Pretty Funny for a Girl

by Rebecca Elliott

  “Can I help you, girls?” booms Mrs. Perkins.

  “Just got some Frick House business with the girls at the back, miss.”

  “Fine, but be quick about it,” tuts Mrs. Perkins before returning her attention to her newspaper.

  They strut toward us as the rest of the room loses interest and returns to their general twitting about.

  They both perch on our table and Destiny leans toward me. “So, Pig—I’ve gotta know if it’s true. I heard you threw a pint of beer in Leo Jackson’s dad’s face when he wouldn’t kiss you, is that right?”

  “No! What? Why, is that what’s going around?” I exclaim.

  “Just what we heard!” says Destiny, her hand raised to me, indicating that that’s the end of the discussion. I rest my head in my hands, willing the world to go away.

  “Chloe,” says Jules, “your nails. Look. A. Mazing. Where did you get them done?”

  Jules always talks with a lot of full stops. As if everything she says is. Of. HUGE. Importance.

  Chloe’s face lights up like someone’s just given her an Oscar.

  “My sister did them,” she says proudly. “She’s training to be a beautician.”

  “Wow! They. Are. SO. Awesome. Would she do mine?” says Jules.

  I look at Chloe’s nails as she fans them out on the table in front of us. Each is decorated in a different color and pattern: spots, swirls, hearts, and zigzags with a glossy, glittery finish. They look like the nail equivalent of an explosion in a Care Bears factory, and it makes my eyes twitch just to look at them.

  “Subtle,” I say sarcastically. But everyone ignores me.

  “Yeah, I’ll ask her,” says Chloe, still beaming at Jules and Destiny’s attention. “Maybe if you come over on Saturday she can set up a nail bar in our house!”

  “That. Would be. Super. Awesome,” says Jules before turning back to me. “So. You’re saying. It’s not true then, Pig, right? So? What did happen?”

  “NOTHING! Nothing happened, all right? Can you just leave it, PLEASE.” I bark and put my head in my hands again.

  “Oooh, all right,” sings Destiny. “Keep your pants on. Come on, Jules. We know when we’re not wanted.”

  Kas and Chloe try to apologize on my behalf, but Destiny and Jules are done and, thankfully, prance away.

  “This is terrible!” I say, repeatedly banging my head slowly on the table.

  “Don’t worry, Pig. They’re coming to the nail bar so I’m sure it’ll all be cool with them if you apologize there.”

  “Not that! I couldn’t give a monkey’s bumhole about a stupid nail bar or being forgiven for sticking up for myself to the twit-tits twins! I’m talking about the Leo’s dad thing!”

  Seriously! How do they not get that this is a huge deal?

  “Oh, that,” says Kas sheepishly.

  “Yes, that!” I say.

  “Well, I think a nail bar’s a great idea,” mumbles Chloe.

  Then they both take it in turns to tell me not to worry about it and persuade me not to give up the comedy career, reminding me that things often go wrong the first time you try them, “like when Freya first dyed Chloe’s hair and it went orange.”

  “Yeah, but she didn’t knock over the sink with her butt and then try to get off with the shower, did she?” I say.

  “Well, no,” admits Chloe. “That’s true.”

  Chloe’s lack of sympathy when she was the cause of the whole thing in the first place is really starting to get on my nerves.

  I try to focus back on the “I’m going over to Leo’s house after school” ditty in my head, but it’s faded and been replaced by an angry chant of “you’re a big tit and they know you are, do-dah do-dah… Leo’s gonna think you’re such a loser, do-dah do-dah-day.” Which is depressing and doesn’t even rhyme as well as the first one.

  Stupid brain.

  “You were really good though, Pig, on Friday night,” says Kas, “until the, y’know, end.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “Wasn’t Jake amazing though!” says Chloe.

  “Well, yes,” says Kas, sensing my annoyance with Chloe, but trying (as always) to keep the peace. “But Pig was amazing too, wasn’t she, Chloe?”

  “Yeah, of course,” says Chloe.

  “Look, can we change the subject,” I say, “to anything else at all?”

