Little Sister Read online

  “Who’s ‘we’?” asked Simon, reaching for the clipboard.

  “At the moment it’s just me and a couple of guys in Year Eleven. I know there are at least six people in other years who want to join, but they’re worried about the fallout of coming out at school. Hopefully, when they see how many of the straight students support the alliance they’ll join too.”

  As far as I could tell, Sally didn’t worry about what anyone thought of her. She’d outed herself during a Health and Development lesson in Year Nine, after Jamie Butcher claimed that lesbians just hadn’t met Mr Right yet. Sally let him know in no uncertain terms that there was whole lot more to her attraction to girls.

  “Is this some sort of protest group?” I thought back to Sally’s Whit’s Wit post in first term demanding that the school ban the use of the word “gay” in a derogatory sense. (To which Prad’s response was, “That’s so gay”. Brandy seemed to agree; she made Simon pull down the post before recess.)

  “That’s up to the members to decide. There might be some issues we want to take a stand on, but it’s more of a social support network – a way for us to stand our ground against the ’phobes by showing we’re not scared of them.”

  “Count me in,” said Maz. She added her name under Simon’s and passed the clipboard to me.

  I signed without bothering to read the blurb at the top of the petition – if Sally wanted to give people like Jamie ammunition to use against her, it was no skin off my highly sensitive nose. Anyway, I had more important things on my mind.

  Al Miller wants out of Little Sister Hell.

  6

  The week’s saving grace was New Media Studies on Friday. Mr Dempster is the most easygoing (i.e. human) teacher at Whitlam and he’s never taught Larrie, so it’s impossible for him to compare the two of us. I didn’t think it was a coincidence that it was the one class where I still ranked in the top ten.

  New Media Studies was introduced to Whitlam’s curriculum last year as part of Mr Masch’s obsession with the internet. After his grandson introduced him to Facebook, he’d convinced the school board that Whitlam should hook into the social media Zeitgeist. Which was how the Whit’s Wit blog was born, and the Whitlam High Facebook group, our Flickr photo sharing group and (briefly, until Simon pointed out that the site was blocked by the school’s web filtering software) a Twitter stream.

  From what we could tell, the idea behind offering the subject was to ensure Mr Masch had a steady supply of content for all these sites. As well as learning Flash animation, photo manipulation and html coding, each of us had to contribute regular posts to Whit’s Wit. The posts were meant to focus on topics that were of broad interest to the Whitlam community, but Brandy quickly vetoed anything controversial. Such as my piece about animal rights and dissection.

  She used to make Simon delete anything that was “offensive” (by her standards), until Maz’s post about how Whitlam’s old-fashioned uniform rules were turning us into beige clones of a certain deputy principal. After that Simon had to build a workflow into the blog that ensured nothing could be published until Brandy approved it. (Which explained why Larrie usually featured prominently on the home page.) As further punishment, Brandy insisted there be an “ethics” component to New Media Studies, in case we were enjoying ourselves a bit too much.

  There was a communal groan when we got to the computer lab and saw the chairs set up in the middle of the room and Mr Dempster struggling with the projector. Obviously, we weren’t going to get to use the computers today. The mood in the room improved a bit when the projector whirred to life and the Celebrity Meltdown home page filled the whiteboard. Everyone stopped chatting to see what was making news.

  “Today we’re going to talk about the ethics of online media, privacy and gossip,” explained Mr Dempster. “It’s been said that the media is a hungry beast: it devours everything and is never satisfied. But is the media to blame or is it merely trying to satiate a ravenous audience? And do celebrities give up their right to privacy when they step into the spotlight?”

  “It’s the paparazzi, isn’t it?” said Nicko. “They take photos of celebrities every time they change their clothes and then sell the pictures.”

  “Is that why some celebrities –” Mr Dempster pointed to Celebrity Meltdown’s lead story, about the girlfriend of a footballer going on a shopping spree “– are never seen in the same outfit twice?”

  “That’s because she’s got an enormous wardrobe,” said Tracy Green.

