Bright Young Things

by Scarlett Thomas

‘Uh-huh. They have to keep on either odd or even numbers depending on which way they’re going. You can’t drop just one thousand in case you have a head-on with a plane going the other way.’

  Anne processes this information. On the large screen at the front of the cabin is a map showing the plane’s progress. Anne finds the little graphics of the world and the plane comforting. They abstract the whole experience. Right now the pretend-plane is somewhere over the Atlantic, a couple of hours from Heathrow. After it lands, she’s never flying again, Anne decides.

  ‘She sat on a rescue boat for eleven hours,’ says the woman on Anne’s other side.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My mother.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘When she was rescued from the Titanic, dear.’

  On the runway at LA, Anne had mentioned to her neighbours that she was a nervous passenger. The old woman said her mother had been afraid of flying. Then Anne said she was OK on boats, and the old woman had started telling her about the Titanic. The woman has slept for most of the flight, but every hour or so she wakes up and continues the conversation.

  ‘I inherited the gift from her.’

  ‘The gift?’

  ‘For reading cards.’

  ‘What, Tarot?’

  ‘Yes, dear. Her cards told her it was a bad week for travelling.’

  She nods back off to sleep and Anne opens her book again. She can’t get into it. Picking up her walkman from the fold-down table, she inserts the small headphones in her ears. She’s on her third REM tape, doing what she always does: fixating on one track and playing it over and over again. For take-off at LA it was ‘Losing my Religion’. For a few hours over the Atlantic it was ‘Tongue’. Now it’s ‘Daysleeper’. Over and over again. Her mother would call it obsessive.

  As a child, Anne never did anything in half-measures. At Sunday School, some girl once told her that if she ever lied she would go to hell. For a month Anne didn’t speak, because she was afraid she would lie by accident. She couldn’t even answer a question like Where are the cornflakes? with a simple I don’t know, because maybe she did know and had just forgotten. In Anne’s six-year-old mind, the devil would count that as a lie. So she just stopped speaking.

  Her mother took her to a child psychologist who had bad breath and wet armpits. Anne continued with her silence, but blushed as he asked her increasingly embarrassing questions about ‘inappropriate behaviour’, and whether anyone she knew had touched her in ways that had made her feel uncomfortable. The trip to see him did cure her silence in the end, especially when Anne was told she’d have to go back again unless there was an improvement. Between the psychologist and the devil, she chose the devil.

  After that, words became Anne’s only friends. Diary after diary explained why she couldn’t fit in at school; why the other kids thought she was weird. Eventually her parents sent her to a special school, complaining relentlessly about the expense. Once there, Anne was told she was too clever and was sent to a room to read Judy Blume books by herself, to try and bring her down to the level of the other children. She was twelve.

  Teen fiction soon became an obsession. Anne read every Judy Blume (her favourite was Forever), and then started on Paul Zindel, feasting on his seminal Pigman and then The Pigman’s Legacy. After that it was anything she could get her hands on. American kids – fat or lonely or abused, she had to know more about them. Anne could have been an agony aunt. She knew about issues. About bullying, suicide, divorce, pregnancy and sex. Any time one of the other kids had a problem, she knew what to do. Any time one of the other kids was depressed, she lent them her copy of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

  There were no rules at the special school, and no homework. When she was twelve and a half, Anne started writing poetry. The poems helped her through what the school called ‘learning time’, which consisted of non-compulsory lessons. At break times she held court in the playground or in an unused classroom, talking about contraception or religion, firing off rounds of teen angst to bewildered pre-teens who would never quite allow her into their group. Out of school she spent her time at the library. She was a loner, and although no one would have called her a well-adjusted child, she wasn’t unhappy.

  During her four years at the special school she wrote seven hundred poems and attended no classes. The school thought she would get bored eventually, but she never did. The policy of boring a child into submission had worked on every other pupil who had ever attended, each one drifting into the non-compulsory lessons eventually. But it didn’t work on Anne. She simply never got bored.

  There didn’t seem to be much point in Anne sitting her GCSEs, since she had never attended a class, but the school registered her anyway, hoping for at least a pass in English. She started with the biology exam. The first question was about contraception; the second was about the menstrual cycle. Since these subjects had been more than adequately covered in Anne’s teen fiction, she got an A. She also got As in English Language, History, Geography, Religious Studies and Art, for which she just turned up in the exam room and drew an abstract of a penis – not that she’d ever seen one. These marks were enough to get her into a grammer school for her A levels, and finally to Sussex University to read English and Philosophy.

  Her parents paid for her flat on Brighton seafront, and for her car, although she hadn’t asked them to. They also provided her with a generous allowance, which she spent on books, magazines and sushi, the only food she would eat. Anne’s first year was spent thinking about nothing, and her resulting dissertation – on the subject of zero – won her acclaim from everyone except her parents, who decided at the beginning of Anne’s second year to withdraw the flat and the car and the allowance, feeling that she had been overindulged.

  They had hoped that Anne would be forced into student life, but not being one to be forced into anything, Anne found a bed-sit, worked as a cleaner and read Sartre for a year. At the end of the year she staged her own suicide. Her thesis was a dossier of papers relating to her death: a diary of events leading up to it and the suicide note itself. Her stunt made national news. Her parents reinstated the flat, the car and the allowance, and organised therapy.

  In her third year, Anne read Baudrillard and listened to Radiohead. She’d never been into indie music before, preferring saccharine pop and seventies disco, but this was the year she discovered MTV. The new groups fascinated her, and their lyrics were like a kind of poetry: surreal, bubblegum poetry, as meaningless and alienating as anything she’d ever encountered. For her third year project Anne invented a videogame called ‘Life’. She graduated with a First.

  Anne has never had a best friend or a boyfriend. She’s still a virgin.

  The trip to America was a last-ditch attempt by her parents to encourage her to get a life. But all she has done in the last two months is think about the end of the world. The aunt she was staying with had to go up to San Francisco to see a sick friend, so Anne was left in the house on her own. She ate lots of potato chips, cheese and alfalfa sandwiches and microwaveable french fries. She discovered chat shows: Geraldo, Ricki, Sally Jesse Raphael, Jerry Springer. And she didn’t leave the house – except to visit the twenty-four-hour supermarket – at all during the two months she was there.

  The atmosphere on the plane changes as land appears below. The turbulence has gone and everyone’s relaxed.

  ‘Looks like we might live after all,’ says the man next to Anne.

  ‘Yeah.’ She smiles at him.

  ‘I could have told you everything would be all right,’ says the old woman, waking up again.

  ‘How?’ Anne asks.

  ‘The cards. I did them this morning.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me that before?’

  ‘You wouldn’t have believed me. People only believe in predictions after they’ve come true. That’s how Mother ended up on the Titanic. She didn’t believe it was a bad week for travelling until the ship started going down.’

  The man in the next
seat presses a finger to his temple and twists it back and forth, implying the old woman is mad. Anne starts putting her walkman and her book in her rucksack.

  Anne has a McDonald’s at Heathrow before taking the tube back to Islington.

  Her parents’ flat is empty when she arrives home; she remembers that they are still at the villa in Tuscany. A copy of the Guardian lies on the kitchen table, open at the Media Appointments section. On top of it is a note reminding Anne it’s time she found a job, and that her allowance runs out in September. Anne’s mother has already circled in red the jobs that she thinks would suit her daughter. They are all PR or charity related.

  Anne pours a glass of Coke and sits down with the paper. For some reason it is suddenly important that she finds a job from this paper. Today. Without meaning to be rebellious, she sets about looking for the most inappropriate job description, but in the end settles for the most vague: Bright Young Things wanted for big project.

  She doesn’t apply for anything else.

  Jamie

  Some days there seem to be numbers everywhere. Jamie Grant hates numbers. They just can’t leave him alone. He hates the number 42 bus, his home telephone number and his inside leg measurement. He once saw a programme where born-again Christians played with barcodes on consumer items, making the number 666 every time. They said consumerism was the work of the devil because you could turn barcodes into the number 666. Jamie laughed when he saw that. Christ, you can turn any number into 666 if you really want to. No, consumerism is not the problem; numbers are.

