I was always the girl that no-one wanted to be seen with at school. You know the type; quiet, nerdy, and more often be seen reading a book than talking with another human being. Even after I grew out of my nerdy stage, I still wore a proverbial banner around my neck that read ‘WARNING: Preconceived notions attached. Speak to at own risk.’ It wasn’t the glasses I wore; I ditched them for contacts in year nine. It wasn’t my hair, either; I must’ve tried a thousand different styles above a thousand different smiles in my search to fit in, but nothing worked. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.
Fitting in wasn’t the only problem that dogged my schooling though, of course; as they say, bad things come in threes. My childhood was practically a montage of violence, alcohol and failure.
A father whose mid-life crisis drove him to drink. The empty bottles, scattered across the kitchen table every morning, that drove us to poverty. The half-empty paychecks that drove my father to anger. The undirected rage that drove my father to hit my mother. The beatings that drove my mother to drink like my father. The alcohol that drove my parents to separate at the end of year eleven.
And so on and so forth; a classic case of self-perpetuating domestic violence. My floor-scraping grades could be blamed away as the fault of the situation at home, but for the sake of the whole ‘bad things come in threes’ thing it can have its own little place in my book of mishaps.
As if things weren’t bad enough on their own, I had little miss Clarabelle Daisy to make me look all the worse by comparison.
Clara is one of those people who must have a guardian angel hanging over their shoulder. Everyone thought so – even she claimed to have heard an angel singing to her when she cried this one time in year five. There was no real way to prove or disprove that though, because little miss never cried apart from that one time. I mean, why would she have to? She lived the perfect life.
By virtue of her radiant beauty and polished smile the other girls in our year – we had to be in the same year at school, of course – elevated her to ‘unofficial’ head of the ‘unofficial’ popular group, whose word was pretty much law amongst anyone with any hope of being one of the ‘pretty girls’. And, by virtue of her flawless grades and selfless after-school charity work, the teachers elevated her to the position of Head Girl in year twelve – which came as a surprise to no-one, by the way. It’s little surprise she had such a good academic and community track record; her parents were as wealth as the Catholic Church, so – unlike me – she didn’t need to get a job, but could spend her time studying and giving starving African children bread or some crap.
Oh, and partying. Don’t forget the partying, though I can only guess how much time she spent on that. I was never invited to any.
As the end of year twelve loomed into view and I was still friendless and failing – not to mention torn up over my parent’s recent divorce – I decided that something needed to change. I’d had enough of always being at the bottom while Clara sailed effortlessly above the clouds. There’s only so much one can take – and twelve years is way past that limit.
So in term three, I decided to make my way down to my local library and loan out some self-help books. Not those trashy, vain self-help books for people who don’t actually need help; I was looking for the heavy duty stuff for serious people. It took some hunting, but eventually I found some battered old books that looked like they would do the trick. I took them out and took them home, and dedicated as many hours between coming home from school and the tear-soaked, crumpling mess that was dinner with my mother as I could find to following their steps to the letter.
And it worked. I managed to pull my grades together enough to pass my exams and get into a course in business management at university. Everyone’s jaw hit the floor when they heard – but that wasn’t really what mattered to me, as nice as it was to be able to know people are talking about you behind your back in a good way for once.
No, what really mattered to me was the way people saw me once I was in university. I made a good first impression there, and kept it up with ease; friends came slowly but surely, as did the high grades. I was doing something I enjoyed and I was doing it in an environment that I felt comfortable in. Now it was me that everyone said had the guardian angel over my shoulder; I moved out of home in my first year at uni, and my personal life settled down immensely as a result.
Clara, on the other hand – little miss Clarabelle Daisy – took a turn in the other direction, though. Her grandmother died a few weeks before our final year twelve exams, and she bombed out horribly. Her application for a re-sit was rejected to boot. She didn’t get into the law degree she and everyone else had expected she would, and with no other plan – who would have expected the little miss not to get what she wanted? – she drifted aimlessly for months. Last I heard she’d gotten involved with drugs and alcohol; rumour had it she was running out of money – her parents had cut her off from their supply, see – and some slack-jaws were spinning tales that she was whoring herself out to guys for money. Even the most gullible didn’t believe that last one of course, but there are still some who say it’s only a matter of time.
Still, she should be thankful. She got a good childhood; no worries or cares, always kept safe and snuggled by her guardian angel. Now it’s my turn; I want some of that security and prosperity that she always took for granted. So what if her life’s falling apart just as mine’s finally coming together? I survived without any sort of angel watching over me, so she should be able to do the same. She was always the stronger one, after all; the smarter one, the prettier one, the richer one.
Besides, I’ve grown quite fond of my attic angel. I do love sitting under the trapdoor and listening to him sing all through the night.
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