Rebel with a Cupcake

by Anna Mainwaring

  A bit like that girl on the wall.

  Dom sighs deeply. He looks back at me and shakes his head, polite enough for once not to say what I’ve heard so many times: How can you two be sisters?

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I say. “But Cat’s out of your league.”

  “Not in my head, she’s not.” He grins wickedly and winks, and I’m not sure whether to be shocked or to laugh. I laugh — it’s generally the best way to handle anything.

  According to the big clock over the row of shops, we have seven minutes to get to school. If we move up a gear from dawdle to walk, we’ll get there in time. The boys drift off, casting longing looks at Cat. She doesn’t look at me again. She pretty much ignores me all the time. This has been going on for about a year, since around the time she stopped eating. Which was about the time she left St. Ethelreda’s and started doing the A-level exams that will get her to university. She’s in sixth form college. With boys. St. Ethelreda’s is only for girls, because apparently, we can’t be trusted around the opposite sex.

  Hannah catches my eye and I shrug. We’ve talked about Cat so many times that there’s nothing more to say. But as we stroll up the hill to school, I do fantasize about force-feeding her a whole plate of my very best cupcakes until she balloons to — OMG — my size. Would boys still look past me to her the way they do now?

  As I’m about to enter the school gates, Hannah puts a warning hand on my arm. It’s Mrs. Brown, Assistant Head with Special Responsibility for Child Intimidation, standing by the main entrance. She can normally be found striding down corridors like the Snow Queen, sucking the life-spirit out of all who cross her path. I swear even teachers hide behind corners to get away from her.

  I’m not usually so horrible, but she is the nastiest person who ever lived. It’s not just that she’s mean, but that she seems to enjoy being mean. The more the Year Sevens cry when she screams at them for forgetting to button up their blazers (I know, what a terrible crime — an undone button!), the more she smiles. And there are no rules against a teacher who’s a bully.

  So, there she is, standing guard at the gate, nostrils flared, looking out for anything that’s visible that shouldn’t be. Cos that’s one of the many things that drives her crazy — female flesh on show. Just behind her, her latest victims stand cowed. Their crimes are easy to guess. Quivering Amy Dutton? Too much cleavage. Sniveling Julie Macdonald? Midriff visible. Defiant Catherine Temple? Skirt like a belt. Likely punishment for dressing like this? Well, at the end of the school year, we have a Leavers’ Ball. It’s the highlight of the year where we all celebrate the fact that we can finally leave this fascist institution and go to sixth form college (a practice version of university but you don’t actually leave home), where we will be treated like adults for the first time in our lives. But these girls — they can kiss going to Leavers’ goodbye. And that means their social lives have just died.

  Just as we get close, one of the younger teachers walks past. Mrs. Brown’s eyes scan her like a laser, taking in the pencil skirt, the high heels and the fitted cardigan. Her eyes narrow. “Miss Farrow. See me after attendance,” Brown bellows.

  Poor Miss Farrow bites her ruby lips and looks petrified. We sigh for her. She’ll learn. Even female teachers have to avoid any suggestion that they might be attractive. Not that I really want to go there — I mean, they’re teachers, after all. As we rush past Mrs. Brown, we hear an intake of breath as she looks at Izzie, but we’re saved. A scream and a whimper break out behind us.

  “Charlotte Harrison, are those FISHNET tights? FISHNETS? Get yourself over here.”

  And another is sacrificed so we can go free.

  Izzie sighs. “She’d prefer it if we all wore nuns' habits and then nothing would be on show.”

  So, it’s 8:49 a.m. and we seem to have survived so far.

  But I speak too soon because as we climb up the stairs to our form room, Izzie spots danger ahead. “Oh no,” she says, “here they come.”

  And the next trial begins.

  So, we’ve just got past the psychopath teacher. Now meet the students who are most like her. Just a bit prettier.

  Meet Zara, Tara, Lara, Tilly and Tiff.

