It's Yr Life Read online

  Wanna hear something I’ve never told anyone? I secretly fart near this girl I hate, Jenna. Then I walk off. Now everyone thinks she has a gas problem. HA! She’s an evil bitch. She’s also someone who pretends to be a planet-mender and doesn’t do shit … I’m not saying you are one of these people ’cause it sounds like you actually do stuff. The stuff she does and says is out of control. She spread a rumor that my dad hits my mom after she saw my mom with a black eye. She’s a total lying bitch and I HATE her.

  Anyway, who cares about that when I’ve found the FUNNIEST black bear facts to show your teacher!!!! She’ll die when she reads it. Check it out:

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  BLACK BEARS OF NORTH AMERICA

  the free encyclopedia

  Bears don’t hibernate, but avoid rough winter weather conditions. Their bodies live off stored fat and before disappearing from the cold, they eat a diet of berries, pine needles and their own hair. The berries work as a laxative to cleanse the digestive tract, the pine needles flush everything out and the hair forms an anal plug to stop the bears from eliminating during sleep.

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  Anal plug? THAT’S DISGUSTING!!!!!

  And do you guys really eat kangaroos? That’s gross.

  Thanks for bothering to email a weird girl back.

  Milla

  PS Do guys get off from spying on girls? Even non-hot smoking bitches? There’s a greasy handprint mark on my window. It’s either the gardener, my bro, the next-door neighbor or my dad. All choices are not really good ones. Hence the locks on my door and window.

  PPS OK, Jenna isn’t really a lying bitch. Dad did hit Mom. But even though it’s true, I don’t want everyone knowing, you know? Sage, who’s kind of the cool girl in our clique, avoided me for a week after Jenna started that rumor.

  * * *

  From: Milla Gainsberg [[email protected]]

  To: Sim [[email protected]]

  Subject: sleepy

  * * *

  Dear Sim

  Are you there? I just want to go to sleep even though it’s early. Ever get that feeling? Maybe I will. Just for a bit. Sleep. I know you’re next to reply but I couldn’t help myself. I can’t stop thinking about you and your parents.

  Do you have dreams about them? What do they look like in your dreams? Do you miss them even though you don’t remember them?

  I’m sorry I told you about my dad. It’s weird, huh. Too full on? I guess don’t write back if you don’t want.

  WHOA. SOMETHING JUST MOVED OUTSIDE MY WINDOW. IT’S TOO DARK FOR ME TO SEE.

  WAIT … TURNING LIGHTS OFF.

  It’s a guy, a tall guy, he’s jumping the fence … I’M FREAKING OUT!!! GOING UPSTAIRS TO TELL MOM AND DAD.

  * * *

  From: Sim [[email protected]]

  To: Milla Gainsberg [[email protected]]

  Subject: u ok?

  * * *

  what? r u serious? was there really a dude? r u ok? i pictured u guys living in some gated community called cedar springs or laguna downs with dobermans roaming round and an electric fence that neutralises dudes tryin 2 bust in. how’d a guy get 2 yr window? didn’t the secret service take him out? tell me what yr folks say.

  that’s really bad about yr dad. glad u felt like u cld tell me. is there some friend or someone in yr fam u can tell? someone who can help? or a number u can call? this must be happening in families everywhere every day. the helpline thing can b good. do me a favour and check it out?

  assuming yr still alive after the dude @ the window, i’ll respond 2 yr e’s …

  farts, chicks with beards, black bears and anal plugs. this is more like it. maybe we can b friends.

  wowie sauce is alcyhol in homerspeak. i haven’t watched the simpsons since i was, like, 7.

  i showed our english teacher yr email and she was digging the anal plugs 2. (not physically digging them.) ‘fascinating’ she said. i asked if we could IM rather than email but she didn’t know what it was + i couldn’t be bothered wising her ass up on evry tech advancement since 1932.

  she’s a freak. we call her rex (as in tyrannosaurus) cos she’s about 8 feet tall with missing teeth, bad breath and an attitude. i tried yr fart + run technique on her today. but she knew it was me and gave me 20 minutes in the sin-bin. got 2 hone my craft. wish we had marge for english. (mrs rogers. looks like marge simpson, but not as yellow.)

