The Bad Karma Diaries (22 page)

I have to admit I was glad Derek hadn’t gone off with someone else like some other so-called admirers I could mention!

Then Justine started badgering me, ‘Who’s he? He’s cool. Are you really gonna dress like that? You should! I think we’ve invented a brilliant new look.’

Then Anna and Heeun were back. They looked at the mannequin and folded their arms, and shook their heads disapprovingly, but couldn’t keep from laughing.

‘It’s very fashion,’ said Heeun earnestly, ‘but it will only work on the cat-walk, I think. It is unwearable!’

‘No, Denise is gonna wear it tonight to meet that boy with dark eyes,’ said Justine.

‘Oh, oh!’ said Anna and Heeun, looking at me.

‘How d’you get on?’ I asked Heeun, quickly, to change the subject. ‘Are you the most kissed?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said modestly, ‘but I did quite well. Lots of the boys from our class and some from the other years as well!’

‘J.P?’ I said curiously, ‘David Leydon? Derek?’

‘Not J.P. or
Derek
,’ she said, giving me a sly look ‘but David Leydon, yes.’

I absorbed this surprising piece of information. It was not at all the kind of thing I could imagine David Leydon doing. Maybe he fancied Heeun!

‘Who replaced you?’ I said.

‘Nobody,’ she said, ‘I was time up …’

That reminded me! I checked my phone, ‘Nearly time!’ I said. We half swivelled our eyes to Justine.
‘I’m
fine,’ she said. But she’d definitely turned paler.

We began packing up the clothes. They weren’t gonna sell in the ten minutes we’d left. Well, they weren’t gonna sell in a
year
.

‘Poor charity shops!’ said Anna.

I saved the jacket – as a memento of Justine’s craziness/creativity, not because I was going to wear it tonight. I was joking about that!

We ran off to assembly. We needed to get there early ’cause we needed to be in the front row. People were already there so we had to shove a bit to get to the front. There was Tommy and his band setting up. He winked at us. I felt gruesome. I looked at Justine and Heeun and Anna. They all looked gruesome.

Tommy’s show was really the highlight of the day. It was €5 in. Practically the whole school was crowded into the assembly hall because everyone wanted to hear Jamón Jamón; that’s the name of Tommy’s band (it’s pronounced ‘Hamown Hamown’ and it means ‘ham ham’ in Spanish). They’re really good. Well we think so. They’re smart too. They play some of their own stuff (so-so) and some Really Famous Stuff (brilliant, obviously). They kind of lull you into listening to their so-so
stuff by rewarding you with Old Favourites. Like they kicked off with ‘Common People’, which everybody loves. How could you
not
love it? I practically forgot my fear I loved it so much. The hall went mad! And they were off, playing one of their own for every two famous ones. And some of their own were actually okay. They had a new one which had a pretty catchy tune and a chorus which by the end we were all singing along to.

And then Tommy announced, ‘And now, for my Johnny Cash numbers, I need a June Carter’ and he looked over the hall, up and down and round, till his eyes fell on Justine as if by chance and he pulled her up onto the stage!

She looked tiny and cute up there, in her jeans and stripey top.

I closed my eyes in sheer horror. My heart was going
thud-thud-thud
. It seemed to me that the whole hall had fallen silent with amazement.

And then: ‘Now I’ve got arms,’ sang Tommy, in his kind of throbbing, deep voice.

‘And you’ve got arms,’ came back an incredibly sweet, girlish voice.

I opened my eyes. That was Justine! She was holding a mike, looking just a tiny bit nervous, but no nerves in her voice.

‘Let’s get together and use those arms … Time’s a wasting!’ They both sang, perfectly in tune, gazing full at each other. They looked like they were in love! Justine didn’t even look nervous any more. It was just incredible! I looked at Anna. Her
mouth was popped open. She widened her eyes at me. We’d never imagined this!

They were singing Johnny Cash, which I recognised because Tommy is always listening to him. Probably a lot of people didn’t know this particular song, it’s not too famous, but it didn’t matter, their voices sounded so good together.

As soon as they’d finished, Tommy and Justine launched without pausing into another Johnny Cash song, and it was a really funny one. It allowed them to show the difference between their voices.

‘Daddy sang bass,’ sang Tommy, pushing his voice real low.

‘Mama sang tenor,’ sang Justine, real high.

‘Me and little brother would join right in there, in the sky, Lord, in the sky,’ they both sang. Their voices really were brilliant together.

At the end there was an
avalanche
of applause. Tommy took Justine’s hand and ‘Justine Nelson!’ he said into his mike (more clapping) and she smiled and waved like a real star and then he lowered her back down to the hall beside us, and he and his band started one of their own (so-so) songs. Unbelievable!

The rest of the concert passed in a delirium. I could not believe Justine had done that well. Of course she and Tommy had been practising for the past ten days, but even so …! I never thought their voices would sound so
matched
and I never ever believed she could look that confident and sassy.

And I knew that that was the end of the bullying – we didn’t
even need O’Toole’s intervention (though I was glad Jayne O’Keeffe was gonna get it from him). I knew it was the end of the bullying because even
I
was looking at Justine with completely new eyes. Like I’ve admitted here, I did think Justine was a bit annoying, but now I knew that every time I saw her I’d remember her up on that stage. Respect.

