Book Excerpt: Trinity Rising by Fiona Snyckers

April 15th, 2009 by Ben - Editor

You asked for it – and your wish is BOOK SA’s command, naturally!

Fiona Snyckers‘ Trinity Rising centres on South Africa’s very own “me generation” – as epitomised by one Trinity Luhabe, daughter of a struggle-hero-turned-BEE-magnate and the kind of girl who keeps “lose my virginity” on her to-do lists.

Let’s look in at Trinity on her first day at varsity:

* * * * * * * *

OKAY, this isn’t a big deal. I can do this. I am not going to cry.

I am not – repeat not – going to cry.

All right, he’s walking away now and reaching into his pocket for his car keys. He’s frowning down at the unfamiliar remote, looking for the button that will unlock the rented Nissan Micra parked on the other side of the road. He’s turning his head slightly and giving me a little smile and a finger wave. I can see that he is also blinking hard.

Oh God, I am so going to cry.

I bite down hard on my bottom lip, but this only makes it worse. I hear a noise behind me, and turn to see the warden – Jasmine Something-or-Other – gaping at me in amazement.

‘Isn’t that …?’ She points across the road. ‘That looks exactly like that guy – what’s his name again? He was on the news last week. Abel Luhabe – isn’t that Abel Luhabe?’

I nod my head up and down, still biting my lip too hard to speak.

‘I learned about him in Industrial Sociology!’ She looks totally astounded. ‘What’s he doing here? Do you know him?’

My lip goes all wobbly the moment I let go of it.

‘He’s my dad!’ I blurt out, before bursting into tears and running back up the stairs.

I bump into a group of second-years on the way up and land sprawling on my hands and knees. My skirt ends up flapping around my ears, for
maximum dorkiness.

‘Who on earth … ?’ I hear one of them say just before I leap into my room and slam the door shut behind me.

I lean my head against the wall and take a deep breath.

Okay. That did not go well.

At least I’m no longer crying, but my cheeks are sizzling with embarrassment. That was the exact opposite of the suave, super-cool entrance I
planned to make. I was going to be all bored and sophisticated – not start blubbing the moment my father leaves.

I can feel my lip getting wobbly again at the thought of him. I give myself a mental smack on the head and march over to my desk to fire up my laptop. Perhaps there’ll be an email from home. At the very least I can calm myself down by surfing some of my favourite shoe sites.

I sit down and switch on the laptop. It makes a lovely, quiet humming noise. The moment it boots up, I click on the Heatmail icon. God, this 3G line is fast! Dad was right. Wireless is totally the way to go. I select Inbox and wait eagerly to see if anyone has sent me an email.

YOU HAVE 142 NEW MESSAGES

I goggle at the screen in disbelief. What the fuck …?

Oh. Right. It’s all spam.

I’ve never had a Heatmail address before. It’s unbelievable how much junk my address has attracted in just two days. I scroll through screen after screen of crap.

Penis enhancements. Viagra substitutes. Online pharmacies.

I stop when I see one called ‘Hello Tluhabe’ but it turns out to be a letter from a Nigerian businessman who has 4.5 million US dollars that he wants to invest in South Africa. Apparently all he needs is for his money to ‘rest’ in my account for a few months. He’ll even let me keep the interest in return. So that would be about $450 000. All I have to do is send him my full banking and credit card details.

Ja, right.

Tucked in between the porn sites and drug dealers, I find just two messages that are actually meant for me. One is a letter from Mom, and the other is a round-robin email from Jasmine Nair – that warden I met downstairs. I skim through Mom’s letter and in slightly less than three seconds I’m remembering exactly why it was that I chose a university a thousand kilometres away from home.

She drives me nuts, my mother. She really does. Always wittering on about the Struggle. All the marches she went on. All the pamphlets she printed. All the times she almost got sjambokked by the police.

Yes, I know it was all noble and everything. And those were really dark times in our country’s history, blah, blah, blah. But do you know how old I was when South Africa had its first democratic election? Four. That’s how old. And do you know how old I was when Mom was running up and down ducking sjamboks? Zero. I was an egg for God’s sake! But they expect me to care about it all as much as they do.

Seriously. Do I look like I care?

I’ve spent my whole life listening to them moaning on and on about apartheid and I’ve had it up to here. Dad’s almost as bad as Mom. He’s not quite as fanatical as she is, but when he starts reminiscing about Robben Island, it makes me want to smack him.

Suddenly I don’t feel like crying at all any more. I’ve come here to have fun, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I mean, look at this email. Mom expects me to ‘go and say hello to the Vic’ for her. I asked one of the second-years about the Vic last night. And guess what? It’s gone. Closed down years ago.

Mom is totally living in the dark ages.

I don’t yet know where the cool students hang out, but I’m going to find out. And you can bet it won’t be some grotty, smelly old pub that my mother used to frequent.

I transfer her letter to Saved Messages with a sigh. I’ll get around to replying to it some time or other.

Then I open the email from the Somerset House warden. I read through it and frown slightly. She seemed nice enough when I met her earlier, but this email makes her sound a bit mental. ‘No loud walking in the corridors’? She obviously hasn’t heard me in my Miu Miu heels. I hope she’s not going to turn out to be a problem.

I save her letter as well, and then delete my entire Inbox.

Goodbye spam.

I decide to clear out the My Documents folder while I’m at it. It’s full of horrible old schoolwork from matric. Thank God I never have to go through that again.

ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DELETE THE SELECTED FILES?

You bet I do. It gives me an actual physical pleasure to send them all to the big Recycling Bin in the sky.

The only thing I save is the old To-Do List I made before Christmas. I still can’t believe I got all that stuff done. It seemed like such a mountain to get through at the time.

Okay, maybe I didn’t quite get it all done.

There was that one tiny detail about losing my virginity. If I’m being completely honest, I didn’t exactly get around to that one. And I so wanted to! I mean, let’s face it. It’s hard enough moving to a totally strange town without having to worry about your ‘first time’ as well. I wanted to get it out of the way so I could stop worrying about it.

I had it all planned. It was going to be my going-away present to Munashe – to soften the blow of breaking up with him. Only I made the mistake of breaking up with him first and then expecting him to sleep with me afterwards. We got into such a fight that by the end of the evening we were hardly speaking to each other – never mind having sex for the first time.

So bang went that opportunity.

Then I tried to date some other boys. Except I couldn’t find one who wanted to go out with me.

Me! Trinity Luhabe! The girl voted most likely to make the FHM Homegrown Honeys list!

And why? Because that raving bitch Sophie Agincourt had told everyone I had chlamydia. I didn’t even know what that was until I googled it and saw that it’s some disgusting STD.

Cow, cow, cow!

But I didn’t let her get away with it. No way. That sugar in the petrol tank trick was a total stroke of genius. It must have cost Daddy Agincourt a packet to fix, but he deserved it too. I mean, seriously, who gives their daughter a Porsche for her eighteenth birthday? I only got a Tazz, and I wasn’t even allowed to bring it to varsity with me.

When I think about what Sophie might to do to me if she ever gets the chance to get even, I feel a little shiver run down my spine.

Thank God that’s never going to happen. At this exact moment, Sophie Agincourt is thousands of miles away in England. She’s staying with relatives for a few months before starting her A-levels in September at some snooty public school.

I am finally free of her. At long, long last she is out of my life forever. It’s a fantastic feeling.

* * * * * * * *