The Bad Karma Diaries (5 page)

‘How d’you get on?’ said the one who asked about Hallowe’en.

He was leader, that was obvious, he was very confident.

‘Not so good,’ I said, but he was looking at Anna, so then I knew it was Anna who’d brought him to the shop. It is not very hard to work these things out. Boys like Anna. She is a bit of a tomboy and has quite short hair, but she’s cute-looking.

That’s what my mum said once, ‘Anna is the cute type.’

‘But she’s not
cute
,’ I told her, because babies are cute – Anna
is tough!

My mum laughed, ‘So don’t judge people by their looks …’

I am not exactly the cute type. I don’t know what type I am. Well, I am the skinny type. Some girls in the class have breasts and waists and thighs, but I just go straight up, straight down. Renata says I’ve got the opposite to an hour-glass figure – a pencil figure – because my chest, waist and thighs are all exactly the same circumference (this is a typical Renata exaggeration – actually my tummy sticks out
more
than my chest, ha!). My hair falls straight down too. It is light brown. I was a cute kid and people smiled at me for no reason in shops, but now my face is longer and has some spots and people smile less. But my eyes are quite large and an interesting colour – like green plums – and apparently loads of girls go through the gawky stage, that’s my mum’s word for it. It means the stage between being a cute kid and a stunning sixth year (there are a lot of girls in our school at that stage, ha!)

When we all spilled back out onto the street, Hallowe’en Boy took charge.

‘Let’s see what you got.’

Then he asked us how much we had left to spend and when we told him, he laughed. All the others laughed too.

‘Real big spender,’ said Hallowe’en Boy. Then he said decisively, ‘I know – the pound shop!’

‘Two Euro shop now,’ said David Leydon.

‘Whatever,’ said Anna, ‘that’s a good idea.’

So we all trooped off together. (Rollercoaster right up!) Hallowe’en Boy was talking in his confident way to Anna all about the Party Business, which was the obvious thing to talk about. I was beside David Leydon. He wasn’t saying anything. I don’t think he is very communicative. He is moody and surly just like a rock star.

I said, ‘So what do you think of our school then?’

He said, ‘It sucks, like all schools.’

‘Oh. How many schools have you been to?’

‘This is my third – including primary school.’

‘Were you expelled?’ I asked.

He said, ‘No. Of course not. If I was expelled, other schools wouldn’t accept me. I just didn’t like them.’

He made me feel naïve, but I said, ‘Why didn’t you like them?’

Our conversation was actually going quite well, although it consisted of me asking all the questions. If I didn’t ask questions, we’d dry up, that was sure.

At the pound (sorry €2!) shop, there were balloons and bubbles and keyrings and a whole load of cheap stuff, so we got prizes and things for the Going Home Bags. And we had 62 cent over! We had a laugh too. The pound (sorry €2!) shop is full of stupid gadgets to laugh at.

Outside the shop, Hallowe’en Boy said, ‘OK, girls, business over. Now let’s go to McDonald’s.’

But one of the others said, ‘Not McDonald’s’ and Anna said,
‘We don’t have any money left!’ I looked at Hallowe’en Boy and said ‘Unless you know a 62 cent café?’

Everyone laughed. (I meant them to). Then we hung about the corner a bit but in the end we just went off. They were gonna hang round town some more. I’d have stayed with them, but Anna decided to go, and I wasn’t gonna stay alone – obviously!

I said, ‘So they weren’t
that
bad,’ because I wanted to talk about them.

Anna said, ‘Keith is enterprising. The rest are goons.’

Keith is Hallowe’en Boy. It’s a pity she doesn’t like David Leydon, but actually it’s not
that
much of a pity.

Uh-oh. Just had a fight. Have been sent up to my room. Like a five-year-old! Am SEETHING!

What happened was I was called down for dinner and when I got there it was pizza.

I said, ‘Oh-hh
pizza
!’
and my mum said, ‘Something wrong with pizza?’ It was her warning voice, and really I suppose I should have been warned, but I wasn’t because a) it is important to speak your mind and not be down-trodden in Life and b) pizza is not so healthy, and it is important for the
whole
family that we eat more healthily. I wasn’t just thinking of me. I was thinking of Dad and Justine as well!

