by Aimee Said
Patchouli paused in her tea making. “Really? I thought since Larissa – never mind.”
She handed me a mug that said “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” in bubble writing. The chai smelt like flea markets and dust. It tasted as good as it smelled.
“Shall we get started? Ms Brand tells me she’s had to meet with you quite a few times recently. She thought it might help if you and I had a little chat about anything that you think might be … troubling you.”
Many things troubled me. Brandy and Larrie, for starters, but Maz’s words echoed in my head. Besides, in two days Larrie would be finished classes and the worst of my troubles would be over. Then all I had to do was get through her exams. I remembered Prad’s advice.
“I don’t know, Miss. School can be pretty stressful.”
Patchouli nodded.
“And then there’s the pressure to fit in.”
More nodding.
“And I don’t know if it’s my hormones, but I haven’t been feeling myself lately.”
Patchouli was nodding so vigorously that I thought she might give herself whiplash. “All those things are perfectly normal, Allison. But you don’t strike me as the sort of person who can’t handle them. Is there something else? Something at home, maybe?”
“No, Miss,” I said emphatically.
I don’t know if she was waiting for me to crack and start blubbing, or what, but I was determined that when I left the room Patchouli would know as little about me as she had when I’d walked in. We sat in silence for – according to the clock on the wall above her head – twelve-and-a-half minutes. Finally, she accepted defeat.
She sighed and scribbled some notes in a folder with my name on it. “I’m going to email you a meditation sound file to listen to after school or at bedtime each day, to help with the stress. And I’ll send you a link to a site about natural remedies that might help smooth out your hormone levels. Sadly, I don’t have a cure for peer pressure – it’s one of the hazards of growing up – but I think you’re a smart girl, Allison, and in your heart you know what’s best for yourself. Listen to your heart.”
It was all getting a bit crystals-and-chakras for my liking, so I was relieved when the bell for the end of the period rang. I stood and gathered my books.
“Thanks, Ms Shields, I’ll do all of that, I promise.”
“And Allison,” she said as I opened the door, “stay out of Ms Brand’s way – you know she’s got it in for you.” She waved me out.
Maz had saved me the computer next to hers in New Media Studies.
“How’d it go with Patchouli?”
“It was okay,” I said, and was surprised to find that I meant it.
“Did she ask you about Larrie?”
“No. In fact, the only time she mentioned her was when she was making her foul chai. Larrie’s lactose intolerance is so infamous even Patchouli knows about it.”
“So, what did you talk about? What did she say?”
“She said I’m smart and I should stay out of Brandy’s way.”
“Sounds like pretty good advice to me,” said Maz.
Al Miller is lying low.
11
The student council had decreed (at Larrie’s suggestion, no doubt) that there would be no muck-up pranks to mark Year Twelve’s last day of school. Instead, a “friendly” soccer match between Year Twelve and Year Eleven was scheduled in place of afternoon classes on Friday. Ordinarily, I was no sports fan, but I was prepared to wave pompoms if it meant missing double Maths.
After lunch the entire student body trooped over to the sports field adjoining the school and crowded into the stands. The two teams ran onto the pitch, their captains meeting in the centre, where Larrie was waiting to throw in the first ball and get the match started. The Year Eights sitting in front of us cheered like it was the World Cup.
“Remember when we were that young and carefree?” sighed Maz. “Back before the teachers started talking nonstop about continuous assessment and vocational training, when we thought free periods really were free.”
“And the Year Tens treated us like dirt,” added Prad. “I’ll take being older any day.”
“Yeah, and I was still two years away from being Larrie-free. No, thank you.”
The crowd roared when Mitch Doherty (#1 Whitlam School Hunk and Larrie’s most recent victim boyfriend) took possession of the ball. He smiled at Larrie as he passed her, to which she scowled in reply. Mitch lined up a kick at goal and missed.
The ball was passed to the Year Eleven team and received by Josh Turner. I tuned out of what Maz was saying, mesmerised by the way Josh manoeuvred the ball down the field as if it was attached to his foot by invisible wires. And by how good he looked doing it.
