Chapter One
As is a tale, so is a life: Not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
- Seneca
Dear Diary,
It is the last day of the year, a year I will not miss. Not that the prospect of the next twelve months is shaping up to be a huge improvement on the last go around. This past year, my parents finalised a divorce a decade in the making and my decision to move up a grade into an advanced placement program stripped me of every single close friend I'd come to rely on since moving to this crap hole of a town half way through primary school.
Best of all, just when I thought things were looking up and the summer holidays were in sight, my school year ended with a cheerleader from the grade above mine committing suicide on my birthday. Not that she even knew it was my birthday. Somehow though, it still feels personal.
3:23 p.m.
I can't believe I thought my homeroom teacher was going to highlight the fact I had finally reached my teen years when she quieted the class down to make the announcement. My ears heated in anticipation of the embarrassment that having your birthday pointed out in class would bring. I forced myself to smile politely at her, which was when I noticed her swollen eyes and creased forehead.
I didn't know the girl who died very well at all, besides her obvious popularity, but her actions have impacted my life noticeably since that uncomfortable morning. The term finished up a day early to accommodate her funeral and instead of escaping to the airconditioned bliss of the tech zone at our local council library my mother forced me to attend her service. Of all the people crammed into that chapel, I had the least obligation to be there.
I went in alone, my mother conveniently had to work. She usually does. I sat down in the last pew, wearing an uncomfortably stiff cotton blouse and spent the entire funeral service staring at a small grey diary sitting atop the dead girl's pristine white coffin.
The drab little book was surrounded by colourful teddies and roses and the contrast made the spectacle of her death something more than just a tragic curiosity.
What made her do it?
What was written in those pages that was awful enough that her family would want to bury her story with her?
Why were the three assholes from my grade who tease everyone with a pulse even here?
Why would anyone choose to be dead?
Did it hurt?
The service was long, when it was over You Should Be Here begun to play as the crowd lined up to farewell her. I watched a familiar looking pink nosed blonde girl in a black mini dress escorted by an equally blonde boy in an unironed zoot suit walk up to her coffin and write a message on the side in purple marker. Then I watched as more people approached to bid a final farewell and leaver their own mark.
I was the last person to walk up to the coffin. My steps came slowly and by the time I arrived to bid the wooden box and its contents goodbye there was no one else left in the chapel. The music ended while I fumbled for the words to write.
Sorry your life was so shit you ended it. Hope you're in a better place? No. Better not.
I sighed and picked up the pen. I wrote exactly what I was thinking in that moment.
Heaps of people turned up today, clearly your absence will leave a big gap in many hearts.
I wish I could be so lucky I thought to myself as I put the pen back on the side table.
What happened next, I'm not proud of. I picked up the little grey book, slid it into my bag and walked out of there. I'm not sure what came over me to be perfectly honest, let's just say it was a crime of opportunity. I told myself she's dead, it doesn't matter to her. But honestly, I just wanted to know what happened to her and reading the dead girls diary was sure to have the answers.
3:29 p.m.
It didn't have any answers though. There were two poems scribbled on the last two pages of an otherwise empty Moleskin day planner. I read them and then tore them both out and hid them in the false bottom of my grandmother's old glory chest.
Today is the first time I have even looked at the empty journal since the day I took it. Seems a waste to just leave it empty so I am going to use it.
3:46 p.m.
Reading Bridget Jones's Diary these school holidays might have also contributed to my decision to start this diary. According to my crazy pirate aunt, it is a novel loosely based on the Jane Austin classic Pride and Prejudice. Which is now going on my summer reading list.
So, I guess that's all the reasons. I enjoyed reading someone else's diary and there's no chance of reading one written by the dearly departed cheerleader any time this side of the grave.
Actually... There is one more reason. A conversation with my cousin Tash on boxing day.
She was laying on a grey yoga mat on her massive veranda trying to sun bake and text simultaneously. I was curled up in an oversized hammock, sweating off all my liberally applied sunblock. The beachside breeze was non-existent that day. I was about a third of the way through reading my newly acquired Helen Fielding novel when an annoyed sigh interrupted my reading.
"You're going to break your arm idiot!" Tash yelled at her younger brother Mitchell.
