PopCo

by Scarlett Thomas

  When I was fourteen, people still wore leggings. No jeans fitted properly. Good clothes were baggy and the size ‘skinny’ didn’t exist. Nothing was hipster; nothing was flared (apart from the clothes of lame 70s kids in school sex-education videos). I probably looked like the non-fashion girls in these documentaries, with their frizzy hair, badly cut jeans and non-branded long-sleeved tops. These girls are making no effort to fit in. Is it because they can’t or because they won’t? I suspect the former, although the possible reasons for this must be almost infinite. I notice that what is objectively different about all the other girls is that they are simply covered with identity markers. They are saying ‘look at who I am’, while the other girls are saying ‘I am nothing’. It is intriguing to note that the point at which the less fashionable girls were allowed to enter the main group of girls was usually via a make-over, or by the girl borrowing some fashion item from her new ‘friend’.

  This is all starting to connect with my necklace/bracelet idea now. I note down what the main identity-tags seem to be, and make a few sketches from freeze-frames. Then I give up on the TV for a while (it’s making me feel ill/iller) and flick through the magazines instead. The same things are here, too: cute bags, turned-up jeans, ‘customised’ laces, rings, sweatbands, plastic bracelets, string bracelets, chokers, strings of beads, hair slides, blue/pink/black nail polish, cute hair bands, cute socks, cute tees, cute smiles … When did teenage girls become so cute, anyway?

  I am still reading and making notes when Ben turns up with lunch on a tray.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ he says when he sees the TV.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘The mountain to Mohammed.’

  ‘Nice of them.’

  ‘I know. I even have magazines.’

  He starts taking greaseproof paper off the plates on the tray.

  ‘We all have them,’ he says. ‘Kieran’s gone off to his room with his. He was last heard saying something like, “Oh, baby, baby.”’

  I laugh. ‘Oh, yuck.’

  Ben laughs too. ‘He has an unhealthy obsession with teenage girls.’

  ‘Yeah, him and the rest of society … Oh, thanks.’ Ben has just passed me a plate of sandwiches with a side salad and chips. I peer into the sandwiches. ‘What’s in here?’

  ‘Falafels with onion relish.’

  ‘And why are there flowers in the salad? Can you eat them?’

  ‘They are nasturtiums, apparently. Everyone was asking about them. The chefs say that yes, you can eat them. They’re from some local organic farm.’

  ‘Cool. I’ve never eaten a flower.’

  ‘Me neither.’ He smiles and picks up a magazine. ‘What were you saying about Kieran and the rest of society?’

  ‘Oh, just an observation about the sexualisation of teenage girls,’ I say. ‘It just hit me when I was reading through those magazines how much more, I don’t know, pornographic kids have to be these days. Maybe I’m just getting old. Anyway, I’m not surprised at his reaction, really. Surely it’s the logical conclusion to all this stuff.’

  ‘Fucking hell,’ Ben says, flicking through one of the magazines. ‘Yeah, I think you might be right. Are they wearing less clothes than when I was a kid or have I just got old finally?’

  ‘It’s less clothes,’ I say.

  ‘I don’t find it attractive, though,’ Ben says. ‘I just find it a bit freakish.’

  ‘I’m not sure you’re supposed to find it attractive. I think that teenage girls are supposed to find it attractive.’ I peer over his shoulder watching a cascade of images of teenage girls, TV presenters and pop stars; advertisements bleeding into features. ‘You know what I think?’ I say. ‘I think the overall message of these things is I’m getting ready. You know, I’m getting ready to go out. I’m getting ready for sex. I just, I don’t know, I just find it disturbing that there’s so much childishness in those magazines, and so much about sex at the same time. Not just the problem-page stuff, either. You are encouraged – in a playful, “childish” way – to pay so much attention to the detail of your “cute” socks and your “cute” bag and the cut of your kids’-TV-presenter jeans and your bubblegum-coloured nail varnish because, well, basically because you want boys to think about fucking you. They don’t say that explicitly, though. They talk about fancying and snogging and crushes. What they don’t say is, “Here’s how to make boys your age want to fuck you.”’