Maz poked me. “Are you listening? Since you didn’t come to Vertigo Pony’s rehearsal yesterday, you could at least pay attention while I vent about how bad we sounded.”
I rubbed my arm. “Sorry, I was thinking about something.”
“Something or someone?” Maz tilted her head in Josh’s direction.
I raised my right eyebrow and was relieved that she accepted the signal to drop the subject. Maz and I could talk about anything, but I didn’t feel like having my interest in Josh exposed in front of the guys. My relief turned to annoyance when I realised that she wasn’t going to let it go after all.
“Simon,” she said as though a thought had just popped into her mind, “you used to play soccer, didn’t you?”
Simon nodded. “Till this season. Why?”
“I was trying to remember why you gave it up.”
“Because I grew twenty centimetres over summer and Josh Turner told me I was too uncoordinated to play A-grade any more. He gave me the choice between playing C-grade with the junior kids or quitting. So I quit.”
“Oh, that’s right,” said Maz, narrowing her eyes at me. “I remember now.”
I turned my attention back to the game. Much as I loved Maz, her Poor Simon campaign was starting to bug me. It wasn’t Josh’s fault Simon had grown freakishly tall and kept tripping over his size twelve feet, and it wasn’t my fault that I found him about as appealing as Mum’s steamed sago pudding (i.e. not at all).
Despite Josh’s heroic efforts, Year Twelve won the game 5–3. Mitch accepted the gold plastic trophy with minimal grace, immediately shoving it in Josh’s face. Josh was obviously gutted. While the rest of the Year Eleven team shook hands with the victors, he stalked off the field to the change rooms. Even in defeat he was so hot I almost had to fan myself.
Walking to the gates after the final bell, I couldn’t help smiling at the thought of turning up to a Larrie-free Whitlam High on Monday. For a moment I even let myself imagine that people might have forgotten Larrie altogether by then. I was so absorbed in my fantasy that I didn’t think twice about turning around when Mitch Doherty shouted, “Hey, Larrie’s little sister!”
If nothing else, four years at Whitlam should have taught me that no one in my sister’s year would address me unless they a) had a message for me to pass on to Larrie, or b) wanted to soak me with supersized water pistols and throw flour bombs at me. But there is a part of me (my id? My superego? My refusal to accept that I am of no interest to guys like Mitch except for my genetic proximity to the most wanted girl in school?) that fills with hope that this time they will want to talk to me about something other than Larrie. But Mitch and his entourage didn’t have talking on their agenda.
It all happened so fast that I was still standing glued to the spot, my mouth frozen in a shocked, flour-filled “O”, when Larrie appeared. “What do you think you’re doing, Mitch? Didn’t you hear what Mr Masch said about instant expulsion for muck-up day pranks?”
“Chillax, Lazza.” Mitch flashed the grin that’s been known to melt the schoolgirls’ hearts at ten paces. “We were having some fun, weren’t we, Larrie’s little sister?”
I nodded, not because I was having fun, but to annoy Larrie. Her pinched expression told me I’d succeeded.
“Then take it off school grounds. Or at least where I can’t see it.” If I closed my eyes, Larrie sounded disconcertingly like Brandy giving me a lecture.
“Come on, guys,” said Mitch, turning towards the gates where a crowd was waiting for the school buses to arrive. “Let’s go somewhere where the anti-fun brigade isn’t on duty.”
By this time I’d regained my wits enough to try to at least clear the flour from my mouth. I spat globs of white goo into the nearest bin, trying not to inhale the heady aroma of sweating banana skins and half-eaten tuna sandwiches.
“Are you okay?” asked Larrie, attempting to wipe some of the chunkier bits off my shoulder.
I shrugged off her hand. “I was fine, until you butted in and made me look like a whining baby.”
“What the – I was trying to help you, Al. If I hadn’t come along when I did, you would’ve got part two of the attack. There are some Year Sevens you might like to ask about it – they’re in the lower toilets trying to get the smell of rotting fish off themselves. How would your super-sensitive nose cope with that?”