  “Maybe,” said Mr Dempster. “Or maybe she knows how to feed the beast. After all, if no one’s looking, no one’s talking.”

  “And how come the paparazzi always happen to be exactly where she is?” asked Maz, upholding her reputation for being the class cynic. “She probably sends them a schedule.”

  “She can’t help it if people are fascinated by her,” protested Lily Ng, who blogged almost daily about said girlfriend-of-a-footballer’s outfits.

  There was a heated debate about whether the media manipulates celebrities or celebrities manipulate the media. The argument was between those of us who followed Celebrity Meltdown religiously, and people like Simon, who thought that we should be interested in what actors and sports people do for a living, not what they get up to in their private lives.

  “People can’t hold themselves up as a squeaky-clean role model when it suits them and then be surprised when the gossip columns show pictures of them falling down drunk,” I said. “If you put yourself on a pedestal, you have to expect people to want to see you fall off it.”

  Mr Dempster nodded thoughtfully. “Nice analogy, Al.”

  It was the biggest compliment I’d received from a teacher in months.

  “I think you’d better stop posting photos of yourself mooning next to famous monuments.”

  Prad looked at Maz like she’d suggested he should stop breathing. He swallowed the mouthful of sandwich he was chewing with a gulp. “I’m not throwing away three years of hard work setting the timer on my camera and distracting my parents to get those shots. I was almost arrested at the Eiffel Tower, you know.”

  “We have to start thinking about the future,” said Maz. “I don’t want those photos surfacing when Vertigo Pony’s on its sellout tour of Europe and America in a few years’ time.”

  “Even if you do delete them now, chances are they’ve already been downloaded by someone you’ve never even heard of,” said Simon.

  Maz’s face fell. “Take. Down. The photos,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “I’ll think about it,” said Prad. Which meant he wouldn’t.

  Listening to them made me feel despondent about not having a plan of my own for the future. As it stood, I hadn’t got further than four weeks and six days, when I planned to be celebrating Larrie’s final exam in a major way. “What am I going to do while you’re off on this tour? You guys’ll be world famous and all I’ll be known for is being Larrie’s little sister.”

  “You’ll probably be famous in your own right by then,” said Maz. “You’ve got loads of talents.”

  I suspected Maz must’ve felt guilty about agreeing with Simon’s ridiculous “change yourself” comment the day before; she’d been suspiciously unsarcastic all day.

  “Name one,” I challenged her. “I can’t sing or act, I’m no good at sports, I don’t understand even the most basic scientific principles, my drawing skills scare people …”

  “What about your amazing sense of smell?” said Nicko. “No one else can tell when Brandy’s lurking round the corner just by getting a whiff of her perfume.”

  “What job’s that going to get me?”

  “Maybe you could be like one of those police dogs that track down criminals?” suggested Prad. “Or you could sniff out truffles, like those pigs in France! There’s loads of money in truffles.”

  “I somehow doubt it’s the pigs that are getting rich,” I said, giving him the stink eye.

  “How about journalism?” said Simon. “Mr Demp
ster’s always saying how good your Whit’s Wit posts are, even the ones Brandy refuses to publish. And it’s not as if you’re short of an opinion.”

  I didn’t want to seem too pleased with Simon’s suggestion, in case it gave him any ideas, but I secretly kind of liked it. I’d always tried to get out of writing for the school blog because it was Larrie Central, but if she wasn’t around, maybe I could be the one making news at Whitlam.

  Al Miller sees the writing on the wall.

  7

  Larrie was excused from family dinner because she and Beth were apparently so engrossed in writing a practice essay on Twelfth Night that they couldn’t bear to stop when it was time for Larrie to come home. I couldn’t believe it: eating together every night was Mum’s personal obsession, and it was impossible to get out of unless you were at an activity on school grounds or had something contagious. Or you were Larrie.

  “I hear Simon Lutz got his learner’s permit,” said Mum, motioning for me to pass her the salad.

  “Does anything happen around here without you hearing about it?” asked Dad. “That medical centre should be renamed the Kingston Gossip Exchange.”