  ‘And Kieran,’ Ben says.

  I smile. ‘And, obviously, Kieran.’ For a moment I think about history and I realise that there was a time when paper wasn’t glossy like this, and didn’t smell of mass-produced perfume. ‘What’s disturbing as well is this thing where people my age are supposed to want to look like these kids. Because they are thin and small and have good skin – essentially because they are still children – grown women look at them and think, “I want to look like that too”, because that of course is the ideal. So then even they’re buying these products, the cute socks and so on. Even I persist with the same hairstyle I had when I was six.’ I pick up a plait in each hand and wiggle them around. ‘I would never have got away with looking so childish twenty years ago.’

  ‘We’re a nation of paedophiles,’ Ben says.

  ‘We’re a nation of paedophiles,’ I repeat, raising my eyebrows.

  ‘I like your plaits though,’ he says. ‘They are quite kinky.’

  I smile. ‘Thanks. I think.’

  ‘Look at this.’ Ben shows me the front cover of one of the magazines. There’s a young American pop star on the front, her bare midriff taking up a lot of the cover space. She’s wearing a white crop-top with a pink bra underneath, cut-off pink fishnet tights on her arms, black nail varnish and blow-job pink lip gloss. On her neck she has a studded red choker, which is connected, with a chain, to a smaller version of the same choker on her wrist. ‘What’s this saying? I’m a porn star?’

  ‘I particularly like the bondage angle,’ I say.

  ‘For girls who love to shop,’ says Ben.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘The tagline.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  He flicks through the rest of the magazine while I eat my sandwiches.

  ‘Where is the problem page, anyway?’ he asks, eventually. ‘I thought at least that would be interesting.’

  ‘I don’t think girls like that are supposed to have problems,’ I say.

  *

  Sunday. I am going through the box of my mother’s books again. I am a detective looking for clues, clues about life. I have worked out that my mother must have had all the answers. Here’s my rationale. There are no answers. She is not here. The answers must be with her. Why did she die? Why did I never know her? Why hasn’t she left me any clues at all? There must be millions of words in this box but so far I haven’t found any that mean anything. Of these millions of words, she herself wrote only about a thousand. The odd diary entry (‘Violin practice frustrating again’) and the odd place in a book where she has marked her name, or the date. There must be something else here. This can’t be it, can it?

  Then, after lunch, I find something. It’s an old, battered copy of Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy. My mother has written inside it – but not just her name. Please return this book to Beatrice Bailey, it says in her curly writing. OK, well, several of her books say this, or the same thing with her maiden name, my name: Butler. But there is more. She has written something in this book for me! Dearest, darling Alice, I have just finished this book and I am wondering what to say to you. Perhaps you have forgotten me already. I wonder how old you are now? Will you even get this book? I have asked your grandfather to add it to the box of books I have left for you but sometimes people say they will do something and then they forget. This is a very important book to me. It explains … A lot of things. Please take care of it. Alice, please know how much I love you, and how much I will always love you. This love doesn’t die. I will die, a bit sooner than I would have hoped, but I will never, ever disappear. I feel like I s
hould say something profound now but, since the margins of this book are too small for all my reflections on the world I will say only this. CHANGE THE WORLD. It doesn’t matter how big or small the change is but make sure it’s for the better. I look around me and I see nuclear missiles, vivisection, cruelty, poverty and hunger. Will things be different when you grow up? I hope so. I will wait on the other side for your report. With all my love, Mummy.

  I gulp, tears forming in my eyes. She is waiting somewhere for me! She loves me! And now I understand that this is how the dead speak to you. This is how they stay in touch. My mother has travelled in time for me. My identity swells. I am not just Alice Butler, orphan/shipwrecked child. I have a mother who loves me. Once I have stopped crying, I start reading the book. It is quite grown-up, but I am going to savour every word. I will understand it. I have to. And I don’t know how I am going to change the world but, later, as I look out of the window into the infinite space outside, I vow to my mother that I will. Does she live in the clouds? In the stars? Inside a rainbow? She is there somewhere, though. I know that now.