“It’s only a bit of flour and water,” I shot back. “And I don’t need you to protect me any more. This isn’t the infants’ adventure playground, Larrie. I can fight for my own spot on the swings these days.”
“Fine,” she said, with a dismissive shake of her head. “I’ll see you at home.”
Larrie walked towards the car park, where Beth was waiting for her. I didn’t need to see Larrie’s face to know she was rolling her eyes.
I did some eye rolling of my own when I saw the time on the belltower clock. It was nearly 3.30 and if I turned up at work in this state Jay would have a fit.
Al Miller can fight her own battles.
12
By the time I got home I had fifteen minutes to change and get to work. I knew Jay would give me his disappointed-puppy face if I got there late, and I couldn’t handle the guilt, especially since Dylan had told me how much they rely on me to help with Say Cheese’s monthly tasting evening. I’d have to forgo the shower and hope for the best.
I pulled off my school dress, which was rapidly stiffening with its coating of paste, and put on the black T-shirt and jeans that are my work uniform. Aside from a few white spatters on my cheeks and arms, I wasn’t too crusty. Thankfully, there didn’t seem to be too much of it in my hair; I pulled it back into a ponytail and arranged it so that you couldn’t see any telltale specks of white. It wasn’t my best effort, but it’d do.
Luckily the village is only a ten-minute walk from home. I jogged there in six, puffing when I threw open the door. The clocks over the counter said it was 5.59 am in Paris, 11.59 pm in New York, 4.59 am in London, and 3.59 pm in Kingston. Jay was regaling a customer with the latest tragedy to befall Doodoo. After my colossal effort, I was tempted to interrupt so that he could note my punctuality. But, hearing the words “rectal” and “thermometer”, I decided it wasn’t worth risking being drawn into the conversation.
“Thank God you’re here,” said Dylan when he saw me. “Jay’s in a tizz because the supplier was late delivering the gorgonzola, and the figs he wanted to serve with it aren’t ripe. Can you start arranging the platters while I run upstairs and change?”
“I’m onto it,” I said, heading for the storeroom/prep area out the back of the shop.
As I went, Dylan uttered a shocked, “Ooh”. I turned to ask what had got his attention and found him rooted to the spot, staring at me.
“What happened to your hair?” he asked, his eyes wide with concern.
“Nothing.” I reached up to smooth my ponytail and my hand brushed over a big, solid blob at the back of my head. I was sure it hadn’t been there when I put my hair up, but I’d only had time to make sure it was okay from the front.
“Yep, that’s the nothing I was talking about. If Jay sees that he’ll need one of his little yellow pills to calm him down. What is it?”
“Flour and water, I think … it was muck-up day.”
“Hmmm … either someone really likes you and he’s trying to get your attention, or he really hates you and wants you to suffer.” To make his point, Dylan raked his fingers through a particularly matted section and tsked again.
“Ow. What makes you so sure it was a he?”
“Not imaginative enough to be the work of a female mind,” he said with a wink. “You’d better figure out how to hide that mess before Jay spots it.”
I stood in front of the mirror above the prep bench that we use to keep an eye on the door of the shop if no one’s out the front, and did my best to make a complicated bouffant arrangement to hide the evidence. When I finished, all I needed was a fake tan and some industrial-strength teeth whitening and I could have been a contestant in a second-rate beauty pageant. I was about to pull it out and try again when Jay called me.
“Al, assistance please,” he crooned in the posh voice he uses when a new customer walks in.
I threw an apron over my head and tied it on my way out. A familiar, chiselled profile stood at the counter, inspecting the Cheeses of the World poster on the wall near the cash register.
“Oh, hi,” said Josh Turner, turning his attention from the poster. “It’s Allison, isn’t it?”
I nodded mutely, too flustered to correct him even though only Mum and teachers call me by my full name.
“Are you here for the cheese tasting?” I asked when I regained the power of speech.
