That Cute Red Halter Neck

The 10 steps to my morning routine

1.       Wake up at 5:45

2.       Continue to press snooze until 6:20

3.       Beat Max to the bathroom to use the toilet

4.       Go downstairs and eat a bowl of cereal

5.       Brush teeth and mouthwash

6.       Wash face

7.       Moisturise face

8.       Get dressed

9.       Do hair

And the 10^th step to my morning routine:

10.   Sit downstairs ready with my shoes and my bag watching TV while mum yells at Max for not being ready

So Kelly rang me last night.  It was...  well, funny more than anything else.  It’s amazing how fake somebody can be on the phone, and I mean store-bought pancake fake.  It went a little something like this:

Me: ...Hey

Kelly: Um is this Melanie?

Me: Yeah.  Is this Kelly?

Kelly: Yeah.  Hi Melanie!  I wasn’t sure if I had your right number,

Me: Well you do, this is me,

Kelly: Oh.  I sent you a text earlier but I never got a reply?

Me: You did?  That’s so weird I never got a text from you. (Which was a complete and total lie, I just didn’t want to reply to her)

Kelly: Oh.  Well it said that it sent.  Anyway, I was talking to Megan in netball and she said that when she was in the changing rooms before netball she heard Macy and Brooke say something about you being upset with someone??  Well, I thought that we were really good friends so I wanted you to know that you can tell me anything, I’ll always be here for you.  So what’s wrong?

Me: Really!?  If we are really good friends then why did you not talk to me once in the whole of the summer holidays?  You only want to be my friend right now because you think I have something interesting going on and you want to be one of the first ones to know!  Nice try but I’m not telling you anything!

Well I didn’t really say that.  That was what I meant when I really said;

Me: I’m fine, really nothing’s wrong.  So how are you?

Kelly: I’m good, look, I have to go.  Bye.

So now I’m interested to see how school goes today and whether Kelly will acknowledge me at all.  Kelly and I used to be really good friends, some would say best friends.  But people change, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse and one of us changed and we grew apart.  It’s just how it is.  Honestly, I think it started when she got her first period halfway through year 7.  Suddenly, she had this snooty thing about her and insisted on spending more time with Megan who ‘knew what she was going through’

However, in about the middle of year 8, they had this whole argument because Kelly became obsessed with Megan and added all Megan’s primary school friends on social networks like she knew them, and talking about them like she had actually met them. 

As usual, as soon as Kelly came back, Brooke and Macy leapt to Kelly’s side like she hadn’t ditched them for ages and all of the bitchy remarks that they had made about her over the past couple of months were instantly erased.  What did I do? Nothing.  Lulled in the background because I wasn’t surprised, some of my friends are major begs.

Finally, I’m at school.  That car journey was too long.  I need school to hurry up, or at least the next half hour - I’m freezing.  We have registration at 8:30, but Macy and I both get in at 7:50ish, (Me because my mum drops me to school before she drops Max.  Macy because she takes the train and the early train is the only one that can get her to school on time). 

If you get in early, you’re supposed to report to the school hall until 8:25 but it’s really crowded and loud in there and the floor is always sticky so Macy and I meet on the stone steps outside of the cubicle of sports lockers. 

So here we are as usual, casually sitting on the stone steps chatting about random little subjects.  I like Macy, she’s very down to earth, and unlike most people at my school, she’s in a similar situation to me.  She lives in the same kinda sized house as me, has 2 working parents, can barely afford private school and buys any designer clothes that she has in sales.

It’s only the second day at school so obviously, we’re still in September, but it’s a really cold September this year, I mean we’ve been outside for 20 minutes now and my butt is freezing, plus I’m holding onto my coat for dear life.  It’s one of those days where you breathe and mist comes out of your mouth and Macy’s rubbing her hands together in hope that they’ll warm up.

“Hey, Melanie?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s freezing out here.”

“I know.”

“Wanna go inside?”

“I don’t mind, but I hate that lunch hall.”

“Me too.” Now Macy’s tapping her foot.  It’s what she does when she’s trying to think of a solution and has nothing to say, “Wanna go to our form room?”

There’s her solution.

“Sure.”

You’re not supposed to be allowed in your classrooms until 8:25, in fact, you’re not supposed to be allowed anywhere outside of the hall until 8:25, but we like to take the risk and go to our classroom at around 8:10.  Teachers are supposed to roam up and down the corridors, sending people to the hall, but whenever Macy and I sneak in early we hardly ever see teachers.

