I’m the least childish person I know.
My brain isn’t complicated, like: Oh, I’m saying this, but what I really mean is this.
Everyone can seriously fuck off.
* * *
Also: I finally checked online about my stomachache.
The internet says: “A stomachache doesn’t usually last long.”
Great. I’ve had mine for weeks.
Suggestions on when to seek medical advice:
The pain gets much worse (tick).
The pain won’t go away (tick).
You have unusual vaginal discharge (er, no, my discharge is fine).
You are bleeding from your bottom (no again).
HERE’S WHAT IT’S NOT:
appendicitis (because the pain is too high)
HERE’S WHAT IT COULD BE:
stomach ulcer
IBS
acute cholecystitis
diverticulitis
I honestly feel sick just thinking about it. I reckon it must be an ulcer, because I have five out of eight symptoms:
dull pain in the stomach
not wanting to eat because of pain
nausea
feeling easily full
heartburn
Dr. Google recommends I visit my doctor immediately, but who’s got time to see a doctor?
I’ll just have to monitor my symptoms and call an ambulance if I’m vomiting blood.
Great.
PS: I could also be pregnant. LOL.
Wednesday, May 9 #BreakingPoint
Miriam Patel had another hysterical fit today.
She’s such a mess.
She started crying at lunch, and Jacob had to pull her into a standing position and drag her to geography. Her teeth were chattering like those windup ones you get at a joke shop.
Mrs. Holmes was all like: “Miriam, I think it’s best for us to send you home so you can get some rest.”
But Miriam Patel was just like: “Please don’t call my mum. I’m okay, really.”
I looked at Polly the whole time, and I could see that she, too, thought Miriam was actually going insane.
I mean, I still don’t feel sorry for her, but it was very confusing seeing her completely nonbitchy and fragile.
It feels like the entire universe is out of whack.
8:19 P.M.
I texted Emma on the bus home to ask if she’s really sore, too, after the day at Pat’s, but she hasn’t texted back.
8:45 P.M.
The hardest thing about the physics GCSE is going to be remembering all the formulas. Everything else is basic.
One test question goes: “Figure 1 shows how the output from fossil fuel power stations in the UK varied over a twenty-four-hour period. Explain the variance.”
Now, you don’t have to be a genius to work out that at midnight less electricity is needed than at 7 A.M., when it’s like: Good morning, Britain, and sixty-six million people are putting the kettle on.
Glad I didn’t schedule in an hour to work out something so blatantly obvious.
PS: I wish this horrendous stomachache would go away.
Thursday, May 10 #KillMeNow
Emma wasn’t at the thrift shop today.
Apparently she’s ill.
I was steaming clothes all afternoon, and then I yawned, and Pat was like: “Ah. You’re bored without your friend, aren’t you?”
I was just like: “I don’t mind, I like my own company,” and then Pat was like: “I know what you mean. I’m the same.”
Great.
I’m literally Pat.
After dinner I spent an hour Photoshopping a picture of Richard. I made him a speech bubble that reads: I MISS YOU. GET WELL SOON.
It looks amazing, but for all the wrong reasons. Mostly because Richard is so cross-eyed.
I’m going to send it to Emma now.
Friday, May 11 #TalkToTheRichard
Emma messaged me in the middle of the night last night, but I was asleep.
Seriously, I don’t sleep for three weeks, and the one night I do, she messages me, and I sleep through it?
She wrote:
Thanks for your picture, Richard. You are the most handsome kitten. When I’m not contagious anymore, I will come and visit you.
I’m really happy she replied, but what have I started? Now she’s talking to the stupid designer kitten, and not to me.
I wonder what’s wrong with her, but I don’t want to message her again already, just in case she thinks I’m totally annoying.
PS: Miriam Patel got through a whole day without crying.
PPS: This afternoon I studied.
Fascinating yet entirely irrelevant fact learned: The most stable thorium isotope has a half-life of 14.05 billion years. Just to put that into perspective, the universe (the universe!) is about 13.8 billion years old.
The age of the universe.
Saturday, May 12 #PhoebeNoMates
Emma’s still ill.
At the thrift shop, Bill and Melanie brought lunch for everyone, which was really nice, but I wasn’t hungry, plus my stomach’s still hurting.
Bill: Phoebe, my angel, what’s got your goat today?
Me: I’m tired.
Bill: You work too hard. School all day; you’re here most afternoons and on weekends; you need to give yourself more you time.
Me: I actually need to study for GCSEs.
Bill: You need to see your friends.
Me: I’ve got no friends.
Bill (laughing that laugh that makes the walls shake): I’m finding that very hard to believe.
Me: It’s true.
Bill: We’re your friends, but I doubt you’d want to spend your precious free time with old farts like us—
Melanie: Who’s old?
And then they both laughed, and he gave her a kiss.
Imagine it. Being married to the same person for sixty years and still finding them funny and wanting to give them a kiss.
I’m such a failure as a human. I couldn’t even get my best friend to wish me a happy new year.
Sunday, May 13 #SecretGutWrenchingPanic
I know we’ve been talking about GCSEs for years, and maybe that’s why it always seemed like they’d never happen, but now they’re tomorrow.
I feel like I’m about to be involuntarily inserted into a hamster wheel that isn’t going to stop spinning. I’ll eventually be thrown back out of it, dizzy, disoriented, and possibly puking, and only when everything’s too late, I’ll realize what went on and what was required.
The most terrifying thing for me is the anticipated pace of this exam hell. The pressure that you have to be on top form every day.
And still I can’t study.
Instead, I found this really funny website where people deliberately make poetry shit.
So instead of:
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert …
It goes:
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said nothing …
LOL.
7:53 P.M.
I told Kate I wasn’t hungry and didn’t want dinner, but of course that never works, and so she brought dinner to me.
Kate (holding a tray with tomato soup): Phoebe. Talk to me.
Me:…
Kate (sitting down on my bed, scooping soup onto a spoon, blowing on it, then pushing it in front of my face): Eat.
Me (opening mouth, eating soup):…
Kate: Better.
Me:…
Kate: What’s going on?
Me: I’ve got a tummy ache.
Kate: Okay. Where does it hurt?
Me (pointing to it):…
Kate (feeding me more soup): Okay.
Me:…
Kate: Do you think you’re sick, or could you be worried about something?
Me: Worried about what?
Kate: Tomorrow.
Me (shrugging):
…
Kate: You understand that these exams aren’t the be-all and end-all, though, don’t you?
Me: But they are.
Kate: No, they’re not. Their outcome doesn’t change your brilliance or your potential as a person, Phoebe. And don’t let anybody convince you otherwise. There are bigger things in life than GCSEs.
Me: That’s what Emma thinks.
Kate: And Emma’s a very wise woman.
Me (being spoonfed more soup):…
Kate: You know you’re my favorite person in the whole wide world, don’t you?
Me: I thought Mum was.
Kate: What? Boring old Amelia? Don’t be daft.
Me: What about James?
Kate: Oh, please.
Me (taking the bowl off the tray and eating by myself):…
Kate: And what’s happening with Polly?
Me (shrugging): Don’t know. I don’t know if she’s had a boyfriend-induced orgasm yet.
Kate (laughing): Well, I think you should definitely check, and if the answer is no, I think we need to have her over for dinner and explain a few things.
Me: I’ve read about the vaginal orgasm.
Kate: Oh yes? Good for you.
Me: You think I should tell her about it?
Kate: The trick is to tilt your hips upwards.
Me: I know. But please let’s not talk about it.
Kate: You started it.
Me: I’m regretting it.
Kate: Eat.
Me: Fine.
After I finished the soup, we went downstairs, and James made me cheese on toast.
Kate said I should rest my brain for a minute, and so we watched a David Attenborough program, and the designer and nondesigner kittens literally lost their shit over it.
They all sat in front of the telly, and every time the lioness went for the kill, they stumbled all over each other and meowed like crazy.
Isn’t it weird to think that lions and cats have the same ancestors?
To be fair, though, ancient humans used to be able to make fire by rubbing stones and twigs together. I know people who can’t light a match.
PS: Twenty-seven exams over six weeks.
Monday, May 14 #RoundOne
I had computer science in the morning, and religious studies in the afternoon, and I can already tell that the biggest challenge during GCSEs is going to be to not write on the blank page that says: DO NOT WRITE ON THIS PAGE. And being in the same room with so many people and trying to ignore their rustling and breathing and fidgeting.
Between exams, Miriam Patel was all like: “I need to quickly go over some dates for this afternoon.”
I was like: “Could she be any more ridiculous?” Because little in life is more obvious than the year Jesus was born, but then Polly told me what’s been going on with Miriam, because she found out from Tristan, who found out from Jacob, and it’s actually so tragic, and maybe I shouldn’t have made fun of her.
Apparently it’s not Miriam stressing about GCSEs; it’s her parents.
Polly said that Miriam’s dad is obsessed with wanting her to go to Cambridge, and because he works all the time and Miriam’s mum is at home all the time, he reckons it’s Miriam’s mum’s job to make sure Miriam gets all the grades, and when she doesn’t, her mum goes proper ape-shit, because it means Miriam’s dad is going to shout at Miriam’s mum for failing as a mother.
When Miriam did majorly badly in her math mock exam, she apparently heard her parents having a shouting match in the kitchen over it, and her dad was going: “You’ve got one job, Grace, one fucking job,” to Miriam Patel’s mum, and then he smashed a glass.
That’s proper shit, isn’t it?
No wonder Miriam gets panic attacks.
I mean, I still don’t like her, but imagine your parents being that horrible to each other because you didn’t get a good grade that one time.
I’m lucky, really, because at least every time I don’t do very well, I can be all like: “It’s because I’m literally an orphan,” and instead of being angry, Mum just feels guilty.
Polly reckons we should help Miriam Patel with math.
That means she thinks I should help Miriam Patel with math, because Polly literally can’t work out five plus five.
