Pretty Funny for a Girl

by Rebecca Elliott

And Leo laughs and closes the door behind us.

  Phew.

  We survived. He doesn’t know I wrote the notes. Which is brilliant, and also he looks like he might be using them to write his new set, which is totally super amazing. That my words, that came out of MY head, might end up coming out of his mouth. Well, it makes me feel light-headed with excitement.

  And even with the massively embarrassing falling over, mud-on-face, farting chairs, and admission of roundness, I can’t stop moronically smiling all the way home.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  But my good mood is busted the minute we get home and I discover Mum is there with the beige beardy-weirdy Santa. Again. And they’re sitting way too close to each other on the sofa for my liking.

  “Ruben!” Noah hollers as he runs into the house and jumps up to sit in between them. I stand in the doorway with my arms folded.

  “Hey, guys,” says the Beard, with a mouth disgustingly full of custard-cream cookies. “I just brought your mum home from her shift—thought I’d hang out for a bit?”

  “Stay for dinner!” says Noah and my heart sinks.

  “Aw, thanks, Noah, but I probably ought to be getting off home soon,” he says.

  “Yeah, Noah, he probably ought to be getting home soon,” I say, arms still crossed and tapping my foot on the floor like an old cartoon of a fuming housewife. Steam might shoot out of my ears soon.

  “So, guys, how was school?” says Mum, hugging Noah and ignoring my tapping.

  “I broke my leg,” Noah says, proudly showing them his knee. “But we went to Leo’s house and he fixed it.”

  “Ow, that looks painful,” simpers the Beard. “You must have been really brave!”

  The patronizing, whiny fart.

  I raise my eyebrows at him, at everyone, though apparently no one sees.

  “Who’s Leo?” Mum asks me. She raises her head at me with a look in her eyes. “A boyfriend, Haylah?”

  “Mum! No, he’s no one,” I huff. She catches my eye roll this time. “I’m going to get changed.”

  “Whoa, that’s new, Haylah!” she says as I walk off. “Changing out of school uniform before dinner! Never thought I’d see the day.”

  “Well. Sometimes things change without anyone being told anything—isn’t that right?” I respond as I thump up the stairs.

  “OK…” says Mum, clearly trying to hide the fact that she’s getting pretty angry with me now. “Was school all right, love?” she calls in a forced bright tone, but my bedroom door slams behind me and I don’t reply.

  I sit on my bed, grab my pillow, and hug it over my stomach. I know I’m being an arse. I know I’m hurting Mum’s feelings. But I can’t help the way I feel.

  Which is angry.

  And hungry.

  I should have taken some snacks from the kitchen before I stormed off. But if I went back down there now it would kind of take away from the drama of the whole door-slamming protest. It would be like Lady Gaga ending her show with a big firework explosion that fades to black, and then creeping back onstage with a tiny flashlight, on her hands and knees, trying to find a lost contact lens.

  Plus, I’d have to see them snuggled up on the sofa together again. I mean, I know Noah’s sitting between them but still. One sofa. Both of them on it. Eurgh.

  All right, so I know he’s just a guy and she’s just a woman, staring into a beard, asking him to give her a lift home, but somehow the whole thing stinks. I mean, why didn’t she tell me about him? This is my home too, right? And then she just brings this chin-sweater-wearing, bald-ankled cack-flump right into the center of our lives with no questions asked. I mean, what if he’s got a wife and five kids Mum doesn’t know about? Or maybe she does know about them and they’re having an honest-to-God affair—ugh! So gross. What if he’s a serial killer? That beard has serial killer written all over it. Alongside the crumbs from the custard creams he just ate. Our custard creams.

  Mum knocks on my door, and before I can tell her to go away she comes in and sits on the end of my bed. She puts a hand on my foot and squeezes it as she begins to talk.

  “Hi, babe. Ruben’s gone now… Look, we both know this is difficult for you…”

  So it’s “we both” now, is it? I think furiously.

  “…but all this slamming of doors and being outright rude to my…friend…well, it’s just not like you.”

  “But he’s not a ‘friend’ though, is he? He’s a boyfriend, right?” I say.