Its pitch black - obviously no one else is here.  I hate our form room.  Most of the school has been redone in the past few years, but we have to be on one of the only corridors that has not been touched.  It’s a dingy old history classroom with faded cake, biscuit and gum stains on the floor, threadbare worn carpets, some grey cracked paper on the walls that I swear was once white, and desks arranged with a middle rectangle of about 8 desks positioned in front of the teachers desk, and the rest of the desks going around the edge of the room, like a border.  It’s an attempt to ‘create a creative learning atmosphere’.  It doesn’t work.  At all.  Macy’s eyes are scanning the room as well, but I don’t think she’s taking in the dreary atmosphere.

“Something’s wrong...” Now she’s standing in the middle of the room circling slowly, 

Oh well.  If you can’t beat her, may as well join her.  We’re both circling the room now, her probably with reason, me because... well... I don’t know why.  Well, now I realise why.  The giggles coming from underneath one of the middle tables explains it all.  Now Macy and I are staring at each other, that cheeky/excited glint in our eyes.  Dead silently, she’s placed her bag down on her desk, glanced quickly around the room, directed her focus back to me and mouthing the words.

“Three, two, one”

And we’re off: running around either side of the table and jumping underneath, scaring Becki and Allison as we do.

“What are you doing underneath here?” Macy’s managed to splutter between giggles. 

We’re kinda friends with Becki and Allison.  They have their own group of friends that consists of them, Megan and sometimes Chelsea and Britney from another form, but Macy, Brooke and I only really like Becki and Allison (because Megan is pretty stuck up, Chelsea only talks to you if she decides you’re popular and Britney only talks to you if Chelsea talks to you). 

They’re both really pretty, both brunettes, but they have really different looks.  Becki has the really light, thin just-passing-the-shoulder brown hair with natural blonde highlights whereas Allison has the long, thick, curly dark brown hair, both roughly the same height (Around 5’5) but Allison has really fair skin that burns easily and Becki has really tan skin. 

“Well, we thought that you guys were teachers so we switched off the light and hid underneath the table” Allison’s finally explained, “And then we realised that this is actually a great place to hide so we thought that we would stay here until 8:25”

Macy and I are either side of the pair squashing them in the middle and we’ve all agreed that this is a pretty good hiding place, so now we’re staying underneath the table talking about the boring lessons that we have later, and annoying brothers, (Allison’s brother Kyle and my brother Max are in the same class at school).

Door just opened.  Oh great. It’s all over, we’ve been caught.  Busted.  We’ll be sent back to the lunch hall to sit on worn down stools and get our shoes stuck to the floor. And whoever it is, is gonna give us that “You thought you could outsmart me - ha I’m better than you” look.  Here it comes...

“Melanie!!  Come and give me a hug!!” A shrill voice just screamed

Ok, maybe we aren’t busted.

It’s Kelly.  I need to handle this tactically �" slowly get out from underneath the table, and walk cautiously towards her wide spread arms. Wow.  She’s actually hugging me, like properly squeezing me.  This is really awkward.  She smells like a Barbie doll and her hair is scratching my face.

“You and I really need to have a good talk.”  Ok, and now she’s whispered to me, and her breath smells of tropical chewing gum and desperation.  

This is such typical Kelly behaviour �" acting like we’re besties because she wants to find out who I’m upset with.  Oh well, when in Rome...

“Yeah, sure we can talk later.”

“Hey, what are you guys talking about?” Thank goodness Macy just broke the awkwardness between Kelly and me. 

“Nothing.  Don’t worry!” she’s replied with a shrug of her shoulders before turning around, mouthing “later” to me, and walking away. 

Poor Macy.  She’s looking over back at me for an answer.  She honestly can’t stand being left out of things, but I guess none of us can to be honest.  Time for some reassurance.

“Seriously don’t worry, Kelly’s just being Kelly!  She’s fine she just asked me if I wanted to talk.”

The classroom’s already full of people buzzing and talking.  It’s funny, as soon as 8:25 hits the school is filled with gossiping girls in plaid skirts and bright green shirts walking about everywhere.  Kelly’s already off somewhere with Megan so Macy and I thought that the best idea would be to search the halls for Brooke. 

Brooke is not a morning person at all, but she told Macy that she was coming in earlier than usual to finish off some homework.  Classic Brooke, second day back and she was already behind on her homework.  Macy and I find her where she usually tends to be in the mornings, on one of the library computers trying to get her homework for first period finished. 

