How to Boost Your Profile Read online

  Girl v The World: How to Boost Your Profile

  Meredith Badger

  Hardie Grant Egmont

  Contents

  Title Page

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Copyright Page

  I’m fifteen minutes early to meet Ethan for our date at the Jokey Juice bar, so I line up to get our drinks. The food court at Westland Mall is pumping with the post-school crowd and the juice queue is already winding into the sushi shop next door. Ethan and I have been going out for almost a month now, so I know exactly what to get him: apple and celery with lots of ginger.

  There’s a special on jumbo juices today. Directly in front of me are three primary-school girls counting up to see if they have enough for one each. They go to my old school – I recognise the cacky colours of their uniforms. One of their mums is probably shopping nearby, but I bet they’re pretending that they’re here alone. I used to do that too.

  One of the girls has the same out-of-control curls that I had before I discovered the greatest gadget ever invented: the hair straightener. Curly-girl is the one counting the money. She looks up after a minute, eyes bright. ‘We’ve got exactly enough!’ she announces to her friends.

  She’s a little awkward-looking, this girl. Like she knows she’s a bit nerdy but doesn’t know what to do about it. Just like I used to be. I imagine going over and saying something to her. Something like, Don’t worry. When you get to high school, you can be someone different.

  I picture myself producing a hair straightener from my bag and giving it to her with a smile – like a fairy godmother – then walking away. Although I wouldn’t actually walk away, because then I wouldn’t be here when Ethan turns up.

  Ethan. Funny how even thinking his name makes me feel quivery. I still can’t believe that I actually have a boyfriend – I mean, out of the two hundred students in our year level, I’d say that only ten of them are going out with someone. That’s only five per cent! And of that five per cent, less than half are going out with someone from our year – which means that at the school social in two weeks, Ethan and I will be one of the only actual couples there. That’s pretty cool.

  The Jokey Juice queue moves slowly forward and then finally the primary-school girls are up. The girl behind the counter is wearing an apron splattered with fruit pulp and her face is shiny with heat.

  ‘Three jumbo apple and watermelon juices, please,’ says curly-girl.

  The counter girl gets busy with the juicing machine, and a few minutes later she dumps the juices down in front of the girls. I’m close enough to read today’s joke printed around the bottom rim. What time is it when an elephant sits on your fridge? Luckily the juices here are fresher than the jokes.

  Curly-girl slides across their carefully stacked pile of coins. But then there’s a problem.

  ‘You’re five dollars short,’ the counter girl says after counting the coins. ‘The special offer ended at four.’ Her thumb jabs over her shoulder. There’s a clock on the wall – huge and green with a big red smiley face in the middle. ‘See? It’s ten past now.’

  ‘It was before four when we got in the queue,’ says curly-girl bravely.

  Counter-girl shrugs. ‘So?’

  Curly-girl flushes and starts counting the money again. Like the coins might have somehow increased while sitting there.

  I’m getting sick of this. Ethan’s going to turn up soon and I don’t want to be stuck in this queue when he does. I fish a five-dollar note out of my pocket and slap it onto the counter. ‘Here,’ I say. ‘All paid for now.’ The kids kind of gape at me but don’t move, so I pick up the juices and shove them in their hands. ‘Go!’ I say. ‘Enjoy.’

  By the time I have my juices, Ethan is officially late. Only by a minute, but still, it’s not like him. I check my phone, but there’s no message. I could call him, I guess, but I don’t want to use up my credit. Once it’s gone I can’t afford any more until next month. I’ve been trying to talk Ethan into joining the same phone company as me because then we can text each other for free. My sister Carolyn and her boyfriend Max do that, although they don’t really need it because they spend every second together anyway.

  I look around for somewhere to sit, but then I remember that they’ve just opened a new branch of Cosmetica in the mall and I may as well check it out while I’m waiting. I slip my phone into my pocket so I’ll hear it when Ethan texts or calls.

