Indigo Girls

by Penni Russon

  Anyway, so I know that’s geeky, but I don’t really understand why. I missed something, some important part of my development. I mean ages ago, right back in Year 7. It’s as if there’s this whole other The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe world at school and I couldn’t find the right wardrobe – everyone else is already up to the bit where the lion gets hacked up on the table and I’m still fumbling about in the coats.

  Or it’s like a tribe with its own language and native dress and all these sacred rituals and totems and I’m a total outsider. And you know what they say about how you can’t observe from outside because as soon as you observe you’ve changed the conditions – so just by being there you’ve kind of wrecked it? That’s how I feel all the time. As if I’m this really obvious white-coated, black-rimmed-glasses-wearing scientist and the other kids at school just sit there waiting for me to go away so they can get back to being real teenagers.

  But it’s not just a secret code in words, it’s shoes and everything. A language of shoes. But how do I get the code? When did they give that out? Was I sick that day? What happens to adults who were never teenagers? What happens to girls like me? Do we become those crusty spinster aunts who have thirteen cats and mutter constantly to ourselves? ’Cause I’ve already started doing that!

  Zara’s got it, for sure. She’s got the code. Maybe she is the code. Maybe the code is a girl, maybe it’s all those girls who seem hardwired for popularity – the best dressed, the shiniest, the girls who get the best dressed and shiniest guys. It’s not just looks or having the right clothes. It’s a sort of electricity. You can tell those girls, you know, even from other schools, you see them in waiting rooms or on the train or at interschool events. And you just know.

  I’m not a friendless wonder or anything. I know people. I always have someone at school to hang out with. But they’re just other omicrons like me, others that were left stranded on the beach when the tide of popularity went out. They’re not . . . it sounds awful saying this, but they’re not the people I would choose to be my friends. Don’t get me wrong, some of them are really nice people. (I can’t believe I’m saying this. If they ever found out I would die of shame.) But I can’t help feeling as if I’ve missed out on something. That maybe that world, you know, the one through the wardrobe, is worth seeing. Maybe I want to see it, maybe I even want to be queen of it for just one day.

  End of rant. I guess I finally got used to Teddy’s Big Bird snores, because I went to sleep and had odd, awkward dreams about wardrobes and alpha girls and being in a play where I was the only one who didn’t know the lines.

  Breaking into the golf club is an annual tradition with us, harking all the way back to the first summer.

  There we were, three nine-year-old girls. Life was different back then. Don’t get me wrong, Zara and Mieke were still way cooler than me, but I didn’t know it and neither did they. We found each other at the beach, you know, ’cause we were all nine and that’s how simple it is when you’re nine. Actually Zara found Teddy. Zara played with Teddy first and then with me and Teddy. And then I can’t remember how Mieke ended up playing with us, I think her mum and my mum were talking. They still get on really well, Mum and Sumi.

  Anyway, nine years old and we wanted to go and look at the golf club up the other end of the beach. It started as a dare. When we played truth or dare, I always picked truth. I didn’t really have any secrets, so I had nothing to lose. Zara always picked dare. Actually we stopped playing years ago, but I remember that. She never once picked truth. I think it was Zara’s dare but it was so inspired and exciting, it became all our dare.

  The golf club was brand new then, and even our parents were in awe of it. Zara’s dad and my dad went up to have a look at it and came back coughing and spluttering about how much it cost to play there. Then the mums went to the restaurant one night and had cocktails and came back in the dark giggling their heads off – we could hear them staggering up the dirt track. Mum and Sumi were singing ‘Lola’ by The Kinks and Zara’s mum was pretending to be sober and trying to shush them. I remember Mum collapsing into bed and declaring loudly, ‘I’m drunk as a skunk.’ Teddy thought she was hilarious and I was self-righteous and cross and lectured her all the next day about the dangers of alcohol while she laughed and moaned and clutched her head.

  Zara was the one who decided we should dress up, because it was so fancy. None of us had good clothes (we were camping) but we managed to scrape up three skirts between us (Mieke wore a long black one of her mum’s that dragged along behind her) and Zara raided her mum’s make-up. We also made our own jewellery with shells and stuff. And because we didn’t have high heels Zara made us all walk on tiptoe. We must have looked hilarious tottering up the beach. Our mums didn’t have the hearts to stop us.

