The Real Rebecca

by Anna Carey

  ‘Look, I’m going to leave the book outside the door. I think you’ll really like it. It’s not really about you, seriously. No one will think it is.’

  ‘Huh!’ I said. I wish I could have come up with a more witty riposte, but in fairness I was practically dying of starvation.

  I heard her go downstairs and then, I’ll admit it, I opened the door. There was a copy of the stupid book with a plate of scrambled eggs on toast sitting on the top.

  I took the whole lot inside and ate the eggs on toast in about two seconds. I felt a bit better after that. It seemed like I’d been starving for ages so I thought it must be about two o’clock at least but when I looked at the clock it was only half eleven. It just feels like this day has been going on forever. Anyway, the stupid book is now sitting on my head. I have read the blurb and it looks awful. Apparently it is about a girl called Ruthie (oh my God, my mother is pathologically obsessed with the letter ‘r’ – she can’t even call a fictional child by a name starting with another letter. What does it mean? A psychologist would have a field day with her). Anyway, Ruthie really wants a boyfriend and comes up with all sorts of schemes to meet a boy. And then she meets one on holiday. Yawn. I’m going to start reading it now.

  LATER

  Oh my God. I have read nearly the entire book and unless it improves dramatically in the last thirty pages I am never talking to my mother again. Well, actually, I’m not talking to her again anyway. But still. Ruthie is horrible. She and her equally horrible friends are obsessed with boys. Now despite what Rachel may say about my pure and holy love for Paperboy, I am not obsessed with boys. I may be slightly obsessed with Paperboy, and a few very good-looking guitarists, and a couple of actors, but I’m not obsessed with boys in general. But Ruthie just thinks about boys and nothing else. She doesn’t, like, read anything, or listen to music apart from boy bands. She would never take part in a spontaneous synchronised dance session. Also, she and her friends are really annoying. They say things like ‘you go, girl!’ and are really sassy. Sassy people are always obnoxious in real life. Ruthie and her friends never laugh about anything. They just give each other makeovers and go shopping. Where do they get the money to go shopping? It’s not like Mum hands over loads of cash to me. Far from it, in fact.

  Anyway. Basically the book is all about how Ruthie and her friends have a competition to see who will get a boyfriend first. Also, they are in a girl band together and sing drippy songs into their hairbrushes. They do all sorts of stupid sad things like pretending to like football so random boys will like them. And at one stage Ruthie follows a boy into a toilet! That sounds kind of filthy but THANK GOD there are no sexy goings-on in the book. I’d have to emigrate if there were. Anyway, they are all really competitive and their crappy girl band breaks up because they play lots of tricks on each other and I actually can’t understand why they’re friends at all as they all secretly seem to hate each other. In the end they all go and eat pizza together and realise the virtues of friendship and how it’s more important than boys, but frankly if I had managed to escape from the society of these horrible cows for five minutes it would take a lot more than a pizza to make me see any of them ever again.

  LATER

  Just after I wrote that last line there was a knock on the door. I shouted, ‘Go away!’, but it turned out to be Rachel so I let her in. We are no longer enemies. We are fellow sufferers. Rachel has also read the book. She is almost angrier than me, which I didn’t believe was possible, but she really really is because there is something in the book which actually did happen to her. She won’t tell me what it is, but she says it is pretty tragic (of course, she said that this mysterious INCIDENT took place when she was ‘your age’, as if girls my age are automatically stupider than sixteen-year-olds, which is obviously rubbish, as one look at Rachel and her friends will prove). Anyway, she also said that she never told Mum about it, but she did, of course, tell Jenny about it on the phone, and as there is sadly no privacy in our house Mum must have overheard her. She says there’s no chance that this is a coincidence because of ‘certain details’ (I have to admit that this all makes this book a lot more interesting – I must figure out what this story is).

  ‘So not only is she embarrassing us, she’s SPYING on us. Or she was in the past,’ said Rachel. The last time I saw her so angry was when Bumpers did a poo in Tom’s bag when he was in our house (Tom, of course, not Bumpers, who is always here). ‘And the worst thing is that this … incident doesn’t just involve me, it was Jenny as well. So she’s going to think I’ve been telling Mum about stuff and she’ll kill me.’

  ‘Surely she won’t,’ I said. ‘She’ll understand that our mother is an evil spy.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I hope so,’ said Rachel. ‘I’m going round to her house now to warn her in advance. What are you doing?’

  I told her I was planning on hiding myself away and that I needed something good to read to remind myself that all literature is not totally evil and life-destroying, but I didn’t know what I was in the mood for.