“Nah.” He held up a half-eaten Power Kick bar. “I need change for the payphone – my mobile’s out of credit.”
Jay must have been eavesdropping because when Josh uttered the word “payphone” he whipped his head round. The public phone out the front of the shop is one of his pet hates (along with balding men who grow ponytails, women who dress like their teenage daughters and people who don’t pick up after their dogs in the park). Ever since the phone was installed there’d been a steady stream of people coming in to ask for coins to use it. There’s an unofficial policy that we tell them we don’t give change, but I figured that was the rule for strangers, not for Josh.
I hit the “no sale” button on the cash register and swapped Josh’s five-dollar note for a handful of coins, letting my fingers brush against his for a millisecond as I dropped them into his palm.
“Thanks, Allison, see you round,” he called over his shoulder before the door closed behind him.
“Who’s the studmuffin?” asked Dylan, as he pulled an apron over his freshly ironed shirt.
“Just a guy from school.”
“And are you interested in getting to know him outside of school too?”
Dylan loved to hassle me about my lack of a boyfriend. After twenty-two years together, he and Jay were of the opinion that everyone should be in a relationship.
“In my dreams,” I said with what I hoped was a casual laugh, even though the statement was more fact than turn of phrase.
“I reckon you’re in with a pretty good chance if he’s dropping by your work to see you.”
“You watch way too many chick flicks. Much as I’d like to believe that a guy like Josh Turner would make up lame excuses to hang around me, the fact that he needed coins for the phone suggests otherwise.”
I knew it was too ridiculous to even contemplate. I mean, Josh was the sort of guy who went out with a girl like Larrie, not her younger, not-as-hot sister. But I couldn’t help fantasising about the possibility that Dylan might be right.
As I arranged the wedges of dolce and piccante gorgonzola on the platters and surrounded them with thin slices of crisp pear, walnuts and the ripest of the figs, I imagined us taking romantic walks together at sunset.
As I wove through the crowd of Kingston cheese lovers who congregated at Say Cheese each month to taste Jay’s latest discoveries, I pictured us sitting together in the seniors’ courtyard at school, subtly locking fingers behind our back
s so as not to flaunt our love.
As I did the pre-close sweep, I imagined that the broom was Josh holding me in his arms while we danced on a moonlit balcony.
“It’s nice to see you so happy,” said Jay when he caught me waltzing back to the broom cupboard.
“What’s not to be happy about?” I replied. “It’s the weekend, I scoffed the rest of that delicious cheese, and in less than four weeks Larrie finishes school for good and life can return to some kind of normality.”
“I’m pleased to hear it. Now please promise me that before you come in tomorrow you’ll wash that muck out of your hair.”
He smiled as if he was joking. Reaching to the back of my head and feeling the hard, matted lump that had worked its way out of its hiding place, I knew he wasn’t.
Al Miller missed a spot.
13
“Dinner’s ready,” called Mum the instant I opened the front door. “Larissa and Beth are off to an end-of-school party so just set the table for the three of us.”
“Can I make a super quick phone call first? Pleasepleaseplease?” I was busting to tell Maz about Josh coming into Say Cheese and to get her opinion on the whole did-he-need-change-or-was-it-an-excuse-to-talk-to-me situation.
Mum was unmoved by my grovelling. “You can call Maryanne after we eat. Your dad’s starving and if this chook stays in the oven any longer it’ll have third-degree burns.”
I started eating the moment my plate hit the table, determined to finish fast so I could call Maz. Mum put down her knife and fork and made the don’t-mind-me-it’s-only-cancer sigh she reserves for when she thinks I’m being (her words) a selfish brat.
“Al,” said Dad. “Your mum’s gone to a lot of trouble to make a nice dinner for us after a long day at work. You could at least chew it.”
I was about to point out the irony of him making the comment while I was, in fact, chewing, but Larrie chose that moment to make her grand entrance. Beth hovered behind her.
Dad whistled through his teeth. “You two look gorgeous.”
