From the bestselling authors of Stuck Up and Stupid, ANGOURIE RICE and KATE RICE, comes a funny, edgy, dark comedy of errors following a school ball gone hopelessly wrong!
Read on for an extract from My Wonderful Disgrace.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Amy Middleton has all her plans in place for the school ball – the perfect designer dress, the perfect dream date, the perfect night.
When Leo Prince finally agrees to go with her, success seems assured, and the night belongs to Amy.
But fate, it seems, has other plans, and with the buzz of an unexpected text, her perfect night begins to unravel.
In the second novel from acclaimed Australian mother-daughter duo Angourie Rice and Kate Rice, brutally honest journal entries, texts, interviews and school newsletters slowly reveal a night gone terribly and hilariously wrong.
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EXTRACT
Elizabeth Starkey’s Statement to Police
I attended the school ball on the night of Friday 14 April at the Pacific Crest Hotel as a supervisor. I didn’t want to go and I didn’t buy a ticket. I had actually planned to follow my usual routine on Fridays, which is to get takeaway from Singh’s in Barkerfield and watch a movie. You can check those details with the restaurant and my streaming service. Ms Kruger, the Principal, sent around an email on the Wednesday asking for more staff support at the event and I said that I would go if nobody else was available. On Thursday, Ms Kruger came to see me in the office and asked me to be there. She said all I had to do was turn up, watch the students and call out any bad behaviour. She told me I wouldn’t get paid for the night, and that it wasn’t official work, but that we would get a free meal and she would be happy to approve any upcoming Personal Leave Days, and that I could leave school at lunchtime on Friday. I don’t know if that’s legal but other teachers were doing it so I went along with it, even though it didn’t sound right to me.
I stayed at school past lunch hour to complete some marking for the Year 10s who I had first thing on Monday, so I didn’t even get to leave the school until about 2.00 pm. I then went straight home and started getting ready because Ms Kruger wanted staff members to be at the hotel by 5.00 pm to supervise in case there were early arrivals, even though she told me initially that the event started at 6.00 pm. I went home, had a quick shower and made it to the hotel on time. There were at least 5 other staff members there when I arrived, including Ms Kruger the Principal, Ben Chang the Deputy Principal, and Martin Kreiwoldt the Head of Health and PE. I would never drink alcohol at a school event, and it’s not allowed anyway, not that that stops some people. I ordered a lemonade from the bar and stayed in the lower foyer area of the hotel to wait for the students to turn up. I didn’t talk to anyone really, as Ms Kruger, Ben and Martin are all quite a bit older than me and we don’t have much in common. I probably spent most of my time on my phone looking at social media and maybe playing a game.
As I expected, nobody arrived until at least quarter past 6. The students always have parties before the event and then they go places like Royal Park for photos so they are never early. I know this from my own experience in high school. I didn’t discuss the ball with any of the students, as I don’t talk to them about things like that and I only have one Year 12 class anyway. I stayed in the foyer watching everyone arrive. I can’t remember who I talked to or if I talked to anyone at all. I probably said hello to the students who are in my General Maths class, if I saw them, but I don’t remember seeing anyone in particular.
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AMY’S JOURNAL
I felt magical. Reckless. Everything anyone said was hilariously funny, everything I said in response was devastatingly clever. Was it the champagne, or the adrenaline, or the fact that I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast? I don’t know. I think it was mostly the dress. It was making a shape in the world that was more in charge of me than I was of myself. In a good way. It swept me along by Leo’s side, not as just a friend or sidekick or fab colleague and classmate but as his partner. We were making history together, fulfilling roles that had been set a long time ago, like way back in the 1980s when teenage romance was invented.
We sashayed along with everyone else up the stairs to the upper foyer. Soft gold lamps lent every surface a satin sheen. Waiters in aprons fluttered around on the edges of the crowd setting up the buffet, or stalked through with trays of orange juice in champagne glasses. A professional photographer was set up with one of those paper-roll backdrops of technicolour clouds.
I said, ‘Omigod! Let’s get a portrait!’
‘Didn’t we do that already?’
‘Oh come on, this guy has one of those silver umbrellas. It’s different!’
‘They’re fifty bucks!’
‘You don’t have to buy one. Just screenshot it. Look! Adorable!’ I pointed to a sample photo (circa twenty years old) of a couple in the classic high school prom pose: her with a hand on hip and a wide-mouthed smile, and him standing behind, holding her waist like his life depended on it. They’re probably married with children by now.
I cleverly slid us into the queue, up against the wall, which turned out to have a delightfully tactile kind of flock wallpaper that I just had to stroke. I may have looked infantile, or sexy, it was hard to tell the difference, but it seemed that up against the wall, the lighting became even softer, the babble of the crowd became quieter, the thrilling aura even more intense.
