Lottie Biggs is (Not) Desperate

by Hayley Long

  My mum said, ‘I’m glad you’re getting on so well with Gareth but don’t forget the rest of us, will you.’

  I shovelled another large spoonful of Choco Pops into my mouth.

  My mum looked at the clock, stood up and put her coffee cup into the sink. ‘I have to be off,’ she said. ‘Have a good day and say hello to Goose for me.’

  I shrugged, munched my Choco Pops and grunted.

  Just as my mum was about to leave the kitchen, she paused and said, ‘How are you getting on with Winnie in your room? Somebody at work told me that chinchillas can be very active at night. He’s not keeping you awake, is he?’

  I swallowed my cereal really quickly and said, ‘No way! He’s as quiet as a mouse. I don’t hear a peep out of him.’

  I’m not sure why I said this. Winnie is, after all, causing me serious sleep deprivation. At the end of the day, I suppose this lie proves that I like having his bouncy little presence in my bedroom.

  But it was still about the billionth lie I’d told in the space of five minutes. I gave my mum a quick smile and tried to look like an honest and trustworthy person even though I was actually starting to remind myself of that terrible Dorian Gray character in my English reading book. He was a dodgy little liar as well. If I had a portrait of myself hidden away in some disused bedroom, it would probably be looking quite old and ugly by now.

  My mum smiled and said, ‘Good old Winnie,’ and then she picked up her coat and bag, blew me a kiss and left.

  I put my cereal bowl into the sink and picked up my own bag. All through Year 10 I was using a genuine authentic Donna Karan handbag for school, but this year, I have gone very minimalist and anti-capitalist and I’m refusing to use anything except a plastic Nike carrier bag which I got given for free when I bought my last pair of bling new limited-edition trainers. I think it makes me look as if I’m stylish without even trying to be. Next, I pushed my earphones into my ears, dropped my MP3 player into the pocket of my trousers, grabbed my keys and set off on the short walk to school. I didn’t bother with a coat. To be honest, I never bother to wear a coat if my mum has left the house before me. Coats are for softies.

  At the school gates, I saw Samantha Morgan and Lee Fogel eating each other for breakfast. I’m surprised that those two have got any lips left. As I walked past them, Samantha Morgan must have opened her eyes long enough to spot me because she called out, ‘Oi, Lottie! Go and talk to Goose. She’s really upset, you know.’

  I paused for a second and then I said, ‘Yeah, so am I!’

  Lee Fogel smirked and said, ‘That’s not exactly news, is it, Potty?’ And then he turned his back on me and buried his teeth in Samantha’s neck. I pretended to chuck up in front of them and walked on through the gates, but as I did, I heard Samantha mouthing off in an angry voice behind me. I turned and opened my mouth to yell something back at her but then I hesitated and closed it again. She wasn’t shouting at me. She wasn’t even looking in my direction. Lee had stopped slobbering all over her and they were having some sort of argument instead.

  It got me thinking about Goose though. It got me thinking again about how stupid I was to go around upsetting her. I know she’s quite irritating sometimes. And I know that she’s a bit too pretty and annoyingly popular and aggravatingly clever and blood-boilingly brilliant at absolutely everything. And I know, too, that she definitely does think that she’s as tasty as chocolate. But she’s still the coolest person that I’ve ever met. And she did sit around my house with me all summer while I was recovering from my reasonably significant mental disturbance. And if the Prime Minister said to me, ‘Lottie, you’ve GOT to sit through a Mamma Mia! night with your mum and your sister because it’s the LAW’, then I’d DEFINITELY want Goose to be there to go through it all with me. Because, after all, she’s fab. I suppose I just need to be a bit nicer to her sometimes and stop being such a crabby old witch.

  So right there and then, I decided that as soon as I had the chance, I’d apologize to Goose and ask her if we could be friends again. My first lesson was English and me and Goose share the same desk so I knew I wouldn’t have very long to wait. As I walked to my registration room, I tried to work out what I was going to say to her. The prospect of apologizing was making me feel a bit nervous, to be honest. It’s weird because I’m really good at saying what I want to say when I write stuff down but when I have to speak things out loud, I sometimes make a right nasty mess of it.

  My brain was still whirring round with all this stuff when I walked straight smack bump into a couple of corridor snoggers.

