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Oh Dear, Fifteen-Year-Old Me (part four)

Posted on by weeks4send

Welcome to part four of “Memory Lives On,” in which fifteen-year-old me tries to slip in a touch of poignancy. It works about as well as you might expect.

Watching my own memorial service was pretty much the strangest experience of my life up to that point. Even now, when I’ve had more strange experiences than I can shake a stick at, it’s still in the top five.

After writing this sentence, fifteen-year-old me then made coming up with “more strange experiences than (Anja) can shake a stick at” top priority. This explains a lot about the rest of the story.

First of all, they showed the road outside my school being knee deep in flowers and the like. They were playing Everybody Hurts at such a pitch that everybody in the room really did hurt, around the eardrum area.

Like the Pearl Jam thing earlier, R.E.M. reference is there solely to have an R.E.M. reference. At least my taste in music wasn’t bad.

(Also, “flowers and the like”? I can’t think of anything that’s like flowers except, you know, flowers.)

There was a huge photo of me in the middle, probably the only one they could find where I forgot to do my “Calculating woman of mystery” smile and grinned cutely instead. It said Anja Cleary, 198_-200_: Rest in peace all over it, which at least covered up the hideous T-shirt I was wearing in the photo. I’ve really got to learn that yellow isn’t my colour.

Bloody parents, giving the media a picture of their presumed-dead daughter in an unflattering outfit. Fashion should be the top priority for grieving family members.

The voiceover somehow managed to shout over the music. “The nation grieves over the death of Anja Cleary, killed in a freak accident at a tragically young age. Today, Anja’s memorial service took place, and her friends and family expressed their sadness.”

Actually, I’d better tell the truth. It was put together pretty well. In fact, I’ll be doubly honest. If it had been anyone else on the entire planet, I think I might have cried. I don’t usually cry at stuff on the TV, so that’s saying a lot.

Behold the awkward attempt to make Anja look as though she has actual human emotions. It was worth a try.

But as it was, it was about me, and crying over my clearly non-dead self would have been a bit stupid.

Well, that’s enough of that!

Other people were. My parents for a start. Because of this, I didn’t hear all of what they said, but some of it was “Why Anja? She hadn’t done anything!”

She was a smug drunk sociopath, Mr and Mrs Cleary. It’s really all for the best.

It’s Mark that’s done something, the git, I thought. Mind you, it would be against my principles to resent someone just for marrying a woman that a psycho fancied.

“Principles,” she says. That’s a good one.

But he was being a pain in the neck at that point. The music was loud enough, without him singing along. If only he’d known all the words, and hadn’t given up and stalked off halfway through the second verse, I’d have been spared a few other horrors.

This is Anja’s primary concern upon watching footage of her parents grieving over her alleged death. Oh, and apparently their grief counts among the “horrors” that Anja wants to be spared from. You really are better off without her, Mr and Mrs C. Remember the good times, eh?

I don’t think my friend Trixie has ever cried before in her life. She’s usually a front runner for the Miss Cheerful trophy, and when she’s upset (an annual event, pretty much) she tends to spout all the swearwords under the sun rather than spoil her eyeshadow. But I think I’d have cried if she or one of my other friends had died. That didn’t make it any less strange.

I don’t think Anja gives Trixie a second thought throughout the rest of the story.

They didn’t interview her. Instead, they skipped right across to Lydia.

But enough about the people Anja allegedly cares about- let’s give her somebody she can really sneer at!

I think I’ve already mentioned that Lydia thought I was a geek. But there she was, doing her Hypocritical Cow thing for the cameras; her excitement at being on TV barely concealed. “Anja, you can’t hear this but you were really loved by everyone. You’ve been loyal and kind to us, and I’ll never forget you. You’ll always be with me.”

We will learn nothing about Lydia for the remainder of the story, since her only purpose is to be a shallow popular girl for Anja to look down her nose at, so we have no way of knowing whether or not her professed grief is sincere. Maybe she really was shocked at Anja’s supposed death. Maybe it really did force her to re-evaluate their relationship. We’ll never know, because Anja’s certainly not going to tell us.

How do you know that, super-blob? For all you know I’ve been reincarnated as a porcupine. I know it’s heartless and cynical to say…

…but why break the habit of a lifetime?

…but that’s what I always think when they say stuff like that about dead people. Also, if I turn up anywhere near Lydia when I eventually do die, I’ll be supremely put out.

“Supremely put out.”  Put out in the manner of Diana Ross, no less.

Fortunately, Lydia’s face was soon replaced by that of my cousin Svetlana. If I was going to make a list of how much I liked each of my relatives, Svetlana would be top. I think at the time of my “death” she thought of me as a bit of an annoying little kid…

Svetlana is now my favourite character.

…but since she was fairly mature and fulfilled for an eighteen-year-old I’ll let her off. She had a two-year-old son, Ben, but she’d found a job in a nightclub that paid better than jobs in nightclubs usually do, so she didn’t have many financial problems. I think in a previous life Svetlana must have been one of those mountain people with really tough lives, because she gave off an air of being tough and determined enough to cope with anything. I was a bit put out to see that my supposed death was listed under “anything.”

“Come on, Svetlana, I tuned in to see tears! Where are the tears?”

“It was really shocking,” she was saying, “I mean, you don’t expect that kind of thing to happen to your cousin, do you? Anja was, like, really spirited and energetic, and I guess you don’t really expect that kind of person to just die on you. You expect it to happen to little quiet people who you don’t notice much.”

Geez, don’t sound too emotional, Svetlana. Anyone would think that you were pleased to be rid of your smug, drunk, sociopathic cousin.

Just then, three really strange things happened.

Strange Thing number one- there was something not quite right in Svetlana’s face. She’d decided on a look for the memorial service. She was trying hard to be someone bravely coping with the loss of a young cousin, in order to hide something. But what was she hiding?

The fact that she’d had “Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead” stuck in her head since the vicar started speaking.

She didn’t have anything to do with what had happened on the bus, did she?

Now that would have been a good twist. But no, she doesn’t.

The screen changed before I could work out what Svetlana was hiding. But then we got propelled straight onto Strange Thing number two. To be honest, this wasn’t as strange or as significant as numbers one and three. But it was a first for the TV coverage of the bus “accident” that they actually remembered I wasn’t the only person who’d died a tragic death.

“How dare they take a break from stroking my ego?”

I was jolted out of my suspicions about Svetlana by the voiceover saying “Gary Wolf, aged seventeen, was killed in the same accident as Anja.” Gary’s immense blue eyes grew even wider at this. If his lids had been any further apart, his eyeballs might have dropped out.

I mentioned that Gary was based on Elijah Wood, right?

“Shell!” he gasped as he slammed his sketchpad shut.

An auburn-haired girl who looked a bit like a giraffe in a padded bra was speaking angrily. The subtitle read Michelle Glass, Gary’s friend. “I don’t think Gary should take second place just because there was someone younger and cuter than him on the bus. I mean, Anja Cleary sounds like a lovely person, and of course it’s a tragedy that she died…

Even complaints about the ego-stroking turn into more ego-stroking! It’s like a black hole of self-congratulation!

(Also, “a giraffe in a padded bra”? Classy, Anja.)

…but the only difference between her and Gary was that he was two years older. Gary was an unsung hero.

We will later find out that Gary did absolutely nothing heroic in the entire time he knew Michelle.

He was the sweetest guy I’ve ever met in my life, and I’m not just saying that because he’s dead…”

I stopped listening.

“Pah! This isn’t about me!”

Michelle, like Svetlana, was hiding something, and I had enough time to work out that it was the same thing.

They didn’t want anyone to know that they were in mortal dread. Gary had seen it too, and, what’s more, he knew why Michelle was feeling it.

I now know that he was feeling it for the same reason.

We never find out exactly how Anja knows any of this. Psychic powers?

I’d never shared a room with two boys before, but then I’d never made a habit of sleeping on a mattress on the floor before. Mark and Estelle only had one spare bed, and Mr Daly had claimed it because of some bizarre health problem, which I’m 99% certain he made up.

