Pip

by Kim Kane

  Olive often wondered if the tennis-and-tuckshop mums and WilliamPetersMustardSeed watched Mog on the evening news when she did.

  Mog was ambitious because she wanted to be a judge. At the moment she was a QC, or Queen’s Counsel, which Mog said just meant she was darn good at her job and a super role model for young women. It was weird though, thought Olive, because Australia didn’t have a queen, only Crown Princess Mary, who would be the Queen of Denmark, not Australia.

  When Mog wasn’t working she spent the evenings hobnobbing with politicians – like the Attorney-General – because politicians appointed Queen’s Counsel as judges. As far as Olive knew, Crown Princess Mary didn’t appoint judges. Which might explain why Mog had never invited Mary to dinner.

  Olive closed the album. Even with all that royal waving to do, Olive was sure Crown Princess Mary would be in the front row at her kids’ concerts. As Olive headed for bed, she kicked out at a random tower of Mog’s trinkets in the hall. They scattered and shattered. Olive left them where they fell.

  6

  Then Dumped

  The next morning at school, conversation was dominated by tales of the Christmas barbeque picnic. Mathilda told everyone how her family and Amelia Forster’s family had sat on rugs next to each other. The girls had snuggled in under a blanket while Mr Graham pointed out crosses and saucepans and pink planets in the sky.

  Olive had stared at the stars one night herself with Mr Graham, trying to find those exact constellations. Olive had pretended as best she could, but she’d had no idea what Mr Graham was talking about. They’d just looked like stars.

  This was not, however, Amelia Forster’s experience. ‘It was brilliant,’ she boasted. ‘We also saw Jupiter, and we’re going to use it to tell our own horoscopes.’

  That would be right, thought Olive. Amelia was so talented she could probably even see the African animals in those fuzzy drawings that merged if you looked at them in the right way.

  Amelia and Mathilda talked about the picnic all the way through English and into Art. Olive tried to change the topic. She wanted to discuss her metal detector and the endless possibilities of unearthing pirate treasure, but Mathilda was distracted.

  ‘You should see it, Mathilda,’ said Olive. ‘The whole machine shudders, and it can pick things up miles under the sand.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mathilda and smiled loosely, vaguely, somehow absent.

  ‘And I wanted to ask you about the Christmas concert,’ said Olive. ‘Mog’s organised a dumb dinner with a politician that night, and I was wondering if you’d like to come afterwards. It will be in a restaurant.’

  Mathilda liked restaurants. She pronounced it ‘restaurong’, like the French and her mum. Dinner in a restaurong would be a drawcard for Mathilda.

  Mathilda looked at Amelia. Olive looked at Amelia, too. She didn’t want to leave anyone out. ‘I’m sure Amelia can come along.’ Amelia gulped a big nasty laugh and Mathilda went pink.

  ‘Girls, quiet over there,’ said Ms Stable-East. ‘We require calm to draw.’ She tapped a paintbrush against the bobbly sleeve of her hand-knitted jumper for some quiet. It was a shrill-coloured knit, which showed that although Ms Stable-East was the homeroom teacher for Year 7C, she was, first and foremost, a teacher of art.

  Olive concentrated on her self-portrait. The face was too small for the piece of paper on which it floated. Out of the corner of her wide eye, she could see Mathilda and Amelia passing notes backwards and forward, forwards and back.

  When the bell rang for recess, the girls filed out of the Art Cottage. Amelia linked her arm through Mathilda’s. ‘I’m dying for a chocolate Paddle Pop. Got any money?’ Amelia ate a Paddle Pop almost every day, but she didn’t nibble them like most girls – she ran her finger up along the sides, carving out the ice-cream, using her finger like a scoop. Only Amelia Forster could manage to do this elegantly.

  ‘I’ll get them. Mog gave me pocket money this morning.’ Olive doubted the girls recognised this for the sacrifice it was: as soon as the bell rang for recess or lunch, the tuckshop boiled. The counter was buried under a swarm of grey-and-green jumpers – big girls lounging over it, little kids stuffed under it at awkward angles, the whole woollen mass pushing forwards. Olive would try to punch her way through the crowd, holding her breath. The tuckshop smelled like an old-people’s home: like canned soup and faded vegetables. Although the snacks were good (especially the cheesy rolls), facing the rabble was never worth it.

