The Mag Hags

by Lollie Barr

  Just then Elvira Kaymer came over. ‘Congratulations girls! You really did a fantastic job with your magazine. I even showed the publisher of WWW and she said, it was the sort of magazine that we should be producing’.

  ‘Wow, thanks,’ said a beaming Maggie, who as editor, had now become the unofficial spokeswoman for the team. ‘We loved creating it’.

  ‘Ifyou need any tips …’ piped up Mand. ‘We will be happy to help out’.

  ‘Okay, Mand,’ said Elvira laughing. ‘I may just take you up on that!’

  The girls headed to Hoolio’s for another celebratory drink before getting ready to go to the formal. Just as they were walking in the door, Nate Smyth-Jones walked out looking his hot, lean and gorgeous self. He had the air of a boy who really thought he was god’s gift to the entire female species, especially when he turned his cheeky, dimply smile on the group of girls, but somehow managed to avoid eye contact with Cat.

  ‘Bella baby!’ he said, greeting her like an old friend. ‘Shall I come up to your place first? I wouldn’t mind a quick go on The Vultron before we go to the formal.’

  ‘Oh, didn’t you get my text?’ said Belle, who hadn’t texted him at all. ‘I’m sorry Nate, I can’t go with you now.’

  ‘What?’ Nate incrediously. ‘You have to – all the hot girls have got dates now! I can’t turn up alone. Whoever the guy is, tell him I’m going to kill him.’

  ‘It’s not a guy actually,’ said Belle with a self-satisfied smile. ‘It’s a girl.’

  ‘What!’ said Nate. ‘You’re going to the formal with a girl? What are you, a –’

  ‘You may know her,’ said Belle, cutting him off mid-sentence and pointing to Cat. ‘Her name is Cat Dean. I think you may have met her before.’

  ‘That’s, that’s –’ said Nate gesturing wildly but, being a boy, finding it almost impossible to come up with the words to express how he actually felt.

  ‘That’s life, babe,’ said Belle, turning away and ushering the girls inside.

  ‘What goes around comes around,’ said Cat as she walked past. ‘It’s the karmic rule of the universe. I’m just glad I was around to see you get yours!’

  ‘Bitch!’ said Nate.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, whatever,’ said Cat, and the thing was, she actually meant it. Those feelings that had tied her in knots were unravelling, and it felt liberating to finally be free of him.

  ‘Ladies,’ said Hoolio, who was in the process of unpacking the girls’ winning magazine from a brown cardboard box. ‘I believe congratulations are in order. I have just been flicking through your fine publication. Mighty fine, my lovely ladies, mighty fine. A job well done!’

  ‘Thanks Hoolio,’ said Mand. ‘You kind of saved the day when you told us not to turn on Belle’s laptop.’

  ‘My pleasure, and the food and drinks are on me, today,’ said Hoolio, handing Jez a fistful of menus. ‘Would you squire these lovely, talented and clever ladies to their booth?’

  The girls followed Jez through the café, which was already packed with students, excitedly talking about the formal – what they were wearing, who was going with who, who had lucked out and didn’t have a date. A hush descended as the girls walked in. ‘Great magazine!’ called Shaznay Hope, who high-fived Cat from her booth. ‘I can’t put it down.’

  ‘Love the clothes, Wanda,’ said Emily Champion. ‘Are you selling any of them?’

  ‘Cool as,’ called out Abdul Minary, who was DJ’ing. ‘Now I know why you chicks are crazy …’

  As Maggie slipped into the booth Jez handed her a menu and their eyes locked for a moment; her heart suddenly felt like a caged budgie flying against her chest. ‘You look hot on the cover of the magazine,’ he purred in the softest, sweetest voice. ‘It is you, isn’t it?’

  ‘Um, yeah, er, thanks,’ replied Maggie, who never in a million years would have thought the word ‘hot’ could ever be applied to her. Now she didn’t have her fringe to hide beneath, she didn’t know where to look, so she looked over at Mand for support, and blushed furiously, sending her scarlet from her neck up. Jez hung about for a bit, then smiled akwardly and walked away.

  Mand, who was never one to miss anything, leaned over to Maggie. ‘Maggie, was that waiter dude with the cute bum scoping you out?’

  ‘He said I looked hot on the cover,’ Maggie replied. ‘He was probably just being nice though.’

