The Bad Karma Diaries

by Bridget Hourican

  SATURDAY OCTOBER 17TH

  Back from Conor’s – he is the five-year-old whose birthday we organised. Now I can say with complete assurance that little boys are much easier and nicer than little girls. Little boys – at least little boys of five – don’t like being dumped by their parents. They are mad clingy! So there were all these parents chatting with us trying to organise games and nobody was too bothered about anything. If a little boy started acting up all you had to do was speak in a stern voice, and he would totally collapse and promise to be good. Amazing! I am worried about these little boys in school though – they must be bossed to bits by the little girls.

  Anyway it’s good that the party was easy because we are not nearly as exhausted as last time, but it’s also bad because there’s no good story for the blog. I think I would rather be wrecked. I really would. I am ready to make this sacrifice for the blog.

  SUNDAY OCTOBER 18TH

  Anna came round to mine and we worked out what we were gonna post on our blog. She insisted on doing it in my house because she said if we did it in hers everyone would get involved and Renata would rewrite it. This is undoubtedly true.

  We looked up loads of blogs to get ideas.

  Anna said, ‘You need loads of photos.’

  ‘Yeah, and not too much writing,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, and a kind of a babyish style’ said Anna.

  ‘Yeah, a kind of an exclamation mark style!’ I said, because it’s true, lots of blogs seem to be written like eight-year-olds exclaiming.

  ‘Not in O’Toole-approved style!’ said Anna. We were ages uploading it, and we had loads of fights about it, but we also had hysterics laughing. So this is what we ended up with:

  I’m Bomb

  [photo of Anna with a hat coming down over her face so you can’t recognise her]

  and I’m Demise

  [photo of me bending down with my head between my legs so all you can see is my back and hair. This a) hides my face and b) shows how bendy I am. I am extremely naturally bendy. For instance, if I sit down cross-legged I can suck my toes!]

  Bombs cause demises so I’m the boss of her.

  [photo of Anna sitting on my shoulders – only showing our backs.]

  We like:

  Music!

  [photo of our CD collections – pride of place, Kanye West and Lady Gaga (me); Daft Punk and The Doors (Anna) She is highly influenced by Tommy and John so she likes really old music by people who died really young.]

  Books!

  [photo of our books – pride of place, To Kill a Mockingbird and His Dark Materials (me), Crime and Punishment (Anna)]

  We are interested in:

  Saving the environment!

  [picture of cows, and underneath this caption:

  ‘Did you know that cows’ farts release methane gas that damages the ozone!? What do YOU think should be done about this?’]

  Fighting injustice!

  [We don’t have a photo for this yet. Anna thinks we should put up a photo of Pierce looking nasty, but I think this could be A Step Too Far]

  The animals we most resemble are:

  [photo of a chipmunk and arrow saying:

  Bomb!

  Photo of a frog and arrow saying:

  Demise!

  It is quite hard to admit we look like a chipmunk and a frog. We would rather look like a stallion or an Irish wolfhound (Anna), or a black panther or an ocelot (me). But the sad truth is we could not look less like a stallion or a black panther. Guess who decided which animals we looked like? Yep, you got it, Renata. We were wondering about it in Anna’s kitchen one day, after reading His Dark Materials. We were saying what would our daemon be. (This is the same as saying what animal do I look like).

  Renata suddenly went off into her horrible cackle of laughter over all our suggestions, and then she said, ‘You (pointing at Anna) look like a chipmunk, and you (pointing at me) look like a frog.’

  ‘Chipmunk!’ – ‘Frog!’ we howled.

  Renata gave her evil, sparkly smile, ‘Yes, you are small and dark and you’re always collecting, amassing, things, but you’ve got a dirty temper and you bite, just like a chipmunk, and you have googly eyes and skinny arms and legs and you can’t keep still.’

  We waited, and ‘Oh, Renata!’ said her mother.

  But after a bit Anna said, well chipmunks are cute, and I said, well frogs are really bendy, they can do the splits! And since then we have become attached to our animals.

