by Hayley Long
I looked at Goose. Even though she’s sometimes got mad hair, she doesn’t look at all weird or scary enough to be the lead singer in a goth band. She’s very pretty for a start, and in my opinion goths tend to veer towards uglydom. But then again, I suppose even Marilyn Manson must have looked fairly OK once. I smiled and said, ‘Thanks, Goose, that’s so cool,’ and squeezed Destiny of Death into my authentic Donna Karan shoulder bag before moving on to the second present. Unwrapping it, I found that it was an unofficial James Dean calendar. I gave it a hard stare and then I put it down on the table.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Goose, reddening. ‘I know we’re halfway through the year already, but the pictures are nice.’
‘Mmm. Thanks.’ It was hard to force any excitement into my voice. I took a sip of my double choco-mochaccino. It wasn’t the fact that Goose had bought me a knock-down bargain-bucket calendar that was bothering me. It was that it was a James Dean calendar. It reminded me of the box of DVDs my mum had given me, and thinking about my mum made me feel colossally bad all over again.
Goose said, ‘Are you sure everything is OK, Lotts? It’s just that, well, if you don’t mind me saying, you’ve been acting very seriously weird recently.’
I stared into my drink. It was dark brown and frothy and housed in a mug which was bottle green and had a red dragon printed on the side. The mug was the same design as the aprons the staff were wearing. My mug had an ever-so-small chip on the rim. I looked at Goose’s mug. Goose’s mug was perfect.
I couldn’t think of anything to say so I said nothing.
We sat there in silence for a bit and then Goose said, ‘How’s the English coursework going?’
The mention of my English project perked me up. I leaned forward in my seat and said, ‘It’s going really well, Goose. I’ve spent about eighteen hours on it and written about twenty-four thousand words.’
Goose’s eyes grew to the size of dinner plates. She went very white, opened her mouth for a second, then closed it, and then opened it again and said, ‘Oh shit! Did Woody really want us to write that much?’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Goose, but when your head is buzzing with ideas, you just have to go with the creative flow, don’t you?’
Goose fiddled with her mug for a moment or two and then said, ‘Um, you know what? I should probably be going home now. I reckon I need to spend a bit of time on my coursework.’ And then she got up and grabbed her bag and rushed off without even waiting for me. Goose can be totally weird sometimes.
aND theN MY Mum PiNCheD mY COmPuter
When I got home, my mum was actually in before me for once. She opened the front door, showed me a big chocolate cake which she was balancing on her other arm and said, ‘Can we start your birthday again?’
I was so relieved I nearly burst into tears right there on the doorstep. After the day I’d had, I don’t think I could have hacked coming home to another Situation Critical Red Alert. It was nice to have a bit of peace. It’s just a shame it didn’t last.
Mum gave me a kiss. ‘Get your coat off and come and have a cup of tea. There are some cards through here which you need to open.’
Feeling a billion times happier than I had done all day, I hung up my coat and followed my mum into the kitchen. On the table were a pile of cards and a package. I picked up the package and looked at it. It was from my sister, Ruthie. Smiling, I ripped at the end. I’m not the kind of person who prefers to leave the best bits until last. I prefer to go straight for the prize. That is probably why I always eat the pizza topping before I eat the base and also probably why I read the last page of any book before I start at the beginning. I’m a go-getting, forward-thinking kind of girl.
Inside the parcel Ruthie had sent me a card with a picture of an orang-utan on the front. This made me even happier because orang-utans are my most favourite animal ever. I like the way they are bright ginger and I especially like the way that their arms look like skinny bits of wispy fuzz but are actually dead, dead strong. You try hanging from a tree by your arms and see how long you last. They are very deceptive, those fuzzy arms. Inside the card Ruthie had written: Saw this card and thought of you, fart face. Have a fab day, Ruthie xxx. If you didn’t happen to know that Ruthie was highly intelligent, there is no way you’d ever be able to guess it. I put my hand back inside the package and pulled out a T-shirt, which also had an orang-utan on the front. Highly chuffed, I pulled the T-shirt over my head and wore it on top of my school jumper.
