White Lady (2 page)

“What you doin’?”

“Taking a shit. Need to know every fucking bowel movement?” The toilet seat clangs and water runs.

I scratch my beard. I take the pre-rolled cigarette from behind my ear, a Zippo out of my back jean pocket, light up, and lean my shoulder against the wall. Waiting.

Two full minutes later, Mia steps out of the bathroom. She sniffs and wipes her mouth on her shoulder. I squint with suspicion as I take the last drag.

“What?” Mia snaps, bringing her shoulders to her ears.

I flick my chin towards the front door. Mia adjusts the straps of her schoolbag and pulls her knickers out of her bum. I grab my keys and Drum off the coffee table as we pass it.

Mia puckers her brow. “You gonna teach PE in
jeans
?”

I hold the front door open and step to the side to let Mia out first. “Problem?”

Mia shrugs, heads towards our diarrhea-coloured Commodore, and mutters under her breath, “That’s fucking pathetic.”

I take one quick glance at the photo of me, Celeste, Ibrahim, and Sonia, hanging on the wall—at our wedding before everything turned to shit—and think exactly the same thing.

Chapter 3

Mia: My Epiphany

Before the bell rings for first period, I sit in the library with my laptop. I log on to the Internet and Google and type in “Dr. Karter Schwörer.” He’s the arsehole my mother tied the knot with. Ha! Tied the knot. Get it? Plastic surgeon … ? Okay, bad pun. Was never good at those anyway.

There are so many articles flaunting his breakthroughs in plastic surgery, but amongst them I find a list of Swiss surnames and their meanings. Out of curiosity, I scroll down to
Schwörer
.

“Nickname for ‘conspirator’ in Swiss German.”

I laugh and click back to the search bar.

Not exactly what I was after, but hey, it amused me for a moment. That’s a positive step towards the Make Mia Feel Pretty Project.

It’s so quiet in here. This library. I hate the quiet. When it’s quiet, guilt creeps up on me. Guilt for eating too much. Guilt for being mean to Dad. But I can’t help it. He pushes. Too hard. If he could just leave me be, to work this out for myself, then maybe I’d feel more confident that a diet is what I need. But right now, the diet feels forced on me. And useless. It’s going to take forever for me to lose five kilos with what Dad wants me to do. Healthy balanced eating, my arse. There’s gotta be an easier, faster way.

I scroll, scroll, scroll through the headlines in Google. Just one thing. One new picture of some deformed rich bitch to lift my spirits before class. But they’re all the same. No new botched surgeries have been reported since yesterday morning.

Damn.

Just as the bell rings, I refresh the page one last time—you know, just in case—and spot an article entitled “Billionaire Karter Schwörer accused of falsifying data to push boy with deformed face to top of pro bono list.” It’s literally just gone up one minute ago.

Huh. Sorry, this doesn’t make me feel pretty. It just makes me feel sick. Poor kid!

But wait … sick?

Oh man … why didn’t I think of puking to get thin before?

Chapter 4

Nash: It’s not a simple touch.

I slip into the staff room and sit at my desk without being noticed. Or, at least, I don’t notice being noticed thanks to the brim of my cap—my psychological bodyguard. I switch on my computer, open the third drawer, and pull out a banana from my fruit stash. My high school footy mates, Gaz and Ibrahim, offer me a thumbs-up from the computer screen. I smile, nod, and chew—the good old days before Ibrahim got mixed up with the wrong crowd and almost destroyed my life.

I don’t know why I still have pictures of him on here. I s’pose I’m not ready for our friendship to be as good as dead yet. I’d never have hooked up with Celeste if it wasn’t for him. And if it wasn’t for Celeste, I wouldn’t have Mia.

I remember when me, Gaz, and Ibrahim would play footy, Celeste would gear up in blue and white and root for me like a true Aussie bloke. Face and hair all dolled up like Barbie, body like a tomboy just out of the sandpit. Tits totally flat. But I was never a tit man. I prefer a nice meaty arse to grab on to. My smile falls from my face at the thought of Celeste with Karter.

“Coffee?”

I look up mid-chew, at Sonia Shâd, the Advanced Mathematics teacher (okay, we’re also doing it), who is handing me a dose of caffeine juice, the outside of my mug stained from overflow.

Sonia shrugs. “You know how it is.”

I smile, nod, take the mug. It burns my hand, and I spill some on my jeans in my haste to put it on my desk.

“I am sorry,” Sonia says. “I will get you a sponge.”