  The moment I walk into Cosmetica, I spot Edi, Olympia, Jess and Hazel in one corner of the shop. The cool girls from school. Of course they’d be here. Edi Rhineheart is one of the most stylish girls I’ve ever known.

  ‘Hi, Edi!’ I call. Edi says hi back but doesn’t invite me to join them or anything like that. So I peer closely at the eyeliners, trying to think of a reason to go up to them.

  My friends Leni and Soph hate it when I’m friendly to Edi. They’ve never actually said it, but I can tell anyway. Maybe they think I’m trying too hard or something.

  But I can’t see what the problem is. How cool would it be if we got to join Edi’s group, or even just hang with them sometimes? Or maybe Leni and Soph are worried I’ll end up liking Edi and those guys better than them. I wouldn’t, though.

  I’ve just decided to go over and ask Edi if they’re choosing stuff for our school social when a phone rings – not mine, unfortunately – and Edi answers.

  ‘Yep,’ she says. ‘Okay, I’m coming.’ Then she sighs and turns to her friends. ‘I’ve gotta go,’ she says. ‘Dad’s going to be out the front in five minutes.’

  I call bye as Edi and the others leave, but they don’t seem to hear me. It’s pretty noisy in here, I guess.

  There’s still no sign of Ethan. I hope he’s okay. He’s kind of vague sometimes. Maybe he got lost. Or maybe he’s been trying to text and there’s something wrong with my phone. I walk around to where Edi was standing in case there’s better reception in that part of the shop, and to see what she was looking at.

  There’s a big display promoting a new line of mascara.

  It’s called ‘5000x’ because it’s supposed to make your eyelashes appear five thousand times longer. The girl in the poster does have amazingly long lashes, but obviously the five-thousand-times bit is an exaggeration. Because an eyelash is what – about one centimetre long? So if this mascara made them five thousand times longer, they’d be around fifty metres long. Imagine trying to blink with fifty-metre-long eyelashes! That would have to be annoying, right? The mascara does look pretty good, though. And I do need some new stuff to wear to the school social.

  I put one juice down on the ground and pick up one of the mascaras. The tube is smooth and slick in my hand and I notice it has two lids – one on each end with a differentsized brush attached. That’s very cool and I find myself wanting this mascara a lot. Then I check the price. It’s thirty dollars. They might as well have labelled it, Not for you, Anya Saunders.

  This is depressing. But what happens next is way worse. My phone beeps and I almost drop the mascara and the juice in my panic to get to it. Because I’m sure this will be Ethan and I’ve got this sudden, horrible feeling about what the message will say. Maybe something’s happened to him.

  Something bad. Like he’s been hit by a bus while hurrying to meet me. Maybe he’s texting me from hospital.

  But there’s no need to panic. Ethan’s not in the hospital. Ethan is fine. I was right about the message being something horrible, though.

  Hi, Anya – sorry, but I’m not coming today.
I think we should just be friends. Ethan.

  I stand there with the phone in my hand, staring at it like I’m waiting for the letters to rearrange themselves into new words. Ones that don’t spell out such bad news.

  But the letters stay just where they are and I’m left wondering what I should do next. Maybe I should call Ethan and try to talk to him? But he might just ignore my call and that would suck. I could ring Leni or Soph, but I don’t really feel like doing that either. Basically, I wish I could just disappear.

  ‘Hey! You can’t bring food or drinks in here.’ One of the Cosmetica staff members – a tall girl who looks like a model – is pointing at the juices at my feet.

  ‘Oh,’ I mumble. ‘Sorry.’ I shove my phone away, pick up the juices again and leave the shop. Just outside the door is a bin and I dump the apple, celery and ginger juice in it. I’m glad I bought the jumbo size. It’s worth the extra money for the jumbo-sized splash it makes as it hits the bottom. The cup rolls around so I see the answer to today’s joke. Time to get a new fridge.

  Jokey Juice should print up a special cup just for me.

  But instead of a joke of the day, they could put my photo on it.

