A Letter from Luisa

by Rowena Mohr

  Not that Meko seemed to be aware she was part of a devious government plot to discourage ideas of future immigration. In fact, Meko seemed to think that everything in Australia was just fantastic. Or perhaps she was just being polite.

  When Meko first arrived at Motherwell High, she bowed practically every time anyone spoke to her. Of course, some people took advantage of these unnaturally good manners, and would push in front of her when she was waiting in line at the tuckshop, saying sweetly, ‘You don’t mind if we go first, do you, Meko?’ And Meko would bow and domo arigato and Melissa and Shania (don’t worry, I’ll get to them!) would smirk and giggle like a couple of underweight Bratz dolls.

  Some people went too far though. One day, behind the girls’ toilets, I heard Fabio Fallaccio explaining to Meko all the most disgusting swear words you can imagine and asking her how to say them in Japanese. Now there’s an international incident just waiting to happen! After that I decided I would take Meko under my wing and make sure she didn’t have a completely crap time in Australia.

  Meko had a thing about Australian animals – especially koalas – but she’d only ever seen them in zoos, so when Mr McGregor organised a weekend camping trip for our year at Bendiwilli National Park, I persuaded Meko to come by promising real live bush koalas. We actually found one, and Meko was standing under its tree taking photos when the koala went to the toilet on her head.

  Mr McGregor was worried that the animal might have a sexually transmitted disease (huh?), and he wasn’t sure whether being doused in koala urine was a good thing. That was the end of our camping trip – not to mention the end of Meko’s love affair with marsupials – and I thought it was also the end of our friendship.

  But as we drove to the local hospital, Meko, oily green koala wee dripping from her hair, started to giggle uncontrollably, rocking backwards and forwards in her seat like some weird wind-up toy. I thought she’d become hysterical and was just about to slap her when she thrust her camera into my hand.

  ‘Quick, Ruisa,’ she gasped. ‘Take a photo to put on Facebook. My friends in Osaka, they never berieve that koara go to the bathroom in my hair. I terr them it weird Austrarian initiation custom.’ And she giggled so much I thought that maybe koala urine wasn’t the only kind we were going to have a close encounter with that day.

  After that, we started hanging out. Meko has a crazy sense of humour – you’ve probably already guessed that from the koala wee incident – plus she’s really into wacky Japanese punk-pop bands and she speaks better Spanish than I do, but with a Japanese accent. At school, when we didn’t want anyone to know what we were talking about, we’d switch to Spanish:

  MEKO: Encontré esta gran banda de punk en MySpace anoche.

  ME: ¿Sí? ¿Cómo se llaman?

  MEKO: ‘Totalitarian Tea Party’.

  ME: ¡Qué guay! Voy a comprobar el álbum.

  MEKO: Se me acaba de ocurrir algo, el sr. McGregor se parece a un Ewok.

  Then I discovered that Meko had a whole other life that no one at school knew anything about. On the weekends, she would dress up in these amazing outfits that made her look like a little Victorian doll – smocked dresses and frilled petticoats and a blonde ringleted wig. She looked incredible – fragile and kind of scary at the same time. The style, she said, was called ‘Goth-Rori’ (she still had trouble with her ls) – which is short for Gothic Lolita – and what they did once they were dressed up was called ‘cosplay’. All her friends back in Japan were into it too.

  This was the reason, Meko told me, her father had wanted her to come to Australia. To get her away from all her weird friends who dressed up like old-fashioned china dolls. I have to say it seemed pretty harmless to me, and I couldn’t understand why her dad was so freaked out by it. I mean, if Meko was into Satanism or cannibalism you could understand it, but the Goth-Loli girls’ idea of a wild time was swapping sewing patterns and having afternoon tea.

  What Meko’s dad hadn’t taken into account was that people like to dress weirdly all over the world. It took Meko about two weeks to find the local Goth-Loli girls – a group of homesick Japanese uni students who thought Meko was adorable and adopted her immediately. They would get together on Sunday afternoons at a cute little tea-shop in the city, and Meko would invite me along, even though I must have looked completely out of place in my tartan miniskirts and fedoras. Meko was a different person when she was all dressed up. She totally came to life and would chatter away in Japanese with the other girls while we drank cups of tea and ate little cakes, and afterwards the girls would promenade through the city arm-in-arm like some slightly creepy childhood dream where all your toys come to life in the middle of the night.

