CW 36: Sweet 16

I wrote this today as part of my commitment to the Clarion West Write-a-thon. A dedication means that person sponsored it by donating to CW, and then provided me a writing prompt that sparked the piece. All the story slots are sold, but if you are enjoying the pieces, please consider a donation to show your support.

Enjoy.

Sweet 16

For Michael Pardy. Thank you for your support of me and Clarion West.

Valerie was mad for fashion and lifestyle magazines. All the girls in the caravan park read them, even though no one could afford trendy clothes or $20 mascara. Most of Val’s friends loved the celebrity mags as well, but she wasn’t interested in what boy bands or TV stars were doing. She was too busy planning her own stylin’ life away from her parents house — well, it wasn’t a house at all, was it? It was a bloody stupid caravan made to look like a house with a little porch, and some flowers in the dirt patch out front that died and had to be replanted every year because it was too bloody hot in Adelaide. Once she got out of there, she was never coming back.

Tick tock, counting down the clock. Two days until her 16th birthday. She could leave school. She could leave the caravan. She could get a job in Melbourne and live in a bedsit with girls who would teach her how to find flash clothes at great bargains, and what clubs were the best, and they would all have boyfriends with good jobs, boyfriends who were older, maybe even 25, who had their own apartments you could move into and buy appliances and a lounge suite and then you were on your way.

She sat at the kitchen counter with her pile of magazines, her scissors, and her clip box, cutting out the best makeup tips and ideas for classy home decor and filing them under the tabs she had created. Office Clothes/Face. Evening Clothes/Face. Kitchen Cabinet Organization. Parties and Entertaining. Holiday Destinations. Bedroom. It was important that the bedroom be sensual and welcoming without being too feminine, because men wanted to be with women without being reminded of them all the time.

And the magazines had given her great tips for her Sweet 16 Party. Don’t have an entertainment-friendly home? Find an unusual and exciting location that shows your individualism! Val planned her party at the bowling centre where her dad worked as night manager, and her boyfriend Derek was the top scorer on the car wash team. They would have half the lanes for themselves, with a red rope blocking off the section, and a DJ, and a mirrorball, and free food from concessions, and they could bowl and dance all night, and at midnight her dad had promised her a bottle of fizzy wine.

And she knew. She knew that Derek’s bowling shirt would have a mustard stain, that her dad would make an embarrassing speech about My little girl, that lots of the kids from school were only coming for the free bowling. She knew. But she was going to make it the best bowling dance Sweet 16 Party they’d ever see in their entire stuck-in-Adelaide lives. And then she and her clip box were off to something better.

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But it all went wrong right away. The red rope was just colored twine, so thin that it was hard to see, and people kept trying to walk through it and pulling the stanchions down. The sound system was wired so that bowling announcements from the public lanes interrupted the DJ music, even when she and Derek were dancing to Their Song and everyone else was watching. It was supposed to be beautiful: the darkened dance floor, the mirrorball sparkling light down on them like stars, wrapped in Peter Cetera’s voice and Derek’s arms. It was supposed to be the moment when all this was almost all over, and for the three minutes of the song it was safe to let herself love everything about the life she was leaving. But this was the life she was leaving, the life where some insurance adjuster’s strike was more important than a Sweet 16, where the ordinary always overcame the special.

And some of the boys brought flasks, and soon the punch was practically hallucinogenic, and all Val wanted was that three minutes: so when Derek said Let’s go sit in my car, she did, and when he said Let’s not use one this time, let’s make it special, she said okay. And while she in Derek’s back seat, midnight came and went and she missed her dad’s speech and the fizzy wine, and two weeks later she missed her period.

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She didn’t sleep at all the first night she came home with the baby to the caravan. Will you be all right? her mum said, and Val said yes. After her parents went to bed, she got out her clip box and went through every article and every photo, one at a time; the smiling girls with their straight white teeth and glittery bracelets and tanned, fit men at their sides, the cunning cosmopolitan flats with exposed brickwork and track lighting, the Ten Best Places to Kiss in Melbourne.

Tick tock, said the clock. The baby would be awake soon. Val closed the clip box, and turned to the pile of parenting magazines, and began to read about diaper bags.