  “Okay, okay,” says Kas. “So Stevie keeps looking over at you again, Chloe. Have you noticed?”

  “Yeah, totally. Do you think he likes me?”

  “You should so ask him out,” says Kas.

  “Do you think he’ll say yes?” says Chloe.

  This torturous car crash of a conversation drones on for what feels like a lifetime until I eventually slam my hand down on the table and explode.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Chloe! You’re, like, the prettiest girl in the year and Stevie’s a scrawny little spiky-haired twit-flump. You know you could have any boy you want! But hey, if that’s your kind of thing, go for it—he’s not going to say no, is he?”

  I stop myself before I say anything more. I really don’t want to have an argument with Chloe. She’d totally win and take Kas with her, abandoning me all day to face the sniggers and gossip alone. I brace myself for her to come back at me, but instead her Hollywood-grade smile spreads over her face. It seems she’s only really heard the words “prettiest” and “any boy you want” and she thinks I’m paying her a compliment.

  “God, you’re right, Pig. I should just go for it, yeah?” she says excitedly.

  “Erm…yeah?” I say.

  Phew.

  I get through the rest of the morning, ignoring the jibes from a few kids in the hallways and concentrating instead on thinking of what to say to Leo after school. I need to make sure I’ve got something good to offer otherwise he might not ask me back again. To his house. Just me and him. Argh! Well, technically and Noah, but still basically just me and him.

  Me and Leo.

  I still don’t tell Kas or Chloe about it. I don’t want the questions. I don’t want the giggling and laughing at the very hopeless idea of me and Leo. This is my special thing, and I want to keep it that way.

  At lunch, Chloe gets me to ask Stevie out for her. After the look of panic on his face fades as he realizes it’s not me asking him out, he of course says yes. Then me and Kas have to spend the rest of the lunch break lurking near them as they stand in a corner, awkwardly holding hands, and, though they don’t say much to each other, everything Stevie whispers to Chloe she laughs hysterically at with what me and Kas know full well is her fake laugh. Then at the end of lunch they awkwardly kiss while his friends whoop.

  “Don’t we look great together?” Chloe says when she finally breaks away from him and returns to us.

  They don’t. Stevie’s quite cute, I guess, if you’re into the little runty guy in the boy band kind of look. But he’s also incredibly nervous and Chloe’s about a foot taller than him, so with his spiky hair they have the look of an animal control officer trying to save a lost hedgehog.

  Of course we agree, though, and tell her they look fabulous together.

  “Just like a celebrity couple,” Kas adds, to Chloe’s delight.

  I didn’t know Carrie Underwood was dating the Wimpy Kid, I think.

  And yes, okay, I’m well aware that I’m basically jealous. Of the kissing and the boyfriend and the being wanted by a guy. Though not just any guy, of course. The one whose house I’m actually going to today after school. Eek!

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  At the end of the day, relieved to be leaving school yet full of nerves about seeing Leo, I pick up Noah and we walk to Leo’s house, the now familiar Leo-induced frantic heartbeat pounding around my body.

  He answers the door, already changed into his hoody and jeans, and, giving a big friendly “Hey, Pig,” he waves us inside. We go into his living room, so unlike ours, so stylish, so clean. He starts up the PlayStation and gets Noah playing some age-inappropriate driving game where the
idea seems to be to hit as many pedestrians as possible. Noah seems to like it.

  Leaving him there we head back to the kitchen and Leo gets us a lemonade. Not supermarket-own bubbly piss water like we have, but the real branded stuff that actually tastes like lemons. He asks me how school was and I say, “Oh, y’know, fine.”

  And he seems to accept that answer, which makes me think he’s not aware that everyone knows about Friday night. Because the last thing I want to bring up with Leo is that again.

  He sits at the table, in front of his laptop, and pats the chair next to him.

  “Well, are you gonna sit down or what?” he says.

  “Yeah, okay,” I say, bracing myself for the fart noise his chairs make and praying the thing doesn’t collapse as I sit on it.

  “Excuse me,” I say as it resounds with a hearty frrrt. “Must be all those vegetables I eat.”

  He laughs a little, then says, “Oh sorry, did you want something to eat? I should have offered. I think we have some Jaffa Cakes somewhere.”

