Super Awkward

To
my family, old and new.

And to everyone who has ever felt super awkward.

You rock.

CONTENTS

Cover

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Eighteen B

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Acknowledgements

Copyright

CHAPTER

ONE

So. It's official. My life sucks. I'd always thought it, but this whole caravan trip has confirmed it. I, Bella Fisher, am on a one-way road to Loserdom. And it's not even the kind of road where you can pop into a petrol station and buy Haribo to make yourself feel better.

Is it normal to have such a high embarrassment-todays-alive ratio? I've only been around for fifteen-and-a-half years, and four of those I can't even remember (except for that hour when I was three and a half and got my tongue stuck to a box of Calippos in Sainsbury's, but that doesn't count) and already I've ticked off way too much stuff on the cringe list. Going to school with a pair of pants stuck in my sock – check. Calling our deranged geography teacher ‘Mum' by accident – done.
Twice.
And he's a man. Getting hit in the face by a rounders ball which bruised my chin and made me look like I had a beard – achieved, the day before our school fashion show.

Why do these things happen to me? Every. Single. Time. Yes, it's entertaining for everyone else, but imagine
being
me. The world's a terrifying place. I wouldn't be surprised if one day I opened the drawer under the kitchen sink – the one that Mum stuffs with old birthday cards, half-burnt joss sticks and dead batteries – to find some weird life contract that she'd signed me up to:

Dear Ms Fisher, I appreciate that birth is

a tricky business, but within the first thirty

seconds of life, your daughter managed to hit

me, an incredibly esteemed doctor, in the eye

with a jet-like urine stream. It is still watering

now. So, I have no choice but to issue you with

the following rules that her life must adhere to.

Many thanks,

An Important Doctor

Bella's Life Rules:

•
Bella shall emit a weird smell that any
vaguely
fit boy can detect, causing them to treat her with deep suspicion. It will probably smell a bit like the farty waft at the end of a packet of salt and vinegar crisps.

•
Bella will accompany every laugh with a snort. And in extreme cases, hic-burps.

•
Whenever there is a party that literally everyone is going to, Bella must be otherwise engaged on a dreary family holiday. Suggested ‘holidays' could be long stints in slightly damp caravan parks, interspersed with Mum lectures about the benefits of pelvic floor exercises.

•
Bella will be a geek. And not in a geek-chic kind of way, but in a secretly-caring-about-failing-maths-and-science way.

•
Bella will always fail maths and science.

•
Finally, whatever Bella does or says to try and impress anyone will always, ALWAYS, backfire.

Urgh, it all seems so very possible. Must check that drawer as a matter of urgency. On the plus side, it would mean none of my life-tragicness was technically my fault. It was just destiny, and Mum says you can't
argue
with that (although she does use red biro to change bits of her horoscopes she doesn't agree with).

If Mum was just one shade less unhinged, we'd have been spared this horror in the first place. My mum + the internet = worse combination than tuna ice cream.

Last year she bid on a model of Benny from Abba for her band memorabilia collection. She never wondered why the postage cost was so high for a 1.8 centimetre cardboard model. It never crossed her mind it would be 1.8 METRES. Now whenever my sister, Jo, and I go to the downstairs loo, we're eyeball-to-eyeball (or eyeball to pant-region, depending what stage of the weeing we're at) with a life-sized model of a bearded Swedish man. Mum only moves him when she gets him to answer the door to freak out salespeople, or to scare off potential burglars.

Her favourite lecture to me is not to talk to strangers on the internet. If only she'd done the same then right now we wouldn't be travelling miles to a fun-sponge of a place on the advice of some randomer called MysticBabs, who she met on a forum called HippyAndHappy. Alarm bells, anyone? Mum said Babs is ‘a deeply spiritual guru' – I think she's a twelve-year-old boy having a right laugh. She (or he, depending on whose side you're on) persuaded my mum that the
answer
to inner bliss wasn't a Saturday night spent perving on the tight-trousered-mum-magnet Dermot O'Leary, but realigning her chakras (or Shakiras as Mum calls them). One dubious internet search later and Jo and I have been bundled into the car on the way to spending our last bit of half-term holiday freedom being dragged to Black Bay Caravan Park for a ‘Meditat-YAY-tion' retreat.

