The sun woke me up on the first morning of school. I bounced out of bed, ready to go and jump on Coco and annoy her, but she was already awake, dressed and staring at herself in the mirror with her hand up to her hair, holding it all at the back of her head.
‘Ponytail?’ she asked, then let some of the hair go. ‘Or maybe like a half ponytail, so it’s kind of up but not all the way up.’
I rubbed my eyes. ‘Why yes, good morning, Charlie. How are you? Are you well? How’d you sleep?’ I smiled. ‘Are you nervous about school?’
She rolled her eyes, but in a nice way. ‘Whatever. I think I’m going with it half up. Or maybe not. Maybe a messy bun?’
I stuck out my tongue at her and made a quick exit, down the hall and out to the kitchen, where Mum was already up and making lunches for us.
‘I didn’t miss making these last year.’ She smiled at me. ‘Chicken salad sandwich for you?’
I gave her a hug.
‘You nervous?’ She kissed my head.
I shrugged. ‘A little, I guess. But it can’t be that bad, right?’
‘I’m sure it will be fine.’ She threw me a box of cereal. ‘Eat. And then get dressed. You have to make sure you get up to the bus stop on time.’
I ate, then I pulled on the clothes Mum had bought for us the week before when they’d finally decided which school to send us to—white uniform shirt, checked uniform skirt, white socks and black shoes.
I was just about ready to go when Coco saw me. ‘You’re kidding, right?’ She had that ‘I’m-going-to-fix-everything’ look on her face. ‘You’re wearing it like that?’ She put a lot of emphasis on the ‘that’.
I threw my backpack on the ground and stepped into the hallway with my hands up and away from my body. ‘I have no idea what I’ve done wrong, but you obviously want to change it, so go ahead.’
She moved next to me, pulling at the waist of my blouse, bending over to adjust my socks and then tugging at my skirt.
‘You’re making it shorter.’ I tried to slap her away.
‘Yeah. Like, durr.’
‘But it’s the right length.’
She gave me a stare. ‘It is so not the right length.’ She tugged at it again and folded something over at my waist. ‘Now it’s the right length.’
Without a mirror in front of me, I couldn’t see the difference, so I just shrugged and let it be. Coco was going to have her way, no matter what I said, and it was no skin off my nose if she wanted me to wear my uniforms tweaked in her particular Coco way. I honestly could never tell the difference between the way I put my clothes on and how she did it, but I figured if it was important to her and kept her happy, I’d let her dress me.
She peered in at my face. ‘Makeup?’
‘No.’ I hadn’t even thought of that. Obviously Coco had; her face was covered in a paste of something close to skin colour and her eyelashes looked like they’d been dipped in a bucket of tar.
‘Not even a little? Primer?’
‘Is that paint?’ I was just teasing. I knew what primer was; Coco had insisted on giving me makeup lessons so many times I was at least familiar with the concept of primer. I also knew what an eyelash curler was. I wasn’t going to use either a curler or primer, though. In fact, the only way makeup ever got on my face was if Coco put it there.
‘I’d better not die before you get married,’ she’d said once. ‘You’d turn up to your wedding day in jeans and a scummy old t-shirt if you had your way. At least if I’m there you won’t embarrass yourself.’
‘Yeah, yeah. Whatever,’ I’d said, and she’d made annoyed eyes at me.
‘Can’t I just get some mascara?’ she said now, still looking at my face.
Dad interrupted. ‘No time, Coco. We’ve got to get to the bus.’
Getting to the bus meant all of us getting into our massive four wheel drive, going along two kilometres of bumpy, unsealed road, through three different farm gates and then going up the hill on the twenty minute trek of the ‘driveway-that-isn’t-a-driveway’, as Coco calls it. It’s a dirt track that winds up around our mountain, past caves and cliffs and over rocks, until finally you get out onto the main road.
The first time we ever visited the farm, after Dad bought it as a surprise, we turned off the main road and just about fell out of the car. ‘It’s a bit of a steep driveway,’ Dad had said, but he didn’t tell us it was practically vertical, with potholes and rocks and logs to get over, all the way down.
I’d laughed and hooted with Josh because of the adrenaline, but Coco (being Coco) had screamed and cried and protested, which had just made Josh and me laugh even harder.
‘So we have to do this every day?’ asked Coco. ‘Even if it’s raining?’
Dad scoffed. In one year he’d turned from a suit and tie wearing city finance guy who wouldn’t have known one end of a shovel from the other, into a flannel-shirted and Akubra-hatted farmer who feels better the dirtier he is. ‘Rain? Ha! A little bit isn’t going to hurt you. That’s why we have this car.’
Coco narrowed her eyes. ‘What if it’s pouring? For three straight days? Or what if there’s like the biggest storm in the entire country? Are we going to have to go to school then?’
‘The biggest storm in the entire country?’ said Josh. He raised his eyebrows. ‘Yeah, right.’