  hey, r u on myspace or facebook? they reckon 96% of teens in america r. i’m not. i’m kinda digging analogue living. sometimes technology freaks me. can u believe 96% of kids want 2 have freaks from round the world pretend to be their ‘friends’? and, in the process, give all their details 2 some multinational who can market stuff back at them? i’m gonna start a revolution. do u know any good alternative social networking sites? there’s makemesustainable.com which is kinda cool but a bit 2 noble or something. or there r a bunch of ‘i hate myspace’ sites but people talk more trash there than they do on myspace.

  dinner time. gotta go 4 a dumpsta-dive with deepspace and lauren. i just read a stat that half all food bought in the u.s. gets thrown out. households chuck out $43 billion worth of food. people look at us like we r animals but we don’t care. least we’re finding stuff rather than buying mountains of crap made by 5 yr olds working for 6 cents a month in the philippines. try searching 4 the ‘u.s. online dumpster directory’. tells u where 2 find all the tastiest morsels. it’s on 1 of the big freegan sites. dare u 2 take a dive.

  i read on the web that some guy, willie fulgear, went skip-surfing in hollywood and found 55 oscars in a bin! they gave him fiddy grand + 2 tix 2 the academy awards as a reward. how keen r u 4 a dive now?

  (goodbye in chinese. raj is teachin me some characters.)

  * * *

  From: Sim [[email protected]]

  To: Milla Gainsberg [[email protected]]

  Subject:

  * * *

  hey. me again. got 2 tell u something.

  lauren led us 2 this dumpster behind dario’s pizza joint. never been there b4. we found 2 pizzas. vego. smelt a little funky but a man’s gotta eat.

  then i found something else in the dumpster. somethin bad. and deepspace’s reaction was totally weird. she just sort of ignored it and scurried us out of there. made us promise not 2 say anything. lauren + i were saying let’s go 2 the cops but deepspace has these issues with police.

  i don’t know if i can even tell u what went down. it was f’d up. i secretly filmed it for my doco. gonna go watch it back.

  where r u? what happened with the dude @ the window. r u dead?

  * * *

  From: Milla Gainsberg [[email protected]]

  To: Sim [[email protected]]

  Subject: e me back immediately

  * * *

  WHAT THE HELL? WHAT WAS IT? ARE YOU JUST MAD THAT I DIDN’T GET BACK TO YOU ABOUT THE HANDPRINT GUY AND YOU’RE MAKING DUMB STUFF UP?

  E ME BACK ASAP.

  PS And I was wondering if you could maybe call your Australian helpline and ask them what I should do about Dad. I’m too freaked to call one here myself. Especially after the guy was spying on me outside my window. Could you? Would you mind? That would be really cool if you could.

  As for who it was? I have no idea. But my dad was not upstairs when I told Mom. Why would my dad be spying on me? Do you think he’s got my computer tapped? Maybe he’s reading all my emails? Maybe he knows that I’ve told you he hits Mom? (I think my dad has all our computers and phones bugged … little bro got grounded for something right after he got off the internet last week. I’m POSITIVE my dad was tracking what he wrote.) Don’t think window guy was Dad though. Think he was out somewhere being an asshole, ’cause Mom looked like she’d been crying.

  PPS Mom said she’s going to get a maintenance guy to put in a sensor light so weirdos won’t spy on me anymore. Dad thought I was just making it up – tool.