It was a pity Mum and Dad hadn’t seen her.

Tommy’s last number was a total anthem, so the hall went crazy. Then as we began to file out people started coming up to Justine, people from older classes, teachers even and ‘you were amazing!’ they were saying. Off-stage she’d gone back to being shy, so she just blushed and nodded but looked thrilled.

I think maybe she is now a celeb like Tommy. God! How am I going to handle this? I meant to
help
her, not to
promote
her.

Next I know J.P. will want to
song
her!

I had better ask Anna’s mum how to handle these (perhaps inevitable) Feelings of Envy and Dissatisfaction.

But I was delighted when Justine told mum all about it. She gave me full credit for coming up with the idea, which I didn’t really (Anna did). I looked modest and sisterly. Mum was thrilled. She hugged us and said she was proud of us both. I think she meant it. I guess if you are a mum you are as proud of your daughter for being a boring thing like kind-hearted, as for being an exciting thing, like a singer.

The Most Momentous Day of Term, maybe of The Year, maybe of Our Lives (to date!) – wasn’t even over yet. There is a
postscript which I will write later, or maybe tomorrow or maybe the next day, because I am about to pass out from the effort and concentration involved in all this writing. And I need to wrap my presents …

Christmas Day!

I am so bloated by food and drink – two glasses of champagne! – I really can’t write. But I summoned up enough energy to write in the blog, because it would be very wrong not to wish happy Christmas to our loyal and faithful readers, so here’s what I wrote, and it will have to do for this diary too:

Posted up on blog at 19:43

Posted up on blog at 19:55

Xenawarrior cleaner

So you’re stuffed then?

Posted up on blog at 20:38

Hefto’s post:

Demise, do not worry, I did not expect a present from you! I just felt like getting you something. I hope this is not embarrassing you!

Happy Christmas all you people out there. We are not having Turkey and stuffing (what is stuffing???) We are having curry …

Posted up on blog at 21:12

ZeeZee:

Do you guys ever think of
anything
but songing and stuffing? (but happy Christmas anyway).

Posted up on blog at 22:10

Demise’s post:

Sigh!
Since you ask, on Friday we got one over the Bullies. But I don’t like to big up my charity work …

Posted up on blog at 22:42

Bomb’s post:

From my sister: book [
The Master and Margherita
, by Bulgakov]

From my eldest brother: poster [from the Soviet Union! Red, white and black! Very Cool!]

From my second brother: A Zippo lighter [second-hand but really cool! It is not for me to light cigarettes, he says, it is for making a fire if I get stuck overnight in a wood (as you do…)]

From my parents: bike [but great bike, freestyle, i.e. no brakes, just back-peddle brakes, very streamlined frame.]

From Hefto: t-shirt (thanks Hefto!).

Posted on blog at 13:14:

Happy Stephen’s Day!

Still eating: sandwiches made with ham and turkey and stuffing, cold roast potatoes, marzipan crumbs… listening to Amy Whitehouse on iPod (latest song is frankly so-so!) and reading
Diary of Anne Frank
(good!)

Posted on blog at 13:18

Pippa:

Still with the stuffing?

Posted on blog at 13:53

CuriousinDenver:

What is this Stephen’s Day? – Boxing Day, surely?

Posted on blog at 14:13

Bomb’s post:

We say Stephen’s Day …

Gonna test my bike by freewheelin’ to your house, Demise

OK. The stuffing’s all gone! Food and present interlude over! I will not make you wait the twelve days of Christmas to find out how The Most Momentous Day of Term ended …

So last Friday after The Triumph of All our Plans and The Routing of the Bullies we were going to Wesley, which is a
disco which Keith goes to. He wanted Anna to come and she wanted us to come, and because it was the last day of term I was allowed. And obviously Keith’s friend, David Leydon was there, and he brought his friends, Derek and Brian. So …

You’ve guessed. Something has definitely got into Derek, I don’t know what, maybe he got lessons from J.P., because he wasn’t looking at me with quite that shiny, hopeful, enthusiastic look. He looked more cheeky.

Soon as he saw me, he said, ‘Hey, you said you’d be wearing leopard-skin and fake-fur …’

I said, ‘That only works on the catwalk. It’s unwearable, unfortunately.’

He said, ‘But you saved the jacket? It was genius.’

Then he sang, ‘
Now I’ve got arms
…’ and kind of grabbed my shoulders, so I sang back at him (but not as well as Justine). And that was it, really. I mean that was me agreeing to his game. So when later he said did I want to dance, I said yes and I knew what I was saying yes to. So …

First I couldn’t think where to put my arms – round his neck, or round his waist? (Yes, let’s get together, but how exactly do we use those arms?) There should be lessons in this. But I remembered it was called
necking
, for a reason I guess, so I put them round his neck, and he grabbed me round the waist. It was not so frantic a kiss as my first Irish College kiss. It was more promising – a little bit enthusiastic and hopeful, but also a little bit cheeky. We crushed against the wall like the other
couples for two whole songs (ha! another good reason for calling it
songing
– cause you do it to songs). When we stopped, I wasn’t quite sure what to do. I mean it’s pretty hard to just start talking about the music or something after that. There should be lessons in this too. We smiled a bit uncertainly at each other and wandered off to find the others.