The Mag Hags

by Lollie Barr

  ‘What’s up?’ asked Belle when she arrived half an hour later. She looked concerned as she slid in beside Wanda.

  ‘Belle, I’m going to cut to the chase here, okay?’ said Cat, who was rather enjoying the drama. ‘We just heard Reanne saying she was going to pack you off to boarding school!’

  ‘What?’ said Belle, looking confused. ‘How … how did you find out?’

  ‘We were in Glitz and Cat was trying on this vile catsuit – sorry Cat, but it was pretty awful,’ explained Wanda breathlessly, ‘and we overheard her in the change room. She was talking about spending all your dad’s money too.’

  ‘I knew it,’ said Belle. ‘She couldn’t love him, she just wants his cash.’ Belle put her head in her hands. ‘What am I going to do?’

  Just at that moment Kylie Mannigan came strolling over. ‘Cat,’ she said, completely ignoring Wanda and Belle, ‘there’s a whole table of Us’s over there, wondering what you’re doing on a Saturday morning with a couple of Them’s.’

  Cat looked flustered – she’d been sprung! This was serious. But her loyalties were divided; she didn’t really want to leave Belle, but she felt like she had no choice. ‘As if,’ she said, getting up from the booth. ‘I’m not hanging out with Them’s, actually Kylie. We are forced to inhabit in a Them universe sometimes because of schoolwork, you know. I was just leaving.’

  She slid out of the booth and left without saying goodbye.

  ‘Geez, I was beginning to think Cat was actually bearable,’ said Wanda. ‘But she really is a total bitch.’

  ‘Us girls never change,’ said Belle. ‘They have to be in their exclusive little club because it makes them feel superior. If they’re excluded, it’s like their whole world crashes down around their ears. It’s sad.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ said Wanda, but she secretly wished she was cool enough to be an Us rather than a Them. ‘So, are you going to tell your dad about what Reanne said?’

  ‘He’d never believe me – whenever I complain about her, he says I need to sort it out with her myself. He’s got his lust goggles on. My dad thinks the sun shines out of her proverbial.’

  ‘If there’s anything I can do to help, Belle,’ said Wanda, reaching over and touching Belle’s hand quickly, in a show of support.

  Belle felt as though she was suddenly going to burst into tears, something she hadn’t done since getting expelled from King Xavier’s. ‘Thanks. I really appreciate that.’

  ‘Oh, I meant to tell you,’ said Wanda. ‘I’ve been working on the clothes for the shoot. Do you want to come over to my place and check them out?’

  ‘I’d love to,’ said Belle. ‘I could do with a distraction. I really don’t want to go home in case she’s there.’

  When the girls went to pay at the counter, Wanda was told the bill had already been paid. ‘Put your money away, sugar,’ said Hoolio. ‘Your blonde friend said it was on her.’ Well, that was a turn-up for the books. Maybe Cat felt bad about being such a cow, after all.

  Mr Hong arrived at the house at the same time as the girls, after a Saturday-morning round of golf. ‘Hello, honey,’ he said, getting out of his car. ‘Not been shopping again, have you?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Wanda who, like her mum, wasn’t prone to telling the truth about what she bought at the shopping mall. ‘Dad, this is Corabelle Askew, from my magazine group.’

  ‘Hello Corabelle,’ said Mr Hong. ‘I know your dad. Say hi to him for me.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Belle. ‘I will.’

  The girls headed off to the sanctity of Wanda’s bedroom, where Wanda put on Jason Jones’s album Buy this baby (You know you want it), which encompassed his Popstarz journey, so was mainly covers. His cute, almost girlie voice bounced off the walls, reverberating about the bedroom.

  ‘So what have you made?’ said Belle.

  ‘I’ve been trawling around all the op shops in town,’ said Wanda. ‘I thought we could style the shoot with a mixture of old and new.’

  Wanda pulled two black bin liners out of her wardrobe and emptied them on the bed. There was a pair of skin-tight silver leggings, a silver and purple A-line dress from the 1960s, a glittery sky-blue cardigan with bat-wing sleeves, a silver fake-leather jacket, and a silver glomesh boob-tube dress.

  ‘Wow, these are so cool,’ said Belle.

