Tiffany puts her regular clothes back on and pays for the black jeans. As she stuffs her change into her Roxy wallet she turns to Olivia. ‘When should we tell her?’
I go cold inside. Is she talking about me?
‘Kaitlin,’ Olivia says with a serious look on her face, ‘we’ve got something important to tell you over lunch.’
We head up Swanston Street to Macca’s. The last thing I want to do is eat. I feel sick. How could people’s thinking have changed so fast? Now they’re smirking, that nerdy girl doesn’t belong in their group.
As we stand in line at McDonald’s, the others are engrossed in deciding what to order. My mind is whirling with all the stuff they might say to me. Kaitlin, we made a mistake with you. Kaitlin, you’ll always belong with the losers.
It’s my turn to order. I haven’t given it a thought. I look at the bright picture of the chicken foldover and say, ‘I’ll have one of those, and a Coke.’ We take our food upstairs and find a table overlooking Swanson Street. I want to scream WHAT IS IT YOU HAVE TO TELL ME? But the words remain icicles piercing my chest. Olivia takes ages carefully arranging her strawberry thick shake, chicken burger and fries.
Finally she looks across the table at me. ‘Charlotte was only on trial,’ she says.
‘On trial?’ I croak. I want to leap up and shout out the window, ‘It’s not about me! It’s about her!’
‘Yes,’ Tiffany says, taking a sip of her lemonade. ‘We prefer to have three people in our group at any one time. It’s a much more manageable number.’
Olivia explains, ‘Last year we had this other member, Alisha, but she moved to Tasmania. We had to choose somebody else and Charlotte really wanted to be in our group. She kept asking if she could hang around with us. She wasn’t actually that popular …’
‘You mean she was a loner?’ I’m embarrassed by the hope in my voice.
‘No way,’ Tiffany says, ‘as if we’d let a loner into our group.’
‘She was just like,’ Olivia explains, ‘not in the top layer of the class.’
Jeez. What if they find out the layer I was in?
Olivia sighs as she slowly stirs her straw through her thickshake. ‘We had our doubts about her, but we thought we’d give her a chance. We told her right from the start that if we found someone better at high school we might have to drop her.’
Tiffany nods in agreement. ‘We never tried to deceive her.’
‘Today’s been way more fun without her anyway,’ Olivia says.
‘That’s for sure.’ My voice is working again.
‘When we get to our spot on Monday morning,’ Olivia states, ‘we’re gonna tell her she hasn’t made it. Most people would do it with a note, but we’re not like that. We’re gonna do it properly, face to face.’
I can’t believe I’m in the group that has this kind of power. Then suddenly, a sharp and terrible thought slices through my excitement. ‘Does this mean I’m on trial, too?’
‘Well,’ Olivia says, popping a fry into her mouth, ‘yes. You’ve got to understand we’re choosing someone to be with us the whole way through high school.’
‘We’re pretty sure you’ll make it, though,’ Tiffany assures me. ‘You’re doing really well so far.’
‘We agreed we’d give you a month,’ Olivia tells me, ‘then we’ll make a final decision.’
I can’t sleep. It’s too hot, plus thoughts are zinging back and fourth like crazy fish inside my head. I want so much to stay in Olivia’s group! I sent all these e-mails to Eve, describing my fantastic friends. I’d rather walk barefoot in our garden on a wet night when the snails are out than write to her and tell her they’ve dropped me. And all week I’ve been planning phrases to drop into conversations when I’m at Dad and Sarah’s. When me and my friends went to the city we tried on so many cool clothes … My friends are so jealous cos this guy in year ten talks to me … At the sleepover, my friends crimped my hair and they said it looked really good.
I turn over so violently that the Beanie Baby pterodactyl I keep on my bed plonks to the floor. You’ve got to understand we’re choosing someone to be with us the whole way through high school. Before I came to bed I looked at the calendar in the kitchen and figured out that a month from now is March 15th. If I can only get through till then without my dorkometer letting me down, I’ll have it made!
