakers, ruining the Goths’ make-up and hairdos. Meko, bless her little platform Mary Janes, had fought them off with a curtain rod, but they’d ripped all Kanisha’s posters off the outside of the building in revenge.

  There I was, two metres away from the man of my dreams and seconds away from the reincarnation of my ‘Jet loves Luisa’ fantasy, and the universe decides that it’s the perfect time to send in Kanisha to screw everything up. Danny Baldassarro, mild-mannered traitor, squeezed my arm and said, ‘Don’t worry, Lu. I’ll stall Jet as long as possible.’

  By the time Kanisha and I got to the Auditorium, Meko had barricaded herself in a dressing-room with the other Goth-Lolis. Kanisha, sobbing pitifully, began to pick up pieces of poster from the ground – a headless Goth here, a crumpled Raver there. I had to act fast.

  ‘Okay, Kanisha. Here’s the key to my locker. Inside you will find glue, masking tape and scissors. I want you to stick all the posters back together and then tape them back on the doors.’ I knocked on the dressing-room door. Nothing, except what could have been whimpering. And then Meko’s scared little voice.

  ‘Prease, I just want to go home.’

  ‘What – to Japan? I know those boys are out of control, but that seems a bit extreme.’

  ‘No, no. To my house. With my exchange famiry.’

  ‘Oh.’ My heart sank.

  From across the playground I could hear the twang, twang, twang of Jet’s guitar as he tuned the strings and it felt as though he was taunting me deliberately. Meko was scared and she needed me to reassure her. But Jet’s sound check would be over soon.

  ‘Meko,’ I shouted through the door. ‘It’s going to be all right. I’ll get Mr McGregor to have a word with those boys and I’m sure there won’t be any more trouble.’

  ‘No, I want to go home.’

  ‘Come out and we’ll talk about it. Please.’

  Silence from the other side of the door.

  ‘You were so fantastic before,’ I wheedled, ‘standing up to Melissa and Shania like that. The look on Shania’s face when you stomped on her cigarette! And you know what? If you can stand up to those two witches, you can deal with a few guys in plastic pants.’

  More silence. But then the door opened a crack and Meko poked her head through.

  ‘I don’t think I can do it, Ruisa,’ she said, in a small, sad voice.

  ‘Of course you can. You’ll be brilliant. Besides, you look amazing.’

  Meko was wearing a beautiful pale-pink satin baby-doll dress with a lace collar and petticoats, and in her ringleted hair she had an enormous pink bow. Her face was white-pale, ghostly. She looked gorgeous – sweet but slightly eerie. Behind her I could see four or five equally pale, frightened little dolls’ faces looking exactly as if they, too, couldn’t wait to get on the next flight to Osaka.

  ‘Not to mention,’ I added desperately, ‘that if you go home there’s no one else to emcee the fashion show.’

  Meko shook her head and picked at her fingerless net gloves in agitation. ‘What about Kanisha?’

  ‘Are you kidding? Kanisha thinks Emo is a character from Sesame Street! You’re the only one who actually knows what they’re talking about.’

  ‘We could emcee it together,’ she said softly, hopefully.


  I looked up and down the corridor in despair, frantically wishing that someone, something, would appear around the corner and save me from what I was about to do next. But nothing happened and no one came. I heard myself saying, ‘I’m sorry, Meko. I can’t. I’ve got something else to do.’

  Chapter 17

  AS I HEADED BACK TO the stage, I could hear Jet one-two-two-ing into the microphone, and it was all I could do not to run towards the sound.

  I was trying so hard not to think about what had just happened with Meko – pushing the image of a frightened little pink-and-white ghost-girl into a compartment in the back of my brain and firmly bolting the door – that I nearly collided with Melissa Kravitz and Shania Goss coming around the corner of the Admin block. Melissa had a hot dog in one hand and a giant slurpee in the other while Shania, obligatory fag in hand, was attempting to pour a half-bottle of vodka into the slurpee.