“Nah, mate. Don’t worry about it. Gotta change into my sports gear soon anyway.”

Sonia smiles, tight-lipped. Folds her arms under her breasts, sways on the balls of her feet. We stare at each other while I sip my coffee. I slurp. Three times.

Her Goody Two-Shoes act creeps me out a bit. But it’s good for her, I know this. I don’t reckon I’d have as much willpower as she, given the situation. You really have to commend her efforts.

Sonia clears her throat. Does she want something? I glance at my computer screen as it shoots off e-mail notifications. Now my wallpaper flashes Celeste and Mia holding up that massive snapper for the camera. She’s decked out in waterproof fishing pants, gumboots, hair scraggly from the wind, eyes squinting from the overcast glare at Sandy Point.

I reckon Mia was happy then.

Crikey. We were all happy.

“You are not doing too well, are you?” Sonia says, checking left and right as if to make sure no one’s listening in.

“Nah. I’m fine.” I look up. Sonia’s eyebrows are practically touching her heart-shaped hairline. “Promise.”

I pinch my nostrils with my forefinger and thumb to make sure there aren’t any nose hairs sticking out. I swivel my seat to face the computer straight on, open my e-mail and a reply window to make myself look busy.

I can see Sonia in the corner of my eye, nodding a few too many times. She gently punches me on the shoulder.

“I am free after recess,” she says.

“Yep. Me too.”

I move a few papers around my desk and accidentally push the tip of my finger into a stray tack.

I curse under my breath and bring my finger to my mouth, but Sonia grabs my hand and stares at it. I let her watch as a drop of blood drips onto my desk before realizing what’s going on and yank my hand away.

“Hey,” I say with a frown.

Sonia’s breath quivers as she deeply inhales. She blinks, coughs into her fist. “Right. See you after recess.”

I smile and nod. She stumbles a little as she walks to her cubicle.

I stare at my screen, flexing my fists under the desk, hoping she’s going to be okay. I reckon I should go over and give her a neck rub. But maybe I should also leave her alone. I’m never too sure whether my affection is a distraction or reminder, so I usually let her initiate it.

I decide to stay put.

I click my e-mail closed to reveal a shot of me and Celeste as teenagers in our murky-green school uniforms. She’s blowing cigarette smoke into my mouth, her feathery blonde hair teased high enough to nest squirrels, my fringe gelled into a wave.

It was three weeks before I decided to skip tryouts for the Carlton AFL team.

I remember because she told me she was pregnant.

And wasn’t sure if it was mine.

Chapter 5

Mia: I deserve it.

I reach my classroom in the new science wing, sweaty and flushed, ankles tight. The insides of my bum cheeks burn like someone has rubbed them with sandpaper. If only I could shove an ice pack between my legs, I’d feel a little more human and less like pork-spit-walking.

Everyone is seated, and Mrs. Shâd is writing the answers to yesterday’s algebra homework on the board. I take a seat at the desk that’s always left empty, as if sitting there might mean they’ll catch my fat like a disease. I don’t drop any books, and I make minimal noise. An achievement on most days.

The room is dead silent, bar the chalk that scrapes rather than slides across the blackboard. Before writing on the board, Mrs. Shâd used to dip the chalk in water. Not only were we spared the cringe-worthy squeaks and scratches but the symbols dried bright and bold, and you didn’t have to squint if you were sitting at the back. But the principal told her it used the chalk too fast and therefore school funding.

What a tosser. He even checks in to make sure she’s stopped doing it.

If there’s one thing I’ve noticed since being transferred to Mrs. Shâd’s class, it’s that she tries—even down to the simplest of things—to make school life glide rather than stutter. And I never used to appreciate how small acts of kindness made such a difference until I became this stinking ugly bitch-face and started paying more attention to others. Even if only because I can’t stand my own existence.

I know. You’re thinking, why was I transferred? Well, what do you think? The oblivious principal put me back into the class that is taught by Mr. Monroe. I couldn’t stand him last year; I was certain he was dropping his pens by my desk so he could look up my skirt. So I kicked up a stink. Cried sexual harassment. He denied it, of course. But at least I got something positive out of it: Mrs. Shâd. She’s cool.

Mrs. Shâd spins around, the sheen of her dark-grey pencil skirt catching the sunlight as she moves. She doesn’t even have to smile. The kindness shining from her presence alone is enough to make me feel guilty for surfing the Net before class instead of finishing my homework.