  So when I say breaking in, I really just mean we walked in through the front gates. Well, the back gate actually, since we came up the path from the beach. There’s the golf club itself, which to us was super boring, it just looked like a restaurant, with a small shop selling ridiculously expensive hats, plus of course the greens in between the dunes. I don’t play golf but if I did, I’d want to play it there. It’s awesome, startlingly perfect green lawns in between big sandy dunes. And then there’s the mini resort: ritzy accommodation where the golfers and the families (mostly bored girlfriends) of golfers stay and get massages and sit by the pool or in the spa.

  So we rocked up and sat by the pool, giggling for a while and then . . . well, we just sat there. No one cared. One waiter even brought us some orange juices. And then we went back to the campsite, half elated and half let down by our success, as if we’d been hoping something more would happen. Later – years later – Mum told me that Dad drove on ahead after we walked off down the beach and told them we were coming. He was sitting in the restaurant the whole time we were there, making sure we didn’t get into any real trouble. Of course he was the one who arranged our orange juices. I never told Zara or Mieke that. To this day they think those orange juices were on the house, part of the magic of the day.

  So now we go every summer and even though Dad doesn’t sit in the restaurant any more (I don’t know how many years he did that) no one minds us being there. We use the pool and the outdoor spa and have drinks brought to us (but we pay for them ourselves). I guess they know us now or they think we belong, that our dads are playing golf or something.

  I wasn’t sure we would even go this year. I mean, everything felt weird without Mieke, as if the rules had changed. Would Zara really want to hang out with just me? But when Zara rocked up to my campsite at breakfast and said, ‘Are we on?’ I knew exactly what she was talking about.

  She was wearing these enormous J Lo sunglasses (I could never get away with them) and her hair was perfect – straight and neat and smooth in some kind of twisty up-do thing. I mean, how do you even achieve perfect hair in the wilderness? I was still in my PJs.

  ‘Hi, Zarsparilla.’ Teddy crossed her eyes, which is a thing she only does when she likes someone. When she was little it came with a dance.

  ‘Hi, Teddybear Biscuit.’

  They’re so cute together. Who would have thought Zara could be cute?

  ‘You girls breaking into the club?’ Mum asked, smiling up at Zara.

  ‘Ooh. My little criminal. I’m so proud,’ said Dad.

  Teddy made a face. ‘Bor-ing,’ she said. ‘It’s all old fogies with tartan pants and floppy hats.’

  ‘What are you guys doing?’ I asked. I always feel this pang when I’ve got plans with friends about being left out of whatever my family is doing, like I wish I could be in two places at once.

  ‘Beach day,’ said Mum.

  ‘Dad’s going to take me snorkelling at Tallow Beach,’ Teddy said.

  ‘Cool. You might find your true family, fish face,’ I said, sticking out my tongue.

  ‘Shut up, big bum,’ Teddy said back.

  Zara gave me a sidelong glance as we walked off, after I’d changed into the one sundress
I’d brought with me just for this occasion – Zara still liked us to dress up for the club. ‘Doesn’t that bother you?’ she said, when we were out of earshot.

  ‘Doesn’t what bother me?’ I asked.

  ‘You know. The fish face, big bum stuff?’

  ‘What? No way. I mean, after all, she does have a fish face, and I do have a big bum.’ I waggled it for effect.

  ‘You do not,’ said Zara, automatically. She pretty much has no bum.

  ‘Well, it’s bigger than yours. Admit it, you’re just jealous. You wish you had a bum like this.’ I waggled again and started singing the big butt song.

  We walked up the beach.

  ‘You really don’t have a big bum,’ Zara said, earnestly.

  ‘Give it up, baby-chil’,’ I said. ‘I don’t mind my ass,’ I said it in an American accent, because ‘ass’ sounds less rude than ‘arse’. I gave it a slap. ‘It gives me something comfy to sit on. There’s more to life than being super skinny.’ As soon as I said that I felt awful. I mean, I wasn’t trying to put Zara down or anything. I started to backpedal but Zara just laughed it off.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Zara said.