  I could try to describe their individual characteristics, but they all get confused in my head. Just imagine a many-headed Hydra from a horror film, each snake’s head with perfect makeup and straightened hair. Once upon a time, I was quite friendly with Lara. But this was before she discovered Tara and Zara, and their personalities merged, and all Lara’s nice bits got lost in the mix.

  Let me sum them up:

  They stalk through the corridors as if on a catwalk, trailing perfume, money and attitude as they pout and pose, making lesser girls leap out of their way.

  They talk loudly so everyone has to overhear the precise details of their interactions with boys, all designed to make you feel inferior if your last close encounter with a potential romantic partner was buying a skinny hot chocolate from a Starbucks barista.

  They tease you if you haven’t had sex. #virgin

  They tease you if you have had sex. #slut

  They don’t like anyone. I don’t think they even like themselves.

  They file past us on the stairs, sniggering.

  “Nice look, Izzie,” Tara simpers. “You’ll need a love potion to get anyone to fancy you in that getup.”

  Hannah they merely ignore.

  Zara checks me up and down with a deliberate stare. “My oh my, we all know you like your sweets, Jess, but it’s really starting to show.”

  “Wow,” I say, and as they walk on, giggling, I shout, “Oh, by the way, you should ask Tilly what she was doing with Jamie in the park last night.” (You have to use whatever ammunition comes your way.)

  Zara spins around, her eyes like a snake, while poor Tilly begins to tremble.

  Then Zara runs lightly down a few steps and stands, staring, over me. “You fat cow,” she says, sneering. I laugh in her face and turn away from her. Then I’m not quite sure what happens. Does she push me? Does someone push her into me? All I know is that I’m flying backward and I land hard on my backside.

  “At least you have a soft landing,” Zara purrs. As she turns, she flicks a glance back over me. “As I said, it’s starting to show.”

  I look down and see that my leggings have ripped at the seam, from halfway down my thigh to my calf, revealing a huge expanse of white flesh. Zara stares at me in triumph and waltzes off. At least waxing my legs last night was a good idea.

  Even so: Bullies–1, Jess–0.

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  Invisible Rule #3:

  If a pupil doesn’t do their work, they get detention. If a teacher doesn’t mark work, nothing happens. There is no such thing as teacher detention.

  Hannah sits down next to me on the stairs as I rub my sore backside.

  “Are you all right?” she asks. “Shall we tell Mrs. Carroway?”

  I give her a look. “I’m not going to a form tutor about anything. We are not Year Sevens. I’ll get my own back on her somehow, don’t you worry.” With that, I hoist myself back up, my ego hurting more than my bum. And THAT is killing me.

  Other girls filter past, some with soft whispers, others calling out, “Okay, Jess?”

  Sporty Amy T. jogs by. “Don’t worry, Jess. I’ve got General PE with Zara this afternoon. I’ll take her down then! She can run but she can’t hide.” She trots on with a wink.

  The three of us look down at my ripped leggings. The intake of breath from Hannah and Izzie confirms that it’s worse than I thought.

  “Shall we try the Textiles room?” Izzie says hopefully, but I can see straight away that the material is too frayed to sew back together properly. There is just a sea of bare white leg. I didn’t think the leggings were that tight.

  Then a thought hits me like a thunderbolt
. A calorie-laden, carb-enriched, fat-loaded thunderbolt. What if Zara is right? What if I’ve just gone from “Well, I can just about live with that” to “We don’t stock your size here. Why don’t you try the FAT shop next door for FAT people”?

  While I’m thinking the unthinkable, my friends are attempting to sort out my problem. “Let’s ask around. Someone’s bound to have something spare to wear, and leggings, well, they fit anyone,” Izzie says helpfully.

  I look at the legs filing past and notice, not for the first time of course, that they’re all a lot thinner than mine. The difference is that this time I care.

  The school bell rings and now we’re officially late for attendance, but that’s okay because Mrs. Carroway is always late. So I go to the toilets and take off the leggings. I wish I’d worn my jeans. As I look in the mirror, I feel horribly exposed. This skirt is too short to wear without tights or leggings. I can live with my legs when they’re covered up. But au naturel? I think not.

