Was He The Queen?!

by Dillie Dorian

  “I’ll walk with you guys,” said Rachel. “I love a walk.”

  “You’re being ridiculous,” snapped Chantalle. “I’ll pay for one of you and Keisha can pay for the other.”

  They did pay, angrily, and we were off on our way to Rindi’s…

  #12 Denial & Embracement

  Despite meticulous planning – meticulous planning which had made me late for the family phonecall – Keisha and Chantalle successfully hijacked another get-together.

  The schedule according to me and Rindi had been:

  1) Rent a film first because we’d be tired from all that walking from town we didn’t have to do in the end. (Because of Chan and Keisha, this ended up being Mean Girls – a movie which according to them is impossible to get bored with, and which even I’ve seen more times than I can count.)

  2) Makeup and hair. (Because of Chan and Keisha, this evolved into a dressed-in-the-dark style competition for the most accurate application. They’d suggested we do each other’s makeup, but me and Rindi vetoed that in case we accidentally blinded someone with a pencil. Keisha won.)

  3) Bake some cupcakes and add crazy toppings. (Rindi had forgotten to buy the stuff for that, and anyway C and K, who hadn’t really been snacking with us, both thought it would make us all fat.)

  4) Muck about on the computer after her parents had gone to bed. (C and K took over and spent the whole time checking out the MySpace profiles of guys the rest of us had never heard of.)

  5) Truth or dare, which never gets old. (Turns out, it actually does. I think you know which two girls I’m going to say started coming up with awful stuff like “I dare you to put Rindi’s mum’s bra on Rindi’s dad while he’s asleep!” and I think you know which nutty try-hard managed to achieve this feat without waking anyone.)

  6) Stay up on the PlayStation or watch Friends until everyone’s fallen asleep. (This also didn’t work out, because Keisha and Chantalle kept yawning in a bored way and calling up guys Keish and Rindi knew from back in Primary school to try and get them over. Fortunately, none of them wanted to come over.)

  By the morning, I was more tired of my friends than tired from lack of sleep. I’ve always had trouble sleeping with the telly on, so I had to lie there squinting at Cartoon Network in the dark while everyone else had seemingly no problems nodding off. Keisha and Chan had bored us about boys and subjected us to truth tortures and disastrous dares until way after two anyway. Rachel kept huffing as if nothing in this world could be more of a chore than hanging out at Rindi’s where there was no space and “nothing to do”. (As you know, she also loves my house – not.) Danielle kept overreacting every time someone didn’t want to do her idea, and ended the night with her head under a pillow, mumbling “Everyone hates me” well after me and Dev and Rindi had tired of trying to comfort her. Devon was in hyper-critical mode, so she spoiled the movie and the makeover game and Friends by overanalysing the characters and going on about noxious chemicals and beauty standards, and Rindi seemed pretty ticked off by the time we left in the morning. I slightly wished on her behalf that Fern had been well and they’d been able to have a girls’ night in without the rest of us, because it honestly hadn’t been fun. Planning the sleepover had been more fun. No one noticed that I wasn’t dressed out of a charity shop either, except Devon.

  It was a long slog home, and Harry when he saw me felt the need to point out that I could’ve called for a lift if I was that tired. I hadn’t felt like I could, so maybe he should’ve made that clear sometime before I left. If I’m honest, it just annoyed me to hear that after an hour’s bedraggled walk in the morning.

  Kitty was out at a birthday party when I arrived, and Aimee was back in bitch mode on the top floor, distracting me from the homework I had due on Monday but was realistically too tired to get right.

  “Ew, grey marks on the knees of my capris!”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled. “I didn’t realise. They’ll come out in the wash.”

  “And brown! Ugh, is that cat poo?”

  I searched frantically for the supposed brown mark, and finally located it on my upper shin. “Rindi doesn’t have any pets. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not poo.”

  I didn’t have the energy to be totally honest with her. If I went into how I’d brushed past both dogs in the hallway, and had to lean under my bed to retrieve the Science sheet I was working on, I’d be there all day. I was so sleepy that I wanted to crawl under the covers and ignore the huffing and growling that came across like a desperate bid for attention, but I found that I couldn’t take my mind off Aimee’s problem even for long enough to label the parts of a plant or animal cell. The nuclei stared back beadily, daring me to picture the multiplications going on inside my stepsister right now.

