by Sarah Ayoub
He motions for me to follow him — and, against my better judgement, I do.
Without saying anything, he takes two of my bags and wraps one around each handlebar.
‘Pegs,’ he says, pointing.
‘Huh?’ I ask, wondering what the hell I’m doing.
‘You put your feet there,’ he says, gesturing to two steel bars poking out from each side of the back wheel. ‘And then you hold on to my shoulders.’
I raise my eyebrows but do as he says.
‘Directions?’
‘Um, what about your friends?’ I ask.
‘They’ll be here when I get back,’ he reassures me. ‘Hold on.’
I direct him to my street, asking him to drop me off at the nearest corner.
‘Strict parents?’ he says.
‘Sort of. And you could be a creep.’
‘I’m no creep, I’m Mike.’
‘Well, Mike, you’ve certainly puzzled me enough for one day.’
‘Here’s hoping you think about me for the rest of the weekend,’ he says, as he turns his bike around.
What a sleaze, I think, heading inside. But I can’t help but smile.
The amusement vanishes as soon as I see my mother scowling.
‘What?’ I ask.
‘Get in the kitchen,’ she says, shaking her head.
I sigh and follow her inside. Dad’s sitting at the breakfast bar, a NSW Police Academy brochure in front of him.
‘You went through my mail?’ I ask, horrified.
‘Well, you are living under my roof,’ he counters.
‘I sent that to Yia Yia’s place!’ I exclaim.
‘And I own your grandmother’s place too.’
‘Dad, that’s a terrible abuse of my privacy.’
‘And you have terribly abused my trust,’ he says, frowning. ‘Moonlighting as a clown while pretending to hang out with your friends? Deliberately applying for something I told you to forget about, and having the audacity to send it elsewhere so I stay in the dark? That’s deceitful, Tammi.’
‘What, do you have contacts at kids’ parties now? Just in case the six-year-olds decide to rob a bank?’
He doesn’t appreciate my sarcasm. ‘It’s up to me to know what’s going on in my kid’s life. What if some creep lured you over pretending he needed a clown. You couldn’t go work in retail like other kids your age?’
‘Well, what did you expect? You say no to everything.’
‘I expect you to stick to what we discussed.’
‘What you discussed, you mean,’ I remind him. ‘I never agreed to any of it.’
‘Tammi, your father’s just trying to look out for you,’ Mum says, sighing. ‘He’s been in the force for twenty years. He knows what it’s like. It’s no place for a young woman.’
‘Please, Mum,’ I say, rolling my eyes. ‘It’s the twenty-first century. There’s no such thing as “places for women” any more. We can go anywhere.’
‘Just because you can, it doesn’t mean you should,’ he says. ‘Being a cop is not safe, it’s emotionally draining and sometimes your colleagues are as sleazy as the crooks. It’s not an environment I want for you. You’re going to find another career.’
‘This is so frustrating!’ I shout. ‘This is all I want to do with my life. If I were a boy, you’d have no problem with it.’
‘But you’re not a boy, you’re my only daughter, and just like I vowed to protect and serve the citizens of this state, I vowed to protect you and your mother the day you each came into my life.’
I roll my eyes.
‘Seriously, Tammi,’ he says slowly, ‘haven’t you heard my stories? Seen what I’ve gone through? What I’ve struggled with? Some if it haunts me every day.’
‘And doing something that’s not going to make me happy will haunt me,’ I tell him. ‘I want to be like you; please just accept that.’
‘I don’t have to accept anything,’ he tells me, rising from his chair. ‘I’m your father, and there’s no way that I will support you in this. And if you’re going to fight and threaten me, I’m going to remind you what you’re dealing with.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I ask.
‘It means that the policing world is a small one. All it takes is the drop of a name to fast-track an application, or send it to the bottom of the pile.’
‘You wouldn’t do that,’ I whisper, stunned. ‘It goes against all your principles.’
‘Every cop out there who has seen what I’ve seen will agree with me, Tamara,’ he says. ‘Even with their principles.’
