Chapter 7: Wake Up
I woke up to a text from Melody.
Have u checked Facebook????
It was filled with pictures of Hannah, the girl with the white hippy dress. There she was in hiking boots on top of a mountain, in a bikini with her good-looking friends on a white sandy beach. Wearing sunglasses and drinking from a coconut. Smiling in her private girls’ school uniform.
Wake up soon beautiful girl.
We love you xxxxxxx
Keep fighting. We know you can get through this.
There was a message from one of Hannah’s friends telling everyone that Hannah was in a coma and that the doctors weren’t able to say when or even if she would wake up.
As you can imagine, her family is distraught. We will keep you updated on Facebook.
I texted Melody back.
It looks bad. What should we do?
What can we do? We don’t even know her. It sucks, Melody replied.
My head was pounding and I had a taste in my mouth that was even worse than last night’s vomit. I was wet with sweat and hungry and nauseous at the same time. I needed a shower but it was a risk. I couldn’t let Mum see me like this.
I opened my bedroom door as quietly as I could. Mum and Dad were in the kitchen sitting in front of their laptop. They were Skyping Spencer. I had my moment. They didn’t even look up as I tiptoed to the bathroom and took a couple of headache tablets. Mum always keeps a packet handy. I’ve heard Dad tell her off for taking them too often but she totally ignores him.
Spencer, as you know, is my big brother. Three months ago, he and his girlfriend Amanda moved to LA to become actors/models. To tell you the truth, I don’t miss him. I mean, Spencer and I have never been close. Not just because he’s four years older than me, but he may as well be from another planet. Growing up, all he wanted to do was play sport and be popular. He called me Fatty Boomba when I ran. When Dad was around he told Spencer to shut it when he called me names, but Mum always said it was normal for brothers to torment their sisters. Mum adores him, so as you can imagine, it was a dark day for her when Spencer left.
I wanted to say goodbye to Spencer at home, but Mum insisted we go to the airport in the middle of the night to see my brother off. She wouldn’t stop fussing, telling him over and over to check his passport and hotel reservation.
‘You don’t want to get to LA and have nowhere to go! Can you imagine? My boy lost in that big city?’
‘I’m fine, Mum,’ Spencer kept repeating. ‘Amanda will be with me, remember? We know what we’re doing.’
‘I know. I’m proud of you, honey.’ Mum gave my brother another hug before we hopped into Dad’s practical Subaru. Mum tried, trust me, but the Mustang could not hold Spencer’s luggage. When I joked that Spencer’s suitcase was stuffed silly with his collection of metrosexual beauty products Dad laughed, but Mum scowled and demanded, ‘Be supportive, Winter.’
The plan was to meet Amanda and her parents at the airport. I don’t know what I was thinking, rocking up in my donut-print pyjamas and Ugg boots. I’d always been intimidated by Amanda, who was confident and arrogant in the way only the willowy and conventionally beautiful know how to pull off. Not that I knew Amanda well. She had only been on the scene for a few months, so their international sojourn was a little controversial to say the least. Mum approved of Amanda’s hotness, but if there’s one person in this world she loves more than anything, it’s Spencer. After he announced his plans to try and forge an international fame-fuelled career I overheard Mum crying to Dad about how it felt like a piece of her heart was being ripped away.
While I’d still rather have been home in bed I was more than a little curious to check out Amanda’s family. We’d never seen them before, but I’d heard they were rich and semi-famous in the Melbourne social scene. Spencer said Amanda’s mother, aka Marianne St John, was asked to audition for a role in The Social Landmines of Melbourne but turned it down. Apparently she is too classy for reality TV. Of course I’d googled her and seen photos, but nobody could be prepared for what appeared before us at Tullamarine airport.
We found them at Gloria Jeans. Surrounded by the discarded takeaway cups and spilt sugar of previous diners, along with a couple of extremely tired-looking families in outfits that rivalled my own, the St Johns were so spectacular they virtually shimmered.
Not that Amanda had to try all that hard. Her hair was up in a messy model-off-duty topknot, highlighting her face that was all big eyes, full lips, a little bit elfin-looking. Had her eyes been a little wider, her chin slightly pointier, she would have looked like a scary cult member. But luckily for her she was perfectly proportioned. Amanda even had the coveted gap between her top front teeth. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to look like that. To have been given that gift, for life to be made so much easier just because of a winning genetic combination. Her father, Max, was what Mum refers to as a ‘silver fox’, maybe not George Clooney exactly, but I could see Mum blush a little when she shook his hand. But Marianne, she was in another league altogether.