  To be honest, I didn’t get the whole cosplay thing at first. I mean, everyone has their own style, but this was totally extreme and it wasn’t really something that you could make a part of your everyday look. For instance, I’m into a kind of punk thing. Not too much, not scary punk. Punk-chic, I call it – even though Dad says that’s a contradiction in terms. And while I can’t wear ripped fishnets and Docs to school, I pretty much wear them everywhere else.

  But then Meko told me about life in Japan and I suddenly understood. Did you know that they have to go to school six days a week? They have lots of rules and regulations and everything is about working hard and being a success. Her dad, she told me, works eighty hours a week for a big corporation and she hardly ever saw him. So dressing up like a china doll was her escape, her way of taking a break from reality. You’d think her dad might have understood, but instead he sent her halfway round the world.

  Chapter 4

  AFTER MY HUMILIATING ENCOUNTER WITH Jet and the ninnies, I was totally sunk in despair. I’d spent the rest of that horrible lunch hour hiding in the girls’ toilets, because I was convinced that the ninnies were taking it in turns to follow me – or maybe one of the more entrepreneurial ones was organising guided tours: ‘Roll up, roll up and see Luisa Linley, the girl Jet Lucas rejected!’

  After school, I insisted on hanging around the Science lab washing up already-clean beakers and test tubes, until Meko, her Japanese politeness stretched to breaking point, finally snapped.

  ‘Risten, Ruisa. Jet did you a favour. He is what you call in Austraria “dirtbag”, yes?’

  ‘What? No, he’s not a dirtbag,’ I said lamely. ‘Not really.’

  ‘He no good for you. He arready make you upset and you don’t even go out with him yet.’

  She had a point, even I could see that. But it didn’t make me feel any better.

  And then as Meko and I headed across the near-deserted grounds, I saw a sinister-looking hooded figure leaning against the bank of lockers right next to mine. An icy knot of fear grabbed hold of my heart.

  If that seems an extreme reaction, let me tell you about my locker. My locker is a black hole of evil that sucks an unending stream of crap into its miserable vortex. Every day, I find some new obscenity scrawled across the door, or a half-eaten meat pie jammed into the vents – or once, last term, a Year Seven handcuffed to the padlock. Its ability to attract merde is, I have deduced, due primarily to its location – shoulder-height, end of the row, tucked into a sort of alcove under the stairs – and not really anything to do with me per se, or so I tell myself.

  I looked around the quadrangle. There were a couple of underweight Year Seven boys playing soccer at one end and deaf old Mr Dwyer shuffling towards the car park at the other. None of whom were likely to be much help if Meko and I were suddenly assaulted by a dangerously frustrated locker vandal with violent tendencies.

  The figure against the lockers must have seen us, because he suddenly straightened up and checked to see if anyone else was around. I still couldn’t make out his face under the hood, and I dug my nails into Meko’s arm so hard she let out a little squeak. And then the figure raised a hand and pulled the hood back. It was Jet Lucas.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, flexing his shoulders beneath his jacket and stepping forward to meet me. ‘Luisa,
isn’t it?’ He flashed me a brilliant knee-knocker of a smile, and it was all I could do to stay upright.

  ‘Lu-Luisa?’ I stuttered stupidly. ‘Yeah. That’s right. Luisa.’ Inside, I was going, Doh! Nice one, Luisa. Now he thinks you don’t even know your own name.

  Jet came closer, his ocean-blue eyes boring into mine.

  ‘I’m sorry if I was rude before,’ he purred. ‘I’ve been thinking about this new song and I was a bit preoccupied.’

  ‘Oh, that’s okay,’ I gushed despite myself. ‘I know what it’s like when you’re trying to be creative.’ Behind me, Meko sniffed loudly and disapprovingly. I ignored her.

  ‘Do you write music too?’ Jet asked.

