Feeling sorry for Celia Read online

  ‘Is she clinically dead, sir?’

  Then Mr Hoogenboom clears his throat and Martin Wilson says, ‘Do you have throat cancer, sir? Would you like to be one of the experiments too?’

  The guys here are almost as bad as the girls, except stupider.

  So anyway I really only have one friend here, that’s Celia, and I promise you she is most DEFINITELY not a nice-private-school-girl. She’s kind of weird actually. She’s always getting into trouble because she gets bored really really easily. So she always wants to try something new, like shaving her head or chopping down a tree or taking apart the kitchen so she can put it back together (she did that to my kitchen actually, and it took us six months to reconnect the dishwasher).

  My mum says it’s because Celia has an attention span the size of a sesame seed.

  Celia’s mum says it’s because Celia’s identity is unfurling itself slowly, like a tulip bud, and it’s a breathtakingly beautiful thing to see.

  Anyway, I’m kind of depressed today because Celia’s run away again. She does that a lot but she usually at least calls me to say where she is. And she hasn’t called yet. I’m scared that something bad will happen to her. My mum called Celia’s mum and said, ‘Why don’t you tell the police?’ but Celia’s mum just said, ‘Remember the tulip bud?’ and told my mum to breathe in and out.

  Sony for making this letter so long. I hope you’re not bored. I hope you write back. Tell me your brothers’ and sisters’ names if you want? I never met anyone with two brothers and two sisters.

  From

  Elizabeth

  !! ELIZABETH !!

  THERE IS PORRIDGE ON THE STOVE FOR YOU.

  YOUR BLAZER IS IN A HEAP ON THE LIVING-ROOM FLOOR WHERE YOU LEFT IT LAST NIGHT.

  I’LL TRY CALLING CELIA’S MUM AGAIN TODAY. CALL ME AT WORK IF SHE SHOWS UP AT SCHOOL.

  CAN YOU PEEL FOUR POTATOES WHEN YOU GET HOME FROM SCHOOL?

  IF YOU ARE BORED WHILE PEELING THE POTATOES YOU CAN SPEND THE TIME THINKING ABOUT THE COLOUR WHITE.

  WHAT ARE SOME REALLY WHITE THINGS?

  SEE YOU TONIGHT,

  MUM

  PS YOUR FATHER CALLED YOU. (I THOUGHT YOU SAID HE WAS FLYING BACK TO CANADA A WEEK AGO? HE’S GOING TO TRY AND CALL AGAIN LATER TONIGHT.)

  Dear Mum,

  Celia didn’t show up at school. I don’t know how come Dad’s still here.

  I’m taking Lochie for a run and I’ll be back in an hour for dinner.

  Here are the potatoes.

  I thought of something white:

  potatoes.

  Love from Elizabeth

  A Letter from a Stranger

  Dear Elizabeth,

  I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU HAVE A TEACHER CALLED MR HOOGENBOOM.

  Were you for real about that or were you just taking the piss?

  If we had a teacher here with a name like Mr Hoogenboom, he’d be dead by now. Seriously, people here wouldn’t let him live.

  I’m sorry I called you a nice private school girl. I believe you now that you’re not one of them. You don’t really sound like one of them. How come you’re at that school then?

  But you did go skiing on the holidays, which sounds kind of private school. I’m sorry your face went red. You should’ve used sunscreen or it’s true about the skin cancer. I’m very sorry but it’s true. You’ll get it. My Uncle Rosco had skin cancer on the end of his nose. It cost him five thousand dollars to have it surgically removed. (My dad said he’d have done it with his power saw for a case of beer, which Uncle Rosco didn’t think was very funny.) Auntie Belinda’s always getting moles cut off her arms too. Actually, I don’t really think that’s cos of skin cancer, I think it’s because she wants arms without moles.

  Those guys in your science class sound like walruses. I think you should punch Martin Wilson right in his cauliflower chin.

  That must be really hard for you having your best friend run away all the time. You must be worried a lot. Plus you must miss her. I hope she’s called you by now, or come back.

  It’s funny that your friend runs away, and you go running like a billion kilometres just for fun. It makes you both a bit weird. I think you should listen to people who tell you not to run long distances, and not just because your bones will fall to pieces. Because you’re out of your mind. 15ks? You’re insane.

  Anyway, I’m sorry to make jokes about your friend running away. That’s a serious thing.

