The new guy – George Papadopoulos – is in my Politics class. He is also in my English class. I sit behind him in Politics (he obviously didn’t get the memo about avoiding the first three rows in Ms Green’s classes, not without an umbrella, anyway), where he clearly doesn’t engage with the wonders of the course outline any more than I do.
Ms Green is wearing what seems to be a peach-coloured dressing-gown. I can see dark leg-hairs squished between her skin and her beige pantyhose. She’s surrounded by a cloud of hairspray that makes me wonder if she is a primary contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Her blue eye shadow goes right up to her eyebrows, and then keeps going. As she lisps her way through the course outline, I consider the possibility that she might actually be a man.
New Guy stares dreamily off into space and doodles in the margins of the course outline. I snoop over his shoulder and see biro sketches of dragons, and knights with swords. What is this guy, nine? He is so going to get broken at this school. There’s a strange, biscuity smell coming from him, which is not at all what I imagine boys should smell like.
As I’m watching, a little glistening glob of Ms Green’s spit lands on his page, near the dragon. The New Guy pauses for a moment, and then draws around it, turning it into a crystal ball thingy being held by a wizard wearing a pointy hat. Oh. Dear.
I think he can feel me watching, because he turns and stares at me. His face isn’t too bad – a little pudgy perhaps, with a blemish or two, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a skin peel and a few weeks of no carbs after lunch. He has nice eyes.
He raises his eyebrows at me, and I blush and look away. Nice eyes notwithstanding, he’s still obviously a Complete and Total Social Incompetent. I feel sorry for him, but not enough to actually, you know, talk to him or anything.
Not that my social status is so high or secure that me talking to the New Guy would automatically confer upon him some degree of coolness. I have, after many years of diligent eyebrow-waxing and lip-glossing, clawed my way out of the rotting mire of uncoolness, and am now desperately clinging to my own little rung of the social ladder. It’s not a cool rung, but it’s a normal rung, and that’s good enough for me.
Tahni’s way further up the ladder than me. I’m not quite sure how it happened, but at some point between Grade 6 and Year 9, she became cool. Her body shape-shifted to create pleasing curves, and her uniform suddenly clung and flared in all the right places as though it was personally tailored to make her look beautiful.
My uniform hangs off me like a shroud. I blame my mother. When we went to the uniform shop in Year 7, Mum decided that in order to save money and natural resources and to lessen the burden on the starving kids in China working in sweatshops, she would buy me the largest size there was, so I could ‘grow into it’. I pointed out that the chances of me tripling my body size in six years was unlikely, and that when I did need a bigger uniform, it would be supplying more work to the starving sweatshop kids, but she just called me a capitalist and bought it anyway.
Four years on, the dress is (unsurprisingly) still enormous. Except now it has the added bonus of being rather threadbare from constant wearing and washing, and has a blue biro stain on the side from when my pen leaked in a Year 9 Geography test.
Lunch is much like recess, only worse. I waste time in the queue at the canteen (the boy in front of me orders a ‘headjob’ instead of a hedgehog and hilarity ensues), but before long I am once again subject to a long and painful interrogation by my best friend. I mumble and stutter through some outrageous lies about dates and kisses and gifts (he bought me a hardcover early edition of The Secret Garden – my favourite book). Tahni is like a vulture. It’s quite scary.
‘It’s such a relief you finally have a boyfriend,’ says Tahni. ‘I worried about you.’
‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘It’s so nice to know you care.’
‘Of course I care!’ says Tahni, completely oblivious to my sarcasm. ‘I was starting to think you might be–’ she looks away and muffles a weird giggle.
‘I might be what?’ I say. ‘Destined to end up a lonely old lady with eleven cats?’
‘Never mind,’ says Tahni.
I frown. ‘No, what?’ I don’t like the idea that she thinks things about me without telling. Oh poor Midge, she probably thinks, she’s so boring and ugly that she’ll never get a boyfriend. Not like me (hair toss, re-apply lip gloss, hair toss).
‘I thought–’ says Tahni, then laughs again and examines her bare knees.
