Mum appeared in my doorway five minutes later with a cup of tea in each hand. “What happened to Simon?”
“He, uh, had to go,” I told her, taking the steaming mug she held out to me. I wasn’t ready to reveal my discovery to Mum for fear she’d say it was my fault; that I’d driven Simon to take drastic measures. “Mrs Lutz called about an emergency at the pharmacy.”
“But what about your assignment? Simon said it’s due tomorrow.”
“It’s fine. I can finish it on my own.”
Mum’s doubtful frown made me regret all the times I’d used needing Simon’s help with homework as an excuse to not do it myself. “Okay, but I think you’d better ask Larrie to give it the once-over tonight. She’ll be back from Beth’s in a few hours.”
Shiz. That was all I needed. Even though Larrie claimed to be too busy to help me with anything around the house, I had no doubt she’d make time in her schedule to show Mum and Dad how rubbish I was at her star subject. I reopened my textbook, highlighter in hand, determined to prove them all wrong.
Four hours later I thought I had it figured out; I’d even managed to work out a punnet square showing how Larrie and I had both inherited the gene for green eyes from Dad’s side of the family. I marked the sections on one gene wheel with my characteristics, and the sections on another with Larrie’s, and compared them side by side. It was no surprise that they were almost identical, but it was what the wheel didn’t show that interested me more.
I’d hoped Mum would forget about getting Larrie to check my assignment, but there was no such luck.
“Okay,” said Larrie when Mum asked her at dinner.
“Are you sure?” I said. “Don’t you have to study for your History exam tomorrow?”
“Studying can wait another fifteen minutes. Anyway, if I don’t know the key dates of the Russian Revolution by now I never will.”
“But you–”
Mum cut me off. “Allison, it’s very generous of your sister to offer to help you. Now say thank you and go and get on with it. Dad and I will clear the table.”
Larrie wheeled her ergonomically correct desk chair into my room and scrolled through my assignment on screen. I sat next to her, studying her face for telltale headshaking and tsks at my mistakes, waiting for her to tell me that everything I’d written was wrong.
“This is actually pretty good,” she said when she finished. “My only suggestion is that you use more colour. Morales is a sucker for colour.”
We went through the assignment together, adding bright colours to the charts and tables. It was the first time in months Larrie had been into my room for any reason other than to tell me off or demand I do something for her. So long that it felt weird to be sitting together at my desk receiving sisterly advice. But good weird.
Larrie closed the document and turned to face me. “I’m really sorry you’ve been dragged into this mess with Camille. If we’d known things at school would get this out of hand, Beth and I would’ve told someone about it sooner.”
“S’okay,” I muttered, studying the stitching on my jeans.
“What’s wrong, Al?” Larrie sounded concerned.
“Nothing. It’s just … I don’t know how to react when you talk about ‘Beth and I’. It’s taking me some time to get used to the idea.”
“If it makes you feel any better, it took me a while too. But being with Beth makes me really happy, and I’ve realised that’s all that matters. I spent two years with Mitch, trying to be the ideal girlfriend, and dress the way he liked and act the way he thought a girlfriend should. With Beth, I can be myself. Isn’t that what everyone wants?”
“I s’pose, but …”
“But what?”
I asked the question that had been on my mind since I saw the photo of them together: “Would Beth still make you happy if she was a guy?”
Larrie shrugged. “I can’t answer that. If Beth was a guy, she wouldn’t be Beth. But if you’re asking whether I’m a lesbian, I think so, yes. Are you okay with that?”
I thought about it seriously for the first time. Not about what people would think of me if Larrie was gay, but how I felt about it, and about Larrie. The two things had been so entwined in my mind, that it was hard to separate them now.
I meant it when I told people that Jay and Dylan were the most in-love couple I knew. And I hadn’t thought twice about signing the petition for the gay–straight alliance. So why was I having such a hard time when it came to my own sister? Patchouli’s theory about comparing myself with Larrie came back to me. Maybe she was sharper than she seemed.
I’d been silent for so long that Larrie looked worried, as if she was scared to hear my answer.
“Whoever you choose to be with is okay with me,” I told her.
She hugged me. “Thank you, Al. I really needed to know that.”
“But Beth’s way too nice for you,” I whispered in her ear.
“I know,” she whispered back. “I’m very lucky.”
I was finishing my cornflakes when Larrie came into the kitchen the next morning. Judging by the jumbo-size bags under her eyes, she’d hardly slept. I wanted to put her mind at ease by telling her that by the time she finished her History exam I’d have “Camille” sorted out once and for all, but she was engrossed in her study notes and I couldn’t risk wrecking the delicate truce we seemed to have reached.
I was about to beat a friendly-but-hasty retreat before we had a chance to start bickering out of habit, when Larrie sighed and pulled her phone out of her pocket. Her face crumpled when she saw the message that had just come through.
“Camille?” I asked.
She handed me the phone.
Good luck for the exam today, sweetie. Not that any uni will let you in once they know what you’re really like. XOX Camie
“You know it’s not true, though, Larrie. You heard Mum and Dad. Unis aren’t like Whitlam, or even Kingston – they don’t care about some random photo.”
“I know, but it still hurts to know that someone hates you so much that they want to wreck your life.” Larrie slumped facedown onto the table, her shoulders heaving with every sob.
Mum came in to refill her coffee mug on her way to get dressed. “What’ve you done now?” she asked me.
“It’s not Al,” sniffed Larrie. “There was another message.”
While Mum comforted Larrie, I did the only thing I could think of to stop things getting any worse and slipped Larrie’s phone into the front pocket of my bag. At least that way Camille/Simon couldn’t upset Larrie any more before her exam, and if he tried to send her any more messages from school I might even manage to catch him in the act.
On the bus I sat in what had become my usual seat, behind the driver. I was too busy thinking of ways to make Simon pay for his antics to even notice whether Rochelle Sullivan was there.
The more I thought about it, the more obvious it became that Simon was behind the whole thing:
He had the motive (me).
He had the means (he spent so much time fixing the computers in the office he’d have no trouble getting the admin details for Whitlam’s Facebook group to give “Camille” access).
He had the knowledge (nerd factor: google times a hundred to the power of infinity).
Now all I had to do was figure out a way to break it to Maz. And make her admit that I’d been right about him all along.
Al Miller will have the last laugh.