He raised his middle finger to her and then proceeded to flip backwards off the rail beside us, his long-tangled curls arcing out behind him, landing triumphantly on the trampoline below.
His daredevil act caused both of our mothers to cry out in unison and rush downstairs, their newly refilled glasses of wine forgotten in their haste.
Tash and I exchanged an exasperated look before I resumed reading and she walked over to the kitchen counter to sneak a sip of Pinot Gris.
"Is he alright?" I called out, surely, he would have made a less enthusiastic noise upon his landing had he been injured in some way. Mitchell never stops moving. He is still quite small for a ten-year-old boy and very immature compared to Tash or myself at the same age. It would almost be a blessing for him to break a leg and give his household some peace.
When no one had answered me, I felt slightly guilty for wishing that and put my book down to check that he was in fact perfectly fine.
As soon as I had glanced over the balcony, I could see that indeed he was, and he was also being suitably lectured for his moronic stunt by his mother. She's actually slipped back into speaking Dutch; she must be pissed.
"Mitchell Loevy you achterlijk koekwaus jongen!" my aunt exclaimed, her profanities only slightly marred by the fact she was sporting a red and black striped bandana. Even my own mother was giving him a severe glare. When my aunt started unbuckling her belt, I headed back inside.
Tash was leaning on the servery counter. "I wish I had a sister," she told me when our eyes met.
"You have to listen to them get lectured also," I assured her, thinking of the time my sister Natalie missed out on coming skiing with Dad, Damien and I because her mother and step father grounded her for sneaking out.
"He could have killed himself. Do you know he actually rode down the hill in a rubbish bin on Christmas eve?"
"Well, I've got a nice funeral outfit now, at least it won't go to waste." God, why did I say that. Super morbid.
"Don't get my hopes up," Tash said before taking another quick swig of wine and resuming her sunbathing.
I lay beside her quietly as she continued to scroll through her social feeds aimlessly. A photo popped up of the dead cheerleader on her gymnastics club page.
"Did you know her?" I asked quietly.
Tash shook her head. "She was in a different team. I know her friend Summer though." She pointed to a blonde girl with a bright smile standing beside her. I recognised her from the funeral, she'd been the first one to write on the coffin.
"I went to her funeral," I said quietly.
Tash turned to face me instead of her phone. "Her parents buried her with her teddies and a diary. Do you think that's a bit off?" I asked her, voicing for the first time one of the questions that had been burning in my head for weeks. I could vaguely remember Tash keeping a diary a few years ago when she first started high school.
She pursed her bow-like lips and pushed her own bushy sun-bleached curls out of her face, tucking them unsuccessfully behind her very burned looking ears. She was sure to add another million freckles to her body at this rate. "That is weird," she admitted. "I don't write in one anymore for that exact reason. I'd hate for someone to read it."
"Did you enjoy writing in one though?" I asked, holding up the book her mum had given me as explanation for this slightly morose vein of questioning.
"Yeah, it's great to look back on, I suppose. At least attempt writing one if you've never written one before." And here we are.
5:21 p.m.
"Are you even dressed?" my mother calls down to me. I sigh and get out of bed to trudge upstairs and ready myself for a hot night out. Temperature wise that is. My darling mother's plan for us is to spend the steamy summer evening socializing with our random bogan relatives.
Why did I think coming back from my visiting with my dad early was a good idea? At least he never makes me interact with anyone, least of all him. I spent almost all my time on the farm in the weeks before Christmas just reading, drawing and binge-watching shows while dad and my brother Damien worked down in the paddocks.
"If you insist on taking me tonight can I at least take a book?" I ask, holding up the one we bought earlier today from the newsagency when mum put on her lotto.
I watched her apply another coat of gloss to her already well-coated lips. "Will you listen if I tell you not to?"
"Probably not, I'm already halfway through this Fabio novel." And enjoying it more than I expected to, I finished silently.
"The one I got you this morning?"
"Yeah."
"When did you get so clever?" she asked, touching my cheek softly with the back of her hand before starting on her mascara.
I rolled my eyes at her as soon as she glanced away. If I was really that clever, I'd have found a way to get out of this lame party at my uncle's place. I would have proper New Year's Eve plans with people who were my own age.