‘You thought …’
‘I thought you were a …’ Tahni lowers her voice. ‘A thespian.’
I raise my eyebrows. ‘You thought I was an actor? After my shameful performance in the school production of Ain’t Misbehavin’ last year?’
‘Not an actor,’ says Tahni. ‘I thought you might, you know. Like girls.’
I can’t help laughing. ‘You mean a lesbian, not a thespian.’
‘Isn’t it the same thing?’ says Tahni.
I think I just figured out where all those curves came from. They migrated from her brain. And hang on a minute; she thought I was a lesbian? Just because I don’t have a boyfriend? Not that there’s anything wrong with being a lesbian. I’m just not one. Oh God, what if I am? What if that’s why I’ve never had a boyfriend? I think about it for a minute. No. I don’t think I am. I’ve listened to Dad’s k.d. lang albums, and I feel nothing. And I like boys. The ones on television. I just haven’t met any actual real boys that I like. Except for my imaginary boyfriend, of course.
‘No,’ I say. ‘Not a lesbian. Or a thespian, for that matter. I just have very high standards.’
Tahni nods, understanding, even though she has lower standards than a burger joint’s recruitment process. ‘So when did you last hear from him?’ she asks.
‘He emailed me last night,’ I say.
‘Really?’ says Tahni. ‘And?’
‘It’s – ah … It’s private,’ I say. Brilliant answer. Brilliant. I am a genius. Of course it’s private.
‘Fail,’ says Tahni. ‘There’s no such thing as privacy between friends. Remember when I first got my period and I made you check in case it was something else?’
I screw up my nose. ‘How could I forget?’
‘You need to tell me,’ Tahni says. ‘I can decipher the boy code.’
There’s a boy code? Does all that monosyllabic grunting actually mean something? Is there a decoder ring for the ‘your mum’ jokes?
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘I couldn’t possibly do it justice. He has such a lovely turn of phrase, and I’m sure I would spoil it if I tried to remember.’
She nods.
Success!
‘Well,’ says Tahni. ‘Print it. Bring it to school tomorrow.’
‘Right,’ I say. My voice sounds a bit squeaky.
‘And Midge?’
I think I am going to be sick, but I smile at her.
‘What’s his name?’
Oh, crap.
3 scheme
–noun; a plan, design, or program of action to be followed; project.
– A Wordsmith’s Dictionary of Hard-to-spell Words
B. His name needs to start with a B. B is for Beautiful and Brave and Bold and Bright.
Bert means ‘bright and glorious’, but it makes me think of Sesame Street, so that’s no good. Byron is poetic but girly. Brian is much more masculine and means strong, but I have a weird cousin called Brian.
Benjamin means ‘fortunate’ or ‘lucky’. And I will be both lucky and fortunate if I can get myself out of this stupid situation without looking like an idiot, so Benjamin it is.
Dearest, loveliest Imogen,
I can’t believe it’s only been two weeks since I saw you last. It feels like an age. I can’t stop thinking about you. The photo I have, of us by the river, is in danger of crumbling to dust; I am touching it so often. I wish it was you that I was touching …
Oh, dear. This isn’t going well. Ben sounds like some kind of Mr Darcy-meet
s-pervert trench coat-wearing freak.
Dear Imogen,
I was reading Proust the other day, and I thought of you.
Who is Proust, anyway? I google. Ooh, Marcel Proust wrote a book called Remembrance of Things Past. So Ben could be Remembering the Things that Passed when we spent time together. Very appropriate. And it’s French. I’m sure Ben read it in the original French. Maybe in France, where his family has a little chateau that they visit in summer. I can just imagine him, sitting on an old wooden bench in a garden surrounded by green and pink and yellow flowers, and the light is all warm and lovely like a Van Gogh painting before he cut his ear off.
For about five seconds I consider learning French so I can go and hang out with Ben in the chateau and we could eat baguettes and read Proust to each other. But judging from his Wikipedia page, Proust’s books are completely unintelligible even when they’re in English, so I think I’ll pass.
I read over the letter and think about adding a couple of spelling mistakes for authenticity. Maybe an untill or a loose instead of lose? But I just can’t bring myself to do it. My boyfriend would know how to spell.
