Rebel with a Cupcake

by Anna Mainwaring

Her tone of disappointment gets me every time. I mean, this is the woman who puts every ounce of energy, every day, into how she looks. She checks her reflection in any shiny surface that comes her way. Her idea of a blowout is putting a second olive on her microgreens. She was quite a success as a model, and she married a rock star, and she’s ended up with me. Mum likes self-help books, but you can’t find anything on Amazon along the lines of I Was a Supermodel — My Daughter’s a Whale.

  Gran looks at me. “Well, young lady, it would be rude to keep The Plastic One waiting.” She winks. “Come and report back to me later.” We exchange grins, but I know I have to leave this sanctuary.

  I have to face my fate.

  Alone.

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  Invisible Rule #5:

  When a parent says they want to “talk,” it means they want to tell you off. They talk, you listen.

  Mum’s voice echoes up the stairs. “Jesobel, I know you’re up there.”

  I expect Dad’ll be awake by now. Nothing like the sweet tones of your beloved to bring you back from your dreams. I’m not quite sure what Dad’s dreams are but I expect he’s on stage somewhere in the early nineties.

  As I pass the bedroom, there’s definitely movement. A second later, Dad pokes his head around the door, all un-gelled hair and baggy boxers.

  “Stephen, get down here and make yourself useful for a change,” Mum calls, with more than an edge of acid to her voice.

  Dad reappears in some trackies and I can hear him follow me down. Lauren is sitting on the floor outside her room.

  “Alice sent me out for answering back. I can go back in when I’ve spent ten minutes on the naughty step,” she says.

  I make a mental note to have a chat with Alice later.

  But before that, I have to face my mother.

  There she stands, fuming. You have to give it to her — she’s not let standards slip. From a distance, she looks much the same as she looked twenty years ago. Large-eyed, groomed to perfection, perfect nails sitting on slim hips, she winces as I stomp down the stairs. This is a woman who likes to keep flesh strictly under control.

  “Jesobel,” she starts, “I’ve had an interesting phone call from school. Care to tell me what this is about?”

  Dad ambles into the living room and I follow. I think I need to sit down, so I throw myself on the sofa. Mum paces, her heels clicking manically on the stripped pine floor.

  “So?” she starts. “Shall we begin with what on earth you are wearing?” Her eyes rake down to my bare legs and back up again. “I know you like to make a point about” — she pauses for a second — “your appearance, but I have to say that what you’re wearing is unsuitable. I mean, frankly, Jess, I don’t want to be harsh but what were you thinking?”

  My eyes prick with tears and I stare hard at the floor to keep my face like a mask.

  “I mean, if you want advice on which clothes would, well, suit …” Her voice begins to quaver for a moment. “… look good on someone who …”

  I let her stumble.

  “… chooses to look like you, then you only have to ask. I mean, I do actually know something about fashion.”

  Dad clears his throat. “Well, I think Jess has the right to express herself through her clothes if that’s what she wants to do.”

  Nice try, Dad, I think, and we exchange smiles. Maybe he isn’t so bad after all.

  “Let’s move on then,” Mum says. “I still don’t understand why you’re sitting at home, half naked, when you should be at school. You start your exams soon and you know how important they are!”

  I take a deep breath. “I got into an argument with Zara Lovechild. She pushed me over and I split my leggings.”

  Mum opens her mouth as if to say something but for once thinks better of it.

  “I was going to borrow something to wear but everything kept going wrong. And then Zara was really rude to me and then she sort of fell over. And I might have said some stuff. And then Mrs. Brown saw me and just started screaming at me. Calling me a bully, when she’s the meanest bully around, but she’s a teacher, so you’re not allowed to say that. And she wouldn’t listen to me so I just had enough.” My voice tapers off. Everything I’ve said sounds so pathetic and childish.

  Lauren’s voice pipes up. “Mrs. Brown sounds like a knobhead if she’s mean to you.”

