Stereotype

by Claire Hennessy

  She watches him, fondly, as he walks away. “He’s great, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah.” He’s got a fantastic smile, anyway. How much can you tell about a person from the minimal amount of interaction we’ve had? I know that he’s into music, and I know that he laughed at American Pie. In other words, nothing that distinguishes him from everyone else of his age and gender.

  I wonder what he’d think if he saw my scars, and whether he’s the sheltered “why would you do that?” type or the hardened “yeah, so what?” type.

  And it doesn’t matter, anyway, because that’s not me. That’s not who I am. I’m never going to do it ever again, because I don’t want to be the poor-little-attention-seeking girl. People like that sicken me. I hate them.

  I am just going to be normal. Well, not normal normal. I mean, my motto is the title of that Avril Lavigne song, ‘Anything But Ordinary’. I don’t want to be normal, but a touch of normality couldn’t hurt. I could live with being creative and wacky. I would love to be thought of as creative and wacky.

  Instead of, you know, weird, freaky and definitely abnormal. Not to mention ugly. Looks compensate for so much in this world. Take Ciara in my class. She’s quiet and mousy and has been getting up to all kinds of crazy things this year, like doing her homework and handing in projects on time. But she’s pretty and skinny and looks right, so she fits in with Hannah and Leanne and Tina and everyone.

  I ache to be thought of as pretty. It’s blatantly unfair that people like Tina get to be attractive and slim when they do nothing but complain about how hideous they are and spend half their lives in the gym trying to perfect their figure.

  And yeah, I know what you’re thinking. “But Abi, maybe it’s just that everyone hates the way they look, and I’m sure they think that you’re pretty.”

  The world would be a wonderful place if it actually worked that way, but it doesn’t. Welcome to reality. Some people are attractive. Some are not. I fall into the second category.

  I do, however, know when to use you’re and your in essays, something which a significant percentage of my class still haven’t mastered.

  (Sorry. Feeling inferior makes me bitchy.)

  Sarah, still perched on the table, looks depressingly great. She’s gone for a semi-gothic look tonight, in black and red velvet and lace. She has the perfect figure. You know the way that if you look hard enough at someone, you can find some flaw? Or maybe not even a flaw to you, but something that you know they hate. Like Fiona thinks that her thighs are too big. (They’re not.) Sarah is perfectly proportioned, with curves in all the right places. Fiona and I told her that once.

  “But what’s the point of having a good figure when you have a face like this?” she moaned. You’d swear she was the Bride of Frankenstein or something. In fairness, though, she never complains that much about how she looks. None of us do. It should be one of those things that doesn’t matter between friends. Should be.

  I am still sipping at my Smirnoff Ice, perhaps in the hope that if I drink enough of it, I’ll be able to look in the mirror and think I look attractive.

  “You want me to introduce to you to people?” Sarah asks.

  I think about it. “No.”

  She laughs. “Not in the party mood?”

  “Not really.”

  “Oh, well. Stay in here for a while and talk to me.”

  “You should be out there mingling. You’re the hostess,” I smile.

  She rolls her eyes. “They’re getting along fine without me. There’s music, there’s drink, that’s all they need.”

  Our lives are veering dangerously close towards the land of teenage normality. I wonder if she realises this, and has opted to stay on the path anyway.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  We end up being social and friendly after all. Shane drags us out of the kitchen and in to talk to some of his friends. The conversation turns to football, and I watch, mildly amused, as the guys, and a couple of avid female fans, get all worked up about it. Caroline and I exchange we-could-be-here-for-a-while looks.

  It’s not as bad as I thought it would be. For the most part, the guys are moderately intelligent, and some are even speaking in whole sentences as opposed to grunts at regular intervals. I’m impressed.

  I find myself discussing all things musical with Hugh, one of the band members. He’s a U2 fanatic, so we debate which of their albums is the best, the three main contenders being The Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby and All That You Can’t Leave Behind.

  Hugh, being a drummer, is talking about Larry Mullen when Shane joins in. “Yeah, but come on now, they’d be nothing without Bono.”

  Hugh seems to have heard this before, many times. “Shane wants to be Bono,” he tells me conspiratorially.

  I grin. “How sweet,” I tell Shane. “We all need a hero.”

  “So who’s yours?” he asks, deflecting the attention from his own hero-worship.

  I shrug. I really have no idea. I mean, I love Sylvia Plath and all that, but I certainly have no intention of dying at thirty.

  “Lisa Simpson,” I finally say, half-joking.

  He grins. “Not Homer?”

  “I’m not the Homer type.”

  “No, I suppose you’re not.”

  What’s that supposed to mean? I want to ask, but don’t.

  The first thing Sarah asks me, once everyone’s gone, is what I thought of Shane.

  “He’s nice!” I say for what feels like the millionth time.

  “Nice? That could be anyone.”

  It’s almost two in the morning. My vocabulary isn’t the best at this time of the day. “He’s interesting,” I add. And yeah, I suppose I’m telling the truth. But he’s a tad on the intimidating side and he can make me feel uncomfortable and I’m not exactly sure what I think of him, or what he thinks of me.

