The Golden Child Page 13

  @BlueSue replied:

  And so what if it is the only thing you’re ‘fit for’, @ozmum? It’s a privilege bringing up your kids, and being able to do it full-time is as good as it gets. I always regretted having to go back to work long before I was ready. I’m pretty sure my kids suffered, and I know I did. I think you’ll find the novelty of work wears off pretty quickly – and the nine-to-five becomes humdrum in no time at all. No one ever wished on their deathbed that they’d spent more time at the office.

  @GirlFromIpanema replied:

  Pretty sure no one ever wished they’d spent fifty years of their life cooking and cleaning for no thanks and no pay, either, @ BlueSue.

  @AliceBTickled says:

  Just discovered your blog, Lizzy. Love it! I’m a long-term trailing spouse too – twenty years this December. So much of what you write rings true for me.

  @ShelaghO’D says:

  I’m starting back at work next week after only five years away, and I’m terrified! Great to hear your week went well. I’ll be posting my experiences too: anirishlass.com

  WWW.GOLDENCHILD.COM

  THE GOLDEN CHILD’S TEN LESSONS FOR SUCCESS

  LESSON FIVE: ENEMIES AND FRIENDS

  Most proverbs are crap. I mean, who would want two birds in the bush, anyway? No moss on your stone? Who cares? Like, it’s moss, right? And because the two wrongs are negative, then they do so make a right. I know my math.

  But ‘The enemy of your enemy is your friend.’ That’s a proverb that makes all kinds of sense.

  Sometimes it can be hard to work out exactly who your enemy’s enemies might be. But you can bet your ass that there’s someone else out there who doesn’t like them.

  Or won’t.

  COMMENTS

  @RANDOMREADER says:

  Two birds in the bush? Gotta say I kinda like that one ;)

  @PROVERBEXPERT says:

  Need to know the origins of your favorite proverbs? Visit proverbsource.com for accurate proverbial information

  CHARLOTTE

  WAS IT HER IDEA? OR WAS IT ONE OF THE OTHERS? WHEN SHE thinks about it later, Charlotte can’t remember who suggested it first. She can, however, remember exactly how the subject came up. The four of them, Amelia, Grace, Harriet and Charlotte, were all at her place; they’d taken the big laptop up to her bedroom and were watching an episode of Doctor Who, illegally downloaded: the one that features the terrifying Weeping Angels. They had freaked themselves out completely: sitting with the lights out, curtains drawn, the shadows around them deepening and lengthening. Plenty of scope there to imagine some eerie presence in the dim corners and oddly angled recesses of her room: the huge timber wardrobe looming in, the horrible paintings on the walls – gloomy old portraits, landscapes, still lifes – all adding to the freakiness. It culminated in a frenzy of half-pleasurable fear when Grace and Amelia decided simultaneously to enact the part of the angels – moving slowly, one inch at a time, across the room towards Charlotte and Harriet, who huddled together on the bed, squealing, before diving under the covers and begging them to stop. The four of them giggled themselves silly, high on creaming soda and Tim Tams – contraband smuggled in by Amelia, whose mother had no idea that these things were verboten in the Mahony household – and then did it all again.

  ‘Hey,’ one of them said when they were spent, had flung themselves head to rump on the bed, a sweaty tangle of bodies and bedclothes, ‘why don’t we do it for real? Dress up and everything. It can’t be that hard.’

  There were endless hours of YouTube tutorials they could watch to find out how to do the make-up, create the costumes. It looked complicated, and perhaps expensive, but not impossible. Still, it wasn’t going to be something they could embark on spontaneously. They were going to need assistance from parents in the form of sponsored shopping trips, help with make-up and sewing. More than that, they needed a reason – at least they didn’t need one, would be happy to do it just for the fun of it (‘Yes, let’s walk down Darby Street in costume, scaring the crap out of everyone,’ said Amelia), but parents, they knew, would only cough up if it was for a legitimate occasion. A birthday, then. And Harriet’s was next. Doctor Who was a brilliant theme. Or was thirteen too old for themed birthdays? But didn’t Daniela Russell in year eight have a Divergent party just a few months before which was a huge hit – even some year ten boys crashed it. Maybe Amelia’s brother Jake could come and bring some of his mates – one of them, Rowan Arnold, looked a bit like Matt Smith. He’d be an awesome Doctor. And Janna Rice – she’d make an awesome River Song with all that wavy hair. Harriet’s mum would be able to source a Tardis cake, or maybe make one herself (she’d done a tutu cake for Harriet’s little sister last year, but it had turned out more like a spaceship, tbh), and surely there were Doctor Who lollies and maybe even cups and plates and . . .

