The Mag Hags (15 page)

‘Sure,' said Felix. ‘Who's going to shoot it?'

‘Corabelle Askew,' said Cat, looking at a puzzle-faced Belle, who didn't have a clue what was going on. ‘Have you heard of her? She's fabulous. Does everybody who's worth doing!'

‘Okay, I'll leave your names with the security guards at the boom gate and they'll issue you with passes. See you at 5.30,' said Felix, and hung up.

It is amazing how the future can change your mood in an instant. One minute Cat was spewing out her feelings about Nate, the next she had secured an interview with the hottest TV star in the country. ‘I've got the Tyler Grey interview!' said Cat, holding out her hands, watching them shake. ‘Look, I'm shaking! Wow, man! Wow! I said you'll be shooting it!'

‘Brilliant! Cool!' said Belle. ‘That's so wicked. Let's go tell the others!'

‘No, let's keep it a surprise,' said Cat. ‘I want to do the
interview and then I'll just present them with the written article and the photographs. They'll flip out!'

The girls walked back into the office and there was a really industrious vibe going on, as there were only three weeks left to finish the magazine. Belle turned up the music and the girls all got on with their respective jobs with a renewed energy now the earlier tension had been defused. Then the door opened and in bounced Reanne.

‘Wow,' she said. ‘Such a hive of activity. I remember when –'

‘Yeah, Reanne,' said Belle. ‘We're kind of busy at the moment.'

‘Yeah, me too,' said Reanne. ‘I'm
kind of
organising a wedding, just in case you've forgotten. I don't think you've asked me a word about it.'

‘What's there to say?' said Belle sarcastically. ‘You and your Poo-Poo are going to live happily ever after and I'm delighted? And thanks for the offer of being a flower girl but I would rather stick pins in my eyes than follow you up the aisle.'

‘I asked you to be my bridesmaid, actually,' said Reanne looking like she was going to burst into tears. ‘You can be a rude cow sometimes, Corabelle, you really can'.

‘Deal with it,' said Belle.

All the girls pretended not to hear and kept working as Reanne stormed off down the stairs, slamming the office door shut behind her.

When Maggie asked her three older sisters whether they wouldn't mind coming for a chat behind closed doors, they were intrigued. Closed-door chats were a regular thing at the Jones house, but Maggie's presence or opinion was never required. Being so much older, Bet, Caro and Lisa had never taken the time to bond with their younger sibling – if she'd been interested in what they were interested in, well, that would have been a start, but they never seemed to have much in common with Maggie. Her sisters liked football (well, they didn't really, they liked dating footballers). Maggie hated sport. The girls loved gossip rags; Maggie liked thick books. The girls liked to be the centre of Baywood gossip and know everything that was going on; Maggie found gossip annoyingly trivial.

So when she requested the chat, the girls were desperate to find out why. They huddled together, discussing the possibilities. Could it be a boy problem at long last? An eating disorder perhaps – she was, after all, very thin. A raging drug problem? A shameful confession? Was
she a kleptomaniac? A lesbian? An alien? (This was a bit far-fetched but Caro sometimes did think that Maggie had other-worldly tendencies.)

The thing was, Maggie lived in her own self-contained universe; she didn't share her thoughts, so her feelings always remained private, which meant the girls really didn't know their sister at all. When she was thirteen and had to have her appendix out – she didn't tell her Mum she had a stomach ache for two whole days. Or when she won the short story competition at school for her story about a girl whose drug-addicted brother died before she told him she loved him, and she didn't even tell her family.

There just didn't seem space for her. Maggie couldn't be bothered competing with her sisters or little Billy for attention, so she would take refuge in a book to tune out the rabble.

After dinner on Thursday evening Bet, Caro and Lisa were all sitting on Lisa's bed, gagging with anticipation.

‘Okay, spill the beans,' said Bet, with the smile of a drama queen just about to get her drama fix. ‘We've been dying to know what's going on.'