  “What did you think?” she asks Fiona.

  “The same,” Fiona yawns. “Look, Sarah, would you just admit that you fancy him and stop interrogating us!”

  “I don’t,” she protests.

  “Sure, sure,” Fiona and I say.

  “Besides –” she begins, and we all know that whenever anyone starts talking like that, it clearly means that they’re interested in someone, but are trying desperately to prove otherwise. “Besides, even if I did, he’s not interested in me.”

  “How do you know?” Fiona demands. “Have you asked him?”

  “I just know,” Sarah insists. “I think he likes Abi.”

  “What?” I splutter. She’s clearly delusional.

  “Well, he was talking to you all night,” she says.

  “Yeah, me and Hugh and Caroline and anyone else that wanted to join in. You’re reading too much into this,” I tell her. “Besides, Caroline thinks he likes you.”

  “Well, he doesn’t,” she says firmly.

  Fiona is watching us with amusement. “Are you two going to fight over him?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” I say.

  “I don’t even like him,” Sarah says, but the lack of conviction in her voice is obvious.

  “Sarah, he likes you,” I tell her.

  “No, he doesn’t,” she says. Yes, it’s true, denial isn’t just a river in Egypt. I know exactly why she’s doing this. If he doesn’t like her, then she can convince herself that there’s no point in flirting with him or asking him out, because it’s pointless. It lets her off the hook. I do it all the time.

  Besides, there’s no way he likes me. I mean, normal, nice, sane guys never like me. Generally even the crazy ones avoid me. But it’s OK, because I don’t like him either.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  “So, do you like Shane?” Fiona whispers to me the following morning. Well, mid-afternoon. Time to clean up. The fun is only just beginning . . .

  I have one of those pounding headaches where you can actually hear the veins throbbing. I’m not in the mood to discuss Shane. “No,” I say curtly.

  “OK,” Fiona says huffily.

  Great
. Just great. Exactly what I need, one of my friends being pissed off with me. Well, I knew I couldn’t hide my bitchiness forever. It had to emerge someday, and then they’d see me for what I really am and hate me.

  Last night Shane and I were discussing the band. “I want us to be really original, you know?” he said earnestly.

  “It’s hard to be original,” I said, thinking, And I don’t think you’re going to achieve that goal. For all your talk you’re still just a seventeen-year-old who thinks he can change the world with his music.

  And the truth is that although a lot of musicians think they can change the world with music, no one has ever succeeded. Sarah disagrees with me, citing John Lennon as an example. Great musician, sure, but there are still wars going on. There are famines, there are diseases that we can’t cure. And I’m not one of those deeply-concerned political-activist types, but even I know that there are still so many problems in the world and music isn’t the answer. Or films, or books, or whatever art form you choose.

  Yeah, I’m a cynic. A poetic cynic, how about that?

  Of course, we ended up talking about whether art could change the world or not. In response to my it’s-hard-to-be-original statement he said, “Yeah, it’s hard, but not impossible. You just have to be honest, and then anything’s possible” which naturally led to a heated debate.

  “You don’t really believe that,” he said, smiling. “You just want to be different and argue with me.”

  “No, I just think that you’re a little naïve, that’s all,” I replied.

  “And I think you’re a little too caught up in the idea of thinking that you’re better than everyone else to accept the fact that you secretly agree with me.”

  I had no answer to that. Mostly because he was a little bit – not completely, mind you – right. And even though it was all in good fun, and we kept being friendly for the rest of the night, I was mildly annoyed with him.

  Caroline and Hugh were coming back from the kitchen with drinks, and rather than involve them in the discussion, I finished it with a simple, very mature gesture.

  I stuck my tongue out at him.

  It elicited a grin. I hated him for being patronising, and loved him for the way he smiled.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “I think we’re finished,” Sarah declares.

  I don’t think she’s ever going to have a party again. She was cleaning up the bathroom. Let’s just say that although it was great that anyone who was sick managed to get in there in time, some people have trouble with their aim.

  “I’m going to go home and sleep,” Fiona says, yawning. She hugs us both and leaves. She doesn’t seem annoyed with me anymore, which is a relief. We’re both just in bad moods today, her because she hasn’t slept, me because of that excruciating headache.

  “You going, too?” Sarah asks.

  “Yeah, I’d better,” I say. I don’t have to go. I could stay, chat, whatever. But I want to leave. The painkillers at home are calling out to me.

  I want to talk to her about Shane, but I’m not sure how to bring it up. And I’m pretty sure she’s still working on fooling herself into thinking she doesn’t have a chance.

  “See ya.” She smiles.

  I arrive home to jokes about wild parties, hangovers and strippers. My parents either still truly believe that at sixteen, I am innocent and my friends are equally demure, or they’re living in Denial-Land. I debate telling them about the friend of Shane’s who danced around in his underwear towards the latter half of the night, but decide they’re better off not knowing.

  Besides, it’s not like I go out all the time. And unlike some people I can think of, I’m always able to walk in a straight line at the end of the night.

  So was Shane, last night, but that’s beside the point. It doesn’t make him a good person.

