Stereotype (5 page)

Ever cried when you don’t know what you’re crying about? It’s intense, and it’s miserable, but oddly soothing at the same time. You’re curled up in your bed, huddled under the duvet, and you’re silently sobbing in the safety of your cocoon.

That’s me, Tuesday night. I choose to blame Graham for popping up in my life again. But it’s not him. Well, not entirely him. It’s something that I can’t quite put my finger on.

It’s more than just the I-feel-so-ugly crisis and it’s more than the I-hate-the-world feeling. It’s like the world is right, and I’m wrong.

Ah, that’s it. It’s far easier to go around feeling like you’re the only sane person in a bunch of crazy people. Not so easy when you start thinking that maybe you’re the one who doesn’t fit in.

I don’t even mean fitting in at school.
That
I can handle. Not fitting in with the rest of humanity is another story.

I really should get to sleep.

Wednesday is a bad day, filled with bad classes and bad things. Leanne is bitchy to me. Karen is too busy talking to Hannah about appropriately obscure music to notice. Sarah won’t shut up about her stupid band. Even Fiona’s boredom with hearing about the band is annoying me. I’m just in a disagreeable mood.

Caroline is out, so I have no one to cook with in the afternoon. Chocolate brownies are easier with two people than one, especially when the one is a hopeless cook who usually forgets to even turn on the oven.

My head hurts.

I can’t wait to get home.

Everything bores me. TV is boring. Reading is boring. Texting people is boring. Music is boring. And I
would
write, but I
can’t
, because I have nothing to say that doesn’t sound pathetic and petty and pointless.

No one really cares what a sixteen-year-old thinks or feels, anyway.

I’m bored. Plain and simple.

Into the kitchen. Boil kettle for cup of tea in the hope that the caffeine will cure my headache without me having to resort to tablets with that taste that lingers in your mouth all day.

I take out a knife. It’s sharp against my flesh. I only drag it lightly across my arm a couple of times, but it breaks the skin, leaving lines of blood.

I press a tissue against the cuts. They’re not too bad. They’ll be fine in a couple of weeks.

You told yourself you were going to stop doing it.

I know. But this is the last time. I promise.

Last time was also the last time, Abi.

Oh, get lost, inner child or conscience or whatever you are.

Outside, the sun begins to shine, the light flooding into the kitchen via the window.

Stupid me. It’s getting hot outside and I’m stuck in long sleeves for the next week, at least. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

It’s two in the morning. I can’t sleep, so, naturally, I am downstairs, on the computer.

Now I know why all those poets went crazy or turned to alcohol. It’s the words. You spend so much time looking for the right one, and then you look back over it a few days later, a few weeks later, and it’s just not good enough. It doesn’t work. It sounds stupid or pretentious or inappropriate. It’s wrong.
You’re
wrong.

I really should find a nice, non-frustrating occupation to throw myself into. Something that
won’t
cause me to constantly doubt my ability at it.

Maybe I’m just one of those people who subconsciously puts themselves into situations where they’ll feel miserable because it’s safer than developing as a person and taking the risk of being happy.

Maybe I just like to write.

Maybe it’s the same thing.

I trace a finger along the marks on my arm. Three thin lines. Not much. If you look closely, you can see faint dark pink lines criss-crossing underneath.

Why do you do it, you want to know.

Sometimes I really don’t know. Sometimes I do it just because I
can.

On Thursday we have a trip to a synagogue, in the hope that exposure to religions other than Catholicism will leave us enlightened and tolerant. It’s really too bad that our religion teacher isn’t coming along. She could use some enlightenment, seeing as she’s about as tolerant as Hitler at the moment. (“Let’s all be tolerant, girls, but only if people conform to what the Catholic church wants.”)

Karen is moaning about having to go. She knows it’ll be boring.

“I think it’ll be really interesting, actually,” says Rebecca The Annoying Optimist. Rebecca, unsurprisingly,
loves
Transition Year, which seems to entitle her to lecture anyone who doesn’t share her view. She doesn’t seem to understand the idea of “agreeing to disagree”. She thinks that she’s the most rational, sensible person in the world, and that if she talks at you for long enough you’ll come around to her way of thinking.