  ‘No, no, not really. I mean … No, I don’t.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ he said, smiling suggestively. ‘Because I bet under that uniform you have the soul of a songwriter.’

  ‘Um … maybe.’ What was I saying? Jet Lucas might have been interested in what was under my uniform, but somehow I didn’t think it was my soul. Either way, I didn’t care, because deep down inside me, maybe somewhere around where my songwriter’s soul should have been, I could feel a little tsunami of something – delight, bliss, rapture, whatever you want to call it – gushing and surging away in my chest, because Jet Lucas was actually flirting with ME!

  ‘Definitely,’ he said. Then he leant over and half-spoke, half-whispered, right in my ear, ‘And I would love to talk to you about my concert. Call me.’ He pressed a piece of paper into my hand as he brushed past and sauntered down the corridor.

  And suddenly I wished that all those nasty little ninnies had been standing there watching me, Luisa Linley, having a totally hot moment with the totally hot Jet Lucas and dying with envy as it dawned on them that I would soon be following up said hot moment with other potentially scorching encounters as I liaised with him about his concert at the Motherwell High Twilight Fete.

  Chapter 5

  WHEN MR MCGREGOR FIRST TOLD us about the fete, I remember thinking that here was yet another opportunity for extracurricular social death and ritualised torture, so I made a point of staring steadfastly at the bitumen when he asked for volunteers.

  I hadn’t bargained on Meko throwing her hand in the air with a mixture of terror and manic enthusiasm and offering to organise a fashion parade, simultaneously digging her nails into my arm and hissing, ‘You will herp me, Ruisa, yes?’

  Nor did I anticipate Mr McGregor cornering me after class one day and suggesting in the nicest possible way – the way the Nazis must have ‘suggested’ that people should relocate to the concentration camps – that, given my musical parentage, I might like to coordinate a second-hand CD and record stall. I did try to explain to him that, between my schoolwork and looking after everything at home, I didn’t have a lot of spare time, but he just patted me on the shoulder and said he was sure I’d do a great job.

  So now I had a slight problem.

  ‘Of course,’ Mr McGregor said when I went to plead my case, ‘everyone appreciates your dedication and enthusiasm, Luisa, but I think you might be over-committing yourself taking on Jet’s concert as well.’

  ‘Seriously, Mr McGregor, it’ll be fine.’

  ‘No really, I don’t think it’s a good idea. You’ve got quite enough to do already and …’ He trailed off and guiltily shuffled some papers on his desk.

  ‘And what?’ I asked.

  ‘And … I’ve already told Edith and Tiahna that you’ll be helping them out with the mocktail bar. Heaven knows someone has to,’ he added under his breath.

  ‘What? But Mr McGregor, you don’t understand. I have to do the sound for Jet’s concert. It’s my destiny.’ I know, I know, I can’t believe I said it either, but I was desperate.

  ‘Look, I’m sure we can find someone else. One of the other fathers maybe?’

  ‘No!’ I shouted.

  Mr McGregor stroked his beard nervously and stared at me the way you might look at a live grenade that just rolled under your door. A more subtle approach was required.

  ‘Of course, my dad would be happy to lend us all the sound equipment, you know, and help me set it up and everything – so really there wouldn’t be much work involved at all.’ I attempted to smile sweetly – like Nina does when she wants something and Dad’s too dumb to notice that he’s being manipulated. It works every time for her, but I think I need to practise more because Mr McGregor still didn’t look convinced, even though I could tell that the offer of free sound equipment was tempting.

  ‘All right,’ he said eventually. ‘I guess it will be okay – since I have found some helpers for your other stalls.’

  This was also news to me – and not good news.

  ‘Helpers? What helpers?’

  ‘Well, obviously you can’t run everything on your own.’

  ‘Oh no, you didn’t need to do that. I’ve already got lots of people to help me,’ I lied. ‘I’ve been talking to some kids from Year Eight—’

  Mr McGregor cut me off. ‘The Year Sevens and Eights are away on camp the week before the fete.’

  Doh! I did actually already know that, because I’d forged Dad’s signature on Nina’s permission slip.