  But I couldn’t help wondering if somewhere under her mask Zara had feelings that could be hurt.

  Chapter Five

  Zara

  How does Tilly do it? She’s so sure of herself. She doesn’t care about fitting in. She doesn’t care about all the millions of rules you have to follow if you want to be popular. She’s just herself.

  It didn’t even seem to bother her that Mieke wasn’t here, she’d just adapted straight away. But I didn’t have friends like Tilly at school. The smart girls stuck together at my school, they always seemed so intense, always having deep and meaningful conversations and stuff. Sometimes Tilly and Mieke would talk about art or Tilly’s philosophy class and I’d just tune out. But without Mieke here, I wasn’t sure how to act, what to say. I wasn’t sure I got Tilly, not completely. Like for example, she was a crack up, but she poked fun at herself all the time, and laughing felt wrong, like I was poking fun at her too.

  We walked up the path to the golf club. I looked out at the beach. It was already starting to get crowded. Soon the water would be full of swimmers, windsurfers, surfers and jet skiers, and little triangle yacht sails out on the horizon. I wished they’d all go away. I wanted the beach for us, for me and Tilly and Mieke. I wanted surf school again, where we owned the beach and nothing else mattered.

  For the first time I felt really self-conscious about going to the club, walking up the path – it’s kind of bizarre, the difference between two and three. Three is a gang. It gives you more strength to do what you want. Two is like . . . well, it’s not that different from one, really. It’s vulnerable.

  I’m not used to it. Since Jess, since primary school, I haven’t had one best friend. There’s four main girls I hang out with: Kayla, Rio, Sooz and Tang Yi. And then there’s another kind of layer below those girls, so there’s always a few people around to go shopping with or get a coffee or hang out with at a party or catch a movie.

  My mum always said, ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell.’ She means secrets. She reckons secrets are the currency of popularity. According to her, secrets are what brings girls down. I’ve seen it happen.

  There was this one girl, Ashley. She was all right. But she was a gossip. After she got into the group, she went crazy just knowing all this inside information. She went to Sooz’s house to do a project and then told everyone in hushed tones about meeting Sooz’s mum who had cancer, talking about her like she was a freak or something because the chemo made her thin and gaunt and bald. She told people about Marie’s dad (Marie was on our netball team, she floated between our group and the music kids) who has a restraining order against him and isn’t allowed to see his kids but parks outside the school sometimes. She told people who liked who, who was dumping who, who was bitching about who . . . it was pretty much stuff we all knew, but it wasn’t cool to spread it around outside the group. And plus she said some stuff that Kayla had said about Rio being slutty at Sooz’s birthday party – ouch. Kayla and Rio didn’t speak for days. But then we, well Kayla, decided to punish Ashley. We froze her out. She cornered us individually, saying, ‘But what did I do? Just tell me what I did?’ After about a week all the girls stood round her on the oval at lunchtime and Kayla asked, in this really hurt tone, ‘Just tell us why. Why did you do it?’ Ashley was a mess in minutes. As if there’s an acceptable answer. Ashley has a bunch of new friends now, nobodies really. I don’t think any of them like her much either.

  Anyway, I don’t ever tell anyone else’s secrets, and I don’t ask to know them. I don’t even want to know really, but if someone wants to tell me stuff, I’ll listen. In fact, it’s amazing how many people have told me stuff – I guess ’cause they know I won’t tell. I don’t tell my own secrets either. Like, I don’t tell anyone about Mum and Dad and how they don’t talk and that I’m scared they don’t love each other, or how my dad doesn’t talk to me anymore and I’m scared he doesn’t love me either. I never told anyone about the time Marcus and I nearly . . . you know. And I didn’t tell anyone about the night of the party, the last week of school, about walking in on Marcus . . . or about the stuff that happened afterwards. Don’t ask. Don’t tell.