  “No, no, I’m fine, thanks,” I say, swallowing down the saliva that the mention of Jaffa Cakes produces in my mouth. The truth is I could quite happily inhale a whole packet now in one breath, but I don’t want to eat in front of Leo. It’s bad enough that he can see that I’m fat, that overeating isn’t one of those bad habits you can hide from others like taking drugs, picking your nose, or watching reality television. So, sure, he knows I’m big—the image of me as a big person is unavoidably lodged in his head—but I really don’t want to implant the image of me shoving my big piggy face with food in there as well.

  “Right,” I say, trying to get a handle on the situation, while feeling a little light-headed when I realize that our knees are almost touching under the table. “So, how do you want to do this? Have you got any, er, ideas already that we can go with first?”

  He stares at his laptop screen, opening a new Word page. “Nope, nothin’. To be honest, I was kinda hoping you would?”

  He smirks at me, his eyebrows raised, his soft brown eyes melting my soul.

  GET A GRIP, GIRL!

  I clear my throat, reach down to my bag, and retrieve a pad of paper and pen. Just so I’ve got something to hold and look at. Oh God, we’re sitting so damned close. “Okay. Well, I haven’t got anything yet, but maybe we can come up with some stuff together?”

  “Notebook and pen,” he says as I slap them on the table in front of me. “I like that you do things old-school.”

  “Right,” I say, not wanting to tell him it’s actually because we can’t afford a laptop.

  “Anyway, I mean, the stuff you wrote for me last time was great, probably better than most of the stuff I write. So, how did you do that?”

  “Oh, you know,” I say, twiddling the pen a little too manically in my hand. “I just thought about what would sound funny coming from you. You get the best laughs when you’re being you, right? I mean, you’ve got this great onstage boyish, teenage persona working for you, so I just went with that.”

  “Well, you must get me pretty good if you managed to write me so well.” He gently elbows my arm, and I feel my cheeks burning. I laugh a little through my nose in response and look down at my notepad and scribble with the pen, trying to get it to work. He’s sitting right next to me though and can clearly see that it is working.

  Stop it, woman!

  “So what’s your onstage character then?” he asks.

  “Oh no, I’m never getting up there again, believe me.”

  “Come on! Okay, so you’re not ready just yet, but you will be. You do wanna be a stand-up, right—that’s your aim with all this joke writing?”

  “Well, yeah, one day, sure. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, but…” I trail off.

  “Okay, so, when you do, what’ll be your on-stage thing?”

  “I don’t know.” I sit back in the chair. “I guess my size. I mean, that’s the obvious one, right? Stuff like, ‘I’m not fat because obesity runs in my family, I’m fat because no one runs in my family.’”

  He laughs and the laughter starts to calm my nerves. “That’s a good joke. But I don’t think that’s your onstage persona sorted, ’cause you’re not fat.”

  I’m not sure what to do with this. I can’t quite work out if he’s saying it to be nice, as a statement of fact (false fact), or if he’s just messing with me.

  I think he’s trying to be nice, but it’s just making me feel strange and awkward. So I shrug it off and say, “This isn’t about me anyway, it’s about you. So, as I said, you’ve got that whole teenage, boyish, cool and, well, erm, good-looking vibe going on in your stage persona, so I think we should just play about with that some more. We should write down what your character is expected to say and then sometimes go against it, like the opposite of what’s expected of you. You do that really well—like when you talk about getting a friend to squeeze a zit on your butt or shoving frozen food down your pants.”

  “Okay. Tell me more about my good-looking vibe though,” he says, resting his head on his palm and pulling his best model-like pout.

  “Tart,” I say with a smile, and I foolishly glance at him and lose myself for a moment in his dreaminess. “So anyway…,” I say, steering my eyes back down to the notepad as my cheeks start to burn again, “we should write more bits like that. But then you know all this stuff already, being a runner-up in the London Young Comic of the Year and everything.”

  Leo shrugs. “Actually, I don’t really know this stuff, or maybe I do, but I don’t really analyze it. I just write what I think is funny and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but, well, it’d kinda be nice if more stuff worked so a few lessons is great! How do you know all this?”