Mrs. Shâd swivels around holding her chalk in the air. “I trust you have your answers ready to compare with those on the board.” She looks straight at me as if she somehow knows I didn’t finish.

As I yank my notebook from my bag, a tampon slips out from between its pages and rolls down the aisle. I snort as if the class has already broken out in laughter, and I have to join in to hide my humiliation.

Mrs. Shâd glides past, scoops the tampon up in a funnel of papers and drops it in my bag with a wink.

Just as I think the incident has gone unnoticed, a dude from the back row asks, “So how do ya decide where to stick those, Rebel?”

Cute. But I’m not as big as Rebel Wilson, thank you very much.

All heads turn to him. Some sneak glances at me. But my smirk slightly fades when I realize who made the remark. I swivel round in my seat and squint at him. At Mick. The dickhead who gets away with everything because he was diagnosed with ADD. The one that had an obsessive crush on me a year ago when I was still skinny, and I always turned down, then pashed his best friend in front of his face just to piss him off.

Yeah, I know. That wasn’t a really smart move.

I would give anything to take that back now. To be skinny again, to kiss again, to actually accept Mick’s offer and go out on that date without an ulterior motive. After all this time of hating body-builder muscles, his are starting to look attractive to me.

But. I deserve his shit. And won’t fight it.

You know what? Bring it on.

Mrs. Shâd squeezes my shoulder. I flinch. No charity. Not now. It’s pure bully bait. I know. I used to be Queen Bitch of Thornbury High. The one all the girls hated but still wanted to be. The one the boys wanted to fuck but wouldn’t dare try. Hey, that rhymes. Mental note to jot it down in my lyric book.

Mick leans back, spreads his legs, picks a pimple. “I mean, wouldn’t it just get lost everywhere except your nostrils?” he says.

Some students giggle, others snicker, pens drop to desks, heads bow to chests. There goes that rhyming again.

“Mick,” Mrs. Shâd snaps, now standing at the front of the classroom. “That is a terrible thing to say. Apologize.”

It
was
a horrible thing to say, but I’m not gonna let it get to me. Words are words. And I’ve got something like five tubes of Wite-Out in my pencil case.

Mrs. Shâd sifts through some papers on her desk as if the whole incident were evolving to plan, or maybe she’s just tired of his disobedience. He really loves to screw with people’s heads. In fact, he can get pretty disgusting at times.

Mick narrows his eyes at Mrs. Shâd for a moment before focusing on me again. When he stands, his chair scrapes against the floor and echoes through the classroom.

“And to think I once wanted to stick my dick into your skanky cunt.”

Student murmurs and giggles crawl the classroom walls like vines. Wow. That totally wasn’t called for. Okay, maybe that hurt a bit. Maybe a bit more than a bit.

“Get out. Now!” Mrs. Shâd points towards the door, cheeks aflush.

Tears block my windpipe. But I can’t let them out. Can’t show it hurts.

Can. Not.

I glance at my bag. There are Lamingtons in there. I need them. To soak up all the self-loathing and mental vomit. What’s the point in trying to lose weight now, anyway? I’m too far fucking gone. I should just suck it up. Learn to live as if this were the way I’ve always been.

Mick drags his feet towards the exit.

And spits at me on the way by.

Chapter 6

Sonia: It was the back porch that changed everything.

It is mid-period, and the corridor is as silent as a morgue. I point my finger so close to Mick’s forehead, I could engrave my initials into it with my nail. He has crossed the line one too many times. How much more do I have to “be sensible” and continue to watch him get worse and worse, more confidence shoved under his rebellious belt?

What now? Detention? Principal’s office? Suspension? Again? All that’s left is to expel him. But really? Does it have to come to that?
Should
it come to that? And I am so tired of the racism. Just because he is Turkish, everyone assumes that he is a good-for-nothing thug, and that his rebellious behaviour should be expected. The teachers at this school are constantly sending him to the principal’s office without taking the slightest moment to consider the root of the problem.

Listen to me. I
know
the root of his problem. His father is the drug lord of Melbourne’s prime criminal network. But he is gone now. He is out of Mick’s life. For now. And there has got to be a way to inject some sense through Mick’s thick emotionless skull. Should I stoop down to his level? Bully him? Use bad language? Would he respond to that? Obviously “power” doesn’t faze him in the slightest. And who is to blame? Me? It is so easy for people to point the finger at the parents. But just look at Nash and Mia. Instead of getting worse after a family crisis, her attitude has gotten better, even if it
is
only on the surface. But that is one step in the right direction. There has got to be hope for Mick at some point.