  ‘I think Maggie will look amazing in this,’ said Wanda, holding up the boob-tube dress.

  ‘I was going to suggest to Mand she ask her mum to come and do the hair for the shoot. What do you think?’

  ‘Wicked idea!’

  Wanda pulled a coathanger out of her wardrobe with a cute silver pleated skirt and a tiny white top held together with huge silver safety pins. ‘Do you like this outfit? I thought it would really suit your figure’.

  ‘Are you serious? You made this?’ Belle peered at the detail in the pleats.

  Wanda nodded.

  ‘You are so talented!’ asked Belle, holding the outfit against herself. ‘You should be a fashion designer.’

  ‘My parents don’t think of fashion as a … career option. They want me to have a stable profession like theirs.’

  ‘At least your parents have dreams for you,’ said Belle. ‘I don’t know if my father even knows I exist any more. He’ll probably be quite happy to get rid of me.’

  Wanda tried to imagine what it would be like to feel so unwanted. ‘Are you an only child too?’

  ‘No, I have a brother who’s sixteen – Zeb … Zebadiah.’ Belle suddenly looked misty-eyed. ‘We used to be close until we were both packed off to boarding school. Now he rarely bothers to come home. Dad found it hard to cope with two kids, after Mum died …’

  Belle left the sentence suspended in the air like a kite tangled in telegraph wires, but Wanda was sensitive enough not to push her. After all, losing your mum, that was so, so heavy, Wanda couldn’t even imagine life without hers, even if she could be a nagging control freak sometimes.

  Belle sat on the pink bed, lost in thought. ‘I’ve got to work out a way to make my dad realise what Reanne is up to.’

  ‘Look, Cat knows what’s going on, so I reckon it’s worth telling Mand and Maggie,’ said Wanda. ‘After all, with our five brains, I’m sure we can come up with something. Let’s call a Mag Hags meeting.’

  Although she never would have said it out loud, just having Wanda there made the burden a little easier to bear, especially as Belle knew that she faced a lonely weekend ahead, trying to avoid her Dad and Reanne.

  Monday was the slowest day of the week at Baywood High. It seemed to last an eternity. The boredom began with school assembly; Mr McTavish would start the day with ‘Good morning Baywood!’ like he was a rock star on stage at a stadium concert, which he secretly felt like with nine hundred and forty-eight pairs of eyes staring up at him. The eight periods of the day felt like twenty-four, and to think that there were another four whole school days until the weekend. No wonder of all the days of the week, Monday felt the most persecuted.

  When the final bell rang, it was like being released from a prison of boring boringdom. The five girls made their way to Hoolio’s and settled in. Jez, the cute waiter whose sparkly hazel eyes mesmerised all the girls in town, was working. The girls spent a long time deciding on their order, primarily as a way of keeping Jez nearby, and in the end settled on a jug of tropical fruit cocktail.

  ‘Nice bum!’ said Cat as the six-foot-one-inch thing of hotness walked away.

  ‘Second that motion,’ said Mand, her eyes following Jez’s bottom all the way to the kitchen.

  ‘Okay, we’ve called this special meeting because Belle’s got a problem,’ declared Wanda. ‘Reanne’s planning on ripping off Belle’s dad and sending Belle to boarding school.’

  ‘Oh, Belle!’ said Maggie. ‘That’s so crap!’

  ‘No way!’ said Mand. ‘That skinny bitch!

  ‘I don’t want to burden you girls with my problems,’ said Belle, suddenly feeling exposed. ‘It’s not like, you know, we
’re mates or anything.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Mand, who liked to fight against anything unjust. ‘We’ve got to stop that walking cliché of an evil stepmother.’

  ‘I need hard evidence,’ said Belle. ‘My father is so into Reanne that he’s blind. I don’t think he’d believe me without it.’

  ‘Look, my mother is the fount of all knowledge in this town,’ said Mand. ‘She could win an Olympic gold medal for the best small talker and idle gossiper on the planet. Her clients feed her the stuff. I’ll drill her later.’

  ‘And my mum and dad know everyone’s financial business,’ said Wand cautiously.

  ‘I’ve got sisters in their twenties. They’d know Reanne for sure,’ added Maggie, feeling as though she was in some real-life crime show.