  But the four of them would be totally awesome as the angels. They’d keep it secret, make a surprise entrance, a really big deal – get everyone in the room fully spooked. Oh, and they could play that game: what was it, that lame kids’ game? Statues? It would be the best party evah. They were almost writhing with excitement just thinking about it. It was the idea of the century. Amazeballs.

  Then one of them – Charlotte honestly can’t remember who: it might have been her, or it might just have easily been Harriet; it was her birthday, after all – one of them had the brilliant idea of doing a practice run first.

  ‘Why don’t we do a rehearsal? You know, test it out on someone, see if we can scare them?’

  ‘We could wear maybe just masks and get vampire teeth, and no, not the dress-up – that’d be too complicated, but we could do the . . . moves? Like in Statues?’

  ‘It’d be sort of like a dance, wouldn’t it? Maybe I could choreograph it properly?’ This from Grace, always looking for ways to connect her extra-curriculars with her social life.

  ‘We can do it at school. But just to one person, so it doesn’t get out.’

  Squeals from all four of them: Yes. Yes. LOL. Yes.

  Then, Who?

  This part they hadn’t even had to discuss: the answer was blindingly obvious, had come to all four of them at once, as if they were no longer individuals, but some sort of hydra-headed multi-limbed beast. This, Charlotte doesn’t have to even try to remember. They’d spoken her name in a single breath:

  ‘SLOWPHIE!’

  Oh, it had been a good idea, such a great idea. The best.

  SOPHIE

  EVEN IF CHARLOTTE WON’T TALK TO HER AT SCHOOL (AND Sophie is getting used to the idea that they aren’t ever going to be at-school friends), things are usually fine when they are forced into one another’s company in their own homes. Charlotte might be cool and distant initially, but after the first half hour or so she warms up and they find something to do together – playing Minecraft or Wii, watching some weird YouTube video. Last time Charlotte came to her place, they spent ages watching one of the senior girls, Gemma Radisson, who set up a YouTube channel that features tutorials on applying special-effects gore. They started out watching her clips for a laugh, though no one would ever think of laughing at Gemma at school. She is a pretty scary sort of girl, stocky and athletic, with a deep and scratchy voice, but the tutorials were surprisingly impressive and the two girls had spent the afternoon giving each other highly life-like slit throats and gaping facial wounds – the blood made from a combination of jam and oil – much to their mothers’ disgust.

  But this afternoon, Harriet George, who is one of Charlotte’s gang from school, has arrived unexpectedly early at the Mahonys’ for a sleepover. Harriet, whose father is a local real estate developer, is one of the girls that Sophie likes least. She is tall, sporting, and though her academics are barely passable, for some reason she is kept in the top class. Her reputation among teachers and parents, and even some of the girls, is of a friendly, conscientious, civic-minded girl, chiefly focused on her sport, but this is not what Sophie has observed. In reality she is one of the most poiso
nous girls in Sophie’s year, a subtle, smiling bully. When Sophie first arrived at the college in year four, Harriet was the one who started the rumours that she had some sort of physical disability. And Harriet was the one who coined the nickname Slowphie, when she came last in her heat of the fifty metres at the primary athletics carnival.

  This particular afternoon, Harriet manages to give a sterling impression of being polite and friendly to Sophie in front of Beth and her own mother, but as soon as the girls are left to themselves, she drags Charlotte upstairs to the bedroom, leaving Sophie with Lucy in the family room.