All of this lying has made me hungry. Why hasn’t Mum called me for dinner yet? I open my bedroom door. No cooking smells. Odd. It’s nearly seven-thirty.
Downstairs, Dad’s sitting on the couch watching Temptation. Mum’s so going to scorch him for watching commercial TV.
‘Where’s Mum?’ I say.
Dad shrugs. ‘Working late.’
He’s engrossed by Livinia Nixon. I clear my throat.
‘Was there something else?’ says Dad.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘The troops are restless. The mess is closed.’
Dad looks up at me. ‘What?’
‘Dinner. It’s seven-thirty. Feed me.’
‘Oh,’ says Dad, looking vague. ‘Sorry. I had a late lunch. Do you want me to fix you some two-minute noodles?’
Two-minute noodles? Oh dear. I’ll be in the cupboard under the stairs next, and I’ll have to walk to school in the snow with no shoes or socks (we may have to move somewhere where it snows first), and then Family Services will come. And then they’ll take me to an orphanage and some plucky freckled redhead will take me under her wing …
‘There had better be chicken flavour,’ I grumble. ‘I’m not eating prawn again.’
I stay up half the night finishing Ben’s letter. By the time I get to school the next morning, I look (and feel) like Steve Buscemi. Tahni hugs me sympathetically.
‘You’re pining,’ she says.
She gushes over the letter and I feel quite proud. I’d even faked the whole email header thing with a To and From and Subject.
‘He sounds perfect,’ sighs Tahni. ‘Romantic, but not too romantic.’
‘That’s what I was going for,’ I say.
Oops. She raises her eyebrows.
‘In a boyfriend,’ I say, feeling my cheeks go pink. ‘That’s what I was looking for in a boyfriend. Romantic, but not too romantic.’
For a moment I think I’m going to get busted.
‘It’s good to have goals,’ says Tahni.
Phew.
In English, Mr Mehmet tells us about our Big Assignment. We’re supposed to do a project in pairs. I’m not really listening; I’m too busy trying to think of how to get out of this whole Ben mess. I can’t break up with him yet – it’s too soon. I need to string Tahni along for at least a fortnight. Then I can say that the whole long-distance thing is too much, and we decided to be just friends. But a whole fortnight? That’s a lot of fake emails.
Someone is saying my name. I look up. Mr Mehmet is frowning down at me.
‘When you’ve quite finished daydreaming, Imogen, perhaps you would like to choose a partner.’
I am this close to saying something about my boyfriend in England, but snap out of it and realise that everyone else has organised themselves into pairs. Everyone except for me. And the New Guy.
Oh, crap. I have to spend a whole lesson with Mr Socks Pulled Up Dragon Pictures. Bleck.
I collect my books, shuffle down to the front row and sit next to New Guy. He smiles and then ducks his head in a nervous kind of way. He still smells like biscuits.
‘You and your partner must select a topic, and write a proposal by next week,’ says Mr Mehmet.
Uh oh.
‘You will then have the rest of the term to work on your project. Remember, it must contain an online component, as well as a written report, and a final analysis detailing how you came to your conclusion. You will present your projects to the entire year level at the end of term.’
This isn’t just a one-off class project. I’m going to be lumped with New Guy for the rest of my life.
‘All right,’ says Mr Mehmet. ‘You have the rest of the class to discuss your projects.’
New Guy turns to me. He has very long eyelashes. He also has a bit of white gunk in the corner of his left eye. Gross.
‘Imogen, right?’ he says. ‘I’m George.’
‘It’s Midge,’ I say. The biscuity smell is making me hungry.
I fiddle with my pen, popping the cap off and snapping it back on again. George straightens his exercise book against the edge of the table.
‘So,’ says George. ‘What will we do for our project?’
I shrug. I’m quite busy enough with my imaginary-boyfriend project. I have no time to think about anything else.
‘Dunno,’ I say. ‘Do you have any ideas?’
‘It should be relevant to young people today,’ he says. ‘Something about the pressure placed on teenagers in modern society.’
