by Hayley Long
It took me a moment to register what he had just said. I’d been miles away. I’d been thinking about Gareth Stingecombe in his rugby kit, for some random reason.
‘So?’ I said.
‘So will you go and see where she’s got to for me?’
The man was starting to look a bit fed up so I headed for the stockroom. Out the back it was deathly quiet. All I could hear was some putrid smoochy love song coming faintly from a radio in Dionne’s office. There was no sign of Goose.
I followed the maze of shelves round and round until I came to the darkest corner and there, as I expected, I was blocked by the legs of the stepladder. Goose was quietly sitting on the platform at the top. She was crying. Knowing it was a completely stupid question but asking it anyway, I said, ‘You OK, Goose?’
Goose shook her head, wiped her nose on the sleeve of her cardigan and sniffed.
Knowing the answer but asking anyway, I said, ‘What’s up?’
Wordlessly Goose reached down and handed me her phone. I took it and pressed a key, making the face light up. There, on the screen, I read:
It was a very horrible situation to be in. I puffed out my cheeks and then I said, ‘Oh my God, Goose. You’ve been binned by text!’
I don’t think it was the right thing to say. Goose just curled up tighter on the platform of the stepladder and started to cry all over again. I chewed my thumbnail and gawped helplessly at her. The thing is, with her sat high up there, it was very hard for me to do anything else. The best I could manage was a pointless pat on her ankle, which was just within reach. She was wearing those ESMERELDA daisy shoes.
And then Emily appeared and said, ‘Um, there’s a man waiting for a DWAYNE training shoe in size ten.’
This wasn’t a good thing to say either. Goose lifted her head up and screeched, ‘YOU STOLE MY MAN!’ And then Emily started crying as well and then, just when the situation was getting really emotionally unstable, Dionne appeared from out of her office and said, ‘Will somebody please tell me what’s going on?’
Goose and Emily were too hysterical to speak so it was left to ME to try to explain, but Dionne kept telling me to slow down a bit but I couldn’t slow down a bit because I had loads to say, and then Dionne just sighed and told Goose to take the rest of the day off and Emily to go and wash her face, which was all smudged with mascara and red lipstick, and after that Gina was drafted in for the afternoon shift and she made me go through the whole sordid story again and I did and Gina didn’t tell me to slow down because she’s obviously quicker at listening than Dionne and then, when I’d finished, Gina said, ‘Love. It causes nofink but an ’eadache. Oo needs it, Lottie? Oo needs it?’
And just for once I agreed with her.
Love and poetry, I reckon we could all do without them. And that’s all I’ve got to say on the matter. Although I appreciate that this actually hasn’t been as brief a word as I was expecting.
sOmetimes, i’D fOrGet mY heaD . . .
My mum has stolen my computer. She has taken it out of my bedroom and locked it in the loft. I am now forced to use the communal facilities in the school library, which is OK, but half of the computers at school are so slow I can feel myself physically ageing while the processor is whirring, and the other half have got sticky keyboards. If I catch bird flu or mange or anything else nasty from one of those sticky keyboards, it will be my mum’s fault.
The problem started when I got up for school yesterday morning. I’d been so totally buzzing with stuff to say in this English coursework – about love and poetry, as you know – that I’d spent almost all of Saturday night and Sunday night thinking about things and then typing them up. In fact, I was so absorbed in intellectual pursuits that it was quite a while before I started to actually feel sleepy, and when I looked at the clock it was 4.17 a.m.
This gave me quite a shock. It is amazing just how quickly time can move when you are genuinely interested in something and how totally brain-meltingly slowly it can go in Mr Thomas’s double-science lessons.
Anyway, I went to bed immediately then, because my first lesson of the week is always art with Mr Spanton and I never want to be late for that. Art is my most wicked and favourite subject ever. I climbed into bed and shut my eyes and got all warm and snugly, but I’d hardly been asleep for more than two microseconds when my alarm went off again and it said 7.00 a.m.
At first I thought it must be a digital malfunction. I picked up my clock and held it close to my eyes and checked again. It definitely said 7.00 a.m. I leaned over to the window which is right next to my bed, opened it a fraction and dropped my alarm clock out.
