The Bad Karma Diaries

by Bridget Hourican

  Mum and Dad were out (at a garden centre probably! They are obsessed with boring things like garden centres), but Justine wandered into the study while we were looking, probably ’cause she heard us having hysterics laughing, so I said ‘Out, out!’ and then, ’cause Anna kind of looked at me, I added, ‘I’m sorry, but it’s private,’ in quite a nice voice. She left.

  Then Anna said, ‘We could let her into the secret.’

  I said, ‘Don’t trust her.’ That was not entirely true. I mean Justine hardly speaks. Who was she going to tell? She might tell someone in her class though, and then it would get round. Anyway I didn’t want her knowing! Things are no fun when your family knows.

  Afterwards we went round to Anna’s cause Declan was there and we wanted to thank him. It’s pretty amazing he did this for us. He is in fourth year! It’s amazing he’d bother.

  But he said, ‘It’s cool. I like doing those things.’

  It’s true he’s a computer wizard, and probably he needs to practise. Probably he is going to invent something like Bill Gates did and he needs to get experience. Which means that actually we’re doing him a favour! This is a good way of looking at it. He said he’d show us all the tricks of Photoshop in case we got more photos from kids’ parties, and also he said he’s not 100 per cent happy about the design, there are a few things he’d like to change, but he wants us to sign-off on them. So he said why not meet in town tomorrow and we’d go through it. He said to meet in Ukiyo because it’s got wi-fi.

  We said sure. He’s taking a lot of trouble with us! I dunno why we’re not just meeting in Anna’s, but it’s true we have to keep going up to Tommy’s bedroom because of not wanting the rest of the family to know, and Tommy’s bedroom is not the tidiest. There is another bed in it where John used to sleep, and still does sleep when he’s home, but you can’t hardly see it’s a bed anymore, it is so overloaded with clothes and books and DVDs and CDs and crisp packets and chewing gum packets too (those are pretty gross!) Actually, there is nowhere to sit really. You have to try and find space on the bed by shoving up all the stuff on it. Well, maybe there is nothing you can do about boys’ mess? Also Anna’s mum believes in self-expression. Once Charlie began to draw on the wall with his crayons, so I screamed, ‘Oh my God!’ and she just said, ‘Well, he needs to express himself. We mustn’t inhibit him.’

  I guess I looked shocked because she added, ‘It will wash off. They’re washable crayons.’ So I wonder would he be allowed express himself in oil paints (ha!) Anyway, maybe Tommy’s incredibly messy room is his form of self-expression?

  What does ‘sign-off’ mean? And where is Ukiyo?

  SUNDAY OCTOBER 25TH

  So now we know an awful lot about web design. The thing is, well … it’s quite embarrassing. So, you’re supposed to admit embarrassing things in your diary, right? That is what makes it different to your blog, right? Well, so … on the way to meet Declan (we were sitting on the top of the bus on the front seat, which is the best seat in the bus), Anna goes, ‘So, Declan must fancy you…’

  I said, ‘No way!’

  She said, ‘So why is he doing all this for us, then?’

  ‘Cause he needs to practise computer programming, so he can grow up to be Bill Gates.’

  ‘This isn’t computer programming! This is easy. It’s not practice. It’s like … autopilot. Nah, he must fancy you.’

  ‘Maybe he fancies you, so.’

  ‘He’s round ours all the time. He’s been round ours for years. He’s known me since I was ten. No way does he fancy me. If he fancied me, I’d know. And anyway you don’t fancy people you’ve known since you were ten.’

  ‘Well you might,’ I said. ‘In Fire and Hemlock, she meets Tom when she’s ten, and he’s at least twenty.’ (Fire and Hemlock is this really good book by Diana Wynne Jones.) Anna paused to consider this; she couldn’t deny it, but she came right back with her answer. She always does come right back.

  She said, ‘Yeah, but he doesn’t fancy her until she’s grown-up. I mean you might meet someone when they’re ten, and then not see them for a long time, and then meet them when they’re grown-up and fancy them. That might happen. But you don’t just suddenly start to fancy someone when you’re calling into their house all the time.’

  I couldn’t comment because she knows more about this stuff then me. She has all these older brothers and sisters. She’s been observing how people fancy each other for years.

