Adorkable (35 page)

Totes! Ppl be haters! Will set things str8. But Y R U grounded? Is ridic. Ur 18.

Working on Cambridge applic & got caught drinking. So ridic!

U don’t even hang out with us @ skool. Every1 misses U. Not just me. But espesh me!!!! Will think of sumthing spesh 2 do when ur free. H xxxxx

OK. Have 2 go. C U tmrw @ skool. M.

OK babes. Luv U. H xxxxxx

THE
MOST DORKTASTIC BLOG ENTRY IN THE HISTORY OF BLOGGING, YO!!!

Hello!
Hola! Buenos dias! Guten tag!
Insert greeting in the language of your choice!

So, hey, how have you been?

Rumours of my untimely demise have been greatly exaggerated. I’m still alive and I’m approximately a gazillion times more dorky than I was last time we spoke because – drum roll, please, maestro – Adorkable is going multi-platform, global and coming right at you!

I mean, I could have carried on blogging and vlogging and tweeting about all the cool random stuff I love in the scant moments I have when I’m not studying for my AS-levels, but really! What’s the point of being stuck in a classroom with twenty-nine dead-eyed, soulless anti-dorks that I have nothing in common with except my age? There is no point. Not when I can be using my time and my energy to spread the message that the geeks will inherit the earth.

So, I’ve spent the last month taking so many meetings that I now break out in hives at the sight of a tray of flaky pastries or a flipchart, but it was worth it (even though I can never knowingly eat a pain au chocolat ever again).

OK, buckle up, and I’ll take you on the guided tour.

Adorkable – the TV show

Next year I’m filming a documentary series for Channel 4. I’ll be exploring what it means to be an outsider in this crazy consumerist cookie-cutter world that we’re forced to live in. I’ll be hanging out at Molly Montgomery’s (from Duckie and my
all-time girl hero) Rock ’n’ Roll Camp for Girls. I’ll be going to Tokyo to hunt down a box of green tea Kit Kats and spend time with street photographer and all-round goddess Keiko Ono. Oh, the places I will go: Sweden, Brazil, America – even China if we can cut through swathes of red tape.

Adorkable – the book

I’ve also signed a two-book deal to write about vampires. Ha! As if ! But I am writing two books. The first one will be called
Adorkable – How I Became Queen of the Nerds
and it’s part manifesto, part memoir, part rant. It will have photos and recipes and also a comic strip. I have no idea what the second book will be about but let’s not tell my publisher that.

Adorkable – the column

The
Guardian
will be publishing eight hundred words from me every Friday. I will pontificate on how cupcakes took over the world, if puppies are the new master race, why the education cuts are an ideological ploy to keep us down and, oh, all the other things I love to pontificate on.

Adorkable – the website

Yes, I already have a website, but this will be a proper website that has a bit of money behind it so you don’t have to just sit and watch my DustCam for hours on end. I have so many amazing friends with amazing talents so Adorkable.com will be a place where they (and I hope YOU) can showcase your awesomeness. It will have articles and films and puppies and it will be a place full of love and snark.

Adorkable
– on tour

I’m doing a lot of public events next year. Like, a lot, a lot. Some of them will be academic conferences but I’m also partnering up with a charity to go into schools and youth clubs to run workshops on self-esteem and empowerment. OMAG! So excited about this but also kind of terrified.

So, there it is. I have a nagging feeling that I might be selling out, but the way I see it is that there should be someone like me representing. Call me misguided, but I believe I’ve got some important things to say that people need to hear and if I can take an hour of screentime or a book sale away from the Snookis and the Jordans, then that has to count for something.

Right, I’m climbing off my soapbox now. There has to be a clip of a puppy doing something adorbs on the internet that I haven’t yet seen and I feel duty-bound to find it. Laters, ’taters, Jeane x

I
hadn’t even started to find any new puppy videos when my Skype icon throbbed into life and I automatically turned on my webcam. Then I slid off my chair and crouched under the table in case it was someone I really didn’t want to talk to, until I heard a familiar voice say, ‘Jeane the Bean, where are you?’