‘Do you think she’ll yell at us when we tell her?’ I ask apprehensively.
‘So what if she does?’ Tiffany answers nonchalantly.
‘We made a decision,’ Olivia reminds us. ‘We’re gonna stick with it.’
We all got to our spot early this morning, so we could be here when Charlotte turns up. We wanted to present a united front.
‘Here she comes,’ Tiffany says.
I look over the cucumber vines and see Charlotte approaching from the other side of the veggie garden. I feel a little sick. At the same time I’m excited, because finally I’m in a position to dismiss somebody.
‘Hi, guys.’ Charlotte looks flustered from her hot walk through the school yard. I imagine how good she feels, sitting down with us on our shady grass. She won’t feel good for long.
‘Charlotte …’ Olivia is using an official voice. ‘Remember last year when we let you into our group? We said it was only on a trial basis?’
She looks scared, and angry. Like a gazelle on a nature show that’s about to be ripped apart by a pride of lionesses.
‘In the end we decided that Kaitlin’s a better …’
Charlotte jumps up, turns her back on us and runs like the gazelle that got away. As we watch her disappear around the back of E block, Olivia says with a frown, ‘How’s she ever gonna learn anything if she won’t listen to a person’s reasons?’
‘Hey … I like your top, Miss!’ Billy’s eyes are wide with admiration. Miss Larsen has just removed her white jumper to reveal a clingy pink top that shows her stomach. It was actually a bit cool this morning. I guess Billy’s happy that it’s warming up again. Miss Larsen’s wearing a silver belly bar with two tiny blue butterflies nestled in her navel.
‘Do you work out?’ Billy squawks.
‘Sometimes.’ She sounds a little shy. ‘I go to the gym when I get the chance.’
‘Can I go with you next time?’
Miss Larsen’s face turns red. ‘Billy,’ she says, ‘let’s get back to business.’
We’re sitting in a circle like we did for our first drama class. But it seems like I’m in a different universe from that day. I’m between Olivia and Tiffany, with Charlotte way across the circle from us. She’s staring at the floor so no one can see her red eyes. She came to home group late this morning and it was obvious she’d been crying. There was an empty seat at the far side of the first row, so she had to let the whole class stare at her as she walked over there and sat down.
‘Now!’ Miss Larsen sounds as if she’s about to give us a good present. ‘We’re going to make up a continuing story. We used to do this when I was at Uni and it was heaps of fun. I’ll say three sentences to start the story, then I’ll choose someone to continue. They say three sentences and choose someone else.’
Choose. I used to hate that word. I imagined that if I was President of the World I’d make it illegal for teachers to tell kids to ‘choose someone.’ It exposes a loner as neatly as when jackals cut off a weak zebra from the herd.
‘Once there was a beautiful fairy named Celeste,’ Miss Larsen begins. ‘She had short spiky blonde hair and freckles. One day she was driving her BMW down Chapel Street, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel to the beat of the music on Triple J, when …’ She pauses and looks around the circle. ‘Justine, you take over now. Three sentences in a nice clear voice.’
I bet she had it planned all along that she’d choose Justine, because she knows nobody else would.
‘Well,’ Justine ponders. She looks worried. ‘Celeste shouldn’t really be driving because she just had like ten beers at the pub …’
Olivia and
Tiffany and several others snicker. I actually thought the story was beginning to get more interesting. Just as well people can’t read my mind.
‘Class,’ Miss Larsen barks, ‘show the speaker respect, please.’
That makes the class snicker even harder. But Justine talks anyway. ‘Plus she was really angry at her boyfriend and she felt like killing him and suddenly she saw him and she speeded up to a hundred k’s an hour and slammed into him and squished him into a bloody blob and then she …’
‘Ah, Justine,’ Miss Larsen interrupts, ‘I think that’s three sentences.’
‘It was?’ Justine looks surprised.
‘Close enough. Choose another person now.’
Everyone looks at the floor. No one wants to be chosen by Justine.
