Pretty Funny for a Girl

by Rebecca Elliott

  And I walk to my class on shaky legs, the harsh sting of regret hitting me a little more with each step.

  What oh what the hell was I thinking?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  For the rest of the day, I’m just a big sack of sweaty nerves. Why, why, why did I think that was a good idea? He’s going to open his locker, read out the crappy joke to his friends, who’ll all laugh along with him—not at the joke but at the strange, sad muppet who must have left it to try to get his attention.

  Oh God, they might even know it’s me!

  “I bet it’s that big girl—she looks just like the sort of desperate weirdo that would do something that crazy,” they’ll say.

  Ugh! Why am I such an incessant ball-bag of muppetry!

  But at the end of the day, desperate to somehow kill the turmoil in my head, I find an excuse to leave Kas and Chloe and head down to the lockers. Maybe if I see the look of hatred in his eyes as he reads the joke it will put a stop to this stupid crush once and for all and I won’t care any more. Or maybe it’ll miraculously fall out of his locker and land on the floor, and I can subtly pick it up and trash it before any damage is done? Or maybe there’s a part of me that thinks I deserve to be laughed at for being such an idiot in the first place and I’ll get some sort of closure on any hopes I might have of being anything other than a dumbass loser.

  Who knows? But, for whatever reason, my feet have taken me here. To the lockers. There are dozens of students milling around, so at least I’m not noticeable as I lean up against the wall, staring down at my phone, pretending to be engrossed in something other than Leo’s locker which I can just about see around the corner.

  The sound of squeaking shoes on the floor, laughter and chattering, and, cutting above it all, the opening and slamming of metal doors fill the air. Then Leo’s voice. He’s with a group, as always. My heart leaps. I try to keep my eyes fixed on my phone, but they keep flicking up to him.

  Stupid eyes.

  Still chatting to his friends, including a tall girl with shiny braces on her huge teeth who keeps touching his back (who is she? How dare she touch him!), he opens his locker door. My note doesn’t fall on the floor. He picks it up. He looks at it.

  Oh God, he’s actually looking at it.

  I can’t hear what he’s saying. I don’t think he’s saying anything. He turns. He’s…laughing. Holding the note and laughing. Not a big belly laugh, just a cute, chesty chuckle. A private laugh. Oh halle-frickin’-lujah, this is just amazing!

  He’s looking around, maybe trying to identify the note’s author. I stare down at my phone.

  Don’t look up. Don’t look up, stupid eyes, I beg you.

  Then I do. Dammit. But it’s OK—he’s not looking my way. He’s putting the note in his back pocket. I can’t quite hear, but I think the tall, toothy girl next to him asks what he was laughing at.

  “Oh, nothing,” I see his lips say, still a smile on them as a leftover after his laughter. Laughter I gave him. Straight from my head to his. Just like I’d always imagined.

  I turn and walk away, unable to stop the smile forming on my own lips.

  That. Was. Hella. A-ma-zing.

  My brain still glowing like I’ve been plugged into an outlet, I pretty much skip home from school, actually quite glad that Kas and Chloe are both busy for the weekend with their families as I don’t think I could hide my Leo-based mood from them. I pick up Noah from school, still on a high. I tell him the pictures he’s done today are the best I’ve ever seen (though between you and me they are, of course, still really quite terrible). I tell him we’re going to read all his books this weekend. And play whatever games he wants. And go to the park. And that tomorrow he can have an extra-long, extra-bubbly bath.

  “Until my fingers look like brains?” he asks excitedly.

  “Yes!” I answer. “Until all your fingers look like tiny wrinkly brains! And you know why?” I ask.

  “Why?”

  “Because today is a good day!”

  “I thought today was a Friday?” he says.

  When we get through the front door, I can’t wait to give Mum a big old hug on the sofa and share my blindingly brilliant mood.

  But instead I hear two voices from the living room. My mum’s and…a man’s. A random man I’ve never met before.

  He says something and then she…oh, my good Lord, she’s actually giggling. Like actual girlie giggles. All high-pitched and breathy. They say that laughter is the best medicine, but hers right now is causing me to feel nauseous.