  We are in business:

  Organising children’s parties!

  [lots of photos from Conor’s party yesterday that we took]

  Now read our weekly blog!

  [account of Supermodel’s birthday party, quite like account I already wrote so I don’t need to repeat it here]

  We don’t use loads of exclamation marks!!!! and question marks????? because we think they look stupid. And we’re not writing in text-speak like, ‘u r 4real & u r gr8’ cause we hate text-speak. We considered writing the whole blog in predictive text, but it seemed like too much hard work for our readers.

  Anna says we have to at least try to keep this blog a secret from people, especially our parents, because, she says, the blog isn’t a notice board. I agree!

  But I said, ‘Tommy knows …’

  She said it was okay for Tommy to know. He wouldn’t tell. Tommy is her favourite person in her family. Probably her favourite person in the world. Well, no, it is a toss-up between him and Charlie, I guess, but Charlie is only two, so he can’t really be a favourite person. He is more like a puppy-dog.

  Still haven’t thought what to do to Jayne O’Keeffe yet.

  MONDAY OCTOBER 19TH

  Went to Anna’s after school to work with Declan on our blog. Not in the kitchen, of course. In Tommy’s bedroom. Declan and Tommy actually laughed at what we’d put up! Me and Anna exchanged glances and squirmed with excitement because they are our first audience, and they found it funny.

  Tommy said, ‘Very funny.’

  I said, ‘Yeah, well, we were copying the other blogs.’

  Declan said, ‘That’s obvious. You’ve been copying blogs by people who can’t speak English.’ He laughed.

  I looked at Anna, a bit embarrassed. Now we knew why they all wrote like eight-year-olds exclaiming! Maybe this wasn’t cool? But Tommy said, ‘It’s cool. Look, it’s better than coming across all earnest.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said Declan ‘it’s hysterical.’ But then he looked at the photos of the party, ‘I’m not sure you can show these,’ he said ‘not without permission. I’m pretty sure you can’t just put photos of other people’s kids on the web.’

  We were disappointed about this. But Declan had a look at some of the photos and said he’d photoshop them. He’s gonna blur out the kids’ faces and blow up the birthday cake, cause apparently you’re allowed to show other people’s kids’ birthday cakes on the web. But he said next time to take photos without kids, or just with bits of kids, a leg would be okay, or a little hand reaching for cake, because all kids’ legs and hands look the same.

  Then Declan started playing round with the design – changing the background colour and moving round the photos and asking did we like the letters this size? Or like this? Or this? To be honest I couldn’t see much difference, they seemed small unimportant changes, and his questions were giving me a headache.

  We went back down to the kitchen and Anna’s mum asked if I wanted to stay to dinner. Which was great! So I phoned Mum to ask and she said no! I couldn’t believe it.

  I said, ‘But Mum …’ and she said, ‘No, Denise, we want you home for dinner.’ And I couldn’t start arguing over the phone in Anna’s house, so I had to just say ‘okay’ and hang up, and then explain in as normal voice as I could that I wasn’t allowed. I don’t know how normal my voice was though, because I was raging.

  But Anna’s mum said, ‘Well, it’s a school night, I do see your mother’s point.’ She has a very soothing voice. Maybe this is because of her job. She
has to talk to mad people. Probably they need soothing.

  When I got home I said, ‘How come I couldn’t stay for dinner?’ in a quite reasonable voice, I thought, but Mum said, ‘I’m not starting a fight over this, Denise. You spend quite enough time in Anna’s. I’m not having them feed you as well.’

  I thought that was crazy. ‘They don’t mind,’ I said.

  ‘Well, I mind,’ she said.

  I had a good answer to that. I was gonna say, ‘It’s not about you,’ because it wasn’t, but before I could get this out Dad said, ‘That’s enough now, lay the table,’ in a warning voice and I decided to swallow my words instead of having a big old row and being sent to my room and not getting fed.

  They are definitely stifling my freedom of speech and I am letting them.

