Feeling Sorry for Celia (15 page)

It ought to be illegal. People could DIE.

I’ll die too, if I’m pregnant and my father finds out.

What should I do? I don’t want to have an abortion, I don’t want to have a baby. Should I take the morning-after
pill? But how do you get the morning-after pill? Does the doctor tell you you’re stupid? Is it legal to get it when you’re only fifteen?

God, you won’t even get this till it’s too late probably. Next time I see you I’ll have a litle baby in a pram. Maddie’ll be singing lullabies to my baby instead of to her coma boyfriend. God, my father’s going to murder me.

I know it’s not your fault that you’re not here. Maybe I should try calling Maddie.

Love from Christina

Letter 3

Dear Elizabeth,

I took the morning-after pill. I’ve been throwing up all day. Mum thinks it’s the new breakfast cereal she just bought, and she threw away the box. That’s a real bummer cos it was delicious.

The doctor was nice, luckily, but she kept asking for details about my sex life and contraception and everything. It was so embarrassing. She also seemed to think it would be a great idea if I started ‘discussing these issues with my parents’.

Yeah, I can really imagine it –

‘Hey, Mum, you know what happened the other day? The condom broke while Derek and I were having sex! Funny, huh?’

‘Oh, bummer, Christina. Maybe you should go on the pill? Let’s get Renee in here and we’ll all have a chat about the best techniques.’

Or the next time Dad’s giving Derek and me a lift into town:

‘Oh, guess what, Dad. I took the morning-after pill the other day. Cheap condom split while we were having sex.’

‘Bad luck, Christina. Maybe you should try a more expensive brand? Here, take this twenty and spoil yourself with some upmarket condoms. And while you’re at it, here’s a hundred bucks, Derek – why don’t you take my little girl to a classy hotel and have yourself a bang-up banger of a night?’

I’m not talking to Derek now. I hate him. What if the morning-after pill doesn’t work? I’ll have to keep seeing Derek for the rest of my life when he comes to visit the baby. And even if he doesn’t the kid’ll
look
like Derek. It’ll probably inherit Derek’s stupid whistling talent and I’ll have to listen to that whistle forever.

I wish I had somebody to talk to. One thing I have to confess is that most of my friends at school are guys, and you just can’t talk to guys about stuff like this. I don’t know how that happened, I just always get on with guys. Also, girls seem to want to talk about school work all the time and what marks they got and how to do borders for their assignments and stuff. Guys practically never talk about school.

I know it sounds very
stupid
but sometimes I hate myself so so so so so so much. I’m so so so so so bad at school work. My mum and dad say it doesn’t matter, and I can run the florist shop when I’m older. I don’t want to sound like a bitch, but sometimes I think I’d get bored running the florist shop and I want to do something more exciting, and get kind of successful. Then I hate myself even more for that, and I can’t say that to my parents and I can’t get good
enough marks at school to be anything successful anyway.

I feel like throwing up again.

How come you get to have so much time off school like that? When are you coming back?

Love from Christina

Letter 4

Dear Elizabeth,

I just got your next letter from Coffs Harbour, and God, I’m so jealous – that whole hot chocolate and white sand and grey sea thing. I really wish I was there. But I’m also very proud of you. CONGRATULATIONS. You actually rescued your friend. That’s fantastic – you are a fantastic best friend. The story was so exciting and you told it really well, with suspense and everything. I was hanging out to get to the end and see what happened.

I’m sorry I sent you all those hysterical letters about Derek and sex and pregnancy and everything. Now you’re going to get back and read them and think I’m out of my tree. You probably won’t want to ever write to me again. I’m so embarrassed. You probably won’t even
have time
to read them, now you’ve got Celia back, and it sounds like you’re practically married to that Saxon guy. Don’t worry if you don’t read them – it made me feel a lot better just to write to you. And I’m glad you sent me letters while you were away. They made me feel so much happier. Thanks.

That Saxon guy sounds nice by the way. He must be pretty cool if he’s got an auntie who collects cricket balls and plays
computer games. I liked what he wrote in your other letter too – you know how he wrote a message to me when you were on the train on the way up there? I don’t forgive him for calling me Tina, of course. I never forgive anyone for that. But he still sounds nice. I hope something happens between you.

Anyway, I feel happier now. I’m not pregnant. Well, I don’t think I am. What’s the deal – if you get your period right away after you take the morning-after pill does that mean it WORKED and you’re not pregnant, or is that a fake period and you still might be? I’m just going with the first option. And Derek and I are kind of talking to each other again, even though we’re not together. I don’t even get upset about that really, as long as I don’t think about his body for more than a second. Don’t remind me of his body, okay?

I’m doing a lot of babysitting for my mum on weekends instead of going out, so my parents can have romantic nights out. I’ve probably saved their marriage. And it’s kind of fun watching videos and making frozen microwave meals for the kids. Although putting the kids to bed is not even this much fun: . That’s a dot to show you how not fun it is making Robbo clean his teeth and wash the chewing gum out of his hair, and put on his pyjamas and get into bed. I told you he was The Devil, didn’t I? Also, making Lauren go to sleep. Bloody hell. She thinks it’s all a big joke, like ha ha, you’re putting me in this cot and giving me this bottle and then you’re going to get in too, aren’t you and we’ll just muck around here for a while, right? So then when you walk out of the room, she thinks, okay, you’ll be back in a second to continue the game, right? So then after
exactly three minutes she’s worked out that it’s all a TRICK and she starts this scream like a jet plane taking off.

Still, Nick’s actually being helpful with the kids lately without needing to be beaten up first. And Renee lets Nick and me choose the videos and she watches us to see where I laugh so that she can laugh at the right place. Plus she does the washing up after the microwave meals.

And I thought of a career too. I heard about this thing called Management Consultancy and you can get rich, and all you’ve got to do is tell people how to get stuff done more quickly. You don’t even have to be smart or anything. And I reckon I would be so excellent at that. I mean, all the time, all around me, I see how slowly everyone does everything. E.g. The postman just kind of strolls along the footpath and men flicks through his letters before he puts them in the boxes; the woman at the fish and chips shop stares out of the window for a while before she thinks about putting the potatoes in the oil.

And you should hear how long my Maths teacher takes to tell us what we’re meant to do for homework. This is an example: ‘Probably the – ah – best – er – thing (cough) – at this stage of the game – ah – is – for you to try your – ah – hand, at the, what shall we say? Shall we say the – er – 7th and 8th – ah, no – yes, I think, I would say we should – er – discuss – yes, shall we say the 6th? Not the 6th! Crazy me! Wait on! Sit still! The 7th – yes, ah, er, the 7th unit in chapter, what chapter is that in? What chapter are we in? Ah. Yes, chapter 13. So let me ah er ah er ah er go over that one more time . . .’

And that’s the biggest waste of time of them all because not one single person in my class does Maths homework.

Anyway, it would be so easy to make these kind of people do stuff more quickly. E.g. You could say to them: ‘HURRY UP.’

You could hire a team of huge men with voices that sound like they need to clear their throat, plus a team of scraggy little women with shrieking voices (my History teacher would be an example), and you could get these people just to run around behind the slow people, shouting, ‘GO FASTER, HURRY UP, TOO SLOW.’