I still can't accept we're going. Not even now as our brown Mini that's older than Jo (Mum says ‘vintage', we say ‘health hazard') is pulling off our drive (I've already seen one neighbour peeking to check the sound wasn't actually an aeroplane taking off). I have to give it one last try.

“Mum, I know the state of your chakras are on the line, but can't you go without us? Pleeeeeease. . .” She cranked up ‘Dark Pipe of The Moon' – her Pink Floyd panpipes cover album – to show her mind was made up.

“And what would you get up to, Bells? Tell me what marvellous reason you've got to make me break the law and leave you on your own?” She checked her bright pink lipstick in the rear-view mirror. Turns out she didn't think ‘being at extreme risk of actual death from boredom (DFB)' was a marvellous reason. “Wave to Benny, girls!”

I
shoved my hands under my bum in anti-waving protest.

“Jo'll look after me . . . WON'T YOU, JO?! She's got that uni athletics trip she needs to get ready for. I bet she's got loads to pack. And, er, shorts to iron, and, er . . . trainers to lace?” The world of voluntary sport was a mystery to me. “RIGHT, JO?” Jo's vertical bun wobbled as I kneed the back of her seat trying to vibrate the right answer out of her. She always got the front seat. Way to make my short legs feel even worse about themselves. As usual, Jo leapt to my un-defence.

“Have you got enough room there? You seem to be accidentally, repeatedly kicking me.” Sister loyalty means nothing to her. “Oh,
how weird,
it's stopped. Anyway, I'm all packed, thanks for asking. I did it days ago – you know I like to be prepared. Means you don't forget stuff. Talking of which, did you remember to bring all that homework you were trying to get me to help you out with?”

Eye. Roll. Jo was my age once, but I swear Mum's alternative carob birthday cake turned her thirty on her thirteenth birthday and she's been stuck there ever since. Sure, I was going to have a terrible time on this holiday, but there was NO WAY I was going to make it productive as well. I'm not a total idiot.

“I've done it all already,
actually,
thanks for asking.
What
do you think I was doing in my room all of yesterday?” 1–0 to me.

“Sorting your nail varnishes into rainbow order, spending hours taking selfies that look as if you've done them spontaneously, and making a collage of quotes from Anna Kendrick movies?” Game, set, match to Jo. That was entirely what I'd been doing.

“Stalker,” I hissed through the headrest.

“Loser,” she hissed back, and flicked her long brown hair in my face.

“Come on, girls.” Mum wasn't having any of it. “We've got a four-hour drive ahead of us. Apparently Black Bay is like the St Tropez of Wales, so I don't want to hear another word about it, OK? Loads of people would love to be in your position.”

I disagreed.

“Name one person, Mum, one person.”

She thought. “Well. . . Benedict Cumberbatch is a massive fan.”

“WAIT. You're telling me Sherlock is a Black Bay regular?!”

“Well, the person that works in his dry cleaners is, and apparently they've got very similar tastes in trousers. And probably holidays too.”

There was no point in arguing.

Seven
hours and three wee stops later, we arrived in the dead of night. The only thing still lit up was their proud welcome sign, ‘B
LACK
B
AY
C
ARAVAN
P
ARK
,
WHERE WE PARTY LIKE IT
'
S
1999'. First impressions were that it did indeed resemble St Tropez – if St Tropez was less golden French yacht paradise, and more one hundred per cent muddy British field. Our tiny caravan had more shades of orange and brown in it than a fancy dress night where the theme is otters eating fish fingers. It was everything I'd worried about – with added floral.

How on earth was I going to make it through the next five days? Isn't there some sort of government committee to prevent massive misuse of school holidays that could rescue me? But unable to find enough phone signal to check/send urgent request for help, I gave in to Mum's demands for us to unpack.

Turns out my definition of unpacking – keep my clothes accessible by emptying everything out of my suitcase in a heap, while rummaging for a ring I hadn't actually packed – is way less mum-friendly than Jo's traditional ‘coat hanger' method. So, surprise surprise, suck-up sis got rewarded with the sofa bed and I got left with one that spent daylight hours folded up into a coffee table.