of times! These are just some of the things I have attempted to be:
Bright and breezy, exuding confidence from every pore. “Hey! Wow! Way to go!”
Pathetic. Utterly pathetic.
Loud and laddish. Smutty jokes and long snorty cackles at anything even faintly suggestive.
Total disaster. I boil up like a beetroot even just thinking of it.
Creepy crawly. In other words, humble.
Even worse. I just oozed humility. All I can say is YUCK.
Eager beaver sports freak. Madly playing football in the playground every break. Dragging myself to school at half-past seven to practise netball in the freezing cold.
Bore bore BORE! I quickly gave up on that one. It wouldn’t have worked anyway.
None of them worked. None of these things that I have tried. When I thought I was being bright and breezy, I just came across as obnoxious so that people kept saying things like, “Who do you think you are, all of a sudden?” They don’t say that to Dani Morris, and she is just about as obnoxious as can be. But she can get away with it, and I can’t!
This is the point that I am making. Like when I went through my oozy phase. All I did was just smile at Kevin Williams and he instantly stretched his lips into this hideous grimace and made his eyes go crossed. Why did he do it??? He wouldn’t have done it to Petal! If Petal had smiled at him, he would most likely have gone to jelly. But Kevin Williams is a friend of Nathan Corrie, so I should have known better. Nathan Corrie behaves like something that has just crawled out of the primeval slime.
However. To return to this typical day that I am talking about. Here are me and Saffy, sat together in our little cosy corner at the back of the class, and there at the front is Ms Glazer, our maths teacher. She’s collecting up our maths homework from yesterday and handing back the stuff we did last week. She’s given me a D+. Not bad! I mean, considering I did it all on my own. At least it’s better than D-, but Ms Glazer doesn’t seem to see it that way. At the bottom, in fierce red ink, she’s written: Jenny, I really would like there to be some improvement during the course of this term. D+ is an improvement! What’s she going on about? I happen to have this mental block, where figures just don’t mean anything to me. Sometimes I seriously think that an essential part of my brain is missing. I have tried putting this point of view to Ms Glazer, but all she says in reply is, “Nonsense! There is nothing whatsoever wrong with your brain. Application is what is lacking.”
Dad is the only one who ever sympathises with me. Mum, in her ruthless high-flying way, agrees with Ms Glazer.
“Anyone can do anything if they just set their mind to it.”
That is RUBBISH. Can a one-legged man run a mile in a minute? I think not! (I wish I had thought to say this to Mum. I’d like to know how she would have wriggled out of that.)
To make up for my D+ in maths, I get an A in biology. It’s for my drawing of the rabbit’s reproductive system. I am rather proud of my rabbit’s reproductive system. I have filled in all the organs in different colours – bright reds and greens and purples – so that it looks like one of those modern paintings that make people like Dad go, “Call that art?” I try showing it to Saffy but she takes one look and shrieks, “That’s disgusting! Take it away!” She says it makes her feel sick. She says anything to do with reproduction makes her feel sick. She is a very sensitive sort of person.
All through the lesson I keep shooting little glances at my brilliant artwork. It occurs to me that the rabbit’s reproductive system, in colour, would make a fascinating and appropriate design for certain types of garment. Those smock things, for instance, that people wear when they are pregnant. It would be a fashion statement!
I get quite excited by this and wonder if perhaps I should go to art school and become a famous clothes designer. Why not? I can do it! Already I have visions of being interviewed on television.
“Jenny Jo Penny, the fashion designer…”
I would put in the Jo, being my middle name, as I think Jenny Penny is just too naff for words. There would be the Jenny Jo Penny collection and all the big Hollywood stars would come to me for their outfits. I would be a designer label! And I wouldn’t ever use fur or animal skin. I would be known for not using it.
“Jenny Jo Penny, the animal-friendly fashion designer…”
Hurrah! I’ve found something to aim at.
But wait! The last lesson of the day is art, with Mr Pickering. We are doing still life, and Mr Pickering has tastefully arranged a few bits of fruit for us to draw. In my new artistic mode I decide that just copying is not very imaginative. I mean if you just want to copy you might as well use a camera. A true artist will interpret. So what I do, I ever so slightly alter the shape of things and then splosh on the brightest colours I can find. Blue, orange, purple, like I did with the rabbit stuff. These will be my trademark!
I’m sitting there, waiting for Mr Pickering to come and comment, and feeling distinctly pleased with myself, when Saffy leans over to have a look. She gives this loud squawk and shrieks, “Ugh! It looks like—”
I am not going to say what she thinks it looks like. It is too vulgar. I am surprised that she knows about such things, although she does have two brothers, both older than she is, which perhaps would account for it. All the same, it was quite uncalled for. (Especially as it made me go all hot and red.)
What Mr Pickering says is not so vulgar, but it is certainly what I would call deflating. I am not going to repeat it. It makes me instantly droop and give up all ideas about going to art school. It is terrible to have so little confidence! But between them, Saffy and Mr Pickering have utterly demolished me.
Get home from school to find the house empty. Mum and Petal not yet back, Dad has gone off to pick up Pip. Help myself to some cold pasta and slump in front of the television till Dad and Pip arrive. Dad at once bustles out to the kitchen to prepare some food, while Pip settles down to his homework. I hardly had any homework when I was ten, but Pip has stacks of it. This is because he goes to this special school that Mum and Dad pay for, and where they are all expected to work like crazy and pass exams so that they can win scholarships to even more special schools and pass more exams and go to university and become nuclear physicists. Or whatever. Me and Petal just used to go up the road to the local Juniors. Nobody cared whether we passed our exams and became nuclear physicists. But Mum says Pip is gifted and it would be a crime not to encourage him. She is probably right. I am not complaining, since I don’t seem to be gifted in any way whatsoever. Not even artistically, in spite of getting an A for my rabbit’s reproductive system
At five o’clock Dad goes off to Giorgio’s for the evening, leaving a big bowl of macaroni cheese for us to dig into. I help myself to a sizeable dollop and go back to the television. Pip is still doing his homework. Petal comes waltzing in, snatches a mouthful of macaroni cheese and rushes upstairs to her bedroom, where she spends most of the evening telephoning her friends. Every half hour or so she wafts back down to grab an apple or a glass of milk. I hear her discussing some party that she is going to at the weekend. Her main concern seems to be whether a certain boy is likely to be there, and if so, who will he be there with?
“Please not that awful tart from Year 10!”
If it’s the awful tart from Year 10, Petal will just die. Why, is what I want to know? But it is no use asking her. She has already gone wailing back up the stairs.
“What will I do? What will I do?”
Fascinating stuff! I sometimes think that Petal and I inhabit different worlds.
We all do actually. Me and Petal and Pip. There’s Pip obsessed with work, and Petal obsessed with boys, and me very