Am I Normal Yet? (40 page)

I'm much smarter than most people

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

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

I know what I want to do with my life

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

She wasn't quite ready to accept that yet.

Though, in the meantime,
she had Holdo.

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

“You're late again.”

“I'm always late.”

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

“It's only been five minutes.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Do you want to talk about it?”

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

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

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

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

“Of course.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She interrupted his war monologue.

“Holdo?”

He stuttered to a stop. “What?”

“I'm a good writer, aren't I?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I've got English today. I could do.”

“He always seems to cheer you up.”

Bree smiled to herself.

Holdo had no idea.

Apparently I'm boring. A nobody.

But that's all about to change.

Because I am starting a project.

Here. Now. For myself.

And if you want to come along for the ride then you're very welcome.

Bree is a loser, a wannabe author who hides behind words. But when she's told she needs to start living a life worth writing about, The Manifesto on How to Be Interesting is born.

Six steps on how to be interesting. Six steps that will see Bree infiltrate the popular set, fall in love with someone forbidden and make the biggest mistake of her life.

ePub ISBN 9781409579571

Soulmates do exist. But not like you think.

Every so often, two people are born who are the perfect match for one another. Soulmates.

But what if meeting your soulmate is earth-shattering – literally?

An epic, electrifying and extraordinary debut about falling in love.

ePub ISBN 9781409557517

Check out more electrifying and thought-provoking YA reads at:

WWW.USBORNE.COM/YOUNGADULT

This ebook edition first published in the UK in 2015 by Usborne Publishing Ltd., Usborne House, 83-85 Saffron Hill, London EC1N 8RT, England.
www.usborne.com

Text © Holly Bourne, 2015

The right of Holly Bourne to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

Photograph of Holly Bourne © Jonny Donovan

The name Usborne and the devices
are Trade Marks of Usborne Publishing Ltd.

All rights reserved. This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or used in any way except as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or loaned or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ePub ISBN 9781409591467

Batch no. 03573-02