  “Mummy!” Noah shouts. “Haylah, Mummy’s here with a man!” and he runs down the hall toward her disgustingly girlie cackle.

  “Right,” I say. “Brilliant.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Like a crime scene officer arriving at dimly lit, ominous surroundings, unsure of what gruesome sight lies before me, I gingerly enter the living room to see my mother on the sofa hugging Noah while beaming a sickening, lipstick-clad smile at a strange man sitting in our armchair. I fight the urge to recoil.

  “Haylah, this is Ruben.”

  Well. Firstly, what the hell kind of a name is Ruben? I mean, has he just walked straight out of the Old Testament or something? We already have a Noah in the house—what’s next, Nebuchadnezzar?

  And secondly what is up with his facial hair? The man’s face derping up at me is all beard. I can barely make out any features behind it, it’s so all-encompassing. It’s like a matted squirrel landed on the man’s face and he’s never got around to detaching it.

  Plus, everything about him is some shade of beige. The beard, the clothes, I assume the personality—and from the beige sleeves of his beige jacket sprout thick beige hair from his wrists. Like the straw stuffing of a badly dressed, poorly constructed scarecrow.

  Of course I don’t say any of this. I just give him a “Hey” and then shoot a questioning look at Mum.

  Determined to ignore my look, she sheepishly says, “Ruben’s a friend from work. I’m just going to go and make us a cup of tea.” And then she sashays out of the room, leaving me and Noah alone with this bearded nutter.

  “Oh,” I say. “Are you a doctor then?”

  “No, I’m a Play Specialist,” he says, in absolute total seriousness.

  You can’t see his lips, so when he talks it’s the only time there’s any evidence of a mouth behind the beard. It’s like someone poked a hole in a Shredded Wheat.

  “Play Specialist? Is that an actual thing?” I say, suspicious of everything this man stands for.

  “Haylah!” Mum screeches from the kitchen. She’s trying to keep her voice breezy, but it just comes out hysterical. “Of course it is! Sorry, Ruben!”

  “No!” he says, laughing a big, deep, annoyingly Santa-esque laugh. I mean, it’s not quite “ho ho ho” but it’s not far off. “It’s fine! It is an actual thing. I use play to help sick children on the ward. To help them understand what they’re going through, or sometimes just to distract them from what they’re going through, to keep them happy at a difficult time.”

  “By playing with them?” I ask, with a frown.

  “Yeah!” the beige man says, with an unnecessarily merry chuckle at the end.

  “And do you need a qualification for that, or can anyone do it?”

  “Haylah!” Mum shouts from the kitchen again.

  “I have a PhD in Lego management,” says the beard with a grin.

  I can hear Mum giggling pathetically and I force out a slightly scornful “Ha” in recognition of his “joke.”

  “Legos! Legos!” Noah shouts in excitement. We very rarely have any guests around and he can barely contain his delight in Mum’s new “friend.” The traitorous little wretch.

  “Do you like Legos, little man? You got any we can play with now?” says the bearded idiot.

  “Yeah, yeah!” says Noah, dragging a big plastic box of giant Lego pieces out from underneath the coffee table.

  Ruben starts asking Noah what his favorite thing to build is an
d kneels down on the floor next to him to play. And it’s then that I notice, as his beige corduroy pants rise up his ankles, that this freak isn’t. Wearing. Any. Socks. And I almost spew up a little in my mouth.

  I walk into the kitchen, open the cupboards, and grab fistfuls of snacks.

  “Hey, Mum,” I whisper, “who the hell is that?”

  “Haylah, seriously, love, what’s got into you?” she whispers back. “He’s just a friend. I expect you to be nice to my friends—I’m nice to yours!”

  “A friend…or a BOYfriend?” I whisper-shout back at her.

  “Well, I don’t know yet,” she says with a disgustingly coy grin. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see! Look, we just get on well at work and we’ve had a few coffees together, that’s all.”

  “Coffees!” I exclaim wildly as if she’s just told me they’ve had several children together.

  “Shh! Yes, coffees. Well, lattes actually.” She whisper-giggles like a brazen hussy. “Is that OK with you?”

