by Pip Harry
They always sit in the same spot – under the glass atrium next to the oval. Nobody else sits there. They wouldn’t dare. It’s marked territory.
Of course my spill doesn’t go unnoticed. Bella Newington picks up one of my folders and opens it up like it’s radioactive waste. It’s black, tatty and covered in lovesick doodles. I’ve scribbled Nate’s name inside a bleeding heart. Of course, she finds it.
‘Oooh, who’s Nate? Do you heart him?’ she titters.
I make a grab for the folder, my face burning up.
‘Give it back,’ I say, realising this is the most contact I have ever had with the famous Bella. We are practically having a conversation.
She swings it in front of her body, taunting me.
‘Why are you so pale?’ asks Bella. ‘Do you dye your hair that black colour? Because it looks really ugly.’
Her friends laugh along like this is entertainment.
I reach for the folder but Bella pulls it back against her chest.
‘Settle down, Goth girl,’ says Bella. ‘Or will you put a curse on me if I don’t give it back?’
I make another snatch and get it this time.
‘Freak,’ says Bella, dismissing me with a pageant smile.
As I walk away, grasping my books, I pretend that Annie and Nate are walking on either side of me, holding my hands tightly. It helps me feel better. If it wasn’t for them I’d still be the mousey ginger girl who everyone ignored. I started dressing Goth last year. There’s more to it than just what you wear but you have to start somewhere. Annie was already into the scene. She’s more of a punk Goth – bondage pants, studs and spikes. She’s not into labels so she likes to sew her own gear or alter op-shop bargains. She helped me find my look too.
*
The day that I became a Goth had been hell.
‘Why should I even get out of bed if nobody acknowledges my existence? I blurted to Annie as she let me into her messy, comforting house, covered in cat hair, unfolded washing, bits of off-cut material and strange art projects. I hadn’t talked to anyone all day. Not even a teacher. I had sat, like an invisible slug, in class after class, right through lunch and all the way through to the final bell. Had I become transparent overnight?
On the tram I didn’t even bother buying a ticket because I knew nobody would check it. I felt like someone might try to sit on my lap.
‘Can you even see me? It’s like I’m invisible,’ I said.
Annie gave me a hug.
‘I can see you. Do you need a little pick-me-up?’ Annie asked. ‘Mum’s out. Not that she would mind or anything.’
‘Yeah. What have you got?’
Annie grabbed my hand and led me outside. ‘Come with me.’ She lit a patchouli stick to mask the smoke and we sat down in mouldy deck chairs.
The garden was an impenetrable jungle of weeds and overgrown plants, old furniture and sculptures Annie had fashioned out of metal, wood and clay that had been left to rot in the elements. Annie and her mum were both hoarders.
Annie poured me a coffee mug of wine from a cask. She lit up a joint nicked from her mum’s stash.
‘I don’t know how you stand it,’ said Annie, passing me the joint. ‘All those pointless rules, that awful uniform.’
I looked down at my drab school dress. ‘I hate wearing this thing,’ I said, pulling at it.
I inhaled slowly, feeling my heart rate slow and a warm glow return to my body.
‘I’m not going back tomorrow,’ I decided. ‘Can you meet me in the city?’
Annie shrugged, as if it was the easiest thing in the world to wag classes.
‘Sure. Wanna go to the gallery?’
I nodded, took a swig of wine and smiled for the first time all day.
‘What would I do without you?’
She sat up, clapped her hands. ‘Oooh. I know how to cheer you up. I’ve been sewing today. I’ve got this wicked new dress. It’d fit you perfectly, I reckon.’
I felt a rush of excitement. ‘No, that’s yours,’ I said. But we both knew I wanted it.
‘Just try it on,’ Annie said. She stubbed the joint into an ashtray and leapt up, just as amped as I was.
‘Come on. Nate will be here soon, let’s surprise him.’
The dress was hanging from a post of Annie’s antique wrought-iron bed. It was beautiful: long, romantic and made out of dark red satin and lace. I nearly cried when I put it on and the zip did up at the back. Annie is smaller than me and it wasn’t her style. She made it for me.
