Notes from the Teenage Underground by Simmone Howell

Author:Simmone Howell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Published: 2007-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Little Happenings

All through exam week the little Happenings kept right on happening.

On Tuesday during economics, Mira fell backward off her chair, not once but three times, and each time Lo let rip the swanee whistle she had tucked in her knee-highs.

Afterward, I praised them: “Very Buster Keaton.” But inside I was thinking, Still stupid. I didn’t see what Mira flashing her undies had to do with making people think. Surely there was a line between art and um, arse? I wondered what Bev would have to say about it. I remembered how outraged she was when that British artist started putting farm animals in formaldehyde. “He should live here,” she said. “He could build a palace out of roadkill. There’s no difference between that and those hideous Kangaroo purses they flog to tourists at the Vic Market.”

On Wednesday it was record hot. When the air-conditioner cranked on during the literature exam, a tsunami of duck feathers poured forth from the vents. Several students had sneezing fits. This was better. More poetic. It would have looked great on-camera, but there was no way I could smuggle my third eye into the exam hall. At lunchtime, Lo and I returned to the scene of the crime. I sneakily filmed two year-ten girls sweeping up the mess. They stopped every few minutes to sing into their broom handles. Lo was leaning with one foot against the wall like a New Romantic. “The feathers symbolise flight, escape, new hope,” she said, cracking a sarcastic smile for the camera.

Later that day, halfway through cultural studies, Lo took off her red-checked scarf and spread it across her desk. Then she brought roquefort and red grapes from the depths of her tunic pocket and began to have herself a little picnic. The examiner was so stunned she almost forgot to confiscate the contraband.

Thursday afternoon, art history exam: Mira took off her school jumper and kept right on going. Strip poker without the pack. She had on her boy-catcher and a pair of knickers that had frangipannis and the words “Friday, Friday, Friday” printed on them. Typical Mira, primed for the weekend.

That was the one that did it. Outrage ensued. The examiner marched Mira out, and there was definitely something rock-starrish in her pose. Sarah Ferris tried to play deputy, sitting at the examiner’s desk, clapping her hands together. “Pens down until she comes back. Pens down!” but no one was listening to her. Everyone was at the window watching Mira giggling and jiggling her way across the quadrangle—straight to the principal’s office. Lo shouted, “Give ’em hell, baby! Work it! Work it!”

• • •

After school, all elevenses were rustled up for an emergency assembly where words such as “vandals,” “show-offs,” and “insurgents” were bandied about. The term Lo particularly liked was “creative hooliganism.” The school head looked tired. Sharon-as-wingman shot some pointed looks up the back, where Lo and I were sitting, but that was as far as it went—publicly.

After the assembly she pulled me up.

“Do you know anything about this?”

“Not overly,” I hedged.

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