My Brilliant Life and Other Disasters

by Catherine Wilkins

  “Yeah, loads, thanks,” I say crossly.

  I finally got a chance to show the others my bee and wasp cartoon in our lunchtime meetings this week and they loved it. They want it to be the front cover. (I’d joked at the time that instead of Toons my new nickname should be Frontcover-o, but I don’t think they got it. No one laughed and Joshua just kind of shook his head at me.)

  But they must have really liked the bee cartoon because Joshua (finally alert and back in the room) starts describing it to Scarlett now, and she actually laughs.

  “You like my bee cartoon?” I blurt out, surprised.

  “Your cartoon?” Scarlett sounds confused. “I thought Josh drew it?” JoshUA.

  Ha ha! Busted! You only say you like things if you think Joshua did them, and hate things if you think I did them! Ha ha! Busted! A voice in my head starts gloating at Scarlett.

  “No, I never said who drew it,” says Joshua mildly, “just that it’s probably going to be the front cover on the next issue, because it’s the best out of all our ideas.”

  You hear that, Scarlett? The best of all our ideas. Quote unquote. In your face!

  “So whoever has the best idea gets to be on the front cover?” says Scarlett.

  “Yeah, obviously,” says Joshua.

  Obviously, Scarlett. I’m obviously the best. Get over it, I add in my head.

  “Well, I should totally email you some of my cartoons and see what you think of them,” concludes Scarlett.

  Ha – wait, what? Noooo! Enough already. Let’s just leave it with me being the best.

  “Great,” says Joshua.

  “No!” I accidentally shout, and they look at me oddly. “Er, what I mean is, you know, there’s a commitee to sort of get through first; it has to be unanimous and everything. It’s not fair on everyone else otherwise.”

  “That’s true,” says Joshua, “but if you email them to me, I can print them out and show them to the others and then we can all decide together.”

  “Oh right, yeah. That’s a good idea.” Now I’m the one who’s lying.

  “What’s the matter?” asks Scarlett smugly. “Scared of a little competition?”

  “Well, if I see some, I’ll let you know,” I reply just as smugly.

  SNAP! Take that. You evil-cartoonist-identity-copying-witch! For the first time, Joshua seems to pick up on the fact that there is some tension between us. He looks quizzically from me to Scarlett.

  “Oh, Josh,” says Scarlett. “I, like, totally know the guy that runs your town’s comic shop.”

  “You know Big Dave?” asks Joshua, surprised.

  “Well, I don’t know his name,” concedes Scarlett, “but he’s friends with my cousin. Do you want me to see if he’ll sell your comic there?” What?

  “Wow!” Joshua nearly drops his onion rings, but luckily I grab them in time. “That would be amazing! Are you … sure?”

  Oh, as if she knows him or has the power to make that happen.

  “Yeah!” enthuses Scarlett. “Well, I’d have to ask him. But I’m sure he’d say yes.”

  “That would be … amazing!” Joshua is nearly lost for words he’s so elated.

  Once we’ve finally said goodbye to Scarlett, all Joshua can talk about is how cool it would be to sell our comic in a real comic shop. He’s completely oblivious to how Scarlett is obviously just trying to bribe her way into our comic with more lies.

  But when I politely hint that this is probably the case, he just tells me that my attitude towards the comic is “unhealthy” – which I think is pretty rich coming from the boy who just bought deep-fried onion rings.

  Forget what I said before, this is the living end.

  My mum calls up the stairs as my dad answers the front door. “Kids! Best behaviour, please!” This is the first time my Auntie Joan has come round to our house since she and my mum had that big fight and she stormed out. I told you she’d be back.

  “Joan!” enthuses my dad. “Great to see you! You look exactly the right weight for your height. You look beautiful and healthy and like you definitely have an appropriate BMI.”

  “Thanks,” says Joan sceptically.

  They’ve got this whole Sunday dinner planned. Roast chicken. Even Tammy is here (admittedly, partly to use the washing machine). It’s actually my favourite of all the super-saver meals though. Cheap vegetables and roast stuff tastes the same as normal-price vegetables and roast stuff. I don’t see why we can’t have this for every meal.