‘This is from your dad.’ My mum handed me an envelope with a Wrexham postmark. I opened it. Inside the card my dad had written: Happy Fourteenth Birthday, Lottie. Lots of love from Dad, Sally and Caradoc. He’d put a cheque for fifty pounds inside. He did that last year too. I stared at the words written in the card for a while and then sort of smiled a bit and put it down.
My mum raised her eyebrows and then ruffled my hair and said, ‘Are you going to open the rest of your cards?’
‘Yeah, in a minute. I just want to take my bag and this calendar up to my room.’
I climbed the stairs to my bedroom, pushed open the door and sat down on my bed. I wasn’t really bothered that my dad hadn’t quite remembered how old I was. To be fair to him, it’s not easy to remember stuff like that sometimes. Not when I live in Cardiff and he lives in Oompa-Loompa land. I can’t actually ever remember his phone number. I have to keep it written down in my address book. I’ve filed it under B for Biggs and it’s right next to Beca Bowen’s phone number, and the truth is I don’t use either of those numbers all that much.
I sat on my bed and did my best to empty my head of all the other stuff and tried to focus on what it feels like to be fifteen. You would think that being fifteen would feel fundamentally different to being fourteen. You’d think that being fifteen would feel more wise or more sexy or more sophisticated. I sat there for ages though and I couldn’t feel anything. And then I started thinking about how fifteen is already halfway to thirty, which is ancient. And then I started thinking about how fifteen is a quarter of the way to being sixty, which is too brain-bogglingly old to even contemplate. And then I started thinking about Goose’s CD, which was called Destiny of Death and, all of a sudden, I started feeling really really totally miserable. I looked at my wall and saw posters filled with the black-and-white face of James Dean, who was young and handsome and famous. But dead.
And then I noticed my computer was missing.
At the top of my voice, I screamed:
‘Mum! What’s happened to my computer?’
I was already halfway down the stairs before I’d got the question out of my mouth. My mum stood in the hallway wiping her hands on a teatowel. She said, ‘Stop shouting, Lottie. Nothing has happened to your computer.’
‘Where is it then?’
My mum looked a bit shifty and said, ‘Come through to the kitchen, Lottie. I want to have a chat with you.’
I didn’t like the sound of this. I could feel myself getting all aggravated. It felt all itchy, like nettlerash.
I followed my mum into the kitchen and sat down at the table. My foot was tap-tap-tapping against the chairleg.
My mum sat down next to me, rested her chin in her palm and looked me right in the eyes. ‘What time did you go to bed last night?’
‘What?’ The question blatantly had nothing to do with where my computer was.
My mum said again, ‘I want to know what time you went to bed and went to sleep.’
I frowned. ‘I dunno. I was doing my English coursework.’
‘Until when?’
‘I dunno.’ I shifted in my seat and started drumming my fingers on the table. As I’ve said before, I’ve never been the type of person who likes being put on the spot. I don’t perform well under pressure.
My mum sighed. ‘It’s just that when you woke up this morning you were all over the place. You hadn’t even remembered that it was your own birthday. And then when I got home from work today, there was a message from the school saying t
hat you’d been removed from lessons all day because of disruptive behaviour. They’re worried about you, Lottie. And so am I. I’ve heard this all before and I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now. And if you remember, Doctor Crosby told us that it is very important that you get plenty of sleep each night if you want to stay fit and healthy.’
I stopped drumming my fingers on the table and put my head in my hands. I’d forgotten that the school would phone my mum. And I’d sort of forgotten about the time that my mum had forced me to see our family GP, Dr Crosby. It was during the summer holidays, last year, when I’d been feeling a bit weird in the head for some reason and stopped washing my hair. I didn’t wash my hair for over a month, and then my mum took me to see Dr Crosby. He said it was probably due to my age and told my mum that I should eat plenty of vegetables and go to bed earlier. But then he told my mum that I also needed to speak to a counsellor. I think it was because he was getting bored of talking to me. He’d seen me before that, you see, about that time in Year 9 when Samantha Morgan drove me mad and made me get chucked out of school. Then I told my mum I wasn’t going to see a counsellor because I’m not mental. I told my dad, and he got really angry with my mum and said that no child of his needed to see a shrink and that she was causing a great big fuss over nothing. Then he took me on holiday with him and Sally and Caradoc to Spain. Spain was OK but Sally didn’t like the heat that much so I spent all of the first week left on the beach with Caradoc while she and dad sat in the hotel bar. The funny thing is, I don’t really like blazing sunshine all that much myself. In the second week I put my foot down and told dad that I’d had enough of the beach so then he enrolled me and Caradoc into a kids’ club. The club was only supposed to be for four- to twelve-year-olds but Dad paid a bit extra so they’d take me too. I told him I didn’t want to go, but he just laughed and said it would do me good. Apart from a weird eleven-year-old boy who kept trying to hold my hand, everyone else was primary-school age. I only went to that tragic club twice, and then I went all weird with sunstroke or something and wouldn’t get out of bed for the rest of the week.