I dragged myself out of bed and off to the bathroom, thinking that perhaps a shower would make me feel better. It didn’t. In fact, I don’t know if it was because I had the water too hot or something, but when I came out of the shower and wrapped myself up in my towel, I went a bit dizzy and had to sit down on the cold tiles for a few minutes.
By the time I’d put on my school uniform and gone down to breakfast, I was feeling like this.
My mum was in the kitchen eating toast. When I walked in, she stood up, gave me a big massive hug and said, ‘Happy birthday, sweetheart!’ I was so gobsmacked I think I stopped breathing. And then, fortunately, I started again and said, ‘Is it really my birthday today?’
This time my mum looked gobsmacked. She gave me a funny look and said, ‘Lottie, it’s your fifteenth birthday. How on earth could you forget that?’
I couldn’t think of any answer.
And then she said, ‘Honestly Lottie! You’d forget your head if it wasn’t bolted on to your shoulders.’
My mum is always saying this to me. I don’t like it. It makes me sound like I’ve got no neck.
My face went all hot and prickly and I got that dizzy feeling again that I’d had in the bathroom. My mum was still looking at me as if I was a mutant. I knew I needed to say something to make her chill out a bit so I shrugged my shoulders and said, ‘So what? It’s just a poxy birthday.’
My mum frowned and picked up a parcel that had been sitting on the worktop. It was all wrapped up in shiny purple paper with a silver ribbon. She held it in front of her and said, ‘So you won’t be wanting this then?’
I smiled at that point. Even when you’re feeling like Doctor Death it’s hard not to smile when being offered something wrapped up in shiny purple paper with a big silver ribbon.
‘Thanks.’ I tore off the paper while my mum watched. Inside was a box set of DVDs. I didn’t recognize the film titles printed on the front. Feeling just a bit colossally confused, I read the titles out loud to myself.
‘East of Eden. Rebel Without a Cause. Giant.’
The pictures on the box showed stills from ancient black-and-white films. I looked up at my mum. I was starting to feel a bit disappointed. I’d have preferred a Nintendog.
‘Why have you given me a load of boring old films?’
I knew the moment I said it, that this was not a good thing to say. If I could have rewound a few seconds and not said it, believe me, I would have done. But I couldn’t.
My mum went all pink and said in a voice which had a really blatantly dangerous edge to it, ‘James Dean, Lottie! They’re the films that James Dean made before he died!’ And then, before I could apologize or anything, she said, ‘You could at least pretend to be pleased. You know what? You can be terribly rude, sometimes, Charlotte, you honestly can!’
I hate it when she calls me Charlotte. She only ever calls me Charlotte when she’s freaking out on me. And I’m not that wildly ecstatic about being called rude either. It affects my frame of mind in a very negative way. It makes me feel a bit edgy. Like this.
I said, ‘Yeah, I like James Dean in posters but you know I can’t deal with watching rubbishy old films. I hate old films. Old films bore me to death. The only old film I’ve ever sat all the way through is that stupid film about two gays sitting on a bench and that was well pathetic. What was it called again? Forrest Gump? Yeah, that
’s it. Forrest Gump. Well old – well pathetic.’
My mum took a deep breath and her eyes went very very narrow. I think she was starting to feel a bit edgy too.
She said, ‘I thought you’d be pleased. I thought those posters meant you were a big James Dean fan. If you can’t make your mind up about what you like and don’t like, there’s no hope for me, is there?’
She was genuinely upset. I could see that her eyes had gone watery. I felt EVEN worse then, but my mouth must have been hijacked by the devil because instead of trying to say anything remotely nice, I just said, ‘Can I go now, please? I’m going to be late for art.’
My mum put her hand over her mouth as if she was trying to stop some bad words escaping from it. I thought that would be a good moment to leave. I’d got as far as putting my hand on the kitchen door when Mum said, ‘Charlotte!’
I froze.
‘For your information, Charlotte, Forrest Gump is not such an old film and it doesn’t even have any gay people in it. And I don’t want to hear you referring to gay people as gays again. It’s not nice and it doesn’t make you sound nice.’
