LATER THAT AFTERNOON, I WAS waiting for Dad to come and pick me up after school. Meko wasn’t speaking to me since my lapse into full-on Jet Lucas-loves-me obsessive mode, which was a shame because I could have used the backup. I was tidying up my locker – I had no control over what people did to the outside of it, but I could at least take charge of the interior.
I’d installed one of those IKEA shelving units. Melissa Kravitz told me I was a freak, but you know what? Stuff her. Just because her locker looks and smells like a couple of rodents had sex in it and died. Plus, my locker arrangement is very practical. There’s one big shelf at the bottom where my books are all lined up according to subject (and where I keep Nina’s ballet bag on the days she has class, because if she or Dad had to remember to bring it she’d be doing ballet in her Bata Scouts). On top there are three smaller compartments where I keep my stationery (pens, highlighters, stapler, paperclips), my personal hygiene items (deodorant, hair brush, neutral lip gloss) and various low-fat, high-GI snacks in case of emergency – not like the rubbish the tuckshop sells.
Kravitz and Goss rocked up beside me just as I was trying to decide between a banana-apricot muesli bar and a carob-coated pecan slice to keep me going until dinnertime. Melissa slammed the door of my locker shut – nearly taking my fingers with it – and started to interrogate me about you-know-who. Shania let Melissa do the talking. She just stood there with her hands on her hips trying to act tough and popping disgusting prune-coloured bubbles at me, because not even she can get away with smoking inside.
‘So, Loser,’ Melissa sneered. ‘What’s this fete bullshit McGregor’s going on about? You are not serious.’
Shania blew another purple bubble and snapped it like a gunshot.
‘Hey, so not my idea,’ I said, sticking my hands, carob-coated pecan slice and all, in my pockets for protection.
‘Really?’ Melissa cocked her head on one side and looked me up and down with her fake gypsy eyes as though I was something stinky she’d found on the bottom of her shoe. ‘See, I’d almost believe that – except for the fact that I know you’ve got an ulterior motive.’
Melissa said ‘ulterior motive’ the way you might say ‘highly contagious suppurating skin disease’.
I could feel my palms growing sweaty and some ridiculous part of my brain – obviously not the bit concerned with self-preservation – was trying to remember what kind of stain-remover might be useful for removing melted carob from cotton-polyester blend gingham. The other part of my brain – the functioning part – was going, oh no, she knows about Jet Lucas. She’s going to kill me. Lie! Lie! Like you’ve never lied before.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ was the best I could come up with. Pathetic, hey? It certainly didn’t convince Melissa. She grabbed me by the collar.
‘Don’t mess with me, Loser,’ she hissed. ‘I know all about your little plan to get up close and personal with Jet. But I’m warning you. You so much as lay a finger on him or try cracking one lame little joke and I will seriously hurt you.’
‘I’m just his sound-tech.’ My voice sounded like Mickey Mouse on helium. ‘It’s not like we’re going on a date or anything.’
Kravitz stuck her mulberry-glossed lips next to my ear and purred, ‘If I thought you were going on a date with him, Loser, we wouldn’t be having this conversation because you’d already be dead.’ She twisted my collar even tighter around my throat like she’d decided to kill me anyway, but then Shania saved my neck – literally.
‘Hey, check this out!’ she shouted gleefully to the whole corridor. ‘Loser is into Barbie. Isn’t that sweet?’ And she pulled Nina’s Barbie Ballerina bag out of my locker and tossed it to Melissa who, fortunately, stopped strangling me so she could catch it.
‘Put that back,’ I croaked. ‘That’s my little sister’s ballet stuff.’
‘Really?’ Kravitz could have sneered for Australia, she was so good at it. ‘I didn’t know there was a little Loser running around as well. Let’s see, does that make her less of a Loser than you, or more of a Loser than you?’
I couldn’t think of anything even remotely clever to say to that, so I said, very stupidly, ‘Her name’s Nina.’
Shania shrieked with fake laughter. ‘Nina Ballerina! Oh, please tell me you’re making this up?’ She began pirouetting drunkenly around the corridor, singing that old ABBA song that Dad used to sing to Nina when she was a baby.
Melissa was not so easily distracted. She’d been going through Nina’s bag and had found a notice from her dance teacher.
‘Oh, look,’ she crowed to the still-prancing Shania, ‘Nina Ballerina’s going to be playing a Thistledown Fairy in the end-of-year concert. Sweet!’ She grinned at me, malice shining from her eyes like a comic-book death-ray. ‘Gee, it would be such a shame if little Nina didn’t make it to the concert, wouldn’t it? If she had some terrible accident between now and then? Maybe, and this is just a suggestion, maybe it would be better if you spent your time keeping a close eye on your sister instead of hanging around Jet Lucas like a bad smell.’
I guess it’s pretty obvious that Melissa Kravitz has seen one too many episodes of The Sopranos. But still there was a part of me that was worried she was just crazy enough to carry out her threat.
By the time Dad arrived, a little movie was playing in my head: awful visions of Melissa Kravitz and Shania Goss tiptoeing up behind Nina as she waited for Dad after class and throwing a sack over her; Melissa and Shania tossing Nina, trussed up like a Sunday roast, into the back of a van and screeching off around the corner; Melissa and Shania tying Nina to a chair and torturing her with giant purple bubbles while she screamed for me and Dad to rescue her.
As we drove to Nina’s dance school, I was quietly hyperventilating, seeing little black and grey spots before my eyes, and Nina was staring at me as if I was a complete fruitcake. Suddenly, and I know this sounds ridiculous, I had a feeling that if Nina got out of the car I was never going to see her again. As she reached for the handle of the door, I shouted, ‘Hey, I’m starving. Let’s all go and get pizza.’
Nina scowled at me from beneath her perfect little ballerina bun. ‘Don’t be stupid, Lu. I’ve got a ballet class – in case you hadn’t noticed.’
‘It won’t hurt you to miss one week, will it?’
‘We’ve got rehearsals for the concert. Madame Olga’ll kill me.’
‘You’re playing a piece of thistledown. How hard can it be? You just waft here and waft there – don’t you?’
‘Ha ha, very funny.’ Nina narrowed her eyes suspiciously, trying to figure out what I was up to. ‘Forget it, Loopy Lu. I’m going to class.’ She grabbed the Barbie Ballerina bag that was the cause of this whole freak-out and jumped out of the car, slamming the door behind her.
Dad turned to look at me as if he’d just noticed that something was going on. ‘What was all that about, Luie?’
Suddenly I had a brilliant idea. It was perfect. I could just tell Dad that we couldn’t afford Nina’s ballet lessons anymore and that would be that. I do all the accounts at home and pay all the bills – Dad doesn’t have a clue about any of that stuff – so he’d just take my word for it. Like I said, perfect!
Dad didn’t seem to see it that way.
‘But Nina loves going to ballet. And she looks so sweet in her little tutus.’
‘Do you know how much those sweet little tutus cost, Dad? And you’re not the one who nearly goes blind sewing on the damned sequins every year.’
‘I know it’s a lot of work for you … but it means so much to Nina. If money’s the issue we’ll just have to find a way to save money on something else. Okay, kiddo?’ He reached over and patted my arm as if to say I should stop worrying about nasty grown-up things like money and maybe think more about boys or clothes or something.
Great. My little sister was going to end up at the bottom of the river but at least she’d be wearing the best tutu that money could buy.