Anja’s a doctor now!

When Estelle told him that she thought this too, he replied, “How dare you, Mrs Freeman! I’m aware that you are a great deal younger than me, but that’s no excuse to treat me like a second-class citizen.”

“OK, I’m sorry,” Estelle defended, “But I think Anja’s got more right to the spare room. Teenage girls need a lot more privacy than… than…” I could tell that she was trying to find a polite way of referring to Mr Daly, but apparently he couldn’t.

“Than fifty-year-old has-beens?” Mr Daly looked as if he was about to explode, which would have been more interesting to watch than him in the usual state. Estelle regarded him with her eyes, which are cool in every sense of the word.

“Estelle regarded him with her eyes.” As opposed to regarding him with her nostrils.

Oh, and it’s worth noting that Mr Daly is apparently only fifty, because the rest of the story insists on treating him as though he’s about two hundred.

“No, Mr Daly. Unlike some people I could mention, I don’t like to pick petty fights.”

Very mature, Estelle.

Neither of them looked as though they were going to back down, so I cut in and said that I didn’t mind sleeping on the floor. I did this partly to stop the argument, but mostly to save Joe and Gary from sharing a room with Mr Daly. Creepy though Joe was, he didn’t deserve anything as horrible as that.

Very noble, Anja.

And anyway, I could always get changed in the bathroom.

The night after the memorial service, I was sort of hovering between sleep and consciousness when I heard something. At first I just thought one of the boys must be asthmatic or something, but then I realised it was a bit too loud and squeaky for… Oh man, someone was crying.

It’s about bloody time. 

And despite the fact that my eyes couldn’t be bothered to open, it didn’t take long for me to work out that it was Gary.

I knew that I should comfort Gary or something…

“Or something.”

but considering that I couldn’t even wrench my eyelids apart it was probably a good thing that Joe got there first. It was hard to believe it was him talking. All the slime had gone from his voice, and he started talking to Gary like he was five. “Hey… Don’t cry.”

“I’m not crying,” sniffed Gary (in the face of all the evidence), “I’m just worried about Anja.”

“I’m pretty sure she’s a demon from hell! Please don’t let her consume my soul!”

Huh? Wasn’t Anja my name?

Nope. Your name is Mary Sue.

At least Gary could be bothered to pronounce it right, unlike Mark. But why would he be crying over me?

“I saw her memorial service earlier today,” he continued, “Her family looked as if they wanted to die. Anja just looked horrified. I thought, I’ve done that to her. Joe, I’ve wrecked her life!”

“Horrified.” Right. I could really see the horror in her comments about coming back as a porcupine.

“Sh,” Joe consoled. Then he realised what Gary had actually said. “Why you?”

Gary wasn’t listening. “Jordan was right! I shouldn’t exist!”

“Who’s Jordan?”

Gary remembered that Joe was still in the room, and replied, “Someone who was right, that’s all. I shouldn’t be here, I just wreck lives like I did Anja’s…”

“Gary, I don’t know who this Jordan person is, but if he told you all that, he was wrong, alright? You’re… you’re an OK person.

“I’m not sure what I’m basing this on, since this is our first actual conversation, but trust me!”

The bus disaster wasn’t your fault. It was the fault of whoever made those lights explode. And also indirectly Mark and my Great-Aunt Jean, I guess. And I don’t know about my aunt, but Mark isn’t crying about wrecking people’s lives, is he?”

“No… He’s a bit creepy in general, isn’t he?”

Gary sniffed. “That’s because all he did was marry Estelle. He didn’t do anything really bad.”

Even though my eyes were still welded together, I could see Joe’s slimy grin in my head. “I dunno. Some people would say that stealing such a stunning girl from the other 3 billion men on the planet was a crime against humanity.”

“Stunning girl.” Because that’s how teenage boys talk about women they fancy.

“Not seriously, though. All Mark did was marry a woman he loved. And she agreed, so it wasn’t as if it was really stealing, was it? If someone else liked Estelle…”

“Not just someone,” Joe corrected, “I’d say every guy she’s ever met fancied her.”

“You’re not taking me seriously.”

“That’s because you’re being dim. Look, you haven’t wrecked Anja’s life, OK? She’s been in a better mood than anyone else for the past few days. Well, except possibly Mark. She told Estelle yesterday that this is the first exciting thing that’s ever happened to her.

This should really make Joe and Gary wonder a bit about her. But no, Gary proceeds to fall in love with her anyway. Glutton for punishment, that Gary.

So stop worrying and go to sleep!”

Gary took Joe’s advice, and I copied him.

And so should we all. Next time, we’ll learn a thing or two about Gary’s tragic backstory, and Joe’s murderous family.

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Order In The Court

Posted on by weeks4send

Order in the court; the judge is half-asleep.

We made him listen for a while, but now we’ve gone too deep.

He says he has his limits, and we can’t ask for the moon,

And if we raise our voices, he will have to clear the room.

He knows that we’re upset, and that we have a right to speak,

He knows to our eyes, our futures seem a little bleak.

He says that life is simple if you just do as you’re told,

But if you break the rules, then you’ll be left out in the cold.

Order in the court; the judge is off his meds.

I don’t think he’s listened to a single word we’ve said.

He says that those who wronged us must someday be made to pay,

But he wants to go to lunch soon, and we’re getting in his way.

He says that it might help to throw our enemies a bone.

If we didn’t act so strange, they’d leave us well alone.

So can we really blame them if they kick us in the face?

We’d have a happy life if we just knew our fucking place.

Order in the court; the judge has gone away.

He says he knows of better ways in which to spend his day.

He says he doesn’t have the time to listen to us whine.

He says that if we looked around, we’d see that things are fine.

He says we’re clearly bitter, that we’re weak and full of hate,

And if we don’t count our blessings, we might soon find it’s too late.

He says we’re unattractive when we’re spewing out our bile.

He’ll punch us in the mouth, and then he’ll order us to smile.

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Oh Dear, Fifteen-Year-Old Me (part 3)

Posted on by weeks4send

The next chapter is uncomfortably autobiographical. And yes, before anybody says so, it would be fair to call Anja a Mary Sue, albeit a pretty lazy one. A more interesting Mary Sue would have gone around solving the mystery with her secret detective powers instead of just sitting there like a lemon.

I never told any of the others that I thought that, especially not Mr Daly. If I’d told Mark, Estelle, Gary or Joe they’d have probably thought I was just suffering from concussion or something. But Mr Daly would have launched into another stupid speech about how ignorant and irresponsible the youth of today are, getting excited when they should be miserable about never seeing their family and friends again.

Yes… “Stupid speech.”

(Seriously, this could all have been solved by establishing that Anja’s parents didn’t like her much and were secretly relieved to be rid of her. Yeah, it would have been a bit Roald Dahl, but it would have been better than this.)

But before I give you a live example of one of these pathetic rants (as well as a bit of conversation from Mark, Estelle, etc), let me explain why I thought it.

My life is a lot better than a lot of other people’s lives. I’m sure there’s people who’d want to kill me for complaining, so I’ll just say that my life has been pretty good. But the thing is, right up to the bus disaster it was boring. I had quite a few friends at school, but all they seemed to want to do was whinge about their boyfriends (I whinged because I didn’t have one). We mostly seemed settled into talking about what a disgusting blob our form tutor was (hey, there’s a thought- I hope he didn’t turn up on one of those dumb memorial programmes. That would be unbearable).

She gets more sympathetic by the second, doesn’t she?

And, in my humble opinion, the boys in our area weren’t much better. Pustule-covered maggots, every last one of them. I always felt a bit separate from everyone, even my friends and relatives, as if I was the narrator and they were the actors. In school, everyone was talking about plans for the future, but I had a sneaking feeling that greatness was about to be thrust upon me.

Said every serial killer ever.