  I said crossly, ‘Whatever. He couldn’t fancy me. He’s too old. Fourth years don’t fancy second years!’

  ‘They do too,’ said Anna, sounding a hundred per cent sure, ‘especially when they’re nerdy like Declan, that’s exactly who they do fancy, younger girls, who are sweet and unthreatening,’ and she looked out the window and sang, ‘That’s why he picked you-oo …’

  So I thumped my fist down hard on her knee and said, ‘I’ll show you unthreatening’ and she said, ‘Ooh, he’d love it if you did that to him!’ So I squealed quickly to banish the image of thumping Declan and him enjoying it, and thumped her harder and she thumped back and soon we were in one of our mad, giggly moods when everything is funny (to us, that is – it’s never funny to anyone else).

  Unfortunately for Declan this mood continued when we got off the bus and walked round Trinity College and across Grafton Street and into Ukiyo, which is this cool Japanese-looking café with low tables and not too much light. It’s a place for grown-ups, I don’t know why Declan wanted to meet here. Well, probably because it’s a comfortable place to sit. There he was in the corner crouched over his laptop.

  ‘Go and give him a quick thump,’ whispered Anna, ‘go on – make his day.’

  I gave her a secret thump on the leg and then we were sniggering in front of Declan.

  He hardly looked up. (Who says he fancies me?) He just said, ‘Hi, sit down …’

  Anna said, ‘You sit there, Denise,’ meaningfully, pointing to the place beside him so I’d no choice, but I leaned right forward on the bench so that no bit of me was touching him.

  We peered into Declan’s laptop, which is so thin it looks like a large credit card. His mouse was whizzing round websites. Our PC at home is a lot slower.

  Anna said dreamily, ‘Wi-fi is like a dog with extra-sensory hearing. It picks up signals we can’t.’ (She loves dogs).

  So I said, ‘Woof-fi!’

  She said, ‘Woof-Fido!’

  I said, ‘Wi-Fi-Fo-Fum.’

  I admit these jokes were very lame (I’m embarrassed just writing them down!), but we were in the kind of mood that thought they were hilarious. We kept on like that. Declan looked from one to the other, confused. Finally he managed to stop us being silly by showing us different ways to Photoshop. You can do a lot with photos if you know how. Declan said all photos in magazines are Photoshopped and the models don’t actually look that good, which is good to know. We’re not trying to improve our looks though, we’re just trying to crop kids’ faces and enlarge their feet.

  We were interested in Photoshop, but then Declan started in on the look of the blog. He wanted our opinion on miniscule changes to the background colours and I really couldn’t see much difference between the hundred shades of green, and then he started on the letters, which he calls fonts, and did we want the font curly or slant, or bold or faint, or boiled or bubbled (well that’s what it sounded like), and he started muttering names of font, like Arial and Verdana and Calibri and Palatino and Garamond and he was reminding me of Renata and Alva saying cake names, except his sounded like characters in Shakespeare, so I said, ‘Titania would be good’, and Anna got it immediately and said ‘Bassanio’ and I said ‘Romeo’ and she said ‘Mercutio’ and I said ‘Caliban’ and she said ‘Bottom’ and then we collapsed laughing.

  Declan said, ‘Oh, ha’, in a confused way, although our names were as good as his. So then Anna tried to be polite and interested, but we were just feeling too silly and he was beginning to look quite desperate.

  So Anna said, �
��Oh, you decide Declan. Whatever you think – we don’t mind, Titania or Oberon or Caliban, whichever you think looks best!’

  I said, ‘Yeah! And thanks’, but I didn’t thank him in the sincere, heartfelt way that I did the other day. I thanked him in a rude, rushed, and offhand way.

  This is what happens when you think someone who you don’t fancy might fancy you. It makes you a) uncomfortable and rushed, b) rude and cruel. You feel quite powerful and then you start to exploit your power. Well I do. Apparently. Does this make me a nasty person? Probably.