‘Well, you know how I'm working on this magazine project …' Maggie took out the notebook with the girls' questions in it, and set up her MP3 player to record the conversation.

‘What magazine project?' asked Lisa.

‘For school. We've got to invent a magazine for our English class and the winning magazine will be distributed around Baywood.'

‘Is that what this little chat is about?' said Bet, a clear edge of disappointment in her voice. ‘To talk about your school work? I know you're not invited to closed-door chats, but really, to call a closed-door chat, you know, you're supposed to have a problem or something. We could have spoken about this anywhere in the house.'

‘Not exactly,' said Maggie, feeling the heat of her nervous rash creeping up her neckline.

‘Get to the point, Maggie,' said Caro impatiently. ‘I've got a million things to organise for my wedding.'

‘Here we go again. The wedding!' said Bet. ‘Does every conversation in this house have to begin and end with your wedding?'

‘If you're looking to start another fight,' said Caro, ‘then I'm ready!'

‘Anyway Maggie,' said Lisa, trying to avert another bust-up, especially in her room because, knowing her sisters, they could start hair pulling and sending her things flying if order wasn't restored. ‘What did you want to talk about?'

‘Boys …' said Maggie. ‘The girls in my group were talking and we realised that most of us didn't have a clue when it came to boys. So we decided to write an article
about it. They all reckon that you girls are legends in Baywood, and because you're older you may be able to come up with some answers, so we don't all have to go through the same heartbreak.'

‘That's hysterical!' said Bet, smiling and relaxing onto the pink pillows on Lisa's bed. ‘We're legends in Baywood, girls! Did they really use the word legend?'

‘Yeah,' said Maggie, who knew flattery could get you anywhere with her sisters.

‘Boys are our favourite subject,' said Lisa. ‘If I can save any teenager the heartbreak I had to go through. Do you remember Oliver Adams? My god …'

Over the next hour and a half, the girls regaled Maggie with stories from their teenage days. How Bet lost her virginity at fifteen and three quarters to that dickhead Darren Davies. It was horrendous and she wasn't sure they'd even done it, but he proceeded to tell the whole school anyway. How Caro had spent two years obsessing over Gary Philpot only to find out he was gay. How Danny McAdams had cheated on Lisa with her then best friend Keren Best, who Lisa slapped across the face in Hoolio's, leaving a clear handprint across her chops. Every question from
The Mag Hag
list elicited an anecdote; the stories came thick and fast until Caro turned to Maggie and said, ‘What about you and boys, sis? Have you ever been on a date?'

‘Who'd want to date me?' said Maggie. ‘Look at me.
I'm five foot eleven with a neck like a giraffe. I'm flat-chested and rail thin. I'm hardly on the average teenage boy's hot list.'

‘You're actually very attractive,' said Lisa. ‘We've always said that you are going to be the most stunning of us all.'

‘If you're being sarcastic …' said Maggie, her bottom lip trembling like an autumn leaf that was about to fall off a tree. ‘Caro said I couldn't be in the bridal party because I'm such a freak.'

‘Really?' said Lisa, looking like she was about to rip Caro's head off. ‘Caro, did you really say that?'

‘Well, not exactly,' said Caro. ‘I just said that if Maggie was a bridesmaid, she would make Roddie look really short.'

‘That's because he is really short,' said Bet, who was just looking for a reason to have a go at Caro. ‘It's not Maggie's fault she's so tall. You can be such an insensitive bloody bitch sometimes!'

‘Who are you calling a bitch, you cow?' said Caro, just as Maggie's mother, barged into the room.

‘Mum, it's a closed-door chat!' said Lisa, like she was citing the Geneva Convention.

‘I'm sick of this fighting in my house,' said Dario, her hands covering her ears. ‘If this is about the wedding again, I'll go bloody mad …'

‘Caro won't let Maggie be a bridesmaid because she
reckons she'll make Roddie look like a shortarse,' said Bet with a self-righteous sneer.