  PPPS E me back!<
br />
  * * *

  From: Sim [[email protected]]

  To: Milla Gainsberg [[email protected]]

  Subject: help

  * * *

  m.

  gotta be quick, in library, some dude’s waiting for the computer. i’m gonna ring our helpline and suss this abuse thing for u. i’ve been there and it sucks. makes u feel kinda sick all the time not knowing when it’s gonna happen. i ended up bein taken away from those foster parents but i still feel guilty i didn’t do anything 2 help my foster mum. even though she was a total pig 2 me she didn’t deserve 2 be treated bad.

  i’m on it. don’t stress.

  s-bend

  * * *

  From: Milla Gainsberg [[email protected]]

  To: Sim [[email protected]]

  Subject: adults are assholes

  * * *

  Sim

  You never told me that you had that happen, too. The abuse thing. Now I kind of feel dumb. You do know how I feel. Sorry you had to go through that and I’m sorry it was with people you were supposed to be able to trust. ASSHOLES. Tell me where they live and I’ll send someone around with a bat. (Bro and I are watching re-runs of The Sopranos. We have it turned up to max volume to block out the olds yelling. I JUST WISH THEY WOULD SHUT UP!)

  I don’t get the hitting thing. It’s not like they think it’s OK, right? They know it’s not OK, so why do they do it? And afterwards, don’t they feel bad? And if someone hit me, I wouldn’t want to be around them so why do they stay? Why does my mom stay? I know this is weird, but I get more mad at my mom than my dad. ’cause I feel like she lets it happen. That’s really mean, right?

  Wish I could come hang out at your house. Are you close to the beach? We could hang out there and you could teach me to surf. Are you a good surfer? Are there sharks? Have you seen anyone get eaten by a shark?

  Gotta go.

  M

  PS Ever hear about that prehistoric shark? Guess how it died? Yup, humans. See if you can see footage of it on the web. Search for ‘prehistoric shark japan’. I’m still not even sure it’s real. It kind of looks like a model getting pulled along by fishing wire or something.

  PPS WHAT WAS IN THE DUMPSTER? PLEASE TELL ME.

  * * *

  From: Milla Gainsberg [[email protected]]

  To: Sim [[email protected]]

  Subject: tell me what it was

  * * *

  Sim, what the hell was in the dumpster? I need to know. Why haven’t you emailed me back? Did something else bad happen? Please email me back. I’m going nuts. I think it was a baby. Was it? I just read a play in drama class about a girl who dumps her baby in a dumpster. But then again, those people you stay with sound pretty caring and I don’t think they’d just run away from that, right?

  Wow, that’s gross. Dumping your baby in the trash. Ever seen a movie called Stephanie Daley? She does that. Dumps her baby when she’s, like, sixteen, and pretends she didn’t know she had it or something. I was only kind of watching. It was one of Dad’s screenings a few years back. He took me to the premiere to make it look like he loves me. What a moron. The whole time I felt sick. Just having to sit next to him made me wanna puke. He kept trying to talk to me about stuff and you could tell he didn’t give a shit. He just wanted the people around us to think we have a good relationship. As if. (And it kind of backfired on him ’cause people thought it was inappropriate to bring your thirteen-year-old daughter to a movie about teen pregnancy – ha, sucked in, Hairplug Man!)

  Heard from the helpline? Maybe Oz help is better than U.S. help? Bet it is.

  M

  PS WHAT WAS IN THE DUMPSTER? PLEEEEEEEASE TELL ME.

  * * *

  From: Milla Gainsberg [[email protected]]

  To: Sim [[email protected]]

  Subject: everything cool?

  * * *

  Where are you? Are you OK?

  So, you don’t have to call the hotline thing if you don’t want to. I get it. It’s cool. My dad hasn’t hit my mom for a while, so maybe it’s all gonna get better. They even went on a ‘date’ last night and Mom came home looking really happy.

  What was in the dumpster? You still haven’t told me. Make sure you tell me next e, OK? Or I’ll go postal on your ass.

  My brother is acting really weird. I walked into his room and he had his iPod on and didn’t know I was behind him. He was punching the shit out of his old stuffed bear, Mickey. He loved that bear. It was his favorite toy.

  I think he’s using heaps of pot now.

  Thanks for the photos of freegans and stuff. But you still haven’t sent one of you. What do you look like? I haven’t got a good one of me. I’ll send you one when I get one.

  Please write back.

