Free The Anti-Cool Girl by Rosie Waterland

turned a key, it would slowly open and a fairy would rise out of the middle. I had seen it on TV for weeks, and dreamed about being the girl in the ad who says, ‘Magical!’ and, ‘Only you have the key!’ I think this dream was more about my desperation to be on TV than it was for the toy, but I wanted the damn flower-thing anyway.
    I would spend hours opening and closing it, imagining that I was the fairy – but the fairy was a famous singer and the flower was her stage. I couldn’t give a fuck about the magic; I was all about a successful career. I had decided pretty young that whatever I grew up to do, it would a) involve an Oscar and b) earn me enough money to buy a house so that I would never have to move again.
    The magic-lockable-flower-fairy-thing had also been a pretty good distraction for the week, which, when hanging out with my dad, was always desperately needed. It was the night before Rhiannon and I were going home, and that toy had successfully stopped me from wanting to nervous-vomit on more than one occasion. When Dad suggested we go fishing after he’d had seventeen drinks, I would just unlock the flower and imagine myself emerging onto a stage, the first ever person to be accepting an Oscar, Grammy, Emmy and Tony on the same night. (It didn’t need to make sense, it just needed to involve copious amounts of glory. My dad could barely stand up – a girl needs her escapism.)
    So there I was, on our last night in Tumut, sitting on the couch and enjoying picturing myself rising like a phoenix out of the flower, with enough money in my bank account to buy a house that I could live in forever. It was imaginative bliss.
    Then Grandpa fell over.
    I froze. Rhiannon and Dad had gone to bed, so I was the only one available to deal with this situation, and I was at aloss. My immediate instinct was to give Grandpa his privacy. To me, falling over was on par with shitting yourself in the embarrassment stakes, so I figured he would probably just want me to focus on my toy and pretend like I hadn’t seen anything. I was perfectly happy for him to get up, leave the room and have us never speak of the incident again.
    But then I realised he couldn’t get up, and that meant things were in a whole new league. Surely, as an eight-year-old with a serious escapism complex, the responsibility of helping this old man up off the kitchen floor couldn’t fall to me? What would the logistics of my lifting him even involve? I’d heard of mothers who had found the strength to lift cars to save their babies, but my love for Grandpa must have been compromised, because I was feeling no such strength. Then I realised I’d been sitting on my arse for thirty seconds while an old, frail man was struggling to get up off the floor. What kind of person was I? ‘Do something, Rosie!’ I kept saying to myself. ‘Help him!’
    But my brain had gone into complete meltdown. And I was still sitting on the couch, now contemplating my utter lack of usefulness in a crisis, as well as just generally as a human being, when he started to call out for help.
    My grandpa was lying on the floor in the kitchen, he couldn’t get up, and he was crying out for help.
    This was it. I knew this was the point where I had to move. But having now accepted that I was clearly not the person tooffer any kind of assistance in an emergency situation, I did the only other thing I could think of: I woke up my dad.
    I had no idea what chain of events I would set in motion. I was a little girl, it was late and my grandpa had fallen over. It was confronting, I was scared, and more than a little disappointed in myself for missing my chance to be a hero on the news. I just did what I thought was right.
    Dad woke up and saw me panicked. I explained what had happened, and he was furious. At first I assumed he was furious at me for not handling the situation myself. But then he told me to get into bed and he