At least I can continue writing in this diary while we are there. I much prefer my antisocial options to the forced platitudes I would likely have to endure at this get-together. All my family do is cook unpalatable European food and carp on, anyways.
Then again, what if my cousins invite some of their mates over? Maybe I should at least shave and put on some concealer before we head off to this shindig. Ever since mum relented to letting me use make-up this past month, I've become slightly addicted. It's super nice to feel attractive rather than my usual scrawny, blotchy self.
Most of the make-up I use was given to me by my friend Jade for my birthday. Gosh it feels weird saying that. I have a friend. It's been so long since I actually felt like I had one. I keep all my cosmetics in the beautiful box she decorated for me. I mean, she had even inscribed my name inside the lid using a calligraphy pen. The box really was impressive, almost as impressive as her remembering my full name after I only told it to her once. No one ever does; it's far too long and far too Dutch.
Jade is the only person at school who even remembered my birthday. I could go so far as to say she's the only person who even knows I exist at school, but that would be embellishing somewhat. Even though it feels like that is the truth most days.
My ex- friends, Ella and Kate, who dumped me after I was moved up a grade know I exist; they just choose to pretend that I don't. And everyone else who might have remembered it was my birthday were far too distracted by the gruesome details of the vibrant cheerleader's untimely death to care about me. Not even Alistair remembered, and he'd been the one to remind Jade. All this made Jade's acknowledgement of the fact I was finally, officially, a teenager the only brightest moment for me that day.
Her gift, coming from anyone else, might have seemed cheesy. A stereotypical present for a newly teenage girl. Not coming from Jade. She is the least fake person I've ever known; she doesn't even wear much make-up herself. That's probably how I've scored so much off her this last year, she doesn't need it. With her classical symmetrical features born of her clearly Scottish heritage, and her well-proportioned curves, why would she?
So, I have now officially been a teenager for twenty-two days now and so far, attending my first funeral for a non-family member and being allowed to wear eye shadow without asking permission are the only differences to my life. Certainly, I don't feel more mature yet.
At the New Year's Eve party.
"Will the swashbucklers be making an appearance?" I ask my mother as we pull into the driveway. This was my not so subtle way of asking if the only family I can stand will be here this evening also.
"No, your aunt and uncle aren't getting along so great just now." Her crazy pirate obsessed sister causing drama, not exactly a surprise.
Christmas lights were strung up haphazardly throughout the front yard, zigzagging along the hedges that lined the fence, all blinking out of time, leading towards the side gate. "Guess I'll go and see what the other kids are up to then," I told her, and wandered off to find a nice secluded place to read my book instead of enduring further socialising.
I don't have a particularly valid reason not to like my uncle's kids: Chase Rosencrantz, who is fifteen, and Gabrielle Rosencrantz, who is almost seventeen. We just have nothing in common. This means our conversations tend to fall flat after a few minutes. We have spoken about the weather on more than a few occasions at gatherings just like this one tonight. Who does that? We only have one type of weather in this town. Hot.
Truly, I do believe that if they ever genotyped us, we would not be a match.
"Hey Clairy, are you swimming?" my aunt asks as soon as I am in the back yard.
Gabrielle and Chase are both in the pool already, and both of them have bottles of cider in hand. Wish my parents were chilled and would let me drink alcohol whenever I wanted.
I politely declined, but my cousins had already been alerted to my presence and wouldn't let up. Clearly those weren't their first beverages.
I tried explaining that I didn't bring togs, that I didn't want to destroy my carefully applied face, that my hair is stupidly long. The reasoning just didn't compute.
"Your hair doesn't stop you from swimming," Chase insisted.
"I can lend you a hair-tie," Gabrielle offered which led to using the 'I don't have spare underwear' argument closely followed by Chase telling me skinny dipping isn't illegal in a private residence.
There just aren't even words for how horrifying that comment was. Incest much?
"I'm just going to finish my book," I mumbled as I left. "My hair is stupidly long," I told my reflection as I opened the back-sliding door. It's the length of my torso now and if I wear it out like I have tonight all I can really do with it is try and keep it out of my food. Even if I did get in the pool, I couldn't do more than sit on the edge. I am totally not going to risk a massive chlorine knot fest tonight which will just anger my mum who will be untangling it for me.
