The Bad Karma Diaries (14 page)

Anna said her mum took it really seriously. In fact, as she was talking about
égoisme à deux
she began to wonder out loud if maybe we were spending too much time together and if we should be separated!!!

Huh!! And I thought her mum was my
friend!

Well if that were my mum saying that I’d have gone nuts, but Anna managed to be (unusually) diplomatic. She just kept quiet and waited for her mum to argue the whole thing around. Apparently she started off saying we should be ‘forcibly separated’ but then argued that this might be ‘counterproductive’ and make us ‘stubbornly refuse to move on’. She concluded that it was better ‘not to force the issue. They’ll probably outgrow each other.’

Why, thanks Mrs Power!! I love you too!

Anna’s punishment is to give the next takings of a children’s party – we have one on Sunday – to a charity. Well, not
a
charity, Amnesty International since they combat racism,
bullying, persecution of the weak, the interfering by strong states into the affairs of the weak and all the other things we’re guilty of.

There is something – I dunno –
creepy
about this punishment. But Anna doesn’t seem to mind too much. Perhaps because of her social conscience. The flip side of her greed to
make
money is her desire to give it
away
(to charity). This is not like me. I don’t care about making it so much, and I’m not that motivated to give it away.

Today we had to give Jayne O’Keeffe our letter. O’Toole made us re-write it. He said, ‘That is a totally inadequate letter. Your use of the word “blackened” shows inappropriate levity. Your apology is self-regarding. You contributed to a major upset and you need to
grovel. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa
!’ and he thumped his heart theatrically each time he said ‘
mea culpa
’. Whatever all that meant. Well, what it meant was we had to re-write.

Here is our final attempt (fourth draft). It is more O’Toole than us. It is a forced confession. It was practically beaten out of us:

So then O’Toole took us to Lucas’ office for the All Apologies Session. Jayne was called in.

Lucas said, ‘Denise and Anna have something to say.’

We said, ‘It was us, sorry,’ and handed her the letter.

She looked quite shocked and suddenly I looked at her and she wasn’t oozing popularity and bitchiness. She looked awful. She looked like she’d had a worse week than me even. So I said sorry again and this time I meant it.

Afterwards Anna said, ‘Well, I do feel bad actually …’

I said ‘Yeah, because she looked … but she
is
a bully!’

And Anna said, ‘Yeah, but we don’t know what happened exactly. We’ll never know. Probably Jayne and Gita don’t even know any more, the story’s got so confused. But the thing is …
there are people in this school who are always going to think she’s racist and that’s because of us making a big deal of it.’

‘Maybe she’s learnt a valuable lesson,’ I said hopefully, ‘never put yourself in a position where people can accuse you.’

‘Maybe
we’ve
learnt a valuable lesson.’

‘Well, of course
we
have! No telly and no money and public humiliation, probably …’

Well I was right about the public humiliation. Jayne has told everyone. I can’t really blame her. We are trying to keep our dignity but it’s not that easy. Most people are treating it as
hilarious
. ‘Ooh,’ they say when we approach, ‘careful! It’s the vigilantes!’

Is it better to be a) a laughing stock, or b) have people despise you, or c) scared of you?

a) is better than b) but I think I’d prefer c).

Well the school might think we’re a) a laughing stock, but it seems that my own little sister b) despises us!

After breakfast today, she came up and said, ‘So it was you and Anna?’

And I said, ‘Yeah, okay! We messed up! Don’t rub it in!’ in a pretty nasty, snappy voice, but it is hard being laughed at and I
needed to snap at someone, and what else are little sisters for?

She said, ‘You really did mess up. You couldn’t do it right and then you got found out.’

I said, ‘Enough already! If I wanted a lecture at home, I’d have invited Lucas and O’Toole to dinner.’

She said, ‘Yeah, well you’ve just made it worse.’ And she stomped upstairs.

I was pissed off – families should stand up for each other! – but now it’s occurred to me that Justine has added another letter, so we’re also:

s) Incompetent messers, not able to do a job properly without being found out.

It’s pretty smart of Justine to have worked that out. In fact, now that I think about it, we owe Gita her money back. We didn’t carry out our mission properly. Obviously it will kill Anna to do this, but she is very fair-minded. She is (probably) more fair-minded than she is mercenary.

There was actually an issue about my doing the children’s party today, because I’m grounded. I was amazed.

I said, ‘It’s
work
, not fun, how can that be grounded?’ Mum said, ‘I think you get quite a lot of fun out of it, and grounded means grounded, means not leaving the house.’

So I thought incredibly fast and said, ‘Well, yes, but that
would mean letting these people down when I made a commitment to them’ – she is big into not letting people down and keeping to your commitments – ‘and,’ I said, ‘I’ll give half to charity!’

So she agreed, but then she said, ‘Charity begins at home,’ so I said, ‘How do you mean?’ wondering did she want me to give half to her and Dad because the recession had taken all our money, which seemed a bit weird and a bit scary, but she said, ‘When you were trying to find out what was happening with Jayne and Gita I noticed you talking more to Justine and trying to engage her, but now … you’re just ignoring her again, aren’t you? I think a little more charity to your younger sister is in order.’ So I said, ‘Oh!’ quite relieved because we aren’t actually poor, it was just the same old parent complaint, so I said, ‘OK, sure, of course – I can talk to her!’ like it was no big deal. I didn’t say that Justine had insulted me and added another letter to the catalogue, because I knew one word would set my mother off and I wanted to get to the party.