  Lucy looks up from her iPad and smiles sympathetically, but Sophie keeps her gaze on the television screen, knowing that any expression of pity will have her own eyes filling up. She can’t help laughing, though, when Lucy says, ‘I expect Harriet Kardashian needs to show Charlie her new bra or her gold glitter toenail polish or something equally earth shattering.’ Lucy’s expression has somehow taken on the vacuity of Harriet’s: her small face suddenly extended, jaw dropped, her eyes widened – even her voice sounds like Harriet’s, with its affected breathy drawl. The resemblance is uncanny, and Sophie is intrigued. Lucy is usually so reserved, almost shy compared to Charlotte, who, though younger, is definitely the more out there of the two sisters. Sophie has never imagined such a brightly sparkling malice beneath Lucy’s benign exterior.

  She has noticed, though, that Lucy hasn’t made quite the same impression at her new school as her younger sister. Her position isn’t anything like Sophie’s – she’s never seen Lucy skulking in the library during lunch break, for instance – but she isn’t popular by any stretch of the imagination, hanging out with a small group of girls who are all relatively marginal to the year nine social scene: not the brains or the pretty girls or the sporty girls or the rich girls – just girls who stay comfortably under the radar.

  Lucy grins at Sophie’s obvious surprise and then looks quickly back down at her iPad, her fingers flying as she types.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Sophie asks shyly.

  ‘Nothing, really. Just commenting.’

  ‘Are you on Facebook? I’m not allowed on Facebook till I’m fifteen.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry. Facebook is only for old ladies these days.’

  ‘What then?’ Sophie’s experience of social media is limited. She has Snapchat on her iPad, but there isn’t really anyone she wants to send pictures or messages to anyway. She follows thirty people on Instagram – friends from her old school, Tess and Maya, her piano teacher and a couple of musicians that she listens to – but she only has half a dozen followers herself. And as with all things virtual, she rapidly lost interest after signing up.

  ‘Just different things. Hey, are you actually watching that?’ Lucy gestures towards the TV screen from the depths of her corduroy beanbag.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Then come over here and I’ll show you.’

  Lucy gives her a tour of her own social networking sites. She doesn’t have Facebook, but she seems to have every other account in existence: Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, MeowChat, kik. Mostly, she confesses to the fascinated Sophie, as she moves easily from one app to another, she uses them to see what other people are up to. She isn’t actually that interested in posting things herself. ‘Sometimes I comment, but mostly I just stalk,’ she says, grinning. ‘I haven’t really got that much to say. I just like listening to other people’s conversations.’

  She shows Sophie ASKfm, her current favourite. She explains the rules – how the questions are posed randomly by the app itself, or by followers; the way comments and questions can be posted anonymously. She browses through the accounts of girls she follows – girls in various years at the college, most of them familiar to Sophie by name at least – clicking through links from one account to another. Sophie can immediately see the attraction of this particular site for someone like Lucy, and for someone like her: girls who are more interested in observing than taking part in the action. Sophie is astounded by how much the girls reveal about themselves (tmi!) online, sometimes continuing conversations and arguments that have obvious real-life origins, and sometimes having discussions she knows they would never, ever have face to face. Sometimes they comment anonymously, but sometimes – shockingly – not. So much of the online action is surprising – such transparent fishing for compliments from girls who Sophie has never imagined would be so needy, comments that are subtly malicious, others overtly bitchy. Girls are constantly asked what they think of others, and then bizarrely – it is so potentially humiliating – ask what others think of them. More often than not getting far more than they bargained for. Their comments are sometimes barely literate and crazily random, swinging between crude and cutesy in a single sentence.

  Reading the ASKfm posts is a bit like watching a car crash, sick-making and compulsive in equal measure. Even someone like Sophie can join in anonymously, can have some sort of an impact on girls who barely know she exists in the real world. Being a nobody at school is painful and lonely, but to be anonymous online has a particular appeal, and the prospect of actually participating is tantalising.

  Sophie is an almost instant convert to ASKfm. Soon she’s spending all her spare time, and occasionally time she should be spending practising or doing homework, on her iPad or her laptop. It’s easy, with her mother so distracted with the baby, and her father always busy, to get away with it: nobody’s taking too much notice of her. She learns to make the concentrated and casually clever comments that seem to come so easily to some of the others. She has a fantasy that in this virtual world, with its strict structure, its particular etiquette, those girls who have nothing to do with her at school will come to realise that she is more interesting than they imagine. Perhaps this is somewhere she can shine, show another, a more conventional, self. Perhaps they will eventually realise that she is someone they should get to know better in real life, that she is someone worthwhile.