  ‘It’ll be fine, Belle, we’ll get something on her,’ said Mand. ‘How hard can it be? The woman’s a walking, talking Barbie doll, for god’s sake. And Barbies are hardly renowned for their brains … or their vaginas for that matter.’

  ‘Why don’t Barbie dolls have vaginas? Just those little plastic mounds,’ said Cat. ‘What’s that about? We should do a story for The Mag Hag. I can see it now – “In search of Barbie’s lost vagina!” It would be hilarious!’

  The girls were all laughing so hard at Barbie’s lack of genitalia that they didn’t notice the tears that welled in the corners of Belle’s eyes. But Belle knew that if she started crying, she wouldn’t be able to stop. So, she took a deep breath and gave a funny half-smile that meant she was being brave and tried to forget that her life sucked.

  ‘Okay, girls,’ said Maggie when the laughter had died down. ‘We’ve got to get down to serious work on the mag. When shall we meet next?’

  ‘We’ve got double English on Wednesday. Let’s meet at someone’s house after that,’ said Belle, feeling in control again. ‘Who’s next? What about our esteemed editor, Maggie?’

  ‘Um, well, er, well, I suppose –’ Maggie was suddenly blushing the colour of the Baywood Devils jersey, which was so red their nickname was the Tomatoes.

  In the days leading up to the girls’ visit Maggie was freaking out. She had been planning on coming up with an excuse to put the girls off, but lying was never her forte and she couldn’t come up with anything plausible. She could have just said no, told the girls that her house was complete and utter chaos, and even if she did have friends she’d never invite them over because she was so embarrassed.

  With five children – Bet, Caro, Lisa, Maggie and Billy – there wasn’t room to swing a cat. Although Maggie’s mum, Dario, was a member of Baywood Cat Lovers’ League so there would often be stray moggies mooching around the house, but thankfully nobody was into swinging them.

  The family lived on Lucia Road, just beyond the centre of Baywood in a ramshackle terrace house, said to be one of the original Baywood houses dating back one hundred and seven years. Maggie’s parents were continually renovating, trying to bring the house upto-date, so it always resembled a building site. Maggie’s dad, Lex, was a builder, which is probably why the house remained in such a state. The last thing he wanted to do with his time off work was work. So jobs just never seemed to get finished. Like the kitchen with the hole in the wall where Lex planned to put in double doors, or the second toilet that had only a shower curtain with just an aquarium scene to protect everyone’s modesty after Caro punched a hole in the door during a fight with Bet – Lex had been meaning to fix the door for the past four months.

  To add to the confusion, Dario was the messiest mother you could ever imagine. Maggie called her the ‘clutter bug’. There were piles of clutter everywhere: stacks of magazines, newspapers, bills, laundry, all of which had to be negotiated, like some bizarre life-size Jenga game. Dario also loved opera and the cacophony of noise that echoed throughout the house was ear-splitting.

  The thought of having the girls over made Maggie shudder. There was no peace to be found in this house. Well, apart from in books. Maggie loved to take herself away to other parts of the world, to other people’s families and to other people’s stories. They always seemed much more interesting than her own.

  Sometimes, she felt like she’d ended up in the wrong family. No one could explain her lanky five-foot-eleven height, when Lex was pushing to reach five foot eight, and Dario was a good four inches shorter. In family photographs Maggie towered over everyone. There was a family joke that she had been switched at birth by a giant stork. While Maggie knew it was a joke, it still hurt, and made her feel as though she didn’t belong.

  It wasn’t only physically that Maggie felt like the family black sheep. Her older sisters, Bet (Elizabeth), Caro (Caroline) and Lisa, aged twenty-three, twenty-two and nineteen respectively, were known as Baywood’s most glamorous sisters. Maggie didn’t have anything in common with them, apart from sharing their last name.

  They were all dating boys who played on the Baywood Devils, which made them the town equivalent of B-list celebrities. And they loved it: dropping their boyfriend’s names and goal-scoring ability into absolutely every conversation. They talked so much about boys, hair, clothes and make-up that Maggie was sure they thought about nothing else.

