Review of Australian Fiction Volume 14 Issue 4 Read online

  Review of Australian Fiction, 14:4

  Volume Fourteen: Issue Four

  Tansy Rayner Roberts & Stephanie Lai

  Zutiste, Inc.

  Review of Australian Fiction, 14:4 Copyright © 2015 by Authors.

  Contents

  Imprint

  Fake Geek Girl Tansy Rayner Roberts

  The Dàn Dàn Miàn of the Apocalypse Stephanie Lai

  Published by Review of Australian Fiction

  “Fake Geek Girl” Copyright © 2015 by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  “The Dàn Dàn Miàn of the Apocalypse” Copyright © 2015 by Stephanie Lai

  www.reviewofaustralianfiction.com

  Fake Geek Girl

  Tansy Rayner Roberts

  Hebe + Phoenix Boy = OTP

  TUESDAY

  My sister Holly is a fake geek girl. A card-carrying, blatant, ‘I pretend to care about superheroes to get attention in public’ fake geek girl.

  It’s not like the world doesn’t know this. Her friends know. My friends know. The fans of her band know, though I suspect a lot of them assume that the name of the band is ironic.

  Maybe I should start again.

  Holly Hallow is the lead singer of a band called Fake Geek Girl. You might have heard of them—at the very least, you’ve probably seen the vid of ‘Witches Roll Dice, Bitches,’ which went viral last summer, and there are quotes from their classic song ‘Someone is Wrong on the Internet’ all over Tumblr and Mirrorweb.

  If you go to Belladonna University, there’s no question that you’ve heard of the band. They play every Friday night down at Medea’s Cauldron, and whether you’re in the College of the Real or the College of the Unreal, you’ve seen my sister screaming out at you from one of the flyers posted around campus.

  I couldn’t do that. Holly’s been singing in public since we turned four, when no one got to the ‘Happy Birthday’ song early enough in the party for her liking and she turned it into a thirty-minute solo. I hate attention. I hate people looking at me. If I had my own way I would slide through life, three steps behind Holly, deep and safe in her shadow. It’s comfortable there. I have snacks, and a reading list.

  Before you ask (and everyone always asks, once they figure it out), I really don’t mind that everything important in my life has been turned into one of Holly’s geektastic songs. I don’t mind that whenever she hangs out with me and my friends, it’s to catch up on the memes and games and trending topics and everything we care about, so she can pour it into lyrics.

  Her drummer is one of my best friends in the world. Sage was my first boyfriend, and the reason we broke up is Fake Geek Girl’s third most popular song of all time. If I wasn’t okay with all this, I would have moved to Bolivia by now. Or Mars.

  No, the part that bothers me is that it’s really hard to be a dedicated wallflower when your IDENTICAL TWIN SISTER is a campus celebrity. An openly bisexual, super confident campus celebrity, whose public persona screams ‘approach me, buy me drinks, hey let’s flirt a little.’

  Conversations like the one that happened the other day in the Desiree O’Dowd Unreal Library are pretty much a daily occurrence.

  PRETTY BOY WITH PHOENIX TATTOO: Hey, ‘Last Straight Girl in the City.’

  HEBE (sighing loudly): I’m not her.

  PHOENIX BOY: Okay…

  HEBE: You saw the band, right?

  PHOENIX BOY: Yeah, last Friday night at the Cauldron. You were brilliant, I really liked…

  HEBE: Still not her. Holly Hallow is my twin sister. I’m Hebe.

  PHOENIX BOY: You’re not the Fake Geek Girl singer.

  HEBE: No, I just look like her.

  PHOENIX BOY: Is this a thing you say to avoid groupies?

  HEBE (cracks up laughing because I do still have a sense of humour about this): Bonus points for use of the word ‘groupies’ to describe yourself.

  PHOENIX BOY: Hey, I call it like I see it.

  HEBE (shows him wallpaper of my phone, which is a pic of me and Holly together, for the specific purpose of proving to people I am not lying about having an identical twin sister): There we go.

  PHOENIX BOY: Whoa. Twins. Can you sing too?

  HEBE: Nope.