  So then we giggled our way in and out of shops. Some of the clothes shops were open. But I didn’t feel like buying anything. I get quite confused about what to buy in clothes shops. Anna doesn’t. She just wears jeans and t-shirts and runners. Everything she wears looks very clean and neat and cool and suits her. But she practically dresses like a boy. So do I, because it’s easier. But I would like to wear wackier clothes. Actually I would like to dress like Renata in dresses over leggings and jumpers and belts and boots and bracelets.I am going to dress like that when I’m in sixth year.

  When we were looking at bags in Topshop – Anna wanted this kind of canvas rucksack – Anna said, ‘Do you think we ganged up on Declan?’

  I said, ‘We didn’t mean to …’

  She said, ‘He was doing us a favour too.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have said he fancied me.’

  ‘Yeah, well he does.’

  ‘Maybe not any more … maybe he thinks we’re annoying little girls.’

  So then we began to giggle again. As we were coming out we bumped into Brian and his mum! We said, ‘Hi, Brian’, and he looked mortified like you’d expect because someone like Brian doesn’t want to be seen with their mum, and he muttered, ‘Hi …’

  Then his mum said, ‘Introduce me to your friends, Brian!’ in a bossy voice.

  Brian turned redder than ever and muttered, ‘Anna, Denise,’ and we said, ‘Hi, Mrs Stewart!’ in our best polite voices.

  She kept us chatting a bit, but then we took pity on Brian and said we had to go.

  ‘Bet she’s giving out to Brian for not “introducing her nicely”,’ I said, and Anna said, ‘Yeah … did you notice how posh her accent is?’

  That was it! I knew there was something funny I couldn’t put my finger on. She has a real D4 accent, what Renata calls ‘strangled 4 by 4 vowels’, and Brian, well, Brian sounds hard and rough.

  No wonder he was so embarrassed meeting us! We have totally blown his cover. He is not a deprived inner city anarchist, he is a pampered little darling.

  I said, ‘Wow, we could so blackmail him.’

  Anna said, ‘Instruments of Karma don’t blackmail,’ in a very prim voice. I was only joking, obviously! The fact that she took it seriously means she is actually tempted to blackmail (I think!)

  Well now I have to have dinner and then I have to think what to add to our blog.

  Later

  Have had a really good idea: I want to write all about Instruments of Karma on the blog, but I don’t want it to get back to us and get us into trouble. So here’s my cunning plan: I will report on what’s happening in school, but not like I’m part of it. Instead I will just pretend to be an observer, as if I’m just any kid in the class saying what’s going on. Well, I have to post something! It is not like we have enough kids’ parties to fill up the blog.

  Later again!

  So here’s what I wrote:

  25th October

  End of an exciting week at our school! Something funny is going on there. Last week someone stole X’s homework. [X is the class bully!] We know it was stolen because one day it was gone, and the next day it reappeared. Like magic! I think whoever stole it was getting X back for being a bully.

  This week someone stuck stickers saying RACIST! all over Y’s coat, and bag, and locker. All over all her things, basically! Apparently Y had said something racist to another girl, who is Indian. So whoever stuck those stickers up was showing her up. Maybe it’s the same person who hid X’s homework! Well who is it? I’ll keep you posted!

  Texted Anna:

  Treated the clog. Take a look!

  But she hasn’t get back yet. Probably she is in bed. It is kind of late.

  MONDAY OCTOBER 26TH

  Today … well, today…

  Shit!!! We’re in trouble!

  Well, potential trouble…

  So we got into school to discover there was an assembly called for before first class. This is not usual. We don’t have assembly except on very special occasions like first day of term, or when our debating team wins a big prize in Europe. So we were all pretty intrigued and excited. When we got to the hall we saw it was only a half special assembly – I mean only the lower school was assembled, First to Third Years. Right off you could see this was not a happy special assembly. The teachers had stern unmoved faces. Then Mr Lucas (our headmaster) came to the stage to address us. He looked VERY serious.

  He said, ‘A serious case of … bullying, or … vendetta, has taken place in the school.’ Then he paused. A ripple moved through the classes, as everyone went oooh and turned to their friends. Me and Anna went oooh and turned to each other. Lucas went on, ‘Some of you will know about this.’ (pause) ‘A student has been branded.’ (long pause, he is a master of pauses!) My heart slowed right down … ‘Yes,’ said Lucas (I swear he was beginning to enjoy himself, I mean he had everyone’s attention and he was milking it) ‘someone in this room is playing God. Someone in this room is playing prosecutor, judge, and jury. Someone in this room has decided to condemn a fellow student as a racist and to anonymously brand her!’