  Olive faced it anyway, and returned victorious, holding the chocolate Paddle Pops above her head like an Olympic baton. She dropped onto the grass, panting, and smiled. For that plump, perfect second, the three of them were a team.

  Amelia peeled off her wrapper and flipped it onto the ground. The wind blew the paper and it cartwheeled over Olive’s shoe. Olive grabbed it.

  ‘Eww, grow-oss. Don’t pick things off the ground, Olive.’ Mathilda and Amelia rolled their eyes and looked at once smug and stern. Olive blushed and dropped the wrapper.

  ‘Olive. Don’t litter or we’ll all lose house points.’ Amelia said this very loudly, in her primmest class-captain voice. She said it so loudly that Ms Stable-East, who was on duty, looked over and frowned.

  ‘Sorry, Ms Stable-East. I’ll pick it up,’ called Olive.

  ‘Sorry, Ms Stable-East. I’ll pick it up,’ mimicked Amelia and Mathilda in high-pitched, goody-two-shoes voices, and then laughed.

  Olive looked at them and squinted, confused. She laughed along with them, but it was clear that she had done something wrong. She was just not entirely sure what.

  When the first bell rang, Amelia jumped up and tucked her gummy stick down the back of Olive’s collar. Mathilda did too.

  ‘Thanks for the Paddle Pop,’ said Amelia. ‘C’mon, Till. Let’s go to the bubbler before class. Water’s good for our pores.’

  Till! Olive blinked and waited for Mathilda to say something. Mathilda even made her family call her ‘Mathilda’ because she thought it sounded more sophisticated.

  ‘Sure, Mill,’ said Mathilda. ‘My skin’s just so grow-oss.’ Olive stayed seated. Mill?

  ‘See ya,’ mumbled Mathilda as she turned, more to the Paddle Pop wrapper on the ground than to Olive.

  ‘Bye.’ A lot appeared to have changed at the Christmas barbeque picnic. Olive stood and tried to shake the Paddle Pop sticks out of her dress. One was trapped by her belt. Olive’s bottom was damp from the grass and she was gritty and sticky. She turned and threaded her way through clusters of sprawled big girls to the loos.

  After recess, Year 7C had double Science with Mrs Dixon. Olive was quite fond of Mrs Dixon, although she looked uncannily like a spotted cod (which was, coincidentally, her species of biological expertise).

  Olive was late – it had been harder to scrub her back with paper towel than she’d expected – but Mrs Dixon was too busy writing elements on the board to notice. Around her, the class hummed. Each class had its own tempo, its own pulse. Maths was slow and steady; English was brisk; Science with Mrs Dixon always hummed.

  Mathilda and Amelia were wedged together at one end of a bench, whispering. There was a spare seat near them. Olive slid into it. She could feel the eyes of the other girls on her plaits. While she suspected it was already clear to the class that alliances had shifted, Olive couldn’t acknowledge it, not yet.

  Olive did a quick headcount. There were twenty-three girls in the class – an odd number. One would be left out. The odd one. Please don’t let us do an experiment, please don’t let us do an experiment, please don’t let us do an experiment, she prayed.

  ‘Okay girls, enough of that,’ said Mrs Dixon. ‘Get into pairs. We’ll be doing an experiment today – the flame experiment. Page seventy-two in your books. Bunsen burners are at the front here.’

  The year, Olive noted, was not turning out that well at all.

  Olive looked along the bench to Mathilda, who was drawing love hearts around the initials ‘J.H.’ all over Amelia’s pencil case.
‘Are you in a pair?’ Olive tried to look casual and friendly. Mathilda shrugged a lazy shoulder and turned to Amelia.

  ‘Yep,’ said Amelia. She looked straight at Olive with her pretty pretty eyes, waiting for Olive to ask to join them; challenging her to do so. A silence grew on the bench, dividing Olive and Till–Mill. Olive could see it, cold and steely white. She took a breath. Everything smelt like Dettol. ‘Um, do you mind if I . . . if I join you?’ Olive loathed herself for asking. The silence set.

  ‘Olive Garnaut, get into your lab coat and join in with Amelia and Mathilda, please. We’re drastically behind schedule, and we need to get this one out of the way.’