  “I’m a comedy genius,” I deadpan.

  “Well, obviously.”

  “Actually, I’m a comedy geek who watches a lot of stand-up and soaks up just about any video, podcast, or book I can find about how to write jokes and do comedy. So I’ve picked up a few tips and tricks along the way.”

  “Got it. So, genius, where do we start? I’ve gotta say, my mind’s a blank at the moment. I mean, I’ve got all this homework and exams and…” He pauses and frowns. “Well, my mum and dad are putting all this pressure on because they want me to go to Cambridge University.”

  “Cambridge? Wow, I didn’t know you were that clever.”

  “Thanks.”

  I look up at him and nervously chew on the end of my pen. “No, I just mean, I don’t know. That’s, like, for the super clever?”

  “Yeah, I guess that doesn’t go with the whole good-looking, cool, teenage, good-looking, boyish, good-looking persona I’ve got, right?”

  I laugh. “I guess! So Cambridge—wow! That’s exciting.”

  He shuffles around a little in his chair and for the first time looks ever so slightly awkward. “I don’t know. I mean I’ve gotta get straight As and go for an interview and stuff, so I might not get in. If I win the competition, that would actually help though as they like that kind of extracurricular stuff. Anyway, I do really wanna go, though not for the reasons my mum and dad want me to. They want me to go so I can have this bright future and glittering career as God knows what, but, well, I really just wanna go for…”

  “The Footlights!” I yell, a little too energetically.

  “Yea, great way to get on stage and get a name for yourself. So you know about them?”

  “Of course! The Cambridge Footlights—an amazing comedy sketch group. God, that’d be awesome! You lucky thing.”

  “No reason why you couldn’t get in in a few years’ time. You’re clever, right?”

  “Nah, I mean, eurgh, everyone says if I worked harder I’d get good grades, but that means actually working harder. Plus, what if I do put in the work only for everyone to find out I’m not that clever after all? Better for people to think you’re clever and lazy than a hard worker and a dumbass, right?”

  “Screw what everyone else thinks. If it’s possible that if
you work harder you might get into the Cambridge Footlights, that’s worth potentially looking like a dumbass.”

  “Huh. Maybe. It would be cool. I mean, that’s where loads of brilliant comedians started out: David Mitchell, Robert Webb, Stephen Fry, Richard Ayoade, Sandy Toksvig, Monty Python, Mel and Sue…”

  “Wow, you really know your comedians,” he says, impressed.

  “I told you, I’m a comedy geek.’”

  This is great! I think. I’m actually relaxing into a conversation with him and not sounding like a total idiot!

  “Well I think it’s cool. And kinda sexy,” he says, making me choke on my lemonade, spitting quite a lot of it out onto the table and my notebook. I try to dry it with the cuff of my school sweater.

  Yep, very sexy.

  “Oh God, I’m so sorry!” I splutter. “But ‘cool and sexy?’ I can assure you no one else thinks so!”

  He leans back in his chair. “Balls. Everyone finds funny people attractive.”

  “No, I think you’ll find everyone finds funny men attractive. Funny women are just seen as obnoxious and strange. Fun maybe, but still not likeable, just peculiar. Funny works for boys, but us teenage girls aren’t expected to be funny—we should be more interested in our nails or hair or clothes.”

  “That’s so not true. Who told you that?” he says.

  “The world told me that,” I say, staring down at the table. I turn to him. “Look, truth is, I don’t get boyfriends and stuff, and I know it’s probably because I’m…big…but I also think it’s because I’m funny, or at least I try to be.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” he says, putting his hands in the front pocket of his hoody. “Everyone always puts ‘sense of humor’ on their list of what they want in a girlfriend or boyfriend.”

  “Yes, but to a girl, ‘sense of humor’ means someone who’ll make them laugh. To a guy, that means someone who’ll laugh at their jokes.”

  He laughs. “Well, I find girls that make me laugh super sexy.”

  I cough again and, not knowing where to look or what to do, I pull my hair over my cheeks which I can feel are glowing like lava bubbles.