The Manifesto on How to be Interesting (2 page)

All she got was:

“Why aren't you wearing that jumper I got you?”

Or:

“Is Holdo coming round
again
? Don't you have any girlfriends?”

Or:

“You're so pretty. Why don't you just DO something with yourself? You're putting yourself to waste.”

Which led Bree onto…

I could be pretty if I wanted

She could. Now. But she didn't want to be. She'd tried to be pretty once before, on her first day at secondary school, in some deluded burst of naivety that it might change things. Still blubbery with puppy fat, she'd hoicked her skirt up, carefully painted darker stripes through her hair with a home-colouring kit, smothered her face with blue eyeshadow and pink lipstick and shoved two socks down her bra. The result was the worst first day of secondary school the world had ever known. Jassmine Dallington and her cronies had positively dribbled with delight when they saw her, spluttering on their laughter and rushing to lob new and nastier names at her.

She'd been so stupid to try. And now, puppy fat gone and her face fully grown into, she wouldn't bother trying again.

What
pretty
person achieved anything of merit anyway? Who cares what a writer looks like as long as their words are beautiful?

So, much to her mother's despair, Bree made herself as unattractive as possible.

If you control what they laugh at, invite them to dine out on you…well, then, Bree found they usually stop laughing.

She would wash her hair, on occasion. It was a lanky mouse shade at the moment but had been an array of absurd colours in the past – pink most recently, which still hadn't quite washed out. She wore the clothes of a frumpy forty-year-old going through a mid-life crisis – all neon this, and novelty-hair-bobbles that. She ate what she wanted, meaning her skin had a near-constant scattering of spots and her thighs rubbed together when she walked. And none of this mattered because…

I'm much smarter than most people

Being pretty was only important at school. And school wasn't a part of Bree's life she considered essential to her development. It was a time to endure before the beautiful world of adulthood opened its arms to give her a great big hug and a two-book publishing deal. School was a mere drop in the ocean of a human life. And for the pretty girls at school, their moment would soon be over. They were peaking in their happiness-levels much too early. Which is why Bree stayed ugly – to delay the peakage to a more useful age. Another reason why Bree was much smarter than most people.

She needed to hurry up though. Bree was smart but she wasn't very punctual. Like, ever. While Holdo was quite the opposite. She wrapped her blazer tighter around her to keep out the cold, barely allowing herself to think about the penultimate entry on last night's list.

I know what I want to do with my life

But what if it doesn't want you? All she had ever wanted to do was write. Well, for the past four years anyway. To have people read her words. To leave a tiny imprint of herself on whoever read them. What better way to validate your existence – to prove you had one? But maybe it wasn't to be.

She wasn't quite ready to accept that yet.

Though, in the meantime,
she had Holdo.

There he was, waiting for her, like he always did. His trademark yellow headphones cupped his ears, and he was wearing that Velvet Underground banana T-shirt over his school jumper – an essential wardrobe item for any wannabe-indie boy. Holdo spotted her, pulled down his headphones and tapped on his watch.

“You're late again.”

“I'm always late.”

“It's disrespectful, you know, to keep other people waiting.”

“It's only been five minutes.”

They began walking towards school, each too stubborn to break the silence. Holdo, of course, broke it first. After a record holdout of five entire minutes.

“So what did you get up to last night?”

Bree stared at the pavement. “I got another rejection letter. It was waiting for me on the doormat when I got home.”

She could see Holdo forgive her lateness as his eyes melted instantly. He never stayed mad at her for long.

“I'm sorry, Bree. I don't understand it. You're so talented.”

“I know,” she said, giving him a wry smile as an apology. “I don't get it either.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.” Not with Holdo anyway. When she was this upset, she always found his well-intentioned advice grated rather than helped.

The fallen autumn leaves crunched under her Dr Martens and she stamped to make the crunch louder.