So I said, ‘Pizza doesn’t have a lot of nutritional value. Not like ostrich.’ But I sat down and was actually ready to eat because a) I like pizza and b) there was salad with it and salad is Healthy.

So if mum had just left it at that like she should have there wouldn’t have been an argument, but she said, ‘Ostrich?’

Her voice was gone from warning to dangerous, and I was scared. I have to admit. She can still scare me. I didn’t say anything. Neither did anyone else. Justine was just staring at her plate.

Mum said, ‘And where did you have ostrich?’

I said, in a very
casual
voice, not a scared voice, ‘Oh, at Anna’s.’

She said, ‘I see. And it’s now beneath you to eat pizza?’

I said, ‘Well, it’s important to diversify. I think our diet in this house is quite monotonous.’

I was proud of using ‘monotonous’ in the right way and I spoke in a nice, explaining voice, not a bratty one, because maybe Mum didn’t realise how monotonous our diet is. I was trying to help!

But Dad said, ‘Apologise to your mother.’ Just like that, in a heavy, no-argument voice.

I said, ‘But I’m not saying anything
wrong
. I’m just saying that maybe–’

He cut me off then. ‘Apologise immediately or go upstairs.’ So what choice did I have? I stood up and slammed back my
chair and went upstairs, banging the door. And then I burst into tears.

I am
so
mad. I was trying to help and they treat me like a little kid. Why shouldn’t I be allowed an opinion on what we eat? Is this some kind of insane boarding school where the Headmistress’ word is Law, and you get beaten just for asking questions? At Anna’s house everyone gets to speak their mind freely. Probably if
Charlie
said he didn’t like his dinner, he wouldn’t have to eat it.

Am very hungry now. Not sure what to do. I need a hidden stash of food in my room. I will find myself apologising when I don’t really mean it just because I’m starving. They are trying to break my spirit through hunger!

Cows’ farts
do
destroy the ozone layer! In Geography today we were doing all about the environment and Mrs Finch asked what destroys the ozone layer so I put up my hand and said, ‘Aeroplanes and cars’, and she wrote it on the board.

Then someone else said, ‘CFCs, you know, in fridges’ and she wrote that down, then Anna said, ‘Cows’ farts!’ so we all began to giggle, but Mrs Finch said ‘Yes, unfortunately that is one of the biggest causes. They release methane gas,’ So then she wrote down ‘Methane gas from cows’, which saved her having to write ‘Cows’ farts’.

I should have known Renata couldn’t have got it wrong.

We discussed what to do to cut harmful gases, like using trains and bikes instead of cars, and boats instead of planes. We didn’t work out what to do about the cows though. Nobody said, ‘Slaughter them!’, because nobody is a psychopath like Renata.

I said, ‘Change their diet’ because it is diet that causes farting, but everyone cracked up laughing.

Anna said, ‘Yeah, put them in a concrete jungle!’ so then I got why everyone was laughing.

Admittedly it could be hard to stop cows eating grass in Ireland!

This is a Conundrum.

At break Pierce went up to Charlie Nuttall and took his Mars bar. Just like that! Charlie had just pulled off the wrapper and was about to bite when Pierce appeared (ap
pierced
!) and leaned in and took the bar casually and said, ‘Give us some of that!’

Charlie said, ‘Uugh–’ and then changed it to, ‘uugh … Uu … no problem,’ and watched while Pierce bit off an enormous bite – way more than half – and then handed it back to him, all covered with Pierce slobber.

‘Ta,’ said Pierce, and he gave Charlie’s hair a ruffle, a really patronising ruffle, the way some grown-ups ruffle kids’ hair, but I never would cause nobody likes being patronised, not even four-year-olds. And certainly not Charlie Nuttall. He looked
frustrated and embarrassed that everyone had seen this but there was nothing he could do.

Anna said to me in a quiet voice, ‘That’s it. We’re gonna have to get Pierce for lying to us and bullying too … it’s our duty.’

‘A good dose of Karma for him,’ I said enthusiastically, but I was nervous. Pierce is harder to get than Elaine. Maybe he’s outside the Karmic circle. I mean, if Karma was gonna get him for his bad deeds, surely it would have got him by now?

Oh, the pizza fight? Well, it was Resolved.