  So I’m popular. And I have these four friends. But Rio and Tang Yi, they hang out all the time. And Sooz and Kayla are totally BFF, they have been since kindergarten. So even though I’m popular, even though most people think I’m, like, it, sometimes I look at my friends and think . . . well. They don’t know me at all. Sometimes I’m surrounded by people and I’m completely alone. ’Cause I might be the most popular girl in the school, but you know what? No one likes me the best. Boohoo, right? Poor little Miss Popular. Now that’s a secret I’m definitely not telling.

  I love the golf club. Maybe there is some of my mother in me after all. I’d die if she heard me say that. But I love the blue-tiled lap pool with the fake waterfall and the spa, the waiters who walk past and get you drinks. I like the fake Balihuts. Even the sun feels extra luxurious here, you know? I love that my sunglasses cover half my face like a movie star’s, like I’m incognito. I love that they put little umbrellas into the drinks.

  ‘Hey, they’ve been recruiting,’ hissed Tilly.

  I glanced around without sitting up on my deckchair. ‘Yeah, I guess,’ I said.

  ‘Come on, you can’t say you haven’t noticed!’

  ‘Since when did you get boy crazy?’ I asked Tilly. ‘You sound like you’re thirteen.’

  ‘I don’t know. It had to happen sometime. And there are some seriously manic-state-inducing specimens here.’

  ‘I guess.’ Actually, Tilly was right. There were three or four new waiters, all about our age, all pretty buff looking. Maybe it was a new service to the golf widows, all those rich lonely women. A couple of the new recruits were standing together now and whispering to each other, looking at us.

  One of them came over. ‘Are you girls supposed to be here?’ he asked. ‘The pool is for guests of the resort and club members only.’

  Tilly looked at me. We’ve never been challenged at the golf club. I sat up. I felt this tingle come over me. And then I spoke.

  ‘Don’t you know who we are?’ I demanded. Tilly’s mouth dropped open. The guy looked uncomfortable and glanced over at Tilly. I took off my sunglasses. ‘I’d like to see your manager. Now.’

  ‘Zara,’ Tilly hissed. I frowned at her and turned my attention back to the recruit. He opened his mouth to say something but I started up again before he had a chance.

  ‘We have been coming to this resort for years,’ I said. ‘We have a long history here. I think the resort would be very sorry to lose our custom, and our parents’,’ I emphasised. ‘Now,’ I waved my hand and saw Tilly munching on her palm to stop herself from laughing, ‘two cokes, please. With fresh lemon.’ ‘Lemon?’

  ‘All the European resorts put lemon in thei
r cokes,’ I said, putting my sunglasses back on. I was wearing the Botox-bored face. It’s a great way to deal with people in the service industry. I know. I work in it – my title, get this, is coffee maid. I half expect to be asked to do it topless.

  As he walked away, Tilly rolled over and pressed her face into the deckchair’s pillow. She let out a muffled squeal.

  ‘You were brilliant,’ she said, rolling her head over and peeking out at me. ‘But do you think they’re going to kick us out?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘But I feel like we do have a right to be here. More right than the transient soon-to-bedivorced golf widows. We’ve got a history, dammit.’

  ‘You go, girl. Self-righteous indignation is your specialty. I can’t believe how much guts you’ve got.’ Tilly’s eyes twinkled. ‘For such a skinny-ass chick.’

  ‘Thanks!’ My mobile chimed and I jumped. ‘Sorry. Message.’ I rummaged around in my bag, feeling slightly ill, the way I always did now when a text came through. But it was just Sooz.

  Tilly looked past me. ‘Crap, he’s coming back,’ Tilly squawked. ‘And – crap! – he’s got the manager.’

  ‘Be cool,’ I said, not looking up.

  I checked my message. Hey Zara. We’re on! See you next week. Sooz. Next week? I’d still be in Indigo next week. She was obviously confused. Sooz was often confused.

  Then I remembered The Plan. They were coming down this way in a few days, staying at nearby Alder Springs. How could I have forgotten The Plan? They’d come and get me, I’d go back with them, one long party. Yeah, right. I was about to text Sooz back, wondering how I would get out of it, when I noticed Tilly was definitely not cool. I dropped my mobile back in my bag.