The Bad Karma Diaries (16 page)

Did not write anything back.

It’s lucky Heeun is having a party this Saturday. We can get out and backcomb our hair and drop the cares of the world from our shoulders, and our readers will realise we have a life and are not just do-gooders.

Oh God! Our blog is a writhing mass. It has spawned! I mean the comments are giving birth to
more
comments and
those
comments to more comments … New add-ons are Hirohito and ZeeZee and Eloise at the Holiday Inn. They are all having a good old debate about us! O’Toole would be very impressed: everyone is marshalling their arguments and all sides are covered.

Hirohito:

I wish you would come to my school because nobody is making a stand here!

ZeeZee:

Maybe you mean well, Bomb and Demise, but
I am afraid you are patronising little colonialists.

Eloise at the Holiday Inn:

Well what can you expect from someone who likes Britney?

Miaaow, Eloise!

I’m afraid we have created a monster. I am terrified to write anything. They’ll all dive on it and they’ll be a feeding frenzy and my poor little comment will end up covered in blood and ripped apart … But Anna has got stuck in.

She has posted up:

It is better to risk looking like an idiot than to do nothing p.s. it’s called irony Eloise

That is quite good, especially the p.s., but I think I am going to warn Anna not to get involved. It is brave, but reckless. They might come and get us! Probably they are all excellent hackers, and they know where we live …

Had nervous dream. I do not remember much about it now but it was very frenzied and all the way through a voice was intoning gravely: ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’. That is what I woke up saying: ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater.’

This does not make any kind of sense.

But someone was definitely pursuing me in the dream. And that does make sense.

I think I am terrified of our blog. Did not log on today.

I am gonna help Heeun prepare her party tomorrow. This means I cannot go to the soup kitchen. There is not time to help two people, and it’s important to help your friends (I think). Anna is going to the asylum-seekers (of course).

Actually I am gonna go to the soup kitchen on Sunday. Heeun wants to come too. Turns out she is actually big into going to mass and helping people. We are going to go together because – this is the good bit – I am staying over at Heeun’s after the party! I am really surprised that I’m allowed to because normally there is never any staying over at houses after parties. (I dunno what parents think is gonna happen to us if we don’t return to our OWN beds after parties, but they certainly think the WORST). I have a feeling my being allowed stay over is part of the plot to separate me from Anna and get me new friends. What they don’t know is that Anna is staying over too! (Ha!)

Snuck a look at the blog. I cannot resist it though it is giving me nightmares … Anna’s last comment has started a whole new trend. It seems to be a Famous Quotations Trend.

curiousinDenver wrote;

Yes, exactly Bomb! All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

Hirohito:

All your troubles start when you leave your room… so stay home Bomb and Demise!

Heimlich manoeuvre:

You can fool some people some of the time but you can’t fool all the people all of the time.

I don’t see what the last quote has to do with anything but I guess it’s nice that our blog is attracting such well-educated readers.

I could not resist. I wrote:

It is rash of me to encourage them by responding – especially after I warned Anna off – but they really want a response and I find it very difficult not to give people what they want.

Do not have a lot of time to write this. Just back from helping Heeun. Must have dinner, then shower, then dress, then go back to Heeun’s and have fun (that is an order!)

Heeun’s house is large and has a lot of beautiful things – vases and carpets and statues and lamps – and it is tidy as a hotel. Her dad is the ambassador, that’s why. She never mentioned this, which shows that she must be a nice person (I think). There was no sign of her parents, Mr and Mrs Ambassador. Perhaps they at a reception? There were a lot of servants though! They are all Korean and they did not speak to us. This made me pretty uncomfortable. At Anna’s house they have a cleaning lady, Mrs O’Reilly, but she speaks all the time. She can speak and wash up and iron and feed Charlie all at once, so you do not feel embarrassed. In my house we do not have servants or a cleaning lady but then we are not a) ambassadors nor b) have lots of children.