The trouble is, I’d had that feeling since I was about six, so it was beginning to wear a bit thin. It was beginning to be overtaken by a nasty suspicion that I’d end up an unfulfilled old spinster, doing whatever unfulfilled old spinsters get up to. OK, both thoughts were a little unrealistic, but they seemed very real to me. And one of them came true, remember? That’s why I thought it was cool.

Young-me really needed to learn how paragraphs worked. And “unfulfilled old spinster”? Are we living in the 1950s?

(This story ends with two women getting married to the loves of their lives in their teens or very early twenties, with little or no mention of any career plans. So maybe we are.)

But the most I thought would happen was us forming a group and suing the bus company, getting much media attention and people admiring our bravery and falling in love with us.

What bravery? And who falls in love with somebody just because they’ve sued a bus company?

And I don’t know why Anja is talking like a doge. Especially since the doge meme wouldn’t exist until ten or eleven years after I wrote this.

I didn’t imagine in my wildest dreams that we’d be involved in a murder plot. Well, actually I did imagine that sort of thing, but not realistically.

“I didn’t imagine it, except that I did.”

“You’re a perfect example of the nation’s youth! The dregs always float to the top in this backward society, getting what they don’t deserve! In my day, that never happened! You had to work for even the most basic things, let me tell you! Your aunt sounds like a respectable woman, and if she is she should have disinherited you a long time ago! You’re nothing but a wastrel!”

This was all directed at Joe, who hadn’t moved from his slouching position on the sofa since Mr Daly started.   While Gary, sitting nearby, was trembling so much that you’d think it was him getting yelled at, Joe seemed indifferent to the shouts. At some point during the rant, a knowing smirk had settled on his face.

Good to see Anja’s not the only unbearably smug one. And Mr Daly is a Daily-Mail-reader-strawman, in case you couldn’t tell.

Joe kept his gaze on Mr Daly until he’d shut up, then swivelled his brown eyes towards me. “Anja,” he said in a patronising-sounding way, “do you know what ‘narcissistic’ means?”

“Um…”

Mr Daly took my hesitation as a no. “Well, I should have guessed she wouldn’t know! She’s the same as you, always taking and never putting anything back! You’re…”

I gave him a venomous look. “I think it means ‘vain’, Joe,” I interrupted. Mr Daly was going to snap something, but then he realised I was right. He ended up in a sulk.

I’m not sure what “always taking and never putting anything back” has to do with not knowing the definition of words. I think I was just playing Daily Mail mad-libs at this point.

Joe’s smile widened. “So what’s vain about wanting to watch the news?”

“Because the news is about yourself!” Mr Daly replied, getting worked up again, “You only want to watch the television tributes to you!”

I could see why Mr Daly got so annoyed at Joe. I didn’t like it, but I could see why.

SPOILERS- Considering that Anja later develops a grudge against Joe completely at random, you’d think she’d be more understanding.

Joe had a whole aura of laziness, and his smirk suggested that everyone else was just about to walk into traps he’d set. Most annoyingly of all (to someone like Mr Daly, at least) Joe managed to make fun of people while being really, really polite to them, so he couldn’t be criticised for being rude and uncouth like other “young people” as Mr Daly put it.

We will see none of this politeness in the story.

There was something about Joe that made me feel uncomfortable, probably because I’m a girl. I didn’t like the looks he was giving me one bit.

And this plot point will go absolutely nowhere. That was a worthwhile paragraph, wasn’t it?

“They’ve barely mentioned me,” Joe laughed, “They’re too hung up on their golden girl.” I already knew he meant me, but he gave me a look that would have spelled it out to any idiot.

Mark had known Joe for ages, so he wasn’t really bothered by the slippery factor. “Got that right,” he sniggered, “You’re a celebrity, Anj. We’ve been fed so much information about you, we’ll probably know you inside out by the time this is over. Mind you, you’re more interesting than some celebs I could mention.”

“It’s probably not all true, though,” Estelle countered, not noticing her hoop earrings catching on her hair, “If any girl was as sugary-sweet as they’ve made Anja out to be, they’d probably have been out healing the sick all day.”

“Tell you what, we’ll test it,” Mark replied, “Anja, what’s your favourite flower?”

“Venus fly traps, I guess.”

Because Anja is QUIRKY and UNIQUE, got it?

“Really? Only they said in the paper it was tulips. Looks like you’re right, love.” Mark gave Estelle an amorous look as he said this. Within an hour of my meeting Estelle, Mark had told me he had absolutely no idea why she agreed to marry him, but he wasn’t complaining. As well as inheriting the mysterious look, glittering eyes and midnight black hair that had helped to make her mother a film star (I don’t know about the acting talent), Estelle had a brilliant personality, a really sharp brain and, to be honest, tonnes of money. Mark said he would have been over the moon even if she only had 10p in the bank, because he’d always thought girls like her were way out of his league. I think Mark really underestimated how likeable he was. But that’s not important.

It’s probably a bad idea to describe a character as having a “brilliant personality” in their first appearance. Even if you’ve worked out exactly how you’re going to show it, some of your readers might disagree with you about what having a “brilliant personality” actually entails. It’s risky even at the best of times.

And, of course, if you have no idea how to show it, and said character completely disappears from the narrative about halfway through because you can’t think of anything to do with her, then you’re really in trouble.

“Why did they say my favourite flower?” I asked. Estelle gave me a worried look, but I could see she was going to tell me. “Well, you see honey, they were describing your memorial service.” She could see that this was a morbid thought, but I think we’d all inwardly decided that morbid thoughts were going to be a big feature of my life now that I was meant to be dead.

Not for the first time, Joe gave me a creepy smile. “Looks like you’ll have to change your name now. You can’t have a name that’s written on a monument.” I couldn’t help imagining what my gravestone would look like. For a moment, I had a terrible desire to go and look. Then I realised what a stupid idea this would be. Not to mention the fact that I’d already been feeling strange enough recently.

Yes, Anja’s been feeling strange. Anja is clearly the person who’s suffering most in this situation.

“There’s a thought,” Mark said quickly, to distract from his friend’s bad taste, “You can use my surname if you want, but Anja isn’t exactly a common name, is it?”

I thought for a bit. “Well, I could spell it A-N-Y-A. It wouldn’t change the way you pronounce it. Or I could just drop the J and leave it like that. Um, that would. Oh, I know, I could use my middle name.”

“Didn’t think of that. So, what is it?” Estelle asked.

“Maureen.”

And this is clearly the most pressing issue at hand- which fake names to use.

In the flurry that followed (Joe grinning mockingly, Mr Daly looking sniffy, Mark pretending to be sick and Estelle giving him daggers with her cool eyes) Gary, who’d been mainly silent and doodling in his pad so far, looked up and smiled. “That’s a great name,” he whispered, “It really suits you.” He paused. “I just can’t see why anyone would want to hurt someone like you. Not unless they were jealous.”

“Well…” I ran through a list of people who hated me. There weren’t many. OK, Lydia and her dumb mates always made a point of calling me a geek, but they did that to a lot of people. My Geography teacher thought I was wasting oxygen by continuing to breathe, but again, he… Wait a minute, why had Gary said something as random as that?

Because expressing love for you and weeping are his only two character traits, Anja. Weren’t you paying attention?

And, yes. Jealousy is the only reason anyone could have to dislike Anja.  The girl’s a saint.

“There’s a point. Good on ya, short arse,” said Mark, “It sounds creepy, but we should go through the reasons why someone would want to kill us.”

Pfft, why do something as boring as that? We’ve got fake names to sort out!

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard!” You can probably guess who said that. Mark replied, in an irritatingly reasonable tone, “No it’s not. We’ve got to work out if someone’s plotting against us, haven’t we? You never know, more innocent- or not so innocent- lives could be at stake. I mean, we survived alright, but others might not be so lucky.” Mr Daly seemed grudgingly satisfied with this explanation, so Mark continued. “Let’s take me for a start.”

“As usual,” Estelle teased.

“True, I’m brilliant. So brilliant I can only think of one reason for people wanting to kill me. Go on,” he grinned at Gary and Mr Daly, as Estelle rolled her eyes, “Guess.”

I answered instead. “Because they were in love with Estelle?”