  “Did you tell your dad yet?” I found myself asking.

  “No, and you promised.”

  “I’m not going to tell him,” I reassured her. “But you really have to think about it.”

  “I can’t… I mean, it’s gonna be a bit obvious, y’know, when I suddenly have a baby coming out of me, but-”

  “Aimee,” I said, sternly. “I think you’ll start to show months before you have a baby…”

  “I really don’t think I’ll be having a baby,” she said, stubbornly. It annoyed me the way that her logic kept switching sides – how can you play devil’s advocate with someone who vacillates between denial and embracement? “There’s no way I’m having it. It just won’t happen.”

  “You are having a baby,” I reminded her. “There’s nothing you can do about it, short of having an abortion, but isn’t there a cutoff week for that?”

  “There’s a what now?” she reeled.

  “A cutoff date. I can’t remember how many weeks. It might be in your GCSE Science book.”

  “Why would there be a cutoff date?” Aimee trembled. “Isn’t it the whole point of having an abortion? It’s too late for anything else!”

  I felt sick thinking about it. Just the other day I’d pictured my poor unborn baby brother dead in the womb, so for me it was a bit soon to start swirling up the implications of no cutoff date in my head.

  But it was no use ignoring the question. Aimee was looking at me expectantly, so that I felt like I was her big stepsister.

  “Well, think about my mum’s baby. It’s been growing for seven months. If it’s been that long, it’s just easier for it to be born and then go up for adoption if you don’t want it.”

  “But I’m not seven months pregnant!” she snapped. “If I was, I’d look like your mum.”

  “I didn’t say you were,” I sighed. “Just look in the Science book. I bet it says whether you can have one or not.”

  Aimee looked sullen. “No. You’re right. I don’t think I want to know, because if I’ve got a baby inside me it’s easier for it to get born.”

  I didn’t know what kind of “easy” she was thinking of, amongst the mucky nappies and midnight screams, but even I had to admit that I liked the description of abortion we’d got in PSHE about as much as I liked the prospect of pushing a watermelon out of my girly yuck-hole. At least if you waited and had the baby, there’d be a baby. With the brothers and sister I already had, raising a child didn’t feel like the hard part – but Aimee… she hated all three of them.

  I grabbed Kitty’s “newborn” doll. It was actually bigger than she had been the first time we met. Then, I held it upside down in front of my tummy and moved it slowly downwards until it had entirely passed the zipper of those pink jeans.

  Aimee went white.

  “It’s really not my decision,” I reminded her. “It depends how much you like surgery… and children.”

  #13 tssis! tssis! tsssssis!

  Y’know how it is – right when you’re leant against a nice, warm radiator, zizzing to the gentle lulls of your Spanish teacher’s voice, some few scary words slip your lughole filters and invade your consciousness. On Monday, those words were:

  “…which is why I am taking this opportunity
to remind you that the exchange students are arriving in only two weeks’ time!”

  Whaaaaaat?

  To my last waking knowledge, Señor Campbell had been droning on about holidays in the sun, and how to ask directions to the nearest beach (“playa”), chemist (“farmaceútico”), or disco (“discoteca”). This was news to me in my snug position with Devon jotting down sentences in my exercise book while I snoozed. We had an agreement to take turns, and at current it happened to be my week of relaxation, and her week of labour.

  Devon squeed, shaking me awake. “Alfie!”

  “Mmm…” I mumbled, hanging on tight to the thread of my dreamworld of a holiday in Spain where Jordy was my boyfriend and geeky Gerry nowhere to be found.

  “He’s so lush…” she continued. “And as for your Gerry, Alfie says he’s alright.”

  “Maybe…” I sighed, hazing into the personality-means-nothingness of my daydream. I mean, I haven’t got a problem with people who are great to be with and not so fun to look at – I’d be in that camp, as would virtually every person I know who’s the right age and gender to go out with. Why can’t all people be hot and interesting?

