by Wendy Harmer
'All the idiots – Mum and Dad and teachers and everyone else included – who think that the internet is scrambling our brains Just. Do. Not. Get. It. They're evolutionary throwbacks,' shouts Tilly as she slaps the steering wheel. 'They're no better than the flat-earth morons who locked up Galileo for daring to think the earth revolved around the sun.
'It makes me so mad and I am sick up to here . . .' and she slashes her throat with a murderous gesture, 'with their dumb, endless lectures about the way life used to be. I wish they would just SHUT UP! The rest of us are trying to think.'
But, I say to Tilly, I can't help wondering whether it's the internet that broke my heart. She instantly swivels her head to me, even though she should really be concentrating on the semitrailer in front.
'I'll tell you something,' she says passionately. 'All the technology in the world can't break your heart. It's humans and their Neanderthal emotions that break your heart. The only thing that happened is that you found out Will was two-timing you a lot faster and more easily than you might have when Mum and Dad were our age. It doesn't alter the fact that you deserve a boyfriend better than Will. It doesn't mean he's not a liar and a cheat. Think of the alternative – what if Will was on with Lily behind your back for ages and you didn't know?'
I nod. She's right. Everyone's right – Mum and Dad, Nan, Tilly, Carmelita, Bianca and Jai, Jayden, Lily, Georgie . . . everyone's right . . . and everyone's wrong. Problem is, I don't know the difference between right and wrong any more. My brain's like a busted GPS – heading off in all directions.
'The internet is mankind's greatest invention!' Tilly declares. 'Bigger than the wheel or the telephone. There are more than a billion people who can talk to each other and share their lives and opinions. And we're all part of the best conversation the world's ever had.'
Oh yeah? I ask how come most of the conversation on the net seems to be about Angelina Jolie's kids.
'Don't be smart, Eleanor,' snaps Tilly.
She's called me 'Eleanor' and that hardly happens, so she must be about to give me a serious talking to.
'It's exactly like real life,' says my sister, who seems to have been blessed with X-ray vision as she narrowly misses a biker who's shaking his leather fist at us. 'You meet someone down the street and say, "Hey, what about Angelina Jolie's kids?" But when you get past that, there's a whole lot more stuff to talk about. Big stuff. Important stuff. And that's what most of us are doing on the net. All the rest is just dumb gossip.'
Tilly's phone rings and I sincerely hope she's not going to answer it while she's driving. No such luck. She rummages in her handbag and again we veer across the road to jeering toots from other cars. She scans the screen and now she's texting, driving and talking all at the same time. It's utterly nerve-racking.
'Do you know that right this minute I could probably send a text from my mobile phone to the International Space Station circling almost 350 kilometres above the earth?' she says.
I tell her what Mum said about all the people in refugee camps dragging buckets of water. If they had a mobile, what would they ask the International Space Station? Hey, can you see my cardboard shack from up there?
'Of course there are millions who live in poverty right now,' Tilly nods. 'But it's not the internet that's causing it. One day every single person in the world will be online and have unlimited access to all the knowledge that's stored there, just like us.' We fly into the library's car park, brakes squealing. 'And they won't have to spend three hours looking for a parking space to get to it.'
'I'm sorry, dear, but you can't get on the net today. All the computers have been booked for this afternoon and right through to this evening,' says the woman from behind the front desk at the Oldcastle library.
I look at Tilly and see the blood drain from her face.
'What?' She shakes her head, uncomprehending, as if the librarian is speaking Swahili.
'We only have four computers in operation at the moment. Of course you're very welcome to bring your laptop in and use our wireless network . . .'
The rest of her sentence trails away as Tilly rudely turns her back and marches out the door, stopping only to kick over the Wilderness Society plaster koala on the footpath. The librarian's mouth is hanging open in shock and before she can complain about Tilly's appallingly bad manners, I quickly ask her when a computer might become available.
'Any time between 9 am and about 4 pm is perfectly fine,' she says. 'But I don't suppose that's much help to you, being during school hours.'
She's right there. I thank her and race across the car park to where Tilly is already backing her car out. I leap in the passenger seat and with a screech of tyres we roar out onto the main road again.
'I need an internet café. There's one down at Crowns on Wobbegong Beach,' Tilly gabbles as she puts the foot down.
Wobbegong Beach? Erk! If I could turn this car around right now, I would. Could Will be there? Could he be there with Lily? Could Bianca, Jay and Jayden – and in fact most of Year Nine – be there lying in wait behind a tea-tree with a lump of wood? If I had my mobile I'd be able to ring Bianca and find out. I suppose Tilly would lend me her phone, but now that Ponsford The Airhead is off my Christmas card list, there's no way I'm calling her.