“Precisely.”

“Mark, I’m not the only reason for people to want to kill you!” Estelle laughed, pushing Mark gently, “I can think of others. Your jokes for a start.”

Did I mention that fifteen-year-old me had no idea where to put the comic relief?

“It’s true. I can’t think of anything else I’ve got going for me enough for people to want to bump me off to get it. My jokes aren’t really that bad.” Estelle gave him a look that told me she didn’t agree. “Look, scandalously untrue comments about my sense of humour aside,” Mark continued, “It’s pretty obvious why someone would want to kill Joe, too.”

I was pleased that someone was finally bringing this up. “Yeah. Who’s next in line for your aunt’s cash, Joe?”

Joe looked pensive, then turned his gaze right back to me. Oh man, I hope he doesn’t think I fancy him, I thought, glad when he finally started speaking.

Because, again, that’s clearly the thing you should be worried about right now!

And, again, this whole “Joe might fancy Anja” plotline goes absolutely nowhere. Because it’s stupid.

“I’m not sure,” Joe said, “My aunt told me most of it was going to me, but she didn’t say what would happen if anything happened to me. And before you say anything, yes, a lot of my family liked Estelle, but I’m not sure which ones liked her enough to want to kill her husband. Maybe all of them.”

“Maybe all of them.”

“Joe, that’s not true and you know it!” Estelle blushed. She was lying. I could tell that she knew pretty much all the men (and probably some of the women) she knew had a mad crush on her, but didn’t want to admit it in case she sounded conceited. That was the main difference between her personality and Mark’s. Mark honestly didn’t have a clue why Estelle found him attractive.

I’m glad Estelle’s so pleased to hear that Joe’s family is made up entirely of murderers.

“We’ll come back to that later,” said Mark, clearly a bit worried. I don’t think he’d realised before that being married to someone like Estelle meant that a lot of people wanted you to split up- or worse. He grabbed a cookery book from off the table, and wrote in the inside front cover.

Me- Estelle

Joe- cash

Keith-

Anja Maureen Cleary (heh heh heh)-

Gary-

“OK, Mr Daly,” Mark said to a man who clearly didn’t like being referred to as Keith, “Can you think of any reason that someone would want to kill you?” Mark’s grin subliminally added “Apart from the obvious.”

“No I can’t,” snapped the man who knew he was being insulted by a grin, “And if you’re going to ask the girl I’m afraid I shall have to leave.”

“I have a name, you know,” I snarled, but instead everyone listened to Joe, who was asking Mr Daly where he’d go if he left.

…His house?

Mr Daly gave him the look of pure hatred that people reserve for people who point out that they’ve just made an idle threat.

But… His house…

I decided to start talking, if only to stop them killing each other.

“I can’t think of anyone who hated me enough to kill me. There were some people who thought I was a pain in the butt, sure, but I thought the same of them and I didn’t blow up any buses.”

Estelle grabbed the pencil from Mark, and wrote Prob. innocent bystanders next to my name and Mr Daly’s. Mark took it back and added Research into pain-in-the-butt theory with a mischievous grin.

It is a theory worth researching, I’ll give him that.

“What did you just write, young man?” Mr Daly asked, but Mark had turned hastily towards Gary. “How about you, oh silent one?”

As Mr Daly muttered on about knowing when he wasn’t wanted and suspecting Mark to be ageist, Gary said something quietly. “You what?” Mark asked, and I think there was possibly someone in a coma in New Zealand who didn’t hear him. Gary spoke quickly and didn’t look any of us in the eye. “Nothing important. Just something dumb at school. Sorry I bothered you.” We could tell by the tone of his voice that it would be a really, really bad idea to ask him any more questions.

So they don’t bother. Hey, who needs to follow up promising leads when you can bicker with Mr Daly?

Gary looked about as stable as a 50-year-old atom bomb that nobody had bothered to deconstruct, and even a complete moron (i.e.-Mr Daly) could pick up on his fear. We needed to be careful with him, I realised, or we wouldn’t like the results.

I think we were all relieved when Estelle closed the book and suggested we order a pizza. But ten eyes were fixed on Gary to see if he did anything. I knew the thoughts in our heads were, for once, as one.

What do you know, Gary Wolf? Why are you so scared?

But they didn’t bother to ask out loud. Asking out loud is for losers.

As it turned out, when I found out what it was I could understand why Gary didn’t want to tell. In his position, I would have wanted to take a secret like that to the grave. In his position, I’d probably have blocked out the memory in the first place.

In his position, I wouldn’t have been able to live with the thoughts.

And so, at the end of the chapter, we come to Gary’s second personality trait. Next time, Gary weeps a lot, Anja completely ignores her family’s suffering, and Mr Daly is bullied for no reason. See you then!

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Oh Dear, Fifteen-Year-Old Me (part 2)

Posted on by weeks4send

The first chapter (after the prologue) is called “Terminal.” Because it involves death, and also a bus. Ah, wordplay.

I wrote that introductory bit a couple of days after the big event. Back then, I suspected it would all get blown out of proportion and lead to disaster, but now I don’t suspect that. I know that that’s what happened, and I also know that more people need to know about it so everyone can finally find out what happened. Also so I can make some money. As you’ll see at the end, I’m going through some financial troubles at the moment.

SPOILERS- There is absolutely no reason for “everyone (to) finally find out what happened” after the story’s end, any more than there was any reason to keep it secret in the first place. There’s not much reason for anything in this story.

Also, nothing gets blown out of proportion. If anything, I think most of the characters could show a little more emotion over the attempted murder of four people.

I didn’t know how we all ended up on the same bus, but I was sure it was going to become clearer after a while (I was right, as usual. Well done Anja).

Great- she’s not just a drunk sociopath, but a smug drunk sociopath. Nice going, past-me.

The way I ended up on it was pretty weird, though, and even then I didn’t think for a minute it was a coincidence. I was in a German lesson, with my eyes on the clock, willing it to be three-thirty so I could go home, when one of the office staff came in, saying that Mrs Eastoe, the head, wanted to see me in her office. This was a massive surprise for me and everyone else in the class, because the article somehow managed to get one thing right about me. I am hardworking, and a right little goody-two-shoes as well. I think I should point out, though, that this is more out of fear than respect for the rules. If I thought I had half a chance of getting away with it, I’d run amok.

I’ve no doubt you would, Miss Smug Drunk Sociopath.

But as it is I’m a wimp, so it was anyone’s guess why Mrs Eastoe wanted to see me. All the way to her office my mind kept coming up with horrible possibilities. Maybe one of my family had died. Maybe someone had committed some evil crime and blamed it on me. Maybe there were extraterrestrials in Mrs Eastoe’s office, demanding to eat whoever’s names she picked out of a hat…

This is the first instance in a pattern of past-me not having any idea where to put the comic relief.

Anja is kept waiting for an hour and a half, then told that Mrs Eastoe doesn’t want to see her after all:

She apologised for keeping me waiting this long, told me that the office must have made a mistake and checked that I’d be able to get home alright, which I could. I take the bus home and my parents don’t usually get back until about six. My little brother would probably be round his friend’s house, so he wouldn’t be worried either. If I’d disappeared completely that evening (which I did) nobody would have missed me until six-thirty.

Anja’s parents and brother will not be appearing in this story, because they spend the entire length of it thinking she’s dead! And they still haven’t been told she’s alive by the end, even though by then the villain is dead and she has no excuse for keeping the secret anymore! This renders the whole story unbelievably creepy, in case you couldn’t tell!

So anyway, at five o’clock I was waiting at the bus stop on my own. If the bus hadn’t come along only five minutes late (not the usual ten or fifteen) the dark and the silence would probably have severely creeped me out. It didn’t help that there were only four other people on the bus, all men. Well, technically Gary and Joe were boys, I guess, being as they were only a couple of years older than me, but my point was that I was the only female of the species on the bus. At least they didn’t seem to be in a gang or anything. That would probably be the dictionary definition of “creepy”, especially since it was October and already quite dark outside.