I have the unfortunate status of being my mother's only living daughter and she has always loved that my hair is long. I've asked her a few times now if I can just be done with all the hassle and cut it.
Nope. She always finds a way to guilt me out of it. Get this, she even talked me out of it after a teacher found me hiding in the toilets when some boys from my class stuck gum in my hair. My free hand balled into a fist as I remembered the douche trio chanting Rapunzel at me relentlessly. Even after that she still didn't want me to cut it. And that happened more than once last year.
"They're just being boys," she told me as she painstakingly removed the tangled sticky mass. "Don't pay any attention to them."
I'm not sure it's normal for anyone to be a complete asshole to another human being but I wasn't going to argue that logic with my mother in front of our counsellor in the pastoral care office. He'd probably have to complete a mandatory notification to child safety if he saw us debating the matter. Conversations with my birth giver often end rather heated and quite possibly louder than a Space X satellite launch. She just doesn't share my particular brand of logic. That no matter your gender there is no excuse for being a wanker.
So, I stopped wearing my hair out at school, after that last incident, preferring to braid it to the side so the douche trio couldn't easily stick chewed up wads of rubber in it anymore. Unfortunately, they found other ways to torture me.
11:20 p.m.
It's almost time for the midnight count down and riverside fireworks display. This place is not technically on the waterfront, my pirate aunt is the only gazillionaire in our family, but we should still be able to see the show going off from my uncles balcony. My uncle's place is just across from the landfill, which is riverside adjacent.
"Where have you got to Rissy Roo?" my mother's sing-song voice bellowed out across the house. Instead of responding, I have elected to remain silent and still beside the bed. The sound of the spare rooms aircon whirring is just loud enough to drown out the drunken sounds of all the adult relatives rehashing their misgivings over my Opas estate. Why is it that all grown-ups ever want to do is talk about money? It just seems to piss them all off.
"Clairy, where have you gotten to?" I heard her call out, less enthusiastically. Does she really need to keep using that dumb nickname? I much prefer Rissa. I wasn't even breathing I was trying so hard to stay quiet. "Clairissa answer me please!" came my mother's voice from the hallway this time.
I elected to remain where I was, we both know I wouldn't run off somewhere. In this hole of a town there isn't anywhere to go and it's not like I'd have anyone to meet up with if I did leave anyway. I don't even have a phone to call them on. I'll re-join the fray as soon as I finish this chapter. I've managed to have a reasonably okay time tonight despite Tash's absence. I didn't have to eat any weird speciality cuisine—the country my mother hails from has a strange fondness for cabbage—and no one has tried to limit my intake of sugary beverages yet. I'm on my third can of soda at present. Adding that to the positives column for becoming a teenager: unlimited sugary beverage access.
Tuesday, January 1st
I can officially add a downside to my list now. There's probably more, but this one definitely belongs right up the top.
I just witnessed my middle-aged parent kissing a greying, balding, potbellied gentlemen as the countdown to midnight ended.
I didn't even know she was seeing someone. She certainly didn't tell me that she was inviting a man along tonight. I bet that's the real reason she didn't force my aunt to come and fulfil her familial duties. She didn't want him to get scared off.
After bearing witness to that, perhaps I'll enjoy some time swimming in the pool after all. Cleansing my eyes out with chlorine sounds pretty good right about now.
12:23 p.m.
Well, that fun idea lasted about five seconds. My asinine cousin Chase made fun of me for wearing a training bra when I got in the pool.
"There are some tissues in my room you could stuff those with," he said.
I thought about telling him to keep them, maybe then his mum wouldn't have to wash out his crusty sheets as often, but I didn't. I just turned red and got straight back out. He and I are almost the same age, but clearly, he has yet to grasp the concept that if you have nothing nice to say don't say anything at all.
I wish I had big enough boobs to wear a normal bra. Every other girl in my grade can fit regular women's cup sizes already. Jade even needs the ones that have underwire in them.