  When she saw me, Shania quickly tried to hide the bottle behind her back, but it was still open and a beautiful crystalline arc of vodka flew up into the air over our heads. All three of us stood watching it as if it was some amazing natural phenomenon like Halley’s comet or the aurora australis, but the second the liquid hit the ground the spell was broken and I turned to Melissa and Shania and said, very quietly, ‘Haven’t you girls got a stall to run?’ and continued on my way to the sound-check.

  At that moment, someone switched on all the outside lights and suddenly it seemed much later, much darker than it actually was. One by one, the stalls lit up. I could even make out a distinctive radioactive green glow that I guessed was coming from the Emerald City mocktail bar.

  Turning the corner of the Science block, I saw that the stage was now flooded in coloured pools of light. Jet’s silhouette glowed within an angelic aura of pink and yellow. Off to the side of the stage was a dim blue gleam from the lamp over the control desk. It bounced off Danny’s white T-shirt and made it appear that he was suspended in his own private puddle of moonlight.

  Watching Danny sitting there, I realised that he did actually know what he was doing, whereas I didn’t have a clue. Why did I want to be there? I knew – better than anybody – that Jet didn’t want me there. I knew I had made myself look pathetic and desperate. Just for a second, I seriously thought about giving it all up.

  And then, up on stage, Jet strummed the opening chords to ‘Angel Without Wings’. And, once again, I crumbled.

  I stood gazing at him in total lust, oblivious to everything else around me – until I noticed that Danny was waving at me trying to get my attention. He gestured for me to come over to the desk and stood up so I could have his seat at the controls.

  Perhaps I knew right then and there that I was never going to meet someone who cared for me as much as Danny obviously did – but as I said before, something happened to my brain whenever I got within a couple of metres of Jet Lucas. It was as if he was the kryptonite to my not-so-super powers of rational thought. Once again, I managed to make a bunch of totally crappy choices – but with even more spectacular consequences than usual.

  I mean, there’s Danny, who obviously can’t hold a grudge for more than a millisecond, who delights in being so damn nice it does my head in, and who still doesn’t seem to have noticed the knife with my fingerprints all over it sticking out of his back, and what do I do? I nearly kill him. Of course.

  Jet stopped playing and turned towards Danny and me at the desk. ‘I think we need to bump up the treble on the guitar mic.’

  He wasn’t actually looking at me when he said it, but since I was the one sitting at the controls, I assumed he was addressing me. ‘Okay, sure thing, Jet,’ I babbled as I pushed up the slider.

  ‘Did you hear me?’ he snapped.

  ‘Yes. Sorry…’ I don’t know what I was apologising for, since I’d already done what he’d asked. ‘Try it now.’

  This was not at all like my fantasy.

  Jet shrugged his guitar further round on his hip. ‘Not you,’ he said. He still wasn’t looking at us, but he gestured with the neck of his guitar towards Danny. ‘You,’ he grunted. ‘Can we just do this and hurry up about it?’

  He slouched sullenly back into position and stood waiting, head down, pretending to re-tune a couple of strings.

  I couldn’t believe it. After everything I’d done – all the plotting and planning and scheming – Jet was sacking me. I was so stunned, I just sat there staring at the mixing desk, listening to the glug, glug, glug sound of my ‘Jet loves Luisa’ fantasy going down the gurgler. I felt Danny’s hand fall softly on my shoulder, but it didn’t occur to me that he was trying to comfort me. I assumed he was telling me it was all over. Plan D had failed and it was time to go.

  I stood up slowly and headed to the rear of the stage. I’m not sure what I intended to do, but as I walked past Jet he shoved something into my hands and said, ‘Oh, and iron my shirt.’

  Thinking back to that afternoon, I still can’t believe that I just walked away without putting up a fight. Or that I didn’t notice Jet was already wearing his stage shirt and the one he’d given me was just an excuse to get rid of me for a while. I should have thrown the stupid shirt back in his face and told him where to stick it, but I didn’t.

  It was like I was in a trance. Or maybe it was just the kryptonite again – telling me that if I played nice, I still had a chance with Jet. Or maybe it was just because Danny was there and I couldn’t bear to let him see how much it all mattered to me.