  Dad chokes and Mum takes a deep breath. I know she’s counting to three and thinking of her happy place like they teach in her self-visualization courses.

  “Lauren, sweetie, where did you hear that expression?” Mum asks and she almost sounds calm.

  Lauren smiles. “Daddy calls Uncle Barry that all the time when he thinks I’m watching TV. Is a knobhead a nice person or a nasty person, Daddy?”

  Dad begins to laugh. Really laugh. And then I giggle. And before you know it, Lauren is squealing on the floor, Dad has tears running down his cheeks and even Mum’s taut face cracks a smile (but not across the forehead, cos of the Botox).

  Mum is the first to pull herself together. But Dad is the first to speak. “So, Jess told some tight-arsed —”

  “Stephen!”

  “— some interfering old bully where to go,” Dad continues. “And that’s it.”

  “Sort of,” I mumble.

  “And then she left the school premises,” Mum points out. “Jess, you can’t just walk out of school. You have to face up to the consequences of your actions. You may have been provoked but you need to show more self-control.”

  “I’m just sick of school,” I say. I wish Gran were here to back me up.

  Mum stares at me as if that’s not an answer. “Are you okay? Perhaps I should take you to see my doctor. He did wonders for Maria Morrison’s youngest.”

  I say, “I don’t need Prozac. I need Zara Lovechild to chill out and teachers not to give me so much stress.”

  “I really don’t see what you have to be stressed about.”

  I say nothing. Because if I say, Well, Mum, I find every day a battle against stereotypical ideas of female beauty and an education system that requires you to be “perfect” at all times, she’ll just laugh her tinkly laugh and say, Being beautiful isn’t easy. So instead I just say, “I don’t need a doctor. I just want to be left alone.”

  “Right on,” Dad says. “You don’t need doctors messing with your head. Are we nearly done here because I need to get to a rehearsal for you-know-what.” He taps his nose like he’s in some lame spy film. What he means is that he’s doing a gig with all his old bandmates soon and he’s treating it like it’s a state secret. Which is probably a mistake because unless they actually tell someone, no one will turn up.

  Mum sighs. “We all have to go to a meeting tomorrow morning at the school. Nine o’clock with Mr. Ambrose.”

  Dad starts to protest. “Nine o’clock? That’s against my human rights.”

  She silences him with a glare. “You heard, Stephen. You’ll just have to cut your ‘rehearsal’ short, not roll in at two in the morning after drinking every bar in the area dry.” Her laser focus returns to me. “You’ll have to apologize.” She anticipates what I’m going to say before I even say it. “I know it’s not fair, but unfortunately, the world’s not fair. I heard what you said, but they say that they’ve got evidence of you bullying this girl. And the camera never lies.”

  If my own mum won’t back me, then what chance do I have?

  Mum sits next to me and puts her thin hand on my plump knee. “You must focus on school. It’s not long until your exams, and I don’t want to put pressure on you, but you need to do well to get into the best universities.”

  This from the woman who left school with no qualifications. The only qualifications models need can best be seen in a swimsuit. But I digress. She’s still talking.

  “I know it’s our family tradition that you cook, but
all the cookbooks, the meals — it’s getting a bit out of hand. And your leggings splitting. Don’t you think that that might be a sign that perhaps you could think about losing a few pounds? I think you’d be happier if you took care of yourself a bit more.”

  Mum’s voice sounds gentle but I feel the barbs.

  “You think I should be like Cat and never eat and just be miserable all the time?”

  “Well, no, but as you’ve brought Cat up, think how well she did in her exams. And she’s very popular with boys.”

  So, that’s it. Cat is the daughter of her dreams and I’m just bringing shame on the family? I kind of always knew this but it’s hard to hear it.

  “So, you think I’ll be happier if there is less of me?”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  But it’s what you meant, I think.

  “Why don’t you think things over in your room for a bit? You needn’t cook tonight. I’ll do it.” Mum’s cooking? So, green salad all round.

