On Thursday Ms Morales handed back the frog diagrams we’d done for homework. Mine was so covered in red pen it was difficult to make out the corrections, but there was no mistaking the mark at the top of the page (nine out of twenty, dismal even by my standards), or the “suggestion” that I ask Larrie for some tutoring before our Science exam. Simon quickly stuffed his diagram into his folder, but not before I’d spied the twenty out of twenty in the top corner. Nerd.
“Our next area of study,” announced Ms Morales, “is genetics.”
Simon hissed a Gollum-esque “Yesss!” under his breath. Double nerd.
“You’ll remember from our unit on reproduction last year that during fertilisation half of one parent’s chromosomes combine with half of the other parent’s chromosomes,” said Ms Morales, drawing her standard sperm-meets-egg graphic on the board. “This means that we inherit fifty per cent of our genes from each parent – although which fifty per cent is entirely up to chance. These gene copies make up an individual’s genotype.”
I tried to concentrate on what she was saying, but after ten minutes of alleles and chromosomes and DNA, my mind wandered to more interesting things. Like imagining Josh Turner inviting me to the Year Eleven formal. The thought of Larrie’s jaw dropping when he arrived to pick me up (in a limo; wearing a tux; carrying roses) was priceless …
My reverie was interrupted by Simon thrusting a piece of paper under my nose.
“What’s this?”
“Homework. We have to classify ourselves according to our inherited traits,” said Simon. “You mark which phenotypes you have and then you can see what the genotype is.”
I gave him the blank expression I reserve for when he spouts technobabble and Klingon.
“You put an ‘x’ in the column for characteristics you have – the phenotype – like eye and hair colour,” he said, pointing to the table on the worksheet. “The genotype is the letters that show whether it’s a dominant gene that you’ve inherited from both parents, or from one of them, or if it’s recessive. For example, both my parents have brown hair, which means my red hair must come from both of them carrying the recessive gene for red. Does that make sense?”
I nodded, because it was easier than asking him to explain it a third time, and stuffed the worksheet in my folder.
Things didn’t improve in English when we got our Romeo and Juliet essays back. I knew I hadn’t made a huge effort in my discussion of the role of fate in the play, but I hadn’t expected a C.
“It might help you to read a few other people’s essays,” Mr Franklin said when he saw my face fall. “To get some ideas about how to make your argument more persuasive.”
Of course, when he said “other people” I knew he meant Larrie, but there was no way I was going to ask if I could read her old essays. I may as well have gone up to her and said, “You’re the only one with a brain in the family.” Which she’d have agreed with.
Even in Art (which I’d only taken as an elective because Maz had promised it would be a bludge) when Mrs Gaunt came round to see our self-portraits, she said, “Allison, I’ve been watching your work develop and it … well, scares me.”
I studied my drawing. Admittedly, it was more stick figure than Rembrandt, but surely it wasn’t scary? From what I could see, other people’s work wasn’t that much better than mine (other than Maz’s, which was so realistic it could have been a photo of her). But then, the rest of the class wasn’t being measured against Larissa Miller, who’d won Whitlam’s annual art prize every year until she dropped the subject in Year Eleven to concentrate on Maths and Science.
I can’t remember a time when teachers haven’t compared me to Larrie, but when I graduated from Kingston Primary to Whitlam the comparisons changed from “You’re just like your sister” to variations of “You’re not as good as your sister”. In every subject, from PE to Drama, and especially in Science, within a few weeks of starting Year Seven my teachers’ disappointment in the Other Miller Girl became obvious.
At first I tried to show them that I had inherited Larrie’s sporting ability, photographic memory and artistic talent. I worked my guts out in the lead up to the Year Seven half-yearly exams, my colour-coded study schedule modelled on Larrie’s own. And I did well. But not as well as Larrie, who came in the top three for every one of her subjects and earned extra house points for leading the Year Nine debating team to victory and captaining the junior swimming squad at the same time.
When Mum and Dad saw our midyear report cards laid side by side, their disappointment was obvious. I may not have failed my exams, but I’d failed to reach the bar Larrie had set for me.
“It’s not like you’re knocking yourself out to get good marks,” said Maz when I moaned to her at lunchtime about my day in Larrie’s-little-sister hell.
“What would be the point? No matter what I do, until Larrie’s out of the picture the teachers are always going to think she’s better than me.”
Maz’s eyes dropped, as if she was suddenly fascinated by the ground in front of her. It’s what she does when she’s preparing to say something she thinks you don’t want to hear. “Al, I don’t want to bring you down or anything, but have you considered the possibility that things might not change when Larrie leaves Whitlam? I mean, sure, you won’t have to see her every day or listen to her boring announcements in assembly, but I don’t think the teachers are going to forget her overnight.”
I felt like I’d been punched in the guts. For as long as we’d been best friends, Maz had agreed that my second-best status at Whitlam would end the moment Larrie was off school grounds for good. Now it almost sounded as though she thought I deserved it.
“Maybe you have to make them see you differently,” suggested Simon, who’d been silent for so long I’d assumed he had his invisible earbuds in.
“What?” I didn’t try to disguise the hostility in my voice.
“My dad has this saying: ‘If you always do what you’ve always done, then you’ll always get what you’ve always got’.”
“Thank you, Confucius. When I want your advice, I’ll ask for it.”
Maz shrugged. “Maybe it’s worth a try.”
I glared at her, mentally invoking Best Friend Rule #1: You’re always on my side.
“Will you sign my petition?” Sally Rechichi squatted between me and Maz and held out a clipboard. “We’re trying to start a gay–straight alliance at Whitlam, but student council rules say we have to get at least 101 signatures before they’ll present the motion to the school board.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” asked Simon, reaching for the clipboard.
“At the moment it’s just me and a couple of guys in Year Eleven. I know there are at least six people in other years who want to join, but they’re worried about the fallout of coming out at school. Hopefully, when they see how many of the straight students support the alliance they’ll join too.”
As far as I could tell, Sally didn’t worry about what anyone thought of her. She’d outed herself during a Health and Development lesson in Year Nine, after Jamie Butcher claimed that lesbians just hadn’t met Mr Right yet. Sally let him know in no uncertain terms that there was whole lot more to her attraction to girls.
“Is this some sort of protest group?” I thought back to Sally’s Whit’s Wit post in first term demanding that the school ban the use of the word “gay” in a derogatory sense. (To which Prad’s response was, “That’s so gay”. Brandy seemed to agree; she made Simon pull down the post before recess.)
“That’s up to the members to decide. There might be some issues we want to take a stand on, but it’s more of a social support network – a way for us to stand our ground against the ’phobes by showing we’re not scared of them.”
“Count me in,” said Maz. She added her name under Simon’s and passed the clipboard to me.
I signed without bothering to read the blurb at the top of the petition – if Sally wanted to give people like Jamie ammunition to use against her, it was no skin off my highly sensitive nose. Anyway, I had more important things on my mind.
Al Miller wants out of Little Sister Hell.