  ‘Boys don’t say that sort of stuff to be nice. He likes you, you dummy! Why not ask him to the formal, babes?’ said Mand, who had developed a deep fondness for Maggie. ‘After all, now you’re a cover girl, you might as well get some benefits from it.’

  ‘What, just ask him? I couldn’t.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll do it for you.’ And Mand sprung up before Maggie had the chance to say no.

  Mand disappeared towards the front of the café, hot on the heels of the waiter as the girls talked outfits, dates and the fact that half of the café was reading their magazine. Mand came back with the biggest smile on her face. ‘Maggie, you’ve got a date!’ she said excitedly. ‘He said he would be delighted!’

  ‘What? Who?’ said Cat scanning the talent in the café and coming up with a big fat zero.

  ‘The waiter dude,’ said Mand. ‘He’s taking Maggie to the formal. He said he’s always had a bit of a crush on her, not that she ever noticed. Now we’ve all got dates, we’re set! We rock! Let’s party!’

  The formal was the highlight of Baywood High’s Year 10 social calendar. It was the culmination of a year of date manoeuvring, outfit gathering and dedicated party organising. The formal committee had been diligently planning away for months to ensure the coolest night of the students’ lives. They had chosen the theme of freedom, as Year 10 was the last year that they still had the freedom to be kids before some of them left school to start work or go to tech and the rest got down to the serious business of the final years of their school lives.

  The décor committee, helped by the swoony Mr McGary, had been making beautiful bright-coloured banners representing freedom, which now hung from the auditorium walls. There were pictures of white doves flying against a cloudless bright blue sky; vivid sunsets; silhouetted girls dancing freely, the curves of their bodies accentuated; boys with huge afros and headphones; and a whole host of black-and-white stencilled images of the students themselves, taken by the photography club and transferred onto huge white canvases.

  Heidi High was the DJ of choice again and was already on the stage pumping out infectious dance tunes that had everybody rocking from the moment they got inside. Teachers and a load of overprotective parents stood guard on the door, checking students’ bags for alcohol; for some of them, though, it was too late – they had obviously had a skinful before getting there, if the wobbles on the dance floor were anything to go by.

  For once in her life Mand had been first to arrive. As part of the deal to get Slinky Joe’s Roadshow to play, Mand had to agree to perform a couple of ‘numbers’, as her dad called them, with the band. She had arrived at six-thirty, sick with nerves, for a brief rehearsal as the band sound-checked. Dressed beautifully in a black silk dress cut on the bias, which made her blue eyes look even bluer, Mand had walked through the empty auditorium, the sounds of her father’s voice beckoning her towards the stage.

  ‘All right, Mandy baby,’ said Pete into the microphone, before grabbing a bunch of carnations he’d bought at the service station on the way into Baywood and bending down and thrusting them at Mand. ‘You look bloody gorgeous, just like your mum back in the old days! Now get your bum up on this stage darlin’, we’ve got some rehearsing to do!’

  ‘Thanks Dad, they’re um … beautiful,’ replied Mand looking at the $4.85 price sticker on the cellophane wrapping paper but thankful her dad had at least made an effort.

  She had just twenty minutes to rehearse. They ran through a couple of songs Mand would be performing. Mand managed to completely forget the words to ‘Suburban Alien Chick’ and sound as discordant as a cat having its teeth pulle
d when she was harmonising on ‘Rolling with the Punches’. The bass player Dave even grimaced at some of her high notes, which just confirmed to Mand what a seriously bad idea it was that she was going to perform tonight.

  ‘I don’t think I can do this, Dad,’ said Mand at the end of the rehearsal. ‘I’m not ready to perform in public’.

  ‘Don’t worry, darlin’,’ said Pete putting a fatherly arm around Mand. ‘Once you get in front of an audience and your adrenaline kicks in, you’ll be rocking. Trust me, I’m a professional, I wouldn’t share a stage with you if you were crap – even if you are my daughter.’

  That was no comfort at all, and Mand was feeling nervous as hell. Not only was she going on a date with a boy she really liked, she was going to be singing with her dad at the school formal. There was something intrinsically cheesy about that, even if he was an eighties pop star. She prayed that her dad didn’t embarrass her or, worse, she didn’t make a complete and utter fool of herself.