It was like we were by ourselves, or at the very least, in extreme close-up in a movie, and nobody around us mattered anymore.
Leo leaned against the wall and flicked through his phone so that the light from the screen caught tendrils of curl on his forehead and turned them into pure gold.
‘I have to tell you something,’ I said.
‘Mmm?’
‘It’s a bit embarrassing.’ He shrugged. ‘We’re way past that, mate. I’m wearing eyeliner.’
‘Seriously?’
‘No! I’m just trying to make you feel better.’
‘Leo!’
‘Okay, I’m wearing a little bit.’
I leaned in close to check. Yes, that line of lash beneath the clear green did seem even more dramatic than usual – but then so did everything else about him. He pocketed his phone and returned my gaze, as if to say: yes you can look, yes I look amazing, and yes you may kiss me. Before I knew what was happening, my hand slid up his chest, around his neck, and my lips were on his in a moment of warm, perfect softness that stretched and stretched into a void where time seemed to stop—
And then came crashing back to reality with a sharp ding and vibration in his top pocket. Like lightning, he whipped his phone out, the kiss was over, and he was frowning at a text message and already flicking off a reply. What the actual?
‘Shit. Sorry.’
‘Leo!’
‘I gotta—’
‘What?’
‘Stay here.’
He moved away from me and the flock wallpaper. The bubble broke and he was out there in the throng, and I could still feel him on my mouth.
Close-up over, we’re back in a wide shot.
‘Are you serious?’ I called after him.
‘No – I mean – yes, I’ll get you a drink.’
What the absolute freak just happened? What felt like a delightful head rush a few seconds ago now seemed to be nausea and suddenly I didn’t feel quite so devastatingly brilliant. In fact, I felt abandoned, which is what I was. Our friends were mostly still downstairs, everyone else in the queue seemed a little scared of me, and I’m sure one of the waiters saw the whole thing and smirked. But what thing? What was that? It is honestly so difficult to tell the difference between a real brush-off and an accidental one.
I turned to smile my embarrassment away at the couple in the queue behind me and was relieved to see they were kissing and had probably missed the whole thing. Then they pulled their faces apart, and my relief turned to a weird mix of distaste and injury when I saw it was Bevan and that girl whose name I can never remember. She was wearing too much lace and not enough make-up.
‘Oh, hi, Amy,’ Bevan said.
‘Bevan! Isn’t this great!’ I smiled. (Oh, hi, says the guy who literally wrote me a love letter in the Year 12 group chat four days ago and is now publicly snogging someone else.) ‘You two look so great together. Love your dress, by the way.’ Where is Leo, why did he leave, was that a real kiss, am I in love, did he really just abandon me for a TEXT?
‘Sorry, I just realised something …’ I looked off to a fixed point somewhere else and purposefully drifted towards it. A less-than-smooth exit, but this was an emergency. I had to speak to Gabby. There are moments like this when only your best friend will do
INCIDENT REPORT: CHRIS BUTT
I started work as usual and I was just at my desk setting up for the night and then the lady who I think was the principal came up and asked me if everything was OK for the presentation and I had to say what do you mean and she said you know, the presentation, and I didn’t know anything about any presentation. There was nothing about it on the system and I showed her that but she said there was definitely a presentation with music and a slideshow even though those should always be listed in the system as per the procedure and there was nothing there.
She came up a bit later with a girl who had a flash drive and then she just said make it work and left. That’s definitely not procedure but it’s not the first time I’ve had to clear up other people’s mess. The girl told me that the presentation was just pictures of the school and a song and we plugged it in and I had a quick look and it seemed fine. I don’t know if they had approval but I hooked it up, that’s an issue for a private hirer not our problem. She wanted the screen up and I couldn’t leave the desk because security so she got the screen out and put it up at her own risk. That was when the other girl in the pink dress came in so it’s possible that’s why she didn’t do it properly but I wouldn’t know as that wasn’t my call. She decided to do it off her own bat, nothing to do with me.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Angourie Rice is an actor with international feature film and television credits, including Mean Girls, Mare of Easttown, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Black Mirror and Ladies in Black. Angourie also writes, produces and hosts a literary podcast, The Community Library.
Read more about Angourie Rice’s podcast The Community Library here.
Follow Angourie Rice on Instagram here.
Kate Rice is an AWGIE award-winning playwright with a PhD in ethical creative process and experience writing theatre with and for young people. Her work has been commissioned by Melbourne City of Literature, Curtin University, Deckchair Theatre, Barking Gecko Theatre, Darwin Theatre Company, Darwin High School and Corrugated Iron Youth Arts.
Visit Kate Rice’s website here.
Read more about My Wonderful Disgrace on the publisher’s website here.
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