Anyway because of all the servants, I don’t think Heeun needed me to help her. Probably the servants could have put black paper around the lampshades and put out crisps and peanuts into bowls and plugged in disco lights and moved the stereo into the basement – that is where the party will be. But it was nice for Heeun to have me there, I can see that, she is quite nervous about how it is going to go.

So am I!

I am wearing this kind of long t-shirt, which could be a mini-dress but I am wearing it over leggings which makes it a t-shirt (I think), and my Doc Martens and loads of bracelets, and two necklaces. I will scrunch up my hair into a wild style. This is all quite daring for me. Normally I am just in jeans and t-shirt.

Today Mr Noisy shouted at me, ‘And how are you today?’

I said, ‘Good … what about you.’

‘Me. I’m great, of course,’ he shouted, ‘The Boss is here!’

‘The Boss?’ I said, looking round.

‘The Boss!’ he shouted, ‘Jesus Christ. The Boss is here!’

Agnes rolled her eyes. Heeun looked amazed.

Now every time I think of Jesus I see him in a suit behind a huge desk with an American accent. The Boss.

I hope that Mr Noisy has not stuck this image of Jesus in my mind for ever. I don’t think it can be right.

It is very impressive Heeun and I managed to go to the soup kitchen and Anna to the asylum-seekers considering how incredibly late we got to bed and how incredibly tired we were. There was a moment when all three of us might have just said ‘forget about it’ and stayed on sleeping.

But then Anna said – from her mattress – ‘the thick thug throttled the thrush by the throat’ like she’d been saying it all
night in her dreams, and I knew she was preparing her lesson for the asylum seekers because she’d explained that the ‘th’ sound is difficult for foreigners – so I said (from my mattress) ‘carrots, carrots, carrots’.

Then Heeun said (from her bed), ‘I will get scrambled eggs and toast for us.’

‘And orange juice?’ I said, and got up.

I was glad I did. It was even good to see the carrots and Mr Noisy.

Oh the party?

Well, that will have to wait. I am exhausted, and my fingertips and even my eyeballs have turned orange from all the carrots, and the only thing going through my heavy and exhausted mind is: the thick thug throttled the thrush by the throat the thick thug throttled the thrush by the throat what did the thick thug throttle who throttled the thrush by the throat what was the thrush throttled by what did the thick thug do to the thrush …

Just checked the blog. Pippa has posted up:

So???? What about the party?

And Xenawarriorcleaner:

what no word??? Is it too much to hope you went mental and are still sleeping it off???

It is nice that people are so interested (I guess), but it is kind of alarming too.

So the party. First things first: I looked quite good. My hair looked punky and wild, but not a mess. Even mum and dad said I looked nice. I waited till I got to Heeun’s to put on make-up because I’m not allowed wear it. Heeun looked great! She was wearing a white dress with big red flowers on it. It looked like a really very expensive dress. It was daring of Heeun to wear it because it was almost girlie pretty, and it’s not cool to look girlie pretty (well, Anna and me don’t think so) but she got away with it (the dress didn’t actually have frills. It did not go
that
far!) Then Anna arrived. She was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, as usual, and her hair was short and neat, as usual, and she didn’t put on any make-up, as usual, so in fact she might have been calling round to watch a DVD, not go to a party. She is a very consistent person. Me and Heeun found this reassuring. We were nervous enough about our own outfits. At least one of us was as usual.

People began to arrive. Practically the whole class was invited and some of them brought friends. So there were a lot of people. Heeun’s basement can take a crowd. You’d never get that amount of people into my house. It was interesting that her parents a) let her invite so many people and b) weren’t even there! A lot of adults – servants – were there and one of them, Myung, seems to be Heeun’s nanny, or housekeeper, or stand-in-mum or pseudo-mum or whatever you want to call
her. So we had supervision, but still! Luckily our parents did not know we were unparented! There was a big stereo system and most people brought music. Actually too many people brought too much music and soon there were the stereo wars. The battle of musical tastes! Caroline Hunter would put on Rihanna or Kanye West and she and her friends would start dancing and then Ben would put on My Chemical Romance or something (I can’t pretend I know all the names of the bands he listens to) and he and his friends would start jumping around – pogo-ing or whatever it’s called – and Caroline and her friends would howl. It was a real mess and actually – for once! I agreed with Caroline because I like some of Ben’s music, sure, but you can’t precisely
dance
to it. Well the class – those who were keeping out of the stereo wars – didn’t know what to do. They were willing, but confused, they’d start bopping dancing and then they’d start pogo-ing (some of them) and then they’d just sit down.