I glare at him. ‘I can’t believe you would do this to me. I have no other options.’
‘Yes, you do — lots of them,’ he says. ‘Just not policing.’
‘Fine! I’ll take up prostitution,’ I yell, walking out of the room.
‘Great,’ he yells back. ‘I can put you in touch with a few madams who own premises on my beat!’
I slam my bedroom door angrily, my eyes filling up with tears.
David, Lauren, Dad . . . Why do I keep letting everyone walk all over me? And why am I so powerless to stop them?
Gillian
Gillian Cummings When you see your best friend in a shoot with Karlie Kloss on Insta #bowdown #SylvanaDarrar #yougogirl
‘I showed Charlie how to use the stupid camera,’ Matty tells me in Maths. ‘Do you want to know what she said?’
I bite my lip, not sure if I’m supposed to answer.
‘She said, “Great, now I have no excuse for getting out of this crap.” The chick’s messed up.’
My face reddens.
He gives me a look that says ‘I told you so’, then opens up his textbook.
I don’t know what to say, so I open mine too and wonder why algebra makes more sense than my own life.
I decide to corner Charlie at lunch. She’s sitting under a tree, her head buried in a laptop.
I stand in front of her for a few minutes, and she finally rolls her eyes, pulls her headphones out of her ears and gives me a look that is all attitude.
‘Matty says he showed you how to use the camera,’ I say.
She nods, then turns her laptop towards me. ‘Do you mind? I really want to watch this.’
I fold my arms, purse my lips and try to match her, attitude for attitude.
‘Nothing exciting happens. It goes into some convoluted storyline and someone comes back from the dead. In three more episodes you’ll start to wonder why you’re watching it.’
She death-stares me. ‘Did you come here to ruin it for me?’
I shrug. ‘No, I came to ask if you need help taking photos. I can go with you to events and stuff.’
‘I don’t need friends,’ she says to me, as if she’s doing me a favour by freeing up my time.
‘This isn’t about friendship; this is about our yearbook.’
She looks at me as if I’m the biggest loser that ever walked the earth. I start to feel like maybe I am.
‘Why are you so keen to work on this stupid yearbook?’ she asks. ‘You heard Matty. No one else even cares.’
‘I think I’ll like it,’ I admit. ‘Maybe I’ll remember the good times.’
‘Can I give you some advice?’ she says. ‘You’re at this school because you have to be. You didn’t choose this. What comes after — that’s what you choose, that’s when the real good times will begin. This is all fake, forced . . . for show.’
I swallow, and look across the playground.
She closes her laptop. ‘Fine,’ she says, after a moment. ‘Maybe I could use some help. Next meeting we’ll discuss what they want and you can come along for some of it.’
‘And in the meantime you’re just going to hang out under a tree every lunch?’
‘What do you want me to do? I told you, I don’t need friends.’
‘You could study,’ I say.
‘Haven’t you heard? I don’t need to.’
‘I haven’t heard anything,’ I say. ‘Look around. Peop
le don’t talk to me.’
‘And this worries you? Doesn’t seem like they’re worth talking to. Everyone here’s so elitist.’
I put my hands on my hips and give her a knowing look. ‘That’s rich coming from you. You’ve been down on the place since you got here.’
‘Well, my whole life has changed. All my friends are in an entirely different state. I don’t need to explain myself to you.’
‘Well, my best friend is on the other side of the world and I have to navigate time zones and work schedules to talk to her, so you’re not the only one with problems.’
She opens her mouth to say something, just as something hard hits my head and splatters.
‘Owwwww!’ I yelp. I whip around and see them across the quad: Lauren, Tammi, David and a bunch of others, standing there, giggling.
My eyes narrow as Lauren gives me a pitying smile. Then she shrugs, turns back to her friends and laughs, her palm covering her mouth.
‘They did that on purpose,’ Charlie says, standing up.
I rub the back of my head and feel wet, chunky bits of apple through my fingers. ‘Ewww!’ I exclaim, shaking my hand and trying to see the back of my uniform. ‘Did any of it get on my clothes?’