“So what did
you
get up to last night?” she asked, kicking up a pile of yellow and orange ones and watching them float back down to the pavement. They didn't have fallen leaves on her road. The handyman jointly hired by the residents blew them away every morning with a special reverse-vacuum machine.

“I watched
Apocalypse Now Redux
. The three-hour version. It's so enthralling. Have you seen it?”

“Of course.”

“But have you seen the extended rough-cut?”

“Yes.” She was lying. Bree had only watched the regular cinema version and found the film more puzzling than enthralling. She would never tell Holdo that though. (She'd rather die.)

“Well, we're in the minority. Most people struggle with the regular one just because it's over ninety minutes long. Honestly, the attention span of cinema audiences these days is insane. If there isn't a massive explosion, or a gratuitous sex scene every five seconds, people just don't want to know…”

Bree let Holdo's well-exercised rant wash over her. She'd heard it at least twenty times. It was one of his favourites. Along with the ones about how reality TV was destroying the music industry, how Dan Brown should be hanged, drawn and quartered for his
Da-Vinci-Code
-shaped crimes against literature, and how the film industry had no original screenwriters any more as they spent all their time adapting bestselling novels rather than investing in raw talent.

She sighed. Holdo was her best friend. Her
only
friend, if she was being honest. Bree knew she wasn't a very likeable person, but it didn't bother her mostly. Yes, of course there were moments of crippling loneliness. And, yeah, it would be nice to have a girl to talk to from time to time. But generally she was happy with Holdo.

“…and it just makes me so angry that the Vietnam War was ever allowed to happen, you know? It was just so completely immoral and it's not like America has learned from it, have they? You'd think they would—”

Ahh. The war. She'd wondered when he would start ranting about the war.

Holdo was your stereotypical rich-kid-rejecting-his-upbringing. The indie sort that honestly believed, if he and Morrissey were to meet, they would become the best of friends. His real name wasn't Holdo – it was Jeremy Smythe. He'd renamed himself – yes – after Holden in
The Catcher In The Rye
(although the “o” on the end apparently made it “more original”). But Bree loved Holdo (in a strictly friendship way). He was the only person around who shared her intellect levels and desires to DO something with their privilege instead of resting on the laurels of wealth. Holdo was designing a computer game – he actually knew how to write code for it and everything. It was a cross between
Grand Theft Auto
and
Bugsy Malone
. As Bree understood it, the game involved a bullied geek running amok at school with a splurge gun, squirting bullies with cream. Holdo was eventually going to be a self-made millionaire. Bless him – he just needed to get through school first.

She interrupted his war monologue.

“Holdo?”

He stuttered to a stop. “What?”

“I'm a good writer, aren't I?”

She knew she was. Of course she was. But she could do with some reassurance.

Holdo reached out and squeezed her hand. “Of course you are. I read everything you write and love every word.”

She looked at his hand, wondering how quickly she could detach herself. That was the thing with Holdo: strictly-friends-only wasn't an opinion he shared.

“Thanks.” She dropped his hand and tucked hers safely back in her pocket.

“Why don't you talk to Mr Fellows about it?”

She'd already planned to. Mr Fellows was her English teacher and the only adult in existence who noticed her.

“I've got English today. I could do.”

“He always seems to cheer you up.”

Bree smiled to herself.

Holdo had no idea.

They got to the school gates and then queued to get through security at the main door. While Holdo somehow slipped through and disappeared with a wave towards his form room, Bree waited impatiently to get her ID card checked. Queen's Hall school cost twelve thousand pounds a year, and half the money seemed to go on ensuring Joe Public couldn't sneak in. Like “being common” was infectious or something.

She stood directly behind Jassmine Dallington and her posse of perfects and could smell the clean strawberry scent of Jassmine's blow-dried hair. As the queue of students shifted and jostled, Bree overstepped slightly and accidently trod on the back of her heel. Jassmine swung her head round, to see who dared touch her. When she saw it was Bree, her nose wrinkled.

“Watch it,” she said, her voice full of disgust.

