Girl Next Door - Alyssa Brugman [4]
I've tried to raise this with her, but she still just talks to me as if I'm a four-year-old. That's when she talks to me at all, which is less and less lately. Hello!
2
EMBARRASSING
Here are the three most embarrassing things that have ever happened to me in reverse order. Actually, no. First I'll say an embarrassing thing that happened to someone else in my presence.
Back when my mother first applied for me to go to The Finsbury School she agreed to host a fundraiser, which involved putting on lunch for the ladies, holding a silent auction and getting a speaker – someone who'd done a solo round-the-world yacht trip, or hopped up Mt Everest on one leg, or door-knocked for the Red Shield Appeal in the western suburbs.
It was unusual because Mum didn't get involved with the parent groups or alumni much at our other schools. She did when we were in primary school, but then I think she got burnt because neither Will nor I was the Dux, or in the top ten. We didn't get any sporting colours either, or even one of those courtesy awards they give to suck-ups. At Finsbury though, that stuff didn't seem to matter. Getting in was the important bit.
At the time, Tanner, Jasmina and I had a friend called Sapphire. She said she couldn't come to the fundraiser because she was working that weekend, and we all looked at each other because none of us worked. We might go into our parents' work and play around with the photocopier and flirt with office boys, but that's not really the same as . . . well, most jobs anyway.
So when the caterers came to set up their kitchen in our cabana, I was so horrified, because there was Sapph in an apron and a black-and-white chequered hat. She obviously didn't know that it was my house either. We tried to make a joke of it. It was embarrassing, because I wasn't going to offer to help unless I was going to get paid for it, and she couldn't stop working and just hang out, so basically I had to sit there and watch her working until the others arrived. When Sapph came around with the trays, we'd talk about everything except how Sapph was serving us as if she was our slave, but after a while I noticed Tanner holding out her glass for Sapph to fill. Tanner and Jasmina never said anything, but from then on at school they would do stuff like hand Sapph their rubbish and say, 'Be a doll and clear this away, would you, Sapph?'
Nice.
Anyway, back to my list.
Number three. In year five I was asked to represent my school at a creative arts day. It was exciting because I didn't have to wear my school uniform so I wore my jeans and my favourite t-shirt at the time, which said, 'thumb-wrestling champion'. Is thumb-wrestling macho? I thought it was a unisex sport, like equestrian, except much cheaper.
I didn't know anyone else there so I kept quiet and sat by myself. At little lunch a girl came over and sat next to me. She was weird, teasing me and smiling all the time, and then she said her friend had sent her over to tell me that I was cute.
So I asked who the friend was, and she pointed to a girl. She was grinning and giggling with her friends, which was weird, but then I realised that they thought I was a boy.
I was so embarrassed. I could have pretended to be a boy for the rest of the day (although I still wouldn't have gone out with her), but the teacher kept saying my name.
Jenna-Belle is not a boy's name. There was no mistaking it – even in this day and age when most parents give their kids a surname for a first name, and then hyphenate their two last names, so every kid in the class sounds like a firm of chartered accountants.
Number two. I made a joke about hairy nipples.