  Apart from weddings, of course. They were always battling to be the first to get married, and give Lex and Dario a grandchild. There was a family bet that Roddie, Bet’s football captain boyfriend, would propose this Christmas; after all, they had been together for two years – and that was what was expected, wasn’t it? Although if Caro, who had been dating Guy for three years, beat Bet down the aisle, there would definitely be blood on the dance floor at the reception.

  Unlike her sisters, Maggie had aspirations beyond the world of Baywood or, as she was prone to calling it in her darker moments, Deadwood. She could hardly bear the thought of another two years in this town and had secretly applied for a student exchange program in Amsterdam. She hadn’t told anyone in her family, as she thought she’d spring it on them – if it actually happened.

  Her mum was always in a foul mood about something. When Maggie asked her if the girls could come over, she looked miffed. ‘Aren’t there enough people in this house already?’ she snapped. ‘Oh all right, you can sit at the dining room table,’ she relented. So Maggie spent Monday night in the dining room, trying to make the place look at least bearable. The mess of the house offended Maggie’s sensibilities. Her sister Lisa, who she shared a room with and who shared her mother’s love of mess, said it was because Maggie was an uptight Virgo, which Maggie had to admit was half true.

  When the girls arrived, the last thing that they were thinking about was the mess. Cat had seen a family photo hanging on the wall as they walked down the hallway. ‘Ohmigod,’ she exclaimed. ‘You’re a Jones sister! Why didn’t you tell us? Like, I knew your name was Jones and everything but like, my god, the Jones sisters are your sisters! That must be the coolest thing ever.’

  ‘Get a grip, Cat.’ Mand rolled her eyes so hard she looked like one of the damned. ‘So she shares some chromosomes with girls who date footballers. It’s hardly cause for hyperventilation.’

  ‘Not for you maybe, Mand,’ said Cat, sharpening her claws, ‘because the closest you’d get to dating a footballer is watching them on TV. But Bet was on TV when the Tomatoes won the cup last year. Do you remember she ran around the pitch with Roddie, holding his hand? It was so romantic.’

  ‘If that’s romance, then please, get me a sick bucket,’ said Mand, sticking her fingers down her throat.

  Maggie, like Mand, had felt mortified at Bet’s behaviour, and according to Caro, the boys in the team weren’t too happy either. Before the meeting could degenerate into another Mag Hag slanging session, Maggie took charge. ‘Okay, meeting officially called to order!’

  ‘Wanda has written a fantastic feature,’ said Maggie. ‘Wanda, do you want to hand it around to the girls to see what they think?’

  ‘I interviewed Cassie Marie, you know that chick at A Cut Above who does the wedding make-up? Well, she gave
me heaps of tips. Oh, and Maggie did a lot of work on it, putting in heaps of the jokes,’ said Wanda as she pulled out five pieces of paper from her school bag and passed them around to the girls, who started reading them immediately.

  10 STEPS TO DATE-READY MAKE-UP

  Want to look utterly fabulous for your big night out! Then follow our beauty guru Wanda Hong’s make-up tips and put your best face forward every time.

  It’s Saturday night and you’ve got a date with a boy you’ve had a crush on for what seems like an eternity. You’ve put together the coolest outfit, spent hours on your hair, but what about your make-up? The last thing you want is to scare him off by wearing so much make-up that you end up looking like the Bride of Frankenstein. Here are my make-up tips to look absolutely gorgeous.

  You’ve got a pimple that looks like a volcano about to erupt and you don’t want to be worrying whether your date is looking into your eyes or that giant spot between your eyes. So, grab some concealer – don’t just nick your mum’s if you’ve got your dad’s olive skin, you need to match your concealer to your skin tone.

  Top tip: to ease the redness of a pimple, put eye drops on it.

  If you don’t want to look like you’re starring in a daytime TV soap opera, then use a tinted moisturiser instead of foundation; it will serve two purposes: to provide some colour and to keep your skin soft and hydrated.

  Your eyes are the windows to your soul, so always curl your eyelashes before applying mascara, to open up your eyes.

  To make your eyes look bigger and brighter use a white eyeliner pencil on the very inner corners of the lower lid.

  Too much eyeshadow and you’ll look as cheap as chips. Cream eyeshadow is easy to apply and blend. You can use your finger to put it on or use a make-up sponge if you want a more polished look. A glitter gel is fun when applied over your eyeshadow.