It sounds kind of crazy now that I think about it but sitting around in towels with four other girls in a day spa all covered in mud, with gunk on our faces and cucumber slices on our eyes, was the most sophisticated and cool I had ever felt in my life.
I had felt slightly grossed out at the beginning when the woman started to smooth out the mud all over my shoulders and neck. Icky, icky icky! I thought. But I tried to calm down and be cool. Mud might not be my thing, but I was doing this to be popular. Plus the most exclusive girls in the school were being really nice to me.
“So is it actually your birthday today?” said Saffron, smiling.
“Yup,” I said. “And my sister as well. Thirteen today!”
“Sister?” asked Lise, picking off her cucumber slices and looking at me with surprise. “How?”
“Um, they’re twins?” said Tiger Lily, giving her a look.
“Oh,” said Lise. “Twins!” Her big blue eyes looked like they were about to fall out of her face.
“Can you, like, read each other’s thoughts?” said Isabella. “Isn’t it like if you pinch one twin, the other one feels the pain? Because I’ve got cousins who are twins and when one of them broke her arm the other one had to go to hospital as well… “
“I think that’s more identical twins,” I said. “We don’t look exactly like each other. We’re more like sisters born at the same time.”
“Oh, I know what that is. It’s a funny word, I’m trying to think of it… Oh I know—fraternal. You guys are fraternal twins, right?” said Isabella. “Is that the word for it?”
“Whatever. Happy birthday,” said Tiger Lily, just slightly rolling her eyes.
“We got you something,” said Saffron and she delicately turned around and pulled out a pink and white striped package with a black bow. I tried to take it without getting mud from my fingers on the paper. I didn’t know whether to open it or not but Saffron was looking at me expectantly so I pulled the paper apart gently to find a very expensive box of chocolates.
I tried to look enthusiastic, even though I don’t particularly like chocolates. “Oh, thanks a lot!” I said, but I could feel Tiger Lily’s eyes in my back.
“Are you going to have one?” she said and she raised her eyebrows slightly.
“Would you like one?” I said and I offered them out to her.
“No thanks,” she said, so I passed it to Isabella and Lise instead.
“No!” declared Lise.
“Not for me, thanks, not today,” said Isabella, darting a look at Tiger Lily and then shaking her head as well. There was only one person left—Saffron—so I offered one to her.
“No,” she said sweetly. “I don’t eat chocolate. It makes me fat,” and she smiled again and tossed her head.
For a second I didn’t know what to think. Why would they give me chocolates but then refuse to have any? I suddenly felt nervous and chewed on my lips. What was going on? I put them down behind me. “I’ll take them home and give some to my sister,” I said.
And then something very surprising happened. Lise started to giggle. And then Saffron and Isabella joined in. It took a few seconds before Tiger Lily smiled but when she did, she almost looked happy. I was still confused.
“You see?” said Saffron. “I told you so.” She looked around at the others as if to say I was right. Then she sat up and, with a big smile on her face, stuck out her hand to congratulate me.
“Welcome our group Coco. You’ve passed the first test,” she said.
My eyes went wide. For a second I felt sick.
“The chocolates were a test?” I said.
“Yes. And you’ve passed. We needed to make sure you weren’t going to pig out on them.”
I gasped. “Nice one. That was good,” I said, trying to look amused and cool. “I haven’t liked chocolate since I was three years old. It just doesn’t do it for me.”
“You’re so lucky!” said Isabella. “I love it so much, it’s so yummy... but we don’t eat it.” She sounded wistful.
“At all. Ever.” Tiger Lily came into the conversation. It sounded like a warning.
“No,” smiled Saffron. “And in fact, one reason we got you to come here today away from school and everything, Coco, is because we need to tell you the rules.”
“Rules?” I said, trying to get the alarm out of my voice and sound casual.
“Yes,” said Tiger Lily. “Rules. It’s pretty simple. We’re the top of the pile. I’m not being arrogant. I’m just stating a fact. We know we’re at the top and we’re going to stay there.” She waved her hand around as if to say, See how beautiful we are? This just doesn’t all happen by chance. “The rules set the standard. If you break them, you get dropped.”
“Okay,” I said. “Um. That sounds... fair.”
Saffron came back into the conversation. “It’s not because we’re worried about you,” she smiled. I felt a little relieved. “It’s because of what happened with Shannon. Basically, we want you, but you have to know that things can change.”
“Sure, sure, I get it,” I said, nodding my head off. “Just tell me what the rules are. It’ll be cool.”
I probably should have gone home and written up the rules that night on a fluorescent piece of cardboard with a massive great thick marker pen and then stuck them in the middle of my mirror so that I could see them every day, twice a day when I brushed my hair and put on my makeup. It would have saved me a lot of tears and a whole lot of disaster further down the track. But, as Mum says all the time, you only know what you know at the time you know it.
These were the rules of the most exclusive group in my school, told to me that day in the spa by Tiger Lily. These were the rules that I was to break at my own peril:
1. We always look good. (“ No!” chimed in Lise. “Perfect!”)
2. We don’t get fat. (“No chocolate or chips,” mourned Isabella. “Or chocolate chips either.” She giggled at her own joke.)
3. We don’t associate with losers. (“We don’t talk to losers, we don’t look at losers, we don’t flirt with losers, we don’t go out with losers,” said Tiger Lily.)
4. There are no secrets. (This is where Saffron spoke up, opening her big blue eyes wide. “We can’t risk our reputations. We don’t want to get surprised if we hear about something you’ve done that might make us look bad. What you do is our business now that you’re in our group. Soooo,” and she shrugged her shoulders, “we need you to be completely honest.”)
5. There are consequences for breaking the rules. (Here no one said anything. Isabella looked scared, Lise looked down, Saffron looked superior and Tiger Lily just looked at me full in the face, narrowing her eyes.)
At the end of it I was breathing faster and my head was spinning. This wasn’t going to be as simple as I thought. What if I forgot the rules? What if I accidentally did my hair wrong one day? What if I made a fashion faux pas? What if I talked to someone I shouldn’t talk to without realising it? Would they just drop me immediately or would I get a chance to make it up? And what were the consequences? Was I even game enough to ask?
The panic must have started to show on my face because Saffron came over to sit next to me.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I picked you for a reason. You’re different from the other, ordinary girls. You’re one of us. You belong here.”
I smiled bravely. “Thanks. I’m so glad I’m here. You have no idea. It’s really cool.” I shrugged. I didn’t really know what else to say. “I’ll try my best.”
Saffron’s face was warm and welcoming. “You know, you’re really pretty,” she said. “But you should do your hair like this sometimes,” and she scraped and pulled my hair into the highest ponytail ever. “Oh wow—that’s great. Hey girls, what do you think of this?”
“That looks heaps better,” said Isabella quickly. “That really suits your face, Coco. You should wear it like that all the time. It looks amazing, just like the way the model had it in that magazine I saw last week... what was its name? Sparkle? Spangle? Something like that...”
Saffron cut her off. “You could probably get it to be shinier, which would help. I’ll show you the shampoo that I use. It’s exclusive. You can only get it from the salon I go to and it’s really expensive but it’s so worth it.”
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