  “Don’t look so sad, Jess,” Mum says. “I bought you something while I was out. I left it in your room.”

  A running machine, I wonder? Or a magic device that sucks fat out? Lauren tries to give me a hug but Mum drags her away and I plod back upstairs to my room, alone.

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  Observation #3:

  If being thin is so great, why are thin people always miserable?

  It’s hours before school ends, so I’m on my own until then. How do you fill the time when you’re just losing at life in the biggest possible way imaginable?

  I could turn my phone back on and see who, if anyone, is concerned about me. But I don’t want to see the response to this morning just yet. And anyway, maybe no one cares. So I change into old jeans and a big top (not too revealing for you, Mum?) and I watch TV. Sort of. I’ve got all of MasterChef: The Professionals prerecorded, so I find my favorite episodes, get out my huge “Ideas for Recipes” scrapbook and make notes on any meals I’ve missed.

  A few hours later, I’m hungry and the house seems quiet.

  I am unhappy. I consider: What makes me happy when everything is a bit rubbish?

  Food. The cooking of it and especially the eating of it.

  I’m not sure that’s going to work for me today, but I head down to the kitchen. Dad’s off being cool somewhere, Mum’s taken Lauren shopping probably for her so-called dinner, Gran never leaves her “suite” and Cat’s at college. Not that you’d notice if she was here. I open the cupboards and see what there is. After a few minutes of rifling through ingredients and flicking through my books, I have a brainwave. I saw this ultracool thing where someone made the Taj Mahal out of gingerbread. It was an amazing feat of imagination, baking skill and engineering.

  For the first time since the whole Zara thing, I properly feel okay. This is my great plan — I’m going to build a model of the school out of gingerbread. And then — this is the best bit — I’m going to eat it. That’s tickety — (I stop myself saying that. I sound like a weirdo.) I’m not quite sure what I’m saying here about my feelings about school, but I think it’s that school won’t get the better of me. I think how satisfying it will be to hear the school walls crunch as I bite down on them.

  But it’s an epic project, which keeps me busy for the rest of the afternoon. First, I need to plan, and then I need to build.

  After three hours of measuring, mixing, baking, cutting and constructing, I stand back and look at my handiwork. The main school bit and then the six portable classrooms that smell in summer and let the rain in in winter. Green icing for the playing fields. And even a little gingerbread clock tower. A bit wonky but definitely a recognizable campanile. It looks fab, even if I do say so myself. I take a photo and leave the gingerbread school there for Mum. She’ll have me put in some hospital for crazy people. “Well, Doctor, making buildings out of cake is hardly normal, is it?”

  By now it’s nearly the end of the school day. Hannah and Izzie will be heading home and I need to talk to them. I don’t want to see my family. I want my friends. As far as I’m aware, I’m not under house arrest — I was just told to stay in my room and think things over. Time served and now I’m free. So, I head off out of the house, walk the few streets to Hannah’s house, find the key under the third stone from the left flowerpot and let myself in to Hannah’s basement, where it all started just a few hours ago. I put on the ancient two-ring stove that we use down here and begin to make hot chocolate for them.

  I don’t have to wait long.

  Hannah and Izzie come through the door exactly 13 minutes and 14 seconds after the school bell would have rung. That is truly a world record — I’m impressed.

  They stand there for a minute.

  “OMG,” Hannah gasps. You know, I’d expect better from someone who reads as much as she does, but clearly it’s one of those days where no one does what they’re supposed to. “I don’t know how you can stand there making hot drinks so calmly.”

  What is she talking about? Someone could announce the end of the world and I’d say, “Now, who’d like a snack before we all panic?”

  Izzie comes and sits next to me on the non-reclining recliner. “Seriously, are you okay?”

  “As in, have I gone mad?” I reply. “Not really, I just couldn’t help myself. I think I was possessed.”

  Izzie looks up with interest.

  “I was joking. Spirit possession is not the explanation for what happened!” I say before she gets any ideas. “So, what’s the word?”