Alright, this paragraph can stay- it’s a fairly realistic reaction for a fifteen-year-old girl to have. It could do with being a bit longer, to build up the atmosphere a bit, but I didn’t care about that at the time.  I wanted to get on with making fun of the other characters.

Anyway, let me give you a mental image of this bus. At the front is whoever it was doing the driving, who would eventually turn out to be “the only survivor of the tragic accident” (or rather, the only one the papers knew about), because s/he was at the front. The seats near the front are pretty much unsittable on, due to some disgusting stains which I’m really hoping were food. Actually, I’m guessing that whoever wanted us dead got on the bus before us and made sure the seats were in this condition, forcing us all to sit near the back, so it probably was food. Anyway, that’s not important.

The whole plot hinges on the fact that none of them thought to stand. And I have no idea how the villain managed to ruin all those seats without anybody noticing.

Sitting on the first non-disgusting seat is Keith Daly, described in the papers as “a real character with many stories to tell, but underneath it all quite a lonely man.” This, as you may know, is obituary speak for “an insufferable old git who winges all the time, and can’t see why no woman in her right mind would be seen dead within a million miles of him.” Spending a few days in the same house as him was hell on earth. I think he must have had a real thing against anything modern, especially (as I later found out to my cost) women exercising their rights. Judging by the glowering gazes Estelle kept throwing him, I’d say she agreed with me.

This chapter was originally written in present-tense, which is one of the reasons it’s worded so strangely. And go ahead, fifteen-year-old-me, tell the readers which characters they should hate. They’ll never figure it out of their own.

(SPOILERS- Mr Daly’s dislike of Anja actually has very little to do with “women exercising their rights.)

That pale, enigmatic-looking person staring out of the window and drawing in a sketchpad a few seats back is Gary Wolf, although Gary Bushbaby would be more appropriate. The first thing I noticed about him was that his eyes were big, but none of the rest of him was. Gary was described in the papers as “a bright and talented child who triumphed in the face of adversity,” which, judging by what he told me later, probably means “someone who had no friends because everyone was jealous of him, was called a nerd and a geek by pretty much all the kids in school and a few of the teachers, and all in all had a fairly hellish time.” This isn’t to say that I thought Gary was a nerd and a geek. Even at the start he seemed quite nice, even if he was annoyingly shy. I could see he wasn’t one of those smart people who shove their knowledge in your face and act all superior (I think I can be one of those occasionally).

At least she’s self-aware.

And let’s just get this out of the way now- Gary is essentially Elijah Wood’s character from The Faculty, alright? In fact, every male love interest I came up with around this time was Elijah Wood’s character from The Faculty. It was a film that had a big impact on me.

(A few years before that, most of my male love interests were essentially Adam Rickitt. So it could have been worse.)

Anyway, on to the other two, sitting together at the back, talking loudly and getting damning looks from Mr Daly. Joe Foster, as I’ve said, was about Gary’s age, and the newspapers didn’t mention him a lot. All they called him was “a promising young man” and “a Jack-the-lad type who always had time for his friends.” Mostly because he never had to do a real job. Joe lived with his great aunt, who was loaded with a capital L.

Yeah, I can see where you’re going with this. Someone else who wanted the great-aunt’s money must have been involved in the “accident.” To be honest, you’re right. Well done. But there was still a big mystery over why that person would want to wipe out a whole bus just to get rid of Joe. They could have just shoved him off a cliff and made it look like an accident. Or made a heavy statue collapse on him.

Foreshadowing! Clumsy, clumsy foreshadowing!

Anyway, we’ll get to what happened in a second, so be patient. There’s still two more people to get through, although the papers really couldn’t think of anything to say about Mark, a friend who Joe was staying with. This is mainly because shouty, enthusiastic, boisterous and slightly superficial people don’t look good in obituaries. The papers couldn’t just translate Mark’s personality into obituary speak.

…We’ve just had the papers describe Joe as “a Jack-the-lad type who always had time for his friends.” Right there. In the previous paragraph.

In order to make him sound like A Tragic Loss To the World, they would have had to lie. This is kind of weird, because I think that the world would be a poorer place if there wasn’t anyone like Mark hanging around making stupid comments and never taking anything seriously. But all they could say about Mark was that he was the son-in-law of Victoria Jewel. You might not have heard of her (I hadn’t), but apparently she was in quite a few films in the 70s. Estelle’s her daughter, and I’m not sure how much she told her mum about what happened. Victoria lived in America, anyway, so she hadn’t got much chance of hearing about it from someone else.

Because e-mail doesn’t exist. Despite the fact that this story was written in 2002.

You know about the last person on the bus. Anja Cleary (i.e.- me) has been described as a lot of things since she supposedly died, but one of the most ridiculous is “beautiful.” No way am I beautiful. I’d say I was pretty, but that would be it. Well, sort of pretty. On a good day. In the right light. If you ignore my nose.

The naive young heroine never sees herself as beautiful, of course. To improve her self-esteem, she has to learn to see herself through the adoring love interest’s eyes.

Look, the point is that Joe suddenly stopped talking to Mark when we reached the first stop. A car stopped a few metres behind the bus, and someone got out. No one would have noticed him crouching conspicuously behind the bus if Joe hadn’t been looking right at him. He proceeded to save everyone’s life by screaming at us to get out now, and sliding through an open window (kind of dangerous since the bus had started to move again).

Just how big are the windows on this bus?

Mark and Joe pull the others out with them, and…

The light fixtures, which had been right above us, all exploded in unison. Then there was another explosion, from the engine or something, probably, and the back half of the bus collapsed in flames.

And at no point, in the two years after this horrific accident, did anybody bother to check for bodies. They just assumed that everybody dissolved into atoms, and held the funerals anyway. Oh, and apparently the bus driver didn’t hear Joe shouting for everybody to escape through the window, even though it seems to have happened quite a few seconds before the explosion. At the very least, wouldn’t be have looked around after the lights burst and seen that none of his passengers were there?

I can’t tell you for sure what was going through the minds of Joe, Gary, Mr Daly and Mark. But I can tell you what was going through mine.

Just before the terror and relief kicked in, I thought, This is so cool!

She’s just kidding about the terror and relief.

Also, note that, at this point, Anja doesn’t know that the bus driver survived. Classy girl, that Anja.

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Ivy (part two)

Posted on by weeks4send

(There may or may not be a part three, depending on whether or not I come up with any ideas for it.)

Because my mother worked late, I would often spend the evenings after school at Annabelle’s house. Her family were a great deal richer than mine, and it always amazed me to see how grand her house was. I also liked to talk to Annabelle’s father- he was a well-known gourmet who was constantly cooking up wonderful concoctions in the kitchen. Annabelle wasn’t interested in food, and I could see he liked that I was. Usually I would just sit and watch him cook, but sometimes he’d let me help him measure out the ingredients, or taste the food to make sure that it was “just right.”

How lucky Annabelle was to have such a father! I didn’t have any at all. From what my mother said, he’d turned out to be a stern fundamentalist who saw potential evil everywhere, especially in Mama shagging the entire rugby team for a dare. “He was such a prude,” she would tell me, “Just because he’d never been good at sport.”

“I hope when I get married,” I told Annabelle as we sat down in front of the television, “I never have an argument with my husband.”

“Then make sure you marry a man who’s had his tongue cut out,” she said sweetly as she changed the channel so we could watch Mrs Brown’s Boys.

I frowned. She was annoying me. I sometimes wondered why I stayed friends with her. But then I remembered that she had a big flat-screen TV and a fridge full of ice-cream, so everything was fine.

Suddenly, we both looked up and listened. There was the sound of a car door being slammed, followed by a loud, piercing squawk, like a parrot being stuffed into a blender.

“Mama!” I cried, leaping up to open the door.

Annabelle’s father got there before me. “Gigi!” he cried, putting an arm around Mama’s shoulders, “What a nice surprise! Would you like to join us for dinner? We were going to have liver and…”

“Mama!” I started to cry. “What’s the matter?”