It was Bethan! I shot up, banged my head and sat down again, hand massaging the sore spot on my temple. I didn’t have time to deal with a spot of brain damage.

‘Look at you in your hospital scrubs like you’ve just walked off the set of
Grey’s Anatomy
,’ I said cheerfully.

Bethan was perched on the sofa in the living room of her Chicago apartment. She looked tired and her blonde hair was scraped back in a tight bun, but then she gave me a daft little wave and a goofy grin and I did the wave and grin back and I felt like I’d come home.

‘I
just read your blog so I know that you’re still alive,’ Bethan said dryly. ‘Thank God for that!’

‘But every time I’ve tried to Skype you, you were curing sick kids,’ I reminded her. ‘And if you will live on another continent then it just makes everything more complicated.’

‘True,’ Bethan conceded. ‘Little kids do have a nasty habit of falling out of trees and getting diseases, but hey, Jeane, Mum and Dad have been trying to get hold of you, I’ve had emails from your form tutor and your deputy head … what’s going on? You can’t just stop going to school.’

‘Well, I kinda can and I have,’ I said calmly. What’s done was done and there wasn’t anyone who could do anything about it. ‘Look, I could spend another eighteen months in school being forced to paint seascapes and write essays about
The Fountainhead
, neither of which are going to give me important life skills, or I could be making a real difference to people’s lives. There’s no contest.’

Bethan sighed and pushed back the hair that was escaping from her topknot. ‘But we had a deal. The four of us agreed that you could live on your own as long as you fulfilled certain promises. Like eating three proper meals a day and keeping the flat tidy and
staying in school
.’

‘But—’

‘And you still have that stupid DustCam and the amount of tweeting you do about Haribo makes me think you’re not getting your five a day and now it turns out that you’ve decided you don’t need an education.’ She sighed again. ‘This is not cool, Jeane.’

‘I am keeping the flat tidy,’ I protested. ‘Look!’

I
turned the laptop round so she could get a sweeping panorama of the lounge, which was blates tidy. I was fed up with
certain people
acting like I didn’t live in the real world and couldn’t cope with real world stuff, which was, like, so not true. Anyway, in the real world, people had cleaners. So, I’d hired Ben’s mum’s cleaner to come round once a week. Lydia was from Bulgaria and she was scarily obsessed with vinegar and how it could obliterate most household grime. She was also just plain scary and shouted at me if I didn’t tidy up before she arrived.

‘Well, it looks OKish, and what about the eating of fresh fruit and veg?’

I stuck my tongue out at her. ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day, you know.’

‘Jeane, you promised you’d do your A-levels. You actually promised.’

Bethan in guilt-trip mode was awful. She’d get this sorrowful, disappointed note to her voice, which always made me feel terrible.

‘Bethan, don’t be mad at me,’ I pleaded. ‘I have all these amazing opportunities that won’t be there if I wait until I’ve done my A-levels. It’s all good – I get to travel the world and do interesting things and have experiences and write books and get paid stupid amounts of money.’

‘You’re too young! No one is looking out for you and, God, this is all my fault. I should have stayed in London and forgot about the fellowship because—’

‘No! You deserved the fellowship and you got to follow your dream and now I’m getting to follow mine. There’s nothing to feel bad about.’

‘There
are so many people who must be taking advantage of you …’

I loved Bethan. I loved her more than all the Apple products and Haribo and fab second-hand dresses in the world, but when she was being all earnest and pained, it killed me.

‘No one is taking advantage of me,’ I told her. ‘I’m not stupid. I talked to people like my friend Molly, who got taken for a ride by her record company when she was my age, and I signed with a really reputable talent agency and I have an accountant and a lawyer. I’m even VAT-registered. Everything’s fine, Bethan. Really, really fine.’

‘Oh, Jeane …’ Bethan looked like she was going to cry. ‘None of this is fine. Things shouldn’t have turned out like this.’