  My mum works here in the Westland Mall – not in a shop but as a receptionist in the doctor’s office on the top floor. Usually I go and meet her when she finishes at five-thirty and we drive home together. But after what’s happened I don’t feel like hanging around in the shops anymore, so I take the elevator up to level five. Maybe Mum will be able to leave early.

  Mum’s standing behind the desk when I walk in. Straight away, I notice that she’s got a new name badge.

  This one says Jillian Hoffman – her maiden name – instead of Jillian Saunders. It makes me feel weird, looking at it. It’s like my mum’s suddenly a different person. It also makes me wonder. Should Carolyn and I change our names too? But Dad is still our dad, even if he’s not Mum’s husband anymore, and he would be pretty upset if we did. But maybe Mum will be upset if we don’t.

  Mum’s become very skinny over the last couple of months – especially around her face – but she still looks pretty, especially when she smiles. ‘Hello, honey. You’re early!’ she says to me. ‘Weren’t you meeting Ethan for a juice?’

  I’m about to explain what happened when Shelley comes out of her office with a patient. ‘Hi, Anya!’ she says. ‘When are you going to hurry up and finish medical school? I could really use another doctor around here.’

  I say hi back. Shelley is the doctor Mum works for and she’s really nice. She likes to be called by her first name rather than Dr Walters, because she says that makes her sound too old and scary. The only thing that bugs me about her is that she’s got this idea I want to come and work with her as a doctor one day. Which I definitely don’t. Maybe I told her once that I did when I was just a kid – but back then I thought her office was her home, and I liked the idea of living in the mall. There’s no way you’d catch me dealing with sick, germy people all day. Gross!

  Shelley glances around the waiting room. There’s only one old woman left, sitting in the corner reading a magazine, who lets out a massive sneeze every minute or two.

  ‘You go, Jill,’ Shelley tells my mum. ‘I’ll close up after I’ve seen Mrs Carnegie.’

  Even then, it takes Mum forever to shut down the computer and gather up her stuff. By the time we finally leave, I’m busting from the effort of keeping my bad news in for so long.

  ‘Ethan and I broke up,’ I say. ‘He dumped me.’

  Mum gives my shoulder a distracted little squeeze with one hand, while the other one searches for something in her bag. ‘Oh sweetie,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry.’ But I know she isn’t really. The whole time I was going out with Ethan, Mum never took it seriously. I bet she thinks I’m too young to have a boyfriend. She wouldn’t react like this if Carolyn broke up with Max. Everyone takes that relationship seriously – Carolyn makes sure of it.

  Then I have an idea. A brilliant one. One that might make me feel better about the whole Ethan thing. A tiny bit, at any rate. I slip my arm through Mum’s. ‘You know what would cheer me up?’ I say.

  ‘An ice-cream?’ suggests Mum.

  I shake my head. I swear Mum still thinks I’m five sometimes. ‘No. Let’s go on that shopping expedition we’ve been planning. The shops are open for another hour.’

  Mum looks confused. ‘What shopping expedition?’

  I can’t believe she’s forgotten. ‘The bra shopping one,’ I say, as patiently as I can.

  I remember when Mum and Carolyn went bra shopping together. It was supposed to be this big secret but I knew exactly what was going on. They went into town together one Saturday morning and bought three bras. Then they had lunch at a fancy cafe and came home on the train together. When they walked inside, they were chatting and laughing like they’d just had the best day ever.

  Carolyn was only twelve when they went, and I’m thirteen and a quarter now. I kept waiting and waiting for Mum to say it was our turn to make the same trip. But she never did. I know I don’t have a whole lot going on in the chest area yet, but all my friends have bras. And I know, from sneaking a look around when we’re changing for sport, that there are girls at our school who are even flatter than me who wear proper bras. Basically, I’m the only girl I know who still just wears a cami top.

  The thing about having a bra, which Mum doesn’t seem to get, is that they make the most of what you have – so really, the flatter you are, the more reason there is to get one. That’s what I think, at least. This girl Briana at our school was completely, totally flat and then she turned up one Monday morning with a proper rack. She must have got one of those padded bras – and she looked amazing.