  Mum looks a mixture of pleased and pissed. “Well, maybe. Look, I told you, I don’t know yet. We’re going to take it slow and see what happens, OK?”

  “Not really.”

  Definitely swinging to pissed. “Haylah! I would say you’re acting like a little kid, but even Noah’s better than this. He’s actually the one being cool about Ruben.”

  “That’s because he doesn’t remember what it was like when Dad lived here!” I say before my brain has a chance to shut my mouth up.

  “What do you mean?” says Mum, her face flashing red with, what? Anger? Hurt? Embarrassment?

  “I mean,” I say slowly, “he doesn’t remember the shouting, the yelling, the throwing of things, the sound as Dad closed the door for the last time.”

  My voice goes all squeaky and I can’t help it. I start to cry. Stupid eyes.

  “Oh, love,” says Mum, and she moves closer to me for a hug, but I shrug her away.

  “Look, Mum,” I say, shaking the tears off, “I just don’t know anything about him. I mean, do you? How do you know he’s not a serial killer or…a Nazi, or a satanist, or a…trainspotter.”

  She laughs a little.

  “I’m serious!” I say.

  “OK, OK. Look, I’ve known him at work for a year and a half. He’s been divorced for five years, he doesn’t have any kids, and with his job they’d have done a background and police check so I doubt very much he’s a serial killer. He was brought up Irish-Catholic, and though he doesn’t go to church any more I doubt he’s a satanist either. And, as far as I know, he’s not into trainspotting, though if you must know he is a bit of a twitcher.”

  “Oh my GOD, that’s disgusting! What does that even mean?”

  “It means birdwatcher, Hay, nothing sinister! And you know what, if you want to know anything else about him, just ask him. He’s not Dad, Hay. He’s a good guy. He’s friendly and he’s pretty funny too. You might actually like him, you never know.” She’s fiddling with a loose thread on my duvet cover.

  “Mmm-hmm,” I say, unconvinced.

  Mum sighs. “Look, I’ll probably never love a guy again like I loved your dad. But he wasn’t good for me, or for any of us, and he left. And…I’m sorry that happened, and I promise I won’t get into a real relationship again unless I’m as sure as I can be that we won’t get hurt again. But I’ve been on my own for a long time now, Hay, and I work my butt off and hardly have time to see my girlfriends any more and, well, at the moment it’s just nice to be with someone. It’s nice to have something more exciting to think about than the rinse aid needs topping up again, you know?”

  I laugh a little. And I know she’s right. I know she works crazy hard for us and that her social life’s died a grisly death lately. But I mean, couldn’t she just join a book club again or something, rather than hook up with this guy? I meet her eyes and they look soft and sad.

  “Fine. It’s just…I like it when it’s just us.”

  “I know, love. I do too. He’s not moving in or anything like that! So it’s still just us. We’ll always be just us, but maybe it’ll be just us plus another one some of the time. OK?”

  This all sounds unreasonably reasonable. And I’m about to agree when I remember the other thing that’s been bugging me.

  “OK. But I want you to stay the same and already you’re changing…for him.”

  Mum looks confused. “How do you mean?”

  “The makeup? The leg shaving? I thought you were against doing that sort of stuff just for what some guy might think of
you.”

  She’s back picking at that loose thread again. “I am. I don’t… Look, Ruben likes me for me, and that’s the important thing. I’m not under any pressure from him to do that…stuff. I guess I’m just doing it because I feel more confident, more attractive. Does that make sense?”

  “No,” I say, though my heart’s not in it.

  She doesn’t seem to hear anyway. “And it’s just a bit of lipstick and a smooth set of shins—it’s not as if I’m getting extreme plastic surgery and breast enlargements.”

  “Mum, if you got breast enlargements, we’d have to employ a scaffolder just to construct your bras.”

  Mum laughs so I go on. “We’d have to inform NASA before they think they’ve discovered two new planets careering into our own.”

  She laughs some more.

  “There’d be panic in the streets as people flee from the unidentified orbs of destruction.”

  “Yes, thank you, Hay,” she laughs. “Can I get a hug now?”

  We hug.

  “I love you, gorgeous girl,” she says.