  “You’ve not seen?” Hannah says. “It’s all gone crazy. You’re all anyone is talking about at school, or at the boys’ school. This is better than when that Maths teacher ran away with that boy in Year Ten.”

  I raise a skeptical eyebrow — it’s a look I’ve perfected over the years. Seriously? “I walked out of school. What’s the big deal here?”

  Izzie and Hannah exchange looks. “You don’t know, do you?”

  “I don’t know what?” I say.

  “About the clip?” Hannah replies.

  They both start to laugh.

  “You will not believe this,” Hannah says. She flips up the lid of her ancient laptop.

  “How can you not have seen this?”

  “I turned my phone off and didn’t go on the computer. I wasn’t in the mood,” I say.

  “Well,” she says, “I think you’ll be in the mood for this. You’re everywhere. Look.” She’s on YouTube. It’s a clip called “Fat Girl vs. Mean Girl.”

  It’s me. It’s a film of me. And Zara. You see me and my face as she says something that you can’t hear. And then you see me say, with added subtitles, what I said: “Grotesque, Zara? That’s a big word for you — do you think you can spell it?” And then she lunges forward and I step to the side. She falls flat on her face. And there I am, with my foot on her bum, pretending to be a triumphant boxer. The girls all around are cheering me on.

  OMG.

  There’s a clip of me.

  On the Internet.

  There have been a few thousand views already.

  My first reaction: that’s brilliant. My moment of triumph over Zara has been captured forever. Now it’s there for all to see.

  My second reaction: Do I really look like that?

  For once in my life, I am speechless.

  I watch the clip over and over again. Partly in disbelief, partly in pride, partly in shock at my legs. I grapple with the knowledge that this clip of me is now being seen all over the world. Maybe girls in Mongolian huts are taking time from milking their yaks to go, “Have you seen that girl on YouTube? She really should lose some weight!”

  As I watch, the number of views just goes up and up. I’ve heard of things going viral but this is beyond weird. Despite my legs being really rather sturdy, they start to wobble and my head spins. I might actually be sick. W
eakly, I say, “Who put it on with the subtitles?”

  Hannah looks proud. “Oh, that was Sana’s idea. We had IT so she just did it then. Do you like it?”

  See, normally, I would like it, but now I’m not so sure. I’m beginning to see how the whole world must see me. And the thought that my body is now being broken into squillions of pixels and being sent round the world for people to laugh at is just not okay on any level. Just minutes ago, I was baking in my kitchen and I was in control of me and my ingredients. I’m so not in control of this. A feeling rises up inside me that I’m not quite familiar with. Panic.

  Izzie is talking, but I can’t hear what she’s saying.

  “So, have you been expelled?” she says again with excitement.

  I shake my head. “I’ve been suspended for the day and I’m in with the parents for the appointment of doom at nine o’clock.”

  I sigh. We all sigh. We all know that this will not be fun.

  But that was before the clip. Which could change things. It’s one thing to break the school rules. It’s another thing to be seen to break school rules by the whole world.

  Izzie pipes up, “Do you want me to read your tarot cards?”

  I bite my tongue (a bit). “You know, I’m gonna give that a miss today.”

  Hannah changes tack. “Let’s log on. You’ve got to see this.” She knows my password and, seconds later, there’s my Instagram account. It’s mad — loads of messages from people I’ve never heard of. Or people who have been too cool to know me in the past.

  Hannah says, “You need to think before you say anything, cos people are gonna want something special from you.”

  Obvs!

  “So, my latest recipe for bouillabaisse isn’t gonna cut it?” I say.

  Izzie gives me a withering look. “Your obsession with food is just as weird as my interest in magic.”

  “Except food is real and essential for life,” I say.

  Then I remember the gingerbread model of the school. That is exactly what this moment needs.

  Seconds later, I’ve posted the photo. Underneath I’ve put: If you don’t like something, eat it. #thegirlwhoeatslife