The Mag Hags

by Lollie Barr

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Mag Hags, The

  ePub ISBN 9781742745169

  Random House Australia Pty Ltd

  Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney, NSW 2060

  www.randomhouse.com.au

  Sydney New York Toronto

  London Auckland Johannesburg

  First published by Random House Australia in 2007

  Copyright © Lollie Barr 2007

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry

  Barr, Lollie.

  The mag hags.

  For secondary school age.

  ISBN 978 1 74166 197 2 (pbk.).

  I. Title.

  A823.4

  Cover photography and imagery: Lollie Barr and Jade Court-Gold

  Cover design by Ellie Exarchos

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Imprint Page

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  For Junie, Dan, Jamali and Narayan

  The early afternoon sun blazed through the window, illuminating the speckles of dust in the air as Mand Hospock sauntered fashionably late into class and scanned the room for a vacant desk. As soon as she saw Cat Dean’s long blonde tresses she was reminded of why she hated this class with every fibre of her being, even though English had always been her favourite subject.

  She sighed, rolled her eyes and looked up at the ceiling fan as it precariously wobbled, half-heartedly churning the turgid air around the classroom. A smirk curled like a snake at the corners of Mand’s mouth as she imagined the fan flying off its axis and decapitating Cat Dean, who was sitting right in front of her.

  Almost telepathically Cat lifted her immaculately manicured fingers and protectively curled her scarlet talons around the back of her neck, then turned and glared at Mand.

  ‘Oh look, Mand’s got a new hairdo,’ she said with the trademark acidic drawl that could scald holes in your soul. ‘Cut it yourself with a pair of nail clippers, Mand? Obviously your mum didn’t do it – she would have been too busy crying over being dumped by a stripper – hence you looking like some kind of retro throwback.’

  A ‘Whoooo!’ went around the classroom. It was common knowledge among the girls that Mand’s mum, Mel, leading hairstylist at A Cut Above, had been dumped by her toy-boy boyfriend Kane Kelly, a male stripper completely devoid of body hair, but now, thanks to bitch-face Dean, the whole class knew.

  ‘Whatever!’ said Mand, a word she used when she couldn’t think of a quick comeback, before slumping down into a chair next to the innocuous Wanda Hong, who was surreptitiously filing her nails under the desk, creating a puddle of chalky remnants in the creases of her school uniform.

  Wanda gave Mand a sympathetic look, which came with equal measures of pity and relief. Like almost everyone else in their year, Wanda knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of one of Cat’s put-downs. Cat had been calling her NUGG (Numero Uno Geek Girl) since Year 7, because of Wanda’s aptitude for maths.

  Despite the fact that Cat’s insults could make you shrivel like a boy in a pair of Speedos on a cold day, Corabelle Askew, or Belle as she preferred to be called, found the episode highly amusing. She enjoyed the cat spats between Mand and Cat as they passed the time in yet another boring English class in an equally boring school. After being expelled last year from King Xavier’s College for Girls, the best private boarding school in the country, Belle was now reduced to watching two suburban girls battle for supremacy as class bitch. It was so not like this at Xav’s, where a true spat would end with hair pulling in the showers before lights out.

  Maggie Jones sat on the other side of the classroom. She was oblivious to the whole commotion as usual, finishing the last chapter of In the Pursuit of Knowledge, written by a Native American chief called Kopi Kon. Her nose was always so far in some book or another that she often missed what was going on in the real world. But she preferred it that way – the slightest whiff of attention could make her blush so red that it looked as though she had a birthmark covering her entire face. Sometimes the boys in the class taunted Maggie just to watch her burn up in front of their eyes.

  As the last few catcalls and whistles from the boys at the back died down, Ms Marrow, with as much authority as she could muster for a teacher one year out of university, tried to get the class’s attention. ‘Okay, okay, keep it down,’ she said, her growing frustration evident. ‘And James, do your zipper up and take that ruler out of your pants or you’ll have a one-way ticket to Mr McTavish’s office. I mean it. Now, class, I’ve got a big announcement to make, so listen carefully because it’s going to affect fifty per cent of your English mark this year.’

  ‘Bone’, as the class had nicknamed the very skinny Ms Marrow, began to explain that all of Baywood High’s eight Year 10 English classes would be undertaking a multimedia project. Students would be grouped together in teams of five to create, design and produce their very own magazine. The brief, Bone said, was to ‘talk directly to your peers’.

  Then came the really big news: parents’ committee chairman, Trevor Bunting, a big man with a bowling-ball beer gut, who was the owner of Baywood’s biggest printers, Bunting, Bunting, Bunting & Daughter, had agreed to print one thousand copies of the winning magazine in full colour. It would be funded by advertising from local businesses, distributed throughout the school and at selected shops around town.