Dad came to my room and said, ‘Do you not know that when someone makes food for you it is very rude to complain?’

I said, ‘Of course. But
mum
made it.’ I mean, of course I would never complain about a
stranger’s
food.

He sighed and said, ‘Denise, you are old enough to realise that your mother isn’t a robot programmed to look after you. If she spends time cooking, it’s the same as if a stranger does. You still have to be polite.’

I was going to argue because a) I am argumentative and b) how can Mum be the same as a stranger? (that’s crazy talk – if you can’t say exactly what you think at home, where can you?) and c) she didn’t actually
make
the pizza, she just heated it up. But I didn’t argue because a) I was
starving
and b) Dad looked like he was making an effort to control himself. He looked like one wrong word and he’d explode. He has been pretty bad-tempered recently because he’s working too hard, because
of the recession, I guess. He leaves earlier and he comes back later and he looks tired. So this time I read the warning signs.

I said, ‘Okay, sorry’ and then went down to Mum and said, ‘Sorry,’ and then I ate the pizza – and salad. So they did manage to break me through hunger! So now I know I would not be able to hold out long if I was being tortured in a death camp. I would give up all the information I knew after just one day’s starvation. I ate Justine’s remaining pizza too. She left about half of hers. How come she didn’t get into trouble over that?

Just sent Anna a text:

boys darts – what to do?

She wrote back, really fast:

bull ’do

Which translates as:
cull ’
em
. I am impressed how fast she thought of that. And it was good coincidence that ‘
bull
’ came up for ‘
cull
’. Because of cows, you know.

Went to Anna’s house to make the cake. Her mum wasn’t there. This turned out to be very unfortunate – for the cake, and for us. In fact we would have been better off going to my house like Anna wanted to because Mum makes good cakes, but I didn’t want to so I said Mum wouldn’t be there. This was not exactly a lie because she
might
have been shopping, but it wasn’t exactly the truth either.

At Anna’s, the only people we had to help us with the cake were Renata and her friend Alva. They were in a very silly mood, I could tell as soon as we went in. They started saying names of cakes back and forth to each other and the names got sillier and sillier:

Renata: ‘Black Forest Gateau’

Alva: ‘Victoria Sponge’

Renata: ‘Lemon Meringue’

Alva: ‘Madeira’

Renata: ‘Battenburg’

Alva: ‘Sticky Toffee Pudding’

Renata: ‘Angel Food Cake’

Alva: ‘Bakewell’

Renata: ‘Tiramisu’

And on and on and on. Really silly, and laughing at us and half showing-off too.

Finally Anna shouted, ‘Shut
up
! We just want to make a six-year-old’s birthday cake!’

Renata got down a cookery book, opened it and said, ‘There!’

It was a photo of a big chocolate cake with smarties and cream splotches on top.

Anna said, ‘So how do we make it?’

Renata said, ‘Follow the recipe, stoopid.’

Then she and Alva trailed out. As she was leaving Alva said kindly, ‘Beat the mix. Always beat the mix more than you think
you need to.’

So we only got one tip and it wasn’t enough … When the cake came out of the oven, everyone was back in the kitchen except Anna’s dad. The cake had sunk. It looked like deflated balloon, all sad and sagging. A big silence greeted our cake. Then Tommy began to laugh. And that set Alva and Renata off in
hysterics
. Anna pushed her lip out …

Anna’s mum said, ‘Renata!’ and then, ‘It will be fine when you’ve iced it and put on the cream and smarties, you’ll see. I’m sure it
tastes
delicious.’

‘It would want to,’ said Renata.

‘You didn’t beat the mix enough,’ said Alva, ‘I
told
you to beat the mix more than you think you need to.’

‘People who say “I told you so” should be shot,’ said Anna.

Back from party. Oh my God! Gonna go play in the traffic …

OK. Have recovered from yesterday. I am now supposed to be doing my homework before Sunday dinner. Instead I will write all about the party:

So, we arrived at Mrs Mahony’s in good time, with everything made – the rice crispy buns and the sandwiches and the cake and the Going Home Bags. Mum gave us a lift, and
she walked us to the door to help carry the stuff. The door opened before we’d rung the bell, and there was a supermodel.