‘Chloe,’ Justine announces. Trying to suck up to her because she used to be her friend for three days.
‘Uh,’ Chloe says. ‘This person saw the accident and called triple O on her mobile. She told the operator there had been an accident. They said they would send an ambulance. Is that enough?’
‘It was three sentences,’ Miss Larsen sighs.
‘Okay, I choose …’
Of course she’ll choose Elise. They’ve been inseparable ever since that first cookery class when I noticed she dumped Justine.
‘Kaitlin!’
I can’t believe it. Why did she say me? Suddenly the answer comes to me: I’m a cool girl. The opposite of what I was at the first home group, when she was too snobby to acknowledge me.
‘Kaitlin?’ Miss Larsen urges. ‘Do you have three sentences for us?’
‘Oh, yeah.’ I think for a minute then say, ‘By this time Celeste had calmed down and she was sorry for killing her boyfriend. She remembered she was a fairy with very strong magic. She snapped the antenna off her BMW and used it for a wand, to touch the bloody mess and make it turn back into her handsome boyfriend.’
I take a quick scan around the circle. No one seems to think that was too dorky. Matthew gives me the thumbs-up sign. Then Justine looks at me with a weird grin and says wistfully, ‘I wish that could really happen.’
‘Look what I got,’ Olivia says, pulling a folded piece of paper out of the pocket of her maroon and grey dress. We’re back at our spot, sitting in a circle on the grass with our lunches on our laps. Olivia tosses the paper onto the ground in the middle of our circle. It has Olivia written on it in black texta, and underneath that there’s a drawing of a cow with huge udders and a sour expression on its face. I could never draw a cartoon that good.
‘I can guess who gave you that,’ I say.
‘Yeah. She pushed it through the slot in my locker. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of opening it in the locker room. She might have been watching.’
I glance around. ‘Can’t see her watching now.’
Tiffany snatches up the note, opens it and reads:
Dear Cow,
You think you’re so smart kicking me out but you’re not because I was going to leave anyway. You chose Kaitlin because she’s a total suck who would never stand up to anybody. Have fun with her because I don’t want to be friends with you or your herd of cows ever again.
‘Ha!’ Tiffany says, crumpling the note into a ball and throwing it in the air. ‘Who cares what she wants?’
‘As if she was gonna leave,’ Olivia scoffs. ‘If she thinks she can get by with calling me a cow, she’s even stupider than I thought.’
Anger is burning inside me. Charlotte doesn’t know one thing about whether I can stand up for myself! ‘I’m not a total suck,’ I say.
Tiffany takes a bite of her Vegemite sandwich. ‘No way. You’re the one who thought of Mrs McPain’s name.’
And right now I’m glad I did.
‘How are we gonna get back at her for this?’ Olivia asks viciously.
I bet I could think of a few choice names to call Charlotte. ‘We could stick a note through the slot in her locker,’ I suggest.
‘Yeah,’ Tiffany nods in agreement, ‘that’s a great idea.’
‘Mum, what are you doing?’
I’ve just come into the kitchen after finishing my maths homework. Mum has her oven mitt on and she’s getting a bunch of little quiches out of the oven even though it must be at least forty degrees out. The table is absolutely groaning with food: a bowl of olives, a wheel of camembert, a loaf of cheese and bacon bread, boxes of Pizza and Barbecue and Cheddar Shapes. She shoves the mini quiches onto a plate and sets them amongst the forest of goodies.
‘Are we having visitors?’ I ask.
‘No.’
‘Then why the feast?’
‘Because I found that Weight Watchers coupon.’
‘So you decided to get out every bit of food in the house?’
‘Yes. I’m having a final fling, so I weigh as much as I can for the first meeting. I don’t want any fattening food around after this. You can have some, too.’
‘You mean you’re really going?’
‘Yep,’ she says in a resigned voice. ‘I figure there’s nothing I can do about turning forty, but I don’t have to go through middle age looking like a prize heifer. My first meeting’s tomorrow night.’