  The ripple swelled and almost burst. Lucas let it build. He gazed down on us. Everyone was exclaiming and turning. I didn’t dare look at Anna. And then I thought: not looking at Anna is suspicious, not making noise is suspicious, so I turned to her and said, ‘Whoa!’

  She was looking mutinous. Her face was fixed and stubborn like it is when Renata gets to her.

  Lucas started speaking again, ‘Perhaps the perpetrator acted with good intentions. Perhaps the perpetrator thought they were doing a good and a just thing. Perhaps the perpetrator thought they were striking a blow against racism. But we don’t condemn people without a hearing in this school, or in this country. We don’t decide unilaterally that someone is guilty. And we certainly don’t take anonymous revenge. Anonymity is the last refuge of the coward!’ (He practically shouted that last sentence. And followed it up by another long impressive pause. He was definitely enjoying himself. He loves the sound of his own voice, and now that he had a good subject …) Then he lowered his voice to a more friendly tone, ‘Racism is a very serious offence, one of the most serious offences we, in this school, ever have to deal with. If you suspect someone of racism, you mustn’t ignore it, you must report it. But you don’t take matters into your own hands! You don’t apply street justice.’ (Another long pause).

  ‘“Vendetta” is a word from the Sicilian, it means “revenge”, and it is what the mafia apply. Now you all know that the mafia are gangsters because you’ve all seen the movies.’ (Pause for titter of laughter, which came of course, everyone sucking up to him … well I laughed too, sucking up for all I’m worth!) ‘But what you perhaps don’t know is that the mafia started off with good intentions. They felt there wasn’t enough justice for the poor and they wanted to protect them. A bit like Robin Hood. So they took matters into their own hands. They dispensed justice. But justice can’t be decided by a few. It is the business of courts. It has to be written into books. It has to be investigated, weighed up and discussed by experts – by police and lawyers and judges. And then it has to be dispensed in the open. Not anonymously! Not in the dark! Once you start doing that, things get underhand, they get corrupt, they get unfair, and before you know it, you have a mafia!’ (I looked at Anna, she rolled her eyes at me. Her look said: here we go, a history lesson and a moral lesson. Typical Lucas!) He was winding up now. ‘In this school we teachers act
as the court. You may think it’s snitching to report things to us, but if someone is guilty of racism or of discriminating against their schoolmates they deserve to be snitched on.’ (Pause) ‘We are currently investigating the very serious charge. We may find that the person was judged unfairly, and did not deserve her branding. But regardless of the original offence, we take a very dim view of students carrying out vendettas. I have called this assembly to convey just what a dim view I take. We will find out whoever has done this, and they will have quite some explaining to do.’ Pause for long final stare to make us feel he could see into our souls. Then quick turn on his heel and off he marched.

  Consternation in assembly!

  Now I know how a criminal feels: you have to act all the time. First we had to act really normal and discuss it naturally. We joined our class throng and said, ‘What was that about?’

  Caroline Hunter said importantly, ‘It was Jayne O’Keeffe. Someone stuck stickers saying “Racist” on her coat and bag!’

  ‘And now she’s off school,’ said someone else, ‘she’s in bits!’

  ‘Well what racist thing did she do?’ I said.

  ‘Didn’t you hear Lucas?’ said Caroline, ‘she didn’t do anything racist. She got unfairly accused.’

  ‘He didn’t exactly say that,’ said Elaine, ‘he said they were investigating it. I think she was racist to someone in her class.’

  ‘No,’ said Caroline, ‘someone just wanted to get her into trouble by accusing her of the worst thing possible.’

  ‘How do you know?’ said Elaine rudely. Everyone starting joining in, saying what they thought, so we did too, acting surprised, interested, disbelieving, dumb …

  And as a criminal you feel paranoid. I felt everyone was looking at us, thinking: they did it. Because of the rumours about Pierce’s homework, we might be suspects. No one said anything, but I was imagining them thinking it, and going to tell the teachers … The only thing on our side was that Jayne O’Keeffe is not in our year.