  Mum’s eyes narrowed. “For your information, Fran Lutz told me about it herself. Simon’s going to have driving lessons with an instructor, but she’s not looking forward to all the hours of practising with him. Still, once he’s got his licence he’ll be able to help her out with the pharmacy deliveries.”

  “And maybe he’ll give Al lifts instead of us having to drive her all over Kingston,” said Dad, who makes no secret of what an inconvenience it is to take me anywhere.

  “I’m not entrusting my life to Simon Lutz’s driving! Have you seen how big his feet are these days? In his clown shoes, he won’t be able to tell the difference between the brake and the accelerator. I wouldn’t be seen dead in a car with him anyway; word’d spread round Kingston in a flash and Mum and Mrs Lutz would have us married off by the time I got home.”

  Dad grinned. He’s always joking that Mum and Mrs Lutz are the eyes and ears of Kingston.

  “Simon’s a very nice boy from a good family. You could learn a thing or two from him about manners, Allison,” snapped Mum.

  Dad must’ve sensed that Mum and I were about to have one of our blowouts (I certainly didn’t intend to sit there and be told I wasn’t as good as Simon Lutz), because he tried to change the subject by inviting me to watch a DVD with them.

  He held up the cover of a lame romantic comedy. “It may not be as funny as the Al and Larrie Show, but it’ll be like the old Family Fridays,” he said, as if that would entice me.

  When we were little, Friday nights were practically sacred in our house. Dad would come home in a good mood because it was the weekend and Mum would make (dairy-free) dessert, and after dinner the two of them would snuggle up on the couch, and Larrie and I would put on a show for them. Sometimes, Larrie would make up a dance for us to perform, or we’d stick paper dolls on the end of rulers and put on a puppet show, but often we’d just go wild in the dress-up box.

  One week, when I was about six, Larrie made a huge cardboard TV out of the box from our new washing machine. We put on a couple of Pop’s old suits and tucked our hair under big golf caps and pretended to be TV show hosts – Al E. Gator and Larrie Says-So. We did our favourite knock-knock jokes and interviewed each other about the week’s “news”. Dad thought it was hysterical and christened it the Al and Larrie Show, and it became a weekly event. To Mum’s distaste, the nicknames stuck too.

  Two weeks into high school Larrie decided that the Al and Larrie Show was too babyish for her, and stuck our cardboard TV set out in the garage. The two of us still hung out together on Fridays, but now Larrie wanted to spend the night painting her nails or putting on deep-cleansing face masks for her non-existent blackheads. It wasn’t nearly as much fun, but back then I thought a little boredom was a small price to pay for Larrie’s company.

  I guess I was too young to know better, but I’d assumed that once I was in high school a more sophisticated version of the Al and Larrie Show would take up where it had left off. In my childish imagination, Larrie was waiting for me to join her at Whitlam so that she could introduce me to her friends and take me to the cool (by junior high school standards) parties she’d started being invited to. What I hadn’t counted on was her ignoring me, or making jokes at my expense, or pretending not to know me.

  The year I started at Whitlam, Larrie a) got her first boyfriend (Michael Schute, who was in Year Twelve – scandalous! – and a state diving champion – hot in Speedos!), and b) started treating me like dirt. First, she refused to be seen talking to me at school, and at home she’d try to make up for it by being extra nice or letting me have a spritz of the perfume Michael had given her for her birthday. Then she decided she didn’t want to hang out together on the weekends any more, because her friends didn’t want a little kid tagging along when they went to Parkville Metro to try on make-up and padded bras. By the end of my first year of high school we never did anything together unless Mum and Dad made us. Maybe it was puberty that changed her, or peer pressure. It didn’t really make a difference what had caused it, all I knew was that the Al and Larrie Show was history.

  I turned down Dad’s DVD invitation, using homework as my excuse.

  Dad feigned shock. “Are you feeling okay? Colette, you’d better get out your thermometer, I think Al must be delusional with a fever.”