  “Joan!” I hear Tammy yell from downstairs. “You’ll sign my petition, won’t you?”

  “Of course I will,” replies my aunt. “What’s it for?” Sure, sign now, ask questions later.

  “Kiiids!” my dad calls up the stairs.

  So now I have to go downstairs and act like everything is normal and my whole world didn’t just cave in yesterday. Still, at least my family are quite a good distraction from that. They’re a good distraction from pretty much everything really.

  Ryan has his space helmet forcibly removed and as my dad dishes up the food Tammy starts telling Auntie Joan about the dog she is still trying to rescue.

  “Well, I say just go for it,” says Auntie Joan. “If you want something to happen, you have to make it happen. Wishing won’t get results.”

  “Well, actually—” My mum starts to say something and then stops. She obviously doesn’t entirely agree with this course of action, but doesn’t want to start another fight.

  “You reckon?” Tammy asks Auntie Joan. I notice she has conveniently not mentioned that she wants the dog to live with us, rather than her, once it’s rescued.

  “Absolutely,” replies Joan. “Just do it, that’s what I always say.”

  “Actually, I think that’s the Nike slogan,” I remark. My dad chuckles.

  “They stole it from me,” quips my aunt, and I laugh.

  “Auntie Joan, did you really see Bigfoot?” asks Ryan then.

  “Yes,” says Joan. “It was amazing.”

  Then Joan tells us the story of a trip she went on a few years ago, to the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon, where she and a few others think they definitely saw Sasquatch (which is apparently another name for Bigfoot).

  I love my aunt’s stories. Even though I know that this one lacks “any evidence at all” (according to my dad) because their footage is so dark and grainy, but my aunt still maintains she knows what she saw. I hope one day I get to travel the world and see amazing things too.

  Anyway, my parents consider our Sunday meal a raging success (largely because no one shouts, cries or storms out and they choose to ignore Ryan’s mild griping about the lack of Kit Kats) so we all pat ourselves on the back and I am allowed to go upstairs and get on with my homework.

  I’m supposed to be researching flowers online for the wildlife project. And I want to keep the goodwill with Natalie I’ve established this week, with all that bee and insect work we did. She’s completely forgotten about the whole not-reading-everything debacle. And I want to keep it that way.

  Unfortunately, as soon as I’m on my own again all I can think about is how angry and annoyed I feel with Scarlett. I can’t believe she’s just waltzed into the centre of my world and decimated it. I feel so impotent and powerless.

  I hate her. And I’m very disappointed in Joshua. How can he be so taken in? She just dangles something his ego desires in front of him and bang, that’s it. He’s basically in her pocket.

  Scarlett can’t write for the comic, it’s my sacred place. This is like when the Nazis tried to get their hands on the Ark of the Covenant in the first Indiana Jones film. Or something. Except, you know, the comic won’t kill us if we look at it.

  Cartoons are my thing. Mine. They’re the one thing I do that make other people like me. (Apart from Nat, who mainly likes me anyway. When I’m not annoying her.) They’re the one thing that stops me feeling sad when someone is mean to me, because I can just turn them into a cartoon. They make me feel invincible. Kind of.

  A
nd hello? I’m clearly good at cartooning. That’s why our comic is proving so successful. That’s why for two issues in a row – 100% of the issues, in fact – the rest of the team wanted my pictures to be the front cover.

  I co-write all of Tanya’s quizzes; I help Joshua and Lewis brainstorm ideas; I help fix stuff that could be better; and I come up with loads of funny ideas all on my own. I’m hilarious. We don’t need anyone coming in and “shaking things up” with their stupid ideas. Especially someone that hates me.

  I know it might sound immature that I don’t want there to be any more cartoonists, but I’d be way more happy to share if Scarlett wasn’t such a horrible person. And if she hadn’t been so mean and rude to me. And if she wasn’t a thief or a compulsive liar. Call me picky if you like. I call it having standards.

  There’s no way the others will let her in. Tanya hates snobs. And Lewis hates thieves. Yeah, I have nothing to worry about. But, just to clinch it, maybe I should draw some cartoons now, just so it super looks like we don’t need any more.