  Actually, Celia sounds a bit like my cousin Maddie. Mad-die’s always getting into trouble and running away too, but it’s not cos she’s bored. It’s always cos of love.

  Maddie’s always falling in love with a different guy. Except the different guys are always the same. I mean, they’re always kind of wild. She really goes for the wild type. And they always get her into trouble, like going to the casino all night, or they get her to run away to Surfers’ with them. Then her dad says she can’t see them any more and she gets into even more trouble climbing out of their top floor apartment window and trying to slide down the drain pipe.

  If you really want to know about my brothers and sisters I’ll tell you. Do you really? Okay, I’m going to tell you right now, and if you only asked to be polite or something, you should skip the next bit. Okay?

  Well, first there’s my brother, Nick. He’s twelve, eats nothing except raw spaghetti, and hasn’t said a word for the last two years. Well, he has said about five words but only when I got hold of his neck and squeezed it till his face went purple. Then he spoke until I let go. But only in swear words. He used to be kind of like a friend of mine – well, he used to be my slave, anyway, because he worshipped me when he was small.

  Then there’s Renee. She’s eight and she’s an angel. She’s smart too – last year my grandmother had a heart attack right in front of Renee’s eyes, when they were alone in the house, and Renee dialled triple 0 and got an ambulance and SAVED GRANDMA’S LIFE. Cool, huh? For a seven-year-old. She also remembered to switch off the stove where Grandma was boiling rhubarb so it wouldn’t all boil away into mulch.

  Then there’s Robbo, who’s five, and he’s the devil.

  Last there’s the baby, Lauren, and she just turned one. She can run but she can’t walk, because if she slows down to a walk she loses her balance and tips over sideways. She can also talk but only in a completely unknown language.

  My mum had two miscarriages between Robbo and Lauren too, so I guess there’d be seven of us, and this letter would go on forever.

  My dad came over here from Slovenia when he was about sixteen, and he met my mum picking grapes up at Mudgee. Mum’s family’s Italian.

  Sorry, I accidentally started telling you my whole family history. Anyway, I can hear Derek coming (he’s whistling Pearl Jam’s ‘Alive’ and it sounds exactly like the original – you have to admit that it’s a real talent and I don’t see why they don’t let him in the school band) so I’m gonna tell Radison that I’ve got a headache and get out of here.

  See ya.

  Don’t forget to write back.

  Christina

  Dear Ms Clarry,

  I see you have a pimple just beneath your nose today.

  That’s a good start and we’d like to compliment you on that. Teenagers are supposed to have pimples.

  BUT YOU KNOW WHAT?

  That’s the MOST DISGUSTING ZIT WE HAVE EVER SEEN.

  And you know what else? Real teenagers cleanse their faces every day to avoid that kind of thing.

  Get into the fridge, and put your head in a paper bag.

  All the best,

  The Association of Teenagers

  !!! ELIZABETH !!!

  I’M NOT COMING HOME TILL LATE TONIGHT. GET YOURSELF A BARBECUED CHICKEN AT THE FISH AND CHIPS SHOP AND DO SOME FROZEN VEGETABLES.

  (ON THE WAY TO GETTING THE CHICKEN YOU COULD TAKE LOCHIE TO THE VET FOR HIS INJECTION. THAT COULD BE FUN. YOU NEVER KNOW WHO YOU MIGHT MEET IN A VET’S WAITING ROOM.)

  YOUR DAD CALLED ME AT WORK YESTERDAY LOOKING FOR YOU. I TOLD HIM YOU
HADN’T FINISHED HIGH SCHOOL YET SO WHAT WOULD YOU BE DOING IN AN ADVERTISING AGENCY?

  HE SAYS YOU HAVEN’T PHONED HIM BACK YET. CAN YOU CALL HIM AT HIS SYDNEY NUMBER BECAUSE I DON’T WANT HIM CALLING ME ANY MORE.

  HAVE A NICE DAY.

  LOVE FROM YOUR MUM

  PS HAVE YOU HEARD FROM CELIA YET?

  Mum,

  There’s leftover chicken if you want it.

  I called Dad and he wants to take me to dinner on the weekend.

  I called Celia’s mum and she told me to take it easy and breathe more. But she seemed a bit surprised that I hadn’t heard from Celia myself yet.

  See ya,

  Elizabeth

  Dear Miss Clarry,

  You think real distance runners miss training just because they have a sore throat?