‘Caro isn't getting married for at least two years!' said Dario. ‘And I'm not having two years of arguments in this house. And Caro, if you don't have Maggie as a bridesmaid because she's tall, I won't be at your wedding.'

‘Neither will I,' said Lisa, her face red with indignation.

‘Nor me,' said Bet, who was secretly pleased that Caro was copping so much heat.

‘Why is everybody ganging up on me?' said Caro. ‘All I want to do is get married!'

By that stage, it didn't matter to Maggie whether she was a bridesmaid or not, because in two years' time, if all went to plan, she would be in the land of the tall people, Holland, on an exchange program, where the average height of a woman was five foot seven and doorframes were made higher so tall people didn't have to stoop. And people wouldn't state the bloody obvious that, ‘Yes, Maggie is tall for a girl' and Maggie wouldn't continously have to say, ‘No, the weather is no different up here than it is down there, you short little cretin!' Her life in Deadwood would just be a distant memory.

After the closed-door chat Maggie spent a lot of time locked in the bathroom, analysing herself in the mirror. There was a sense of symmetry about her face, as though God had had his geometry set out and spaced her eyes evenly from the bridge of her nose; her cheekbones,
which looked as though they had been cut from marble, jutted out at ninety degrees; and her lips were fat and bee-stung. But Maggie didn't see this at all. Her mind had concocted a picture of what she looked like – a giraffe, with slightly hunched shoulders from having to munch leaves from low trees.

But what had Lisa said? Did her sisters really think she was attractive? If so, why were they always trying to change her? Trying to make her dress like them? To be interested in what they were interested in? To be just like them?

This introspection came to an abrupt halt when Lisa banged on the door and said she was dying for the loo and she couldn't bear the indignity of going to the spare one, with just a shower curtain with fishes on it to cover her modesty.

Maggie splashed her face with water and opened the door. Lisa gave her a big hug.

‘Maggie,' she said, holding her by the shoulders. ‘Don't worry about Caro, you know she can be a superficial bitch. You're not a freak, you're just different from us. But it's what makes you so unique – you're intelligent, you're sweet-natured, and you're gorgeous! And as you get older, you'll learn to love the fact that you're not like everybody else.'

‘But I want to be like everyone else and not feel like I'm watching a play that I can't join in,' said Maggie.

‘Sweetie,' said Lisa without a touch of condescension, ‘being fifteen can suck the big one. But it gets better, I promise.'

‘When?' said Maggie, really hoping Lisa could provide her with the answer.

‘Soon,' said Lisa. ‘Soon, sweetie.'

But soon could never be soon enough for Maggie.

As the final weeks of the competition kicked in, the girls were working on their magazine every day. It was a hectic time for them as they were studying for exams at the same time. While the other groups were all keen to win, the girls had discovered their passion. Maggie loved editing – playing with words, shuffling them around to make sentences with clear intention. Mand loved writing, being able to express herself and her views about the world. Cat loved writing captions to the photos and using her wit to come up with crazy headlines for the stories. While Wanda and Belle loved the visual aspect of the magazine, finding fantastic photos, choosing font types, moving blocks of type about.

After three afternoons at Mag Hag Central, Mand suggested that they meet up at Hoolio's on Friday afternoon, for a change of pace. They took what had become ‘their' booth at the back.

‘Can I tempt you with anything sweet, girls?' said Jez, the waiter dude, after taking their drinks order.

‘I'll take a piece of your pie,' said Mand doing her best
to embarass him, which obviously succeeded, as Jez flushed bright red. Maggie gave him a sympathetic smile, which he beamed back at her, before walking away.

Maggie took out her schedule of what needed to be done. She had printed out a rather official looking list on her father's printer, the one he used for invoicing clients for building work, and passed it around to the girls.