  OK, I know I’m supposed to be doing this flowers research so that Natalie won’t be mad at me, but I can just do that really quickly first.

  Enthused, I look at the work sheet and start typing stuff into Google. I find a couple of websites that say things about pollution being bad, and bees and pollination. This all looks relevant. I bookmark the page.

  I find a couple more likely-looking websites, then one that seems to be all about rare flowers specifically. The print is too small to read it all, and I’m itching to start drawing cartoons. So I take the laptop to the printer and just print everything I’ve found out to show Natalie at school. I can quickly go through it all by then anyway. It’s probably easier to read on paper.

  That done, I gleefully set about drawing some more sheep. And I should probably try to re-create the magic of the wasp/bee cartoon too. That went down well.

  Ryan knocks on my door and asks to play Lego pirates but I tell him I’m too busy. I feel a bit bad when he looks upset. “I’m busy drawing cartoons, Ryan. We can’t play at that together – it’s not something you’re interested in.”

  “I am,” says Ryan defiantly.

  “Are you?” I say sceptically. I don’t have time for this.

  “Yes,” says Ryan. “Show me.”

  Then I have an idea. “OK, come here.” On another pad, I draw a balloon. “See that? It looks flat, doesn’t it?” Ryan nods. “You can make it look 3D if you draw this on it.” And I add the kind of curved “window” bit that makes the balloon look round, and like light is reflecting off it.

  “Cool,” says Ryan.

  “OK, you can practise doing that over there if you like. But I have to get on with this.”

  Ryan nods obediently and goes and sits cross-legged on my bed drawing balloons. Phew, that was easy.

  Right. First I draw Mr Denton as a sheep. He teaches PE, so I draw him holding a basketball, wearing a “Baa-adidas” T-shirt (geddit?), and with a speech bubble saying, “I meant the other kind of dribbling!”

  Then I draw a series of scenes featuring some sheep in unlikely situations, like queuing up in the school canteen and asking for more vegetables. I write captions under them and call this my “Things That Will Never Happen” series.

  I get quite engrossed in what I’m doing and don’t notice how much time has gone by. Blimey, it’s later than I thought. Ryan’s been quiet for a long time actually.

  “Kids?” calls my dad up the stairs. “Are you getting ready for bed yet?”

  “Yes!” I call back. It’s not a lie, because my dad prefers the word fib. And I’m definitely about to start getting ready.

  “Hey, Jess, look at this,” says Ryan.

  “Let’s see then.” I join him on the bed, expecting to see the fruits of his balloon labours, and indeed he has drawn many a balloon, but that is not what he wants to show me.

  On a fresh piece of paper, scrawled in his six-year-old handwriting, are the words “Petishon Aboot Food”. He’s drawn some columns underneath, evidently without any kind of ruler judging by how wayward the lines are, then he’s put his name, followed by a squiggle, which I imagine is what he thinks his signature would be.

  It’s simultaneously one of the daftest and cutest things I have ever seen, and I have to really try not to laugh in Ryan’s face, as I’m genuinely impressed by the thought and ingenuity that has gone into this, however misguided and ultimately doomed his petishon might be.

  Evidently Xylophone-gate was the last straw for Ryan and he is putting his foot down. “Confirmation Reaction,” he explains.

  Con what? Oh, wait a minute. This is the type of thing Tammy says when she’s banging on about her petition. “Do you mean positive action?” I ask him. (It’s quite a big concept for Ryan.)

  “Yes, positive action.” Ryan nods, as if that was pretty much what he said and I’m just splitting hairs. “Tammy said make a stand on papers and Auntie Joan said just do it, so I’m doing it. They’ll have to let us have Kit Kats now,” he adds earnestly.

  “I’m not sure that’s quite how it works, Ryan,” I say.

  “Yes, it is: Tammy said,” he says firmly. “You have to sign it.”

  “OK, Ryan,” I say, taking the pad of paper from him and leaning it on my lap. “But to make it more official I’m adding this sentence: ‘We the undersigned hereby declare that the policy of purchasing only Value food should be amended to allow for the inclusion of real Kit Kats.’ And I’m going to put underneath: ‘As you can see, 50% of the household disagree with the current policy and demand CHANGE.’”

