Pip: The Story of Olive (6 page)

‘Sure, Mill,’ said Mathilda. ‘My skin’s just so
grow-oss
.’ Olive stayed seated.
Mill?

‘See ya,’ mumbled Mathilda as she turned, more to the Paddle Pop wrapper on the ground than to Olive.

‘Bye.’ A lot appeared to have changed at the Christmas barbeque picnic. Olive stood and tried to shake the Paddle Pop sticks out of her dress. One was trapped by her belt. Olive’s bottom was damp from the grass and she was gritty and sticky. She turned and threaded her way through clusters of sprawled big girls to the loos.

After recess, Year 7C had double Science with Mrs Dixon. Olive was quite fond of Mrs Dixon, although she looked uncannily like a spotted cod (which was, coincidentally, her species of biological expertise).

Olive was late – it had been harder to scrub her back with paper towel than she’d expected – but Mrs Dixon was too busy writing elements on the board to notice. Around her, the class hummed. Each class had its own tempo, its own pulse. Maths was slow and steady; English was brisk; Science with Mrs Dixon always hummed.

Mathilda and Amelia were wedged together at one end of a bench, whispering. There was a spare seat near them. Olive slid into it. She could feel the eyes of the other girls on her plaits. While she suspected it was already clear to the class that alliances had shifted, Olive couldn’t acknowledge it, not yet.

Olive did a quick headcount. There were twenty-three girls in the class – an odd number. One would be left out. The odd one.
Please don’t let us do an experiment, please don’t
let us do an experiment, please don’t let us do an experiment
, she prayed.

‘Okay girls, enough of that,’ said Mrs Dixon. ‘Get into pairs. We’ll be doing an experiment today – the flame experiment. Page seventy-two in your books. Bunsen burners are at the front here.’

The year, Olive noted, was not turning out that well at all.

Olive looked along the bench to Mathilda, who was drawing love hearts around the initials ‘J.H.’ all over Amelia’s pencil case. ‘Are you in a pair?’ Olive tried to look casual and friendly. Mathilda shrugged a lazy shoulder and turned to Amelia.

‘Yep,’ said Amelia. She looked straight at Olive with her pretty pretty eyes, waiting for Olive to ask to join them; challenging her to do so. A silence grew on the bench, dividing Olive and Till–Mill. Olive could see it, cold and steely white. She took a breath. Everything smelt like Dettol. ‘Um, do you mind if I . . . if I join you?’ Olive loathed herself for asking. The silence set.

‘Olive Garnaut, get into your lab coat and join in with Amelia and Mathilda, please. We’re drastically behind schedule, and we need to get this one out of the way.’

Olive smiled and nodded, although she wanted to scream:
Mrs Dixon, haven’t you noticed that Mathilda Graham
is
my
partner for experiments? Always? Haven’t you noticed that
Mathilda Graham is
my
best friend? We’re joined at the hip. Isn’t
it weird that she’s with Amelia Forster now and that she’s called
Till
?
But Mrs Dixon was unravelling a pile of Bunsen burner cords.

Amelia lit a match for the flame. ‘You can join us.’

The match hissed.

‘If you want.’

‘Sorry,’ said Olive.

The girls settled into the experiment and the silence softened. Till–Mill burnt chemicals on spoons; Olive recorded the results three times so that they would each have a copy. Olive was neat and industrious; she wanted their notes to be the best. Till–Mill chatted on above her lowered head.

The chatter continued as the girls ate lunch on the oval. Olive chewed at the same patch in her sandwich while Mathilda–Till swooned over the hair of some boy called Angus King. Amelia–Mill promised to put songs on Mathilda–Till’s iPod (iPod? Olive hadn’t even known Mathilda had one). Mathilda made Amelia–Mill laugh by mimicking a presenter Olive had never even heard of from
Video Hits
. She and Amelia–Mill then repeated the same line from a cartoon, laughing louder each time they said it, trying the words in different voices, shuffling the emphasis.

Olive’s sandwich was like plasticine in her mouth.
But
this isn’t Mathilda. This isn’t the
real
Mathilda
, she thought. Olive looked straight at her best friend. She still looked like Mathilda – not like Till at all. The real Mathilda just had to be in there somewhere.

After they had eaten, Mathilda and Amelia leapt up as if on an invisible cue. Olive stuffed the rest of her sandwich in its bag and stood, too. Till–Mill took off across the oval. Olive trailed a pace behind them like one of the deferential Chinese wives they had learnt about from the olden days.

Till–Mill talked on and on about the Christmas barbeque picnic, a saucepan of stars and James Hurley’s
hilarious jokes
. Olive stared at Amelia’s baggy jumper, which hooked down under her bottom, and at her perfectly straight North–South part. It was hard to compete with a part like that.

Olive tried to pull her own jumper sleeves down over her wrists. Her jumper was shorter than Amelia’s and Mathilda’s. Olive had never really noticed before.

‘C’mon, Till. Let’s go to the Art Cottage,’ said Amelia.

‘Sure, Mill,’ said Mathilda.

Olive spun on her heels and dutifully followed the perfect part, but she was getting angry. What was Amelia doing? Mathilda Graham and her entire family and their chairs
in chintz
and date scones were Olive’s. Just Olive’s.