Somehow I’d forgotten all about that holiday and Dr Crosby, even though it wasn’t all that long ago. But my mum, it seems, never forgets anything. Feeling my aggravation rise, I shook my head and said, ‘Honestly, Mum, it wasn’t my fault. There wasn’t a category for me to put my age into.’
‘Lottie, it doesn’t matter about that.’ My mum was still looking me right in the eyes. ‘I’m just concerned that you’re not getting enough sleep. What on earth are you doing on that computer all night? You’re not talking to people in chat rooms, are you?’
I rolled my eyes and gave a big noisy frustrated sigh. ‘Oh honestly, Mum. I have got real friends, you know. I told you, I’ve been doing my English coursework, that’s all. There’s no law against that, is there?’
‘No, there isn’t, but I’m not having you sitting up all night doing it when you should be sleeping.’
‘I haven’t been feeling tired.’
My mum looked at me a little nastily and said, ‘You’ve been acting tired.’
I started to feel desperate. The thing is, you see, I really need that computer. Without it, this entire English coursework project could go belly up. I said, ‘So how exactly am I going to do my schoolwork?’
My mum said, ‘You can use my laptop on the kitchen table in the evenings after tea.’
I opened my mouth to protest, but before I even had a chance to groan, my mum said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ve already saved all your files on to a disc for you. Aren’t I wonderful?’
I didn’t answer this. I couldn’t because I was too furious to speak. My mum just carried right on talking anyway.
‘And you can use the facilities at school. But until I can trust you not to stay awake all night and then go getting yourself into trouble with your teachers because you haven’t had any sleep, your computer will stay locked in the loft. End of discussion.’
So now I’m reduced to using the scatty school facilities in homework club. Me. In homework club.
THE SHAME!!!
I haven’t told Goose.
NOt sLeePiNG is NOt fuNNY
Since my mum stole my computer I have been totally and utterly unable to sleep. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that I am sleep deprived. This is a blatant example of irony. Today in school Mr Wood wasted seventeen minutes and twelve seconds trying to explain to our class what irony means. In the end I had to help him out. Mr Wood was going about it all wrong. He was confusing everyone by using intellectual examples from that play Macbeth, which nobody really understands anyway because it’s written in the language of the ancient druids.
Mr Wood had his eyes shut and his glasses in his hand and was droning something that went along the lines of, ‘When Macduff says Look to the lady, this is a moment of high dramatic irony because we – the audience – know that Lady Macbeth is a scheming, wicked, heartless charlatan. She is certainly not a lady.’
It’s not Mr Wood’s fault, but he happens to have a voice like a foghorn and sometimes it can be very difficult to stay interested in what he is saying.
At the back of the class Lee Fogel’s hand shot up. ‘But she is though, sir. That’s why she’s called Lady Macbeth.’
Mr Wood opened his eyes and frowned. ‘I don’t think you quite follow me, Lee. What I’m saying is that there is a huge disparity between our notion of what a lady should be and her conduct, and Macduff’s usage of lady here seems misguided and ridiculous.’
Lee said, ‘Huh?’
Everyone was shifting in their seats. Beca Bowen had got her nail file out. I was getting a bit bored and fed up so I put my hand up and said, ‘I think what Mr Wood is trying to say is that irony is about weird contradictions. Macduff thinks that Lady Macbeth is a gentle, delicate, womanly woman, but actually she’s a minging troll bitch from hell.’