  The door of the loo bangs open, and who should come in but Catamaran Caroline (so-called because she was once overheard saying, “Daddy’s thinking of buying a catamaran this weekend” in the same way your or my dad might think of buying a Meatloaf album. In case you don’t know, a catamaran is some kind of weird boat that not even idiots can capsize. They cost A LOT). She gives me the once-over, then makes a face like she’s seen some sick. How many more people are going to look at me like that today?

  As a result of all this, I am three minutes late for attendance.

  And guess what? Just this once, Mrs. Carroway’s on time. She usually swans in ten minutes late with a Starbucks in her hand, but today, she’s already sitting at the computer, logged on and ready to go. She attempts to give me (queen of the stare) a hard stare.

  It fails.

  She starts calling out the messages for the day and doesn’t seem to notice the amount of leg that I’m showing. So, I just sit down.

  That’s when she calls on me. “Jesobel, it’s not like you to be late. I’ll let this one go but you’ll be getting a letter home if it happens again.”

  Oh God, I’m quaking in my Vans. A letter. In the twenty-first century, the school attempts to communicate our sins to parents via paper letters. They don’t seem to notice that no one ever replies to these letters. Because parents never actually get them. Cos we steal them. There you go: School–0, Students–1.

  My other friends try to offer help. There’s Sana — small, huge eyes, constantly readjusting her headscarf and trying to copy homework. She’s always drawing manga when she should be studying. Then Suzie — funny, long legs, never hands her homework in on time. Never listens to her parents from what I can see. Finally, Bex. She finds school hard. She finds life hard. Give her a hockey stick and she’s transformed. But even she feels sorry for me today.

  The bell rings. So, with naked legs, it’s off to English. I hope it’s not one of those lessons where you’re made to put Post-its on the board.

  There are generally two kinds of teachers — young ones who’ve been on courses and try to make you do stuff in an “interesting” way, and old ones who just get on with it with as little fuss as possible, unless the inspectors are in. Fortunately, Mrs. Lewis is one of the old ones. She just puts some questions on the board and leaves us to work through them, so my legs can stay safely hidden behind my desk.

  Unfortunately, this gives her time to check who’s done their homework.

  “Jesobel, I’m still missing an essay from you from last week.”

  What I really want to say is, I’ll hand it in when you mark my controlled assessment, which you’ve had for four weeks. I mean, I’m in trouble for not doing my work, but I’m not allowed to say to her, “That’s not good enough, Mrs. Lewis. You’re in detention.”

  I just don’t buy that line teachers give us about being so busy. I whisper to Izzie, “Funny how when we walk past her house, she’s always drinking white wine and watching Come Dine with Me. Busy, my aching arse!”

  I might have whispered this too loudly, because now Mrs. Lewis is looking at me as if I’ve just said Shakespeare is overrated.

  “What did you just say, Jesobel?” she snaps.

  “I was just saying how moving I found this poem,” I lie. Then I put on the wounded puppy expression. “Sorry about the homework, miss. I’ll hand it in tomorrow.”

  “I expect better from one of my prefects,” she says sharply.

  And I feel like screaming, cos today’s been quite trying and it’s not even nine o’clock yet. But I smile sweetly while I imagine her drowning in a vat of crisp white wine, her little arms waving as she bobs pathetically, sinking deeper and deeper into the alcohol. Just cos I’m a prefect — a dubious honor at the best of times — I’m supposed to be bloody perfect.

  “Well,” she says with a cold smile, “if I can’t mark your work, I can’t tell if you’re on target for your predicted grade. So, you’d better go and sit with the girls who are below target.”

  The whole class draws in a deep breath.

  Thing is, in our school you sit in order.

