First, the word went around our year. Milly told Emily who told Breeanna who told Brittnee. Soon everyone knew. “Tiger said they’re definitely going to choose someone else to join them, but only one person.”
“Really? Only one?”
“Definitely only one.”
No one could stop talking about it. Hayley, a girl whose dad was a bookmaker at the races was even taking odds on who it might be. Sam drove me crazy. She was on the phone for three hours one night going through all the names.
“It might be Leigh, but she’s probably not cool enough. You know how she wears her bag, always about to drop off her shoulder. I think they’d think she’s a bit too messy. It could be you. But probably not. Because, you know, you’d have to get your teeth fixed.”
I slid my tongue around my mouth. My teeth were definitely a problem. It wasn’t that they stuck out or anything. It wasn’t even that I had braces. It’s just that for some unknown reason my enamel was stained.
Samantha first pointed it out when I was 11 and I made a decision to never smile in a photograph again until they were fixed. When Mum noticed my closed lips in every picture she wanted to know what was going on.
“It’s really not that bad, Coco,” she said, staring into my mouth. “I mean, the colour is a little bit uneven, I guess. Maybe over here a bit. But it’s no worse than anyone else.”
When I cried, she looked again and then compared with Charlie’s teeth.
“Well, I suppose there is a bit of difference,” she said after about five minutes.
“Yeah, but really?” said Charlie. “Is it that much of a problem?”
I stamped my foot.
“Seriously, you’d have to be blind not to notice how ugly they are. I really need to get them fixed. Please let me? Please!”
“Okay,” said Mum. She said it in that way that people do when they’re kind of giving up and giving in. “Oh-kaaaay. I’ll talk to the dentist and we’ll see what they can do. It’s not the kind of thing that you should get done before you’re a teenager though. You’ll have to wait until you’re at least 13.”
Thirteen was this year. And I had plans. But they would still have to wait just a little longer, because Samantha hadn’t actually stopped talking yet.
“It might be Georgia, except have you seen how she’s dip-dyed her hair? Probably not. Maybe Savannah. I mean, she’s pretty and she’s tall and she’s smart, but not too smart if you know what I mean... I’m not saying she’s dumb, right? She’s just not a brain box nerd.”
“Sam, I’ve got to go to bed,” I said eventually. “My mum’s going to come up here and take the phone out of my hand if you don’t get off. We can talk about it tomorrow. Just try to get some sleep, okay?”
We’d all been going nuts for a week before Saffron and Tiger picked about five people they thought possibly might be good enough and wrote each person a little note, inviting them to have a ‘conversation’ over lunch.
Samantha and I both got notes. We were both ecstatic.
“You see?” she said. “My strategy worked. We didn’t follow too closely, but we didn’t separate off from the group too much. They can see that we’re individuals, but not like, crazy individuals. How are we going to do our hair? It will have to be perfect. This is it. This really is it. This is make or break for us.”
I still had a question in my head about odd numbers and even numbers and two of us and four of them but I didn’t say it out loud. Perhaps Saffron would see what great friends Samantha and I were and pick both of us. Anyway, I had other things to think about, including my teeth and how I would have to be careful not to smile too much.
On the day of my ‘conversation’ I had to go over to their seat by myself and answer questions from all four of them about things like clothes and music and shoe designers. Samantha had spent the whole week reading recent copies of fashion and gossip magazines and she had tried about 20 different hairdos over the weekend before she finally settled on one that to me looked just like Saffron’s messy, straight do. I wasn’t going to tell her so though. She’d already panicked for about 72 hours straight.
She panicked for another 72 hours while the girls made their decision. By the end of those three days Charlie was giving me grief at home.
“Auditions? To become a member of a group?” She was incredulous. “Are they for real? What’s so special about them anyway?”
I got defensive. “Just because you don’t care about these things doesn’t mean they aren’t important,” I said. “These girls are like the pinnacle of Year Eight. Everyone wants to be like them. If I get to be in the group, that’s pretty much my social life sorted out for the rest of high school. I’ll be the best there is. I mean, it’s all just basically a competition, right? If I get in, I’ll have won.”
“Unless you get too fat, of course,” she said, raising one eyebrow at me. I tried to raise mine back at her, but my face failed and she burst out laughing. I screwed up my nose at her. At least I could do that. It’s so unfair. How come some people can raise an eyebrow and others can’t?
“But seriously,” I said, flopping myself over on the patchwork quilt on Charlie’s bed. “I don’t think they’ll pick me anyway. Not being vain or anything, but I’m too pretty to be their makeover kind of project, and being realistic, other people know more about fashion and stuff than me so they will probably choose them.” I thought for a minute. “It would be the coolest birthday present ever though…”
Yes, Charlie and I were going to turn 13 in a week’s time. But what I hadn’t told her was that if I was picked, I’d have to go to a day spa with Saffron and the whole group on the actual day of our birthday.
I wasn’t going to mention it before I had to. Charlie would be upset if she thought that I was hoping to do something else on our birthday. Every single year for 12 years we’d woken up together, opened our presents together and had a party together. I wasn’t looking forward to possibly telling her that I wanted to go away with my potential new friends.