The Bad Karma Diaries (8 page)

J.P. is in our year but he’s too cool for school. This is a stupid phrase, I admit, but it is the only possible phrase for J.P. so, sorry, I have to use it. I
definitely
fancy J.P. and so does everybody else, it’s just that nobody will admit it. This is because he’s ugly and dirty – he doesn’t even wash. He has long, lank, greasy hair and small red-rimmed eyes and white pasty skin and a big nose (Wow! Doesn’t he sound dreamy?) There is something dangerous about him like he might suddenly do something crazy. He’s also rude and jeering, although he’s not cruel rude, I mean, it’s good-tempered jeering. But what with him being dirty and ugly and dangerous and jeering, nobody can admit to fancying him. Tommy is the acceptable face to fancy cause he’s good-looking and charming and artistic and kind-hearted, blah blah blah. But, fact is, when J.P. speaks to you, you get goosebumps and he has this way of looking at you … Even Anna fancies J.P. (I know though she’s never admitted it).

But anyway David Leydon hasn’t graduated to J.P. yet. After break Anna had Spanish and I had French, so we separated and I saw David Leydon with Brian going towards French, so I caught up with them, and said ‘Hi …’

They said, ‘Hi’.

I said to David, ‘So did you stay long in town?’

He looked completely blank. This was potentially mortifying!

I said, ‘Last Saturday..?’

‘Oh yeah … yeah… we hung round a bit…’ Then he said ‘How was your kid’s party?’

It’s incredible that he remembered this!

I said, ‘Well, our cake caused a food fight, and the birthday girl cried
nineteen
times, and our games ruined the flower beds, but otherwise fine, perfect!’

Derek started to laugh, so the others did too. (I meant them to!).

Brian said, ‘What were you doing at a kid’s party?’ but he has an inner city accent, so it sounded like, ‘Wha’ were you doin’ a’ a kid’s par-ey.’

I started to tell him, but then we reached French class.

I have made contact and am cementing my friendship with David Leydon. Chloe’s party is worth its weight in cake and tears!

Oh – we have decided what to do to Pierce we are going to hide his homework. This is Simple, but Effective.

Today was The Day. We took Pierce’s English homework. It was quite easy. At break we found his schoolbag by the lockers and took out his copybook and just ripped out the English essay. It was a spiral copybook so it didn’t even show where we ripped. Then I put it carefully in my copybook so the pages would stay neat because today his homework was going to miraculously
disappear
, but tomorrow it had to miraculously
appear
, unharmed!

In Maths I took a quick look at Pierce’s essay cause I was curious what he wrote. The essay was on
To Kill a Mockingbird
and his first line was ‘In my opinion Atticus Finch is one of the most important characters in Harper Lee’s
To Kill a Mockingbird
.’

So I nudged Anna and whispered sarcastically, ‘Guess what? Atticus Finch is one of the most important characters in
To Kill a Mockingbird
!’

‘In Pierce’s opinion,’ said Anna, deadpan.

At the beginning of English class we all handed in our essays. I stole a look at Pierce. He was flicking through his copybook, front to back, back to front, front to back, with a totally amazed look on his face. He looked like someone had just plucked a Mars Bar out of his hands. All the essays were handed up. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t say anything right through the
class, but just sat there. When the bell rang he went up to O’Toole. I lingered a bit going through the door and heard O’Toole saying, ‘That’s okay, Pierce, just bring it tomorrow.’

So now I know: Pierce is more cunning and diplomatic than Elaine. He stayed calm and totally got away with not having his homework. This proves that there is never any point losing your temper. It just makes things worse. I am surprised though. I would have thought he’d lose his temper and get all nasty.

‘I think our Karma is a good test of character,’ I told Anna, ‘you get to see how people will react in a crisis. So now we know Pierce stays Cool, Calm and Collected.’