‘Turn around,’ Annie said. She wound a choker around my neck – a silver black widow spider pendant hung on a web of black leather. I put my palm up to it. ‘Are you sure?’ I asked.
‘Yes. Keep it. I have others.’
Looking through her closet, she kicked thick boots my way and threw me a pair of tights. She plopped a velvet hat on my head, then took it off. Tried a few wigs. Took them off too. When I was dressed she marched me to the mirror. The girl looking back at me was already different. She looked taller. Her shoulders weren’t hunched over and her mouth was upturned into a smile.
‘I love it,’ we said together.
‘Yeah, but what can we do about your hair?’ she said, winding a strand of my red locks around her finger.
‘Dye it,’ I said, feeling bold. ‘Like yours.’
*
I stood in Annie’s mildewed shower, watching the black dye wash out of my hair and swirl down the drain like an oil slick. My depressing day was washing down that drain along with the chemicals that burned the red out of my hair follicles.
‘Kate! Are you nearly ready?’ Annie asked, sticking her head around the door. ‘Nate’s here.’
I tipped my face to the water and closed my eyes, letting the hot water run down my neck. I would be in big trouble at home but I didn’t care.
‘Ready!’ I said.
After Annie blow-dried my hair, she tipped out her make-up bag. There was lots of it. I’d been wearing eyeliner and a bit of lip gloss for a few years but this was a new level. Annie wiped my skin with pale foundation, removing every blemish, freckle and trace of tan. I peeked in the mirror and saw a cadaver staring back.
‘Don’t look!’ Annie said, swinging my chair around so I couldn’t see. ‘It’s not finished.’
She took out thick black liner and pressed the pencil under my eyelids. Then she dusted my lids with charcoal powder and caked my lashes with mascara. She was concentrating really hard, breathing in my face and squinting her eyes, the tip of her tongue poking out. The finishing touch was a slick of dark red gloss on my lips.
‘There. Done,’ she said. ‘Let’s show Nate.’
Nate was sitting in a beanbag, playing with his phone as I emerged shyly from Annie’s bedroom.
‘Check. Kate. Out,’ Annie said.
It was a total Cinderella moment and Nate my Prince Charming. If Prince Charming could wear a ripped T-shirt and baggy jeans with chains hanging off them.
‘Hey Nate,’ I said, suddenly feeling self-conscious. I wanted to say: Is it too much make-up? Do I look like a try-hard? But instead I just asked: ‘What do you think?’
Nate had no idea but I was actually holding my breath while I waited for his verdict. He sat up and blinked at me, his mouth open.
‘You look like a different person,’ he said. ‘Where’s schoolgirl Kate?’
‘Do you like it?’ I said eagerly.
‘Hell yeah,’ he said as his phone beeped.
He looked down at the screen and smiled. A faraway, sexy smile I wished was for me.
Annie and Nate walked me to the tram stop as the sky darkened and the streetlights blinked on. I felt like a celebrity. People whispered and gave us looks as we walked past, arms wound together.
‘Are you
sure I look okay?’ I asked.
‘You look beautiful,’ said Annie.
‘Like one of us now,’ Nate agreed.
Annie said I could keep her clothes as long as I wanted. She was going to make me more and take me op shopping.
I felt stronger as a Goth. I finally felt like myself. Really myself. Like how I felt on the inside was how I looked on the outside too. I matched.
‘You are not invisible,’ Annie whispered as my tram appeared on the top of the hill. ‘You are Kate Elliot. Goddess of the dark side.’
Mum didn’t share Annie’s excitement for my new look. As soon as I walked in the house she demanded I scrub every last trace of individuality from my face.
‘What have you done to yourself?’ she said, another gem from the Big Book of Parenting Clichés.
‘Don’t you like it?’ I said.
‘You have lovely hair. Why would you dye it black?’
‘I like it better. I don’t look like a ranga anymore.’
Mum rolled her eyes. ‘Let’s start with the make-up. Go and have a shower and take it off before your sister sees you. You’ll scare her to death.’
‘No,’ I said, raising my voice. ‘I like it. I’m keeping it on. Deal with it.’
