Not Pretty Enough

Not Pretty Enough

by

Jaimie Admans

Not Pretty Enough © Jaimie
Admans.

First Kindle Edition.

All rights reserved.

The moral right of the
author has been asserted.

This novel is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places and incidents portrayed in it are a product of the
author's imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, events
or localities is entirely coincidental.

No part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or
by any means, without the prior permission of the author.

First published in 2013 by
Jaimie Admans.

Cover design by Jaimie
Admans. Image © BeauSnyder/iStockPhoto.

Find out more about the
author at
http://www.jaimieadmans.com

Extra special thanks to two lovely friends and wonderful
authors – Sharon Sant and Bryan Thomas.

Also by Jaimie Admans:

Afterlife Academy

Kismetology

Creepy Christmas

CHAPTER 1

There’s a common misconception that everyone wants big
boobs. Let me tell you something: they don’t. If they’re fourteen and have a
chest bigger than most of their school, including the teachers, they don’t. I’m
a DD cup. People pay thousands of pounds to have their boobs enlarged to be
smaller
than mine. I can’t remember the last time I
passed for a half fare on the bus. Or the last time a bus driver asked my face
and not my chest for the fare. Everyone notices boobs when you’re my age. In
fact, the only human in the world who doesn’t notice them is the one person I
would quite like to notice them.

Lloyd Layton.

I’d quite like him to notice my
personality too, but at this point just noticing my mere existence will do. If
I have to use my boobs to lure him in, then so be it. The thing is, Lloyd
Layton is hot, popular, and really, really tall. Taller than everyone else in
our year. Taller than the teachers. Occasionally taller than the doorways. He
knows what it’s like to be picked on for a physical attribute you can’t
control. He’s different too. He knows what it’s like to be an outsider. Okay,
when it comes to Lloyd Layton, he’s not really an outsider, because he’s
absolutely gorgeous and loads of people like him, and I doubt anyone would dare
to pick on him for anything because he could knock them flying with one swoop
of his gigantic hands. But still. He’s taller than everyone and I have bigger
boobs than everyone. We’re clearly a match made in heaven. It’s just a shame that
he can’t see it yet.

But I’m sure he will one day
soon.

I’m actually moving closer to
that goal because he said one sentence to me back in December.

One sentence. Three small words.
Not the three words I would like to hear him say, but I’ll take what I can get.

It was the last lesson of the
last day of term before the Christmas holidays. Double technology. Not usually
something to get excited about, but we came to the conclusion that the
Christmas spirit had gone to Mr Vale’s head because he let us watch a movie in
class instead of doing any work.

The
Princess Bride
.

We were allowed to pull chairs
in around the TV and sit and watch a movie for two hours. Guess who pulled his
chair in not that far away from mine?

Lloyd Layton.

I don’t know what happened next.
I can’t explain it. It was like having an out of body experience. I’ll never
understand how I had the courage to do it, but halfway through the film, I
leaned over and said, “This is a good movie.” To Lloyd Layton. Better than
that, he actually replied. He said, “Yes, it is.”

Three whole words.

It got even better than that
again because after it was over and we were putting the chairs up on the desks,
he smiled at me. A real smile. And it wasn’t at the person behind me because I
was next to a wall. He smiled at
me
.

Now I haven’t seen him for two
weeks because of the school holidays, so he’s probably forgotten I exist again.
But things are going to be different this year. I’ve made some decisions. They
aren’t New Year’s Resolutions as such, because I read in a magazine that people
are more likely to give up on New Year’s Resolutions, and I am
not
going to give up on Lloyd Layton.

So, these are my New Year’s
Decisions:

1. Lloyd Layton will know I
exist. He has already said three whole words to me, so this is obviously
progress. If I do not get a proper conversation out of him soon, then I’ll take
my top off and streak through the cafeteria, because
nobody
could fail to notice these boobs.

2. I will not get expelled for
streaking through the cafeteria.

Those are my resolutions and I’m
going to stick to them, come what may. Lloyd Layton will know of my existence.
You never know, maybe I’ll even be off to a jump-start and he’ll remember me as
the girl who thinks
The Princess Bride
is a good
movie.

CHAPTER 2

January.

I stare at the back of Lloyd’s shaggy brown hair as I follow
him across the yard. He doesn’t know I’m following him, of course. I’m not even
following him, not really. Not this time, anyway. Debs and I are just casually
strolling across the yard towards the buses and he happens to be in front of
us.

“Chessie!” Debs shouts at me
just a second too late as I walk smack bang into the side of a bus.

Ouch.

Lloyd turns around at the sound
of the clattering thunk I make.

Usually I like the sound of
Lloyd’s laugh, but not today. Not when he’s laughing at me.

“You couldn’t have told me just
a second earlier?” I ask Debs.

“Sorry,” she says. “I was
talking to you and didn’t realise you weren’t listening until it was too late.”

Luckily the bus I’ve just walked
into happens to be our bus, and I throw myself onto it with such force that I
nearly come out the other side.

“You all right, love?” The
driver asks. I ignore him and heave myself down into my seat with a huff.

I am all right. My boobs are so
large they hit the bus before the rest of me did, otherwise I’d probably have a
bruised face as well as the bruised ego. Once, just once, couldn’t these things
happen to me when Lloyd
isn’t
watching? It’s not
too much to ask, is it?

“Maybe if you spent more time
watching where you were going and less time watching Lloyd, these things
wouldn’t happen in front of him,” Debs says.

I hadn’t meant to say that out
loud.

“But he’s just so… watchable.”

“I’m pretty sure he’s talkable
to as well, you know, if you tried.”