‘Yeah,’ said Anna,
‘
he’d
be good under fire.’ Our history teacher, Mr McMahon, is big into battles and likes telling us how we should behave if we’re ever under attack, like this is likely to happen.

‘And Elaine would be a rubbish,’ I said, ‘Hassled, Hysterical and …’ I paused trying to think of a third H-word.

‘Helpless,’ said Anna, ‘Hassled, Hysterical and Helpless.’

After lunch Anna and I crept into the boys’ changing rooms and put Pierce’s English essay back in his book. This was actually very brave of us. We’d be in real trouble if we were caught in the boys changing rooms. But we didn’t want Pierce to have to write a whole new essay. That wouldn’t have been fair, and the Instruments of Karma actually play it very fair. We slipped the essay back between the pages; he wouldn’t know it was there till he opened the book to write a new essay this
evening. Then we legged it out of the changing rooms. My heart was beating very fast. This is very exciting and dangerous work!

‘I wish I could see his face when he finds it back there,’ I said.

‘Yep, we’re messing with his head,’ said Anna.

‘Maybe we should have changed the first line for him though. Maybe we should have cut out “in my opinion”. He’s gonna get a rubbish mark with an opening like that.’

‘We’re teaching him a lesson,’ said Anna, ‘not teaching him a
lesson
.

It is going round the class that (maybe!) we hid Pierce’s homework!

This morning Pierce was telling Ben, ‘When I got home, it was just there! In the middle of the book, but I swear it wasn’t there earlier.’

Ben kind of nodded but he wasn’t too interested. It is hard to get interested about Unlikely Occurrences that happen to other people.

Then Anna butted in, ‘Did you get in trouble?’

Pierce said, ‘O’Toole let me off if I brought it in today, but he said not to let it happen again, like two strikes and I’m out.’

‘Yeah,’ said Anna, ‘it’s rough getting penalised when it isn’t
your fault.’

That’s all she said, but Pierce suddenly looked closer at her. And by first break the whisper was going round that we’d hidden his homework. Then he confronted us with it.

He stood in front of us, with Ben, and said, ‘Did you steal my homework?’

Ben was looking a lot more interested about the whole thing then earlier.

So I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ in a casual, impatient, bewildered voice, which was just exactly the right kind of voice. Maybe I should become an actress!

Ben said, ‘Come on! You stole his homework to get him back for not paying you interest, didn’t you?’

Anna said, ‘That would have been a brilliant idea!’ in a very enthusiastic voice, but like it had just occurred to her. Also very convincing – she could be an actress too.

And I said, ‘Huh! It’s your guilty conscience for not paying like you
said
you would, that makes you think it’s us.’

We went on like that, and they couldn’t pin anything on us. They
suspected
us, maybe, but they weren’t
sure
. We were so relaxed, they were
un
sure.

In the end I said, ‘Do you really think we’d do that to
you
? I mean you’d
kill
us.’ And I watched his face go all flattered and sly and could see him thinking to himself, ‘Yeah, they’d be too scared to get
me
.’

Later Elaine said, ‘It was you two, wasn’t it?’

Anna said, ‘It was Karma.’

Elaine said, ‘Karma?’

I said, ‘If you do something bad, it gets back to you, that’s the Karmic circle.’

‘What comes around goes around,’ said Anna.

We – me and Anna – have agreed it’s quite good we’re
suspected
of stealing Pierce’s homework because it’s kind of publicity for the Instruments of Karma. We can’t advertise our services so we need the word to be whispered round. But at the same time we can’t have people
knowing
it as a Sure Thing because we could get in trouble, so at first break we found Emma and swore her to secrecy about Elaine’s gym-bag. Well, we kind of threatened her to secrecy. We said if she told something bad would happen her. This was the only way to make sure she didn’t blab. She hasn’t said anything so far, but that’s because she’s afraid of admitting her part in it, but I bet that if the conversation got round to us and Pierce’s homework, she’d start in on the gym-bag. Just because it would make a good story – she’d get everyone’s attention, and normally she never gets
anyone’s
attention. People will say anything to get everyone’s attention, I’ve discovered. But I think we scared her bad enough for her to stay dumb. She’s not so hard to scare. She’s like jelly. We didn’t mean the threats of course. That was just our excellent acting.

