The Bad Karma Diaries (2 page)

Sometimes my mum calls me, saying, ‘Anna’s dad is on the telly’.

I think she hopes I will learn something, but, sorry, it’s impossible to know what he’s on about.

Anyway, back to our blog; we want to put our marvellous adventures up on it to set us apart from all the other teenage bloggers. But we haven’t had any marvellous adventures yet. So we were round at Anna’s today trying to think of ideas. The Lotto numbers today were her mum and Charlie and Renata. Renata is at college now but obviously nobody at college has to work too hard because it seems like she spends all day sitting round the kitchen and all night going out. We cleared a space at the kitchen table to make our list. The kitchen table is also quite like the Lotto numbers because you never know what’s going to be on it. There could be books or make-up from Renata, or sports clothes from Tommy (
sweaty
sports clothes!! Ugh!), or Anna’s homework (she does have a desk in her room but she doesn’t like working in her room, she says it’s lonely) and there are always a few of Charlie’s toys and his abandoned plastic plates of squashed banana. The whole house is like that: chaos. My mother wouldn’t allow it, but then there are only four people in our house and none of them are sweaty boys. But I feel relaxed in Anna’s house because if I broke something or spilled juice, nobody would even notice.

Anyway, Anna wrote down two ideas for our blog:

1) Start a business.

(I said, what business? She said that’s what we had to work out.)

2) Do something to raise money for charity.

(Anna has a good social conscience. It is part of coming under the influence of intellectuals, I think).

I wasn’t sure about these ideas. I said they sounded like work, and what our parents do, not like a blog.

Anna said, ‘Well what are
your
ideas then?’ (quite rudely).

I said I had two ideas too:

1) We could go bungee jumping.

2) We could swim with dolphins.

That’s when Renata did her Snort, Swivel, Swat routine:

‘Who wants to read about you two flapping round, trying
pathetically
to commune with nature? I thought you wanted
original
ideas. Do you know how many accounts there are of swimming with dolphins on the net? About a million. Do you know how many interesting accounts there are of swimming with dolphins on the net? Nil. Nada. And as for bungee jumping … unless the rope snaps, we’re just not interested.’

We just gazed at her, and waited––

‘Oh, Renata!’ said her mum.

Anna said, ‘You think of something then!’ and pushed her lip out the way she does when she’s angry.

Renata said, ‘Well, let’s see. Bullying? Vandalising? Shoplifting? That’s all people want to read from teenagers.’

Her mum: ‘
Renata
!’ – not in an
Oh, Renata!
voice this time, in a really cross voice. Renata went back down to her book.

Her mum said, ‘Would you two take Charlie out to the garden? He needs fresh air.’

Charlie is the cutest baby in the world. He is very smart. He says ‘Actually’ a lot, which makes him sound grown-up though he is only two: ‘Actually, I don’t like apples.’

I don’t think the boys are fancying Heeun. You can normally tell when they fancy the new girl because they just keep going up to her. One of them will come up and tell her something and then another will come up to show her something and then another will come up to invite her to something. It’s like the action of a magnet that we studied in science. But Heeun is like the negative bit of the magnet. No boys are coming up to her. She is repelling them. I am surprised because she is definitely pretty. But then I’ve noticed before that who the girls think is pretty is not always who the boys think is pretty. The boys’ taste always infects the girls though. The first day of school Caroline Hunter was saying how pretty Heeun was and smarmy-ing up to her; now she’s backing off because it’s looking like Heeun is not going to be one of the popular ones. It’s impossible to be very popular if the boys don’t fancy you.

In case you are wondering if me and Anna are popular, then
yes we are, but not like that – I mean not envy-able popular. The boys don’t automatically fancy us, and the girls don’t want to be us, but they all like us (I think!). Actually, Anna has a boyfriend. It’s just that she never sees him. Well it’s Carl, who’s in our class, so she
sees
him (every day in fact) but she never spends any time with him. They have been going out since the end of last term. But you wouldn’t know it. In the summer we hung out with him and his friends a bit. But since we’re back at school, nothing – they hardly even
talk
. But if you asked her, she’d say yeah, she’s going out with Carl, but she’d say it in a completely uninterested voice. She is definitely not crazy about him. She isn’t even
pathological
about him. She isn’t even
neurotic
about him. She isn’t even
hung up
on him.

