Apparently sometimes they do more than view. She doesn’t know what that is.
Chia hears the other girls talking about it. They don’t seem to mind. They pull their hems up higher and their shirts tighter. Without blazers. They giggle when the boys pinch them and moan when the boys do something else to them. Chia hears that sometimes, accidentally, and runs away when she does.
Chia walks out of the school grounds and towards the subway. She looks through her book-bag and finds her candy-coloured wallet. Paying her fare, she stands on the platform waiting for the train. She stands beside the other school girls, who move away when they see her. When the train comes, Chia holds her skirt down in case the sudden wind blows it up. The other girls don’t care.
The train is busy. It always is after school. Chia sits down next to a businesswoman. The woman is on the phone but she looks Chia up and down. Chia looks back at her and the woman’s expression is somewhere between amusement and pity.
Finally, Chia can sit. It's been a long day, standing in front of classes and giving oral presentations. She shouldn't be standing there, a teacher should be, teaching her rather than her teaching the class.
Chia continues to suck on her lollipop as she finds what she wants in her book-bag. A plastic compact, like all the other girls have. Inside is silver eye shadow. Chia thinks it’s a bit grown-up for her but she has to have it so she can fit in. The woman finishes her phone call and watches her as Chia applies it, her face unreadable.
Chia offers the eye shadow to the woman. The woman crosses her legs under her black skirt, moving a little further away. Chia thinks the eye shadow would cheer up the woman. The woman looks so stern in glasses, her hair in a bun and black business jacket. At the next stop, the woman walks quickly to the door, her high heels clicking on the floor while carrying her briefcase. The phone goes off again.
Chia gets off the subway at her stop and runs up the stairs to street level, her hand back over her bottom. She doesn’t like this subway station very much because it’s dark and she’s afraid of the dark. She can feel eyes on her as she runs up and it makes her skin crawl.
There’s a row of mobile phone stores that Chia walks behind on the way home. The vendors aren’t very careful and sometimes she can find the chains that everyone else at school attach to their phones, to wear around their necks. Chia finds two today – one glittery and one rainbow coloured. She holds the glittery one up to the sun and smiles as it sparkles.
Chia makes it to her house, a little flat on a corner. She’s lived here for a long time on her own and she doesn’t think she’s old enough to be living on her own yet. Nobody’s agreed with her and she finds that strange. She opens the front door and walks into her bedroom.
There’s plenty more chains hooked up in front of her window. Chia adds the two she’s found, smiling as they move softly in the breeze coming through the open window. She puts her book bag down on her floor and sits on her bed, on the pink doona with yellow moons and white bunnies all over it. Chia loves her doona.
The dolls and teddy bears on a shelf above the bed watch Chia as she brushes her hair, held in pigtails, and rubs some pink lip gloss on her lips.
Chia breaks her lollipop with her teeth in joy as she sees the postman on his bike pull up, put an envelope in her box and disappears again. She runs out of her house and grabs the envelope.
Back on her bed, she opens it. It’s a birthday card from her mother. For Chia’s thirty-seventh birthday.
Chia cries. She’s turned fourteen today.
She knows she has.