The thing is, I have tried.
Lloyd brings out the worst in me. He brings out the most nervous, clumsiest,
downright embarrassing side of me that doesn’t even exist unless he’s in the
immediate vicinity. Well, maybe it exists but it doesn’t show half as much if
Lloyd’s not there.

“Why don’t you?” Debs is saying.
“Just go and talk to him. You’re a great girl. He’d be lucky to have you.”

“Oh, please. Lloyd is popular,
rich, and gorgeous. He doesn’t even have to get a bus to school, the lucky
bugger. I’m the complete opposite.”

No one even knows where Lloyd
Layton lives. He has a taxi bringing him to school every morning and picking
him up outside the gate every afternoon. I get to ride on this rustbucket with Debs
twice a day. He’s popular, always surrounded by a gang of equally popular
mates, and always the first to be picked for sports teams. I’m unpopular,
always surrounded by no one but Debs, and always the absolute last to be picked
for sports teams.

“Come on, Chessie,” Debs says.
“You’re not ugly and you’re not unpopular. No one dislikes you.”

“No one particularly likes me
either.”

“I particularly like you. Ewan
does too. We’re your friends.”

“I love you for trying to make
me feel better but I’m average all round and you know it. The only person who
has any feelings towards me whatsoever is Leigh, and she intensely dislikes
me.”

“Leigh is just a bitch. She
intensely dislikes everything.”

Leigh Marlow is our class bully.
She walks around the school like she owns the place, flanked on either side by
two other bullies who think the sun shines out of her backside. If she doesn’t
get what she wants, someone gets hurt. What she wants this year is our friend
Ewan, who isn’t interested in her in the slightest. She thinks this is somehow
our fault, so Debs and I are her current targets. Me in particular.

This is why I made those
resolutions. Not because of Leigh, but because I have to do something. I’m sick
of being the girl who doesn’t stand out. I doubt most of the kids in my form
could even tell you my name, and I’ve been in class with them for over two
years. I get good enough marks but never good marks. I’ve never done anything
memorable in my life. The most memorable thing about me is the size of my boobs
and how frizzy my hair goes in the rain.

So I’m going to make Lloyd
Layton fall in love with me. On most days it seems like the unlikeliest thing
that could ever happen, because apart from those three little words last month,
he barely even glances in my direction. I want to prove to myself that I can do
things if I put my mind to it. I’m not pretty, I’m not smart, but I think Lloyd
and I have lots of deeper, more important things in common. I want to prove to
people like Leigh that looks don’t matter, and not being as pretty as her isn’t
the end of the world.

CHAPTER 3

I remember the first time I ever laid eyes on Lloyd Layton.
It was during a school assembly in June last year. He was sitting in the main
hall, a row in front of me as we all sat in lines, gathered for a
mind-numbingly boring lecture from the principal.

I noticed Lloyd because he was
talking to Ewan. Ewan and I have been friends forever. I’ve known him,
literally, since nursery school. Our mums are really good friends. My dad died
when I was seven and Ewan’s mum came to stay with us for a few days to help my
mum get over the shock.

Here in Wales, at Bach Afon
Comprehensive School at least, each form is made up of a few kids from each
primary school in the area, and known by the year and an alphabet letter. We’re
in 9B. Lloyd is in 9C.

Debs, Ewan and I are the ones
from our primary school in our form. We’ve all known each other for years, and
so we’re good friends and usually stick together unless Ewan decides to be all
macho at lunchtime and hang around with a gang of boys instead. His own friends
from primary school are in different forms so he only sees them in the yard or
if they’re in the same set for lessons. We’re divided into sets depending on
our exam results from the previous year. Set One are pupils who got over sixty
percent, Set Two are those who got thirty to sixty percent, and Set Three are
the ones who got under thirty percent.

Anyway, this huge tall guy was
talking to Ewan a row in front of me. He had to be new because I’d never seen
him before, and at that size, he wasn’t exactly someone you could miss. At
first glance I thought he was a year eleven, but there was no way any year
eleven would let themselves be seen dead talking to a year eight, so he had to
have been thirteen like the rest of us.

“Who was that?” I hissed at Ewan
when he crawled back into our line.

“Lloyd Layton. He just joined
8C. He’s friends with Darren.”

Darren was Ewan’s best friend
from primary school, the one who wasn’t in our form.

“He’s huge,” Debs said on the
other side of me.

We didn’t see how tall he
actually was until we all stood up to leave. Holy cow. I’d always thought I was
quite tall. At five foot five, my growth spurt had come when I was much too
young for it, and I was now one of the tallest girls in our class, and taller
than most of the boys. But this new boy, Lloyd, was much taller than me, and by
the looks of it, taller than most of the teachers too. He was at least six foot
something. Our maths teacher is six foot three, and Lloyd looked at least that
size, if not more. At thirteen, in amongst a lot of five foot nothing
teenagers, you couldn’t help but notice him. He stuck out like a sore thumb.

That was six months ago. Since
then we’d all moved on to year nine, up to fourteen-years-old, and I’d spent
the best part of a year salivating over that tall guy.

Lloyd ended up in my set for
most classes. This is fortunate or unfortunate for me, depending on how many
times I embarrass myself in class. I never plucked up the courage to speak to
him, but he must’ve been super intelligent. He never seemed to struggle with
the work like I did. I had managed to get myself put in Set One for most
classes but I didn’t belong there. People like Ewan belonged there, people who
had aced all their exams with a ninety-eight percent score. Not people like me
who had scraped sixty or sixty-one percent and got put into Set One because
technically it was over sixty percent. Set One was for clever people. Not
people who wanted to spend all their time daydreaming and chatting to Debs when
the teacher wasn’t looking.