I guess most of the girls in my grade are also already fourteen, and some are even turning fifteen this year. It really blows being one of the youngest in the class.
Great, now I'm thinking about school again. It's the holidays, and I don't want to think about that den of drudgery right now. I wish I didn't have to go back there. I wish I could go to a different school this year, be a different person. Someone that people don't make fun of, someone they want to hang out with at lunch. Honestly, just thinking about returning to that place in four weeks' time makes me want to bang my head against the non-slip pavers.
It's the first day of the new year and I don't feel remotely excited about it. Should I feel excited?
What exactly is there in my life that's worth celebrating living through another 365 days of it? I'm not allowed a mobile phone; my afternoons are all taken up with homework or music lessons; my weekends are chores or helping mum at her job because she feels bad about leaving me home alone; I have no social life asides my immediate family and the occasional mumbled greeting in the library from the boys playing games in there during lunch.
The only person who talks to me in class is Jade, and I'm pretty sure that's only because she was assigned as my student buddy for the advanced placement program. We've never really hung out after school, except to study, she probably doesn't want to.
Truthfully, I barely want to spend time with me. Since I'm on a roll, recollecting miserable facts, I have also just remembered it's the birthday of the cheerleader who took her life. They talked about her being born on New Year's Day at her funeral. She should have been turning sixteen right now, enjoying a sleepover with her friends, eating cake, revising for her learner's test. She won't ever do any of that.
So, I guess things could be worse than me being an unpopular flat chested nerd with divorced parents. I could be all those things as well as dead.
Oddly enough, that realisation has cheered me up somewhat.
Still at my uncle's party.
Still wearing wet underwear from jumping in the pool earlier. After my wanker cousins' boob commentary, I decided to just hide out upstairs again until we leave.
Unfortunately, I have come inside via the laundry and walked in on a trio of uncles smoking something that did not smell like tobacco in the garage. My squelching alerted them to my presence. "Off to bed with you," Chase's father bellowed as he hastily hid his glass pipe. Are they so stoned they've forgotten I don't even live here?
"Sure," I told him, squeezing past to use the stairs. I'm definitely not going to sleep anywhere near here. No doubt Chase will grab a permanent marker and draw a penis or something similarly lewd on my face if I do.
My mother is refilling the punch bowl in the kitchen when I walk through, The portly boyfriend has his arms around her waist. How charming. Not.
"Can we leave yet?" I ask, interrupting her and the boyfriend I've yet to be introduced to.
"Let me just say goodbye to my brother first," she says, disentangling herself.
He steps away, clearing his throat in that pointless uncomfortable way that men often do. He is wearing plaid drawstring trousers. Surely my mum can do better.
"Pretty sure they're smoking up downstairs," I warn her, once her lover boy is out of earshot.
"You don't know that," she hisses. "Stop being silly and go get dressed." But I do know that, because I have older brothers, and I have hidden weed on their behalf numerous times in my short life. I smiled to myself thinking of the multiple teddies on my bed that have loose seams to accommodate additional organic stuffing.
I still can't believe mum bought that my brothers' dog was responsible for chewing them apart when she noticed. She had better house training than most humans.
1:13 a.m.
After a brief hello and goodbye with mum's date we are finally setting off home.
"Where did you and Peter meet?" I ask her after buckling my seatbelt.
"He does work for the school sometimes. Linda introduced us a couple of months ago."
"Nates mum. So, was it a setup?"
"It's not easy meeting people at my age," she said, clearly irritated.
"I wasn't trying to offend you. He seemed nice," I said and then decided quietly staring out the passenger side window was my safest course of action. If anyone should be offended it's me, she didn't even tell me she was bringing a date tonight.
I guess the fact she was wearing all those layers of make-up should have been a clue. The only other times she wears make-up is when my dad comes to collect me for the holidays. Why she'd want to look good just to get into a yelling match about support payments is beyond me. Adults are stupid.
In my bed.
I've consumed way too much soda and I can't get to sleep. I guess now is a good time for some resolutions.
I will:
· Write in this diary regularly
· Do my chores before I get yelled at
· Remember my house keys
· Make more friends
I won't:
· Steal chocolate without asking
· Get caught talking in class
· Cry at school