Dad wandered in to check out the commotion.
‘What’s new, pussycat?’ he asked me. I turned around and showed him what we were fighting about.
‘Whoa, got yourself a bit of a makeover, Kate?’ he said.
‘Mum says I have to take it all off.’
‘She’s experimenting, Issy, let her be. Remember when you shaved a peace sign into your scalp for that anti-war rally? Your parents gave you a month to grow it back or they were going to cut you out of the family trust. I remember exactly where you told your mum to shove it.’
Mum gave Dad a look like she wanted to slice him in half and he stopped chuckling to himself. ‘That was totally different. I was a grown woman,’ Mum says. ‘So you’re completely okay with our teenage daughter dressing like she’s stepped out of a crypt?’
Dad shrugged. ‘I don’t have a problem with our daughter being an individual. And you shouldn’t either.’
I sensed a small victory. It was unexpected so I seized it while I could.
‘I’ll take the make-up off,’ I countered, ‘but I want to dress like this on weekends.’
‘Fine. But don’t expect me to like it.’ Mum looked at Dad and I could tell they were going to have it out later behind the closed door of their bedroom.
‘Way to get my back, David,’ Mum said. Then she walked out of the room.
Dad smiled and looked me up and down.
‘Goth?’ he asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘You look great, kiddo. Scary but great. Now get upstairs and tone it down before dinner. I’ll talk your Mum around. She wore some whacky get-ups herself. Before all those boring grey work suits.’
I climbed the stairs to my bedroom, elated.
I was a Goth. And no one was taking that away from me.
6
We’re all in lockdown for a mandatory weekend in school. Apart from the Punks and Princesses social, the teachers have organised a ‘friendly’ softball match at the park. Tomorrow there’s a working bee where we’re all enlisted to help clean the common rooms. They say it’s fun bonding but I reckon it’s slave labour. I might call the child protection authorities to come and make a bust.
The social seems a slightly better option than hanging around a windswept oval dodging a ball in the nose, followed by a sad sausage sizzle. But I hope to be able to skip both and just stay in our room and read. I don’t feel up to pretending our dining hall is a nightclub, just because they’ve put up some balloons and let someone play bad music.
Harriet and Jess preen over the final touches to their princess outfits. Harriet takes photos on her phone, holding her arm outstretched, nearly pushing Jess out of the frame. ‘Okay. Now take a sexy one. Just of me,’ she orders Jess.
Jess aims the lens at Harriet as she squints her eyes and purses her lips. She looks more constipated than sexy.
‘Let me see. Hot. Grant will love it,’ decides Harriet. She presses send, even though she’s seeing him in half an hour.
Jess scrutinises the photos and frowns. ‘Harriet, do I really look this ugly?’
Jess has borrowed a stiff pink skirt and a puffy-sleeved shirt from Harriet. They’re a size too small and make her shoulders look even squarer, the fabric straining to cover her V-shaped back. She pulls at the skirt, trying to stretch it over her stocky thighs.
Harriet pauses for a moment and takes in Jess’s wonky lipstick and high heels she can barely stand up in. ‘You look fine,’ she says, turning back to the mirror to angle a bejewelled tiara on her head.
During the day Harriet is bulletproof. At night she still cries when she thinks everyone is asleep. I’m onto her. She’s not the happy-go-lucky popular girl that everyone thinks she is. Jess hoiks up her stockings and twists her skirt around, looking uncomfortable.
‘You look like a drag queen, Jess,’ says Maddy coolly. Maddy’s right but her bluntness is embarrassing. Even I feel like rushing to Jess’s defence.
Jess’s eyes fill with tears. ‘I knew it!’ she says. She rips off her outfit and throws it into a puffy taffeta pile on the floor. ‘I’m just going punk. That was what I wanted to do in the first place.’ She looks accusingly at Harriet. ‘Except you wouldn’t let me.’
Harriet layers her lip gloss with a fine coating of glitter. ‘I just said you’d look more butch as a punk,’ says Harriet, never taking her eyes off the mirror. ‘But if that’s the look you’re going for . . .’
