Stereotype (6 page)

Thursday night.
Buffy. Angel.
Then sleep. Or at least an attempt.

My room is a bookworm’s paradise. The first time Sarah saw my room she spent hours just looking through my bookcase.

I’m addicted to American young-adult novels. Short, sassy, and sophisticated – what I hide behind when I’m not up to reading grown-up type books. So I have a whole pile of them.
The Perks of Being A Wallflower. I Was A Teenage Fairy. Speak. Innocence. The Princess Diaries
(bought after much reluctance).
Keeping The Moon. Tiger Eyes. Among Friends. Sloppy Firsts.

On the other hand we have the tome next to my bedside. (No, nor
War and Peace
.
The Journals of Sylvia Plath
, actually.) It’s been sitting there for the past couple of weeks. Mostly I just look at the pictures, because it’s hard to get into the actual journal part. I mean, it’s not that it’s boring – it’s more like it’s
intense
. Like when I read
The Bell Jar
. It took me two years to properly get into it. And then I read the rest of it within two days.

Her hair looks awful in most of the pictures, if you must know. I don’t like those fifties hairstyles. But on the cover, she looks pretty. I think she was. Pretty, I mean. Her hair’s down to her shoulders and wavy and she looks enigmatic – and young.

She
was
young, but you forget. You forget that her family and teachers knew she was talented in her teens, that she was published before her twentieth birthday. You forget that those amazing poems of hers were written in her twenties, as was
The Bell Jar
. And you forget that she never got to see her thirty-first birthday.

February 11, 1963. That’s the date. You probably think I’m crazy for knowing it.

There’s this picture of her and Ted – well, there are a couple of pictures of the two of them, but there’s this one where he’s got his arms around her, and they’re both looking out into the distance, amazingly happy. It looks sort of posed, actually, but the joy is real.

Before college she writes about not wanting to die. Aged thirty she kills herself. Maybe she just wanted to take control of her own destiny instead of waiting around for fate to choose her death day. Maybe things were just that bad for her.

Maybe February 11 was the first day she ever thought about it and really meant it. Maybe she was planning it all her life, some little voice in the back of her head telling her that her life wasn’t worth living.

(Read the journal, Abi, and quit boring us with your speculation. Yeah, yeah, I know.)

Thank God it’s Friday. When I get into school Karen informs me that the synagogue was, as suspected, boring.

I smile. “I told you – you should’ve left.”

“Did you go home on your own?” she asks.

“Nah, Sarah came with me,” I say. See, Karen, I’m not necessarily going to be a loner just because you decide you’d prefer to stay in school to hang around with Leanne.

Call me bitchy, or obsessive, or whatever, but I like the fact that I’m closer to Sarah and even Fiona than Karen is. I guess Karen’s lucky that she can fit in with
any
group, but I think the trouble with being universally liked is that it’s harder to get to know people well.

Either that, or it’s my way of trying to convince myself that it’s better to have a few close friends than a crowd of semi-close ones, so I can feel better about my disastrous people skills.

Because it’s the day before a bank-holiday weekend, the entertainment-related discussions have reached their peak. As have my stress levels. If one more person mentions St Patrick’s Day, I’ll scream.

This weekend I will
not
be going to the parade, or going out drinking, or anything remotely normal. I was planning to be completely reclusive. You have to admit there’s something enchanting about the whole idea of cutting yourself off from the world to maximise your creative potential. You know, living alone, being all crazy and poetic . . . it
does
sound appealing.

But my plan to have a trial weekend of isolation has been thwarted. There’s a party on Saturday night in Sarah’s house. The infamous Shane will be there, as will the rest of the band. The final decision was made about the members yesterday. According to Sarah, one of Shane’s friends desperately wanted to be involved. He’s also desperately tone deaf. I feel sorry for him.

So it’s Sarah, Shane, and three of his friends, including, surprisingly enough, Caroline. I didn’t know they were friends, but apparently they went to primary school together and live in the same estate.