  PHOENIX BOY (truth dawning on him): You’re the sister. Like, the sister from ‘Time Agents Stole My Sister’ and ‘Big Gay Break Up Song?

  HEBE: Wow, you really stayed for the whole set list.

  PHOENIX BOY: It’s a great band.

  HEBE: Yes, it is. I’m very proud of her. You can go now.

  PHOENIX BOY: You’re like her muse. You’re the first muse I’ve ever met.

  HEBE: Literally no one has ever said that to me ever.

  PHOENIX BOY: Is that a lie?

  HEBE: No, it’s sarcasm. Please stop now.

  I related this conversation word for word to Sage and Mei over takeaway noodles in Sage’s kitchen that night. I wasn’t entirely sure they were listening. Mei always has at least one laptop and two mirrors open, and Sage had three Theoretical Sorcery textbooks spread across the kitchen counter, trying to make sticky notes attach to the pages.

  Real books hate contact with the Unreal, so he was on a losing streak with the sticky notes, but Sage isn’t brilliant at listening to advice until he’s tried and failed every single option for himself. Which actually explains our entire high school relationship, but there you go.

  The point is, neither of them were properly listening, which was good because it allowed me to rant without consequence. Or so I thought.

  ‘I think you should have given him a break,’ said Mei, still typing as she talked.

  ‘You’re not mirroring this conversation, are you?’ I asked suspiciously. Never trust a woman who is an expert in both Real and Unreal social media—and believes that privacy is an outdated concept.

  ‘Of course not.’ She looked up at me, and I saw dialogue reflected in her glasses. Mei is a Big Name Fan in about three different media fandoms, and has several major fic deadlines going at any one time. When she stops multitasking, that’s when you’ve got to worry. ‘Sounds like he was flirting with you.’

  ‘No,’ I said patiently. ‘He was flirting with Holly. Everyone flirts with Holly. Holly is so amazing at being flirted with, she doesn’t even have to be in the same room at the time.’

  I felt the soft buzz of magic from the other side of the room as Sage coated the sticky notes in a Real aura. It flicked off, plastering itself to his shirt. Magical clothes developing independent personalities, that was totally what they needed in this flat.

  ‘Mei’s right,’ said Sage. ‘He stayed to talk after he found out who you are. The trouble with you, Hebes, is you’re so used to thinking of Holly as the cool one, you don’t even notice when people are into you.’

  ‘I had to sneak up on you to become your friend,’ Mei said with a solemn nod. ‘I stalked you online for a year before you accepted that we were always going to eat lunch together until time stops and the world ends.’

  I nudged her with my foot. ‘You’re adorable.’

  ‘See what you nearly missed out on?’ She indicated her Athena Owl t-shirt and sparkly purple sneakers. ‘By a narrow margin.’

  They both had a point, but that didn’t mean they were right in this specific instance. ‘I think perhaps I failed to describe quite how outrageously attractive this boy was.’

  ‘No, that came across,’ said Mei with an impish smile.

  ‘He was like—magical royalty. Posh foreign accent. There may have been a silk shirt and a phoenix tattoo. Antique sigils on a pendant. And—you know.’ I shifted uncomfortably. ‘Muscles.’

  The boys who are in
terested in me once they get to know me are not boys who look like that.

  Sage rolled his eyes at me. ‘He’s a fan of the band, Hebes. That means he’s into your brain.’

  ‘I’m not in the band,’ I said sulkily.

  ‘Half our songs are about you, dimwit. You basically ARE the band.’

  It was an odd thought, and one I hadn’t entertained before. But before I could question him further, he added one spell too many to the precarious sticky notes disaster, and they exploded in his hands.

  Magical confetti rained down on us from above, and in our attempts to protect all of the electronic devices in the flat, the conversation was forgotten.

  WEDNESDAY

  ‘So you must be Holly.’

  I can see how he made that leap. When I work in the Desiree O’Dowd I dress in full librarian chic—all cardigans and retro A-line skirts. I even put my hair up in a bun because come on, how could I not? Working in a library. Living the dream.