When they got to the Art Cottage, Amelia looked over her shoulder and announced a little too loudly, ‘C’mon,
Till
. Let’s go to the netball courts.’ The Till–Mill duo turned. Olive followed, bringing up the rear.

Amelia–Mill chatted on about the cricket and membership and how she would see if there was a spare ticket this weekend so that Mathilda–Till could come and sit with her family and maybe even see James Hurley and Angus King.

‘Cricket? I didn’t know you even
liked
cricket, Mathilda,’ said Olive. She dug her nails into her palms. The comment had slid out. It sounded much more sarcastic than she’d intended, aggressive even.

Amelia looked at Mathilda. ‘Did you hear something?’ she asked. Mathilda laughed.

‘I’m not sure if I
heard
something, but I definitely
smell
something,’ continued Amelia, shooting Olive another quick look over her shoulder. She may as well have used a bazooka. Olive stopped. She waited for Mathilda to leap to her defence – surely this time Amelia had gone too far – but Mathilda just poked her T-bar in the dust, making a wall to block a stream of ants.

Olive turned deep red and started sweating. Blood hurtled around her body and clogged her ears. Everything was fuzzy. The light refracted; all the pale things appeared so bright that they hurt, and all the dark things looked like one thick smudge of deepest darkest ebony. Olive concentrated on keeping her head upright and turned away. She blurred her vision so that the hyperdark superlight didn’t hurt.

Don’t let them see me cry. Don’t let them see me cry. Just to
the loos. You’ll get to the loos
, she said to herself, walking methodically with a tight face and as much dignity as she could muster. Two paces from the cubicle, Olive crumpled, bereft.

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt
me
, Olive repeated to herself that afternoon in English, over and over.
Silly kids’ mantra
. Any fool knew that, pound for pound, words could pack as much punch as stone. Whenever she felt teary, Olive groped around the inside of her desk, pretending to look for something essential in its deepest corners. She bit the inside of her mouth until it hurt.

Olive sat, an island surrounded by a stretch of cream linoleum. There was nobody near her; nobody wanted to be. That was the thing about being dumped: it was contagious. Schoolgirls hunted in packs. Olive was so contagious she could almost see her own disease.

At the back of the room, Mathilda–Till tipped her chair against the wall, balancing. She chortled loudly, playing up, showing off. She was performing for Amelia like a Sea World seal. At first Olive had thought that Mathilda–Till was pretending. She realised now that Mathilda had had all these interests stored up – iPods and
Video Hits
and boys and pores – and Olive hadn’t noticed.

Conversations bubbled on around Olive. She listened. Mathilda was not the only one. Somehow the rules had changed, and it seemed that every other girl in the class had read the new book and was on top of it. Every girl except Olive.

Olive concentrated on a design she was looping about her spelling. She could hear both Mathilda and Amelia laughing now – talking and laughing. Talking and laughing about her.

‘You know, Mum says that if she had a father she’d be a different person. She reckons she’d be normal. You know, normal on the inside as well,’ stage-whispered Mathilda across the room.

‘She’s not
that
normal on the outside.’

Olive looked around to see Amelia sprinkle dimples about the room like fairy dust. She pressed her hands against her ears to block Till–Mill out, and bit harder and harder on the inside of her mouth, waiting for the day to end. Wherever she looked, girls ducked her stare or squinted, feigning short-sightedness.

When the bell finally clanged, Olive picked up her bag and exited quickly, head high, rigid inside her blazer. The pool of checked uniforms parted to let her through.

Olive left without looking back at the new Till again.

7

The Twenty-second Day
of the Month

Olive walked fast. ‘I’ll show them, bloody bloody. I’ll show them, bloody Till bloody Mill,’ she muttered, stomping down the pavement towards the beach. ‘How dare they, bum and bugger, how dare they.’

This was the worst day of Olive’s entire life. It was the twenty-second day of November. Olive kicked out at a picket fence. More twos. No surprises there.

Olive was working herself up into what Mog termed a Right Tizz. ‘I am a middle-pick girl,’ she spat. And she was. She was the kind of girl who was consistently class vice-captain in third term or class captain in fourth term. Never a leader, but certainly never picked last in Sport. She was no Nut Allergy. Nut Allergy had matted hair and she stank. In junior school she wet her pants, and sometimes, on hot afternoons, her uniform had been so damp that it had actually steamed. These days, she was always stranded on the oval when every other girl in the class had been snaffled for netball teams.

‘I do not smell,’ said Olive, unconvinced. Perhaps she just hadn’t noticed? People didn’t. When she thought about it, every family had a smell. Mathilda smelt like the Graham family home: all beeswax polish and baking. Amelia smelt like apple shampoo, washing detergent and new leather.

Maybe Olive smelt like her home too, and she just hadn’t noticed. Maybe Olive smelt like crap-knacks – like old costumes and second-hand books.

Olive flipped Mathilda’s words over in her mind, like sausages in a pan.
Mum says that if she had a father she’ d be
a different person. She’d be normal.
She kicked a can in the gutter. Till–Mill were right. Mog and Olive were just not normal. The can reverberated back onto Olive’s shoe. She crushed it.