I see Caroline on Friday afternoon. There’s a hockey match on, one of the senior teams playing, and we’re allowed go out and watch it.

Since hockey doesn’t terribly excite me, I end up talking to Caroline for the duration of the match.

“Hey! Are you going to the party?” she asks.

I nod. “Yeah, Sarah’s making me.”

She grins. “Good. It looks like there’s going to a bunch of people from Shane’s school there, and I don’t know any of them. I was scared it was going to be just me and Sarah around, like, a hundred guys.” She frowns. “Actually, maybe that wouldn’t be that bad.”

“You’ve always got Shane, anyway,” I remind her.

“Ah, of course,” she says. “Except I think he’ll be too busy with Sarah on Saturday night.”

“Does he like her?” I ask.

She shrugs. “I don’t know. He says he just likes her as a friend, but –”

“But he acts like he does,” I finish.

“Yeah.”

OK, it’s settled, he fancies her. I change the subject. “Have you guys decided on a name yet?”

Caroline frowns. “Shane came up with one, but we told him where to go with it.”

I grin. “What was it?”

“God, I don’t think I can even
pronounce
it right. Idio – idiosyncratic. I had to look it up when I went home.”

“I like it,” I muse.

“I bet you know what it means, too.” She rolls her eyes.

“Sort of,” I say. “Distinctive, unusual, individual.”

She groans. “It took me ten minutes to find it in the dictionary and you know it off the top of your head. That’s not scary at
all
. I didn’t even know how to spell it.”

“So probably not a good idea for a name, then,” I say.

“Yeah. We all wanted something we actually understood, so we’re still thinking of names.”

Call me crazy, but that little story suddenly makes me interested in this Shane person. Big words impress me, OK? Of course, he probably picked it up from some pretentious rock song. But still . . .

I like the idea of us both knowing what a word meant while everyone else is confused, two misunderstood souls.

So, Saturday night, huh?

Friday night is
Frasier
night. The whole family sits down to watch it, even Jess, who doesn’t think it’s “cool” to watch any programmes that your parents enjoy. (Not to mention your older sister. It’s hard to believe Jess used to look up to me. Even up until she turned thirteen, just before Christmas, she used to borrow my clothes. Now she wouldn’t be seen
dead
in anything
I’d
wear. Sigh. I should be devastated, but it’s such a relief to not have to worry about her taking my stuff anymore that I’ve forgotten to grieve.)

Is it just me or did all the fun go out of the Niles-and-Daphne relationship once they actually got together? I mean, the great thing about them was the hope that maybe one day they would get together, that Niles would finally confess his feelings for her. You wanted him to get her, and you felt sorry for the poor lovesick puppy. The excitement is in the “maybe”. Once they actually became a couple? Blah. All the hope was gone.

Unrequited love is
much
more interesting. Even in real life. The possibility of something happening is what keeps you going.

Like me and Ronan. This was – oh, ages ago. First or Second Year, I suppose. He was a friend of Hannah’s and I fell madly in love with him. Every spare moment of my time was devoted to dreaming about how we would profess our undying love for one another. Then Hannah said that she thought he liked me.

I should have been happy, delirious, over the moon. And I was – for about a day. It was wonderful being admired. It was a nice change. But the novelty wears off quickly, and you realise that the excitement has gone.

I stopped liking him. Then he stopped liking me, at which point I started liking him again. And so on. It went on for about three months, and the funny part is that nothing ever came of it. I never even kissed him.

In a way, the daydreams are more fun. Reality just can’t compete.

He writes a song for me, and sings it for me at the band’s first public performance, gazing into my eyes intently. I stare up at him, loving him so much that it hurts.

Or maybe we’re not together yet, and he sings it. I am in the audience, thinking, “Wow, what a great song” when he accidentally catches my eye, and looks embarrassed. It hits me – the song’s about me. I look up at him, and he is both hopeful and scared. I smile, and he grins, throwing himself into the music.

Or maybe one of the other guys in the band starts to fancy me, and he thinks I’m interested, and gets jealous. One night he confronts me, somewhat awkwardly.

“I don’t know what you’re doing with him,” he says.

“Why?” I ask, somewhat coquettishly. (I’m not at all sure if I can be coquettish, but it’s a fantasy, so we’re allowed take some liberties.)

“He just doesn’t seem like your type.”

“Really? So what is my ‘type’, then?”

“Someone – I don’t know. Someone who appreciates you.”

I look at him. It’s one of those perceptive looks that Sarah’s so good at.

He looks slightly embarrassed, but doesn’t blush. “What?”

“Nothing,” I say.

“You know . . . I really think you’d be better off without him.”

“Why do you even care?” I ask, exasperated at this stage.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” he says, joining me in The Land of Frustration. “Why do you think I care, Abi?”

And then . . . he looks at me, and I look at him, and we kiss, and it’s wonderful.

Or maybe I’m really drunk at the party, and can’t even stand, and he has to carry me upstairs to Sarah’s room. I’m practically unconscious at this stage, so he watches me for a little while, and pushes strands of hair away from my face, his tender fingers lovingly running over my skin. (Fun to imagine; but if it actually happened the intimacy would be lost on me.)

Or maybe we’re alone in a room and we just talk. One of those wonderfully deep discussions where you realise how much you have in common. And he makes me laugh. And then I make him laugh. It’s perfect.

Or maybe we’re watching a movie and it’s really emotional and he brushes a tear away from his eye. I look at him.

“What?” he says defensively.

“You’re crying,” I note in amusement.

He does the whole macho-man thing, denying all allegations of tears, before I tell him that I love sensitive guys.

“Especially cute ones,” I add.

Or maybe I don’t even
know
this guy. I’ve never met him, I don’t know what he looks like, and the only thing I do know about him is that he’s talented.

And has a wide vocabulary, which is why the daydreaming began. Aaagh! I ask you, how many sixteen-year-olds do
you
know who find big words a turn-on?

On Saturday I am struck with a severe case of anti-social-itis. I don’t want to go out. I don’t want to see people. I just want to stay at home and read and watch TV and if that makes me a loser than so be it, because I’d prefer to be at home than out and not enjoying myself.

I consider making an excuse. “Look, Sarah, I’m feeling really sick, I don’t think I can come tonight.” Or plead a case of irrational parents. “My mom’s really pissed off with me, she won’t let me go.” Or anything, any reason for not being able to go to a party full of people I don’t know. People who take their music really seriously and can tell you everything you never wanted to know about a particular band or singer.

People who idolise Kurt Cobain and light a candle every April 5 and who can explain exactly why his death was such a tragedy and how he influenced the music of today, blah blah blah.

People who talk a lot about suicide and think it’s cool. People who would sooner shoot themselves than listen to uplifting, pop music once in a while. People who are so pretentious that I would happily put them out of their misery and kill them.

I hate pretentiousness about
anything
. I hate people who only read “literature”, like Jane in my class. Jane spent her childhood with her nose in the classics and thinks you’re deprived if you haven’t read
Pride and Prejudice
at least ten times. She uses English class to make comparisons between every male character ever created and Mr Darcy. Riveting, I assure you. (I mean, if you’re going to take any literary character to use as a basis for comparison, it should really be Emily Brontë’s Heathcliff. But that’s beside the point.)

I wonder if Sarah will even care if I don’t go. If I’m not there it’ll give her a chance to spend more time with her instantly-acquired music-related friends, and before I know it, we’ll be drifting apart. I’ll call to her house one day before school only to be told that she’s already left. I’ll suggest doing something for the weekend and find that she has other plans that I was never told about. I’ll ring her on the phone and she’ll find some excuse to hang up after five awkward minutes.

I’ll go back to being Lonely Abi. And even though I enjoy being alone a lot of the time, it’s much worse to have it thrust upon you because no one wants to be around you.

I really don’t want that to happen. Besides, I usually have a good time once I actually go out. And I have the rest of the weekend to be my usual anti-social self.

So . . . what am I going to wear?