‘So Cat, do you think we should drop the whole Tyler story?' said Maggie. ‘I know you've been chasing him like crazy, but we may need to come up with another idea.'

Cat had a smile that spread across her face like soft butter. ‘Well, girls,' she said as she reached into her bag, ‘I interviewed Tyler on Saturday!'

‘You're kidding!' said Mand. ‘What was he like?'

‘Maybe you should just read the feature!' said Cat, handing out a copy to each of the girls, except Belle.

 

Will the real Tyler Grey please stand up?
Our very own Cat Dean gets a very exclusive interview with
Federal Investigation
's Tyler Grey

 

Oh my god! I'm sitting in the green room of Channel 19's studio about to meet Tyler Grey. Yes,
the
Tyler Grey of
Federal Investigation
, who we have all swooned over, have plastered over our bedroom walls and followed every move since he hit our TV screens playing the super-sexy, super-cool Detective Adam Yorke, Chase City's very own
boy-wonder detective, famous for the most incredible stunts and solving the grisliest murders, using a combination of modern high-tech methods and advice from his grandfather, Old Par, played by Warren Sigwicki, who teaches him those good old-fashioned detective methods from the days before DNA testing.

Tyler, who turned twenty-two on December 22, has made a big impact since hitting our screens at the beginning of last year. On his mantlepiece sits a Goldie, TV's top accolade for Personality of the Year, as well as two silver Goldies for Most Popular Actor in a Drama and Most Popular Newcomer. Not to mention all the hearts he's won from girls across the nation.

And now I'm going to meet him. I'm so nervous it feels like my heart is going to explode when the door opens and in walks Tyler. ‘Hi, you must be Cat,' he says, his voice deep and bassy like a funked-up dance-floor hit. OH. MY. GOD! Tyler Grey knows my name!

I stand up and the back of my knees stick to the black leather sofa, making a squeaking sound, and I put out my shaking hand. He takes my hand in his (I pray that my palm isn't sweaty) and squeezes it tight, then kisses me on the cheek. I feel his trademark stubble graze my skin, and his delicious aftershave (Pom Pour Homme, I later learn) fills my nasal passages. I feel as though I'm going to faint!

For a few seconds I'm, like, totally lost for words. ‘Oh
my god,' I finally splutter, feeling the heat of embarrassment raging in my cheeks like an open fire at camp. ‘Hello, Tyler,' I say as my eyes drink him in. He is dressed in white from top to toe – white jeans, tight white T-shirt, white socks and white trainers that look like they've just come out of the box (which I later learn they did: ‘I never wear the same pair of trainers twice,' Tyler told me).

His five-foot-eleven body is gloriously tanned the colour of deep treacle; his muscles bulge and strain against his body-hugging white clothes. His shock of black spiky hair is wet with hair gel, and I can see myself reflected in his trademark aviator sunglasses. I notice I look nervous as I fumble about for my notepad ready to ask the questions we are desperate to know about Tyler.

‘Relax,' he says as he flops down on the sofa next to me. ‘I know you're going to find this hard to believe, but I'm really just a normal person. Okay, I might drive a Ferrari, have a penthouse and have more clothes than you'll have in a lifetime. But think of it this way: I'm just like you, just with more talent and money.'

I'm not sure if he's joking until he starts laughing. Tyler Grey laughs like this: Gawfur, Gawfur, Gawfur – kind of like a machine gun. Tyler's assistant Felix then pours him a cup of green tea from a silver flask (‘Fab for the skin, sweetie,' says Tyler. ‘It's full of antioxidants.') into a tiny silver glass, which he sips delicately with his little
finger poking out and curled a bit. Tyler drinks a lot of tea. I know this because his assistant Felix carries a flask and fills his glass every time he takes a sip. ‘More tea, T?'

I take a deep breath and compose myself. ‘So Tyler,' I say feeling very professional as I press the red record button on my MP3 player to record our conversation. ‘The girls at
The Mag Hag
have come up with a list of questions'.