‘Things have turned out just great and if you’re still pissed off with me when you fly over next week, I’ll let you spank me. You can even pretend to send me to my room if it will make you feel better.’ At least that made her smile, even if it was a pretty sad smile. ‘Actually, is there anything you want me to add to my Christmas shopping list? Maybe another yule log and more mince pies? You can never have too many mince pies. We usually have a six-a-day habit by Christmas Eve, don’t we?’

I expected the mention of mince pies to perk Bethan up where all else had failed, but she slumped on her beige sofa. ‘Oh God …’

‘Why oh God? Have you developed a fatal allergy to mince pies?’

Bethan looked to her right and said something that I didn’t catch and then Alex, Bethan’s boyfriend, who was almost
rippling with as many muscles as Gustav and wanted to be a neurosurgeon when he was all grown up, sat down next to her.

‘Hey, brat,’ he said. ‘How’s tricks?’

‘Hey, Mr Apple Pie, Bethan’s mad at me, can you tell her to stop because it’s beyond boring?’

Alex took Bethan’s hand and they nudged each other a bit and whispered until I had to rap my knuckles on my monitor to get them to stop.

Bethan took a deep breath. ‘Well, do you want the good news or the bad news?’

I knew right away that the bad news was far going to out-weigh the good news. It always, always did. ‘Bad news, please.’ They both glared at me. ‘You’ve got to have the good news first,’ Bethan said.

‘Fine, whatevs. Hit me up,’ I said impatiently.

Bethan held up her hand and I waited for the good news and I waited and then I waited a little longer. ‘Can we hurry this up, please?’

‘Look at my sodding hand!’ Bethan demanded. ‘Third finger.’ I squinted at the screen and on her finger was a ring. Possibly a diamond, though it could have been cubic zirconia. ‘Um, are you engaged?’

Alex beamed the smile that was a credit to his orthodontist. ‘I asked Beth last weekend and she agreed to make an honest man out of me. How do you feel about having a brother-in-law?’

Honestly, I wasn’t sure how I felt. I guess I was pleased for them. But Alex was American and Bethan was British and when her residency at the hospital was over, they were going to have to make a decision about which continent they were going
to live on. I mean, I liked being independent and that Bethan could only breathe down my neck via Skype, but she wasn’t meant to stay away for ever.

I managed to plaster a smile on my face. ‘Hey! Yay! That’s great news. I’m
so
pleased for both of you and, Alex, if you don’t get on my case about eating vegetables then I’m happy to offer you the position of my brother-in-law.’

This time Bethan smiled like she almost meant it. ‘There’s something else,’ she said. ‘No easy way to say it so here goes: I’m pregnant.’

‘Oh, wow! Right. Is that why you’re getting married?’ I asked baldly.

‘Part of the reason, but mostly because I love this big old lughead,’ Bethan said, rubbing Alex’s crew cut while he beamed toothily at me. ‘And, well, there’s a whole immigration issue so it makes sense to get married before the baby’s born.’

There were so many questions that I should have been asking, like when was it due and did they know what sex it was and did they have any names picked out, but I couldn’t ask them because I was sure that as soon as I opened my mouth, I’d say something awful. Something like, Why the hell would you even want a baby? Aren’t you worried that it will get ill like Andrew? And aren’t you scared that you won’t love the baby like Pat and Roy never loved me? So, why the hell are you actually keeping it?

How could I say any of that? My smile was slipping and before it fell off my face altogether, I managed another, ‘Yay.’

‘It’s a shock, isn’t it?’ Bethan asked me gently.

I
nodded. ‘Yeah, I’m kind of processing. So, was that the bad news?’

‘Oh, Jeane! You have
such
a dry sense of humour.’ I’d never heard anyone guffaw before, but Alex was doing it right now. ‘Of course it’s not bad news. We’re both so excited – it’s just that, well, it’s good news when we needed it. My mom’s really sick.’

‘Oh! I’m so sorry to hear that.’ I was and I meant it. ‘Is there … like, will she get better?’