  “Huh. I guess,” I say, ripping off bits of baguette and shoving them into my mouth to ease the nausea.

  “Anyway, I invited him over and we might go out for a proper drink later. If that’s OK with you, of course, Mother,” she teases, with that horrible, glossy red girlie grin again.

  So this is why she’s wearing lipstick and—eurgh!—shaving her legs. For him. She’s a traitor to the sisterhood.

  With a swish of her nurse’s uniform, which is frumpy and utilitarian and bears absolutely no resemblance to the “sexy” nurse’s uniform people wear to fancy-dress parties, but has nevertheless taken on a whole new sordid meaning in my head, she grabs the two cups of tea. I follow her back into the living room and she puts them on the table before slumping back on to the sofa.

  “Thanks, Dawn,” Ruben rumbles, using my mother’s first name like he owns her or something.

  I stand in the doorway, stuffing my face with crackers as this stranger kneels up on our rug, one hand holding one of Noah’s Lego characters, the other gripping one of our mugs from which he slurps our tea through his gnarly beard.

  I mean, what the hell gives this no-sock-wearing, beige-bearded Santa-wannabee scumlord the right to touch and consume our stuff?

  “What’re you guys making?” asks Mum from the sofa.

  “Well, I’m working on a house and… Noah, what you got going on there?” he says.

  Noah holds up a random collection of colored bricks and announces, “It’s a dog-powered wig-making machine.”

  Evil Santa bellows his ho-hoing laugh, and Mum chuckles into her tea.

  “Well, that’s quite an imagination you’ve got there, my boy!” he booms.

  MY BOY?

  And it’s at this point that I lose it. Which I think you’ll agree is fair enough, right? Who does this stinkhole think he is? Coming in here, talking to Noah as if he’s his dad or something?

  My cheeks burn red and I explode with: “He gets it from his dad!”

  There’s then an agonizing silence and all the air in the room seems to go cold as Mum stares at me with a look so sharp I can feel its two points spearing into my soul.

  Regret starts seeping into my brain as I desperately hope Noah didn’t hear me mention the forbidden D-A-D word.

  But thankfully both Noah and Ruben weren’t really paying attention. Only in the silence now are they vaguely aware that something sinister just passed in this room. They look up for a moment, both with clueless expressions on their faces like meerkats in the desert checking for danger, but Mum quickly removes her daggers from me and offers the simple creatures a comforting grin which is enough to settle them back down to their Legos.

  The truth is I’m not really sure why I was building up or even bringing up the guy who left us when Noah was three months old and ran off up north with his secretary. If Noah had heard me it would only upset him. So OK, yeah, it wasn’t one of my best moments but still, I can’t be expected to just put up with this crap and not say anything, right?

  I sigh loudly, then storm off in the direction of my room, slamming the door behind me as I hear Mum saying, “Sorry, Ruben. I guess she’s had a bad day or something.”

  “No, that’s quite all right, I understand,” replies the sockless wonder.

  I pace around my bedroom, kicking clothes and books across the floor as I go.

  The thing is, I haven’t had a bad day. I’ve actually had a super-awesome day, but now I come home to find this new man-friend invading our house, and in an instant Mum’s not Mum any more—she’s this giggling girlfriend in a nurse’s costume. And, oh God, they’re going to get married. And have kids. Little tiny, bearded, beige brats running around with their high-pitched Santa laughs.

  I stop pacing and curl up on my bed. OK, I shouldn’t have brought up Dad. That was stupid. It’s the unwritten rule in this house. Don’t talk about Dad. Don’t even think about Dad. After all, he never thinks about us. When he first left, he used to see me and Noah every weekend, then every fortnight, then his new girlfriend got a job up north. Last I heard, they were trying for a baby and, well, now he doesn’t even call us on our birthdays.

  I shut my eyes. Shut it all out.

  A few hours later, I wake from my nap to the muffled sound of Noah’s usual loud complaints at being put to bed. I can make out his piercing whines followed by Mum’s calm bedtime-story-reading tones and then the boom of an irritatingly jolly Santa laugh.

  He’s still here then.