‘Fire away,' says Tyler, smiling at Felix.

 

Cat Dean:
How did you get into acting?

Tyler Grey:
The question should be, how did acting get into me? I was bitten. Bitten by the bug. I love the craft. The craft, sweetie, we actors call it, the craft. I think I was born to do it. I started when I was nineteen. I was walking down the street when a car pulled up and a guy leaned out the window and asked me to audition for
Federal Investigation
. He said I had that look, you know – dangerous, edgy and cool, but still pretty and youthful. I was working as a hairdresser at the time, but felt I needed to, you know, stretch my creativity in different directions.

Cat Dean:
Were you nervous at the audition?

Tyler Grey:
The director said the camera loved me. He said it was my high cheekbones. Feel them. (At this point, I touch Tyler's sharp cheekbones – yes, they do feel like cut glass.) They reflect the light apparently and make my eyes sparkle. That's why I wear sunglasses when I'm not
filming, so people don't always stare at my eyes. That happens you know, the staring.

Cat Dean:
How much like Adam Yorke are you?

Tyler Grey:
I embody Adam Yorke. That tough machoness of Yorke is all me really.

Felix:
And Tony Felano, the stunt man. You should give him credit, T.

Tyler:
Why should I give him credit? Okay, so he rolls over bonnets, gets set on fire and dives off tall buildings. But the facial expressions are all mine – I give Adam Yorke his character, babes. Anyway, why do you always have to bring up Tony? I hate how you always bring up Tony. Leave Tony out of this, okay? It's not about Tony.

Felix:
Whatever.

Tyler:
Whatever, yourself.

Cat:
Is it true you're dating Sarah-Leigh Trundall, who plays Lizzie in
Federal Investigation
?

Tyler:
Oh, Sarah is such a sweetie. A fabulous actress – she cries so freely. No inhibitions when it comes to tears and tantrums, that Sarah. Boo Hoo is her nickname on set. Oh, yes. Love love love, dear old Boo Hoo to death, darling. Love her.

Felix:
But not in love with her, shouldn't you add, T?

Tyler:
Obviously I'm not in love with her.

Cat:
Would you ever date a fan?

Tyler:
Date a fan! Date a fan! That's the funniest thing I've ever heard! A civilian, a normal, a non-celeb! Did you
hear that, Felix? Date a fan? Too funny, darling. Too funny! Next!

Cat:
Why did you change your name to Tyler Grey from Arthur Shanks?

Tyler:
Felix, what's this? She's a journalist and she's asking me about Arthur Shanks? Doesn't she know the rules? Artie Shanks is D–E–A–D – there is no Artie Shanks. I'm Tyler Grey. Do you hear me?

At this point, Tyler Grey got up and walked out of the green room (which wasn't painted green at all but a dull magnolia, like you'd find in a hospital) slamming the door behind him so hard the wooden doorframe splintered.

‘Didn't Lauren-Beth warn you about not mentioning Artie Shanks?' said Felix, packing up Tyler's things.

‘She must have forgotten that part,' I said.

‘Artie Shanks reminds Tyler of who he used to be.'

‘What's wrong with that?' I asked. ‘Who did he used to be?'

‘A little fat kid that used to get bullied because he wore glasses and had a sense of the theatrical. He doesn't want to remember that now he's a star. Doesn't that say it all?'

With that, Felix left the room and I was left sitting alone feeling like I really had screwed up. How would I ever explain to the girls who'd had so much faith in me? On the way home I thought about what I'd learned about Tyler Grey from my interview. Tyler had been everything to me, but like Detective Adam Yorke, Tyler Grey doesn't really
exist at all. It makes me wonder whether you should ever meet your heroes because they can never live up to the expectations you put upon them – after all, they really are just people with issues, secrets and problems, just like me and you.

 

‘Ohmigod!' said Maggie, who finished reading the story first. ‘Cat, that is absolutely fantastic! I can't believe you pulled it off, and it's such a great read too.'