It’s not surprising. He is a total dud. His school trousers are slightly too short for his legs so you can see his ankles when he walks. It gives me a shivery, dreadful feeling every time I catch sight of those bony ankles. I can’t see how Anna could have kissed him, but possibly neither can she seeing as how now she ignores him. But when there’s a kissing opportunity, like at a party, she does use him for that still.

I think it’s that she’s a very practical person and she doesn’t like wasting time or opportunities, so she will use him for kissing till she replaces him.

This makes her sound ruthless, but she’s not like an Exploiter. I mean he seems quite happy with the situation.

I am not that practical – there are not too many boys I want
to kiss, and the ones I
do
want to kiss I am nervous about approaching, and if I
did
actually kiss them, I would probably become hung up-neurotic-pathological-crazy about them all at once and would never be able to set up such a slick/ruthless/convenient arrangement as Anna’s.

I have kissed boys – well, I kissed one, in Irish College. Which counts, I guess, but it only
just
counts because it is part of the rules of Irish College that you learn to kiss. It’s Rule 4 and it comes after Rule 3, Learn how to use the Genitive Case … So because it’s part of the rules, well, you just grab the nearest male. I can hardly remember the name of the guy I kissed. Well, okay, he was called Mark. But I can’t remember anything else about him. Well, okay, his tongue went frantic looking for something in my mouth. So, okay, I can remember the kiss, but not
him
specifically …

We haven’t come up with anything for our blog yet. Maybe Renata is right – I am imagining a different me and Anna who bully and shoplift and vandalise. We could call ourselves Bomb and Demise and wear black all the time. I wonder if David Leydon has ever shoplifted? I think when he is not in his uniform he probably wears black.

Steak for dinner. Quite healthy. Justine was not eating much of hers so I ate it. Justine is a year younger than me, she is twelve.

The reason I have hardly mentioned her before is that she is deeply boring. She is as boring as my parents. Sorry. That
sounds very mean. But Anna’s mum said we had to admit
everything
to our diary, all our
innermost
thoughts, even the
bad
ones. When we were little me and Justine played together a lot but that was because: a) I didn’t know how boring my house was then, and b) when she was little she was cute. It is only recently she has become deeply boring. She is quiet as a mouse in the house. You wouldn’t even know she’s around most of the time.

Anna has had an idea for our blog. It is an idea based on her original idea – to start a business. Our business is going to be to organise children’s birthday parties. People will hire us to arrange party games and keep hordes of children amused for three hours. Anna had this idea because her neighbour asked her to help out with her six year old’s birthday. So Anna did pass the parcel and pin the tail on the donkey and musical bumps and organised the singing of Happy Birthday. She was very good at it, she says, and stopped the Girl Who Lost Musical Bumps from crying, and then cheated a bit to make sure the Birthday Boy won pass the parcel. Afterwards the neighbour gave her €25 and big thanks and this gave Anna the idea to make it a business, not just a one-off.

I do not like to pour scorn on my best friend’s ideas, but I was Not Impressed. It didn’t sound like much of an idea for a
blog.

I said (in my best impersonation of Renata), ‘Who wants to read about us playing pass the parcel with a load of six year olds?’

Anna said, ‘Maybe something will go wrong and it will be a comedy blog.’

I said, ‘We can’t go into it hoping something will go wrong!’

She said, ‘We won’t be
hoping
something will go wrong! It just
will
, that’s what happens with kids. The Birthday Boy will vomit, or some little pig will smear chocolate cake all over the Little Princess’s pink party dress.’

So then I started to laugh, although I didn’t want to because once you start to laugh, you’ve lost the argument, but it was the thought of a Fat Little Princess in Pigtails with dark chocolate smears all down her frilly pink dress, bawling … ha!

