from
Glee
.
I know the people here are probably not my BFFLs.
I know never to repeat a single word I hear in the vicarage.
I know that I’ve got to lie every day and that I can never invite any of my new friends home.
It’s pretty exhausting spending every moment of every day lying to someone or other. I’m either pretending at college or pretending at the vicarage. The only time I get to relax is in bed at night and even then Rebecca could easily ask me a question that might catch me off guard. The only thing that she doesn’t know about me though is that my life is as crap as hers. That I find it all as hard as she does. Maybe she’s guessed but I don’t think so, she thinks it all comes so easy for me, that I’m Little Miss Normal. God, how could anybody growing up in this place with parents like ours turn out normal? That’s whatI’ve been hoping college might teach me, instead of all the stupid Maths and stuff, and I wish Rebecca would work a bit harder on her normality skills too. I watched her walk past me in the corridor today, her backpack heavy on both shoulders, bent over and
muttering to herself, her trousers too short and those awful bright-green socks emerging from her clumpy shoes. I wanted to run over and push her behind me, hide her from the stares. I see people sniggering all the time, I’ve had to watch it all my life and for a long time I think it hurt me more than it ever hurt her. I want to yell at them to get lost, to leave her alone, maybe shove them or hurt them so they’ll know what it’s like to be picked on. But Rebecca, it’s like she doesn’t even notice and doesn’t even care, so that’s why I’ve given up on her and I leave her to get on with it now. She can embrace Weirdsville all she likes, but she’s not taking me down with her.
I hope Craig’s in tomorrow and that he talks to me again. If he does I need to make the most of it this time and show him I like him. Maybe he’ll ask me out on a date and take me somewhere nice, just the two of us.
The week drags though and he’s barely there at all. I take the plunge on Thursday and send a friend request on Facebook during study time. We’re not supposed to use the Internet in the sixth-form centre during study periods but nobody else takes any notice of the rule so I don’t see why I should. I wait for him to add me, fidgeting in mychair, clicking the mouse every couple of seconds for the entire forty minutes, forty minutes which should have been spent trying to do my Physics homework. Our parents made us take these stupid subjects and I can’t follow a word of it. Nothing.
Nada
. It goes through my head like sand through a sieve and I know the teacher can see it too. I haven’t answered a single question right yet. I watch Rebecca struggling to understand, the concentration on her face makes her look odder than ever, and I want to scream at them that we hate it, that we
didn’t want to do it and that he made us. Instead I copy someone else’s answers and keep my fingers crossed the teacher will keep on letting me get away with it if I smile nicely and hand my homework in on time.
Every lesson is like that. What do Rebecca and I want with Maths and Physics and Chemistry? He chose our subjects, he thought they posed the fewest risks, and guessed we wouldn’t understand a thing. We might as well have been studying Martian. He gets a kick out of proving we’re useless. Him and his poxy Theology degree from Cambridge, which as far as I can tell has been the high point of his life so far. Ever since then he’s been chasing greatness, trying to prove he deserves the big time, but the Bishop doesn’t rate him, I guess, despite the hours he spends licking his boots, and the rest of his life has been a ride on the helter-skelter of anticlimax. He should face facts: we’re not going to be brain surgeons or scientists or Nobel Prize winners. Rebecca should be doing English,every chance she gets she’s in the library
Glee
.
I know the people here are probably not my BFFLs.
I know never to repeat a single word I hear in the vicarage.
I know that I’ve got to lie every day and that I can never invite any of my new friends home.
It’s pretty exhausting spending every moment of every day lying to someone or other. I’m either pretending at college or pretending at the vicarage. The only time I get to relax is in bed at night and even then Rebecca could easily ask me a question that might catch me off guard. The only thing that she doesn’t know about me though is that my life is as crap as hers. That I find it all as hard as she does. Maybe she’s guessed but I don’t think so, she thinks it all comes so easy for me, that I’m Little Miss Normal. God, how could anybody growing up in this place with parents like ours turn out normal? That’s whatI’ve been hoping college might teach me, instead of all the stupid Maths and stuff, and I wish Rebecca would work a bit harder on her normality skills too. I watched her walk past me in the corridor today, her backpack heavy on both shoulders, bent over and
muttering to herself, her trousers too short and those awful bright-green socks emerging from her clumpy shoes. I wanted to run over and push her behind me, hide her from the stares. I see people sniggering all the time, I’ve had to watch it all my life and for a long time I think it hurt me more than it ever hurt her. I want to yell at them to get lost, to leave her alone, maybe shove them or hurt them so they’ll know what it’s like to be picked on. But Rebecca, it’s like she doesn’t even notice and doesn’t even care, so that’s why I’ve given up on her and I leave her to get on with it now. She can embrace Weirdsville all she likes, but she’s not taking me down with her.
I hope Craig’s in tomorrow and that he talks to me again. If he does I need to make the most of it this time and show him I like him. Maybe he’ll ask me out on a date and take me somewhere nice, just the two of us.
The week drags though and he’s barely there at all. I take the plunge on Thursday and send a friend request on Facebook during study time. We’re not supposed to use the Internet in the sixth-form centre during study periods but nobody else takes any notice of the rule so I don’t see why I should. I wait for him to add me, fidgeting in mychair, clicking the mouse every couple of seconds for the entire forty minutes, forty minutes which should have been spent trying to do my Physics homework. Our parents made us take these stupid subjects and I can’t follow a word of it. Nothing.
Nada
. It goes through my head like sand through a sieve and I know the teacher can see it too. I haven’t answered a single question right yet. I watch Rebecca struggling to understand, the concentration on her face makes her look odder than ever, and I want to scream at them that we hate it, that we
didn’t want to do it and that he made us. Instead I copy someone else’s answers and keep my fingers crossed the teacher will keep on letting me get away with it if I smile nicely and hand my homework in on time.
Every lesson is like that. What do Rebecca and I want with Maths and Physics and Chemistry? He chose our subjects, he thought they posed the fewest risks, and guessed we wouldn’t understand a thing. We might as well have been studying Martian. He gets a kick out of proving we’re useless. Him and his poxy Theology degree from Cambridge, which as far as I can tell has been the high point of his life so far. Ever since then he’s been chasing greatness, trying to prove he deserves the big time, but the Bishop doesn’t rate him, I guess, despite the hours he spends licking his boots, and the rest of his life has been a ride on the helter-skelter of anticlimax. He should face facts: we’re not going to be brain surgeons or scientists or Nobel Prize winners. Rebecca should be doing English,every chance she gets she’s in the library
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