  I decided the only way to get back at them without getting into trouble was to sulk and not speak through dinner. I wanted to point out that we were just eating boring old chicken while at Anna’s they were having an exciting pink soup called boar-shsh or something like that, but I managed not to comment on what we were eating, and not to say anything in fact. I didn’t even make an issue of it when Justine got both the wings.

  I commented on it obviously, I said ‘Hey, why is she getting both?’

  But when Mum said, ‘Oh, don’t be such a baby, they’re her favourite,’ I kept my mouth shut, although it wasn’t me being the baby and the wings were wasted on Justine. She doesn’t know how to pick bones clean and she didn’t even eat the skin! It was a very quiet meal. Dad is the quiet type and recently he’s just been exhausted from work, and Justine never says anything, of course. I realised then that it is only me and Mum keeping this family talking.

  TUESDAY OCTOBER 20TH

  Here’s what we’re gonna do to Jayne: we are gonna get loads of stickers and write Racist! on them and stick them to her back, her bag, her locker, etc.

  This is definitely the most daring, bravest thing we’ve done yet as Instruments of Karma but the punishment must fit the crime and the crime is serious!

  I said we’d better run it by Gita. Anna said, why bother? Because, I told her, if she doesn’t agree to it initially, she might use it later as a way to get out of paying. She might say: that’s not what I meant, I’m not paying. Anna was pretty impressed by this argument. So was I – it sounded just like something an economist would say.

  Actually Gita thought it was a brilliant idea, but she was nervous too.

  ‘Jayne’s gonna think it was me,’ she said. She was getting in a state about it.

  Anna said, ‘Well what do you want us to do?’ quite belligerently.

  But then Gita calmed down, ‘I know, I’ll be off sick that day. You gonna do it tomorrow? Day after? Okay, I’ll be off sick. Then she can’t blame me!’ This seemed pretty neat, but pretty cowardly too!

  ‘If you’re off sick, you’ll miss her reaction,’ said Anna, but we left it at that.

  WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 21ST

  After school we stopped off and brought a roll of plain white stickers, not too big, but big enough and some markers and then we went to Anna’s and straight up to her room to design the stickers. This was definitely not something to do in the kitchen! On most of the stickers we wrote: Racist! in big black jagged letters like this: RACIST! (Anna) and RACIST! (me) and we coloured in the background red. But some of them we did in red on a green background, and some in black on a yellow background. Anyway, they all looked very noticeable and truly alarming.

  THURSDAY OCTOBER 22ND

  We placed the first stickers just before first class. We put a black and yellow one and a black and red one on Jayne’s locker. At break she obviously hadn’t been to her locker yet because we saw her in the playground chatting quite normally. Then we had to do a very tricky and difficult manoeuvre. We had to get the sticker on her back without anyone noticing us. So we waited till everyone was filing back into class because then there’s this big crush of lines and queues, and we got in behind her. We kept chatting very naturally to each other and Anna had the sticker in her hand and just lightly, lightly, very very lightly, she pressed it on Jayne’s back so she couldn’t feel it. And we didn’t immediately disappear. We kept right on chatting to each other and blocking everyone else’s view of Jayne’s back, until the last minute. We went right up the steps and into the corridor behind her, and then we just turned nonchalantly up the stairs. We totally got away with it.

  At lunchtime we noticed these huddles of people from Gita’s class standing round hissing in excitement about something. So we got up close to try and listen. We couldn’t really make anything out, except ‘Did you see?’ and we didn’t want to make ourselves conspicuous, so we moved off. It seemed pretty clear though. We went to look for Jayne. We couldn’t see her anywhere, so we went inside. We passed by her locker and the stickers had been peeled off! A little bit of them was left on but not that you could make anything out. It looked like someone had used hot water. We stuck two more on. It was a pity we didn’t know which was her gym bag to stick that too. Then the bell rang to go back to class.

  FRIDAY OCTOBER 23RD

  We weren’t sure whether to keep up our sticker campaign – well, we needed to know how it was going. So at break we went to find Gita. She saw us coming and left her friends and came over.