  Olive smiled and nodded, although she wanted to scream: Mrs Dixon, haven’t you noticed that Mathilda Graham is my partner for experiments? Always? Haven’t you noticed that Mathilda Graham is my best friend? We’re joined at the hip. Isn’t it weird that she’s with Amelia Forster now and that she’s called Till? But Mrs Dixon was unravelling a pile of Bunsen burner cords.

  Amelia lit a match for the flame. ‘You can join us.’

  The match hissed.

  ‘If you want.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Olive.

  The girls settled into the experiment and the silence softened. Till–Mill burnt chemicals on spoons; Olive recorded the results three times so that they would each have a copy. Olive was neat and industrious; she wanted their notes to be the best. Till–Mill chatted on above her lowered head.

  The chatter continued as the girls ate lunch on the oval. Olive chewed at the same patch in her sandwich while Mathilda–Till swooned over the hair of some boy called Angus King. Amelia–Mill promised to put songs on Mathilda–Till’s iPod (iPod? Olive hadn’t even known Mathilda had one). Mathilda made Amelia–Mill laugh by mimicking a presenter Olive had never even heard of from Video Hits. She and Amelia–Mill then repeated the same line from a cartoon, laughing louder each time they said it, trying the words in different voices, shuffling the emphasis.

  Olive’s sandwich was like plasticine in her mouth. But this isn’t Mathilda. This isn’t the real Mathilda, she thought. Olive looked straight at her best friend. She still looked like Mathilda – not like Till at all. The real Mathilda just had to be in there somewhere.

  After they had eaten, Mathilda and Amelia leapt up as if on an invisible cue. Olive stuffed the rest of her sandwich in its bag and stood, too. Till–Mill took off across the oval. Olive trailed a pace behind them like one of the deferential Chinese wives they had learnt about from the olden days.

  Till–Mill talked on and on about the Christmas barbeque picnic, a saucepan of stars and James Hurley’s hilarious jokes. Olive stared at Amelia’s baggy jumper, which hooked down under her bottom, and at her perfectly straight North–South part. It was hard to compete with a part like that.

  Olive tried to pull her own jumper sleeves down over her wrists. Her jumper was shorter than Amelia’s and Mathilda’s. Olive had never really noticed before.

  ‘C’mon, Till. Let’s go to the Art Cottage,’ said Amelia.

  ‘Sure, Mill,’ said Mathilda.

  Olive spun on her heels and dutifully followed the perfect part, but she was getting angry. What was Amelia doing? Mathilda Graham and her entire family and their chairs in chintz and date scones were Olive’s. Just Olive’s.

  When they got to the Art Cottage, Amelia looked over her shoulder and announced a little too loudly, ‘C’mon, Till. Let’s go to the netball courts.’ The Till–Mill duo turned. Olive followed, bringing up the rear.

  Amelia–Mill chatted on about the cricket and membership and how she would see if there was a spare ticket this weekend so that Mathilda–Till could come and sit with her family and maybe even see James Hurley and Angus King.

  ‘Cricket? I didn’t know you even liked cricket, Mathilda,’ said Olive. She dug her nails into her palms. The comment had slid out. It sounded much more sarcastic than she’d intended, aggressive even.

  Amelia looked at Mathilda. ‘Did you hear something?’ she asked. Mathilda laughed.

  ‘I’m not sure if I heard something, but I definitely smell something,’ continued Amelia, shooting Olive another quick look over her shoulder. She may as well have used a bazooka. Olive stopped. She waited for Mathilda to leap to her defence – surely this time Amelia had gone too far – but Mathilda just poked her T-bar in the dust, making a wall to block a stream of ants.

  Olive turned deep red and started sweating. Blood hurtled around her body and clogged her ears. Everything was fuzzy. The light refracted; all the pale things appeared so bright that they hurt, and all the dark things looked like one thick smudge of deepest darkest ebony. Olive concentrated on keeping her head upright and turned away. She blurred her vision so that the hyperdark superlight didn’t hurt.

  Don’t let them see me cry. Don’t let them see me cry. Just to the loos. You’ll get to the loos, she said to herself, walking methodically with a tight face and as much dignity as she could muster. Two paces from the cubicle, Olive crumpled, bereft.

  Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me, Olive repeated to herself that afternoon in English, over and over. Silly kids’ mantra. Any fool knew that, pound for pound, words could pack as much punch as stone. Whenever she felt teary, Olive groped around the inside of her desk, pretending to look for something essential in its deepest corners. She bit the inside of her mouth until it hurt.