“Sorry,” Bree mumbled, looking down at her stripy legs.

Jassmine turned away and must've made a face because the other girls laughed. Not properly – a genuine laugh would make their faces look too ugly – but they sniggered in an attractive way. Gemma Rinestone whispered in Jassmine's ear and there was another wave of giggles.

Bree continued expressing an unnatural interest in her tights and cursed herself for blushing. She didn't care. Of course not. The perfect posse were idiots. But, you know, it was still embarrassing.

She handed her security card to the guy and did her best disappearing-into-the-wall trick while she waited. It wasn't hard. She was nobody here. Bag and card retrieved, she made her way through the maze of corridors to her form room. She would have to sit there for no good reason and listen to her tutor drone on about the importance of success for an hour.

Hugo and his mates were standing in the doorway, blocking it.

“Excuse me,” she said, turning her body sideways to try and squeeze past.

They ignored her and Hugo carried on talking.

“Oh my God, guys, the gash hunt on Friday was totally brutal. Those single-sex-school girls are, like, so grateful. I swear, I'm not even lying, this one girl came up to me and offered herself, just like that.”

His friends laughed like a pack of hyenas and high-fived him.

“So, did you?” one asked. His face was far too red. Either from unfortunate genetics or overzealous fake guy-laughing. Bree thought his name might be Seth.

Hugo raised an eyebrow. “A gentleman never tells.”

“Ha! And when have you ever been a gentleman?”

“Good point, man. Good point.” Another high five. “Actually, nothing happened. I told the girl to get some self-respect and she started crying.”

More laughter. Possibly-Seth looked like he was about to combust.

“Great party though, man,” the red-faced guy said, tears of laughter in his eyes. “I was so completely wasted. I swear to God I went
literally
blind for a while.” He looked round the circle, waiting for the laughter. It didn't come.

Hugo pulled a face. “Christ, Seth. You only had a few shots!”

“No I didn't! I had most of a bottle of vodka. You just didn't see. Probably too busy pushing away all that gash.”

Hugo rolled his eyes. “Whatever, man.”

Bree used the awkward silence to try and get past. She cleared her throat. “Excuse me.”

Now all the boys' eyes were on her.

“What do you want?”

“Can I just get by?”

Hugo lifted his arms and stood back, creating the teensiest bit of space for her. The other boys followed suit, each not quite giving her enough room. She examined the gap, sighed inwardly, and sidestepped her way into the form room. The front of her body brushed against Hugo's.

“Eww, stop rubbing up against me,” he said. “I don't like getting touched up this early in the morning.”

The boys burst into hysteria. Bree blushed for the second time that day and half-ran to her desk. Her legs twinged as she sat and pulled out her favourite notepad. She could feel her face burning and pulled some lanky strands of hair over her face to cover it.

Stupid school. Stupid school. Stupid school.

The thing was, though she was loathe to admit it, she couldn't help but fancy Hugo. Ridiculous, she knew. Ludicrous. Fantastical. And also so, so wrong, considering he was such an arse arse ARSEhole. He basically stood for everything she hated about:

a) Boys

b) This school

c) Life in general

And yet he was so frustratingly good-looking and lived up to all the clichés that went with that. Captain of the school's trophy-winning rugby team, complete player (though he proudly pronounced it “playa”), the absolute definition of alpha male thanks to his built, toned physique. He was a year older than them, after his parents pulled him from school for a year so he could live in Paris and get fluent in French. Oh – and his parents knew Mark Zuckerberg or someone. He was so wealthy he made everyone else at school look poor.

Of course he and Jassmine had a turbulent on-off-on-off relationship. Even Bree knew every detail of the ongoing saga that was their “love”. Every update got broadcast round the classrooms like some really sad version of Chinese Whispers. Bree hoped her own silly crush would ultimately pass and the thought of getting with him wasn't one she indulged. Not only because it would NEVER happen – he was ignorant of her very existence – but also because, well, he was an ARSEhole.