  ‘So?’ we said. ‘So she’s not at school today,’ said Gita, sounding really satisfied, ‘and yesterday she was in tears apparently!’

  I said, ‘Wow!’ but I thought: in tears …!!

  ‘Everyone’s talking about who did it,’ said Gita, ‘but of course I’m not a suspect cause I wasn’t even in school.’ She sounded really proud, like she’d just got through stage six of Tomb Raider or something.

  ‘Bully for you,’ said Anna sarcastically. Then Gita gave us €11 and we gave her back 50 cent. ‘So don’t tell anyone it was us,’ said Anna sternly in a quietly menacing voice.

  ‘No way,’ said Gita, ‘that would get me in trouble!’ She walked off. We looked after her.

  ‘Well we’re safe from her telling,’ I said.

  ‘For the moment,’ said Anna, ‘If she’s suspected and questioned, she’ll squeal. She’d sell her baby brother to save her skin.’ I sniggered, and thought what a cute example – I mean the worst thing Anna could think of anyone doing is selling their baby brother. That is not the worst thing I can think of, but then I don’t have a baby brother, it’s true, just a little sister, who is not a baby any more.

  We walked on.

  ‘Didn’t know Jayne would cry,’ I ventured, ‘and not coming into school today… well…’

  ‘Serve her right,’ said Anna, ‘anyway, shows she’s got a guilty conscience.’ She sounded brash. She generally sounds brash, Anna, but she didn’t sound 100 per cent brash.

  SATURDAY OCTOBER 24TH

  Declan told Tommy to tell us he’d done stuff to the blog, so today at my house we took a look. (We couldn’t do it at Anna’s cause they’d be no privacy, and we don’t necessarily want everyone knowing about this). It does look better. It’s got a gorgeous green background colour, and the pictures of the party look funny, especially the close-up of the cake. If I came across this blog, I’d honestly think it was really entertaining and I’d want to know the girls who set it up. We don’t come across as trying to seem sweet, cool or sexy, and that’s the main thing.

  What bonded me and Anna when we were first making friends at the beginning of First Year was how embarrassing people’s web profiles were. Even people trying to seem ultra-casual always reveal themselves as trying too hard to project a certain image. Like Caroline Hunter putting up that baby picture, pretending she found it an embarrassing baby picture, because it showed her mouth all smeared with chocolate, but you just knew that she thought it was adorable and that she wanted everyone else to think it was adorable too. Or Celine putting up a picture of herself with backcombed hair and loads of black eye make-up and black lips, and underneath the caption: ‘Marilyn Manson meets Dracula!’ Well she was h
oping by her ironic caption to dissociate herself from the photo, but she couldn’t hide that she’d put it up because she thought she looked cool. And the thing is: she did look cool! Celine is very sexy because of being half French – she is super-skinny, and she always looks sulky, and she looks very cool when she smokes, unlike everyone else who look like idiots when they smoke, which is part of the reason Anna and I don’t smoke. (And also because it’s bad for our health, and also because it’s a ruinous habit, Anna says, meaning it’s ruinously expensive. She knows this because her brother, John, at Oxford, smokes and he says there’s no point starting because then you’re hooked and before you know it, it’s costing you €50 a week. €50 a week is definitely a lot of money! It is the profit from one and a bit children’s parties! This Puts Things in Perspective, as Anna’s mum says, and probably we will never smoke, although – who knows? – when we start college, it might just happen. At college people sit around and drink black coffee and smoke and go on marches protesting about what the Americans do to poor people.)

  Anyway, so Celine really suits back-combed hair, and black eye-make up and black lips. It is A Good Look for her, and I could see why she wanted to put up that photo, and I don’t know if I’d have been able to resist myself if I’d had such a good photo, but Anna said sternly, no way, you have to exercise control, and that it diminished Celine, and she was right, it did diminish Celine! It would have been okay if someone else had put up that photo – like if someone was putting up photos of a party, and that photo happened to be among them, but it is not okay to put up a flattering photo of yourself. That is the rule! Now that we know Celine is trying so hard to be cool, she is less cool.