  Olive sat, an island surrounded by a stretch of cream linoleum. There was nobody near her; nobody wanted to be. That was the thing about being dumped: it was contagious. Schoolgirls hunted in packs. Olive was so contagious she could almost see her own disease.

  At the back of the room, Mathilda–Till tipped her chair against the wall, balancing. She chortled loudly, playing up, showing off. She was performing for Amelia like a Sea World seal. At first Olive had thought that Mathilda–Till was pretending. She realised now that Mathilda had had all these interests stored up – iPods and Video Hits and boys and pores – and Olive hadn’t noticed.

  Conversations bubbled on around Olive. She listened. Mathilda was not the only one. Somehow the rules had changed, and it seemed that every other girl in the class had read the new book and was on top of it. Every girl except Olive.

  Olive concentrated on a design she was looping about her spelling. She could hear both Mathilda and Amelia laughing now – talking and laughing. Talking and laughing about her.

  ‘You know, Mum says that if she had a father she’d be a different person. She reckons she’d be normal. You know, normal on the inside as well,’ stage-whispered Mathilda across the room.

  ‘She’s not that normal on the outside.’

  Olive looked around to see Amelia sprinkle dimples about the room like fairy dust. She pressed her hands against her ears to block Till–Mill out, and bit harder and harder on the inside of her mouth, waiting for the day to end. Wherever she looked, girls ducked her stare or squinted, feigning short-sightedness.

  When the bell finally clanged, Olive picked up her bag and exited quickly, head high, rigid inside her blazer. The pool of checked uniforms parted to let her through.

  Olive left without looking back at the new Till again.

  7

  The Twenty-second Day

  of the Month

  Olive walked fast. ‘I’ll show them, bloody bloody. I’ll show them, bloody Till bloody Mill,’ she muttered, stomping down the pavement towards the beach. ‘How dare they, bum and bugger, how dare they.’

  This was the worst day of Olive’s entire life. It was the twenty-second day of November. Olive kicked out at a picket fence. More twos. No surprises there.

  Olive was working herself up into what Mog termed a Right Tizz. ‘I am a middle-pick girl,’ she spat. And she was. She was the kind of girl who was consistently class vice-captain in third term or class captain in fourth term. Never a leader, but certainly never picked last in Sport. She was no Nut Allergy. Nut Allergy had matted hair and she stank. In junior school she
wet her pants, and sometimes, on hot afternoons, her uniform had been so damp that it had actually steamed. These days, she was always stranded on the oval when every other girl in the class had been snaffled for netball teams.

  ‘I do not smell,’ said Olive, unconvinced. Perhaps she just hadn’t noticed? People didn’t. When she thought about it, every family had a smell. Mathilda smelt like the Graham family home: all beeswax polish and baking. Amelia smelt like apple shampoo, washing detergent and new leather.

  Maybe Olive smelt like her home too, and she just hadn’t noticed. Maybe Olive smelt like crap-knacks – like old costumes and second-hand books.

  Olive flipped Mathilda’s words over in her mind, like sausages in a pan. Mum says that if she had a father she’ d be a different person. She’d be normal. She kicked a can in the gutter. Till–Mill were right. Mog and Olive were just not normal. The can reverberated back onto Olive’s shoe. She crushed it.

  If WilliamPetersMustard Seed was here, I’d be normal. If WilliamPetersMustardSeed was here, my family would be like the Grahams and I wouldn’t be so strange. If WilliamPetersMustardSeed was here, I’d wish for things that would fit on eyelashes, too. It was so obvious. Olive couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to her before. She ran across the road, ashamed and angry.

  A new sign had been erected in the beach carpark.

  Seaside City Council – Upcoming Event

  The beach will be closed between Wolf Lane

  and Kelso Pier from 22 November – 2 December

  in preparation for the Inaugural Seaside Carnival

  and Sand Sculpture Display Biennale.

  Licensed fishermen exempt.

  Parking restrictions will apply.

  Go to www.seasidecitycouncil.vic.gov.au for more

  information.

  Olive kicked the sign. Now the council had stolen her beach?

  Olive wanted to throw her head back and howl. She wanted to wail. Everything was spinning, spiralling out of control. She threw her bag down on the pavement. Something a little longer than a lipstick fell out of the front pocket and rattle-rolled across the concrete. The something stopped at Olive’s shoe.