  ‘Oh. Well, the Year Nines—’ I cut myself off. There was no point finishing the sentence, because Mr McGregor knew as well as I did that most of the Year Nines were completely feral and far more likely to set fire to a stall than run it.

  ‘I was thinking of some students from your own year?’ Mr McGregor looked at me expectantly, as if this was a totally brilliant idea and I should be congratulating him for having thought of it.

  ‘Year Ten?’ I stammered stupidly as my brain struggled to process the most likely candidates. I ran through them in my head with a growing sense of doom, all the while praying silently to myself, Please, please, don’t let it be—

  ‘Melissa and Shania, to begin with,’ he said.

  My heart bungee-jumped from my throat to the bottom of my stomach and back again.

  ‘And Kanisha Lamas has very kindly offered to help you and Meko with the fashion parade. What do you think?’

  He beamed at me, completely oblivious to the mess he’d just made of my life.

  Now that I think about it, maybe Mr McGregor was responsible for everything. If he’d just trusted me to look after the fete the way I said I was going to, the whole catastrophe would never have happened. Melissa and Shania wouldn’t have even been there, and Mr McGregor himself wouldn’t have been arrested. Okay, there’s a fair chance that I’d still have done the dirty on my best friend, but Mrs Kapiniaris would not have developed a phobia about exploding teddy bears and Danny Baldassarro’s butt would not have ended up resembling a double choc-chip cookie.

  Melissa Kravitz was the scariest girl in the whole school – even though she was only in Year Ten. She was tall, skinny and might possibly be considered attractive – if you came from another planet. She got away with wearing great slashes of black eyeliner every day despite the fact that we weren’t allowed to wear make-up. She told Mr McGregor it was natural and that her grandmother was a Hungarian gypsy or some rubbish. We all knew it was rubbish because her grandmother worked in the undies section at Best & Less and had ash-blonde hair and drawn-on eyebrows.

  For some reason I’ve never fully understood, Melissa Kravitz hated my guts. It’s not like I’ve ever done anything to make her hate me – apart from the fake nose-stud incident, I mean. (Don’t ask! Dad finally gave in and let me get my nose pierced. It’s very tasteful. Honest.) No, she just hated me because I’m me – and let’s face it, there’s not much I can do about that. Except maybe change my name. Melissa Kravitz loved my name because it sounds – sort of – like ‘loser’. So that’s what she called me – Loser Linley. Hilarious, huh?

  Melissa Kravitz never volunteered for anything, so imagine her delight when Mr McGregor told her she was going to be helping me out with the second-hand CD and vinyl stall. Take that and multiply it by about a million when she discovered
that one of the reasons she was helping was so I could sound-tech for Jet Lucas.

  You know how I said before that Jet Lucas could have any woman he wanted? Well, technically that wasn’t true. Melissa Kravitz had decided that if she couldn’t have Jet Lucas, no one else was going to have him either.

  Obviously, Kravitz had no control over who he hooked up with outside of school, but within the grounds of Motherwell High, she had appointed herself the gatekeeper of Jet Lucas’ social and sex life – a kind of one-woman anti-dating agency, if you like. I’m pretty sure Jet Lucas had no idea of the services she performed on his behalf, but I doubt he would have cared. Kravitz tolerated the ninnies – just – as a useful tool in the practice of intimidation techniques. But anyone else who even looked in Jet’s general direction soon regretted it.

  Melissa’s best friend and partner in crime was Shania Goss. She had flaming red hair, skin like apricot yoghurt (but without the actual lumps of apricot) and tiny little baby teeth, so perfect and pearly white you’d never guess she smoked like a bacon factory. Of course, since Melissa hated me, Shania hated me too – although to be honest the girl didn’t have enough brains to have an opinion of her own, she just did what she was told.

  So now you see my problem?

  You’re probably thinking, oh, Luisa’s just overreacting. They can’t possibly be as bad as all that. Well, you’d be wrong. Fortunately, Melissa and Shania are not really representative of the Year Ten girls at Motherwell High. No, the others are mostly weirder – but a lot less scary.