  On the other hand, when I work at the student advice centre, I dress in whatever I’ve picked off my floor that morning, and they’re lucky if I remember to turn the t-shirt the right way out. Add to this I had a pink wash in my light-brown hair (I lost a bet with my sister, who wanted me to try it out to see if she could risk the look for Friday night) and sure, I can buy that he thought I was the other twin this time around.

  But that didn’t stop me saying ‘Still Hebe,’ in a put-upon sigh, because the only fun thing about being a twin is making people feel guilty about getting it wrong.

  It was him again. The pretty boy with the phoenix tattoo that wrapped around the side of his neck and occasionally blew realistic-looking flames across his medium-brown skin. To his credit, he looked crestfallen at his mistake. I’m guessing he wasn’t used to anyone telling him he was wrong.

  ‘Shit. I’m sorry I—really? You work here too?’

  ‘Part-time jobs are precarious things,’ I told him gravely. ‘So many students fighting over minimum wage shifts—it’s a jungle out there. I juggle multiple jobs to cover rent and food and books.’

  I had been right about him being Real Royalty—instead of the ‘I know your pain’ grimace of a fellow working student, he had a baffled ‘wait, there are students whose parents don’t cover all their living costs?’ twitch across three quarters of his beautiful face.

  I was pretty sure his jacket cost more than my monthly rent.

  ‘Right,’ he said, taking a deep breath. ‘Can we start again?’

  ‘Any time you’re ready,’ I said sweetly.

  Okay, I’ll admit that I sometimes enjoy the phenomenon that I refer to as the ‘Hollyfluster’. Yes, it’s annoying to be constantly hit on by people who think my sister is super cool. But once they have opened a conversation with that, I feel no remorse at all about being sarcastic at them.

  Normally I’d be nervous and fumbling around a pretty, privileged Real boy (not that one would bother to talk to me without the Holly factor) but right now I was having fun.

  Then I felt bad almost straight away, because Phoenix Boy was looking shifty and uncomfortable, and, oh crap, he had a genuine problem he had come here to fix, and here was me teasing him because he couldn’t tell the difference between twin sisters.

  ‘Starting again,’ I said, more gently than before. ‘What do you need?’

  ‘I need to know the process for switching my degree from Real to Unreal,’ he blurted out.

  I lost all ability to be neutrally helpful, and just stared at him. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Do I not look serious? I’m uh, asking for a friend,’ he added, with a practiced tilt of his head that didn’t fool me at all.

  ‘Okay,’ I said slowly. ‘Well, the process is pretty simple. I can print you out the form here, or you can download it off the website. You need to see a course advisor and get signatures of the Dean from each college. I mean, your friend—I can make an appointment for them with Sarah, she’s the course advisor on duty over the summer. Or they can email her directly.’ I handed him Sarah’s business card, because I wasn’t sure he was going to give up the ‘it’s for a friend’ story any time soon.

  Phoenix Boy looked at the card, and not at me. When he finally turned his dark brown eyes up to fix on my face, my stomach almost entirely melted out of my body. Yes, he was that pretty, shut up.

  ‘But?’ he invited.

  ‘But nothing. Straightforward. Forms. Appointments. Signatures.’

  ‘But,’ he said, more forcefully than before.

  ‘It’s not common, that’s all. But I’ve only been working here a year…’

  I’d never heard of a single transfer from Real to Unreal. A couple, yes, going the other way—because studying magic and its related disciplines was always a safe, job-friendly choice and the romance of specialising in magic-free arts or politics or literature often wore off once the careers fair destroyed everyone’s hopes and dreams.

  But who would give up studying magic once it had its hooks into you? And why would a boy who looked like an illustrated chapter in the history of pampered legacy kids make that choice?

  Maybe it really was advice for a friend.

  ‘We also have counsellors,’ I found myself blurting out. ‘General feelings counsellors. If that’s something you think would be useful.’

  Phoenix Boy smiled at that point, though it wasn’t a happy or relieved smile. It was a ‘you can’t make my day worse than it was before I saw you’ kind of smile. ‘I’m good. I’ll take a printed copy of that transfer form. And do you know where I can go to look for accommodation options?’