I turned around. ‘Gay? It’s a word. Everybody says it. You just said it.’
My mum stood up and put her head on one side in the way that she does whenever she’s about to get a bit deep. ‘There’s a very big difference between referring to someone as a gay person and a gay sitting on a bench. You wouldn’t like it if someone called you a gay or a straight, would you?’
‘No, because I’m not a gay,’ I said. I was nearly crying.
‘No,’ said my mum, ‘and you’re not just a straight either. You’re a person, Lottie. You’re you.’
I said, ‘I thought you were in the normal police not the word police,’ and then I picked up my Donna Karan shoulder bag and walked out of the kitchen, slamming the door as I went.
Breakfast in my house is not always like this.
aND theN it GOt wOrse
After that I didn’t have a very good day. I ran all the way to school, only to discover that art had been cancelled. Instead of perfecting my forgery of The Scream,12 I was ordered to sit in freezing silence in the sports hall and fill in one of those completely pointless and random questionnaires that we get forced to fill in from time to time. Somewhere, somebody is putting together a dossier of colossally useless bits of information on every pupil in Wales, perhaps even the world. The first question said:
Are you . . . ?
Please tick.
I looked at it for ages. Around me, everyone else had their head down and was busy ticking boxes and turning pages. I just sat there thinking about James Dean on my bedroom wall. I used to be really into him once. I don’t know why because he’s only a sad, dead film star with sticky-up hair. Then I thought about my mum and started to feel really bad and really guilty. It wasn’t her fault that she’d bought me the world’s most boring DVD box set. At least she’d actually remembered it was my birthday. Unlike me, apparently.
I looked down at the questionnaire again and frowned and then I finally put up my hand. Mrs Rowlands came over. She hates me.
‘I don’t know where to put my tick,’ I whispered.
Mrs Rowlands looked down at the paper and then said, ‘Haven’t you even started the proper questions yet? What have you been doing all this time?’
‘I’ve been wondering where to put my tick,’ I whispered back.
Mrs Rowlands gave me a funny look and then said, ‘Well, you know how old you are, don’t you?’
‘I’m fifteen,’ I whispered. ‘Today.’
‘Well tick the box that says fourteen to fifteen.’ She gave me another blatantly weird look and then started to walk away in the direction of Gareth Stingecombe, who also had his hand up.
‘I can’t,’ I said to the back of Mrs Rowlands. ‘I can’t tick fourteen to fifteen because that’s not how old I am.’
Mrs Rowlands spun round on her kitten heels and said, ‘Ssssshhhh! Whisper, please, Lottie! These are test conditions. What are you fussing about now?’
‘I can’t tick that box because it says tick here if your age is fourteen to fifteen years old, and my age isn’t fourteen to fifteen years old. I’m fifteen today, which means that, technically, I’m past fifteen but I’m not yet between sixteen and seventeen, so there isn’t a suitable category for me. If there was a category which said fifteen to sixteen I’d tick that one, but there isn’t, so where do I put my tick because I’m not going to say I’m fourteen to fifteen years old when it blatantly isn’t true.’
All this came out of my mouth very quickly. Somewhere along the way I’d also forgotten to whisper. Mrs Rowlands was looking a bit annoyed.
‘SSSSSHHHH!’ She gave me a dirty look and then said, ‘Just tick the box that says fifteen in it.’
For the zillionth time that morning I felt my face go hot. All around me in the sports hall people were sitting still and filling in their questionnaires, but I couldn’t fill in mine because there wasn’t a category for me to fit into and it made me feel all agitated and anxious. I picked up my pencil and started tapping it on the desk.
‘SSSSSSSSSHHHHHH!!!!’ Mrs Rowlands gave me an ‘I hate you Lottie Biggs’ look and then said, ‘Stop being silly and just fill the thing in.’
And then I flipped. I stood up in the silent sports hall and said in a voice that was very loud:
‘So you want me to tell lies now, is it? You want me to tell the nosy person who reads this that I’m actually younger than I am. It’s not every day you have a fifteenth birthday, you know. But for all you and this stupid questionnaire care, I’m actually living in some random twilight zone which doesn’t even have its own bloody category. Well, it’s NOT BLOODY funny living in a timeless black hole, actually. Not funny at all!’