‘He sounds like such a wanker,' said Mand. ‘Was he really that bad?'

‘He was a total prima donna,' said Belle. ‘But according to Felix, he got a big head once he became famous.'

‘Were you there too?' asked Wanda, feeling slightly jealous. She really fancied Tyler, even if he
was
a wanker.

‘Well, that's the second part of the surprise,' said Cat as Belle reached into her pink handbag and pulled out her laptop.

Belle placed the laptop at the end of the table so all the girls could see it. She opened Illustrator onto a page with a big picture of Tyler Grey smiling his big white toothy smile like he was the happiest person in the world, his arms spread wide, as if he was going to embrace the whole world.

‘You took this photo?' said Wanda. ‘It's brilliant.'

‘Wow! That is the coolest spread,' said Mand. ‘We've got to win now!'

Kylie Mannigan appeared at the head of the table. ‘Win? You bunch of losers? The geekiest of the geeks,' looking at Wanda, ‘the mouthiest of the mouths,' looking at Mand, ‘the boringest of the boring,' looking at Maggie, ‘the spoiltest of the spoiled,' looking at Belle, ‘and the most unpopular of populars. Yes, that means you, Dean,' said Kylie.

‘Move on, Mannigan,' said Mand.

‘Why don't you make me?' said Kylie.

‘Really, Mannigan, you must have something better to do like hanging out with the Pus Crew,' said Cat.

‘Come on, Kylie,' said Maggie reasonably. ‘We're just trying to do our work, okay?'

‘No, it's not okay,' said Kylie. ‘It's time you learnt a little respect, Dean.'

At this point in events it was impossible to say what really happened, whether Kylie Mannigan was just leaning over the booth to get to Cat, or whether she deliberately sent Belle's untouched Berry Berry shake spilling all over her laptop, covering the keyboard in a sticky purple goo.

‘What have you done?' screamed Maggie, as Tyler Grey's smiling face pixilated and then dissolved on the screen as though he had been dipped in a vat of hydro-chloric acid. ‘There's weeks and weeks of our blood, sweat and tears in that laptop.'

‘I didn't mean –' said Kylie clearly shocked. ‘I mean,
I didn't mean to kill your laptop, really, I wouldn't do that.'

By this stage Mand, who had been sitting at the back of the booth, had sprung over Cat and Belle and was about to throttle Kylie when Hoolio, the man with the best timing in the music business, intervened by placing his bulky frame squarely between the two girls. ‘Okay, ladies, and yes, I am being polite, what is the trouble here?'

‘She … she … she …' said Wanda, trying to gasp for air. ‘She has killed our magazine stone dead! And on purpose!'

‘And you don't have a backup, anything on CD or a hard drive?' asked Hoolio who, although artistic, was also very practical.

All the girls looked at Belle, their eyes full of pleading, desperate expectation.

‘No,' said Belle. ‘There were a million times when I thought about it but I just never got around to it. I'm so sorry. It's all my fault.'

‘Don't be ridiculous,' said Mand, trying to get past Hoolio again, and failing. ‘It's not your fault, it's Kylie bloody bitch-face Mannigan's fault.'

‘Mand! Stop it!' yelled Maggie. ‘It's not worth it. Let's leave McTavish to dish out Kylie's karma for her. Yes, Kylie, we'll be going straight to the principal's office, then you can explain to him how you managed to wreck our major English assignment and Belle's laptop.'

‘You'll be on detention until you're sixty-five!' spat Wanda.

‘Try turning on your laptop,' said Cat. ‘You never know, it might just work.'

‘No, no, no,' said Hoolio, a man who was quite handy in all matters IT. He even ran his very own fan site – apparently he still had a huge following in Germany. ‘You want to turn it upside down and let the Berry Berry shake drip out. You have to dry it out, not heat it up. Don't touch a thing, I'll be right back.'