  The Society of High School Runners Who Aren’t Very Good At Long Distance Running but Would Be if they Just Trained.

  Letter to a Stranger

  Dear Christina,

  Thanks for your letter, I really liked it, and I’m really glad you told me about your family. It wasn’t boring at all, it was cool. I haven’t got any brothers or sisters (except for a stepbrother who I’ve never met) and I’d LOVE to have one, so if you have any to spare send one to me in your next letter. The baby sounds cute, for example. And that smart one, Renee, she sounds useful to have around in case of emergencies.

  I’m writing this in Maths because I don’t believe in coordinate geometry. I don’t think it’s healthy really.

  For one thing, it’s bad for my brain. I know it’s bad for my brain because it gives me a headache. I have a headache right now, and there’s no reason for me to have a headache. I haven’t been bashing my head against a brick wall or anything, for instance. Also, I don’t know why I have to find out the midpoint between two dots on a piece of paper. Excuse me, but who needs to know? And if they do need to know why can’t they do it themselves? Or just look it up in the back of the book? THE ANSWERS ARE THERE.

  For another thing, everyone in this entire room’s sick; they’re all coughing and sneezing and making disgusting snorting, snotty noises, and the guy who sits next to me just coughed and I saw a little splat of gooey green stuff land on my Maths book. I don’t know if anything as disgusting as that has ever happened to you.

  So I’m not going to do Maths. Anyway, I’m depressed. Sorry if I always sound depressed. It’s for these reasons:

  1. Celia still hasn’t called me. I’m scared. I don’t know where she is. And nobody seems to think there’s anything to worry about except me.

  2. Disgusting, gooey green stuff just landed on my Maths book right in front of my eyes.

  3. I have a sore throat.

  4. I didn’t train this morning and I want to train six days a week because the Trail Run’s coming up soon and I really want to do well in it. Plus if I don’t run for a few days I start to feel crazy and depressed.

  5. I phoned my dad this morning – he’s still in Sydney. He was supposed to go back to Canada ages ago. (He lives in Canada with his second wife and her son – he left my mum and ran off with this woman when I was a baby.) He wants to take me out to dinner on the weekend, because he has something exciting to tell me. I suppose that’s not a reason to be depressed, because maybe the exciting thing’ll be good. Like maybe he finally wants to take me to Canada with him (I’ve never been there and I’ve never even met the second wife or her son, which, can you believe that? I mean I’m his only daughter, aren’t I?)

  But I hate going out to dinner with my dad. I can never think of anything to say. And you can see him sitting there trying to figure out really teenage stuff to talk about. And we always go somewhere posh and he gets me a glass of wine, even though I hate wine, and then we have conversations where he goes something like, ‘Elizabeth? How about the nose on this shiraz, hmm?’ and I think he’s talking about the waiter or something, so I look around for the one with the big nose, and he goes, ‘I mean the wine, darling’ and then I feel stupid.

  Then he goes, ‘Have a sniff of it, what does it smell like to you, sweetheart?’

  And I go, ‘Um. Wine.’

  And he goes, ‘Mmm. Yes, but what else? Come on!’

  ‘Um. Red wine.’

  ‘Nothing else? You can’t smell a fruit in there? Come on now, what kind of a fruit is there?’

  ‘Apples?’

  ‘Apples? Really? Interesting. I don’t get that myself. You don’t, by any chance, get strawberries, do you?’

  ‘Um.’

  ‘Raspberries?’

  ‘I guess.’ (Even though it smells exactly like red wine.)

  ‘Blackberries?’

  ‘Maybe.’ (Even though it still smells exactly like red wine.)

  ‘Nutmeg?’

  ‘Mmm.’ (What’s nutmeg smell like anyhow?)

  ‘That’s it! That’s a girl! It’s delirious, isn’t it? It’s like summer pudding and Christmas cake all mixed up into one glorious flavour celebration, isn’t it? Isn’t it? !’

  Then he’s really pleased with himself because he thinks he’s taking care of my cultural education.

  And then he always asks how my mum’s going and as soon as I start to answer he looks around the room for a waiter and asks for another bottle of wine or a whiskey on the rocks or something.

  Anyway, so that’s what it’s like going to dinner with my dad.

  I hope you’re having a good day and eating something else besides porridge for breakfast, because I think it’s probably bad for your brain, and I’m sorry about that, I know you like it, but that’s it.