  “Love you too, Mum. Oh and…”

  And I know this sounds bad, but as we pull away from the hug I figure it’s a good time to ask about Friday night. So slowly, and gently, with my head slightly to the side and my eyes as innocent and big as I can make them, I say, “Can I go over to Chloe’s on Friday night? I just think I need a little space. Is that OK? They’ll bring me back by eleven or whatever.”

  “Well, I’ll have work. You know that, but…yeah, OK. I think you deserve a break.”

  Yay! I think. The spell worked!

  Then she ruins the moment by going on, “Maybe Ruben can babysit Noah.”

  Ugh! Why did she have to say that? Now I’m ticked again.

  “I see. So you’d just leave Noah alone with him?”

  Mum sighs, but with frustration. “Yes, I would. Noah likes Ruben—they get on really well together.”

  “Yeah, but Mum, Noah likes the Grumpy Old Troll from Dora the Explorer—it doesn’t mean you should get him over to babysit, does it?”

  “Haylah…”

  And I know I’m breaking my own spell, but I just can’t stop myself, and in truth I’m kind of enjoying it. “I’m not saying Ruben’s the Grumpy Old Troll! Although, now you mention it, there is a striking resemblance.”

  “Haylah!” Mum is getting ticked again too. “Do you want to go to Chloe’s or not?”

  I hate it when she slam dunks me into submission. But she’s won and she knows she has. Reluctantly, I relent.

  “Sorry, yes, I do. It’s fine—he can babysit. Thanks, Mum.” Though the “thanks” is a bit sarcastic.

  She sighs again. “You need to do your homework, OK?”

  “I am—look.” I wave my hands toward a pile of papers on my desk, hoping she won’t look too closely. But she gets up and starts to examine them. I squirm.

  “This isn’t homework, it’s jokes. You’re writing jokes. Haylah, love, we’ve talked about this! I think it’s great that you write, well, anything, but every parents’ night your teachers tell me if you just knuckled down and concentrated on your schoolwork rather than always having your head in the clouds, thinking up stuff to put in all these notebooks of yours, you’d be getting straight As.”

  “OK, fine, I’ll do some homework. Happy now?” I say, grabbing my German workbook off the floor. “Sieh zu, wie ich die dumme deutsche Hausaufgaben machei…”

  “Ecstatic,” she says with a clueless frown.

  When she leaves, I chuck the German book across the room.

  I know what’s she’s saying. I know she’s trying to “take it slow” with Ruben, but I can’t shake off the feeling that she’s going to get hurt. That we all are. That we’re better off without anyone, and definitely without him. He’s not right for her, for us—he’s too much of a bearded weirdo. He’s a beardo. And sooner or later he’ll realize he doesn’t want to deal with someone else’s moody teenage daughter and nutso little son and he’ll leave her. And she’ll get depressed again, like after Dad left, and she won’t get out of bed for weeks.

  Well, whatever. If it’s what she wants, I guess.

  I grab my notebook. Screw the German. I know how to ask, “Wo ist die Jugendherberge?” and that their word for fart is pupsen. What else do you really need?

  I clear my mind. And start writing down more jokes.

  Sometimes I just write about funny stuff that happened that day, but sometimes I think of a punchline, maybe something people say a lot, and then I work backward to make it into a joke like:

  I dislocated my shoulder the other day.

  I told the gym teacher I didn’t want to play tennis.

  But he twisted my arm.

  Or:

  Did you hear about the man who suddenly quit eating red meat?

  Yeah, he went cold turkey.

  Or:

  I’ve got a big karate-chopping exam next week.

  So I ought to hit the books.

  OK, so these might not be great jokes, but at least they take my mind off Mum and the Grumpy Old Troll.

  Later we eat dinner and then play “Guess Who” with Noah—it’s his favorite game, but only when we play our own version: “Facial Stereotypes” as we call it, or as Noah calls it, “Faecal Stereotip! Faecal Stereotip!”

  He doesn’t really understand the game, but he thinks it’s funny because we think it’s funny.

  Basically, as with the normal version, you have a load of cartoon faces in front of you and you have to narrow down which character the other team chose, but instead of asking, “Is it a woman?” or “Do they wear glasses?” and so on, you have to ask questions about their personality.

  We stand up all our characters, Mum picks a card and me and Noah ask the questions.