I’m not terribly enthusiastic about the afternoon tour, either. I suggest leaving at lunch time to Karen. She’s worried about getting caught. I have had ten minutes to think about it and have grown quite attached to the idea of not being here this afternoon.

Sarah, on the other hand, has physics in the afternoon.

“See you outside the gates,” she tells me.

Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Years are allowed home for lunch, so there is nothing suspicious about walking out of the school grounds. We’ll be marked absent for the afternoon, but it will be assumed that we went home sick, or that a note was handed in, or something. It’s easy to get away with missing an afternoon.

At the start of the year, caught up in the novelty of being able to go home for lunch, I used to do it every day. Then you get tired of it, and stop bothering.

We go to my house, since my parents won’t be home until after five and Sarah’s mother has been known to come home at lunch. (A fact that she learned last year when she and Fiona left early one day. It wasn’t pretty.)

“So, how are you?” she asks, settling in for a Deeply Personal Conversation.

I shrug. “Fine.”

“You always say that,” she grins. “Seriously. Is everything OK?”

“Yeah,” I say, and smile to show that I really, really mean it. And in a way I do. Everything
is
OK. What can I complain about, really? Nothing’s
wrong.

“How are things with you?” I ask.

“So-so,” she admits.

“Just so-so? What’s up?”

She shrugs. “It’s stupid. And you don’t want to hear about it.”

“It’s
not
stupid,” I tell her firmly. “Come on. What is it?”

“Just this whole thing with Shane, and the band, and stuff . . .” she begins. “Are you sure you want to hear this? I know I’ve been going on about it a bit . . .”

“It’s fine, go on.”

“Well, it’s great, in one way. I mean, I’m getting to know some really cool people, and I love the whole vibe. You know, the excitement that we’re all really going to do this. But then there’s the flipside of it all, where I wonder what the hell I’m doing there with all these incredibly talented and dedicated people. I mean, I’ve been looking at a lot of the stuff Shane writes. It’s – amazing. He’s seventeen. He’s
seventeen
and he’s writing stuff that most of the professionals out there wouldn’t be able to write. You listen to him play it on the guitar and it’s like he’s – I don’t know, ripped out your heart and turned it into music.”

“He must be good, then,” I say. Well, what else can I say?

Sarah rolls her eyes. “No shit, Sherlock.”

I laugh.

She continues. “Anyway, it’s depressing. I mean, what am I doing around someone like that?”

“If he didn’t think you had talent, he wouldn’t have bothered asking you if you were interested,” I point out.

She doesn’t look convinced. “I suppose . . . but maybe he just feels sorry for me.”

“He seems like the sort of person who takes music really seriously,” I say.

She nods. “Oh, he is, yeah.”

“So of course it makes
perfect
sense for him to surround himself with people who’ll let him down and mess things up for him,” I say pointedly.

She starts smiling. “OK, so maybe you’re right.”

“I’m always right,” I kid.

“Oh, of course. How could I have forgotten? I am not worthy, oh great one.”

“I forgive you, my child,” I say solemnly.

“You’re too kind.”

“Yeah. I know.” I grin.

“What are you doing home?” Greg asks suspiciously.

“We had a half day,” I say in my ‘well,
duh’
voice. It’s useful when dealing with younger siblings.

“Oh.” He pauses, then decides to continue the conversation. Wonderful. “I have
loads
of homework.”

“You’re in fourth class,” I remind him.

“So?” he says defiantly. “We still get
loads
of work to do.”

“Sure. Whatever.” I nod.

“You think you know everything,” he snaps at me, storming out of the room.

“Someone could do with some therapy,” Sarah notes.

“Me or him?” I smile.

“Oh, you’re too far gone,” she says. “Greg still has a chance at a normal life, but you? There’s no hope.”

“Hopeless, that’s me.”

“OK, what’s up?”

“Nothing,” I smile.