  I don’t know why I’m even thinking about him. I mean, he is the epitome of everything that I don’t like about my generation. Pseudo-intellectual, pretentious, idealistic, “unique”.

  And I do not think that I’m better than everyone else. I’m just . . . not like them, that’s all.

  And maybe he isn’t, either. Maybe none of us are, maybe we all really are individuals, but then I think about Rebecca The Annoying Optimist, the Bleach Brigade, the Pretty People, the It’s-Cool-To-Be-Depressed Crowd, and it’s just too hard to believe that any of them have anything truly original to say.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The thing I hate about The Catcher In The Rye and the book that’s been referred to as its twenty-first century equivalent, The Perks Of Being A Wallflower, is that you understand why the narrators are so messed up. You know what I mean. They have reasons. There’s a traumatic past, involving the death of a loved one and abuse as a child, and they’ve been to psychiatrists.

  I wonder if it’s just that Americans have this talk-it-all-out attitude, and that’s why they love sending kids off to therapists. They’re big into finding quick cures for problems. If therapy doesn’t work it’s off to the GP for your Prozac prescription. In Ireland it’s a different view – work through your problems, there are always people worse off than you, life is hard, everyone goes through tough times.

  Maybe it’s just me who thinks that. Maybe it’s just me saying these things because I would love the thought of being declared a troubled child. Diagnosed. And then fixed.

  “Made tidy,” like in that U A Fanthorpe poem, Patients. I like it because I think maybe she knows what I mean, she understands this feeling that no one else seems to have. Or maybe she doesn’t and I’m only seeing what I want to.

  Of course, if they told me I was crazy then I’d hate it. I’m the ultimate tantrum-throwing toddler, wanting everything that I don’t have.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  On Monday we all head off to Mass together. The whole family. St Patrick’s Day is one of the three occasions, along with Christmas and Easter, when we all have to go. The rest of the time we don’t. I mean, my parents do, every single Sunday, but then Jess and I started refusing to go, and Greg decided to be oh-so-original and join in. Eventually they gave up on the three of us – although they still have some hope for converting Greg back to Catholicism. Maybe it’s not too late for him, they think.

  I think it’s their way of being tolerant while secretly hoping that it’s just a phase (everything’s ‘just a phase’) and we’ll grow out of it.

  Jess is extremely anti-religious, thinks all priests are child-molesters, thinks all religions are cults, et cetera. I’m not. I just can’t believe in any of it. I would support almost everything the Catholic church has to say if it wasn’t for the deity element of it.

  I used to pray every night, the same way that someone with OCD has to wash their hands seventeen times or flip a light switch on and off. Dear God please don’t let anything bad happen to my family and friends and please don’t let any of them go blind or die, amen.

  I was such a worrier as a child. I was haunted by nightmares of my parents dying. Every time they were out late I panicked. I stopped praying and for a while I just blocked everything out. No more worrying about anything serious, just reassure yourself that’s everything will be OK.

  It’s like I can only concentrate on either the serious or the trivial. And the serious stuff feels worse, but the trivial things make me do stupid things like cut myself or scream at someone. I don’t get it. I really don’t.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Another Tuesday has arrived too quickly. Once more I have forgotten my tracksuit for Irish dancing. You’d almost think that I was doing this deliberately. Caroline seems to be playing the part of an involved, enthusiastic student and taking part in the dancing this week, so I’m on my own. Well, not technically on my own, but it feels that way. There are a couple of Earnest Students and a few of the Bleach Brigade in the same boat as I am, but for all intents and purposes, I’m alone.

  Some people can’t stand not being surrounded by people to talk to. I’m not like that.
I sit quietly at the back of the supervision room and stare at my homework journal. The cover is too crowded to even attempt to fit in another squiggle.

  Sometimes I wish Transition Year would just finish. Everyone’s always saying about how much they’re dreading Fifth Year and how hard it’s going to be after this, but I’m so sick of doing nothing. I just want to get out of here.

  The work is not going to be a problem. Well, it is. I mean, it’s hard. But it’s the spaces in between the work that’s the problem, the hanging-out-with-people-in-your-class part.

  They don’t really care if I’m there or not. Karen might, yeah, but she’s generally too busy trying so hard to be popular, or whatever it is she’s trying to do, to notice. I’m not a part of their little group. I hover on the outskirts, slipping away to talk to Sarah half the time. For them, school is a time to be with their friends. For me, it’s . . . just school. Just a place that I have to be for another couple of years, and then I’ll leave and never look back.

  It makes me feel kind of sad in a way, though. I remember in First Year we were told that we’d look back fondly on this time in our lives, and that we’d make lifelong friends in school. And yes, it was sentimental bullshit that had half the year rolling their eyes, but I always get inspired by things like that. I’m pathetic, I know. It just makes me feel like I’m missing out on the whole teenage experience. Everyone else is busy making lifelong friends and going out and having fun and enjoying their youth – and I’m sitting at home in front of the TV, or the computer, or listening to CDs.

  Don’t get me wrong – I love doing all of that. But sometimes I wonder whether I’ll look back on my teenage years and regret not . . . participating.

  Hi, I’m Abigail the Wallflower, welcome to my life.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine