Stereotype (2 page)

Chapter Four
Well done, Abi, I tell myself as the bell goes. (The bell being a symbolic representation of the hold that the school and its rigid timetable has over all its pupils. Naturally.) I got through a whole class without storming down to the back of the class to strangle Sophie with my bare hands.
I must be maturing. You know you’re really an adult when you can resist the urge to murder someone who the world would really be better off without.
In Irish we are debating over the age-old question. To have or not to have a school uniform? Are they a good idea, or bad? Answers only in that archaic and hated language, please.
Louise doodles on her homework journal beside me while I scribble down what’s being written on the board. Might as well
try
to learn something in school, after all.
The fairly obvious points about school uniforms are coming up. I’m not surprised. It’s the fairly obvious people that are speaking up.
And what is our anti-heroine’s opinion on school uniforms, you might wonder?
Does she embrace the idea of everyone being equally hideous and having each person’s creativity stifled?
Or does she hate them and wish she could wear whatever she wants, just to show people that she’s different?
Well, what do
you
think?
The discussion in the class is at first pro-uniform. It seems everyone absolutely loves the idea of these bright blue monstrosities. After all, without them we’d get to be individuals and we wouldn’t want that, would be? They don’t. They want to be identical. They’re terrified of being different.
Idiots!
Don’t they get it? Normality is
boring
. They’re boring.
If we didn’t have to wear a uniform I’d dress all in black and dye my hair bright purple. Or I’d wear long denim skirts and t-shirts with slogans like “Nobody knows I’m a lesbian”, just because it would be so much
fun
to see the reaction of the masses. Or I’d wear fishnet and lace . . . or not bother and just wear tracksuits, because it is only school after all and I’m not trying to impress anyone. Except maybe I would be – determined to stand out just to get attention.
Aren’t middle children meant to be the ones who feel they have to act out to get attention? Something is clearly wrong in the Evans family dynamic. Maybe we are dysfunctional after all. I can only hope . . .
Our teacher is looking bored and asks for the disadvantages of uniforms. Funny, I thought the teachers were meant to be brainwashing us into thinking that uniforms are a good thing. She should really stop while she’s ahead.
Before you know it, the class is spouting out pro-individuality propaganda, and discussing how much they hate the uniform. Anyone who is still in favour of the idea is silenced by the mob, and by the time the bell goes I know exactly what side I’ll be taking when we have to write a short essay on our views on uniforms for homework.
School uniforms: definitely a good idea. How could you possibly think otherwise?

Chapter Five
The sad truth is that I wish I were like them sometimes.

Not the whole alcohol-is-the-centre-of-my-existence-matched-only-by-boys-and-clothes attitude.
Or the I’m-such-a-rebel-because-I-listen-to-the-type-of-alternative-music-that’s-so-trendy-and-commercialised-that-I’m-really-not-being-rebellious-at-all-but-just-following-the-crowd kind of way.
Just the easy friendship they seem to have, the teenage normality that they all take for granted, that I used to imagine I’d have when I finally became a teenager. I should have known that turning thirteen wouldn’t mean a sudden transformation into a butterfly.

I envy the pretty ones, who look beautiful effortlessly and don’t even realise it, and who are
friendly
on top of it all.
And the talented ones, the artistic, the musical, the athletic, the intelligent, the dramatic, the ones who have a
gift
and don’t realise that others
don’t.
And when they’re pretty
and
talented, it just hurts. In the great cosmic scheme of things, a lot of things aren’t fair. It’s not fair that people get sick and die, it’s not fair that bad things can happen to good people. And compared to those
big
issues, it seems a little childish to complain about it not being fair that people have so much going for them when you don’t.
So call me childish, then!

Chapter Six

Leanne and I were best friends from fifth class onwards. We did the usual best friend stuff – talked about boys, painted each other’s nails, listened to pop music together, bitched about almost everyone we knew.

I started being friends with her because she was nice to me. She told me I was smart and that she wanted to be friends with me. I was flattered, having absolutely no self-esteem, and we began hanging out.

