CELEBRITIES DON’T FAINT. That is because they are cool, and fainting is quite possibly the uncoolest-looking thing ever. I know this for a fact, because we have this girl at school, called Johanna Garrison, who has this horrible blood-sugar condition, and she faints at least once a month. She always looks like a complete twit. I mean, I feel bad for her and stuff, but I also feel majorly embarrassed for her. And she made me realise that fainting was something I never, ever wanted to do.
Especially not in public.
Especially not in front of one and a half hot guys (Cody gets a half, because he is, sadly, hot, even though he is mean).
And, the really tragic part is, I didn’t even get to experience the film-star faint. You know, when the heroine does this glamorous swoon, and melts so prettily into the handsome lead’s arms and their big, billowy skirt puffs around them into this perfect sea of fabric, and they somehow ALWAYS manage to get the back of their hand up to their forehead, and when they wake up their eyes are all fluttery and their cheeks are pink, and there is always, ALWAYS some sexy guy cradling them in his arms and stroking their hair, and . . .
You wanna know who was sitting over me when I woke up?
Paulina flipping Gifford.
You wanna know HOW she woke me up? She SLAPPED ME! AGAIN!
Now, getting slapped once by a pathetic nerd I can handle. Twice? Grr!
Oh, and the skirt thing? Turns out mine wasn’t puffy enough to billow. Turns out mine was just short enough and loose enough to free itself from my hips and go on a big, exciting journey all the way up to just under my armpits, showing the whole of Indonesia my undies, which have a silver crown on them and, in glittery writing, the words: Drama Queen.
Trust me, they looked cute and a little bit naughty on the rack at City Girl. When I looked down and saw them flashing and flickering and glittering in the middle of a throng of locals and tourists in Ubud . . . not so cute.
Oh, and then I threw up. On Paulina. Again.
‘That’s twice now,’ she said.
‘Yeah, well, you slapped me twice!’ I retorted. At least, that’s what I tried to say. Actually, I think it might have come out more like, ‘Ooo lapp . . . ice!’
‘Are you okay?’ asked Wayan, leaning over me.
‘Well, obviously, she’s not,’ said Paulina, using the bottom of her T-shirt to wipe the spew from my mouth. I would have felt guilty, only it was that embarrassing ‘clone’ T-shirt, so in truth I was doing her a favour. And plus, I felt like a big pile of disgusting. She reached up and pulled my skirt down, and smoothed it over my legs.
‘There,’ she said. ‘Better.’
I felt this horrible, churning, nasty, prickly feeling in my tummy. And no, it wasn’t spew again. It was something like . . . gratefulness. Gratefulness to Paulina Gifford.
‘I’m okay,’ I said to Wayan.
‘You are covered in wommit,’ he said.
‘Wommit?’ I asked.
‘Vomit,’ said Cody, holding out his hand to me. ‘He means vomit. You’re covered in vomit, and so is Paulina, and there’s even a little bit on Tinkerbell.’
‘Sorry, Tinkerbell,’ I said, reaching out to take Cody’s hand.
As I did, he pulled it away, making me slide (painfully) back onto the ground.
‘Hey! What did you do that for?’ I asked. ‘I just fainted! That was mean!’
‘That was mean?’ cried Cody, laughing. ‘Drama Queen, you just said ‘sorry’ to a dog, but you didn’t even say thanks to Paulina for covering up your crazy underpants.’
‘It doesn’t matter, Cody . . .’ Paulina said.
‘Yes, it does,’ said Cody. ‘And, just on that subject, Zee, did you even thank Paulina . . . or say SORRY at all . . . for your behaviour the other night? You know, the first time you threw up on her?’
‘Well . . .’ I began, before Paulina interrupted.
‘Cody! Seriously, it’s enough. Can’t you see she’s sick?’
‘She’s not sick, Paulina. She’s just spaced out because she never eats.’
‘Cody, the girl just fainted. Give her a . . .’
All right, so at this point, I was well over being on the ground, and not at all comfortable with being the subject of Nerd and Nerdette’s first lovers’ tiff, so I hoicked myself up onto my elbows.
‘Okay, okay! Paulina, thank you and I am sorry. Okay?’
‘No, it’s not okay!’ said Cody. ‘Are you always like this? Because since the second I met you, you have acted like a spoiled princess with an eating disorder.’
It was like the whole of Bali went quiet. The dogs stopped barking, and the kids stopped laughing, and the tuk-tuks stopped beeping their horns, and once all that was gone, all that was left were two words echoing around and around my head. ‘Eating disorder.’
Eating disorder? I didn’t have an eating disorder. Did I? Girls like me didn’t have eating disorders. The girls who had eating disorders were sad, hollow-eyed skeletons who ended up in hospital. They were shuffling, ghostly, half-dead people who never ate ANYTHING. I eat. I eat all the time.
I shook my head. I felt tears sting my eyes.
‘Cody, leave her alone,’ said Paulina, quietly. She pulled Cody away, and whispered fiercely to him. I didn’t think she knew what fierce was. And here she was being fierce again . . . for me. She was standing up for me. Against Cody.
Wayan held out his hand to me.
‘Up you get, Puteri,’ he said.
‘What does that mean?’ I asked.
‘Princess,’ he replied.
‘Do you think I’m a spoiled princess, too?’ I asked.
Wayan shook his head.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I think you are sad. And I think you should eat something. Look at Tink. She looks pretty happy, ya?’
I nodded. ‘Yeah, so?’
‘See, full of food and happy is okay. Also, dude, if you do not eat in this heat, you will probably die. And that would not be very cool, ya?’
I shook my head. And then I put my head down and I began to cry. I felt a hand on my back, rubbing, soothing.
‘Shhhh,’ a voice whispered in my ear, soft and gentle. ‘It will be okay. We’ll fix it.’
‘Thanks, Paulina,’ I whispered back.
I looked up. There were three people crouching over me.
1 Paulina Gifford.
2 Mean Cody Calabria.
3 Wayan Suparmanputra.
I looked at Paulina. There was something different about her. You know how sometimes there’s a song you don’t really like, but then it’s playing on a night when you’re out with your girls, having a rocking time, and suddenly it’s a good song? Suddenly, every time you hear it, you think of having fun. You think of good times. The song hasn’t changed, but something in your brain has.
Three days we had been in Bali. Ten to go before we headed home. Three days and already so much had happened. The song had begun to sound different.
Tink jumped up on my lap and licked my face.
‘He is taking away your tears,’ said Wayan. ‘You know what else makes tears go away?’
I shook my head.
‘Green pancake with coconut in the middle,’ he said, smiling.
He really did have the most beautiful smile. After Robbie Chandler’s, that is. But, green pancakes?
‘Ya, green pancake, dude! Trust me?’
I shrugged. What the hey, if I could feel grateful to Paulina Gifford, and be mad at a guy I thought was hot, and make friends with a straggly dog, then why not trust a Balinese waiter I had only just met?
‘I trust you,’ I said, doing an eyelash flutter for good measure. I still planned to make Robbie Chandler jealous. That, at least, had not changed. After all, we have to use our feminine charms while we still got ‘em, hey, Ange? Let you know how I go.
Peace,
Zee