No birthday party to organise today. I’m afraid that maybe the word has gone round the six-year-olds and their parents that we are Trouble. This is pretty unfair because actually if Mrs Mahony had been left to organise that party by herself she would have had a nervous breakdown and probably Karen would have ripped the Birthday Girl’s dress and hacked off her supermodel hair.

Back in business! We have a party for next Saturday – a five-year-old boy’s from the next road to Anna’s. We dropped cards in all the houses round hers and mine. This time we are gonna ask for €55 to buy food and prizes, and we don’t do birthday cakes. Well, we will buy one, but not out of the €55. We are getting the hang of this.

Oh and we’re
finally
doing the blog! It’s going to be a proper blog, like a website, not just a Facebook entry. We need a proper blog because a) we have too much to write just for Facebook, and b) in Facebook you have to follow a set formula and we need to express our creativity by not following a formula, and c) you go on Facebook to make friends and comment on everyone else’s entries and our blog is for the whole world to read, not just signed-up friends.

Declan, this friend of Tommy’s, is helping us design the blog. Declan is a computer genius and quite nerdy. He has glasses, and spots, and is bad at sport. Outside school, like in Anna’s house, he wears just jumpers and cords. He is not exactly the friend you’d expect for Tommy because he’s not cool at all, but in fact him and Tommy are good friends. Maybe because of music; Declan is not in a band like Tommy, but he makes electronic music.

Anyway, how he agreed to help us design the blog was he was in Anna’s kitchen with Tommy, when I said to Anna, ‘We’ve got to get going on our blog!’ and she said, ‘Yeah, I know …’, but not in that interested a way.

She is not as interested in this as me, and also she was drawing with Charlie so wasn’t really concentrating.

But Declan said, ‘Your blog?’ immediately interested, because it was to do with computers, so I told him my idea and he and Tommy cracked up laughing in a definitely patronising, but also a cheerful way, if you know what I mean.

Declan said, ‘So what adventures are you putting in?’

I said, ‘Adventures like the birthday parties. Funny adventures!’ Then I explained about The Party People. I didn’t go into the Instruments of Karma.

Tommy said, ‘It’s not exactly “from the war zone”, is it? Not exactly “Adolescent life from besieged Baghdad” or “Under the Veil: teenage girls speak out from Iran”.’ He was really taking the piss now, bit like Renata, but less cutting.

I sighed because actually I am quite jealous of teenagers in war zones and dictatorships because everyone wants to read their blogs. But I said, ‘Write what you know. All experience is relevant!’ in a deliberately prissy, teacher-y voice, because that’s what O’Toole says when we have to write stories. He never wants us to imagine we’re stolen by space aliens, or that we’re international spies, or that we’re witches or wizards. He always just wants us to write about our own lives. I dunno about this. I think it has led to some really boring stories. I mean, imagine Pierce’s stories: ‘I got up. I had breakfast. I watched TV.’ I think it would be better getting him to imagine being an arch criminal. Even Mr O’Toole said once, ‘These are dull, dull,
dull
!’ and with every ‘dull’ he whacked his palm down on our pile of stories. Every so often he gets enraged like this but unfortunately for him it’s always more funny than scary, so it doesn’t affect our behaviour much. But it’s true that thanks to him I sometimes look at my life and see which bits of it would work in a story. And sometimes I get to thinking what situations mean, why did someone do that, what is the story behind the story? And now I think about it, if Pierce actually told the
truth
about his life – I mean if he wrote about bullying people, then this would a) make a more interesting story (nasty-interesting but still
interesting
) and b) might make him think about why he’s doing it. Still he never would. O’Toole wants us to tell the truth in our stories. But that is way ambitious of him. You’re not going to tell the truth in a story
that the whole class might read. Just in a diary
(ha!)