  “Well, Alfie said he’s going to treat me every day. His parents are loaded, and so are Gerry’s!”

  “Dev,” I said. “Your gran’s loaded – why is that a novelty?”

  “Excuse me for finding things to be happy about,” she huffed. “I ran out of other stuff to say.”

  Right… what had happened to her completely unenjoyable attacks on the commercial lifestyle? I couldn’t decide whether it was more annoying to be gone on at by someone who had everything, or someone who was excessively annoyed about other people having everything.

  “There’s a first time for everything,” I told her, rolling my eyes and settling back down against the radiator.

  “And this,” she beamed, “is the first time I get a guy I don’t have to act way normal for.”

  “You don’t act normal for Charlie,” I reminded her. “But since you both seem so sure that you don’t, don’t, don’t fancy each other…”

  “Well, I don’t,” she laughed. “And he’s besottled with Malice anyway. Did you know she’s back at school now?”

  “Besottled?” I repeated, checking I’d heard right. “And yes, I’ve been told a thousand times.”

  “Besotted eightyfold, says he…”

  “Ah,” I concluded, uninterestedly.

  “Oh! Oh! Ben told me something wow, yesterday!”

  Right as I managed to care about something she had to say, Señor Campbell marched over with a big frown on. “Girls! No talking in my classroom. You’ve been at it all lesson, so I’m afraid it’ll be detention for you next week.”

  “Can’t we do it tonight?” Devon volunteered, all sweetness and light, batting her false eyelashes as if to remind him of yet another school rule she could make herself exempt from.

  “Your parents need a day’s notice.”

  “Please?” she begged.

  He sighed. “OK, just this once.”

  “Devon!” I hissed. “Why did you just volunteer us for half an hour of after-school hell?”

  “Then we can still walk home with Charlie after his detention.”

  “That’s an hour now, girls,” Señor Campbell added sternly, on his way back past.

  At the time I was groaning inside – but then again, something good had come of it. The sky was threatening rain for the last half hour Charlie would be spending outside the Languages block.

  * * *

  Prying Aussies should note that I’m not often blessed with detention, but when I am, it’ll be for one of the following:

  1) Talking in class. (I.e. being talked at while trying to sleep.)

  2) Passing notes in class. (I.e. being poked until I reply to “Omigod what should I do?”.)

  3) Chewing gum in class. (It’s a bit of rubber – how is that hampering anyone’s learning?)

  4) Wearing makeup to school. (Well, not to school – I’m often attacked by Keisha and Chantalle at breaktimes as if I’m an emergency reconstruction case.)

  5) Being late for school. (Always the product of one or all of my siblings being slow in the bathroom, kitchen or hallway.)

  Noticing a pattern? My detentions are always, without fail, either directly or indirectly someone else’s fault. (Except when I forget my homework.)

  Amongst Señor Campbell’s Reprobates of the Modern Foreign Language were four Year 7s, Two Year 8s, me and Dev and three other Year 9s we didn’t recognise, and countless slumped down people from somewhere in Key Stage 4.

  All of us were supposed to be doing homework, but there were a considerable amount of concealed mp3 players, mobiles and magazines that I could only spot because I’d been sat right at the back of the room as the probable least likely to reoffend.

  In a room filled with discontented groans, deliberate pen-dropping and the irritating tssis! tssis! tsssssis! of not quite audible music, it proves impossible to do anything constructive towards homework whatsoever, I can tell you.

  Devon pulled out her copy of our latest Art homework sheet: draw an object in a mirrored surface.

  She passed a note. (See? Did I ask for that?) It said: Do you have anything shiny?

  I wrote back: Zak’s got a pretty shiny ego.

  She replied: If I wanted to do a funny shiny object I would’ve done Ben’s greasy face…

  Something twinged in my brain – the thing Ben had told her… that was surely Aimee’s, erm, situation?

  I hastily scribbled: That thing Ben told you? Aimee’s pregnancy, right?

  She almost fell off her chair. I’d caused an involuntary “Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?” on top.

  Señor Campbell span around to glare at us both. “Same time, same place, Monday afternoon!”