But then I recovered with a good argument, ‘Yeah, well, we can’t put that on the blog though! People will find out and not hire us!’

Anna said, ‘Oh shut up! We’ll make money anyway!’

This, as they say in Anna’s house, was UN-ANSWER-ABLE.

Apparently we are going to charge €60 for our services. This seems a lot to me, but Anna says it’s not because we will have to arrange all the party games beforehand, and wrap the Parcel, and fill the Going Home Bags and choose the music (big deal!) If we do the food, it’s extra apparently, €20 extra, because cutting sandwiches and making rice crispy cakes can take
forever (true!)

I said, ‘Who is going to spend €80 on a six-year-old’s party???’

Anna said, ‘You’d be surprised!’

Apparently it costs way more to rent one of those leisure centres for parties – you pay more than €15 per child! Well, OK, I
am
surprised …

Anna is making up posters to advertise our services.

A mad thing happened at lunchtime today. Emma came up to us and said, ‘Will you do something to Elaine for me? She was mean to me.’

Elaine is in our class. She is fine, I guess, but deeply boring, except that she has a bad temper. When she loses her temper, it is
not
deeply boring! I guess she lost it with Emma, and Emma is like jelly, she’s so nervous, but still – we were amazed. What did she want
us
to do about it?

But Anna said, ‘We’ll think about it,’ in a grand voice.

When Emma went off we were laughing because we couldn’t believe it.

I said, ‘She’s crazy, but maybe we’re like Robin Hood, protecting the weak. Emma is definitely the Weak and Elaine is the Strong.’

Anna said, ‘If we do do something mean, she’ll have to pay us, we’ll be risking our necks for her.’

I said, ‘Yeah’, though Robin Hood didn’t get paid, I don’t think, but then he only worked for the Poor, and Emma is not the Poor. She gets quite a lot of pocket money.

Anna hardly gets any pocket money, which is why she is always thinking of ways to earn it. I don’t know why she hardly gets any pocket money when she lives in a big house. Maybe because a) she has too many brothers and sisters so there isn’t any money left over, or b) her parents are against pocket money like they are against telly, or c) the recession stopped her pocket money. The recession hasn’t stopped my pocket money yet but it has entered our house – the words ‘we can’t afford it’ are now used quite a lot. For instance I want an iPod but ‘we can’t afford it’ and we only went for one week to France this year because we ‘couldn’t afford’ the second week and Dad ‘couldn’t afford’ more time off work. If the recession is forcing an entry into my house, it has probably taken over Anna’s, since that’s her Dad’s job. I’m pretty sure she’s so obsessed about starting a business because she’s afraid that all the money is leaking out of the country and can only be halted by people starting up new businesses (well I think this is what her Dad says).

We still haven’t thought of anything to do to Elaine yet.

We are going to hide Elaine’s gym bag. I thought of this. It’s quite clever – she will get into trouble, but not
too
much
trouble, and no one will know it’s us. We told Emma what we were going to do and Anna said, ‘That will cost you €9.50,’ in a very professional voice.

(Apparently €9.50 is the psychologically correct way to ask for €10). Emma said OK!

At break we found Elaine’s gym bag by the lockers and took it away and hid it beside the upstairs toilets in the store-room where the cleaning ladies keep the cleaning things.

At gym later on Elaine couldn’t find her gym bag. First she was confused, and then she began to lose her temper. She stomped about, throwing things around, trying to uncover her bag. The rest of us all changed into our sports gear and then Mrs Moloney (our gym teacher) arrived and said to Elaine what was the problem? Was she sick?

Elaine shouted then, really loudly, ‘NO! I’m not sick! My bag is gone! Someone must have stolen it!!’

She is extremely fierce when she loses her temper.

Mrs Moloney didn’t give out to her. She said, ‘All right, Elaine, well, have a good look for it. Maybe you left it at home?’

‘I did NOT leave it at home!!’ shouted Elaine.

Then Mrs Moloney said sharply, ‘Calm down. Take another look and then you’d better go to Study.’