  I swiped Mum’s hand away when she reached for my forehead. “I thought you’d be happy. You’re always telling me off for leaving my homework until Sunday night.”

  “And you’re always telling us that only losers do their homework any earlier,” said Dad.

  I could see Mum was forcing herself not to smile, but she managed to keep a straight face. “Don’t tease her, Max. I think it’s an excellent idea – Larissa always tries to get at least half of her homework out of the way on a Friday.”

  She looked baffled when I stormed out of the room without saying another word.

  I wouldn’t admit it to Maz, but since Thursday I’d been thinking about what Simon said about making people see me differently. I realised that when I thought about how I wanted people to think of Al Miller, all I could come up with was “not Larrie”. It was going to take a while to work out, but I figured in the meantime I could at least pick up my marks a bit in the subjects where I’d stopped trying simply because Larrie excelled at them.

  I turned up the volume on my speakers, to mark Larrie’s absence, before pulling out my Science textbook. After I’d read the introductory chapter on Mendelian genetics (named after some monk who was obsessed with peas), I filled in the table on Ms Morales’s worksheet. It turned out to be a list of things like eye and hair colour, and was pretty straightforward once I understood the difference between phenotypes and genotypes. Buoyed by having got Science out of the way, I started on my New Media Studies essay about privacy in the digital age.

  It was a pretty pathetic way to spend a Friday night, but I didn’t have anything better to do since Maz was at a gig with Nicko. (Strictly for Vertigo Pony research purposes, she assured me, not because she’d started eyeing off Nicko like he was hot chips and she’d been on a low-carb diet for six months.)

  I didn’t mind that they’d been spending so much time together, but it had made me more aware than ever that I’d never had a “real” boyfriend. By my age, Larrie was already going out with Mitch Doherty and they were rising through the ranks of Whitlam’s power couples. I used to watch them walking with their arms around each others’ waists or cuddling on the couch together and think, In a couple of years, that’ll be me and my gorgeous boyfriend. But so far it hadn’t happened, and the one guy who was interested in me was about as un-Mitch-like as they came.

  Al Miller has a lot of catching up to do.

  8

  “Some of us are trying to sleep!” yelled Larrie when my alarm went off the next morning. “I’ve got six hours’ study to do today.” />
  Well, you shouldn’t have come home from Beth’s after midnight, I thought, but I turned the radio off. It was punishment enough having to be up early on a Saturday morning for work without Mum telling me off for disturbing Larrie’s precious sleep.

  Mum was waiting for me downstairs, dressed in her latest trendy exercise outfit. She says she does yoga every Saturday morning to keep her body strong and flexible, but I suspect it’s also because she looks way better in lycra than most of the mums in Kingston. She gave herself a final once-over in the hall mirror before we left.

  On the short drive to the village we saw plenty of familiar local faces heading out for breakfast or coming back from the newsagency with the Saturday papers. When we pulled up outside Say Cheese, Dylan waved from inside the shop.

  “Say hi for me,” said Mum. “And tell Jay to lay off the triple-cream brie before he comes in for his cholesterol test next week.”

  Jay and Dylan have owned Kingston’s specialty cheese shop for as long as I can remember. Since Jay’s heart attack last year he’s supposed to take it easy, so Dylan gave him an ultimatum: either they sell the business and retire to the country or they hire someone to help out with the Saturday morning rush and other busy times.

  I started working for them last summer when Larrie was away at a camp for precocious overachievers youth leaders. I was bored and broke and desperate to get out of the house, and it seemed fitting that I should work in a shop that specialises in Larrie’s kryptonite. It’s not exactly glamorous, but I get to eat all the cheese I want, and since Larrie’s had the whole household walking on eggshells it’s been a relief to spend time in a place where she’s not the centre of attention.

  Saturday mornings are pretty busy at Say Cheese. We get a steady stream of people dropping in after breakfast at Petite Cafe or on their way to brunch at Armando’s. They stop by to pick up cheese platters for their dinner parties, or the perfect complement to the artisanal sourdough from Bliss Bakery next door.