  So after months of waiting for Mum to say something, I had to bring the subject up with her. And when I did, she looked at me like I’d asked her to buy me an astronaut suit. ‘But you’re too young still,’ she said. I then pointed out that Carolyn had been wearing bras for an entire year by my age, and Mum had kind of laughed and said, ‘Okay, we’ll see.’ That was weeks ago. And right now it’s obvious Mum has totally forgotten the whole conversation. But this time I’m not going to let it go because I’m already picturing the look on Ethan’s face when I turn up at school tomorrow with my brand-new boobs. He’ll probably beg to get back with me again but I’ll make him wait for ages – at least until a day or two – before I say yes.

  ‘Please, Mum?’ I say, doing my biggest, saddest, most puppy-ish eyes.

  It works. Mum puts her arm around me and says, ‘Let’s do it.’

  We start heading towards the lingerie section of the mall’s department store. Everything’s going fine until Mum’s phone rings while we’re on the escalator. I know straight away that it’s Dad. My parents don’t even bother saying hi to each other anymore. These days they just pick up the argument where they left off.

  ‘Have you forgotten that the house is going on the market in two weeks?’ Mum says. ‘The painters are coming on Thursday, Steve. The rest of your stuff better be gone by then.’ She’s talking in this really loud voice, and I just know that the people in front of us on the escalator are listening to every word. It’s so embarrassing.

  The thing is, Mum gets in such a flap whenever she starts talking about the house being sold and all the stuff that needs to be done before then, that everything else kind of fades away. I can see a simple solution: don’t sell it. But whenever I suggest this, Mum says that the house has too many associations for her. Associations with Dad, she means. Which is funny, because it’s the associations with Dad that make me not want it to be sold. Because that stuff only means something while it’s ours.

  When someone else moves into our house, they won’t know that Dad laid the little blue-and-green tiles in the bathroom himself. They won’t know that the wattle tree in the backyard was a present I gave Dad two years ago, and that we planted it together. And they might paint over the pencil marks on the kitchen doorframe that Dad made to measure m
e and Carolyn as we grew.

  ‘Well, go over there now, then!’ Mum yells suddenly as we step off the bottom of the escalator. The people in front of us look around with their eyebrows raised, but Mum doesn’t even notice. Mum and Dad’s ‘conversations’ are getting louder and louder. If they keep going like this, soon they won’t need to use the phone at all – they’ll just be able to yell at each other across the city.

  ‘But you better make sure you’re not damn well there when I get there tomorrow afternoon.’ Except Mum doesn’t say damn well. She says a way worse word.

  ‘Well, really!’ the woman in front of us mutters.

  To block it out, I start thinking about what kind of bra I’m going to buy. It’s something I’ve thought about a lot lately. I’ve been looking online and measuring myself weekly with a tape measure to make sure I know exactly what size to get. The other ‘research’ I’ve been doing is trying on Carolyn’s bras when she’s not around. She’s got heaps of nice ones but my favourite is a white satin one with silver sparkles. It was my dream bra for a long time. If I do it up on the smallest hooks and pull my shoulders way back, I can make it stay up.

  But then I found an ad in a magazine for a bra that was even better than Carolyn’s sparkly one. The ad is divided into two. On one side there’s a girl walking through school with a smile on her face, her hair billowing back and her tight top showing off her amazing figure. There’s a group of students in the background staring at her admiringly (the boys) and jealously (the girls). On the other half of the ad, you see a close-up of the bra itself. It’s purple satin with tiny diamantés scattered across it like little stars. The cups are padded and there are arrows on the ad showing how this bra pushes your boobs up and makes the most of what you’ve got. Boost your profile with the Charm Bra says the ad at the bottom.

  Mum is still on the phone to Dad when we get to the lingerie department, so I give her my pleading look again and she tells Dad that he’ll have to call back later.