It was another really easy party to manage, which was good at the time but means I’ve nothing to feed the blog with. It’s strange that our first party was such a disaster. It’s like we passed a test and now it will never be so hard again. Maybe it’s because we’re more experienced – for instance we’d never arrive now with the cake we baked for Chloe – but it’s not just that. Chloe’s party had a lot of difficult characters (including her parents!) whereas today there were only seven guests and they
were all angelic. It was like they’d been brought up by Barney to love each other, and hadn’t yet realised that he’s actually a sinister dinosaur who is brainwashing children for some nasty purpose of his own. But the birthday girl’s parents were really cool. And we got a tip! The dad gave us an extra €10! He was really nice and actually quite young and actually quite handsome – I said he looked like Colin Farrell, and Anna said, no, Jonathan Rhys Myers. I do not see how he could look like both and anyway, I said, he had dark hair, not light; ‘Try looking beyond the obvious’ said Anna in a very superior voice, ‘so if I put on a long, black wig, I’d be Angelina Jolie, would I?’ Then we both dissolved laughing cause Anna could not look less like Angelina Jolie. One of those indie actresses maybe, but not remotely like Angelina Jolie! Anyway whoever he looked like, the dad was quite handsome and quite rich and quite generous and is not suffering in the recession!

So then we had to work out did Anna have to give all her tip up to Amnesty International, and me half my tip up? I said, no, that definitely wasn’t in the contract. She said she knew she wasn’t
legally
obliged, but
morally
she felt she was.

I said, ‘If you want to know about morals, go ask a priest.’

She laughed. This is becoming my catch-phrase.

Anyway she is giving
all
her tip up and she has a holier-than-thou look (according to me). I’m not giving
any
of my tip and I have a cunning, greedy look (according to her).

Actually we
don’t
have to give Gita her money back.

This morning Anna said, ‘Gita
lied
to us, right? Saying Jayne was a racist?’

I said, ‘Yeah! Well, I suppose she might have misunderstood Jayne …’

‘Whatever! Lucas has decided Jayne was falsely accused, so really
Gita
should be paying
us
!’

‘Yeah! Right!’ I said again, ‘and anyway she’s managed to keep out of this and get no blame … if we approach her, we’ll compromise her …’

‘She’ll probably run away screaming …’

So at least we make €10.50 from this!

Trust Anna to find a way out of paying back!

J.P. has rumbled us! At break he came up to us and said, ‘Tell me you got paid for that?’

He was looking down at us (he is quite tall) with his small, red eyes (I mean they are not actually red, he isn’t a demon, they are pale blue, but red-rimmed). I looked at his arms. His sleeves were rolled up and he’d no coat though it was pretty windy, but he never wears a coat. His arms are the only conventionally handsome thing about him, they are long and tanned and vein-y. It is funny his arms are tanned when his face is white. I got the goosebumps and felt myself turning into a flailing mess. This is the effect he has on me. It is a real tragedy
that I can’t feel cruel and powerful like I do with Declan.

Then both me and Anna admitted (proudly, defiantly), ‘Well, yeah …’

‘So who paid you?’ His eyes gleamed red. He looks like a member of the rodent family, definitely. Not a rat, but maybe a stoat or a weasel. Luckily we weren’t so far gone as to say who paid us (we shouldn’t even have admitted we got paid, but no way was I gonna come across as a do-gooder to J.P. and even Anna wasn’t).

We said, ‘Can’t say!’ and then Anna looked at him fiercely and said, ‘Hey, you’re not to say we got paid, right? We’re in enough trouble.’

A kind of electric charge passed between her and him. The fact is that round J.P. there are a lot of charges. He is like an electrical storm. But none from him to me, ever. (Damn! Damn! Damn!) He said, ‘Won’t say a thing – but imagine getting caught!’ And he gave his jeering, good-natured, dangerous laugh.

At the end of lunch break, going back to class, I caught sight of Anna’s coat; it had a sticker saying:
Lame-oid
! on it. I peeled it off. She checked my back. Same sticker.

This, as Anna says, is inevitable. But although we are acting very cool/relaxed/nonchalant/unconcerned and although this is nearly doing the trick – people aren’t getting a rise out of us so they’re not making as much of the whole thing as they could – still they’re making
something
of it, and it’s beginning to get us
down. Back in Anna’s kitchen today, her mum said, ‘How are you two doing?’ in a nice, kind voice. I just looked at her suspiciously because I know about her secret desire to get rid of me. Anna made a sighing/grunting/fed-up noise.

Her mum said, ‘Well the worst is over.’

I said gloomily, ‘The whole school knows now.’

Renata said, ‘A week is a long time in politics.’

I’ve decided to come clean on the blog. Why not? Since everyone knows and we’ve given up the Instruments of Karma anyway, I might as well. So I wrote:

(If I inform my readers it’s closed, perhaps it will be! (Hmm, what readers? Twenty hits, but no comments …)

I’m worried about our book and music choices. I think maybe

they look a bit try-hard cool, so I texted Anna:

name of a book you think is asap but you still egg
(aka name me a book you think is crap but you still dig)

She texted back:

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

I texted:

not asap enough!

(Actually, not asap at all, Anna!)

So then:

The dc vinci code