As Winchester Headland comes into view at a truly terrifying speed, my schoolbag turns into a safety airbag. I whine to Tilly that I want to go home.
'You can catch the bus back if you want,' says Tilly grimly. 'I've got a ton of stuff to print out and I've got to get organised. I start exams next week, Elly. Next week! That's seven days away. Stop being so selfish.'
The car comes to a stop on the gravel with another almighty lurch and I'm saved by my bag from catapulting through the windscreen and onto the footpath. Tilly's out the door in a flash. I sit and catch my breath and peer through the car windows in all directions. There's no-one around. The coast is literally clear, so I climb out of the car.
The first thing I'm glad to see is that there's absolutely no surf. The sun is mostly hidden behind banks of grey clouds and the sea is choppy and dull. Here and there the odd whitecap is being whipped up by a cross-shore wind. As Will would say: It's blown out and messy – nothing to see here.
That means of course that Will won't be down at the beach tonight, and I hope he's home in his cosy little shack in Hammerhead. At least that's one place Jayden wouldn't dare go. Will's dad Took would bounce him down the sand on his pointy head.
But then I can't help wondering whether Lily is there too. Is she sitting on the floor with Pookie playing Boggle? Is she dipping into jars of glaze, helping Jasmine decorate her pretty pots? Or is she sitting on the old cane couch in Will's bedroom, snuggled in his arms, her head on his chest and watching the late afternoon sun slant across the ocean?
The thought that Lily might have slipped so easily into my place, eating Jasmine's delicious curry puffs and listening to and laughing at Took's crazy stories, makes me unbearably sad. I wish I had my mobile now. I'd ring Carmelita. I know she'd say, It's all in your imagination, Els. Just calm down and stay focused on what you know.
But I don't have my mobile this afternoon and I'm alone with thoughts that take flight like a sea eagle, swooping off towards the misty horizon.
I button up my blazer to keep myself warm and think back to lunchtime today for the trillionth time. I can't stop replaying the scene in my head. What was in that envelope Lily held out to Will? The one he didn't want to take. A love letter? And why was she crying? I'm still trying to imagine what could have gone down there when there's a loud bang! from the front door of Crown's. I see Tilly – her dark eyebrows scrunched together like two demented caterpillars – stomping towards the car.
'BLOODY BACKPACKERS!' she spits and wrenches open the door. 'Stealing our waves and hogging our computers! Get in the damned car!'
And then we're backing out and skidding on gravel.
'You should have seen those boofheads huddled over every single screen in the plac
e with their cans of Red Bull and bags of jelly beans and disgusting knitted beanies. Playing their lame online games. Poncing around pretending to be dragon slayers or wizards . . . it's all dumb, time-wasting CRAP!'
So much for the great online meeting of brainiacs in the sky.
'What am I going to do now?' wails Tilly. 'It's all so . . .'
And, uh-oh! Tilly's crying! As I watch, the tears spring from her eyes with such force they land and ping off the steering wheel.
'I'll drop you home and then go to Eddie's place,' she sniffs. 'I'll use his laptop. I think the flat upstairs has a network and I might be able to log into that if I can get the password. But there's no printer . . . so I guess I'll use a data stick. And then print it out tomorrow . . . at school or the library . . . My God, this is a nightmare!'
It is a bad dream. We're teenagers on the edge of a technological breakdown. And if we're this hopeless and unable to cope without our shiny gadgets, imagine if we were caught in a war zone, invaded by aliens or about to be hit by an asteroid?
EEEK! That wasn't an asteroid that almost wiped us out, but a Beefeater Butchery smallgoods van. I beg Tilly to pleeeeease slow down. She pretends not to hear how terrified I am as we whiz along Kensington Street. I suddenly remember that the post office is meant to be here somewhere. In the schoolbag I'm hugging to my chest there's a pile of Nan's party invitations that I promised to post.
Monday. 8 pm.
PM. AW. PPC.
I.S.O.L.A.T.E. Isolate. By my calculation, with double word score and this word here . . . it's 47 points. We're sitting at the dining table tonight playing Scrabble and I really can't remember the last time we did this.
'Hmmm, nice score,' says Mum. 'I think you've got me beaten, you little beast! You've got a way with words. I was never going to be a match for you.'
I laugh. I actually laugh. Can you believe that Mum and I are sitting together in our PJs scoffing a king-size block of chocolate? And we haven't fought once? Maybe this is life Post Personal Computer. Instead of Mum being on her laptop in the kitchen and me being on FacePlace in The Dungeon, we've spent the last two hours putting kiwifruit yoghurt treatments on each other's hair and playing boardgames.
'Your Nan's a champion player,' says Mum as she tucks a gloopy strand of hair under her plastic wrap turban. 'Oh, and by the way, did you get those party invitations off?'