  From,

  Elizabeth

  !! ELIZABETH !!

  LIBBY, I HOPE YOU FEEL BETTER THIS MORNING. I MADE EXTRA PORRIDGE FOR YOU, AND A NICE HOT LEMON DRINK WHICH WILL BE GOOD FOR YOUR THROAT. WHILE YOU’RE DRINKING IT YOU COULD THINK ABOUT HOW YOU WOULD FEEL IF YOU WERE AT A HOLIDAY RESORT WHICH IS ALL BUILT UP IN THE BRANCHES OF TREES. HAVE A GOOD DAY GETTING AN EDUCATION!

  LOVE FROM YOUR MUM

  Dear Mum,

  I’m not going to school today. I’m going back to bed. I will die very soon.

  Thinking about holiday resorts built in the branches of trees makes my head feel worse, so I don’t want to do it, thank you all the same.

  Elizabeth

  DEAR LIBBY,

  I HOPE YOUR COLD FEELS BETTER I’M IN THE LIVING ROOM AND I DIDN’T WANT TO WAKE YOU SO I’M PUTTING THIS NOTE UNDER YOUR DOOR. DO YOU WANT SOME DINNER?

  LOVE MUM

  Dear Mum,

  It’s not a cold, it’s PNEUMONIA. I’m writing this at 2.30 a.m. and I’m going to put it on your door because it might be the last time you’ll ever hear from me. Both nostrils are stuffed and my throat’s about to disappear completely, and when that happens I don’t really see how breathing will be possible. So I guess I’ll be dead when I see you next.

  So, BYE MUM.

  Love from Elizabeth

  NOTE FOR ELIZABETH!!! FOR WHEN SHE WAKES UP!!!! LOOK HERE ON TOP OF YOUR CLOCK RADIO, LIBBY!!!

  I HOPE YOU FEEL BETTER TODAY. PLEASE RING ME AT WORK IF YOU ARE DEAD.

  TAKE VITAMIN C’S (IN THE BOTTLE NEXT TO THE TISSUES JUST OVER THERE).

  PUT VICKS VAPOUR RUB ON YOUR CHEST (ON THE FLOOR NEXT TO YOUR BED).

  LOVE FROM YOUR MUM

  PS I’m sorry I thought it was just a cold when it’s pneumonia. PPS One thing you might do today is think about creative ways to describe your symptoms. E.g. If you have a headache, does it feel like drums beating against your forehead? If you have a sore throat, does it feel like ants crawling around your throat? BUT ONLY DO THIS IF YOU’RE FEELING UP TO IT OF COURSE.

  Dear Ms Glarry,

  Here’s your perfect opportunity to climb into the fridge. Lying around under your Teletubbies doona all day must surely highlight how HOPELESS you are!

  May we remind you that the only time you ever throw up is when you have the flu? Never from getting smashed off your brain. Ever been DRUNK, Elizabeth? Oh no, that’s right!
The only time you drink is when your FATHER gives you a glass of wine! That’s so impressive!

  You haven’t even SEEN marijuana, let alone experimented with the hard drugs that you’re SUPPOSED to be using.

  You’ve never spray-painted your initials on the inside of a bus shelter either, come to think of it.

  What are you waiting for? You know you’re a waste of space.

  Yours sincerely,

  The Association of Teenagers

  Dear Ms Clarry,

  Another thing. Most teenagers are supposed to have heaps of friends to do all the drinking and drug taking and vandalising with. And to go to parties with, and movies, and dance parties.

  Apparently, you only have ONE friend and she′s disappeared off the face of the earth!

  You really ARE a waste of space!

  The Association of Teenagers

  Dear Elizabeth,

  Your dad sounds exactly like my Uncle Rosco. That’s my cousin Maddie’s father. Is your mum like my Auntie Belinda? She’s always getting bits zapped off, like moles off her arm, and eyebrows off her face, and cellulite off her thighs. She’s got black painted-on eyebrows, which look like she used a black crayon and pressed really hard. And her nails are so long that they practically drag along the carpet behind her. And she’s always carrying the cat around, which is a big fat lazy fluffy pile of shit, and then going, ‘Oh LORD, CAT HAIRS, on my CASHMERE!’

  Which you’d think she’d’ve worked out already and would just stop carrying the cat around.