“Are you sure? You’d tell me if there was something wrong, right?” She sounds worried.

“Of course. Before I shoot myself, I’ll call you,” I tell her.

“That’s all I wanted to know.” She pauses. “Seriously, though, Abi, I worry about you.”

“Yeah, I worry about me too,” I say in an effort to keep the conversation light.

“You know what I mean.” She tries to look annoyed, but can’t quite pull it off. The Sarah-smile. Even when she’s angry people can have a hard time figuring out whether she’s serious or not. “I mean, you’re
always
saying you’re OK. And you’re not.”

“I’m fine,” I say, wondering how many times I can utter that phrase before it loses all meaning. Actually, I think I’m already past that point.

“No you’re not. You’re a teenager. It’s practically mandatory to be at least a little crazy.” She’s half-joking, half-serious.

I shrug. “I’m crazy. I admit it.”

“I think you’re scared to let anyone get too close to you,” she muses.

She is far too perceptive for her own good.

“Maybe,” I say softly. “I just don’t like talking about myself.”

She puts on an exaggerated-sad face. “Not even to me?”

“Especially not to you, you nutcase,” I grin.

“I always knew it!” she sighs theatrically.

And the serious talk is over. Cue a sigh of relief from me.

Let us resume the telling of Abi’s Life Story, in non-chronological order. (Just to be different. As always.)

Flash back to sometime in Second Year, probably around this time two years ago. Angry Abi is sullen and alienated from her former friends. School has become a place of torment. (Wait, change the ‘has become’ to ‘still is’.) Incidentally, her grades have never been higher. She doesn’t know why. It’s not as if she’s throwing herself into her schoolwork. It’s hard for her to find solace in anything.

It’s more than just Leanne, more than just this school crap. It hurts to smile. Her mind will only entertain dark, morbid thoughts. Sometimes it feels like she’s not there at all.

She is even slowly losing the enthusiasm to be angry.

She knows she can’t go on like this forever. The thought of never being happy again scares her. She works hard on blocking out the darkness.

She is walking home one day and turns onto her road. She notices a thin, dark-haired girl sitting on the doorstep of one of the houses. They are in the same school, wearing identically hideous uniforms. Abi has seen her around school and sometimes walking home, recognising her vaguely. Their dads know each other, some community-related thing.

Now, let’s be clear on this. Pretty people usually intimidate the hell out of me. But there was something different about her that made me call out, “You’re locked out, huh?”

She smiled. “Yeah. Forgot my keys.”

“If you want to call someone or anything, I have –”

“Nah, it’s OK, I already called my mom,” she said, getting up and walking towards me. “She’s not going to be home until later. She’s still in work and then she has to go pick up my sister from music. You’re Abigail, right?”

“Uh-huh. Abi.”

“Sarah,” she introduced herself. “You’re in Second Year, yeah?”

“Yep.”

“How’s it going?”

“OK, I guess.”

She grinned. “Second Year is hell. Of course, Third Year’s worse. Just think, you’ve got
that
to look forward to next year.”

“I can hardly wait,” I laughed.

And we clicked, just like that. She ended up coming back to my house and waiting there until her mom got home.

“Hmmm. The Goo Goo Dolls. I approve,” she said, picking up
Dizzy Up The Girl
from beside the CD player in the kitchen. “Now I know it’s OK to hang out with you, seeing as you have good taste in music.”

I smiled. “You’re big into music, huh?”

“Only obsessively. I spend most of my money on CDs, write my own songs, that sort of thing.”

“You write songs?” I was interested, and intrigued.

“Yeah. I know, I know. It’s sad.”

“No! I think it’s cool. I mean, creating something – it’s great. And it’s fun.”

She did her perceptive-stare thing for a moment. “Ah. We have an artist on our hands, I see. Not a composer . . . painter?”

I shook my head.

“A writer,” she said firmly. “A poet, maybe?”

She was chancing it with the last part, but she was right. We did a little bit of creative-mind-bonding and then went to watch
The Simpsons
, thus sealing our friendship forever.