  The buzz grew louder and louder, like a stereo being turned up slowly from one to ten. Mark Thomas leaned over to Stu Williams and whispered something about Baywood Football Club; Gemma Turncoat began chattering to Shaznay Hope about a magazine featuring new boy band 2-Be-A-Man; and Aidan Cole and Tim Billingham were hunched together discussing a computer games mag. The class had spent last term wrestling with ye olde English of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, so the magazine project was a welcome relief.

  Then Ms Marrow dropped the bombshell.

  In her hand she had a list of the groups that would be working together. Wit
h every set of names she read out, the groans became louder. The classroom sounded like a field hospital in the middle of a war zone. What was the woman thinking putting sporty hulk Gav Estery in the same group as spekkie computer-geek Colm Brannigan, skinny indie-boy Todd Daniel, rapper and human-beatbox king Abdul Minary and Dungeons & Dragons-playing, bagpipe- enthusiast Donald McTeddy? Not to mention throwing shopaholic fashion-victim Jessica Humble in with hockey captain Emily Champion, spaced-out hippie chick Misty Minstry, bad-girl motocross champion Paulette Howles and holier-than-thou horse-lover Ginny Tucker?

  Every group Ms Marrow read out was a hotchpotch of personalities and haircuts. Kids who had barely acknowledged each other since arriving at Baywood High in Year 7, and who obviously had zero shared interests, now had to complete the year’s biggest English project together. It was like trying to get a fully grown bull elephant into a sports car – it just didn’t fit.

  When Ms Marrow read out the last group – Wanda Hong, Corabelle Askew, Cat Dean, Mand Hospock and Maggie Jones – it was as if the universe had turned upside down and collapsed in on itself.

  The girls stared at each other in absolute horror.

  ‘No freaking way,’ said Cat Dean, getting to her feet. ‘I’m not going to rely on those dweebophiles for fifty per cent of my English mark!’

  ‘Oh no, oh no,’ said Maggie Jones quietly to herself, peering up through her thick fringe that hung so low it looked as though it was resting on her eyelashes. ‘Not Cat Dean, please not Cat Dean and Mand together.’

  ‘You’ve got to be joking!’ yelled Mand Hospock at the top of her lungs. ‘What next, are you going to put baby kittens in with bloodthirsty ferocious dogs, polar bears with fluffy white seals?’

  That was it – the room suddenly erupted like an unwanted pimple on a hot date on a Saturday night. It was pandemonium: kids standing on chairs yelling to their friends, others pointing and cursing the group they would have to spend an entire term with. The quieter ones disappearing into their own heads to contemplate whether high school could possibly get any worse.

  ‘Quieten down!’ shouted Ms Marrow, her blue eyes bright with frustration. ‘Quieten down. Now!’

  It took Ms Marrow numerous more ‘Quieten downs’, ‘Be quiets’ and ‘Settle down, peoples’ and eventually an extremely firm ‘Shut-up!’ before the class finally fell silent. When she had everyone’s attention she explained that each group would get ten weeks to come up with the magazine concept, assign each person a role, decide what would appear on every page, and then write the features and design the magazine from start to finish. The students had studied journalism and feature writing earlier in the year, so this term’s English classes would be dedicated to learning about everything that went into making a magazine – analysing existing publications, coming up with a concept, a look and a target market, as well as subbing (checking facts, grammar and spelling).

  Ms Marrow then announced that Baywood High’s sexiest teacher, the divine Mr McGary – the reason there had been a one hundred and twenty-three per cent increase in female students taking art as an elective this year – would be on hand to help with all aspects of the visual design. There was a collective swoon from all the girls in the classroom, and a responding jeer from the boys.

  Steve McGary was the reason the word ‘gorgeous’ had been invented. He had a thick head of shaggy hair as favoured by indie-rock boys and dark brown eyes the colour of steaming hot chocolate, framed by the most obscenely long lashes that fanned out and rested on top of his eyebrows. His rippling body looked firm and muscular in his trademark white cotton T-shirt and butt-hugging dark denim jeans. But what really made him so delectable was his smile, which radiated like a beacon of all things good, kind and loving when he turned its full power on you. No wonder Baywood High’s female population had nicknamed him ‘Fit Club’.

  Fit Club would be helping the students with Photoshop and Illustrator, programs his art students were already well versed in. He would also be available to help organise photo shoots and work on logo design.

  Ms Marrow ignored the girls’ excited, hormone-driven chatter at this piece of news and went on to tell the class that by the end of the ten-week period each group would have produced a mock-up magazine that would be presented to the judges, school principal Davvid ‘Daffy’ McTavish and Elvira Kaymer, who had attended Baywood High back in the dark ages – sometime in the early 1980s – and who was now the editor of leading women’s magazine We Woman Weekly, or WWW as it’s known. The judges would then have two weeks until the end of term to pick the winning magazine and the announcement would be made on the last day of school.

