How to Kill a Pea – by Lara Keys
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I have a secret.
No, not that kind. Jesus, you’re a perv.
No. Mum and Dad and Mary don’t know. They’d ruin it. Of course, they would. You know that as well as I do.
Twins! Adorable! Like two peas in a pod.
People say shit like that when they meet me and Mary. Well, old people say it. Kids wouldn’t. It’s stupid.
Mary smiles at them. Bang! Be. Ee. Ay. Em. A full-on blowtorch. That grin is squint- eyes kinda bright. She turns it on in an instant because she knows she’s beautiful.
I don’t smile.
I’m something else.
Come on, Honeydarlingdear. Where’s yaw smile?
They bend in the middle. Faces zoom in. Like, nose-hair-close.
From that moment I’m screwed. You smile at that point, right? Otherwise, people say you’re a sulk, or a sook, or depressed. It’s a whole thing.
Closed lips are never okay.
You can do better than that, Sweetiedarlingheart! Come on! Give us a proper smile.
So, yep. I do it. I stretch my mouth for them.
Shit.
That’s what their faces say then.
Shit. Not two peas at all. That is one perfect pea and that, that is one garbage pea.
They try and shake it off because they are good people really, or they aren’t really bad people. Not sure.
They say a nothing something then.
There you are. That wasn’t so hard, was it?
That wasn’t so hard?
Man, I mean really. We all know they’re traumatised.
People have bad feelings about me and Mary all the time.
Those twins. Seems cruel, doesn’t it? I mean, look at her.
Miss Gersten says that to Mr Kim at recess. One corner of a cheese sandwich rolls around her mouth, bulges her powdery cheek while she speaks. They’re watching Mary playing handball with her friends. The uneaten part of the sandwich points at my sister and then heads back to Miss Gersten’s gob for biting.
Gorgeous.
She says that with her mouth full.
If you’re wondering, I’m near the bubblers, being invisible. I’m not sooking or anything. I’m just imagining my yoghurt-coated plastic spoon stabbing their faces. It distracts me for a bit, their blood spurting onto Mr Kim’s white tennis shoes.
What?
Okay. Calm down, weirdo. No crime in thinking, right?
Hey, like remember when I wanted a trampoline?
I asked Mum about it when Dad was down at Magpies with the fellas. Her eyes drilled me. Her hair was still a hard tight ball at the base of her skull, her forehead red where the net cut into her.
Tell me, Shelly, how many chooks does a trampoline cost?
Her fork stabbed the air in my direction.
Jesus. Chicken costs. I should have been prepared for it. One day I’m going to sit down, figure it out. Then I’ll say something like, two thousand and fifty-three, Mum. That’s how many wings and legs you’ll be hacking off to get me what I want.
Instead, I shrugged.
Exactly.
She looked back to her sausages and snorted.
What the hell is the point of a trampoline anyway?
Mary smiled, looking right at me.
There’s no point, Ma.
Yeah right. Like she wouldn’t bounce on our trampoline.
That night I sat on the back step. It was still light, cos it was daylight savings. The washing line dangled in dandelions. Gash-pink rhubarb with giant wobbly leaves had swallowed a corner of the yard.
Did you know they’re poisonous? The leaves? Truly. Don’t go munching on the wrong bits.
Jason from over the fence was bouncing on his trampoline. He was just a smug head appearing and disappearing in the distance. Squeak, head, squeak, head, squeak. He was so busy jumping he didn’t even notice me.
Then, Jason’s always not noticing me – at school, on the bus, while he’s sniffing around Mary.
So, I started thinking. I watched his pimple head, and I thought about throwing a knife. Just a small one, like the one Dad uses for apple skins. I thought about it hitting Jason right in his ear. Going the ear would puncture his brain for sure. He might even bounce a couple more times because it would take a while for his nerves to realise the messages had stopped, and he’d collapse. Drop on the nylon mat. Imagine how easy it would be to clean that up afterwards. For the next owner, I mean. A spray with the hose would do it.
And it would be a shame to throw it away when there are two girls living just over the fence who could get some use out of it. People love silver linings.
Jesus. Seriously, calm the farm. Of course, I would never.
What was I saying?
Oh yeah, the secret! I am making other things happen. You swear you won’t tell, right?
Okay. So, you know Julie De Silva, who’s in my year at school? She had braces put on this term. Either her mum decided they were worth the number of dismembered chooks or Julie’s family doesn’t have a chicken currency system. She’s not my friend. What do I know.
My dad, for the record, laughed when I announced that I needed braces. He asked me what difference they would make anyway.
You can eat, can’t ya?
He didn’t wait for an answer. Just kept chewing on his pork chop. Snarled into the gristle even.
When Julie De Silva first had her braces put on, before she’d learned to move her mouth around them easily, I would watch her in class. She’d pinch her top lip between her thumb and first finger and lift it up and away from the metal where it was always getting caught. Then, she would drop that lip back in place. I’d imagine a tiny slapping sound that only she could hear.
Now. The gap between my front teeth is the biggest problem. Not the only one, trust me. There’s some bunching-up all over and a vampire tooth that’s grown at an angle. That tooth points towards the dangly bit at the back of my throat like it’s done something shocking. But the gap? It’s wide enough for a two-dollar coin to slide in like I’m a poker machine. One of my dad’s mates said that, calls me Shelly Lucky Legs. He always curls his top lip when he says it, and kind of snuffles into his beard.
I used to press chewing gum into the gap and turn my head this way and that really fast and smile into a mirror. I loved the smooth perfect – the blurry white niceness of it.
I tried a couple of different materials, did some proper experiments and everything, but in the end, I made my braces out of a hairpin. The wire-thin pins that Mum uses to hold her chicken gory hair in place just worked the best. With sharp-nosed pliers I straightened one out, and then curled it around into a loop, the two ends crossing like fingers wishing for something. Every night I have to fit it again, of course, open up the metal and rewrap it around my two front teeth. It takes a bit of force. I jam the wire in, and the teeth resist. Don’t know what’s good for them clearly. And then, the wire crashes into swollen gum.
Yeah, there’s a bit of blood, I suppose.
Then it’s about tightening. I keep twisting the two ends around each other and corkscrew them, like I’m tying up a garbage bag.
I tried a garbage bag tie too, actually, but they are really flimsy and sharp. They were hard to control and always snapping. I ended up with a million tiny punctures under my top lip.
So, I twist the pin until a groan comes out. Of me, obviously. And then I stop. My top lip gets caught, so I lift it with my thumb and forefinger and drop it back into place. I listen for a tiny slap. Sometimes I’m sure I hear one.
In bed, under the covers every night, I do the last step: I visualise my transformation.
That’s something I heard about on one of Mum’s shows. And all those TV women have amazing smiles.
Can you say it with me, ladies? Viz. You. Ell. Eyes. Yaw. Traaaaans. Formayshon.
You deserve it!
All the nerves in my mouth shout at me. It makes my eyes watery.
It’s not crying.
Jesus. Come on. I would never.
Before I close my eyes, I rub my tongue against my braces and enjoy the taste of hairpin and blood. Like a metallic mouthwash.
Sometimes I think about choking. In the dark. My braces could slip into my throat while I’m sleeping, down into where the tunnel for air is so narrow the tiniest little thing could block it off.
Don’t you worry but. It’s fine. When that thought happens, I just push it away, close my eyes really tight and think about peas. ▼
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