  “OK, so…do they throw big parties?”

  “No,” says Mum.

  “Right, Noah, so we have to put down all the party animals, like Andy, Kyle, Rebecca, Emily… Oooh, and Ashley. She’s wearing a beret, definitely up for a party.”

  “Do they have ADHD?”

  “No,” says Mum, laughing.

  We put down Jay and Brandon.

  “Would they know how to spell ‘unnecessarily?’”

  “Yes, definitely,” says Mum.

  Down go all the stupid-looking faces.

  “If someone dropped a ten-pound note in front of them, would they pick it up and keep it?”

  “No.”

  Down go all the shifty-looking faces.

  “Do they get mostly swiped left on Tinder?”

  “Quite possibly, yes.”

  Down go all the good-looking people.

  “Could they be a vicar in a local church?”

  “Yes,” Mum laughs.

  Down go anyone remaining who’s slightly young and trendy.

  “Do they have a weird collection of Star Trek figurines?”

  “Erm… It wouldn’t surprise me—yes!”

  And we’re down to two—Nick, an old, fat, balding guy with glasses and tufts of white hair above his ears and David. Who has a beige beard.

  And I really want to ask, “Does this look like someone you’d trust to babysit your child?”

  But before I do Noah comes in with, “Does he look like someone who’d be fun to play with?”

  “Yes, Noah, I think he does!” says Mum.

  “It’s David!” he shouts triumphantly, and Mum turns her card around to show beardy blimmin’ David.

  “Well, of course you chose the one with the beard,” I snap.

  “Indeed I did, Haylah. That OK with you?” says Mum with her jokey, “sassy” look, which involves a raised eyebrow and pouty lips.

  “I suppose,” I say, “if you like that kind of thing.”

  “I do like that sort of thing, yes,” Mum replies, but this time with a warning tone in her voice.

  “I like beards! I WANT ONE!” says Noah.

  But the evening feels spoiled again (THANKS, RUBEN) so I make my
excuses and head back to my room.

  Once there, my thoughts shoot back to Leo. I was in his house—actually in his house! And he thought I was funny, and I’m pretty sure he was using my jokes—MY JOKES—to write his set for Friday night! I should have just told him they were mine, but that would definitely have been super awkward and he would have seen me for the desperate stalker that I am. And then I—Oh God, did I really tell him I was a communist?

  I’m not entirely sure what it is I’ve claimed to be, so I look up communism on my phone and it turns out it was the cause of loads of death due to starvation and genocide and that cute-sounding Little Red Book I’d heard of was actually a book used by a bad Chinese dude called Chairman Mao who killed, like, millions of people. And for some reason I thought THIS sounded better than owning up to wanting to be a comedian?

  Before it gets cemented in his head that I’m a mental, communism-obsessed maniac, I should just tell him I wrote the jokes. Tell him I want to be a comedian too, and then he’ll realize that we have loads in common, that out of all the kids at school it’s just the two of us who share a pure love of the funny. So it kind of makes sense that we should totally hang out together.

  And possibly curl up intertwined on a sofa, feeding each other grapes.

  Lying on my bed, I start staging the conversation in my head. I imagine walking up to him on Friday night and saying, “Yeah, so, funny thing is, I’m not actually a huge fan of occasionally genocidal political movements. I just find it hard to talk to people about wanting to be a comedian in case they laugh at me. Which…is kind of ironic because comedians should want to be laughed at. But the thing is I don’t want to be laughed at, I want to be laughed with. Which is why I said I was a communist, which I’m not really and…”

  OH, FOR GOD’S SAKE! I CAN’T EVEN MAKE THIS CONVERSATION WORK IN MY HEAD! HOW AM I EVER GOING TO MAKE HIM THINK I’M ANYTHING OTHER THAN A LOSER IN REAL LIFE?

  Breathe, Pig, just breathe. Write some more jokes. That’s what you’re good at. Stick to that. Then quietly and anonymously post them through his locker for the next few days and then go out Friday night, keep your mouth shut, and just enjoy watching lovely Leo from a distance.

  A safe distance. Where he can’t hear any of the nonsense that comes out of your big, stupid, pig mouth.