Neither of us were contestants for the Miss Popularity pageant. We didn’t even make it through the first round. I was quiet and weird; she was bossy and mean. Maybe she did think I was cool, or maybe she just needed a friend and anyone would do. “Using” is an overused word in the primary school vocabulary, but it’s probably because it happened so much. People are selfish and to be alone is unthinkable. So you use people. You mightn’t even like them, but they suit your needs right now.

It doesn’t automatically stop when you enter secondary school, either. Maybe not even when you head out into The Real World. Sometimes you don’t even know that you’re doing it, and sometimes you don’t realise how much you can hurt other people. But you do it all the same. I’ve done it. More than once. Too often.

Maybe I was using her too. I needed a friend as much as she did. But I don’t think I ever dismissed her the way she did to me, making me feel like a tiny insect she wanted to crush. I
never
put her down the way she constantly did to me. She set out to make me feel stupid and inferior and it worked. Of course I probably would have felt that way anyway. I was just about as neurotic and insecure then as I am now. The only difference is I was much bitchier back then.

We were as close as sisters and fought about as much too. And eventually I started hating her. I could have entire conversations with other friends about how much I hated her. Like Hannah, who agreed with me entirely – but who was too scared of her to stand up to her.

I hated Hannah for that, for her weakness. I hated everyone who put up with being treated like crap. I spent a lot of time seething, then finally exploded into screams and tears.

I was fourteen and I’d lost my best friend of four years. Never mind that she’d been an awful friend – I was alone and lonely and miserable and I hated it. I was Angry Abi. You didn’t want to be around me. I hated the world and the world hated me.

Later I learned how to be a good girl, a normal girl, and how to turn the rage inwards instead.

I don’t want you to think I’m crazy. Well,
part
of me doesn’t. The other part is hoping that I am. Then maybe everything would make sense.

I mean, look at my arm, for God’s sake!
Look
at it! See the red scratches and the fading scars? Now tell me that I’m perfectly OK and that everything’s going to be all right. Just try it. Do you really believe what you’re saying?

Oh, oh, and I’m Attention-Seeking Abi again. Sorry, I’ll try to stop myself from doing that, but it’s hard when you spend a great deal of your time feeling like you’re screaming into a void.

It’s weird because I really hate people who are always whining on and on and on about their problems. Even Fiona and Karen can get on my nerves sometimes. Sarah is the exception to the rule because I trust her completely. There’s a lot she doesn’t know about me, but she knows me better than Fiona does, better than Karen does, better than all those people at school do.

I mean, how many of them would suspect that Abigail Evans hates herself? She’s too quiet to make much of an impression on anyone who doesn’t make a point of getting to know her. Even then she won’t reveal much. She’s a relatively good student. She doesn’t do any sports but she doesn’t mind PE, although her laziness leads to her just not bothering with it most of the time. She lends CDs to her friends and daydreams a lot. She scribbles quotes from songs and poems on her homework journal amid various squiggles and doodles. She sometimes talks about herself in the third person, which is probably just a way for her to distance herself from her disturbed psyche.

Disturbed psyche? God, who even
talks
like that? No wonder I’m so completely introverted. I’m weird. I’m the stereotypical school nerd/outcast/freak (tick all boxes that apply, and they all do).

I don’t want to be a stereotype. I just want to be
me.

Fiona is in the library when I go up there at lunchtime to bring back a book that has been overdue for about three years. (Yep. I’m one of those scary people who visit libraries regularly. Oh come
on
, don’t tell me you’re surprised. You knew it was coming.)

“Hey,” she smiles at me.

“Hey,” I return. “What’re you looking for?”

“History stuff. We have this essay to do, and we’re meant to get ‘extra sources’. I hope they have something here.”

“When d’you have to have it done for?”

She checks her watch. “About two hours from now?”

I grin. “I see.”

She shrugs. “I know, I know. I’m hopeless.” She takes a book off the shelf and flicks through it. “Yeah, this’ll do. Hey, did Sarah tell you about her band?”

“Her
what?”