  * * *

  Charlie was sat on a table in the hallway of the MFL block, swinging his legs engrossed in whatever band he liked this week, and treating outsiders to that annoying tssis! tssis! tsssssis! tune we all love.

  “You’re not at all wet!” I groaned aloud, watching the rain pound down outside.

  No answer.

  “Charlie!” I tutted, yanking the headphones out. (Possibly a little violently, but oh well.) “You’re not all wet!”

  He jumped and nearly fell off the table. “I know,” he tried to say smugly with a grin, though it looked forced and awkward. “But we’ll all be soaked in a minute.”

  This was true.

  Devon sat down at the table next to him and instructed him to make room for me. “Budge up, grungy-boy!”

  I joined them. “So what’re we gonna do?”

  “Sit here and wait for the rain to stop,” said Devon, defensively.

  “And do what?” I asked, heart set on snuggling up in my room (with uniform and bag out of sight) under a duvet, with a year’s supply of ginger nuts and possibly a pet or two.

  “I don’t know,” she said truthfully. “Maybe Charlie’ll share his music with us?”

  “Maybe he won’t,” snarked my brother, still untangling his wires. “I only have two earpieces and this thing doesn’t have a speaker on it.”

  “Fine by me,” I sighed. “I have no interest in your weird growly music.”

  And that was how I got to sit on a table getting a numb bum next to my sparkly best mate and evil-but-sensitive twin brother, drawing the reflection of the hell outside in the mirror Devon kept in her bag, whilst tolerating the incessant tssis! tssis! tsssssis!-ing and mumbled coos from Devon over whatever song they were listening to that was supposedly cute.

  How long did the rain last? Too long. It went on until I’d finished my homework and the cleaners appeared in their frumpy macs and shooed us away. Forty five minutes it had been, with the fuzzy company of Charlie’s music keeping the beat to my pencil-strokes, and the rain still hadn’t ceased…

  Finally, we had to start walking. If we’d left when me and Dev got out of detention, we would’ve arrived home by now �
�� the more I dwelled on it, the worse I felt. The rain kept bucketing. Devon had a flowery pocket rain-suit (coat and trousers), and Charlie put his hood up, but I didn’t even have a jacket to wear, so my jumper was soaked through in minutes. We trudged on enthusiastically, and before long, stopped avoiding puddles and tramped right through them.

  Charlie and Devon started kicking water at each other, mostly soaking me because I insisted to walk between them and be as obstructive as possible to their annoying flirting. I could’ve pegged her as aquaphobic up until now, what with how she staunchly avoided swimming for PE and designed that bikini that was wholly unfit for submerge, but along she went, kicking and giggling like a three year old with new wellies. My school trousers chafed against my legs as my damp, cold skin gave up all defence against the battering.

  Then, there was a huge gust of wind. Devon’s wail from behind me was deafening. Before I even turned to check what was happening, I spotted the problem. Today’s scarf – red and gold patterned – had blown clear off her head and into the road. We were still on the insanely long one leading away from school, where traffic sped past outside of drop-off and pick-up hours. It wouldn’t be safe to simply step out and get it.

  “That’s my favourite scarf!” I heard her cry. I still hadn’t turned, as I was mesmerised by the horror of four passing cars swooshing over it in a row. “I have to get it!”

  Devon darted into the road behind the cars, desperately fumbling to put her hood back up while she ran. She retrieved the scarf and reached the other side of the street, just as another two cars zoomed towards her. Me and Charlie were both stunned by her impulsiveness.

  “That was stupid!” Charlie shouted, angrily, across the traffic. “Do you know what could’ve happened? You could’ve been smacked down by a car and ended up like Malice. You could’ve died!”

  Inside I agreed, but Devon looked exactly as distraught as he did. Maybe she felt really, really sorry for scaring us so much?

  Nope. “I don’t care, I need it!” she hollered back. “And anyway, I didn’t.”

  We waited what seemed like forever before crossing safely, with cars roaring along the tarmac at impossibly close and taunting intervals. I could certainly see what would make someone take such a risk – it was infuriating – but neither of us was that sort of person.