  ‘Awwww come on, Miss,’ said Gav Estery, his head in his hands. ‘How can you expect us to do a magazine with people we’ve got nothing in common with?’

  ‘Welcome to the world of work, Mr Estery, where you don’t get to choose your work mates based on the music they listen to,’ replied Ms Marrow. ‘You’re going to have to find your team’s strengths, not concentrate on their weaknesses.’

  ‘The only strength Colm Brannigan has got,’ said Gav, pausing for effect, ‘is the strength of his BO!’

  The whole class laughed except Ms Marrow and Colm, who had a quick whiff of his armpit, just to make sure it was actually a joke.

  ‘That’s enough, Gavin,’ said Ms Marrow. ‘You’ve got to look a bit deeper to find people’s hidden talents. I’m sure there’s more to you than hurdling and football.’

  ‘No, there definitely is not!’ yelled Mand, who for this very reason often found the words ‘disruptive influence’ on her report card. ‘Gav is all muscle and definitely no brains.’

  ‘How would you know, Mand?’ said Cat, like a kitty going in for the kill. ‘Felt his muscle, have you?’

  ‘Ohhhhhh,’ went the class, looking to Mand for a killer comeback, but she just sat in angry silence again.

  Two nil to Cat Dean.

  Ms Marrow handed out the brief and directed all the groups to find a shady spot to have their initial discussion. Disparate groups of students wandered off, barely speaking a word. And the group that contained Wanda, Mand, Maggie, Belle and Cat was more morose than most.

  They looked like an odd bunch. Strawberry blonde Belle with her delicate features, her green eyes firing and her downturned bow mouth set hard and angry, forged ahead. Maggie was head and shoulders above the rest of the gang, her gangly frame and elfin features lost beneath her fringe. She looked incongruous next to little Wanda Hong who, at five foot two, was struggling to keep up with Maggie’s long-legged strides. Cat followed, scowling as she furiously texted her outrage to her friends, who were doing exactly the same thing elsewhere around the grounds. Meanwhile, Mand deliberately hung back, her trademark black jumper swamping her school uniform and her dyed jet-black hair, layered to within an inch of its life, flapping in the wind.

  The girls found shade under the large oak tree near the front gate of the school and sprawled out, metres apart. A heavy silence hung in the air as they avoided even looking at each other. Wanda picked at a blade of grass before slitting it into three and creating a fine grass plait, Corabelle squeezed the in-grown hairs on her legs, while Cat checked her mobile phone, and Maggie stared off vacantly into the distance.

  ‘Well,’ said Mand eventually, breaking the silence. ‘What are we going to do? Just sit here and ignore each other in the vain hope that a magazine will magically appear and save us from having to repeat Year 10?’

  ‘We could start by reading the brief,’ said Maggie, blushing furiously as she spoke.

  ‘I know, let’s read the brief,’ said Belle, ignoring Maggie.

  Commission

  To: Year 10 English Class

  From: Ms Marrow

  Deadline: 10 December

  Key message: Talk directly to your reader

  The Brief

  This is your opportunity to invent a magazine that your peers will want to read. Your job is to entertain, inspire and educate. Be as creative as possibl
e – the judges are looking for an innovative magazine with bags of style, and attitude. Remember, it has to talk directly to your readers, so they must be able to relate to the content, the photographs and the issues you address.

  As a group, decide what you want your magazine to be about. Come up with some keywords that encapsulate your vision; for example, if you’re doing an adventure magazine, it may be adrenaline, pleasure and excitement. Next you will need to form your team, so appoint an editor, art director, features editor, writer and any other positions you feel relevant. To have a shot at being the winning magazine you will need to discover each other’s strengths and work together effectively to create the winning publication.

  Good luck!

  ‘It’s obvious I should be the editor,’ said Cat after she had finished reading the brief. ‘I love magazines. I buy Celeb Insider religiously every week.’

  ‘What, so you know Vienna Regent’s shoe size and the size and texture of her Labradoodle’s poo and suddenly you’re the expert?’ said Mand. ‘Vienna Regent is as shallow as an empty Petri dish.’

  ‘Vienna Regent is a role model to a generation of women. She’s a businesswoman in charge of her own image and she’s making loads of cash in the process,’ replied Cat, who liked to imitate Vienna’s overbleached blonde hair, blunt-cut fringe, barely-there clothes and constant pout. ‘As if you’d have any idea with your grungy outlook on life.’

  ‘Grungy?’ said Mand. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Your tree-hugging, vegetarian, Jesus-sandal-wearing, save-the-planet nonsense, that’s what it means,’ said Cat. ‘Don’t you see the irony? Handing out leaflets about global warming is cutting down more trees and making more pollution?’