Mama’s face looked bleak and haunted. “It’s your bloody grandfather!” she whispered, “I told him not to drink weedkiller! I told him what happens when hydrochloric acid reacts with potassium! But oh no, he just had to have that banana for dessert, didn’t he? Now I’ll be picking his entrails out of the rosebushes for the next ten years!”

“What are you saying?” I asked through my sobs.

“I’m sorry, Ivy,” my mother said, “Your Granddad is… dead.”

“Nooo!” I screamed, shaking my head as if it might somehow alter things.

“I’m afraid so. He exploded and took the shed with him. I found his head in one of the flowerpots…”

I wailed piteously.

“And I think his intestines ended up in the old oak tree…”

“He planted that old oak tree himself,” I whispered. Strangely, it gave me some comfort to think that Granddad was still tending to the things he loved, even in death.

“They look a bit like tinsel…”

I shook my head again. Granddad couldn’t really be dead, could he? I’d always thought that we lived in a magical world- surely the fairies and the pixies and the mysterious fanged creatures wouldn’t let him die and leave me. Surely he must still be alive somewhere… Without his intestines… Or his head…

Hmm. On second thoughts, I was OK with letting him rest in piece.

“Anyway,” said Mama, “Come along home so you can pack your bags. I want to be on the motorway by seven, so we’ve got to hurry.”

“What?” I cried, “Where are we going?”

“We’re leaving!” said Mama with a laugh, “Now that my dad’s out of the way, I’m selling the house and moving to Amsterdam to become a lap-dancer! That nice Abelard Cephalopod said he’d take us.”

I gasped. Abelard Cephalopod was a binman who lived down the road from us. He had small beady eyes, slicked-back hair, and a long, curly moustache that he liked to twirl in his fingers. I never knew what my mother saw in him, but she said he was glamorous and had connections. “Gigi, knowing the number of the kebab shop off by heart doesn’t count,” Granddad would always say, to which Mama would let out a blood-curdling roar and throw the blender at his head.

“Mama, no!” I wailed, “He’s a total crook! And he looks like a weasel!”

“Oh, don’t be like that, Ivy,” said Mama, “Deep down, he’s a delicate flower.”

Just then, Abelard Cephalopod’s rusty Ford Focus drove into Annabelle’s driveway, crushing most of their flowerbeds and running over the cat. He got out, and pointed and laughed.

“See?” said Mama, “Not every man would take the time to cheer up a mortally-wounded animal.”

Soon we were on our way, with Abelard Cephalopod telling us story after story about all the cities he’d visited. Places with glamorous names like Scunthorpe and Dunstable. It made my head spin. To think that we were leaving the little town I’d lived in all my life, and heading out into the world! How could Mama have been so foolish? If she was going to run off with a creepy binman, she could at least have picked a hot one.

“I don’t care what glamorous places you show me!” I cried, “In my heart, I’ll always belong to this beautiful place, the place where I was born!”

Abelard Cephalopod gave me a horrified look, then turned to Mama and said, “You didn’t tell me she had Tourette’s.”

Mama shook her head. “Shut your trap, Ivy,” she told me, “You’ll have plenty of time for complaining when you meet your father and his wife. Strewth, what a pair of misery-guts. Misery-gutses? What’s the plural?”

“What?” I cried, incredulous, “You never said we were going to see my father and his wife!”

“Oh, sure I did!” snapped Mama.

“No you didn’t!”

She thought about it for a second. “Huh. You’re right. Maybe it was the postman I told.” She stared into space for a moment, then clapped her hands and smiled at me. “Fantastic news, Ivy! You’re going to visit your father and his wife!”

“Why?”

“Because it’s what your grandfather would have wanted,” she said piously.

“No it isn’t!”

“Damn. I was really hoping you’d fall for that. OK, if you really want to know, it’s because we don’t want to take you to Amsterdam and we’re dumping you on them instead. I’ve got a life of my own to live, and I don’t need some whiny teenager scaring off my new boyfriends.”

“What new boyfriends?” wailed Abelard Cephalopod.

“Shut up and watch the road, you. Anyway, Ivy, it’s for the best. You don’t want to grow up moving from place to place. You need a stable home so you can put your roots down.”

I frowned. “So… Why couldn’t I have stayed in Pitsea? I’m pretty sure I had some roots there.”

“You just couldn’t. So there.”

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Oh Dear, Fifteen-Year-Old Me (part one)

Posted on by weeks4send

(This series of posts originally appeared, in a slightly different form, on my Deviantart journal.  I’m putting them here so they’ll be easier to get to.)

Hiya. I’ve decided to make fun of a story I wrote when I was fifteen. We’ll see how that works out.

My reasons for doing this are threefold: First, I think it’s always good to remind yourself of how much you’ve learned, and how much you’ve still got to learn.  Second, it’s also good to remind yourself that just because somebody has written a terrible story, it doesn’t automatically mean that they’re a terrible person. Even if somebody has written a terrible story with awful moral implications, it might just mean that they weren’t paying attention to how they might come across to other people. I know I didn’t.

Third, I just thought it might be funny.  So there’s that.

So let us begin. The following story was initially called “Memory Lives On,” but was later renamed “Memory” after I realised that “Memory Lives On” didn’t make much sense. Still, I thought it was pretty clever at the time. It was supposed to be a title with a double-meaning, since it was about a group of people who’d inadvertently faked their own deaths.  “See, the newspapers are always going on about how their memory will live on forever, but little do the papers know that their memory living on will help them solve the mystery of their attempted murder! Oh, I’m so wise.” In the end, though, the main characters’ memories don’t have all that much to do with how the plot is resolved. The villain more-or-less self-destructs while the heroes spend their time wangsting about their problems. This was before I learned how plots actually worked, of course.

Anyway, enough preamble- here’s “Memory Lives On”:

“Anja Cleary is a tragic loss to her family, to her friends, and to us. The fact that a loyal, caring, intelligent, hardworking teenager could die such a tragic death is a sign of the carelessness of our times. The world needs to use the memory of this smiling blonde beauty to ensure that this kind of hideous accident never happens again. Anja’s parents and brother can now only be comforted by the thought that they now have an angel in Heaven looking down on them. Rest in peace, Anja.”- 25th October 200_

I’m not sure where I got the name “Anja Cleary” from. Or why I felt it was so important that I didn’t say which year the story took place.

The story started off as a Mickey-take about how tabloids cynically shovel on the treacle when talking about major tragedies. It’s a bit unfocused, because at the time I didn’t actually know much about tabloids and their inner workings. If I was to write it now, I’d probably emphasise the falseness of it, or bring in a few more elements about their focusing on the pretty, middle-class, white victims over everybody else. Either way, though, the whole tabloid-satire theme is quickly shoved to the side in favour of a really dull murder mystery and an even duller romance subplot. Priorities!

What a load of rubbish. I can’t believe someone would actually print that in a newspaper. It’s so saccharine it makes my teeth ache, plus it’s all wrong.

In the words of Pearl Jam, I’m still alive, but the person who wrote the article can be excused for not knowing that. The whole country thinks I’m dead. Only five other people know I’m not, and some of them are meant to be dead themselves. But Mark and Estelle’s house couldn’t be called Heaven without anyone laughing. It’s pretty cool, as houses go, but they aren’t the neatest people in the world. Mind you, I don’t think they were expecting four guests, so I’ll let them off the hook.

That’s three or four subject changes in the space of one paragraph. My English teachers must have been so proud.

The Pearl Jam reference is there purely for the sake of having a Pearl Jam reference. I did this a lot.

While we’re on the subject, people don’t become angels after they die, even really good people. Angels are completely separate beings. I learnt that in RE. I think the difference is that they don’t have free will. And besides, Satan apparently started out as an angel, so being one isn’t a guarantee of good behaviour.

This has nothing to do with anything. See what I mean about the lack of focus?

There, that’s the first and last time anything I’ve learnt in school will be applicable to real life.

Frankly, I think “applicable to real life” is stretching it a bit even there.