  She had arranged to meet Cat, Belle and Zeb at the front gate at seven o’clock for moral support. Zeb gave Mand an awkward kiss that was half on the cheek, half on the mouth, before presenting her with a beautiful corsage of red roses which made Mand blush from head to toe. Two bunches of flowers in a day, Mand thought to herself, I could get used to this.

  ‘How are you feeling, Mand?’ asked Belle as Zeb tried to pin the corsage onto Mand’s dress without stabbing her.

  ‘Like I want to be sick,’ said Mand, clutching her stomach. ‘I sucked in rehearsal, big time. It was so embarrassing.’

  Cat put a reassuring arm around Mand and squeezed her tight. ‘You’ll be brilliant! Maybe last term I would have encouraged you to perform, just to see you fall flat on your face. But Mand, I’m your friend, I wouldn’t let you get up there if you were going to make a total tool of yourself.’

  Zeb then added that it was dead cool to be able to make music even if you were rubbish, which Mand took as a compliment even though it didn’t sound much like one.

  When Belle and Cat walked into the auditorium, laughing, smiling and holding hands, the whole room stopped and stared. Cat looked extremely hot, but for once didn’t have the attitude of a girl who knew it, which made her look even more beautiful. Her blonde hair was piled up on her head like a fifties movie star’s, and she was wearing a black corset dress that accentuated her curves, along with a towering pair of stilettos. Belle had gone for a funkier less formal look in a cool pink A-line dress, a studded belt, a pair of turquoise leggings and a pair of silver ballet shoes, and she looked just as stunning.

  Wanda, who was wearing a vintage baby-pink strapless ball gown that she’d found in a second-hand shop, was dancing with Billy Prince who, despite being cute, danced like a dad at a wedding, all elbows and knees. When she saw the girls she abandoned him on the dance floor and went rushing over to say hello.

  When Maggie walked in, on the arm of the tall, hunky waiter who turned out to be a first-year university student (making him the oldest boy at the do), she looked a little shy and coy. Jez had picked her up at her house in his big blue sedan complete with red P plates and the whole Jones posse had waved them off in the street, much to her mortification. On the ride over to the school, Maggie found out that they both had a desire to discover the world.

  ‘I’m going to take a year off uni and “do” South America next year,’ Jez had said. ‘I’ve been learning Brazilian–Portuguese.’

  ‘Can you say something in Portuguese to me,’ said Maggie.

  ‘Você, é linda’ said Jez, looking over at Maggie.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ said Jez shyly. ‘It is one of the phrases I actually remember.’

  ‘Um,’ said Maggie quizzically, not sure if he meant she was beautiful or that he wanted to pick up beautiful South American girls on his travels. ‘I actually applied to a student exchange program in Holland this year but I’m not sure I’ll go now even if I do get in, because my sister’s getting married, and she desperately wants me to be a bridesmaid.’

  Maggie felt comfortable in Jez’s presence even though he was nearly three years older than her and the fifteen minute ride over to the school came to an end all too quickly.

  ‘Hey, Maggie,’ said Belle as the girls gathered around Maggie, admiring the silk slip dress her sisters suggested she wear, as Jez headed to the bar to get them drinks. ‘You look so hot and you win the cutest date of the night award!’

  ‘What about your brother?’ said Mand, looking over at Zeb. ‘I reckon he’s the hottest guy here!’

  ‘Well, it’s certainly not Nate Smyth-Jones.’ Belle pointed at Nate, who was skulking around the room, trying to find someone to dance with, but as most people were already paired off, he was having a difficult time of it.

  As the night progressed, the atmosphere kept building and building. The crowd went wild when Hoolio stormed the stage and played a set including ‘Diggin’ it (In the Mood for Love)’ and ‘Want To Be My Jelly?’ with his big-haired backup singer, Helen. That man still could really shake it!

  Just before 9.00 pm, Cat Dean took to the stage to announce the surprise act.

  ‘Baywood High Year 10! You rock!’ she said into the microphone. The crowded cheered wildly. ‘Now for your listening pleasure, we’ve got a special treat. Put your hands together and give a big Baywood welcome to … Slinky Joe’s Roadshow.’

  Pete and his band walked out on stage to rapturous applause, even if half of the kids had never heard of Slinky Joe or his Roadshow. ‘All right Baywood! You want to rock?’ said a gravel-voiced Pete, whose thick black eyeliner made him look like he’d just been punched. ‘Let’s go!’