  “Yes!” Ryan beams and nods, as if he might have been about to suggest this too.

  I hope my parents appreciate that it’s the combination of Kit Kat deprivation with exposure to Tammy and Auntie Joan that has led to the radicalisation of their six-year-old child.

  So what has two thumbs and a load of excellent cartoons in their schoolbag? This guy! (You can’t see me, but I am pointing at myself with my thumbs. Geddit? I don’t think I will ever get bored of that joke.)

  I’m practically bursting at the seams to show Joshua and the others my new stuff. I can’t wait for our lunchtime comic meeting.

  This briefly annoys Natalie at registration, as she wanted us to work on the project at lunchtime, but as I say to her (and stupid, stirring Amelia) I can do that after the meeting.

  “Oh dear,” says Amelia loftily. “Trouble in paradise?”

  “Hardly,” I retort. “There’s plenty of time for everything.”

  “Good, good,” lies Amelia. “Have you heard back from your experts yet?”

  Some people in our class (like Cherry and Shantair, who of course wrote to wildlife experts on the official list) have had reply letters with all kinds of useful-looking booklets and information to help with their project.

  “Yes, actually,” says Natalie happily. “I wanted to show you at lunchtime, Jess. It’s awesome; she’s sent us all kinds of stuff.”

  “Oh great!” I enthuse. I hope it doesn’t look bad that I haven’t had a letter back yet.

  “Have you?” Natalie asks Amelia.

  “No,” Amelia smiles, “but we’ve asked someone very special to help us, so I don’t expect we’ll hear back right away.”

  “Who?” I ask, unimpressed.

  “Well, that would be telling,” simpers Amelia.

  Oh, who cares, Amelia? I manage not to shout. Honestly. And anyway, Natalie will forget all this and be well impressed when she sees all the stuff about flowers that I printed off the Internet later.

  “OK, so new business,” says Tanya as we sit on the comfy seats outside the library at lunchtime. “Anyone?”

  “I have some new business, actually,” pipes up Joshua. Me too, Joshua, I think. Me too.

  “And me.” I manage to say this fairly normally.

  “Jessica and I met this girl who wants to draw cartoons for our comic,” says Joshua. “And, as Jess pointed out, she would have to be approved by ev
eryone else too.”

  “Damn right,” interrupts Tanya, nodding approvingly at me.

  “So I’ve got her pictures here.” Joshua reaches into his bag for some paper.

  “Oh hey,” I interrupt. “Can I do my new business first? It won’t take a second.”

  “Go for it, Jess.” Joshua gestures politely for me to have the floor, so I pass round my new cartoons to everyone.

  Joshua really laughs at the Mr Denton one. (But then he was the partial inspiration for it, telling me about his basketball practice.) I love making Joshua laugh. I don’t know why. The others like them too, and everyone sort of chuckles.

  “These are amazing,” smiles Joshua.

  “Bang-up job, Toons, as always,” says Tanya.

  “Yes, they’re really good,” agrees Lewis.

  “Oh, good, I’m glad you like them.” I try to sound casual. “They’re just something I knocked up last night. But there are quite a lot of them. Hang on – you don’t think…? And I’m just thinking aloud here, but maybe we don’t have room for another person on the comic, if we have all these?” Oh yeah, pretty subtle.

  Joshua shoots me a puzzled look. “OK, so,” he says as he passes round some paper with various pictures of mice on them. “These are the cartoons this girl Scarlett drew, to see if we liked them. So what do you think?”

  We all look at the mice pictures. I’m not very impressed by them. I mean, I suppose there’s a chance I might be biased because I hate Scarlett so much. But honestly, I think they’re boring.

  It’s just a series of mice with different slogans or speech bubbles, like the one of a mouse holding a rucksack and it’s saying, “School Sucks”, which I’m sure is very cool and everything in cool-land. But our comic isn’t cool-land. It’s supposed to be funny. And as far as I can tell that cartoon is just an opinion, rather than an actual joke. It’s empty.