CHASING EXCELLENCE

For Excellence, the student needs to produce a selection of fluent and coherent writing which develops, sustains, and structures ideas and commands attention.

So this is my real life, Miss. It’s original, for sure. Sorry about some of the language, but you did say to be authentic.

                                                                               *

 I’m cold. The fucking cold burrows into my bones and hibernates there. It’s an ice queen bitch who rules my life for half the year. Her fingers, thin and hard as pencils, dig through cheap tights from The Warehouse and claw another hole in them. They worm their way up the sleeves of my second-hand school jersey and scratch at my skin, searching out small tears, pimples, any imperfection will do. And when someone nicks my jersey at PE, her scrawny arms wrap themselves around me, sapping the only energy I have left. Then she searches through every muscle and joint, finds a way in and embeds herself. She never leaves till spring and even then lies in wait, ready to pounce at the hint of a cold snap. 

      I see and taste and smell her too. I see her in the mirror in the A Block bathroom, watch her peering at me through Kelly Johnson’s filthy graffiti. She mocks my mottled skin and sniggers when the form teacher tells me to remove my makeup. The bathrooms aren’t heated so she’s right at home here amongst the stink of shit and urine, used pads and spray deodorant. It reminds her of our house, my mates’ houses, my grandma’s and cousins’ and uncles’ houses. Even at school, she loves being in charge. 

      The ice queen sharpens her claws at home. I taste her there in the cold baked beans on the days the power’s off, in the sour milk and cereal and the half tomato in the fridge. Her meanness turns my spit bitter when I see her curl those arms around my little sisters. They fight and cry, then cry some more. They fight over the blanket on the sofa, the one from the Sallies. It stinks of old puke and dampness from when the littlest threw up last week. The sun in winter never dries anything properly. 

                                                                         *

I’m hungry. I’m always fucking hungry, even when I’ve had a feed. Hunger wakes before me and sleeps after me. It dries me up so that I snap like a dry twig at my mates, but then floods my mouth with longing when I pass McDonalds on the way to school. It’s a a stalker that lies in wait, then hides behind my shame when other people notice. And it doesn’t even make me skinny, like our mate Awhina whose ribs make us scared to hug her. She loves her hunger, cultivates it and tells us she transcends it. 

      My hunger  crawls around inside me like an insect that’s always gnawing away, looking for more. It sneaks into my brain and muddles my thinking, telling me to buy hot chips with my bus money on the way to school; then it paints a sneer across my face as I stroll in late. Hunger convinces me that Fanta is filling and that noodles will nourish me. And it makes me devious with the counsellor. I drink her Milo but refuse her biscuits so she doesn’t worry and alert anyone. When I offer to take the cups to the staffroom, I pinch the teachers’ lunches from the fridge.

                                                                            *

I’m tired. My bones groan like the frame of our bunk. I’m careful not to fall as I climb down past the torn stickers and peeling paint. I’m as careful as Nana and I’m only eighteen! But falls mean doctors, questions, money. 

       Tiredness makes my voice a broken glass that cuts my sisters when they try to drink from it. It makes me hate my mother even more and resurrects despair about my father. It defines me at school too, convinces everyone I’m lazy. I’m one of those kids the teachers try to move on, the ones talked about every week at deans’ meetings. By Period Four, bits of me start melting. My limbs go soft and woolly and I feel like a cloud floating above the classroom. I hover over the teachers and listen to their barks and sighs, their brittle voices cutting through the tough skins of my mates and slicing up their confidence. 

                                                                    *

I’m scared. Fifty-two years till I’m seventy and then I’ll be old, like Nana. I lie in the bunk and listen to the changes in my sisters’ breathing – the moment when they surrender to sleep, stop fighting each other for a place they can call their own in a bottom bunk never made for two. I’m scared for them too. Only a few more years and they’ll be on their way to oldness, just like me - old enough and young enough though for Uncle when he comes to stay, when the cousins take their bunk and they land up on the sofa. 

      Fear freezes me. It’s colder than the ice-queen and more cunning than hunger. It distracts me during daylight, then penetrates my brain at night. It sneaks into my dreams, steals my rest and strides around proclaiming the same old message  – “You’re screwed. You’ll always be screwed.” 

      Even in random moments, when hope comes out from hiding and points towards the future – a Merit for maths or a poetry prize - fear stomps in and smothers what might be.  It rains on every parade at school, drenches the Merits and poems and convinces me I’m still a loser. It scoffs at Excellence and makes me scowl at teachers, even the ones who like me. 

                                                                         *

I’m angry. Something’s shifting and I’m angry. I saw Kelly Johnson in the mall yesterday and she gave me a wave; the bitch usually ignores me. Her skirt was up around her ass as usual and she was wearing too much makeup. She came over while I was checking the noticeboard for a part-time job, but there was nothing. No one wants the sort of experience I’ve got.

      Kelly Johnson has it made. She’s deputy head girl and the teachers love her. They don’t know about the graffiti and the shit she sells on the back field every Friday. She’s smart too, plays the piano and wants to go to uni. So I was surprised when she came over. I’m definitely not her type. 

      “Hey, how’s it going?” she said. “My old man just gave me fifty bucks. Come on, I’ll buy you a burger.”

      That was weird. But I went of course, because who’s going to turn down a free burger? And she got fries and drinks as well and showed me the new top she’d just bought. I tried not to scoff the burger and I put an I’m really interested look on my face while she talked. Shit, I’d never heard her talk so much.

       “No worries,” she said when I thanked her. “I’ve been rolling lately. What Dad gave me is peanuts.”

      “Okay, have you got a new job or something?” I knew she sold shit at school, but her operation isn’t big time.   

      She looked a bit cagey then.

      “What is it?” I asked. “What’s your job?”

       She moved closer. “I saw you looking at the noticeboard. Do you need a job?”

      When she told me, I nearly keeled over. She’s an escort, for fuck’s sake! Some 19 year-old girl wanted better conditions for sex workers and started a new agency. Kelly started three weeks ago and it was amazing money, she said – sixty percent. And the “clients”, mostly fat rich dudes, were fine. Some just wanted to talk, would you believe, and some got off on just looking at her tits. The rest of were okay once you figured out what they liked. And the boss had strict rules, looked out for them all. 

      “Think about it,” she said. “You’ve turned eighteen, right? You’ve got a great body and, if you don’t mind me saying so, you look like you could use the money.”

      I did mind her saying so. But I’m not dumb, and anyway, she started me thinking. We talked some more and this time, I asked the questions.

      I’m wondering why I’m still angry, why I quite like Kelly Johnson now when I’ve always hated her. She talks to me at school and sometimes buys me lunch. My mates ignore her. They say stuff like, “Once a bitch, always a bitch,” or, “She’s using you, the cow. Watch your back.” 

      That makes me want to fight - but not my mates and not Kelly Johnson. I want to fight a flame inside myself. It’s brighter than the hope flame (which never really got me anywhere) and it shines on a different place. But it does flicker a lot. So I stop sometimes and listen to what it has to say, before it goes out. 

      “You won’t be cold or hungry or tired if you do this, but you will be scared, for sure. And you might still be angry.”

      The principal always spouts on about the importance of choices at Year Thirteen assembly. When I hear her now, I smile to myself and wonder if this is the sort of stuff she means.

                                                                        *

 Kelly Johnson says I’m ruthless and that’s why she recruited me. I love that word “ruthless”. It makes me feel I could one day be a queen myself.