  The band was so tight after all the years of playing together that they struck the first note together with meticulous, bang-on timing. The crowd surged towards the front of the stage and started dancing. Cat, Belle, Maggie, Jez, Wanda, Billy and Zeb took their positions just below Pete and shook their booties as the Slinky boys rolled out all of their old hits, such as ‘New Gold Way’, ‘Synthetic Electric’ and ‘Coup Da Ville’.

  ‘Right now we’ve got a very special guest to join us on stage,’ said Pete, sweat gathering like pools beneath his pits and soaking his tight black T-shirt. ‘You may know this singer better than I do, but I want to make amends for that. So, Baywood High, can you give a big welcome to my daughter, Mand Hospock.’

  As Mand walked out on stage with her dad’s semi-acoustic strapped to her body, the crowd collectively gasped. Mand Hospock had a rock star for a dad, how cool! Mand could feel the beat of her heart reverberating through the wood of the guitar as she took her position at the front of the stage without saying a word. She smiled and her jaw trembled with nerves. She was as frozen as a bag of green peas just out of the freezer as she peered into the darkness.

  ‘Go on, Mand,’ called Cat from the audience. ‘You rock! You can do it!’

  With that, Mand came into herself and suddenly realised where she was. Just about to play her song in front of the entire year, and with a band! She looked down at the front row and saw Cat, Belle, Maggie and Wanda smiling up at her expectantly.

  Mand squinted in the spotlight, turned and smiled at her dad, then nodded at the band to indicate that she was ready. ‘This one’s called “Suburban Alien Chick”, ’ she said into the microphone, her voice a little shaky. ‘One, two, three, four …’

  Then Mand let rip, singing with the deepest part of herself, thinking about every moment of not fitting in, of not belonging. Every emotion she was carrying poured out of her in a torrent. There were no nerves; it was as though everything had stopped and she knew for absolute certain that her purpose on the planet was to be here right now, singing this song. The crowd responded accordingly, stopping to actually listen to Mand pour her heart out.

  Unbeknownst to Mand, standing with Mel was Lottie, who had come down from the city to see her little sister sing. Mel looked like one of those mums from Popstarz whose kid had made the top t
en, and was bursting with pride. After Mand finished singing, everyone clapped, cheered and woo-hooed.

  Slinky Joe’s Roadshow finished off their set with a rousing rendition of ‘Rolling with the Punches’. Mand’s harmonies were spot on, and surprisingly most of the kids knew all the words, raising their fists and shouting ‘Getting drunk with the drunkards’ during the chorus. At the end of the song, Pete grabbed Mand’s hand and triumphantly lifted it into the air and then hugged her tightly against his sweat sodden T-shirt.

  ‘You were fantastic, love,’ he whispered into Mand’s ear. ‘Your old man better watch out, you’ll be the succcessful muso of the family before long.’

  As the cheers died down and Heidi High cranked up the tunes, Mand came down from the stage on the biggest adrenaline high she had ever experienced. It was like every nerve in her body was tingling and she had never felt so happy and alive. Wanda, Belle, Cat and Maggie and a crowd of kids gathered around congratulating her on an awesome performance. For a girl known for her snarl, she couldn’t stop smiling.

  Mand felt a tap on the shoulder and turned around to see Lottie with the biggest smile on her face.

  ‘You rock, sis,’ said Lottie, who grabbed Mand in a bearhug so tight it almost squeezed the life out of her. ‘I’m so proud of you.’

  ‘Mand, you were brilliant,’ said her mum with tears in her eyes, standing next to them. ‘Group hug?’

  Mand and Lottie grabbed Mel and the Hospock women hugged in the middle of the dance floor before the girls dragged Mand away for a dance.

  It was a fantastic night that didn’t finish until 6 am, as the Mag Hags and all their respective mates and dates ended up back at the mansion, night-swimming in the pool, discovering the possibility of other worlds on The Vultron, dancing under the moonlight and snogging their faces off.

  Just as the sun was coming up, the five girls ended up back in the office where they had spent so many hours creating The Mag Hag. Belle had been reluctant to clear away the amazing memories of the last few months so the magazine still hung from the small silver pegs, and the whiteboard was still covered in the girls’ handwritten notes, ideas and thoughts.