After the exam, I’m walking past the Drama noticeboard in the Performing Arts Centre foyer when I notice a pinned piece of notepaper waving in the breeze.
Community Notice
If you are interested in trying out for this year’s school musical production of The Boyfriend, please note the following conditions:
1. Lead role: Must be very pretty. The male lead will be cast from our brother school and we wouldn’t want him to have to kiss someone who is less than an eight (MINIMUM). Neither acting nor singing skills required.
2. Supporting role: Must be pretty, but not as pretty as the lead role. Must be funny, but not too funny. Acting and singing skills preferable, but not as important as other requirements.
3. Chorus: Must be able to sing. Don’t worry about acting ability or how attractive you are. If this is an issue we will make you wear a paper bag or something.
Signed: Amelia ‘telling it like it is’ Westlake
Nothing about this notice indicates Harriet’s or Nat’s involvement. I sure as hell had nothing to do with it. But here’s the thing. The notice – and I don’t know how else to put it – is just the kind of joke Amelia Westlake would make.
It occurs to me that I haven’t checked her Instagram feed for weeks. I go home and log on with the password Harriet gave me.
Two hundred and fifteen more followers! And the comments section is going mental. There’s the usual speculation about Amelia’s identity. But @amelia.westlake has been tagged in a whole lot of other pics as well.
Photographs of things Amelia has supposedly done. Things I don’t know about. Things I’m pretty sure Nat and Harriet don’t know about either.
For example: a picture of Amelia Westlake’s donation to Rosemead’s latest cupcake stall for Amnesty: a hundred chocolate cupcakes, with a note scrawled in one of the cake boxes: Great cause! Good luck, AW.
A stencil someone has sprayed on a wall in the school courtyard: the iconic outline of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, but with the initials ‘AW’ on his cap instead of a star.
An RSVP to Beth Tupman’s eighteenth birthday party:
Dear Beth,
Thank you so much for the invitation. I particularly appreciate it since I live in one of the ‘lesser’ North Shore suburbs and my father isn’t a member of your father’s golf club. I will probably stick out like a sore thumb. But I would be delighted to attend!
Amelia Westlake
My resistance falters and dies. I text Harriet.
Check out Amelia’s Insta feed.
She doesn’t text back.
Our trial exams finish on a Friday. I spend the weekend passed out on my bed with exhaustion, a state intermittently broken by thoughtful food deliveries from my mother and occasionally Graham, whose surprising adeptness at cooking pumpkin risotto initiates a low-level guilt trip about the whole hitting-him-with-a-frying-pan incident. I barely have the energy to check for texts from Harriet, although I still make the effort about thirty times every twenty-four hours. On Sunday night she finally makes contact.
Hi Natasha and Will. I hope you are well. Any chance you could meet me in the newsroom before school on Monday? I have an idea. Best, Harriet.
When I get to the newsroom I find Nat, who’s sporting some serious Arthur-inflicted gravel rash, on the moth-eaten couch. She’s in deep discussion with Harriet, who’s hovering above her.
‘We could book them online,’ Harriet is saying when I walk in.
‘No way! It needs to be untraceable.’
‘What needs to be untraceable?’ I ask.
‘Your intellect,’ Nat says, looking up. ‘Oh, hang on, it already is.’
Why is she being such a bitch to me? We haven’t even seen each other since exams started, so it’s not like I’ve had a recent opportunity to piss her off. Besides, Nat is more inclined to threaten me with water torture for a specific offence than get passive-aggressive on my butt.
‘Ha. Ha.’ I make my you-think-you’re-so-hilarious-when-in-actual-fact face.
‘You’re just jealous Harriet and I have been hanging out at her house together,’ Nat says, running a finger along her blistering chin. ‘We’re practically sisters-in-law now, aren’t we, Harriet?’
Harriet looks alarmed.
Nat switches her gaze to me. ‘We’re talking about Operation Formal, if you must know. This Friday is the night of nights.’
‘Hang on.’ I look between them. ‘What the hell is Operation Formal? I thought we agreed we had to kill off Amelia Westlake.’
I address this last part to Harriet, who looks away guiltily. ‘Well, yes,’ she says. ‘But with all this Amelia Westlake activity that’s been happening –’
‘You checked out her Instagram feed, then?’
She gives a business-like nod. ‘It’s perfect. Amelia Westlake has basically gone viral. It gives us at least a dozen alibis. There’s no way we can be linked to all of what’s happened. Which means that if we do pull off another Amelia-related prank, it’s not necessarily going to be linked to us, either.’
I take in what she’s saying. While I’ve been mourning Amelia’s death, Harriet’s been planning her revival, with one big difference. This time, I’m not invited to the party.
I can’t believe it. It was me who prompted her to check out the new activity on Instagram, and now she’s using it to sideline me. She knows I won’t be at the formal. She and Nat have probably been plotting this at leisure during study breaks on the Price’s pristine cream couches.
‘I take it you remember I’m banned from going.’
‘Of course I remember,’ Harriet says, glancing at Nat. Harriet looks nervous and excited at once. ‘That’s the beauty of this operation. This way, you can come.’
What is she on about? I never said I wanted to come. Although, if it’s going to be the scene of another Amelia Westlake strike against Rosemead, I could be persuaded. But how could Harriet have possibly engineered a formal that Croon wouldn’t kick me out of as soon as I turned up? Our beloved principal will be there to make the bloody welcome speech.
‘I don’t get it.’
‘Sit down, Will,’ Nat says.
I sit and listen as they talk me through it: every
