Pretty Funny for a Girl

by Rebecca Elliott

“Of course she’s ready!” says Chloe, sipping on her smoothie. “You are, right? I mean, it’s not going to be like last time?”

  “Chloe, that’s really not helping,” I say. “No, I don’t think I’m ready. But what I do know is I want to beat Leo.”

  “Oooh, I love it—a revenge gig!” says Kas.

  Then, as I had hoped they would, they start harassing me into letting them make me over. And, for once, I’m going to let them.

  “What?” says Chloe, her face lighting up like I’ve just given her a diamond necklace. “Really? You’ll let us make you over? Yay!”

  “But on my terms,” I say.

  “Which are?” says Kas.

  And I explain that firstly I wish to wear no makeup other than a bit of foundation to minimize spotlight shine, and maybe a tiny bit of eye makeup so when I’m frowning at Leo it really freaks him out. Secondly, if anyone comes at me with nail polish, I’m heading for the door.

  “Oh come on, look at these beauties,” says Chloe, fanning out her fingers for us to admire. “Wouldn’t you love something like that?”

  “You look like you’ve got a psychedelic fungal infection.”

  Chloe retracts her claws, tuts, and rolls her eyes. Then they both laugh.

  Lastly, I explain to them that I want to wear what I want to wear, and, after a brief argument with Chloe who believes, mistakenly, that she’s seen the perfect dress for me in a “size-diverse” (fat-girl’s) shop, they agree to my terms.

  “Okay, so tell us what you want to wear, Pig,” says Kas.

  “Well, you guys look great, like pop stars or movie stars…well, maybe not movie stars, but at least a couple of chicks from Clueless.”

  “Aw, thanks,” says Kas sarcastically.

  “Aw, thanks!” says Chloe genuinely.

  “But that’s not me, and those people aren’t my heroes. My heroes are comedians and funny women like Sara Pascoe, Victoria Wood, Caitlin Moran, Tina Fey, Kate McKinnon, Gina Yashere, Josie Long, Ellen, Susan Calman, Sofie Hagen, Susan Wokoma…”

  “Alright alright! Enough already, we get it!”

  “Okay but you know who they all are, right?”

  “Course we do, Pig. We’ve been your friends for, like, centuries, and we’ve sat through all your birthday ‘popcorn and comedy’ evenings in front of the TV! We like these women too, you know,” says Kas.

  “Totally. And I think I know exactly the kind of look you’re after. This is going to be awesome. How much money do you have?” says Chloe.

  “Twenty-five pounds. Fifteen pounds leftover birthday money from Gran, and it’s been a lucrative couple of weeks on the fake parental letter front…but that’s all,” I say.

  Chloe dramatically drains the rest of her smoothie, raises a fist in the air, and announces, “Then let’s get out of here and hit the thrift shops!”

  “Thrift shops? You’re a fan of thrift shops?” I say. And it’s like the Queen just told me she really loves an Aldi bargain.

  “Oh hell, yeah,” says Chloe. “They’re retro-chic and so in right now.”

  “I guess we all still have some secrets from each other!” says Kas.

  As we leave the coffee shop, I link arms with both of them and say, “Thanks.”

  “What for?” they say in unison.

  “Just…everything.”

  After trawling around the thrift shops, we end up back at Chloe’s, with music blasting out of her phone and a massive box of Maltesers keeping us going as they pluck, primp, and preen me to within an inch of my life, with me taking every opportunity I can to beg for mercy.

  And I don’t think we’ve ever laughed more in our lives.

  Then, with half an hour to go before we have to catch our train, I stand in front of the mirror and take it all in from my toes upward.

  Chloe’s sister’s shiny black DMs (part of her festival wardrobe which were more accustomed to being teamed up with a miniskirt and spangly boob tube) leading to dark red leggings, leading to gray, dog-tooth-patterned shorts, leading to an old black David Bowie T-shirt over which I wear a brown tweed jacket, with my hair cascading in twirls over my shoulders. My eyebrows actually have a shape that’s recognizably eyebrow-like for once, and I even let them persuade me to wear a lipstick Kas had with her which matches my leggings.

  “Wow,” says Kas, “you really…”

  “You look FANTASTIC!” Chloe shouts.

  “Yeah? You sure?” I say.

  “Totally! You look cool, you’ve got curves, you’ve got style,” says Kas.

  “A-MA-ZING!” agrees Chloe. “And you’re right, this is you.”

  I look again in the mirror. I don’t look like Kas and Chloe, who look stunning in their dresses and girlie shoes, but for the first time I’m looking at myself and genuinely thinking, I look good. I look like how I wanna look. And it’s not like a bit of lipstick made me realize what a knockout beauty queen I am (that Ally Sheedy travesty of a makeover in The Breakfast Club?—almost spoils the whole film for me), and it actually doesn’t have anything to do with my size. It’s just that I finally see the outside of me expressing what the inside has always been.

  I look sort of interesting, cool, confident even. I feel like if I saw me in a room I’d totally want to talk to me.

  “Come on, girls! You’ve got a train to catch—I’ll drive you to the station!” yells Chloe’s mum up the stairs.

  “Okay,” I say with my fists clenched. “Let’s do this. Let’s go and comedy the crap out of London.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  On the train down to London, I stare at my set—a printed side of A4 with various words underlined and others scribbled out with funnier words written above the scribble. I furiously read it over and over again on the journey, stopping only occasionally to focus on what Kas and Chloe are talking about, or to give my eyes a break by letting them look around the traincar for a moment.

  There’s a few other students from school sitting by us, including Grace, Poppy, and Fajah (they do know it’s comedy they’re going to see, right? Not a crafting convention) who sweetly wish me luck—and Dylan who keeps looking over at Chloe and grinning like a complete twonk.

  But no Leo. Still blissfully unaware of my witnessing him and Keesha sucking face, he messaged me earlier to say he’s getting a lift there with his dad and a few “friends,” which presumably includes her. My not replying to any of his messages over the last few days doesn’t seem to have triggered any realization in his ball-bag brain that anything’s wrong.

  But I’m grateful he’s not here as I don’t really know what I’m gonna say to him anyway, and if he’s with Keesha I fear I might just punch him in the face.

  Oh, I so want to beat him this evening.

  My new clothes feel great, and as I catch a glimpse of myself reflected in the train window it makes me think, Yeah, I can do this. I can show everyone this is me. I might not look like the other girls, but it’s because I CHOOSE NOT TO. I’m cool, I’m interesting, I’m funny. I’m…

  Then I catch Dylan looking over with his eyebrows raised and a smirk on his face, and I look again at the tweed jacket, and the makeup accentuating my eyes and my mouth, and I think, Oh God, everyone’s gonna wonder why I’ve come in fancy dress as Toad from Wind in the frickin’ Willows. I should have just worn my invisibility cloak like I normally do.

  I look away from Dylan and down again at my set, only now the words jumble themselves up on the page, and I can’t focus on any of them. Stupid words.

  Sensing my nerves, Chloe leans over and says, “You’re gonna be great, Pig,” and puts a hand on my knee.

  “Do you want to practice on us?” says Kas, wearing a seriously concerned face that’s making me even more anxious.

  “Good God, no. I mean, thanks, but…well, if you don’t laugh, I might just chicken out altogether.”

  “Fair enough. Did you send the message to Ruben?” asks Chloe.

  “Yeah,” I say, glad to think about something else for a moment. “I guess
we’ll just have to see if he shows up. If he doesn’t, I’m not sure how I’m ever gonna make it up to Mum.”

  I spend the rest of the journey trying to focus on my set and making notes on the back of my hand with a ballpoint—just words or even initials to remind me what to say and in what order.

  As the train approaches London, I can’t resist staring out of the window as the fields and trees give way to factories, sky-scraping buildings, and bustling streets exploding with life and activity. I look at my friends’ faces, wide-eyed as they gaze out of the window too, and I know they feel the same as me: that try as we might to keep our expressions cool, to look like we come here all the time (not just the handful of times we’ve managed to persuade our jailers parents), there’s no escaping the tingling feeling that here anything is possible.

  “I chuffin’ love London!” says Chloe as we leave the train at Liverpool Street Station.

  “It’s like your brain lights up when you get here,” says Kas.

  “I know,” I say with a smile. “It’s just so chuffin’ Londony.”

  We go down to the underground station and get swept along with a herd of people, all seemingly in the biggest race of their lives to get somewhere, anywhere, NOW. Then we get on a random train because Chloe “has a good feeling about it.” After eight train changes, which we later discover should have just been one, but our “good feeling” train has taken us in COMPLETELY the wrong direction, we get to our stop, and at the top of an insanely long escalator we’re spewed out onto the swarming West End streets.

  The colors, sounds, and random drunk nutters with purple hair that can only be found in London ignite our senses as we walk to the theatre, open-mouthed, drinking it all in. Chloe and Kas stop to look in every shop window, but I soon find that with every step my nerves about performing this evening increase. I’m actually performing.

  TONIGHT.

  ON A STAGE.

  When we stop at McDonald’s, I just stare at my burger. Go over my set in my head again and again as the nerves swim around my insides. I’m only vaguely aware of Kas and Chloe carrying on their conversations, and occasionally I offer a “yep” or “hmm” so it at least appears I’m with them and haven’t gone completely nuts. But then I must have said a “yep” or “hmm” at the wrong time because I suddenly realize they’re both staring at me.

  I pause the rerun of my set in my head. “What?”

  “I said are you all right, Pig?” says Kas.

  “Oh yeah, just, y’know, terrified by a crippling, hellish despair.”

  “Okay, but still I’ve never seen you ignore your food,” says Chloe as if worried about an elderly cat.

  “I know, right? I should totally do this all the time. I’d lose so much weight.” I rest my head in my hands. “Oh God, what was I thinking? This is going to be horrendous.”

  Chloe puts her arm around my shoulder. “Rubbish, you’ll be awesome! And remember—you’re doing this to beat Leo! To teach him he can’t just use girls and get away with it.”

  “Yeah, and the important thing is you’re doing it—getting up there, showing him you can do this, without him. I mean, even if it goes wrong, at least you tried, right?” says Kas, delicately dipping a French fry in barbecue sauce.

  “What? So you think it’s going to go wrong then?” I say.

  “Wait, no!” says Kas, panicked. “I’m just saying even if it does.”

  “Oh God,” I say again.

  “Don’t worry about it, Pig. Come on, eat your burger,” says Chloe.

  And I feel like I’m being fattened up for the slaughter.

  We reach the theatre, a small ramshackle place with peeling paintwork and a couple of boarded up windows. Not exactly the perfect setting for a night of glamour and entertainment. But it is the perfect setting for a grisly horror story.

  So this is where it ends, I think. My life, my dignity, my dreams.

  The girls hang around outside with a few other kids from our school and a load from other schools while I go into the foyer. The inside is surprisingly clean and stylish. There’s a few other kids standing around with their parents. They must be other contestants as they all look as horribly nervous as I feel, shuffling their feet or pacing about, looking at bits of paper, staring up to the ceiling, possibly hoping for a bolt of lightning to wipe them off the face of the earth so they don’t have to go through with this. I walk up to the front desk and tell them my name, and a fancy woman who sounds like she’s sucking a lemon when she talks says, “Haylah…Swinton?”

  “Yeah,” I say, “but everyone calls me Pig. So can I be introduced as Pig?”

  “If you insist,” she snorts. “Right, doors open in around half an hour. There’s a backstage area through that door for the contestants. A panel of four anonymous judges are in the audience, and they will make the final judgement based on the quality of your material, not the amount of laughs you get—”

  What the actual? Isn’t that the same thing?

  She seems to pick up on my skepticism, looks at me over her spectacles and says, “It’s because some contestants bring twenty people along with them, some only three, and people tend to laugh louder for the people they support, do you understand?”

  “Yes, yep, got it.”

  Yeah, okay, that kinda makes sense.

  Pleased with herself, she continues. “There are eight contestants, everyone will be introduced by Jonno our MC so do NOT go onstage until you’ve been introduced, and you’re on last, probably around nine o’clock. After that, the judges will convene for ten minutes before reaching their verdict. Okay?”

  Verdict. Like a court’s decision on whether or not I should be executed for crimes against comedy.

  This is all getting horribly real and scary now.

  “Yep,” I say, trying to stop my voice from shaking. “Fine. Thank you.”

  She gives me my tickets.

  “Haylah Swinton!” says a young woman in a silver jumpsuit and a top hat. I turn to see just about the coolest woman I’ve ever laid eyes on. “I’m Vanessa Trimble—call me Van—from the email.”

  “Oh right, yeah! Look, thank you for letting me in.”

  “Just don’t tell the others you got your application in late, okay?” she whispers with a grin.

  I smile. “No, of course not!”

  “Wait here—James is so gonna want to meet you. James!” she yells and an equally cool young guy in a brown suit looks up from his chat with another contestant and comes over.

  “Look, it’s Haylah!” says Van.

  “Haylah”’ he says, reaching out to shake my hand, “A pleasure. I’m James. Me and Van run this crazy night, plus a few other more regular comedy nights across town. Look, you’ve got such a natural style, we can’t wait to see what you do this evening.”

  My heart does a little forward roll of joy at being complimented by people who actually know what they’re talking about.

  We chat for a bit as I tell them how nervous I am and they tell me that’s perfectly normal, that you need the nerves to do well out there.

  “So who are the judges then?” I ask.

  “Well, we keep them anonymous as otherwise the acts tend to play just to them, and if they’re not laughing we’ve seen people just give up and totally die onstage. They’re comedians and guys who’ve run clubs or been on the circuit in one way or another for years. But look, don’t worry about them. Just do your best and focus on your delivery and the laughs will come, yeah?”

  Then they wish me good luck and I go outside to join the others, glowing a bit from the encouragement, but still shaking at the thought of actually doing this.

  “I’m on last!” I huff. “Can you believe it? I’m on bloody last!”

  “What’s wrong with that?” asks Kas. “The audience will have warmed up by then. Oooh, and have you seen those two boys over there, Chloe? They’re totally checking us out.”

  “Oooh, you’re right!” says Chloe, drawing herself up to her full height and giving them h
er squinty “flirty” look over her shoulder, which always looks to me more like she has a retinal problem.

  “What’s wrong with LAST?” I say. “It means I’ve got to sit there all evening, watching everyone else and getting more and more freaked out and EURRGHH! Why am I putting myself through this! I should just go and tell them I can’t do it. I should just—”

  Then someone taps me on the shoulder. I spin around—and am relieved to see it’s not Leo. It’s Ruben.

  “Hi,” he says.

  “Hi! Erm, Ruben. Kas, Chloe, this is Ruben.”

  “Hi,” they say, before they really obviously look down at his feet to see if he’s wearing socks. Luckily, his ankles are hidden from view by great swathes of beige corduroy pants.

  “So, your mum sent me a message asking to meet her here?” he says with a look of bewilderment behind his beard. And actually I thought seeing Ruben would be dead awkward, but the truth is I’m kind of glad to see him and relieved to think about something else other than my impending onstage humiliation.

  “Yeah, erm, I need to tell you something about that…”

  We walk around the corner and sit next to each other on the concrete back steps of the theatre.

  “Okay, look, so…” I take a deep breath. “Mum didn’t send you that message. I did.”

  “What? Haylah!” he says.

  But then, before he can get mad, I spill everything out. And he listens as I explain to him that although, yes, I thought he was a twonk when I first met him, now he actually seems all right. I tell him that I didn’t know they were serious, and that I just wanted to keep everything the same for me, Mum, and Noah. I tell him that since he left she’s been a total sad sack and that I think she actually likes him. A lot.

  “Oh,” he says when I’m done, running his hand over his beard.

  “I know, I was horrible. And super selfish,” I say.

  He thinks about it for a moment. “No, you weren’t. You were looking out for your family, and there’s nothing wrong with that.” He sighs. “So, you want us to meet, right? Today?”

  “Yeah. It’s a comedy competition thing. I’m performing and…Mum’s coming along in a bit, though she doesn’t know I’m going onstage. I know she’d love to see you. So would Noah. So…you’ll stay? Please?” I ask, hopefully handing him his ticket.