  ‘Watch where you’re going!’ said Goose, angrily, once she’d detached herself from Spud’s face. And then she went bright red and said, ‘Oh, Lottie, it’s you.’

  I didn’t know what to say. I rubbed my bumped shoulder and shrugged and then said, ‘Oh yeah, so it is!’ Looking back on it, I think I might have sounded slightly sarcastic.

  Goose said, ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yep,’ I said.

  Spud smiled at me and then slipped his arm over Goose’s shoulders.

  Goose said, ‘Look, Lottie, I’m sorry about the other day.’

  Spud was looking bored and stroking Goose’s left shoulder. I wished he’d just go away.

  ‘I’m sorry too,’ I said. ‘It was my fault. I shouldn’t have given you such a hard time on the phone.’

  Goose grinned and looked relieved. ‘It’s all right, Lotts. Forget about it. Why don’t you come over to my house on Saturday and watch a documentary I’ve got about the making of the Free Willy films? It seems like ages since we’ve done anything together.’

  I laughed. ‘No, I’ve got a better idea,’ I said. And I was right on the very verge of telling her about my mum’s poxy plan to have a Mamma Mia! party when I suddenly spotted something on Goose’s neck which made me momentarily lose the ability to speak.

  She had a dirty great love bite on her neck the size of Sexas. I mean Texas.

  My cheeks had gone hot. Spud was still getting in the way and draping himself all over Goose’s shoulders. I tried to give him a look of blatant disapproval but suddenly all I could see was that vision of Gareth in his dad’s Britney Spears boxer shorts. I felt my face go even hotter. Before I could stop myself, I opened my mouth and blurted out, ‘I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t I go and see Shark Mutilation 3 at the cinema with Gareth?’

  Goose stopped smiling and looked a bit confused.

  ‘Because he’s asked me and he’s already bought the tickets,’ I added, to try and make things better.

  Goose gave me a puzzled smile and said, ‘Oh. OK then.’

  From somewhere further down the corridor, a familiar voice boomed out, ‘Biggsy!’

  It was Gareth. The vision of the BSBS flashed across my mind again. My cheeks were so hot I thought that I was about to spontaneously combust on the spot.

  Gareth gave me a big bear hug from behind and kissed me on the cheek.

  Spud said, ‘All right, Stingey? So you’re taking Lottie to see Shark Mutilation 3 then? Nice one. Richard Pritchard told me that you actually get to see someone’s head popping in that film.’

  It was Gareth’s turn to look confused. ‘What are you on about?’ he said.

  Spud said, ‘Lottie just said you’re taking her to see the film on Saturday.’

  Gareth looked even more perplexed and said, ‘Am I? First I’ve heard about it.’

  I could feel Goose staring at me. She’d gone a very deep purple colour. She looked as if she might be about to spontaneously combust as well.

  ‘Remember?’ I said to Gareth. ‘Remember you said we’d go this Saturday?’

  ‘Huh?’ said Gareth.

  I put my thumbnail in my mouth and bit on it. Goose hadn’t taken her eyes off me. For a moment, I thought she looked a bit sad but when she spoke she just sounded plain furious. ‘Got a better idea then, Lottie? Well, that’s really nice. Thank you so much for making that abundantly clear.’ And then she grabbed hold of Spud’s hand and
dragged him off down the corridor.

  Gareth said, ‘Er . . . have I done something wrong?’

  I chewed my thumbnail and watched Goose disappear around the corner. ‘No,’ I sighed. ‘But I have.’ And then I grabbed hold of his hand and dragged him off to registration with me.

  aND theN Jlml heNDrIX askeD me the CrltlCaL QuestlON

  In English, me and Goose didn’t speak to each other. We just sat there, as serious as a couple of chess players, and pretended to be really interested in what Mr Wood was saying about the Oscar Wilde book.

  ‘Has anyone read as far as page sixteen yet?’ he asked the class in his foghorn voice.

  I put my hand up and said, ‘I’m up to page one hundred and sixty-two.’

  Next to me, Goose muttered something and started scratching the desk with her thumbnail.

  Mr Wood smiled and said, ‘That’s marvellous, Lottie. See! Didn’t I tell you that you’d enjoy it? It’s full of so many great and memorable quotations from the witty Mr Wilde. Are there any pearls of wisdom which have jumped out at you?’