I was going to say no, but I do feel a bit sorry for Miriam, because nobody deserves to have shit parents. Also, if we have a study session together, I don’t have to have one on my own, and I can be like: #StudiedAllAfternoon.
PS: I have French tomorrow, and I seriously need to brush up on my fruits and vegetables.
Did you know that the word pineapple is pretty much “ananas” in every other language but English? Even in Hebrew it’s “ananas,” but of course it’s spelled like: so you’d never know.
I also have to study “under,” “over,” “in front” and “behind,” also, “to the right,” “to the left,” because, apparently, when traveling to France, no one has access to Google maps and needs to solely rely on getting directions from non-English-speaking locals.
Yawn.
Emma isn’t taking French, she’s taking Spanish, which makes so much more sense, because apparently 570 million people in the world speak it.
Only, like, 220 million speak French.
What was I thinking?
Tuesday, May 15 #ContemplatingDeath
This morning I had French 1 and 3, and this afternoon I had Biology 1.
Matilda Hollingsworth had a crying fit during Biology 1, because she had to really, really go to the toilet, but she didn’t want to go, because she thought she was behind on time.
Mr. Kane was really nice about it, though. He went over to her desk and was all like: “Look, Matilda, go to the toilet, and I promise you’ll be able to concentrate much better.”
I went to the thrift shop afterwards, which was a big mistake, because I’m now almost certain that I have stomach cancer.
Pat caught me stretching and rubbing my tummy, and she was like: “Stomachache?” And I was like: “It’s okay.”
And then she told me how her husband died from stomach cancer.
Why would you be like that?
Someone: I have a really annoying stomachache.
You: My husband died of stomach cancer.
OMG.
So when I got home, instead of studying for this week’s biggies, French and chemistry, I just Googled “stomach cancer survival rates,” and Google reckons that if it’s discovered in the early stages, the five-year survival rate is 65 percent. That means that thirty-five out of one hundred people die. It obviously also means that sixty-five people live, but still.
If the cancer has spread to other areas, the five-year survival rate is about 30 percent. That means that seventy people out of one hundred die, and only thirty live.
Maybe I should go to the GP.
If it’s cancer, I hope that it hasn’t spread.
Kate didn’t seem particularly worried when I told her about my stomachache the other night, and I did feel a bit better after the soup and the cheese toasty. Maybe I’m not intolerant to dairy after all?
I wish it would just go away, because I don’t want to die of stomach cancer.
I don’t want to die of any cancer.
In fact, I don’t know how I want to die.
I wonder if Emma would come to my funeral.
I don’t think black would suit her.
Maybe I should insist everyone wear bright colors “to celebrate my life.” Blech!
PS: I have no exam in the morning, and Religious Studies 2 in the afternoon, but I refuse to study for it, because nobody is ever going to give a shit about how I did in that subject.
PPS: Actually, maybe I should try to do well, because I read that if you want to convert to Judaism, you have to seriously impress the rabbi.
PPPS: Polly just texted to say we’re going to meet with Miriam Patel at Starbucks tomorrow morning to do math. I’m only going because I miss the Polly that’s all independent and no-nonsense and “
this is what we’re doing.”
Wednesday, May 16 #Lessons
When I sat down at the table with Miriam Patel, I literally felt the universe twitch.
Miriam wasn’t her usual self (at first!), because she wasn’t at all bitchy (at first!).
We did a few problems, and turns out the thing with Miriam Patel is that she really knows the answer, but she thinks she doesn’t, and so she confuses everything. It’s not like with Polly, who actually really doesn’t get it, and even if you tell her the answer, she’s still like: “Eh? Sorry, but my brain doesn’t do any of this, but that’s fine, because you don’t have to be good at everything. If we were all good at everything, we’d have no geniuses, and the world would be without wonder.”
OMG, I love that about Polly so much. She’s good at finding wonder. Maybe that’s her superpower. She sees things other people don’t see. Maybe that’s why she’s with Tristan.
Anyway, at the end of our pointless extracurricular math lesson, I was just like: “Don’t waste my time, Miriam. You know how to do this, so don’t be an idiot.” And she was like: “That’s easy for you to say. Your mum’s not here, so she probably doesn’t give a shit about your results.”
I could feel Polly flinch, and Miriam looked like she maybe hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but then she was all like: “Whatever, I said it, and it’s true.”
I just went: “Get out of my sight.”
After she’d gone, Polly tried to be all: “She didn’t mean it,” but I was like: “Of course she meant it. She always means it, only she usually doesn’t say it to my face.”
Polly: Thank you for offering to help her, though.
Me: I hate Miriam Patel. I can’t believe I fell for her sad story.
Polly: It is a sad story, Phoebe. Apparently her dad gets really arsy.
Me: And apparently my mum doesn’t give a shit.
Polly: She’s just jealous that your mum trusts you to become a responsible adult without her monitoring your every move.
Me: You think that’s what she’s doing?
Polly: Who? Miriam?
Me: No, Mum.
Polly: Phoebe, hello. Do you think she’d go gallivanting around the planet if you were a mess?
Me: I hadn’t really thought about it from that angle.
Love Is for Losers Page 15