It’s not anything big, it is only the second day back at school after all.  We had English yesterday and we had to fill out this sheet on the computer titled “Who am I?” and hand it in today.  It had the basic questions; Name, age, favourite colour, what do you want to be when you grow up, your goals for the year, a paragraph on your personality, and if you were an animal what would you be.

Macy and I arrived at a good time; Brooke’s collecting something from the printer in the corner.

“You finished?” I asked as we went over to meet her

“Just. Hey!” she yelled, just before chasing after Macy, who had snatched her English homework, and is now giving it a read.

Wow.  I need to rethink my English homework.  This is a typical Brooke, a rushed but yet very impressive piece of work.  I swear, Brooke could get away with anything.  She doesn’t revise for tests and yet she gets super high test results, she doesn’t listen in class and yet gets amazing report cards and she does her homework at school in the mornings and yet it’s always amazing quality.  That is probably the one thing Macy can’t stand about Brooke.  Macy works super hard to get good grades and her grades are great, but they are always a couple of marks behind Brooke’s. 

“My favourite colour is light blue because when translated to French it reads ‘bleu Clair’ and that is how I feel about my personality, clear - easy to see through - no secrets.” Macy read from Brooke’s sheet, “Brooke! What? Where did this come from?  It asked you about your favourite colour, not a full insight into the poetic world of Brooke!”

“It’s all a load of rubbish that I typed in like 5 minutes” Brooke shrugged, stealing her sheet back, “I just needed something to hand in for next period”

Macy’s facial expression.  Oh dear.  This is actually quite funny, Brooke is completely oblivious to how jealous Macy is of her last minute luck.  It’s been like this for as long as I can remember and to be honest, I completely understand where Macy is coming from, Brooke kind of flaunts the fact that she doesn’t revise and gets good grades after every single test we do, and it gets to the point where you just wanna go “Ok.  We get it.  You don’t revise.”

“Guys, hate to be a downer, but we have 2 minutes ‘til registration.” Macy’s staring at her watch in worry.  She’s trying to get perfect attendance with no late marks.

Luckily, we done it.

Our form teacher, Mrs Baldon was already there when we got in, and so was every other girl in our class, sitting at their desks talking.  She looked up and gave us a stern look,

“Don’t start off this year the way the three of you started off last year!” She moaned as we ran to our seats, “This is your third year of school here and this year I won’t let you off easy!  I’ll mark you in as absent if you’re not here to answer your name!”

We sat down and tried to keep serious expressions on our faces, but as soon as she looked away we burst out laughing.  We all got to choose where to sit in our form room yesterday.  We immediately took the row of 4 at the back, I’m on the end (As usual) next to Macy, who’s next to Brooke and Kelly’s on the other end.  Kelly leaned down on her desk so that she could see all of us (The problem with sitting at the end).

“Where were you guys?” She whispered down the line,

“You can talk!  We asked you if you wanted to come with us!  You were too busy with Megan” Macy whispered back

“Well sorry, but while you guys were messing about in the library, I was getting all of us invited to Chelsea’s birthday party!” She replied.  At the mention of Chelsea’s name, Brooke chimed back into the conversation;

“Chelsea?  Chelsea Billam?” Brooke asked,

You see, Chelsea Billam is in one of the other year nine classes, (There are 4 in total) and every year her parents pay for her to throw the most legendary birthday party ever.  She rents out a club, gets a DJ and a live band, has a food room filled with sweets and hires a professional photographer to take pictures of everyone then posts them on her very own party website.  The only problem is, the guest list is very exclusive, so unless you rank in the top 10 most popular year nine girls out of the 120 year nine girls that there are, you can’t expect an invite.  400 people go but the rest of them are year 10’s, year 11’s, girls that don’t go to our school and roughly 250 of them are boys.

“Yes, Chelsea Billam!  Who do you think I mean?” She asked as she rolled her eyes, “It’s on the 31^st October so the theme is Halloween!  You’ve got to go in costume!”

Macy was still sceptical, “But.....  How did we get invited?”

“I went with Megan to get her invite, and then Megan told Chelsea that she needed some for her friends so Chelsea gave Megan a bunch of invitations and there were spares!  You’re welcome!” Kelly smiled, “Here you go, 1, 2, 3, 4” she counted as she handed us the invites

“Oh.  My.  God.  What am I going to wear?” Brooke laughed,

“You should so wear that cute red halter neck that you bought when you, Macy and I went shopping that time!” Kelly exclaimed,

And then the conversation went, as it usually does, on to something that they did that I wasn’t invited too.