I can’t believe Mum took the advice I hid in the M&M’s. I don’t know what to say, so I go over and give her a big hug. She hugs me back. As she pats me on the shoulder she tells me, ‘By the way, that coupon was five years out of date. But I called the local club and they said they’d honour it anyway.’
‘Do you think our parents would have had us if they’d had to get a licence first?’ I ask.
‘Who cares?’ Olivia yawns. ‘This is a stupid topic. I wish we would of got the one about reality TV.’
We’re in the library for English, researching our debating topics. Mrs McBain spent the whole of yesterday’s lesson explaining how to debate and then she showed us a sample video of a year ten team. I liked how the rules were spelled out really clearly, for example how long each speaker was allowed to talk, and who had the responsibility for introducing each bit of the argument. Just the opposite of life, where you never know how your words will be judged.
‘Let’s write that note to Charlotte,’ Tiffany says.
‘Now?’ I ask. I look over at Vi and La, who already have a heap of books in front of them and are busily scribbling down ideas. They’re our opposition. We’re the affirmative team for this subject and they, along with Justine, are the negative.
‘It’s a perfect time,’ Olivia says, ‘we’ll just put some books in front of us for camouflage.’
‘We’ve got like two weeks to get ready for the debate,’ Tiffany points out. As she gets up to grab some books, I think how Vi and La took Justine into their team as if she’s a normal kid. I guess they got to know her in cookery. Or maybe they don’t understand how the class works.
‘Here we are!’ Tiffany dumps the books on our table.
Tiffany rips a page out of her exercise book and shoves it in front of me. ‘You do the writing,’ she commands.
‘Me?’ I gasp. I seem to be specialising in one syllable sentences today.
‘You’re a good writer,’ Olivia reminds me.
‘Yeah,’ Tiffany agrees, ‘you won McPain’s competition.’
Every time they call her that, I feel a sharp pain between my eyes. In some ways, I wish I’d never thought of that name. But what better way could I have come up with to show I can stand up for myself?
Matthew’s voice rises in excitement. ‘We could say how Survivor teaches you what to do if you ever get stranded on a deserted island, or in the outback!’
‘Keep it down, Matthew,’ Mrs McBain cautions. ‘You want to keep your good points secret till it’s time to debate.’
Matthew and Stephen are a team with Tristan. Obviously they’ve started work on their topic. I suddenly feel wistful for the last term of grade six, when Mr Callaghan let the boys and I have extra time on the Internet so we could research for the interschool trivia challenges. He was so proud
of us for getting to regional level.
‘Come on,’ Tiffany urges, shaking the paper in front of my face, ‘get started.’
‘What should I say?’
‘You should know, you’re the writer!’
Talk about pressure. I look around this library, four times bigger than the one we had at primary school, and I have a sudden vision of me and Matthew and Stephen, sitting at that desk beside the animal behaviour section. Researching our hearts out. The nerdiest trio this side of the Dividing Range. Ask us what the capital of Sweden is, or the name for a baby swan …
I can’t let that happen! I can’t blow the best chance I’ve ever had. We’re choosing someone to be with us the whole way through high school.
‘How about Dear Wildebeest?’
‘What’s a wildebeest?’ Tiffany’s perfect blond eyebrows are furrowed in confusion.
‘It’s one of those African animals, kind of like a deer, that gets eaten by lions.’
‘That sounds good.’ Olivia nods in approval. ‘Put in how she buys her clothes at Kmart.’
I take my green gel pen, my least favourite colour, out of my pencil case and begin to write:
Dear Wildebeest,
It’s a good thing you don’t want to be friends with us because you were never a permanent part of our group anyway. Did you forget that? Did you also forget you got your coolest top at Kmart and your idea of a great brand name is Black and Gold? And I wouldn’t talk about other people being sucks if I were you. Because you, if you haven’t noticed, are a slimy little bottom feeder. Go suck on some algae.
Worst wishes,
the Lionesses
Term in Year Seven Page 8