Jess’s face turns bright red and tears shine in her eyes. ‘What do you mean?’ she says, her voice wobbling.
‘Nothing. Just go punk. Whatever. We have to go soon.’
As Jess frantically pulls together a new punk outfit I take a big bite of a Mars Bar. I’ve already screwed up my diet by having a chocolate doughnut and a sausage roll with sauce from the milk bar. Might as well just pig out. But Maddy won’t be letting me stay in without a fight.
‘Kate! What are you doing in bed?’ she asks, pulling the covers off. ‘Get up, get dressed.’
‘I don’t have anything to wear.’
Your cupboard is full of punky stuff,’ says Maddy. ‘Just chuck something on and I’ll do your hair with gel.’
‘No touching my hair,’ I say. It’s backcombed and looks really good today.
Maddy opens the door to our closet and pulls out a pleated black skirt, boots and a velvet jacket. ‘Perfect,’ she breathes. ‘Wait. You need one more thing.’
She holds up a large silver safety pin, brandishing it like a weapon. ‘Just hold still,’ she says. She pushes the sharp point into the fleshy pea of my earlobe. I jump out of bed, screaming.
‘Maddy!’
‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘But you’re out of bed now . . .’
‘Will we at least be able to get some alcohol?’ I ask. I miss the dizzy numbness of drinking. Feeling like I’ve put my brain on a merry-go-round.
‘Officially? No. Unofficially. Yes.’
‘All right. I’ll go.’
I think even Maddy is surprised by the swiftness of my decision.
Maddy links her arm into mine as we stride across the quad towards the muffled sound of music. She is wearing jeans cut into strips with a pair of scissors, which show off the curve just below her bum, and a pair of Doc Martens. She’s borrowed some of my jewellery and it looks good on her.
Kids mill about with coloured mohawks, fake silver spikes through their noses, ripped T-shirts, leather jackets and stick-on tats. For once I don’t look out of place. A few guys thud around the quad kicking a football and yelling in deep, booming voices.
&nb
sp; ‘Come on, Ollie! Pass the ball!’ shouts a stringy guy, dressed bravely in a ripped princess dress, sneakers and tiara.
Maddy and I exchange a look.
Mine says: ‘These guys suck. Don’t you think?’
Hers says: ‘These guys are cute. Don’t you think?’
The ball skids across our path and Ollie McKenzie – famous for captaining the footy team and bedding a series of Year Eleven girls in the same group – tumbles after it, tripping and sprawling on the hard ground.
At first I think he might be hurt but he wipes the stones and specks of blood from his palms, looks up and laughs hysterically. So do his friends.
‘Give us a hand, would you,’ says Ollie to Maddy, stretching out his arm, which has an anarchy symbol scrawled in red Texta along his bicep. He holds her hand for a moment too long, then pulls himself up, nearly toppling Maddy over with him. Maybe that was the idea. ‘What’s your name then?’ he asks her.
He doesn’t ask my name. I don’t expect him to. I’m invisible to guys like Ollie. They don’t chase me on the trams like the girls with bouncy ponytails, prefect badges and big racks. They avoid me like I have an STI. Sometimes they point and say nasty things loud enough so I can hear. I give them Black Death looks and play my iPod so loud my ears feel like they’re bleeding.
‘Maddy Minogue.’
When Maddy says her name, Ollie’s eyes light up and his lips turn into something between a sneer and a smirk. ‘Ahh, the famous Maddy Minogue. Danni and Kylie’s little sister?’
The guys start jeering from across the quad. Then one of them says, ‘Come on, Ollie, stop chatting up chicks and throw us the ball, would ya?’
‘Yeah. Owright!’ He looks mildly embarrassed, punting the ball aggressively across the quad.
‘See you in there,’ he says to Maddy, who shrugs and keeps walking.
I get the feeling Ollie won’t be her only offer this afternoon.
Inside it’s hot and stinks like bad aftershave. The teachers confiscate a slab of beer one of the guys tries to smuggle down the back of the hall. Anyone who’s even a little bit drunk gets interrogated and sent back to the boarding house in disgrace, a phone call to their parents to follow.