  Whatever it was, I didn’t see Danny walk up to Jet and shove him so hard in the chest that he nearly fell off the stage. Nor did I see Mr McGregor, looking exactly like a Duracell Ewok, sprint up the quadrangle to break up the fight. No, I missed all of that as I went off numbly to look for an iron.

  I had no idea where I was going. I looked around me and realised with surprise that the fete had already started. There were people everywhere. The dodgem cars were charging around like drunken mechanical wombats. A long line of kids snaked around the corner of the library waiting to have a turn in the bungy dome, and the smell of charring sausages and onions filled the air.

  Suddenly there arose from the dim, dark, still-functioning part of my brain the image of Meko, and a wave of guilt washed over me. At the same time I remembered that there was an iron in the Goth-Lolis’ dressing-room. I could go and check on Meko – if she hadn’t already caught the first plane back to Osaka – and I could iron Jet Lucas’s shirt.

  As I ran up the front steps of the Auditorium, I was met by an ominous silence – which was only marginally more reassuring than being greeted by the sounds of a full-scale war. To be honest, I was secretly hoping the whole Urban Tribes fiasco had been abandoned due to irreconcilable fashion differences. At least then I wouldn’t have to feel so guilty about abandoning my friend in her hour of need.

  I peered into the darkened theatre, expecting to find a weeping Meko surrounded by her distraught doll-friends. Instead, I was nearly knocked flat by a blast of sound that made the air tremble, followed immediately by a barrage of strobing light and loud cheers of approval from what seemed like half the population of the school.

  Up from the floor of the stage rose about twenty figures, posturing and posing in time to the music. One by one, the figures came forward and sashayed or danced or krumped along the catwalk that had been attached to the front of the stage. First a Goth, then a Death-Rocker; a Hip-Hopper followed by the lone Dandy; and then, not one but five Goth-Lolis, exquisite porcelain figurines come to life, stepped forward arm-in-arm and curtseyed to the crowd. The middle figure was Meko.

  You would never guess that just half an hour earlier she was refusing to come out of her dressing-room. Now she stood centre-stage, swishing her petticoats, totally in her element. Her pale face, framed by the black ringlets, was a mask with dark eyes and lips. I wondered what she was thinking. Was she angry with me? Would she forgive me for deserting her when she needed me?

  From the side of the stage came another figure – black lace-up bo
ots and torn leggings, hair teased into two enormous bunches on either side of her head, glasses glinting in the stage-lights and – on top of it all – a brown cardigan that looked as if it had once belonged to Shrek. The crowd went wild. Kanisha waved gaily at the audience as she handed a microphone to Meko, and blew kisses as she retreated to the wings.

  The music stopped and the crowd fell silent. Meko gazed calmly out at the audience and raised the microphone to her cupid’s-bow lips.

  ‘Radies and genterman,’ she boomed into the mic, ‘wercome to the Urban Tribes Fashion Show …’

  I should have been relieved that Meko was all right, and that she hadn’t been torn to pieces by rival fashion tribes. I should have been delighted to see how she had conquered her fears and triumphantly taken the stage. But you know what? I wasn’t.

  What I felt at that moment when Meko grabbed the microphone was – what’s a polite way of putting this? – major annoyance! Here I had been racked with guilt, beating myself up about what a bad friend I was – and it was all totally unnecessary. Meko didn’t need my help. It was all an act, all part of her Hello Kitty, Goth-Loli, little-girl-lost-in-the-woods persona. Meko, I decided righteously, could no longer tell the difference between cosplay and real life.

  When I got back to the stage, carrying one freshly ironed but totally superfluous shirt, Jet had gone and Danny was sitting on the stairs waiting for me. He jumped up when he saw me and held out his hand as if he thought I might crumble into a blubbering heap of fragile girliness.

  ‘Hey, Lu. Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I lied. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ The last thing I needed right now was sympathy from Danny Baldassarro.

  ‘Jet Lucas is a jerk. I’m really sorry.’