Chapter 4 #2
“It doesn’t, and I resent you calling it a waste.” Ada slides back into bed and returns to her breakfast. “Send me the itinerary for this dogshit reunion and for the love of God, please use my credit card to reserve us hotel rooms. We are not staying with our parents.”
Despite myself, excitement swells in me again. “I can’t believe we’re doing this! We’re going! I love you, Addy.”
“I love you too, Cee.” She holds up her right fist. “Who’s your right-hand woman?”
“You are,” I say, grinning as I tap my wrist to hers.
Our ivy leaf tattoos touch, tiny black outlines we had inked onto our skin in a dodgy Amsterdam studio when we were twenty-two.
We’d Googled ‘friendship symbols’ and, after first dismissing ivy as too clingy and toxic, realised women are always being accused of those things, and fuck that.
“Ivy has a shit reputation,” Ada said. “So do we. But Ivy’s tough and pretty and evergreen, and so are we. Let’s be each other's ivy, Cee.”
“So,” Ada mumbles through a mouthful of potato, “Will and Jenny are splitsville, huh? What’s the deal?”
“Well, your new All Black boyfriend—”
“Shut up!”
“—said Jenny was doing the dirty on him. But it’s recent. Like, she’s still using Sharpe as her last name on social media.”
Ada snorts. “Probably scared people’ll talk shit about her the way she does about them because she’s a malicious slag.”
I nod. I hate Jenny Sharpe née Wallis, and not just because she married my high school crush and burnt my teenage dreams to ash. I was in the same class as her from kindergarten to graduation, and she’s the meanest person I’ve ever met. Not kid-mean or high-school mean, supervillain mean.
She started horrible rumours, mocked anyone who didn’t fit in, pitted her friends against each other, and called me ‘Tristan’s Sister’ and made fun of my height for twelve straight years.
And having a popular brother meant I got off easy.
Jenny told everyone Ada had a boob job, a criminal record and STDs.
She made so many people’s lives hell, and she did it safely behind a mask of wide smiles, student leadership positions and being a literal Sunday School teacher.
Ada still swears it’s how she lost her faith.
To Jenny’s credit, she was an equal opportunity asshole. There wasn’t anyone she wouldn’t talk shit about, even Will.
I was wrestling with a tampon in the school bathroom one day when she came in with her posse of friends. I knew she and Will had just broken up in the on-off nature of teen relationships, which made me giddy.
I sat in front of Will in bio, and I’d been working on getting his attention all week; wearing perfume, asking if he needed a pen—he always did—giggling whenever he said something funny, a technique I’d been refining in my bedroom mirror.
The movies I loved assured me that boys might start off dating the mean, popular girl, but they really liked adorable nerds.
Adorable nerds whose hidden beauty they’d see when they got past their short-sighted infatuations.
I sat on the toilet, half-wrapped tampon in hand, as Jenny listed Will’s lamentable traits—getting drunk and making her drive him home, not kissing her on the sidelines after he scored the winning try against Wesley College, and, worst of all, being ‘slow in the head.’
“Oh well,” she told her hanger-on, best mate, Hayley. “Will still thinks he’s gonna be an All Black. He’s not even that good at rugby. Everyone knows Jake’s better. I think I’m gonna get him to ask me out next.”
This is it, I thought, shaking with excitement. This time her and Will are definitely off. I can finally make my move.
But they weren’t definitely off. In fact, they were back together by Monday. And all my practiced giggling amounted to nothing more than having a substantial number of pens stolen.
It was the first time movies lied to me, but certainly not the last.
Ada, who wasn’t allowed to watch TV when we were kids in case it gave her weird Anglo ideas, had no concept of my Mean Girls brainwashing. She assured that me Will hadn’t asked me out ‘because he’s a boiled foreskin masquerading as a person.’ It wasn’t true, but it was at least a little comforting.
“Good thing they didn’t have kids,” Ada says, pulling me back into the present. “Jenny’s exactly the kind of twat to use them as pawns.”
“Probably true. I hope he gets the house.”
“I hope she gets Mad Cow.”
I wrinkle my nose at her.
“Cece, are you forgetting this is the girl who wrote ‘Praying the antibiotics kick in before you infect every guy in Pukekohe’ on a Valentine’s Day card and put it in my locker?”
I wince. “Sorry. Wish whatever you want on Jenny Sharpe. Anyway, I’ve been stalking her online—”
“Obviously.”
“Right? And well, after I finished stalking her, I stalked Hayley Dean.”
“Pregnant?”
“With her third.”
“Called it.”
“She’s in an MLM and posts all these pregnancy workout videos. Her kids are always in matching clothes.”