Although the chances of my ever seeing the inside of a school again are fairly small. So there are advantages to everyone thinking you’re dead.

One of the disadvantages is being made out to be sweet and innocent in the papers.

Is “never getting to see your loved ones again” another one?

(Seriously, that barely comes up in the story. I didn’t mean to make my main character come across as a sociopath.)

I could hardly be less sweet and innocent if I tried. Gary’s sweet and innocent, I think. I haven’t known him that long. But I’m pretty certain he’s more sweet and innocent than me.

I also didn’t mean to make her sound drunk.

Incidentally, Gary is the love interest. His two character traits are a) expressing love for Anja, and b) weeping over his tragic past. I’ll leave it to you to decide which of these is more irritating.

In fact, I told Mark earlier today that Gary might as well have had his picture plastered all over the newspapers instead of mine.

“Yeah, but you’re the obvious choice, aren’t you?” he said, “You’re the youngest and the only girl. You’re A Young Life Cut Tragically Short, see?”

“And Gary isn’t? He’s not much older than me.”

“Well… Oh, I know. You’re cuter than Gary.” As you probably know, once you get to the age of fifteen it’s very annoying to be called “cute,” but I let Mark go on. “I mean, you’re textbook cute. Gary looks cute, but he looks weird as well, so they can’t make him their Tragic Accident poster kid. Weirdness and cuteness mixed would bother the public,” he said knowledgeably.

OK, I still quite like the phrase “Tragic Accident poster kid.” But I’m not sure how often men refer to each other as “cute.”

I don’t really think Gary looks all that weird, but maybe he looks different from all his photos. I know I do. Three days before the crash, I dyed my hair strawberry-red, and there weren’t any photos taken of me between then and now. So all the photos of me give the impression that I’m blonde.

This is a bit of a handwave on my part. Apparently, dyeing your hair a different colour means that absolutely nobody will recognise you, even if they’ve known you for years.

One more thing. There was another mistake in the article.

The reason we’re in hiding is that what happened wasn’t an accident. The only accidental thing was that we all survived.

SPOILERS- There’s actually no good reason for them to be in hiding. They could easily just tell the authorities that they’re alive, go home, and let the police handle it. But then there’d be no story, and we can’t have that.

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Why?

Posted on by weeks4send

Have you seen this? That fucking headline?

The photo’s bad enough. A picture of her, all blonde hair and pink cheeks, smiling at everyone as if she’d never had a bad thought in her life. Thinking about how fucking gorgeous she is. Well, she’s not that pretty. You’re not that pretty, love. You could do with losing some weight, for a start.

But it’s the headline that drives me mad. “Why?” Just the one word, mind you. “Why?” As if it’s some deep, profound question, when the answers are fucking obvious to anyone who actually bothers to think.

What they should be asking is, what was she doing in the park in the first place? She must have known it was dangerous. But no, she thought she knew best, so she went through it instead of crossing the main road. Thought it was a shortcut. So there’s the answer to your “why?” She’s got no-one to blame but herself.

And why couldn’t she have taken a bus, anyway? The 152 goes from right outside that school she worked at to right outside her flat. I looked it up on Google Maps this morning. If she’d taken the 152, none of this would have ever happened. Alright, I know some people don’t like buses, like my niece Lucy, but that’s not the point, is it? She can’t afford a car, but she never takes the bus anywhere. I asked her why once. I said, Lucy, it’s not about convenience, it’s about whether you live or die. That’s what they don’t understand- it’s about whether you live or die. And Lucy said that she’d caught the bus every morning for five years in high school, and, after five years of being packed in like sardines with kids who stuck chewing gum in her hair and called her “four-eyes,” she decided that she just preferred walking.

But what I want to know is, what were her parents doing getting glasses for her, at that age? Because that’s what they did, my sister Edie and her husband. Dragged her to the opticians and had them slap a pair of glasses on her, just because she was squinting a bit. It wasn’t as if she was fucking blind. But no, Edie and Pete can’t have their daughter squinting, so let’s take her off to the opticians and make sure that the other kids bully her for the rest of her life. Sometimes I feel like saying to them, if your daughter ends up the same way as blonde-hair-pink-cheeks on the front page, and you feel like pointing fingers, then point them in the fucking mirror.

“Why?” it says. What I want to know is, why did she even take a job in this area? I bet you plenty of local girls would have killed for that job. I’ve read that article. She grew up in Benfleet. You can’t tell me that there weren’t any jobs in Benfleet. You can’t tell me that she wouldn’t have found one, if she’d just got off her pretty little arse and looked. It’s a nice place, too. Barely any crime. Her mum and dad must have begged her to stay. They must have begged her not to move to a place where you’re not safe in your bed at night. But she didn’t listen. I bet she never listened. I can tell, just by looking at her face, she was the sort of girl who thinks she knows everything, and everybody else is just stupid and narrow-minded. Well, look at that front page. How clever does she look now?

I bet I know just what it was. She might have grown up in a nice little town, with parents who’d give her everything she could possibly want, but they let her watch films, didn’t they? They probably bought her all the Disney films when she was a little girl. And she probably watched them over and over, until they got their hooks into her brain. Telling her that she was special, she was a perfect princess, and she was built for better things than staying at home and keeping her mum company. Telling her that, unless she went out into the world and saw absolutely everything in it, she’d be wasting her life. Well, real life isn’t a fucking Disney film, love. Most of us had worked that out by the time we were ten.

And what I’d like to know, what I’d really like to know, is, if old blonde-hair-pink-cheeks was too good for a job in Benfleet and too good for the bus, then why couldn’t she just have rented a flat closer to work? Why did she have to get one that meant she’d have to walk through the park on her way home? It was as if she wanted something bad to happen. Some people are just headed for disaster, no matter what. If it hadn’t been what happened at the park, it would have been something else. Sooner or later, something always gets them. You can’t expect anyone to be sorry.

Actually, saying that, the landlords and the estate agents don’t fucking help, putting the rent for those flats so low. They talk like it’s just good business, but really it’s tempting innocent people into a disaster area. It’s blood money, pure and simple. Blood money. And I happen to know why those particular flats are so cheap. It’s because those tight-fisted bastards can’t be bothered to fix the heating in that building. Half the time it doesn’t work, and the other half it’s clank, clank, clank, all through the night. I’ve heard stories of people not wanting to live there because they think it’s ghosts. So there’s the answer to your “Why?”- it’s because people are stupid fucking cowards.

Look at her face. Those bright eyes and that smug little grin- I can tell I wouldn’t have liked her. You can tell that she spent all her time laughing at people behind their backs. Fluttering her eyelashes at boys and then shagging their best friends, just for the fun of it. There’s something about her eyes. You can always tell, when you look at the eyes- they never fool you. You can tell she was a complete bitch. There’s something there. Something not quite right. Something actually quite evil.

In the picture, she’s got straight, shoulder-length hair, but that’s a lie, too. What the paper doesn’t tell you is that, a few months before she died, old blonde-hair-pink-cheeks decided to get her hair braided. All done up into ratty little plaits. That wouldn’t have made such a good front page, would it? They wouldn’t be asking “Why?” then. She probably loved having her hair like that, though. Probably all her friends had the same style. But that wasn’t as funny as she thought, because someone else had her hair like that, too. She probably never even knew it, but with her hair in those ugly plaits, she looked exactly like Victoria Devereaux.

And the most ridiculous thing is, that wouldn’t even have mattered if she’d just gone to the party two weeks ago. I found out about it through a friend of my son’s. My Richie and his friends were all invited, and they all went, but not old blonde-hair-pink-cheeks. They invited her to go, but she was too good for their party. And the ridiculous thing is, if she’d gone, she could have saved herself. If she’d gone, she might have met my Richie. She might have made an impression on him, and made sure that he’d never, ever mistake her for Victoria Devereaux, as long as he lived. But she didn’t go. She missed her last chance, and she probably didn’t even realise. So don’t you go asking me questions like “Why?” Not when people can be as thoughtless as that.