‘Look,’ said Dad. ‘If the road gets blocked off with a landslide or a waterfall or something, obviously we won’t be able to get through. But it would have to be a lot of rain. You’re going to go to school, okay?’
I grabbed Coco’s hand and gave it a squeeze. I know when she gets nervous; she gets cranky and fusses around. She was definitely nervous that morning, with the prospect of new kids and making friends and all that stuff she really cares about.
‘It’ll be cool,’ I whispered to her. ‘We’ll be fine.’
And it was. We got on the bus, we got to school, we found the teacher waiting for us, as Mum had already arranged. Josh was taken to his year group and Coco and I were introduced to some girls who’d been given the job of looking after the new kids.
‘Hi, I’m Matilda,’ said one of them, and introduced her friends, Sarah, Jemima and Baylor. Coco’s face lit up immediately and her shoulders seemed to relax. I looked at the girls, then I realised why. They all had the same hairstyle as Coco, who in the end, had gone with what I would have called ‘no hairstyle at all’, just her hair long down by the side of her face, but really, really straight. Their faces also looked like Coco’s; makeup stuff all over their cheeks and sooty eyelashes that a chimney sweep would be proud of.
Before I even knew what was going on, they started gushing at her. ‘Hi! How are you? Oh, we’re so glad you’re, you know, nice. We were told we’d have to look after the new girls, and you just never know what to expect, right?’
‘Aw, that’s sweet,’ said Coco, and she got all gushy as well. ‘I love your hair,’ she said to Matilda, or was it Sarah? I couldn’t really tell them apart. ‘The highlights are so great.’ Then they grabbed her arm and were all crowding around her so that I had to follow along in their path as they led us over to the year nine homeroom.
‘It’s okay,’ announced Matilda as we went inside. ‘The twins are here, and they’re awesome.’
A group of maybe twenty kids looked up at us and I suddenly felt totally weird. Almost like I’d forgotten to wear my skirt or something, or I’d turned up in my pyjamas. Coco, on the other hand, looked like she was utterly happy. She was chatting and laughing and waving her hands around like she was telling the most interesting stories in the world, and everyone was listening to her and looking at her and laughing at her jokes.
I looked around me for help but there was none to be found. For the first time in my life, I felt like an outsider. Where were the girls who looked like me—normal? In year seven in Sydney, there had been quite a few. Had I missed some memo about what girls had to become in year eight? How had every girl turned into a fashion model in the short year we’d been home-schooled? No one was looking at me. No one even asked me a question. It was all ‘Coco, Coco, Coco.’
When we went to class, I felt better. I’m good at schoolwork, although obviously I’d prefer sport. But at recess, Coco grabbed my arm and pulled me along with her new friends.
‘Try harder,’ she hissed in my ear. ‘You’ve got to talk more. What’s going on with you?’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Is there a game of soccer or something I can play?’
‘In that?’ Coco pointed to my skirt and looked a little scandalised.
‘I don’t care,’ I said, but she wasn’t listening.
‘So, what do you guys like to do?’ she asked Matilda. ‘What are you into?’
‘Dance, mostly,’ shrugged Jemima. ‘And just hanging out.’
‘Do you play sport?’ I asked, doing what Coco told me to do. Try harder. Usually conversation wasn’t a problem for me but this just felt weird.
Matilda made a face. ‘No. Do you?’
Coco came to my rescue. ‘Charlie’s a really good runner. Especially cross country.’
Sarah’s eyes got big. ‘I hate cross country. I’m so bad at it. I never actually even finish the race.’
‘Yeah, me too,’ said Baylor. She sat up straighter and kind of tossed her hair. ‘If you’re going to do sport, you should ride a horse. It’s so good for you.’
My heart bounced in my chest. At last, someone I could understand. I gave Baylor a big grin. ‘I ride. I love it! Even though I only started last year, really. I mean, I’ve loved horses since forever, but I never had a chance to ride them.’
Baylor smiled and lifted her chin. ‘I’ve been riding since I was four.’ She looked down at her shoulder like she was waiting for someone else to say something.
‘Baylor won show jumping at the Inter-schools comp last year,’ said Matilda. ‘And she got selected for the Royals.’ She sounded proud, but my face must have looked confused because she quickly explained. ‘The Royal Easter Shows. You know.’
‘That’s really great.’ I was impressed. ‘Wow. You must be good.’
Baylor made a face that tried to say ‘oh, it’s not that important’ but I could tell she was actually really pleased with herself.
‘I’m hoping to compete this year,’ I told her. ‘Maybe I can get some tips off you.’
Baylor smiled. ‘Of course I’ll give you tips. Always happy to help someone who’s just starting out.’
I smiled back and the bubble in my stomach that had been getting bigger and bigger all morning finally started to deflate. Maybe school would be alright. No one was playing sport but at least I could talk to Baylor about horses. Maybe one day we could even ride together.
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