She glares at me. ‘Are you just going to let that go? March up to her and tell her off.’
‘No way! There’s only five months left of school. After that, I won’t see her again.’
‘She threw fruit at you. What if it had broken your nose or something?’
‘Well, it didn’t, did it?’ I say as I scurry away to the bathroom to clean myself up.
‘What an idiot,’ I hear her mumble, as the back of my head burns.
Later that afternoon, Charlie tries to talk to me about it again in my free period.
‘Get over it,’ I say, turning to the computer. ‘I don’t want to get into any fights.’
‘Life is not just rainbows and butterflies.’
‘I get it. But I also don’t want to spend the rest of my school year cleaning myself up in the bathroom.’
‘Whatever. What’s “Diary of a Pollie’s Kid”?’ she says, peering over my shoulder.
I take a deep breath. ‘It’s my blog,’ I tell her. ‘I started it, like, two months ago.’
‘Hmm,’ she says, scanning the screen. ‘Do many people read it?’
I shrug. ‘I guess so,’ I say. ‘I have a Facebook page and an Instagram account for it, and my following is slowly growing. Every time I have to go to political events, I write about it.’
‘What does your dad think?’ she asks.
‘He hasn’t said anything,’ I say. ‘He has a whole PR team that sometimes makes me change stuff if they don’t like the “tone” or the “angle”. But mostly they leave me alone.’
She laughs at that. ‘Is that why Lauren Pappas is bullying you? Because your blog’s blowing up and she’s trying to take you down a notch?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I say, logging out and packing my bag.
She looks at me for a moment, then turns away.
I send Sylvana a Facebook message while standing at the bus stop on my way home.
I got hit in the back of the head by a flying apple today. Are you sure you don’t miss the school quad?
A few minutes later, I hear back.
I don’t know. Tonight I wiped, like, 15 kilos of foundation off my face, tore off heaps of eyelashes when taking off my falsies, and there were reptiles in today’s photo shoot.
I smile.
Yeah, but who was the shoot for? ;)
She doesn’t write back.
I lean against the wall. There are so many students around me, but I’m the only one standing alone. I really am a loser.
I call Mum.
‘Do you think Anton can do something about my hair soon?’ I ask her when she answers. ‘I need a change.’
‘Yes, definitely, make an appointment!’ I can hear the enthusiasm in her voice. ‘What are you gonna do? Cut, colour?’
I start to make my way to the Westfield. ‘I dunno, maybe both. I’ll see what they say and when they have appointments.’
Inside, I make a booking for a hair assessment and style with a girl who looks like she stepped out of the pages of a magazine. As she pencils my name into the appointment book, I stare at my reflection in the full-length mirror. My plain, golden-red waves make me look like a child. And my knee-length skirt, smart blazer and little hat don’t help either.
But maybe with a new hair style I’ll look more mature. More in control.
She calls out to another girl — who looks just as glam as she does — and asks if her afternoon is free. The girl looks at me. ‘Yeah, I’m free,’ she says, her eyes scanning the length of my body.
‘Hear that?’ the first girl asks me. ‘We can do it now.’
I sit at the basin while she washes my hair and massages my scalp, imagining myself lost somewhere — far away from the quad, my classmates, the yearbook that I really wanted to help produce but that no one else seemed invested in.
In the full-length mirror in front of me, I can see the hair stylist eyeing a wavy strand of my red hair. ‘You should do a keratin treatment,’ she says to my reflection. ‘Much more grown-up than curls. You won’t need to blowdry it, and it’ll last three to six months.’
‘How long does it take?’ I ask.
She shrugs. ‘Couple of hours.’
I nod and let her take the scissors to my hair, watching as she frames it around my face.
‘Just trust me,’ she says to my uncertain face, reflected in the mirror. ‘I’m going to put a couple of foils here in the front too, brighten it up a little bit. It’ll look hot.’
I swallow, nervous.
‘So do you live in the area?’ she asks.