She laughs. “Yeah, I know. She wants to set up a band.”

I am in shock. “Why?”

Fiona shrugs. “Don’t ask me. She thinks it’s going to be cool. She was talking to this guy Shane yesterday, who plays the guitar – he suggested the idea, and she fell in love with it.”

“Or him,” I mutter.

“Probably! She’s really excited about the idea, anyway.”

Silence. Huh. I never really know what to say around Fiona when it’s just the two of us, because I don’t know her that well. She’s more Sarah’s friend than mine – they’re in the same class – and since I am not Karen and therefore
not
always at ease with people, we have an awkward silence.

“I’d better go write that essay.” Fiona smiles.

“Good luck.” I smile back.

Back in the classroom I sit on a desk and swing my legs while the group babble on about last weekend (party at someone’s house) and next weekend (St Patrick’s Day is on Monday, so there are various activities going on). I am still in shock at the thought of Sarah being in a band.

You see, Sarah is even less enthusiastic than I am about things. She is one of those people who can barely find the energy to do PE and go to her piano lessons every week, let alone be part of a band. She loves music, sure, but I just can’t see her in a band. It’s such a clichéd thing to do, the alternatively-trendy hobby.
Everyone
seems to be in a band or know someone who is. It’s so . . . un-Sarah-like.

You know that awful disconcerted feeling you get when you realise that something you’ve taken for granted turns out to be completely wrong, and that you don’t know one of your best friends as well as you thought you did? Or maybe even at all? That’s me now.

Maybe it’s just that she likes this Shane guy, and wants to get to know him better. But
that
idea is even weirder than the first. She wouldn’t go to all that trouble for some boy, even if it was, say, Brad Pitt. (Well, maybe for Brad Pitt, but since I don’t
think
he’s lurking around Dublin posing as a seventeen-year-old guitar player, it’s not really an issue.)

My world has suddenly stopped making any sense whatsoever.

Chapter Nine

On the way home I listen to Alanis Morissette on my walkman.
Hands Clean
is an obsession of mine. Karen stopped liking her because she thought she was getting too “popular” and commercialised, but I think that it’s just part of her “I can’t like anything remotely popular or something that isn’t completely and utterly obscure” phase. I hate that. Why can’t people just listen to what they want to without being defined by it? Oh, but wait. Then we’d all have to judge people on what they’re
really
like instead of having neat categories that everyone slots into. We couldn’t have that.

Greg is out playing football with his friends, Jess is probably listening to horrendously loud “music” at someone’s house. I have the house to myself.

I switch on the computer, open a blank Microsoft Word file and stare at it for a few minutes before closing it and going to watch TV instead.

Sometimes you just can’t write, even when you’ve been meaning to. Besides, I have nothing to say. Except perhaps
Oh how strange this all is/ Sarah is starting a band.
Nope. Definitely not the beginnings of an epic masterpiece.

There is nothing on TV. Well, obviously there’s
something
, but nothing worth watching. I turn on my phone. One message from Sarah.
Not going 2 school 2day, c u later.
I’ll go around to her house and if she’s not too “sick” to see me, I’ll ask her what the story is with this band idea.

I used to want to be a singer. Famous and beautiful and adored universally, with little girls dreaming of being just like me when they grew up. Then I realised that not only am I not beautiful, but I have no musical ability whatsoever. I love listening to it, but as far as being creative in that area goes, I’m a hopeless failure.

Sarah writes songs. I found that out the first day I actually spoke to her. She doesn’t often show me her stuff, just like I tend to keep anything I write to myself, but sometimes she will. I guess I’m a little jealous. It’s not fair that she’s so talented when it comes to music. I’d hate her if she wasn’t as insecure as I am.

And now I’m more than a little jealous. This whole new musical world has opened up to her, a world where she and Shane and assorted others will live in harmony (ouch, bad pun) and where I’ll be lucky to be invited for occasional visits.

She hasn’t even gone through the door yet, but already I’m worrying and paranoid about our friendship. Just call me Abigail “Overreacting” Evans . . .