Actually, if you’re going to ask “Why?” then my answer is simple- “Because of Victoria Devereaux.” If Richie had never met that bitch, then everything would have been fine. You should have seen her in the mornings, walking to the estate agent’s with her face made up like a fucking clown’s and her skirt so short that you could see the cellulite on her arse cheeks. That’s always how it is, isn’t it? They can dress like whores to reel the men in, but underneath, they’re as ugly as sin.

She knew what she was doing to my Richie. She knew that every time she batted her eyelashes (which are fake, just like the rest of her) or gave him a sexy little look, she was giving him a little bit of hope. She led him on. That’s what they always do. They let men think they’re interested, and then they shoot them down just for fun. And then they’re surprised when something like this happens. Well, it’s her fault. There’s blood on her hands.

I mean, it’s the media, isn’t it? it tells them that that’s the only way to get a boyfriend. Never mind decency and self-respect, just show off your tits and they’ll come running. They tell them men want “sultry seductresses.” In other words, “whores.” I mean, when I was young, we had something called “morals,” but I suppose that sort of thing is a bit old-fashioned these days. A bit behind the times.

Well, if it’s old-fashioned, then my Richie was as old-fashioned as it gets. You’d never see him treat a girl badly. All throughout his teenage years, he was the only boy in that whole shitty school to treat girls with a bit of respect. He was the kind of boy who’d hold doors open, and carry their books for them, and walk home with them just to make sure they were safe. I’ve always said, if he’d found a girlfriend who was as sweet as him, one with manners and class, that would have been the making of him. But he never did. All the girls at his school were… Well, there’s plenty of words for them, but none I’d use in polite company. None of them appreciated him. Let’s leave it at that. None of them appreciated him. He tried so hard with them, and all they did was laugh at him behind his back. If you ask me, girls like that bring this kind of thing on themselves.

The boys were almost as bad. Little fuckers. Felt jealous, didn’t they? Because he was going on to better things, and there they were, sat at home, knowing they were going to be stuck working at Tescos for the rest of their lives. I’m sorry, but Richie was so much better than them. I know mothers always say that about their children, but he was. You could tell, just by looking at him. Most of those boys, they looked more like animals than human beings. More like pigs. As if their mothers had screwed their way through the farmyard before they were born. People like that- weak people, useless people- they always want to bring down anyone better than them. They hate being reminded of what they are, so they won’t let anyone rise above them. It hurts them. They ground him down, my Richie. He had more intelligence and drive than anyone I ever knew. He had a spark, and they tried to put it out.

So don’t ask me “why.” Don’t print stupid headlines that ask it as if it was some profound question and we’ll never truly know the answer. I just told you the answer, didn’t I? I just gave you all the answers you’ll ever need. Cause when we live in a world like this- a world where a good, decent boy can see all his potential wasted because nobody ever cared enough- then it’s no wonder that things like that happen. In fact, it’s a miracle that they don’t appen more often. When you get right down to it, the only answer to “why” is something that you should have learned when you were a baby- life just isn’t fair.

He’s a good boy, my Richie. He’s a good boy.

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Ivy (part one)

Posted on by weeks4send

(Note- I used to read far too much V.C. Andrews as a young ‘un.)

When I was a little girl, I believed that the world was a magical place.  In my mind, there were fairies at the bottom of the garden, pixies hiding in the woods, and mysterious fanged creatures at the bottom of our school swimming pool.  Actually, come to think of it, I turned out to be right about that last one.  Now that was an interesting lawsuit.  Anyway, I’ve never stopped believing that there were magical beings all around us, beings that can only be seen by the innocent and young at heart, or maybe those who’ve had too much vodka, and that, if we just believe, they will come to us in our hour of need.

If my mother heard me say such things, she’d tell me to take my head out of the clouds and come back down to earth.  That, or whack me round the head with a wooden spoon.  “There’s no such thing as magic,” my mother would say to me, “Life is nothing but a string of misery, horrible mistakes, and indigestion, so abandon all hope now.”

“But Mama,” I’d say to her, “If there’s no such thing as magic, how does the Tooth Fairy know where I live?”  I’d got her there.

“Pah!” said my mother, spitting into the sink, “Enjoy these innocent years now, me girl, because you’ll soon learn.  The world is a horrible place, full of war, and poverty, and disease, and men who say they’ll marry you but leave you two weeks before the wedding just because you were technically cheating on them, so you’re left with nothing but a baby that gives you stretchmarks and an empty bank account, and grows up to whine about her friends’ legs being bitten off during swimming lessons, honestly, like I haven’t got anything better to worry about, I have a life too, you know, Eastenders isn’t going to watch itself…”

At this point, I grew bored of marvelling at my mother’s impressive run-on sentence, and snuck out into the garden to talk to Granddad.

How I loved my grandfather!  He was always there for me, out in the garden among the trees and plants.  This was because he lived in the shed.  He’d been a famous naturalist in his youth, and he found that he didn’t feel at home unless he was surrounded by the beauty of Mother Earth at all times.  I respected his desire to live life in his own way, although I didn’t see why it meant he had to drink all the weedkiller.

“Don’t take what your mother says to heart, Ivy,” said Granddad, pouring me a cup of his homemade tea (specially brewed out of moss and dead beetles), “She’s had to put up with a lot of disappointment in life.”

“What kind of disappointment, Granddad?” I asked.

“Well, when she was a little girl, she wanted a pet unicorn.  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that they didn’t exist, so I got a rhino, painted it pink, and hoped she wouldn’t notice the difference.  It gored five of our neighbours to death before she realised something was up…”  Granddad’s eyes twinkled as he told the story.  He was a sprightly old man with long white hair and apple cheeks, and I never felt safer than when I was with him.  Even if he did keep feeding me insects.

“Anyway,” he concluded, “My point is, don’t be too hard on your mother.  She’s like a beautiful, exotic bird that yearns to fly free.  And until she does, we have to put up with her squawking a lot and crapping on us from a great height.”  He poured himself another glass of Weed-B-Gone.  “Fancy a sip, Ivy?  It expands your mind.”

“Er…  I’ve got to get to school now,” I replied, backing out of the door.

When the day came that I fell in love and decided to marry, I wanted my husband to be just as wise and good as Granddad, although preferably not as full of dangerous chemicals.

I rushed to school through the roads of concrete and tarmac that we Essex folk called a dual carriageway, thinking how lucky I was to have such a beautiful home.  All the graffiti on the walls was spelled correctly, and sometimes, at night, you could look out of your window and see a pair of urban foxes, noisily shagging the night away.  Was it any wonder that I still believed that there could be magic around every corner, when I’d grown up in a place as wonderful as this?

My best friend, Annabelle Lecter, would always tell me that I was foolish to see the world around me in such a way.  “There’s nothing magical about this place,” she said in her usual pedantic manner, “Pitsea is where hopes and dreams go to die.”  Annabelle was nice enough, but unpopular because of her weight, her spots, her greasy hair, her crossed eyes, her irritating personality, and the fact that she gave off a constant smell of sardines.  However, my Granddad had always taught me to look beyond the surface to see the person within, and besides, it wasn’t as though people were exactly queuing up to be friends with the girl who still believed in pixies, either.

“Well then why is it,” I demanded, “that whenever there’s a traffic jam on the road outside my bedroom at night, I see the headlights light up the darkness like a constellation of earthbound stars?”

“I’d say it was because you’ve been licking the inside of the freezer again,” she said dryly.  “Just look at this school- boys staring at your chest all the time, popular girls laughing at your outfit, science teachers who dump piranhas into the pool and then don’t bother to tell anyone…”

I thought about it.  I agreed with Annabelle about the popular girls, the ones we both called hyenas– always grinning inanely, laughing at other people’s misfortunes, and dominating weaker members of the pack with their vestigial penises…  OK, the metaphor needed some work.  Anyway, the hyenas never included us in their gossip or invited us to their wonderful parties.  Fortunately, we were mature enough to rise about it.

“I bet they’ve all got crabs,” I said.

Annabelle giggled.  “Yeah.”

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