The Full Ridiculous. Mark Lamprell

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СКАЧАТЬ her face buried in her knees.

      Rosie likes a drama as much as any fourteen-year-old girl so she sits next to Ursula and asks what’s wrong.

      ‘Nothing,’ replies Ursula which, of course, heightens Rosie’s interest.

      ‘Tell me.’

      ‘She’s such a bitch!’

      ‘Who?’

      And out, over an obstacle course of sniffles and sobs, tumbles the story.

      When Ursula saw Maddie Peacock this morning, she was on her way to put her name down for the French tour but Maddie told Ursula not to bother because after the meeting the other night when Rosie O’Dell asked if Ursula could come, Eva Pessites’ mother told Miss Crowden Clark that if Ursula came then Eva would not be going on the tour. Mrs Pessites considers Ursula not the type of girl she wants her daughter to be associating with.

      Until recently, Ursula and Eva were best friends. A murky incident involving a silver photo frame missing from Mrs Pessites’ gift shop led to the demise of the relationship. Ursula protested her innocence and everyone except Mrs Pessites suspected Eva Pessites was the real culprit but they were all too intimidated by Eva to say anything.

      Eva Pessites looks like a beautiful doll. Tumbling blonde ringlets frame her translucent face; spectacularly long (surgically transplanted?) dark lashes frame languid green eyes; bee-stung lips, grown suspiciously plumper since Year 7, frame gleaming tombstones of teeth. Some say Eva’s smile can be seen from space.

      The Pessites fortune comes from earth-moving equipment, not Mrs Pessites’ gift shop, which she runs for fun. The Pessites donate large sums to Boomerang. The weekly assembly is held in the Pessites Auditorium. Eva Pessites understands the power she holds and up until today no one has questioned it. Not out loud anyway.

      Filled with indignation, Rosie confronts Eva in the locker room. She knows better than to go straight for the jugular so she tells Eva how gorgeous her new watch is and adds, like it’s an afterthought, in a voice pitched slightly too high, ‘How come your mum barred Ursula from the French tour?’

      Eva pauses, her eyes narrow. Other girls stop to look at her. She turns back to her locker and takes her time closing it. For a while it seems she has cut Rosie dead, leaving her question adrift in the ether. But Eva is enraged. She flicks a smile at Rosie, ‘How the fuck would I know?’ she says breezily. ‘I’m not my fucking mother, am I?’

      Her admiring audience titters and Eva turns and heads out of the locker room.

      Rosie calls after her, ‘But you could have stopped her.’

      Eva stops dead and looks at Rosie like she’s inspecting a dog turd. ‘So? Who cares?

      ‘I do.’

      ‘You should mind your own business.’

      ‘It is my business.’

      ‘Is not.’

      ‘It is if my friend can’t come on the tour.’

      ‘Ursula O’Brien is not your friend.

      ‘Is too.’

      ‘She hates you.’

      ‘No, she hates you, Eva, but that’s no reason for her not to come on the tour. Not until your mother stuck her big nose in it.’

      Eva is a second-generation Albanian and, although Rosie cannot know this, her mother had a prominent nose before surgery corrected it. Thinking on her feet, Eva decides to misinterpret Rosie’s comment as a racist jibe about proboscisly endowed Albanians and go for the outraged immigrant angle. She counters that Rosie is a ‘skanky skip’ (skip meaning someone who is several generations Australian). What Rosie’s Irish Catholic and Lithuanian Jewish grandparents would make of all this, no one can say but Rosie is so infuriated by the sudden disintegration of the argument that her synapses explode. ‘Piss off, you dumb bitch!’ she blurts uninventively.

      ‘Racist slut!’ Eva proclaims as she glides away in triumph.

      Rosie, slipping further behind in the originality stakes, fires a final projectile at Eva. ‘Suck my dick!’

      Once again, Eva stops. Once again, she turns. A sea of girls parts, opening a path between Rosie and Eva. ‘Why don’t you go suck your black boyfriend’s cock, slut!’

      Some of the girls snigger.

      A crimson wave roars into Rosie’s head and she charges forward. Eva also charges forward and thrusts her textbooks into Rosie’s chest. Rosie lets fly with a great gob of spit which lands with spectacular accuracy in Eva’s open mouth. Eva emits a howl of horror and, spitting compulsively, grabs Rosie’s ear. Rosie slaps her hand across the side of Eva’s head. Eva crumples to the ground, screaming like her legs have been amputated without anaesthetic.

      Rosie sees that Eva is already amplifying the extent of her injuries as part of a strategy to have Rosie nailed as the unprovoked perpetrator of this attack. Rosie no longer gives a flying fuck. She draws back her right foot, intent on shutting down Eva’s left kidney, just as Mrs Millington comes sailing round the corner in her signature tartan skirt, red cheeks blazing.

6

      You wake up. Or not. Where are you? Banks of fluorescents swirl overhead. An institution. You are in some kind of institution. You’re ill, trapped in a night terror dream. Wake up! No, you are awake. Shapes. People? Wendy and that doctor, the Indian one, and other doctors. Fresh Face looks frightened. They’re staring at you.

      You feel like you’ve died but the Indian doctor tells you that you passed out. You had a little fit and you passed out. It’s probably a reaction to having things put in your veins. Some people get it. Not to worry too much. They’ll keep an eye on you.

      Wendy looks sick. She kisses your hand. You close your eyes.

      Who’s shouting? Why does there have to be shouting? That Indian girl. Indira bloody Gandhi. She wants someone to open their eyes. You. She wants you to open your eyes. You don’t want to but you open them to shut her up. Bossy doctor. Questions. Blah blah questions and you answer blah blah. And you feel…

      the feeling…

      the feeling of…floating.

      You are floating.

      You are

      You’re thirsty. Parched. Water. You open your eyes to find Wendy sitting next to you. She smiles. You try to say water but your lips stick together. You push your tongue through the sticky stuff on your lips and rub it back and forth. Your lips are sore. So sore.

      ‘Water?’ Wendy reaches for a plastic decanter and pours water into a vessel that smells of your childhood lunchbox. She holds it to your lips and you guzzle it like a man who’s spent forty days and forty nights in the desert. Some of it goes down the wrong way and you splutter and gurgle, which draws the attention of your Indian doctor. She says she likes your colour and you almost tell her you like hers.

      Wendy and the СКАЧАТЬ