This is all Ben’s fault. If I hadn’t been thinking about him I could have picked a better partner. Stupid imaginary boyfriend.
At lunchtime, I tell Tahni about being saddled with the New Guy.
‘O.M.G.,’ she says. ‘You’re doing your English project with him?’
I nod.
‘But haven’t you heard?’
‘Heard what?’
Tahni leans in close. ‘Why he left his old school. I’m not entirely sure what happened, but it was bad. Kate Martin says it was because he attacked another kid. They say the kid was in hospital for a month.’
I think about that for a moment. I think about New Guy, and his soft brown eyes and pulled-up socks.
‘I doubt that,’ I say.
‘That’s not all,’ says Tahni. ‘James O’Keefe told me that when he got suspended, they found all this stuff in his locker – all these pictures of swords and armour and stuff. Like he was planning something.’
I roll my eyes. ‘Yeah, right,’ I say. ‘Underneath those long, dark lashes, New Guy has the cold hard instincts of a killer.’
The bell rings. Tahni grabs my arm and hisses dramatically into my ear.
‘Just be careful,’ she says. ‘Remember Camembert.’
As I wander back to my locker, I rack my brains. Camembert? Was there an incident where someone was suffocated with soft cheese? Is she telling me to think of Ben, and our picnic with the squishy cheese and the daisy garland?
I’m half an hour into Maths before I realise she meant Columbine.
4 er·satz
–noun; an artificial substance or article used to replace something natural or genuine; a substitute.
– A Wordsmith’s Dictionary of Hard-to-spell Words
I’m in my bedroom, staring at my computer. I should be writing my essay on the pros and cons of the Australian system of government, but instead I’m trying to figure out whether my imaginary boyfriend is a Facebook kind of imaginary boyfriend, or a MySpace kind of imaginary boyfriend.
I settle on MySpace, because it’s more public. And more artsy. Ben is definitely artsy.
I wonder what kind of background my imaginary boyfriend would have on his MySpace page. Nothing too cheesy. Maybe a classy black-and-white photo of a lake or a tree or something. I do a half-hearted search on Google Images, but then decide against it. If he did have a photo, it would be
one he took himself, with some kind of compelling story that went with it, like he saved a three-year-old child from drowning in that lake just seconds after he took the photo. And given Ben doesn’t exist, it’ll be pretty hard to find a photo he took.
Plain white is too simple. Ben pays a lot of attention to detail. I’ll have to go with a solid colour. Black’s too emo. I try a mossy green (too earth-mothery) and a classic brown (too Poncy English Tweed Tally-ho Old Chaps), before settling on a nice, muted blue.
Right. Interests.
General: Photography, black-and-white movies, reading, lacrosse.
This is good. It shows he is the kind of boy who can talk about Hitchcock without sniggering, but is also athletic. Lacrosse is such a thinking-man’s sport.
I think about adding ‘writing poetry’, but perhaps that’s pushing it a bit. There is such a thing as Going Too Far.
Music: This Broken Tree, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen
I don’t really know much about music. I only know This Broken Tree because someone mentioned them in that TV show where ridiculously beautiful teenagers discover dead bodies in their swimming pools. All the others are from Dad’s record collection. They seem like the kind of indie vintage music that Intellectual Boys might listen to. The phone rings downstairs. I let Dad pick it up. It’s probably Mum, who is working late again. More two-minute noodles for dinner. I’ll have to talk to Dad about expanding our culinary repertoire, at least to include soup-in-a-can and maybe some instant mac-and-cheese.
Movies: Rear Window, Psycho, The Maltese Falcon, Gilda, Finding Nemo, The Muppets Take Manhattan.
I almost put Casablanca in, but even I’ve seen it, so I reckon it’s too much of a cliché. Finding Nemo and The Muppets Take Manhattan are there so he doesn’t look too much like a wanker.
‘Midge!’ Dad is knocking on my door. ‘Phone for you.’
He opens the door with the cordless in his hand. I quickly minimise the MySpace project and tap away at my Politics essay.
Not Quite Perfect Boyfriend Page 2