  I flicked to page nineteen and read out the words which I’d underlined there. ‘The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.’

  Mr Wood said, ‘Ah yes. One of Oscar Wilde’s most famous lines. But is it good advice, Lottie?’

  I shifted in my seat uncomfortably and said, ‘How the heck should I know?’

  Mr Wood’s eyes twinkled back at me and he said, ‘Indeed, how would you? I’m sure there is little in the way of temptation to trouble your lovely young mind.’

  As soon as he said this, the BSBS popped into my head again. For the eighty-six millionth time in the space of five days, I felt my face get hot. I looked down at my desk and hoped Mr Wood couldn’t see the terrible contents of my lovely young mind.

  Mr Wood said, ‘And how about you, Miss McKenzie? Have any of Oscar Wilde’s words proved to be of particular interest to you?’

  I sensed Goose’s body give an ever so slight jump. She probably hadn’t been expecting Mr Wood to start bending her brain as well. If I know Goose, she’d probably been composing some hit song lyrics in her head. I sat back in my chair and waited with interest for her response. My guess was that she’d been too busy receiving love bites from Spud to have actually started reading the book yet.

  I was wrong though. Goose said, ‘Yeah. This bit.’ She picked up her book and read out loud, ‘Some day you will look at your friend, and he will seem to you to be a little out of drawing, or you won’t like his tone of colour or something.’ She slapped the book down on her desk and added, ‘That line says a lot really, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Does it?’ said Mr Wood.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Goose. ‘It really sums up the total disappointment that you can feel when you realize that someone you really thought of as a good friend has changed and, actually, you see that they’re not the fantastic person that you thought they were.’

  Mr Wood put his head on one side and said, ‘Hmmm, interesting! Although I’m not sure that your interpretation is quite what Wilde actually intended. What do other people think?’

  And then he asked the rest of the class for their opinions but, of course, no one actually had any because they were all in the very advanced stages of Death by Boredom. Beca Bowen was so far gone that she was even plucking her eyebrows. Goose shifted a bit in her seat so that she was looking out of the window and then went right back to scratching the desk with her thumbnail.

  And I felt WORSE THAN EVER because I knew that Goose hadn’t really been talking about that stupid book at all. She’d been talking about me.

  Art was just as bad. Mr Spanton made us draw self-portraits using little mirrors that we had to hold out in front of us with one hand while we tried to sketch our own faces with another. I did my best but, really, I don’t think my heart was in it. When I’d finished, Mr Spanton came over to have a look at what I’d done. Scratching his chin, he said, ‘As an illustration, it’s not without merit, Lottie. In fact, I suppose, we could argue that it’s actually rather avant-garde.’

  ‘Which means?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s highly original. Definitely one of your more unique and innovative compositions. However . . .’

  ‘However?’ I asked.

  ‘However,’ repeated Mr Spanton, ‘I did ask you to draw a realistic portrait of yourself and in this drawing, you look about eighty years old!’

  I looked at my picture.19

  I can’t deny that he had a point.

  ‘What’s with all the wrinkles?’ He picked my picture up by its corners and held it out in front of him for a closer inspection. I sighed and waited. ‘And maybe those devil horns are a bit much too,’ he finally added. ‘Why don’t you have another go and concentrate properly this time?’

  But I couldn’t be bothered to concentrate. And I couldn’t be bothered to draw my own stupid Cornish pasty face so I just sat there in a big grizzly sulk and ignored everyone until it was lunchtime and then I got up and walked straight out of the school grounds because I didn’t want to be there any longer.

  Instead of turning right down Church Road and towards my house, I kept on walking down Merthyr Road and through the centre of Whitchurch village. Elvis Presley, a local celebrity who sleeps on a public bench and drinks more alcohol than is good for him, was dancing around on the opposite pavement and singing ‘Jailhouse Rock’ through a traffic cone. I wasn’t in the mood to listen to him. Pulling my MP3 player out of my pocket, I shoved my earplugs into place and pressed the PLAY button. There was a second’s delay and then an unmistakable clanking sound of feedback and percussion wrapped itself all around me and blocked Elvis Presley out of my life. Feeling relieved, I adjusted the volume so that no noise from the real world had any chance of getting through, and allowed Jimi Hendrix free rein to totally batter my ears. The freaky feedback noises faded away and Jimi’s guitar burst its way into my head. Across the road, Elvis was now singing silently into his traffic cone. On my side of the street, people stood outside the shops and chatted with their volumes turned down. I smiled triumphantly and kept on walking – my footsteps in time to the music. I think I even had a bit of a swagger in my step. All of a sudden, I felt really good. I felt fantastic. I was swaggering along down Merthyr Road just as if I was in my very own MTV video and Jimi’s song was ALL ABOUT ME.