  Later on Sunday afternoon, I get the feeling that my grandmother might be sad since I haven’t visited her in her study for a few weeks. I have had a lot of school things to think about, but is this any excuse, really? Why isn’t it the summer holidays? I don’t want to go back to school. Would my mother like, or even understand, the person I have to be at school? Would she see me as I see myself now, as a cowardly collaborator? I look out of the window but there is nothing. No answer attached to a shooting star. No message on an interstellar laser beam. Change the world. I wish I knew how. Even though I still have two days’ worth of homework to complete, I wander down the landing to my grandmother’s door and knock.

  ‘Alice,’ she says. ‘Just the person. I need you to read out these numbers to me, so I can write them down …’

  It feels like I have just returned home after a long journey.

  A stomach ache prevents me going into school on Monday. I stay at home instead and read. In the afternoon my grandfather asks me if I am too ill to make a list of some rare red flowers for him. I have my dinner downstairs with my grandparents. On Tuesday, my stomach ache is worse. When my grandparents say that I should see the doctor I refuse, as usual. Thus, I am back at school on Thursday.

  It is too late. Leaving your friends alone for an hour is really too long, let alone three whole school days. You can lose a best friend in five minutes. All it takes is a short conversation. ‘Do you really like her?’ ‘Well …’ ‘I mean, she is a bit weird.’ ‘I know.’ ‘She’s such a know-it-all.’ ‘I know.’ ‘I wish we were going around together.’ ‘Me too.’ ‘Well, why don’t we …?’ ‘How will I tell her?’ ‘Oh, she’ll get the message.’

  It’s not that Emma has exactly dumped me, just that while I have been away she has been going around with this girl Becky, who is in maths with us. They both present me with the sad but inevitable news that Aaron is going out with someone else now. And, of course, it is round the whole first year that I am tight because I wouldn’t kiss him (I did kiss him! Well, sort of.) Is being tight worse than being a slag? Aaron also told everybody that I talk too much. Even Alex looks at me oddly now, if he looks at me at all. I am wearing my new skirt (which I had to change into in the alley on the way to catch the bus) but it hasn’t made very much difference. I have lip gloss but so does Becky. Anyway, lip gloss isn’t quite as important any more, suddenly. The new craze, which I have missed entirely, is for stationery: glitter pens, coloured Tippex, stick-on stars, felt pens, highlighters. All of my group now spend every lesson decorating their work with different-coloured underlining, or coating their rulers and protractors with coloured Tippex. They all know a really good way of drawing heart shapes. I can’t draw heart shapes at all. And why would I draw a heart shape anyway? It’s not as if I have another set of initials to go with mine inside the heart.

  ‘We’ll help you find a new boyfriend,’ says Becky, at lunchtime on Thursday.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Emma. ‘Aaron’s not worth it anyway.’

  Meanwhile, my homework is piling up. The only lesson I am doing OK in is English. I keep seeing Emma and Becky in intense-looking conversation. I feel like a virgin queen, plotted against by everyone. Actually, I don’t. I feel like a lonely eleven-year-old with an overflowing locker, a dirty PE kit and dinner money obtained under false pretences. I hate school. At home I can think about private things: books, my mother, the Voynich Manuscript, cricket. Here, they’d know if you even thought about subjects as embarrassing as these so it’s best not to even try. Thinking is something you are not allowed to do anyway. At break on Thursday we see a girl sitting on her own on the bench outside the science block. She’s called Sophie and she wears glasses.

  ‘What are you doing, four-eyes?’ Emma asks Sophie, in a sneery voice.

  ‘Thinking,’ says Sophie.

  ‘Thinking?’ says Lucy, while the others laugh. ‘Who do you reckon you are, then? Mrs Einstein?’

  ‘Leave her alone,’ I say to them. And this is the beginning of the end for me.