So luckily Anna took charge. At least she took Heeun firmly by the arm and said, ‘Heeun, you have to sort this out’ because it was Heeun’s word, of course it was, it was Heeun’s party.

So Heeun said, ‘For one hour it is Caroline’s music, and then you can have your choice, Ben.’

She managed to say it quite firmly, almost as well as Anna. Perhaps that is her ambassador’s training. Or perhaps it’s that she had Anna beside her, which is like having a bulldog beside you. Anyway it worked. Truce in the stereo wars! The girls
began dancing (and some of the boys too, pretending to do taking-the-piss dancing, but actually secretly enjoying it).

Then J.P. arrived and the whole atmosphere changed. Suddenly all the girls were dancing to him (even though they weren’t necessarily looking at him, they were definitely dancing
to
him). He took a quick look round the party and saw that it was un-parented.

So then he came sauntering up to me and Anna with his hands scrunched into the pockets of his tight jeans, ‘Let’s do a whip around and send someone to the off-license.’

Our jaws dropped. ‘For
beer
?’ I squeaked.

‘Well not for Fanta,’ he said sarcastically.

He’d gone crazy. I couldn’t even begin to say what was wrong with his plan, but a) it wasn’t like we were all carrying money – I mean why would we be? We didn’t need it at the ambassador’s reception – and b)
who
were we going to send to an off-license? Some people look sixteen, maybe, but nobody looks eighteen, let alone twenty-one, and c) nobody else wanted booze. J.P is just a lot more advanced than the rest of us. So his plan was crazy and probably he knew this and was just trying it on. Anna and I decided to go along with it, cause we knew it wasn’t going to happen.

We said, ‘
right!
’ in a ‘you-can-count-on-us’ way and went round to everyone, saying importantly, ‘Do you have any money? Cause J.P.’s gonna go to the off-license?’

So of course everyone turned their pockets inside out for J.P.,
but it was like I guessed, nobody really had any money on them. It made us all feel important that J.P was asking us, but the truth is we were at a house party that our parents had driven us to and our parents would be picking us up from. J.P. obviously thought he was at another kind of party, an older party, where people fended for themselves and bought beer.

‘No go,’ I said to Anna. She said, ‘Yeah…’ then ‘we’d better warn Heeun.’

So we went up to her and Anna said, ‘J.P. is gonna come up and ask you to get money to send someone to the off-license, so you’d better say no, okay?’

Heeun looked totally panic-stricken – poor her, wouldn’t you, saying no to J.P.? – but she said, ‘Okay …’

And this was super well-guessed of Anna cause when we told J.P. That no one had any money, he got his most jeering expression, and said, ‘Losers,’ but then he said ‘but there’s money somewhere’ and his red eyes gleamed round at the big house and the silent servants. He went up to Heeun. We watched, but she did extremely well. She didn’t turn into a flailing mess like I would have. She kept this incredibly charming smile on her face and she kept giggling with her hand over her mouth, and nodding, and shaking her head, and it was a wonderful mime. You didn’t even have to hear her to know what she was saying, ‘Yes … yes … great idea! .. but impossible … sorry … impossible … so sorry …’ so J.P. had to walk away empty-handed and not even able to jeer at her. You couldn’t
jeer at those giggles. He went up to Celine and draped his arm round her and soon they were necking in the corner. He generally necks Celine, but not always. She isn’t his girlfriend. He doesn’t have girlfriends. He moves around.