  And then it hit me.

  The song I was listening to was called, Are You Experienced?’

  Jimi, in his sexy but mocking voice, was asking me a question.

  A very personal question.

  And even though I’d listened to this song a thousand times before, it was only right there, at midday, in the middle of Whitchurch, that I suddenly understood exactly what he was driving at.

  I stood stock still on the pavement. Jimi’s weird guitar noises continued to blast my eardrums into a messy pulp. Instead of feeling fantastic, I suddenly felt a bit sick and dizzy. From out of nowhere, freaky visions popped into my head. There was Gareth in his pants and Goose with a colossal love bite on her neck and Dilys cracking sexy jokes and Neil Adam dating every single woman in Cardiff and Samantha Morgan and Lee Fogel in a disgusting pashy smoochy clinch. It was horrible.20

  And it was also at that precise moment that I realized that EVERYONE in the whole of Cardiff is experienced except for me. I pulled the earplugs out of my ears and let them dangle down the front of my jumper. And then, before I even had a chance to stop and think about what I was doing, I took a great big deep breath and shouted,

  ‘No, Jimi. I am NOT experienced. In fact, I’m a total virgin!’

  All around, people stopped their conversations to turn and stare at me. I can’t be sure that the cars didn’t all screech to a skidding halt as well. It’s actually even possible that the world stopped spinning on its axis for a second. But then a man with a big belly, grey hair and fuzzy sideburns turned towards me as he pushed his way into the Spin Dizzy record shop and winked. He was braving the cold in a short-sleeved Ca
rdiff City football shirt and had a matching Bluebirds tattoo on his big hairy arm. Grinning, he said, ‘Anything J can help you out with, love?’ And then he laughed like a leery person.

  ‘Urrgghhh! Shut up!’ I said. And then I turned and walked as fast as I could back up Merthyr Road and on towards my house.

  And that’s where I’ve been ever since. I haven’t set foot outside the front door. I haven’t dared to in case I lose my head and behave like a tragic desperado again. Yesterday, I told my mum I’d had to come home with a headache, and this morning I told her it hadn’t gone away so she’s let me stay off school. And I’ve just been typing all this up into my Emotion Notepad Document and having a very long hard think about stuff.

  And what I’ve decided is this. It’s about time I had some experience. Just like that nosy woman on the bus said, life passes by at the same speed that you can click your fingers. So there’s no point messing about. It’s time for me to wake up to reality and the reality is that I am a woman with a womanly urge. And I need to take action.

  So I’m going to speak to Gareth tomorrow.

  a shOrt DIsCusslON Of the DlfflCuLtles whICh CaN arise frOm BeING NOt Quite the MIDDLe ChILD Of twO aND a haLf ChlLDreN

  In science, I’ve been learning about a very boring thing called the periodic table. Basically, it’s just a chart full of little boxes and in each little box is a symbol which represents a chemical element. In my opinion it’s a colossally tedious diagram which is not worth looking at but my double science teacher, Mr Thomas, reckons that it’s the most amazing feat of graphic design which has ever been undertaken. He says it’s even more brilliant than the London Underground map. Personally, I don’t think that the Underground map is any great shakes either. Mr Thomas loves the periodic table so much that he probably has it printed on his duvet cover and it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest to learn that he has the pillowcases to match. Anyway, he made us copy this boring chart into our boring exercise books and when we’d finished, he collected our books in to be marked. When I got mine back, he’d written all over my page in boring red pen because I’d got some of the boring boxes in the wrong boring order. I was a bit annoyed because I’d spent a lot of time colouring in that chart so that it looked nice. I said to him, ‘At the end of the day, does anyone really care if I muddle up a couple of random elements like Scandium and Snoozium? In the great big scheme of things, does it actually matter?’