  In a lot of ways he is normal. His parents are divorced, but they both still love him. Last week he attended his first funeral, for a relative he’d never met. He’s twenty-two and he’s ordinary. Except for one thing. He’s just graduated from Cambridge University with a First in Pure Mathematics.

  He has a girlfriend he doesn’t love and a best friend who is too tall and as a result drinks too much. Jamie masturbates precisely (how he hates that word) twice a day – when he gets up and before he goes to bed. If Carla is around he does it in the bathroom, in secret, and then pretends to be too tired to do it with her. She doesn’t mind. She doesn’t really like sex, and anyway, she chose him as a husband, not a fuck. In Jamie’s circle that’s fairly ordinary. No. In Carla’s circle that’s ordinary. Jamie remembers that he doesn’t have a circle; he just orbits other people’s.

  As he cycles up Mill Road, Jamie plays his favourite game: listing all the things he could do that would really surprise everyone. He could get contact lenses to replace his swotty glasses; maybe green ones. Then, with his new green eyes he could start a band and become like Damon or Liam . . . no, definitely Damon. He could dump Carla and shag groupies. Perhaps go around the world. That would surprise everyone. Or maybe he could just get married, have kids and go on the dole. What he really doesn’t want to be is a mathematician. Because that’s what everyone expects.

  His favourite fantasy is to be a pilot and fly a plane. If everyone would get off his back, he’d just fly his own plane around the world and have adventures. He imagines finding strange lands and looking for secrets, like Indiana Jones or Lara Croft. He likes Lara Croft. He likes pop music. He likes motorbikes. So why the hell does everyone see him as such a geek? It’s those fucking numbers, that’s why. Because he knows what they do. Because he can work out the square root of things. That makes him a geek. What’s the square root of everything? Nothing.

  In a worse mood than when he went out (to get rid of his mood), he returns and lets himself into the small terraced house he shares with Carla and Nick. He wishes they’d do something interesting. He always makes an effort to come home slightly earlier than he is expected, hoping he will find them fucking. The thought turns him on in a peculiar way. Not that he’d really want to see Carla fucking Nick, just that it would set him free. If only he could hate them, he would be free. He could stop looking after Nick and dump Carla. All he needs is a reason. And tomorrow he will be twenty-three. Things will have to change.

  He’s bought the Guardian and a packet of Marlboro from the shop at the end of the road. He hasn’t smoked since he was about ten. He goes up to his room and puts both items on the bed.

  His bedroom is the only room in the house with a TV. Carla never watches it because she prefers the radio, and Nick just reads, when he’s in. Carla says that TV is for the working classes, to keep them entertained and to stop them having any revolutions. What stops this theory being interesting is that she actually thinks this is a good idea, and she’s proud to be part of the class that makes TV, rather than the class that consumes it. God, he hates her. He checks his watch: six o’clock. She’ll be at choir practice right now.

  He flicks the TV to Sky One and watches The Simpsons. It’s an episode he’s seen before: Lisa falls in love with her teacher and nobody understands her. He cries during the scene when the teacher reads out a bit of Charlotte’s Web, Jamie’s favourite childhood book. He cries when the teacher leaves town at the end. This is another thing: he has to stop crying all the time.

  Carla comes in at about seven. Her choir practice is over and she’s looking for an argument. She walks into Jamie’s room wearing M&S cream trousers and a cotton blouse. He wishes she would wear something nylon for once. Lycra, or whatever. For a moment he imagines her dressed in whore’s clothes: a mini skirt, high heels and a boob-tube. Is that right? They don’t wear boob-tubes now, surely? Too seventies. Maybe just a little vest top with no bra. And she’d have to swear. Not that this really turns him on – quite the contrary – but it cheapens her. And she’s so fucking expensive that she really needs a price cut.