Anyway, Tommy and Declan got my ‘Write what you know. All experience is relevant’ immediately because that’s O’Toole’s famous catchphrase.

Declan said, ‘Yeah, Tommy, they could be like Sami.’

Tommy laughed.

I said, ‘Who’s Sami?’

Turns out Sami is a Turkish blogger who got an astronomical number of hits. He is a cult, and all because his blog is so boring. All he does is write about what he has for tea and what his mother-in-law says and things like that. I thought this was a pretty insulting comparison because our adventures are better than
that
but anyway I laughed to show I was a good sport. And then Declan said, well, if we were really set on it, he’d help us design the blog! I gasped. This is incredibly kind of him!

Another Karmic duty! Maybe the whispering campaign worked in our favour because at break Gita came up to us and she isn’t even in our class. She’s a First Year, like Justine. So our reputation is spreading! She is the daughter of someone in the Indian Embassy. Our school gets a lot of embassy kids, I don’t know why because it’s not top of the league for Leaving Cert results or anything. Maybe it’s because our school is mixed boys
and girls, when most secondary schools are single-sex. Even though we wear uniforms, our school looks a bit more like a school on American TV than other schools in Dublin. We can wear jewellery and boys can have long hair and sometimes you see kids kissing. Maybe embassy kids want their schools to be as close to America as possible? Anyway, Gita said would we do something bad to Jayne O’Keeffe because she was saying racist things to her. Anna went nuts over this! There is nothing worse than racism for a person with a strong social conscience.

Declan said to check out as many blogs as possible and see which ones we liked the look of and then he’d help us design it. Thanks to Declan we’re gonna have a really cool-looking blog that will avoid all the clichés. But I’m worried about how to blog about the Instruments of Karma because we can’t really admit to it, but on the other hand it is too good
not
to put up. This is a Conundrum.

We are taking our job for Gita very seriously. In fact we considered not charging her because this is a question of Justice, but then Anna pointed out that Robin Hood stole from the rich to give to the to poor but Gita isn’t the poor – no way, she wears designer shoes. To school! So we are charging her €10.50. We haven’t decided what to do yet. It is a very serious crime that Jayne is committing and we think this time she needs to
know why she’s being punished. For something as serious as
racism
it’s not enough to leave it to Karma.

Back from Conor’s – he is the five-year-old whose birthday we organised. Now I can say with complete assurance that little boys are much easier and nicer than little girls. Little boys – at least little boys of five – don’t like being dumped by their parents. They are mad clingy! So there were all these parents chatting with us trying to organise games and nobody was too bothered about anything. If a little boy started acting up all you had to do was speak in a stern voice, and he would totally collapse and promise to be good. Amazing! I am worried about these little boys in school though – they must be bossed to bits by the little girls.

Anyway it’s good that the party was easy because we are not nearly as exhausted as last time, but it’s also bad because there’s no good story for the blog. I think I would rather be wrecked. I really would. I am ready to make this sacrifice for the blog.

Anna came round to mine and we worked out what we were gonna post on our blog. She insisted on doing it in my house because she said if we did it in hers everyone would get involved and Renata would rewrite it. This is undoubtedly true.

We looked up loads of blogs to get ideas.

Anna said, ‘You need loads of photos.’

‘Yeah, and not too much writing,’ I said.

‘Yeah, and a kind of a
babyish
style’ said Anna.

‘Yeah, a kind of an exclamation mark style!’ I said, because it’s true, lots of blogs seem to be written like eight-year-olds exclaiming.