I tell Mum that I'll do it straight after school tomorrow.
'Thanks, darling. We have to remember that a lot of elderly people like to have plenty of notice about their social engagements. They'll all want to write an RSVP and post it to your grandmother.'
I know what ROLF means, but what's RSVP?
'Répondez, s'il vous plaît!' Mum sings as she breaks off a massive hunk of chocolate and stuffs it into her mouth. She's obviously happy to be telling me something I don't know. 'It's French.'
I think that's what she said anyway. It's hard to tell through that gobful of hazelnut crunch.
'It means that when you send an invitation you are also asking people to "answer, please".'
Yeah, but why is it in French?
'Because the French have always been considered, throughout history, to have set the standard for manners,' says Mum, spraying me with bits of soggy, half-chewed nut.
The French set the standard for manners? As if! What about that whole nuclear testing in the South Pacific thing that we studied in history last week?
'Yes, apart from that,' Mum smiles, swallows and goes for the coconut ice. 'You and your sister are so smart. How am I ever supposed to keep up?'
I'm not as smart as she thinks. I mumble this to Mum as I take the square of Turkish delight that she knows is my fave. Without my mobile and computer I'm feeling dumber than I ever have.
'Well, I wouldn't look at it that way, Elly,' says Mum. 'Everything you need to know is right there in that big brain and that big heart of yours. You have to listen to what your intuition tells you. You often can't hear the voice within when it's drowned out by the millions of opinions around you but, as your pop always said: To thine own self be true.'
Yeah, but what if you don't even know who 'thine self' is? I wish that I could go to www.thineownself.com, answer a simple questionnaire and be on my way.
'And you, my girl,' says Mum, 'are a good and kind person, so don't forget that.'
We are packing up the Scrabble set when Dad finally walks in the door. He's really late and I can smell beer and cigarettes. He's bent over and looks as if he is carrying the whole weight of Ascot Couriers on his broad back.
'Eight gone,' he sighs. He dumps his backpack and slumps into a kitchen chair. 'They sacked eight blokes today. It's the Global Financial Crisis.'
'Oh no!' Mum exclaims and then sinks into a chair next to him.
'I've just come from the pub,' Dad sighs. 'Everyone's worried about the future. I feel for the blokes with young families and everything.'
This time I know what and everything means. It means being unemployed and not being able to afford mortgage repayments and school fees and the fact that it will be hard to find another job. I've started to see a lot of 'closing down sale' signs in shop windows around Britannia.
'My God, Rick, could you be next to go?' whispers Mum.
'Yep. Management has assured me that I've got a job till Christmas, but after that, who knows?'
Ulp! Now the and everything also includes my new mobile phone and computer! And then I feel bad about thinking that. Tilly's right, I should stop being so selfish.
I watch as Mum and Dad squeeze hands and look at each other silently for what feels like a very long time. Then Mum's up on her feet and pacing.
'Well, we'll just have to watch every cent, that's all,' she says with determination as she pulls tight the belt on her leopard-print fake-fur dressing gown.
'I've still got quite a lot of events booked. People might be cutting back on how much money they spend, but they're still getting married and celebrating life. They won't stop doing that.'
'I hope you're right,' says Dad morosely.
'And,' Mum continues, 'we'll economise. It'll do us all good. Elly, you can start doing some extra cooking – no more take-aways! I might lose a bit of weight.'
Mum slaps her tummy and the sound is actually a bit more gruesome than she might have expected – like leftover lasagne in a bin-liner. Mum pretends she hasn't heard and keeps on.
'Tilly? Well, she'll have to knuckle down and take a few more shifts at Earl's so she can put the money towards a new laptop.'
I know I probably shouldn't – but I have to ask about getting my new computer and mobile. Dad's not impressed.
'No. No way,' he says and his hand chops the air as if he is trying to break a brick with a karate move. 'We'll get your mother a new laptop and you'll all have to share.'
I'm sensible enough not to go on with it, but the idea of the three of us sharing a computer is an utter fantasy. Hmmm.
Maybe I can help Mum with a few of her events and earn some money that way? Then at least I could buy myself a new mobile.
'Well . . .' Mum looks at Dad. 'What do you think, Rick?'
'If she can make herself useful, I don't see why not. You won't ever hire a quicker learner than Elly.'
'I could do with a hand,' agrees Mum. 'So yes, Miss Eleanor Elizabeth Pickering, you are Regal Events' first apprentice! I'll pay you $10 an hour.'
And that's how I come to spend the rest of the night sorting white and silver scorched almonds into tiny tulle bags and tying them with silky white ribbons – and make $25!
Tuesday. 4.30 pm.
AM. PM. PPC.