I think I would have said more but by this time Mrs Rowlands had taken hold of me by the elbow and was half pulling, half pushing me out of the room. As I walked past the desk where Goose was sitting, I saw that she had stopped writing and was looking at me with a very worried expression on her face. I wanted to smile at her, but I was so wound up I think I’d forgotten how to. Then I walked past Gareth Stingecombe’s desk and he had also put down his pencil and was looking rather worried. I tried to smile at him too, but my facial muscles weren’t having any of it so instead, I just said, ‘OH, FOR GOD’S SAKE! NOT MORE BLOODY VIRGINS!’ Gareth went all purple and quickly put his head down. Then I noticed that nearly every other person in the sports hall had stopped writing and was looking at me. But most of these others weren’t looking worried – they were laughing.
For the rest of the day I was internally excluded. This meant that I had to sit outside the head teacher’s office and read a book. By some weird twist of fate, the book I was given was called The Collected Poems of Stevie Smith. I sat and read the whole thing and then I sat and read it through four times more. I still didn’t understand any of it.
When the bell eventually rang to signal the end of the last lesson Goose came to find me. She was out of breath because she’d run all the way from the science block to catch me before I left. Seeing her cheered me up no end.
I said, ‘Goosey! How glad am I to see you! I’ve had to sit here all day and read this boring book of poetry by that Stevie Smith woman. I’m surprised I haven’t dropped down dead with terminal tedium. At one point I even thought about asking if I could go to Mr Thomas and get some worksheets on amoebas or something but there wasn’t anyone around to ask, so instead I just—’
‘Happy Birthday, Lottie!’ said Goose.
‘. . . sat here reading this random poetry about people called Croft who sit in lofts. I’ve read it all five flaming times but it still doesn’t make any sense to me. I reckon this Stevie Smith woman must have been totally off her flaming head or something. Her poems are—’
‘Lottie, shut up a minute,’ said Goose. ‘I’m trying to wish you happy birthday.’
‘Oh.’ I stopped talking and felt a bit baffled. Then I remembered
about my birthday and started laughing. It was really shaping up as the crappest birthday ever. Sometimes there’s nothing else you can do other than laugh.
‘I’ve got you a present,’ said Goose. ‘You want to go to the Dragon Coffee House and open it?’
This was definitely without a doubt the very best offer I’d had all day. We walked out of school and down past the graveyard. On the other side of the road, Elvis Presley was lying on his back on his public bench and bellowing, ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’ When he saw us walk by, he stopped and shouted, ‘Hello shoe-shop girls,’ and then he carried on singing. We shouted ‘Hello’ back.
I said to Goose, ‘Do you reckon Elvis is a schizo or something?’
Goose frowned. ‘I don’t know, Lotts. I think he’s harmless though.’
We walked on a bit further and then Goose said, ‘I don’t reckon we should call him a schizo though.’
‘Why not? Schizo – it’s a word. Everybody says it. What’s wrong with that?’
Goose frowned. ‘I don’t think everybody says it. I don’t think a doctor would actually refer to someone as a schizo. I can’t imagine teachers saying it either. Or your mum. It just sounds a bit nasty.’
‘All right, keep your wig on,’ I said.
But when we reached the Dragon Coffee House, Neil Adam was sitting at a table with Emily. Goose saw them first. She went a bit pale for a second and then she shrugged bravely and said, ‘I’m SO over it. Being kissed by him was like having my face sucked off by a jellyfish. She’s welcome to him. Let’s sit here by the window.’
We ordered double choco-mochaccinos (with extra cream and marshmallows) in big chunky mugs, and Goose gave me her presents. There were two of them. The first was a CD called Destiny of Death by Goose McKenzie and the Tribe of Pixies. I was well impressed. It almost looked like something you could buy in a shop. Goose smiled proudly and said, ‘I produced it myself. And designed the CD cover. We’ve moved on from folk music and developed into a heavier gothic sound.’