  Those who are pretty perfect — you can tell by their neat handwriting and beautifully selected stationery items — and are going to get A’s or A-pluses are in one group. I’m always in this group, partly because I work hard and partly because I really do love those cute Japanese erasers shaped like kittens. Then there are the more normal girls who are going to get B’s and, hell, maybe a few C’s. And there’s the rest — D’s or below. The lost causes. The girls who just don’t get it. They look sad, like rescue puppies that no one wants. This system is supposed to encourage us to stay out of the bottom group.

  I can feel words bubbling up inside me like lava in a volcano. But I don’t say a word. I just move myself, my books, my bag, my pencil case with all its lovely color-coded pens, and sit down at the Fail Table. With Ellie Unwin, who smells, and not in a nice way. And Rosie Sherwood, who cries all the time. Shall we review the situation?

  I’m wearing a skirt that makes me feel ridiculous. #fashionfail

  Most days I don’t feel fat. Today I do.

  The hypocrisy and double standards today have gone from “mildly annoying” to “this place is driving me crazy.”

  Normal Me would just go, “Hey, having a bad day? Then eat an amazing cake!” Current Me doesn’t want cake.

  This situation is going from bad to worse.

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  Observation #1:

  Doing what you’re told is often overrated.

  I put my head down and answer a series of devious questions about a poem that seems to me to be a random swirl of words on a page but apparently is a work of genius cos some dead white guy wrote it.

  It makes me feel slightly better that Ellie and Rosie, my fellow public failures, really can’t do this. I know the BS that the exam board wants and can puke up pages of it, but Ellie is chewing her pen in a sad sort of way and adding smiley faces to all the i’s in her work, while Rosie is weeping into her homework planner. I push my book so that Rosie can see it and nod to her to copy. She almost smiles but not quite.

  Meanwhile, at the non-failing tables, Sana chats away to Bex for pretty much all of the lesson and so keeps Mrs. Lewis’s attention away from us and our cheating. Note to any teachers out there — don’t worry about the noisy ones, they’re easy to spot. It’s the quiet ones you need to watch.

  The bell screeches at the end of the lesson, drowned out by the sound of exercise books and pencil cases being flung into bags. Izzie comes and stands next to me, making a sad face.

  “I’ll curse her if you like,” she offers.

  “You’d do that for me?” I laugh. “You’re so sweet. Can I order boils or being hit by lightning?”

  “You laugh at me,” Izzie says, “but you know what I can do.”

  (Once she did a talk in E
nglish about a “love potion” and gave it to Rebecca Turner. Who then snogged Jay Hudsworth at a party. Yes, Rebecca Turner — not cool — snogged Jay Hudsworth — way cool. Izzie puts it down to her love potion. I put it down to vodka. The rest of the school is undecided.)

  We wander off into the main corridor, knocked about like corks in the sea as we are hit by a series of large bags carried by Year Sevens. The size of their bags increases in direct proportion to their smallness. I’m sure you could turn this into a mathematical equation — which would then be the only useful thing done in a Maths lesson this century.

  Izzie stops to talk to someone while I plow on up the stairs to Music. I’m not really in the mood for chitchat. My legs feel naked and huge. I’m in the mood for an argument.

  As I stand at the top of the steps, I see my reflection in an ancient glass cabinet. I see my legs in all their glory. Yuck. I really am half dressed. In fact, I have unwittingly achieved the slut look that half of Year Eleven aims for on a Friday night. I look like I should be in some music video, bumping, grinding and generally getting my groove on behind some hip-hop star.

  “Wicked look,” Sana calls, and gives me a wolf whistle. I do a little shimmy in return. I might not feel great about myself at this precise moment, but I can still pretend that I think I’m awesome. I’m not beaten yet. I mean, what’s the big deal about a pair of big, naked legs?

  “Work it, girlfriend,” she continues and, giggling, I pretend that I’m on an imaginary catwalk, sashaying and spinning, blowing kisses to the invisible paparazzi. There’s quite a few of us on the stairs and in the corridor, and the chant of “Go, Jess” begins to build as I continue to shake my thing.

  Sana laughs as I spin and pout at her. She gets her phone out and starts to film me. “You got it, Jess!”

  For the first time all day, I actually feel okay.