‘Croydon,’ I say, nodding. ‘My mum is friends with Anton.’
She smiles. ‘Better take extra good care of you then,’ she says.
A couple of hours later, I’m transformed. I eye myself in the mirror again, trying not to admire the girl staring back at me. I do look more mature. I wonder if it will change anything as I pay the girl and walk out, optimistic as always.
On my way out, I grab a tub of frozen yoghurt, looking forward to seeing Sammy’s excitement. The bus ride home is a short five minutes and Sammy is on the front step when I arrive.
His eyes light up when he sees the yoghurt tub in my hand. He lunges forwards and grabs it, running inside excitedly calling about getting bowls and spoons.
‘Don’t hog it all!’ I call out after him.
Mum emerges from the kitchen.
‘Really, Gill?’ she asks. ‘You told me you wanted to do something about your hair; I thought you wanted to take your appearance seriously. Then you come home with frozen yoghurt?’
‘Aww, come on, hun, it’s just a snack,’ my dad calls out after her. ‘Nice hair, sweetie,’ he says to me. ‘Love it.’
‘Yeah, but she has plenty of snacks,’ she snaps. ‘My trainer says if she continues grazing like that, she could balloon.’
I have a vision of cankles and plus-size stores and decide the yoghurt’s not worth it.
‘I’m not hungry anyway,’ I mutter. ‘Sammy will enjoy it more.’
I head upstairs and try to ignore my parents as Mum tries to defend her actions to Dad. I can’t help but catch a few phrases, like ‘size eight’ and ‘work for it’, before the door of his office closes.
We’ve always been terrible problem-solvers. We just shut ourselves away instead, so nothing gets fixed. I always thought it was the worst thing, but now I can see it’s an attitude that has seeped into my veins.
Which is why no matter what Lauren Pappas throws at me, she will always get away with it. Because I will always just shut myself away and let her.
And maybe because, deep down, I guess I deserve it.
Ryan
Ryan Fleming Planning the plays is definitely not the same as making them.
James Czalo Hang in ther
e, mate. You’ll get there.
I don’t know why, but I’m going to soccer training. It’s David’s idea, of course; he’s still trying to convince me of it as we walk over to the field.
‘Dude, you need to quit feeling sorry for yourself and get off your arse,’ he says. ‘It sucks that you can’t play, I know, but you’re still part of the team. You can give us pointers, work out game plans, be our water boy . . .’
I shove him and he laughs, squirting me with his water bottle.
‘I don’t know how many sessions I can come to, though,’ I say, not wanting to admit how much the joke had really stung. I didn’t get this far to be a water boy. ‘Especially now with the yearbook stuff happening.’
‘Why don’t you grow a pair and leave that frou-frou stuff to the girls?’
I laugh. ‘I don’t know how we’re still friends, man,’ I say, shaking my head.
‘Seriously, though — the yearbook? Like, what the hell?’
‘I can’t let this accident screw up everything,’ I say. ‘It’s messing with my headspace; I need a distraction. And Mrs H said doing it might help me win the St Jerome Medal.’
‘You’re still going for that?’ he asks, looking at me incredulously. ‘Why? What’s the point without soccer?’
‘Um, just because I can’t play now doesn’t mean I’ll never play again, right?’
I know it’s a mistake to look to him for reassurance, and my gut instinct seems to be right on track when he responds with silence. We may have been best mates for a while, but there’s always been a little competition between us, and with me out of the picture David is the school’s solo soccer star.
‘Plus, there are other dreams. Just because I don’t know what I want to do yet, it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t still chase a ticket. And the St Jerome Medal is the ultimate ticket. It’ll pay for whatever I want to do next — at any uni.’
He shrugs with the indifference of someone who has his whole future filed into a box marked ‘To be dealt with later’. Not to mention that whatever he wants to do, he’ll have his super-wealthy parents to pay for it.
‘Whatever you want, bro,’ he says. ‘You know I support you. Although that new chick from Melbourne — the one with the attitude — is super smart. She even corrects the teachers.’