  ‘I know,’ said Rachel, and she went to her room and came back with a copy of Pride and Prejudice. ‘There you go,’ she said, ‘read that.’

  I told her I didn’t know if I was in the mood for something old-fashioned right now, but she said, ‘Trust me, Bex. The heroine has a very, very embarrassing mother. Jane Austen understands our pain.’

  LATER

  Oh my God, Jane Austen DOES understand my pain! Well, the pain of having a mother you kind of want to shoot, anyway. At least Mum isn’t trying to marry off me and Rachel. Unless that’s what happens in the next Ruthie book. Pride and Prejudice is about a girl called Lizzie with lots of sisters whose mother wants them all to get married and embarrasses them every time they leave the house, especially in front of Mr Darcy, who is this annoying rude but hunky man who’s just turned up in the neighbourhood.

  LATER

  I am imagining Mr Darcy looking a bit like Paperboy.

  LATER

  Although I can’t imagine Paperboy on a horse. But who knows what he gets up to when he’s not delivering papers? He could be quite the horseman for all I know.

  LATER

  Finally got through to Cass, but I wish I hadn’t now. Some friend she is. I told her about what Rachel said about Mum putting something from her own life in it. Cass seemed more worried that there’ll be something about her in the book rather than about my public humiliation. She was so annoying I told her that there’s a bit in the book about that time she took off her glasses when we were in Tower Records so she’d look better in front of a very cute boy who was looking at some music magazines. She was posing away by the magazine racks until she realised she was staring straight at the porn section. I let her rave on for a while before I told her it wasn’t true (although I will have to be careful what I say on the phone from now on as apparently the walls have ears in this house of spies. Well, one spy. Unless she’s got Dad doing her dirty work and reporting to her on our conversations. You never know). Anyway, she calmed down a bit then and was a bit more sympathetic. For about five seconds. She said the photo of me in the paper was nice.

  ‘Your hair looks very shiny,’ she said.

  ‘That’s because I stole Mum’s conditioner,’ I said.

  Cass said, ‘So she’s good for something, then.’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose so,’ I said. ‘But anyway, I’m making a stupid face in the photo.’

  And then Cass who, lest we forget, is meant to be comforting me in my hour of sorrow, said, ‘But you always look a little bit funny in photos.’

  And she is supposedly my friend! She says she meant it as a compliment because I look much better (or as she kindly puts it ‘quite normal’) in real life. But it is not what I want to hear right now when that hideous photo is in newspapers all over the country. So I said, ‘Well, thanks a million’ and hung up. She texted back straight away and begged for my forgiveness (as well she might) so I texted her and said she was forgiven and I suppose sh
e is, but I’m still very annoyed with her.

  LATER

  I rang Alice, who was much more understanding than selfish Cass. I feel a bit better now I’ve talked to her. She said that no one at school will care that much about the book, and no one reads the paper anyway. She said I amworrying about something that MIGHT happen rather than something that has already happened. She sounded so wise that for a while I actually forgot all about the hideously embarrassing Paperboy incident from this morning, which definitely did happen. But still. I don’t feel quite as bad as I did earlier. I am going to have to leave my room now. I want to have a shower and I’m starving again. But I’m still not talking to my horrible evil mother.

  Sunday

  I am still not talking to Mum. Neither is Rachel. Well, we kind of grunt when spoken to, but that’s about it. I made my own dinner last night (scrambled eggs and sossies, which I suppose is quite a lot of eggs in one day. Unfortunately it turns out that everything nice I can cook is somehow egg-related) and took it up to eat in my room. Rachel just went off to Jenny’s house. Dad gave us a lecture this afternoon about acting like babies but he doesn’t understand our shame. I feel sick to my stomach whenever I think of Paperboy seeing that photo of me. And seeing me looking like a lunatic in my pyjamas. Oh, the whole thing is too awful to think about. I’m going to go to bed, to read more Pride and Prejudice.