  I waved at the general direction of the bulletin board. ‘It’s probably too late to register for a room in one of the residential halls, but there’s a bunch of flatmate and share-house requests over there.’

  I was going to make up for my previous utter lack of professionalism by leaving it at that, and I totally wasn’t going to draw attention to one flatshare flyer in particular, but Phoenix Boy found it anyway. Unsurprising, since Sage and Dec had been up half the night decorating the flyers with fierce fluoro pens, and had insisted I use pins shaped like tiny battle-axes to attach it to the board.

  ‘Join the Manic Pixie Dream House,’ Phoenix Boy read aloud with a bemused tone in his voice. ‘Must be able to endure one flatmate’s long drumming sessions, and the other flatmate’s constant smell of wet art materials (mostly clay). Brace yourself for meals made mostly of dead animal, and weekend gaming marathons in which the flat fills up with angry nerdboys and rattling dice.’

  ‘They’re friends of mine,’ I admitted.

  ‘Do they have mixed feelings about letting someone else share the flat with them?’

  I laughed, the weird tension of the help desk finally leaving the conversation. ‘They’re not quite hauling up a drawbridge, but they don’t want another disaster—that’s pretty much a list of reasons why their last flatmate flipped out and stuck them with his share of the rent with no notice.’

  ‘Ouch,’ said Phoenix Boy, still staring at the flyer. ‘Are they—students of the Real or the Unreal?’

  ‘One of each.’

  That surprised him. He spun around and stared at me, as if the idea of a mixed household was completely off-the-chart crazy. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘It’s not that unusual,’ I said, blinking. Just how sheltered was this boy? Had he never had a friend from the College of the Unreal before? I wasn’t sure whether to throw him at Sage and Dec for his own sake, or warn him off their chaos.

  ‘Huh,’ was all he said, and when he walked away with the transfer forms, he took a tab from the Manic Pixie Dream House with him.

  Sage Doesn’t Hate Karaoke Night (But He’s Not Gonna Sing)

  THURSDAY

  So I heard this rumour that most universities don’t have an all-night coffee house like Cirque De Cacao to rely on for their karaoke needs?

  Man, most universities must suck.

  Cirque De Cacao is smack dab between the Real and Unreal campuses. Y
ou’d think it’d mostly be Unreal students cos of the screwy effects that coffee has on magic, but the manager was sensible enough to set up a serious hot chocolate menu to lure in the witches who don’t want to face down their senior tutors next morning with a caffeine hangover sucking all the Real from their veins.

  Assuming that magic is stored in our veins. I never really thought about that. Maybe it’s in the pores.

  Me, I was raised in an anti-magic household, and I’d been drinking hardcore espressos since I was eleven, so maybe it’s not a surprise that I didn’t know about my affinity for Advanced Real Engineering until I tested off the charts at the end of high school.

  These days, I limit coffee drinking to uni holidays, and to when I’m sick of making the TV go fzzzt-bang just by being in the same room as me. It was still weeks before the new semester started, and that meant I could drink a cappuccino without fucking up my grades.

  Unfortunately, it also made me a Holly magnet.

  ‘Sage Sage Sage Sage!’ Three seconds after Skinny Goth Waiter served my drink, Holly whipped into the booth opposite me and leaned over so far that her nose nearly dabbed into the chocolate-dusted froth in my cup. ‘Omigod that smells amazing.’

  ‘Get your own,’ I said, batting at her with a napkin.

  ‘Can’t, I have to visit the Mums tonight so they don’t fuss about me and Hebes staying in town again this weekend, and train tickets are wicked expensive. Gonna have to be the broom.’

  I gave her a flat look. ‘Hol, you can’t fly straight at the best of times. That sounds like a dumbarse idea.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she admitted, chewing on a fingernail. ‘If I hitchhike instead of broomstick, I can have a coffee now. I really want a caramel macchiato.’

  ‘You’re not hitch—huh.’ I glared at her. ‘Yeah, you can borrow my car.’

  Holly gave me her rock-star smile, the one that makes her glow like she’s singing this song for You And No One Else. A lot of blokes and even more girls have done stupid things because of that smile, and I wish I could say I wasn’t one of them.