“Yuck. We should hire a child psychologist. Try to break the trauma-cycle before shit goes full We Need to Talk about Kevin.”
“Probably. And I was thinking…”
Ada’s eyebrows rise. “You were thinking?”
“I could be better. On social media. I could look like I’m better, at least.”
“What? Shut up. No. You don’t need to be anything other than what you are. You’re perfect.”
“You shut up. I know social media doesn’t reflect real life and blah blah blah, but it helps create an overall impression, you know? And I’d like my impression to be a little flashier than sticky bar floors and that pic of me off my face at the glowworm caves.”
“I love that picture!”
“I do too, but it doesn’t exactly scream ‘successful businesswoman.’ More ‘yes to stricter safety regulations.’ Everyone from school’s gonna be all over social media during the reunion, and I want to give off a good vibe.”
Ada makes a face. “Let me get this straight: even though you know everyone we’re gonna see at this thing is a total cunt, you wanna update your socials so you look like a parallel cunt?”
“Exactly. But like, serving cunt, not being a cunt. Important distinction.”
“It is. Well, since I’m going to this reunion shitshow, it’s in for a penny, in for a pound, I guess.” Ada picks up her phone and taps the screen. After a few seconds, her shoulders shake with laughter.
“What’s so funny?” I ask.
“The glowworm picture.” She flashes her screen at me, and I catch an eyeful of myself in a bikini top and a backwards orange safety hat, my pupils blown wide, hallucinogenic-laced chocolate smeared across my cheeks.
Between the dark cave and blurry glowworms, I look like I’ve stumbled into a galaxy mid-trip, and I’m terrified by it.
“Do you see how that’s not going to earn me any class points at the reunion?”
“I see that it’s cute and hilarious. Gets me every time.” Ada screenshots the picture, though she must have a dozen copies saved by now.
“I love you, little weirdo,” she tells the image, before looking up at me. “Are you sure about this? I’ll do anything for you, even let you bone Will Sharpe—” She makes the sign of the cross “—but I hate the idea of you watering yourself down for these has-beens.”
I sigh. “Can I be honest?”
“I already said, honesty is the best—”
“Policy, yes, yes, thanks, Mum. But no, I mean it, I… I know I should feel more comfortable in my own skin, but this year’s been hard. Really hard.”
Ada frowns. “I know it has, but you’re working your tits off, and you’re turning it around.”
My insides shiver. You don’t know the half of it.
“Thanks,” I force myself to say. “But it’s not just the bar—it’s the judgement. Everyone acted like I’d lost my mind when I said I was leaving nursing. You can’t tell anyone you quit pediatrics because the stress was insane without them looking at you like you failed every sick kid in the country.”
Ada nods. I know she gets it. I might not have all the details of why she abandoned the Philharmonie de Paris, but I know we’re both carrying the weight of doing the opposite of what people expected of us. I knot my hands together.
“When I was nursing, it was like I had on this cape that automatically earned respect. And it was nice to be the one people were proud of. It meant I had accomplished more in my life than just being Tristan’s sister.”
Ada nods again. She knows all about my issues with Perfect Tristan and his Perfect Life.
She picked me up from the first popular kids party I got invited to.
The one where Tristan was the only person I knew.
My brother wouldn’t even speak to me, just hissed that I needed to find my own friends when I tried to join his game of flip cup.
I wandered around hoping to chat to Will, only to discover him making out with Jenny, who stopped sucking his face long enough to tell me that Yasmin only invited me because she wanted to hook up with Tristan. It wasn’t the worst night of my life, but it was at least top five.
“Tristan’s a snake,” Ada mutters, shifting on the bed. “If anyone’s proud of him, it should be for successfully concealing what a twat he is.”
“I know. But I was proud to be a nurse. Now I want to be proud of Afterglow. I just wish it was making money.”
“We’re not quite there yet?”
“No, we’re not.”
“So, we’re at the faking it ’till we’re making it stage, social-media-wise?”
“Pretty much.”
Ada sits bolt upright. “Hey, you know what brings in money?”
“I’m not doing ghost tours!”
“Boooo!” she says, falling back into the pillows. “Think of all the rubes we can spook! I will personally paint my face in liquid chalk and jump out at every man who comes in here. For free.”
“No ghost tours! I am not leaning into the bar’s murder history. People still call it ‘Bar Stab-a-Hoe.’”
“I prefer ‘Stabbies.’”
“Thanks, Ada.”
“Anytime. It’s still better than ‘Bar Navajo.’”
“Agreed. I swear, Uncle Mitch did one peyote session in a Native American sweat lodge and made it his whole personality. That man needed DEI like I need to win the lottery.”