  On Friday I have to stay behind after Geography to explain why I haven’t done my homework. My life is such a mess. Afterwards, I don’t feel like going to lunch with the others. They have just about got over the incident with Sophie yesterday, but I just can’t keep up with them, I realise that now. Someone has brought in a magazine with pop stars and gossip and song lyrics in it. I have never read this magazine. I’ve seen it for sale in the village shop but I would never, ever be able to summon up the courage to buy a copy. Surely the newsagent would refuse to sell it to me. I am not fashionable enough, or old enough, to understand it. He would know that. Someone said it even has swear words in it, worse than ‘bloody’. Of course, I already know all these swear-words from the books I now read but no one knows about that. The newsagent would definitely tell my grandfather that I am buying grown-up magazines with swear words in them and I would die of embarrassment. I have realised some other things, too. I won’t get Emma back from Becky, not ever. Even if I did get her back, it is my turn to invite her for tea. What could I ever do about that? Living in one of the villages is embarrassing enough, but how would I even approach the subject of having no TV, or any fashionable non-school clothes? How would I tell her that I am not simply ‘staying with my grandparents for a while’ but that I live with them all the time? No one lives with their grandparents. Also, I would have to admit that I lied. Being a liar is worse than being a slag, or fat, or even a gyppo. Lying is worse, even, than thinking.

  Sometimes, if you want to tell your best friend a secret, and you want it to stay a secret, you do this thing where you swap secrets. On a sleepover, usually, you start whispering into the darkness about embarrassing things you have done, boys you have kissed, or people you don’t really like. For each secret you offer, the other person has to offer one back of equal value. This way, you are both taking out a kind of insurance. If they tell your secret, you will tell theirs. I have done this once with Emma. I told her that I kissed Alex (‘Who?’) and she told me that she really fancies Michael, even though Lucy likes him. But there is no way on earth she will have enough secrets to match mine. Even if she had aleph-null secrets, I know I have aleph-one. And anyway, my secrets make me really weird.

  Can I use the fact that I know two secret things about Emma (the Michael thing and the fact that she stole that lip gloss) to secure my exit from their group? Will Emma make sure they leave me alone if I threaten to blab? It’s unlikely. Leaving the protection of the popular group takes power away from anything you might have to say about its members. There’s a big difference between manoeuvring from within the group and attempting manoeuvres outside it. Inside, you can whisper to one other person and cause all sorts of trouble. But outside, all you are is a slag spreading rumours because you are jealous. Still, my position in the group in untenable. I cannot keep up with all the rules, conventions, things you have to buy. I will jump, before I am
pushed. If I could leave this school, everything would be easier but how would I even explain why I want to?

  So I am in the dinner hall, instead of the Portakabin. It turns out that all the boys eat in here, big plates of beef burgers, fish fingers, chips, beans. They don’t have to worry about being seen eating this kind of food. Anyway, I am standing in the queue on my own (horrors), when all the popular boys from my year come in – Michael, Aaron and that lot. There are about twenty people behind me, and only two in front. The boys all bound up to me like oversized rabbits.

  ‘Let us in, Butler,’ says Michael, getting in the queue in front of me.

  ‘Yeah, thanks, Butler,’ says another one of them, called Mark.

  Aaron gives me a slightly embarrassed look and then also slips in. I expect this is the last time any of them will talk to me in a friendly way but who cares? Actually, I do care, but I can’t do anything about it. I just can’t afford my special shell any more. I think about Roxy, and how she didn’t care about this sort of thing at all. Could I Roxify myself? Would I dare?

  ‘Why are you in school dinners, anyway?’ Michael asks.

  I blush and look at the floor.

  ‘Don’t you lot normally just stay in that Portakabin eating air at lunchtime?’ Mark says.

  ‘No,’ I say, although I suppose it would have been better to giggle coquettishly and say yes. But it’s not at all clear what I should say. You are not supposed to come in to contact with boys like this, on your own. That’s why girls go around in pairs or groups all the time.

  As if the boys can already sense something of the outcast about me, they soon stop speaking to me at all, and punch each other’s arms all the way to the till. I am just in time to see Alex go off on his own, with his free lunch (he has special tickets). I could never, ever, sit with him, because he’s a boy. So who shall I sit with? There’s no one, so I sit on my own. I sit on my own and eat pie, chips and beans on my own and every single second of it is like a little death. But at least I am free.