First off, being Persian, she had an accent so exotic it didn’t seem real. Her olive skin was virtually unlined, with no obvious signs of Botox or plastic surgery. Her long dark hair flowed and shone like the highest quality crêpe de Chine. She was practically dripping with gold, her long manicured fingers covered in rings. As she stood and walked towards us, smiling a wonderful, not too fake-looking smile, I noticed her shoes. Black pumps. But these were no Nine West designer knock-offs. Mum and I had watched enough Social Landmines episodes to know exactly what a red sole means. $800 Christian Louboutin’s, that’s what.
Dad and I were the odd ones out. There was no doubting that for a second.
Marianne exuded elegant wealth, like Princess Kate or Princess Mary. Mum, on the other hand, preferred a more edgy Kate Moss style. Together they made quite a combination as they talked about how proud they were of their babies who had the courage to go forth and follow their dreams. While Dad talked to Max, I tried to talk to Amanda about her plans for LA. Neither of us was particularly interested, but we made the effort.
‘What are you going to do?’ I asked. ‘It sounds very exciting.’
‘Well, we have to get headshots and an agent. There’s a lot to organise. But we know some people and I have a really good feeling about this,’ Amanda told me.
You hear stories all the time about people who try to make it in Hollywood and end up teaching Pilates. But there was no self-doubt in Amanda.
‘Well, if all else fails, you can always become a Scientologist,’ I said.
Amanda sipped her skinny-whatever and turned away, joining in the conversation between the two glamazon mothers. I swear, she never so much as looked at me again.
Me? I just wanted to get out of there.
Unfortunately, we had to stick around drinking coffees and making chitchat. Amanda and Spencer were on the edge of their seats and more than once said something like, ‘We really should get going.’
But it was the parents who wouldn’t let them leave, until finally they had no choice.
‘Mum,’ Spencer insisted. ‘We’ll miss our flight if we don’t go through now.’
‘Of course,’ Mum agreed. ‘The time just goes by so fast.’
To give her credit, Mum tried hard to contain herself and when she finally had to hug Spencer goodbye she even cracked a lame joke about him buying her a house next door to a Kardashian when he hit the big time. But on the way home she cried and cried and cried. Nothing Dad or I said made any difference. She was completely shattered in a way I’d never seen before.
‘Amanda’s family sure are good-looking,’ I said, trying to take a light and gossipy angle. ‘I mean, seriously. They are straight from a TV series about a really good-looking family who intimidate everyone with their good looks.’
‘Is there a show like that?’ Dad asked. ‘I can’t think of one.’
‘Maybe we should pitch it and they could be the stars!’ I suggested.
‘Nobody wants to watch that,’ Dad said. ‘Too depressing. People only want to hear about losers who make them feel better about themselves.’
‘What about the Kardashians?’
‘Bunch of weirdos,’ Dad said.
But while Dad and I joked around, Mum simply sobbed.
Of course a part of me wondered if she’d feel the same way if I decided to head off to LA to ‘make it’. I bet she’d just tell me to go on a diet. ‘Everyone in Hollywood is so thin’, she’d say.
‘Why do you like Spencer so much?’ I wanted to ask her. ‘Why have you always liked him better than me?’
But I already knew the answer. Spencer was beautiful and I was not.
I heard my phone beep when I got out of the shower. I picked it up casually, assuming it would be Melody wanting to gossip about the night before and ease her guilt about drinking too much when she had so much study to do AND a possible genetic predisposition to drug and alcohol addiction.
But I was wrong.
Wanna hang out this afternoon? The message from an unknown number said.
My phone beeped again.
This is Oliver, btw. From the party.
My heart started to beat so fast I had to sit down. Oliver! I knew we’d hit it off because of the whole 80s music connection. Sure, he’d asked me to program my number into his phone, but as my emotional hangover took hold I worried that I had in fact been a slurry drunken bore. And there was the whole vomit-in-a-pot-plant situation. Well. Let’s just say that while I was in the shower scrubbing myself with Mum’s geranium shower gel I’d accepted the fact that Oliver was just another boy who didn’t find me attractive.
I texted back.
OK.
‘Oooh, you look nice,’ Dad commented when I walked into the kitchen. ‘Where are you off to?’
‘Nowhere,’ I fibbed. ‘Just hanging out with some friends.’
‘Cute dress,’ Mum said. ‘Did you make it?’
‘Yeah.’ It was just a simple floral tea dress I’d designed myself.
‘Isn’t she talented?’ Mum said to Dad, then turned back to me. ‘We were just Skyping Spencer. He got a call back for Hoochilicious Party Bandits! God, I love that show.’
‘Wow,’ I said, spooning yoghurt into a bowl. But I was too nervous to eat. I didn’t want to stuff this up.