  Milla

  PS The woman next door has sex in her pool. I can see it and hear it. Does she not care that I can see? My bedroom is right next to her fence and I can see through to the pool. Welcome to Hollywood. I wonder if I should say something to her? I wonder if she’d even be embarrassed? She doesn’t seem to care about anything. Is this against the law?

  PPS For debate team we found out about the ADA, American Disabilities Act. Did you know there used to be an ‘ugly’ law in America right up until the 1970s? Try and wiki it if you have time. PPPS Does pizza from a dumpster taste weird? I don’t know if I could eat something from a dumpster. E me soon.

  PPPPS THINGS I LIKE FOR YOUR LIST:

  I like the moon. Late at night when everyone is asleep but me. Reading books and plays. (DON’T LAUGH.) Flying on planes by myself knowing that no-one can call me, talk to me, or harass me. (With other passengers, just no-one I know, you know?) I love the squirrels on my street. They love messing with the dogs on my street. It’s hysterical.

  A while back there was a photo in the news of a baby squirrel that fell out of a tree and this mother dog rescued it and brought it up as one of her puppies. How cool is that? It was big news here. All over the TV and internet. You can probably google pictures of it. Sooooooo cute.

  PPPPPS Sorry for going on and on and on and on but you said you wanted facts. NOW TELL ME WHAT WAS IN THE TRASH? I HAVE TO KNOW.

  * * *

  From: Sim [[email protected]]

  To: Milla Gainsberg [[email protected]]

  Subject: snakes

  * * *

  hey

  sorry to leave u hangin but some pretty bizarre stuff’s been going down here. after the dumpster thing the other night no-one’s really been talkin + deepspace has been acting weirder than usual and pretending nothing’s goin on, but it so is. i just don’t know what.

  i tried talking 2 lauren bout it but she’s such a fricking nutty chick. she just smiles at me while i talk to her and then says stuff like ‘yr so cute’ and i’m like ‘whaddya mean?’ and she says ‘yr just cute when yr worried that’s all’. and i’m like ‘what’s cute about finding … in a bin’ and she says something like ‘chill, man’ and then she tells me i can come listen 2 music in her room which totally turns me on (i gotta send u a photo of this chick) + she knows it. but i’m 2 freaked about the bin thing + 2 stoopid 2 go in there and get busy with her so i say no. go figure, man.

  sorry i haven’t rung the helpline yet either. it’s late here now so i’ll do it 2morrow nite. promise. i really wanna know how u can make things better 4 yr fam.

  yr bro’s smokin pot, huh? heaps of kids in my year do 2. some dudes do aerosol cans. it’s not my gig though. i get 2 sketchy + i’m 2 juiced about stuff 2 sit round eatin doritos, watching futurama reruns + talking crap. i know guys who won’t even leave the house cos they’re so sketchy. maybe yr bro’s bored. or maybe if u sort the stuff with yr folks he’ll stop smokin? how old’s this kid? isn’t he still in nappies?

  sex in the pool. rock on. i’d be shooting it. who wld want 2 stop that? unless she’s like ninety. maybe u shld yell out ‘hey kn
ock it off biatch. i’m trying to sleep’ + hide + see what happens? or maybe film it + put it on utube then send her a postcard with the link on it. that’ll stop her pretty damn fast. or maybe it won’t? she might dig it. and it might also be illegal. possibly not worth getting sent 2 compton for.

  gotta go. i can hear raj arguing with deepspace in the kitchen. they think me + lauren r asleep. i wish this thing would go away. i’d been sleeping heaps better cos the rats r gone. raj put a python up there. heaps of people do it round here. but now i stay up all night lookin out the window @ the lighthouse beam spinning overhead thinking bout what we saw in the dumpster. and i can hear the snake slurping round in the roof. not great but quieter than rats.

  out.

  sim

  * * *

  From: Sim [[email protected]]

  To: Milla Gainsberg [[email protected]]

  Subject: googleganger

  * * *

  ps it’s later now. house is quiet. can’t sleep. plugged milla gainsberg into google + did u know u don’t have a googleganger? (someone who’s googleable with the same name as u but isn’t actually u?) yr like a prime number or something. totally yr own dawg.