A light of understanding came on somewhere behind Lee’s eyes. I was on a roll so I continued, ‘I mean, it’s like what’s happened to me since my mum stole my computer. She took it out of my bedroom because she thought I was working too late on it and not getting enough sleep. It is therefore deeply ironic that I have been unable to sleep one single wink since it left my room.’
I sat back and folded my arms. Mr Wood took off his glasses and frowned. Then he said, ‘Yes, that example would work. Thank you, Charlotte.’
The thing is though, apart from being a premium example of irony, not being able to sleep is also a premium example of mental torture. It was Monday when my mum committed her act of thievery. It’s now Friday and I don’t think I’ve properly lost consciousness once. Not even for a second. I am starting to feel desperate. It was fine when I was sat up all night typing because then I wasn’t thinking about sleeping, I was thinking about my coursework. But now I’ve got nothing to do except lie awake at night and think about trying to go to sleep. And I can’t. If you want to know what that feels like, imagine that you’re massively tired but every time you shut your eyes your feet start to tap–dance and Cardiff Airport opens up a new terminal inside your head.
It is the most hideous thing in the whole world EVER.
Part 2
a NOte fOr the eXamiNer
Dear Mr (or Mrs) Examiner
I know that to you I am nothing more than another piece of coursework in your massive pile of marking, but I’d just like to take this opportunity to remind you that I am an actual human person with actual human problems. And my life is a bit complicated at the moment. This means:
1. I haven’t got access to a computer.
As you already know, my mum has confiscated mine, and I’m not in the mood to sit in the kitchen and borrow hers. I’d rather stay in my bedroom. So please excuse my handwriting.
2. As you can see, I am dividing my creative-writing project into two parts.
When I began writing this I did not intend this to happen. To be honest, I was only expecting it to be a couple of pages long. But the
thing is, see, since I last sat down and wrote anything, my life has changed completely. Everything written before this point was written by a normal person. Everything from here onward has been written by a social menace. This could seriously affect the quality of whatever you are about to read. It is not easy to concentrate on coursework when you are officially under surveillance by the South Wales Police.
Please could you bear this in mind when you are deciding what grade to give me.
Thank you.
Lottie Biggs
a sCreaM DaY
Today, Saturday 21 June, has been a day of Shockingly Crappy Rubbish at Every Abysmal Moment (SCREAM). In fact, it has been a disaster. I have only previously had two such awful days in my entire life. The first was the SCREAM day we had six years ago when we discovered my dad had left us and was running away to Wrexham to live with Sally. That day had been rubbish from the offset. Ruthie had woken me up and said, ‘Dad’s gone. He’s taken his CDs and everything. Mum says he’s gone to live with Sally.’ Sally worked in the same office as my dad. Ruthie and I had both met her a few times when we’d been ill and mum couldn’t get a day off from fighting crime. I’d got to know Sally quite well because when I was seven I broke my leg and ended up being off school for practically an entire term. She’d always been really nice to me and often gave me sweets. I think it’s fair to say that I liked her. I never wanted her to run away with my dad though.
Me and Ruthie didn’t go to school that day and my mum didn’t go to work. We all spent the whole day crying. In the evening my dad showed up looking tired and upset. He also had a trendy new haircut. My mum went upstairs while my dad told me and Ruthie how he still loved us but he also loved Sally and he needed to go and live with her. Ruthie got up then and called my dad a very rude word and stormed out of the room. I can remember exactly what she said very very clearly, and I remember too that it made me start to cry all over again because I’d never heard Ruthie say bad stuff like that before and it was pretty shocking. After that it was ages before Ruthie spoke to him again. Literally MONTHS and MONTHS. Every time my dad rang us up Ruthie refused to come to the phone, and every time he visited she’d go upstairs and shut herself in her bedroom until he’d gone again. Then one day, just before she went off to university, Dad came round with a stack of archaeology books and a cake which said GOOD LUCK RUTHIE on it and the two of them finally went and had a long-overdue talk and now I think they get on fairly OK. The weird thing is that I can remember this stuff about Ruthie freaking out really clearly, but I can’t actually remember that much about how I felt. I suppose it’s not really something I like to mull over very much.