She hauls a table across the room, its legs screeching. ‘If you’re not prepared to do anything then please stop complaining,’ she says.
It takes me a moment to recover from such blatant hypocrisy. Another moment passes as I wait for her to finish manoeuvring the table against the back wall. She can’t be serious about calling out Hadley’s sexism in the school paper. It doesn’t exactly align with her blind allegiance to Rosemead.
I decide to call her bluff. ‘All right. You’ve convinced me. Let’s write an article.’
Harriet looks shocked. She sits down on the table with a thump. ‘I didn’t mean I wanted to help. I can’t be involved.’
Just as I figured. ‘Why not?’
‘I’m a prefect.’
‘That’s exactly why you should be involved,’ I argue, twirling my pen.
‘Oh my God. I can’t write something like that about a teacher,’ she says, swinging her legs. ‘Like him or loathe him, Coach Hadley is a notable public ambassador for Rosemead. He has put this school on the map.’
I study her. ‘Do you really believe that crap? Or are you just bunging it on?’
Harriet blinks. ‘Excuse me?’
‘Something tells me you know it’s bullshit. If you don’t, fine. But if you do …’
‘Then what?’
‘Then you’re a fucking coward, Harriet Price.’ My pen twirls off my fingers. It crashes to the floor and rolls across the room, landing right beneath her swinging feet.
Harriet bends over and snatches it up.
It’s worth eleven bucks, that pen, and I nicked it from Mrs Degarno’s art supply cupboard only an hour ago. I scrape back my chair.
When I reach her, she slips back onto the table and holds the pen away from me.
Talk about high maintenance. If she wants me to grovel, fine. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’ I put out my hand for the pen.
Harriet grips it tighter.
I sigh. ‘Calling you a coward was going too far.’
Looking me square in the eye, Harriet holds the pen high above her head.
I can’t lose that pen, dammit. There’s no way I can steal another one without Mrs Degarno noticing, and she’s already on my back about some missing sheets of pressed metal. I could tackle Harriet for it, of course, but I don’t need an assault complaint on my record. ‘Look,’ I say. ‘How can I write the article if you won’t return my pen?’
This works. Harriet lowers it. I grab it and go back to my seat. With my pen safe I’m free to walk out of here, and with Harriet refusing to help she has no grounds to stop me. But an angle for an article about Hadley has just occurred to me. And it’s not like there’s any need to rush home. I may as well write it down.
I turn over a fresh page in my notebook. As soon as I find my rhythm I’ve filled it with a lucid argument in no time. I read it over, make a few changes and read it again. It’s good, possibly very good. I walk it over to Harriet, who is now attacking graffiti on various pieces of furniture with a shredded tissue.
‘What?’ she asks when I hold out my notebook to her.
‘I need you to proofread it,’ I say. ‘You’re in Stream 1 English, aren’t you?’
Harriet hesitates, then takes it, as I knew she would. Control freaks can’t help but stick their fingers in. I watch her skim the article.
‘Way too ranty,’ she says, handing it back. ‘Hyperbole is never persuasive.’
Condescending, infuriating little – ‘You do it, then.’ I thrust my pen at her.
Harriet folds her arms, this time refusing to take it. ‘I’ve already told you I’m not getting involved.’ She nods at the sketches on the facing page of my notebook. ‘I see you like to draw.’
I bet nobody was ever this patronising to Frida Kahlo. ‘It’s for my major work, if you must know.’
‘Are you any good at cartoons?’
Some people just like bossing others around. It’s what sets the prefects in this world apart from the non-prefects. As it happens, I am good at cartoons. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Maybe you could do a cartoon instead.’
A cartoon about Coach Hadley and his sexist ways. It’s not the worst idea I’ve ever heard. He would be easy enough to caricature. But what would the picture be? And the caption?
‘I could give you an angle if that would help,’ Harriet says casually.
Now I see how it is. She wants the control without the responsibility. She’s unbelievable.
On the other hand, it’s not like I have any ideas of my own. ‘Fine,’ I say, making it clear I don’t give a shit one way or the other.
She talks me through her idea.
I should say at this point that Harriet Price isn’t known for her wit. Where some are ironic, she’s earnest. While others smirk, she weeps into a lace-trimmed handkerchief. Okay, I’ve never seen her weep, she’s always so upbeat, but I imagine that when she does succumb to her darker emotional side – if she has one at all – there’s a lace-trimmed handkerchief involved. ‘That’s quite funny,’ I concede.
I spend the next ten minutes in deep concentration, drawing up her idea. When I’ve finished, I hand it to Harriet and watch for her reaction.
A smile spreads across her face. ‘This is really good.’
Despite her condescending tone, I’m pleased. ‘You came up with it,’ I say generously.
‘Hardly. It was your idea to do something, not mine.’
‘But the cartoon was your idea.’
‘But you executed it. You deserve the credit.’
I look at it again, and get an excited flutter in my chest. ‘Can you write the caption? I reckon your handwriting would be a lot neater than mine.’
She