  While Jamie’s been thinking, she’s been talking.

  ‘Are you listening to me?’ she demands, her voice clipped and precious.

  Cunt, thinks Jamie. Are you listening to me, cunt?

  ‘Sorry?’ he says.

  ‘I thought we might go to that concert tomorrow.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘It’s your birthday.’

  ‘I’m aware of that.’

  ‘It’s a recital.’

  ‘I thought so.’

  Jamie stares at the TV screen. Don’t be mean. Don’t be mean. Give her another chance. Give her . . . a challenge.

  ‘I want to go clubbing,’ he says.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Clubbing? It’s what young people do.’

  ‘It’s what plebs do. God, Jamie, what’s got into you?’

  He stays silent, watching the images on screen.

  ‘Could you turn that thing off?’ she says, pissed off.

  He doesn’t move. He doesn’t want to hurt her, but he can’t help it. On reflection, she probably isn’t hurt, just confused. He wonders how you would actually hurt Carla. She sighs and leaves the room, slamming the door behind her. Jamie still doesn’t move.

  Later, he hears her on the telephone, talking to some other public school bimbo.

  ‘He’s just changed so much.’ Pause for commiseration. The other girl probably asks for details, over-stressing at least one word in every sentence. They all do it.

  ‘He’s been playing computer games and watching TV.’ Maybe the friend tells her that’s normal. ‘Yes, I know, but all the time? And he’s so distant. Earlier on he said he wanted to go clubbing.’ She giggles conspiratorially. ‘I know. It could be quite good fun, I suppose. But I think he wants to do it seriously. Last week he told me he wanted to go to a rock concert. Sorry? Blah, I think.’

  Another pause.

  ‘Blah, that’s right.’

  She’s trying to say Blur but she can’t even manage that.

  Jamie’s got a copy of The Face hidden under the bed. He pulls it out and looks at the clothes and the people. Maybe this is what he could have been, had he not been so bright. He hates that word. It’s what people have always said about him, from his junior school – in the days when he still had an accent – to his grammar school. Jamie, he’s so bright. And they always sighed at the end of the se
ntence, as if his brightness made them tired, because it was just too dazzling.

  As far as everyone here is concerned, his background is just a blip, an aberration. He’s bright and he’s escaped.

  Well, now he wants to go back.

  He remembers loving his primary school and all his friends. But just before the Eleven Plus he was put in a special class, with the other bright boys and girls. They were taught by the headmaster and kept out of ordinary classes. From that moment, Jamie’s best friend, Mark, and girlfriend, Gemma, disappeared from his life. At the time he didn’t even notice.

  Last summer he spent his holidays in Taunton with his mother and her new boyfriend. Walking around his home town was a surreal experience. Sometimes, in the bank or in the record shop, he’d see a familiar face, but not be able to give it a name. He’d tried to track down Mark and Gemma once and found they’d got married – to each other. They hadn’t invited him to the wedding. Why would they? He was never really one of them. While Gemma and Mark struggled with long division, he was doing algebra with the headmaster. He was just too fucking bright.

  The people in The Face look like they’re on drugs. They look like they’re having fun in their dressed-down clothes; in their avant-garde photo shoots. Could he have been like that? Maybe he would have been if it wasn’t for the numbers. Maybe he could still be something interesting, even with the stupid numbers. With all his numbers he’d be qualified to deal drugs, maybe; 28 grams in an ounce, 3.5 in an eighth. That’s how they sell drugs, isn’t it? He doesn’t really know. But the people in this magazine aren’t that. They’re artists and pop stars and underground rebels. They’re not the losers that Carla and her friends think they are. They’re probably just really nice people.

  He looks at his clothes: chinos from The Gap; white T-shirt bought by his mother about five years ago. It’s greyed in the wash. Is that good or bad? He has a lot to learn. Worse, he has a lot to unlearn. He pulls one of the Marlboros out of the packet and lights it. He remembers smoking years ago in Taunton town centre, with Gemma breathing cold smoke in his ear, telling him she would always love him.