  And for a while, it works. Initially most of her conversations are with her old friends from Scone and from outside school, kids she knows from music camp, but her network soon expands. She is amazed by how many girls from her year, some who will barely acknowledge her existence in real life, are willing to follow her online, and excited to see just how many of them will actually comment on even the most banal computer-generated questions. She plucks up courage and comments occasionally on their pages too, sometimes using her name, sometimes posting anonymously.

  But somehow, none of what happens online seems to translate to anything at school. It’s as if there’s some sort of unspoken rule that states that what goes on in the virtual world doesn’t count in any real-life scenario. So a friendly tbh I think you’re really amazing on ASKfm from, say, @MattyMat, doesn’t prompt any friendly overture from the real Matilda Matherson at school the next day. It appears that the online world can reveal the inner nice guy as well as the far more prevalent inner monster.

  ask.fm/sophiepen

  SIGN UPLOG IN

  What are you having for dinner? BridieS

  Chops and mash and peaz

  Thoughts on meeee? MayaR

  Cool beautiful funny. Wish you were here:(

  Fave movie? LucyMah

  Hunger Games, duh

  Best teacher? CharlotteMah

  Don’t know. Maybe Mrs W? She has reaaally good fashion sense. Lmao

  Ha ha. Good one MattyMat

  It’s true:)

  PAP of when you were a baby LucyMah

  What’s PAP mean?

  Post a pic ☺ LucyMah

  Can’t find one:(

  Thank god. Bet you were a really UGLY baby anon

  Probs. Haha.

  Stop trying to hang around @CharlotteMah anon

  I don’t!

  You shouldent try to be what your not anon

  That’s true. But tbh I don’t

  Tbh whose the hottest in year 7 anon

  Don’t care

  Has anyone ever told you your no
se is really big anon

  Who is this?

  Hey Slowphie you should stop trying to talk to @CharlotteMah and @AmeliaCar in class, no offence but they don’t really want to b ur friends. No offence juz tryin to help anon

  Not really a help:(

  Hey Slowphie your the hottest girl at hlc. I know that you want to know who I am, but I can’t let you know that because if people found out shit would go down, what I’m basically trying to say is that I’ve fallen for you anon

  Who is this?

  Wouldent you like to no anon

  Hey, anon – stop being so mean. And @SophiePen, you’re really gorgeous. LucyMah

  lol. I’m not, but thnx

  Hey Slowphie – you should try and lose some weight. Just saying to be helpful anon

  Leave me alone, whoever you are.

  SOPHIE

  IT HAPPENED TO HER ONCE BEFORE, BUT THAT WAS IN YEAR five, and then her tormentor was Holly Bridgewater, who’s since been sent to boarding school in Sydney. Holly was year captain, and seemed to be captain of everything else too: netball, debating, dance, football. And for no reason that Sophie has ever been able to work out, she’d had it in for Sophie from the day she arrived. It began on her very first day at the college, when, noticing Sophie wiping away miserable tears, Holly whispered loudly in the ear of some other girl, clearly and pointedly, about how red Sophie’s face was, how puffy her eyes had gone. After that, Sophie tried hard to avoid her, but it was almost impossible when she was still essentially alone, before she had really met up with Tess and Maya and found in them two loyal friends and an effective buffer against the sort of persecution that Holly was already so expert at.

  And Holly refused to be avoided. At first it was only little things. She would ignore any comment made by Sophie, pretend she couldn’t see her, snigger at her efforts in PE. She would roll her eyes any time Sophie was asked to perform either in class or, as happened frequently enough, in front of a larger audience at assembly – and then cough or sneeze loudly while she was playing. Mostly the nastiness was contained: the other girls were rarely involved, or only as accomplices, sometimes unwittingly. It was always surreptitious, and utterly deniable. It never got to the stage where anyone other than Sophie herself noticed anything calculated. There was no point dobbing, no point complaining; it was all too subtle for that. But it ensured Sophie was kept out of the action. Even if the other girls weren’t aware of it, Holly’s dislike of Sophie spread into an intuited shunning by the rest of the year – including those girls who weren’t even part of Holly’s inner circle. The implicit politics of that particular year were spectacularly simple: if Holly didn’t like you, nobody liked you.