  Soon after, Mum calls upstairs to say that they’re going for drinks and to check on Noah. I grunt back a response, and the front door shuts. Then the post-nap grogginess lifts and I feel stronger, fresher.

  I’m not going to let this mountain-man twonk-womble spoil my day. Why should he?

  Just think about something else.

  So I think about Leo. Laughing at my joke. And the thought makes my insides go deliciously fuzzy. I want this feeling to last. I should write him a new one. Put it through his locker again on Monday.

  I get up and sit at my desk, grab my notebook, and start twiddling my pen around in my fingers. But, as much as I want to escape into the funny, my mind is blank. I know I’ve got all weekend to think up funny stuff but I really need something to come to me now, to lift me out of this brain funk. I sigh and swap the pen for my phone and putz around on that for a bit.

  Then some sappy nonsense meme Kas has reposted sparks a thought. I turn off the phone and let the idea grow in the silence. And with it, the familiar excitement that I’m just about to capture something funny.

  I go after it, like the BFG chasing his glowing dreams with a net before plucking them out of the sky, only with jokes. Instead of shoving it in a jar, I need to write it down before it floats away. I close my eyes for a moment, take a deep breath, then grab my pen and trap the funny.

  Oh, I am so the BFG1 of comedy.

  * * *

  1 The Big Funny Girl, obviously.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Mum gets back late from her drinks with the woolly-chinned Lego-twit. When she comes into my room to say goodnight, I pretend to be asleep. She gently kisses me on the forehead and for a moment I feel guilty about the way I was earlier, but then I remember the hairy, sockless ankles that she brought into my world without even a heads-up. And the anger, along with a little bile, rises up in me again.

  The next morning over breakfast it’s all super awkward between me and Mum and neither of us really says anything to each other. Noah happily fills the silences by rambling on about his favorite superheroes and what he thinks they’d have for breakfast. Apparently, Batman would never eat anything as “wimpy” as granola, but he’d happily lift his mask and nibble an almond croissant.

  Mum leaves for a day shift and says, “We’ll talk later, OK, honey?”

  “What about?” I grunt.

  She sighs. Kisses Noah goodbye. And leaves.

  I give Noah the bath I promised him yesterday, but my heart’s not really in it.

  “I li
ke Ruben. Do you like Ruben?” chatters Noah.

  “Yeah. I suppose,” I say, kneeling on the floor and washing and rinsing his hair a little more violently than I normally would. “Right, stand up and hold your hands out.” I squeeze soap on to his palms. “Now clean your bum and belly button.”

  “Why do we have belly buttons?” he asks while scrubbing away.

  “Noah, is this going to turn into a massive list of ‘whys’? Because I’m not sure I can be bothered this morning.”

  “No. Just one ‘why.’” He sounds certain. I fall for it.

  “OK,” I say, rearranging my legs and sitting cross-legged on the floor. “We have belly buttons because when you’re in your mummy’s tummy she eats food and some of it goes into your tummy down a tube that goes in through your belly button. Got it?”

  He stares at me for a moment, his face screwed up as he ponders this, then he sits back down in the bath with a splash and ponders it some more as he drums his little fingers on the side of the bath. You can almost see that one original question exploding into a million others behind his eyes.

  Oh, sweet baby cheeses, here we go.

  “How was I in Mummy’s tummy? Did she eat me?” he says.

  “No, Daddy put you there,” I say as casually as possible as I lean back against the towel rail.

  “How?”

  Uh-oh. “Doesn’t matter. Just…magic.”

  “Is Daddy a magician?”

  “No, although he’s good at disappearing acts. Now wash the back of your neck.”

  Noah does as he’s told, but the distraction doesn’t have the desired effect. “What’s a disappearing axe?”

  “Nothing. No, he’s not a magician. He’s a financial advisor.”

  “Is that like a magician?” he says, lying back in the water.

  “Erm…yeah, if you like. Look, I think it’s pretty much time to get out now, Noah.” I am desperately trying to draw the conversation to a close as I stand up and start searching for the least-damp towel.

  He ignores me and looks down at his belly poking above the water like a plump pink island surrounded by a bubbly sea.