‘
Not
in O’Toole-approved style!’ said Anna. We were ages uploading it, and we had loads of fights about it, but we also had hysterics laughing. So this is what we ended up with:

I’m Bomb

[photo of Anna with a hat coming down over her face so you can’t recognise her]

and I’m Demise

[photo of me bending down with my head between my legs so all you can see is my back and hair. This a) hides my face and b) shows how bendy I am. I am extremely naturally bendy. For instance, if I sit down cross-legged I can suck my toes!]

Bombs cause demises so I’m the boss of
her
.

[photo of Anna sitting on my shoulders – only showing our backs.]

We like:

Music!

[photo of our CD collections – pride of place,
Kanye West
and
Lady Gaga
(me);
Daft Punk
and
The Doors
(Anna) She is
highly influenced by Tommy and John so she likes really old music by people who died really young.]

Books!

[photo of our books – pride of place,
To Kill a Mockingbird
and
His Dark Materials
(me),
Crime and Punishment
(Anna)]

We are interested in:

Saving the environment!

[picture of cows, and underneath this caption:

‘Did you know that cows’ farts release methane gas that damages the ozone!? What do YOU think should be done about this?’
]

Fighting injustice!

[We don’t have a photo for this yet. Anna thinks we should put up a photo of Pierce looking nasty, but I think this could be A Step Too Far]

The animals we most resemble are:

[photo of a chipmunk and arrow saying:

Bomb!

Photo of a frog and arrow saying:

Demise!

It is quite hard to admit we look like a chipmunk and a frog. We would rather look like a stallion or an Irish wolfhound (Anna), or a black panther or an ocelot (me). But the sad truth is we could not look less like a stallion or a black panther. Guess who decided which animals we looked like? Yep, you got it, Renata. We were wondering about it in Anna’s kitchen one day,
after reading
His Dark Materials
. We were saying what would our daemon be. (This is the same as saying what animal do I look like).

Renata suddenly went off into her horrible cackle of laughter over all our suggestions, and then she said, ‘
You
(pointing at Anna) look like a chipmunk, and
you
(pointing at me) look like a frog.’

‘Chipmunk!’ – ‘Frog!’ we howled.

Renata gave her evil, sparkly smile, ‘Yes, you are small and dark and you’re always collecting,
amassing
, things, but you’ve got a dirty temper and you
bite
, just like a chipmunk, and
you
have googly eyes and skinny arms and legs and you can’t keep
still
.’

We waited, and ‘Oh, Renata!’ said her mother.

But after a bit Anna said, well chipmunks are cute, and I said, well frogs are really bendy, they can do the splits! And since then we have become attached to our animals.

We are in business:

Organising children’s parties!

[lots of photos from Conor’s party yesterday that we took]

Now read our weekly blog!

[account of Supermodel’s birthday party, quite like account I already wrote so I don’t need to repeat it here]

We don’t use loads of exclamation marks!!!! and question marks????? because we think they look stupid. And we’re not writing in text-speak like, ‘u r 4real & u r gr8’ cause we hate text-speak. We considered writing the whole blog in predictive text, but it seemed like too much hard work for our readers.

Anna says we have to at least try to keep this blog a secret from people, especially our parents, because, she says, the blog isn’t a notice board. I agree!

But I said, ‘Tommy knows …’

She said it was okay for
Tommy
to know. He wouldn’t tell. Tommy is her favourite person in her family. Probably her favourite person in the world. Well, no, it is a toss-up between him and Charlie, I guess, but Charlie is only two, so he can’t really be a favourite
person
. He is more like a puppy-dog.

Still haven’t thought what to do to Jayne O’Keeffe yet.

Went to Anna’s after school to work with Declan on our blog. Not in the kitchen, of course. In Tommy’s bedroom. Declan and Tommy actually laughed at what we’d put up! Me and Anna exchanged glances and squirmed with excitement because they are our first audience, and they found it funny.

Tommy said, ‘Very funny.’

I said, ‘Yeah, well, we were copying the other blogs.’

Declan said, ‘That’s obvious. You’ve been copying blogs by
people who can’t speak English.’ He laughed.