  Monday

  I was going to write ‘today was the worst day of my life’, but the way things are going around here at the moment I’ll end up writing that every day, so I’ll just say that today was as terrible as I thought it would be and it’s all my mother’s fault. As usual. At first I thought that it was actually going to be quite a good day: first of all, I was a bit late but not too late – I arrived just as the second bell was going so I was able to sneak into the classroom with Alice and Cass and not talk to anyone. Then we had English first class (which I had been totally dreading, for obvious reasons) and it turned out that Mrs Harrington wasn’t in so we all had to go the library. We always pray that we’ll have a free class, but our teachers are apparently immune to all germs as they are hardly ever out sick. Us girls will be wheezing and coughing and puking away and not a single germ do those teachers catch. So anyway, we had a free class, and I thought I could just sit there and read something entertaining, but Karen Rodgers was sitting behind me. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned Karen Rodgers before. One day during the summer Cass and Alice and I were in a strangely hippyish mood, talking about how cool it is that our class actually all get on pretty well with each other and how there’s a genuinely friendly atmosphere, and then Cass remembered Karen Rodgers and Alice and I both went ‘oh, yeah’ in exactly the same depressed tone. Karen Rodgers isn’t a bully, but it’s not for want of trying. She’s just kind of mean and sarky and she’s always making unfunny jokes at other people’s expense. Her best (and only) friend is Alison Smith, who is actually okay, if a bit annoying, when she’s on her own, but when Karen is around she turns into a sniggering sidekick.

  So anyway. No sooner had I taken Pride and Prejudice out of my bag than something poked me in the back. I turned around and Karen was smirking at me and waving a pencil.

  ‘What?’ I said, in my rudest voice. Well, rudest whisper.

  ‘I saw you in the paper,’ said Karen. ‘Were you making that face on purpose?’

  I felt myself go red with rage, but I couldn’t think of anything clever to say so I just turned around and ignored Karen’s hideous sniggering (I should have said, ‘Yeah, I was doing an impersonation of you.’ Damn. I just thought of that now. Why didn’t I think of that this morning?). She poked me in the back again. but luckily Miss Brady, the school librarian, noticed and told her to stop. Miss Brady is a bit scary so Karen did stop and as soon as the free class was over I marched out before she could poke me again with her revolting pencil. It really is disgusting. She chews the end so it’s all gross and falling to bits. Why is she eating wood anyway? Perhaps she is part beaver.

  But worse was to come. When the free class was over we were walking to the next class and on the way a few girls from other years pointed at me and whispered to each other. I heard a senior girl going ‘yeah, she was in the paper at the weekend. Her mum wrote a book about her or something!’ And then things got even worse. The next class was in Room 7, which is our class 2:2’s form room (which means we have lunch there and our lockers are there) and when we went in, we saw that someone had got the awful photo of me and Mum and put it up on the noticeboard. And they’d blown it up on a photocopier so it was huge. That was all bad enough. But someone had written ‘2:2’s OWN PAGE THREE GIRL’ above the photo. Everyone stared at the photo and then at me and lots of them were laughing. I wanted to die. But then, without saying a word, Alice marched straight over, tore it down, crumpled it up, and without missing a beat she threw it all the way across the room into the bin. A perfect shot! Who knew she had such good aim? She should join the second-year basketball team. Everyone was so surprised by this that they shut up and then our maths teacher Miss Condren came in so that was the end of that. But the feeling that everyone was laughing at me behind my back went on all day. Alice and Cass said I’m just being paranoid but I know I’m not.

  In fact, the world seems to have gone mad. Vanessa Finn was nice to me at lunch today. It was very weird. She usually just ignores me, which is fine by me. In fact she ignores almost all of us because she thinks we’re common. But not today. Me and Cass and Alice and Ellie and Emma Donnelly were lurking in the cloakroom and they were all being very kind and telling me that everything will blow over, and I was actually feeling okay as long as I could hide there forever. But I had to go to the loo (I shouldn’t have drunk that smoothie so quickly) and on the way back Vanessa just leaped out in front of me (well, she didn’t quite leap, she just walked round a corner, but it felt like being leaped out on) and said, ‘Hi, Rebecca!’ in a strangely friendly voice.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, and tried to walk past her, but she moved in front of me (she is surprisingly nimble for someone who spends most of her time wearing ginormous fluffy boots).

  ‘So, how are you?’ she said.

  ‘Grand,’ I said. ‘Sorry, I’m just …’

  ‘I just wanted to say that I thought that photo of you in the paper was so cool,’ she said.

  ‘What?!’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, you looked great,’ she said.

  ‘Um, thanks,’ I said. And then the bell rang for class, so I sort of smiled and went back to the others to get my bag. I have to admit, I was genuinely touched. Maybe she is not such a snooty cow after all? She is obviously not telling the truth, as I did not look great in that photo, but it is quite kind of her to lie to me. Although she is still a bit odd.

  Anyway, the afternoon went past in a sort of blur apart from the bits between classes where it felt like everyone was staring at me until (AT LAST) the final bell rang. I went back to my locker to dump some stuff while Cass and Alice got their blazers and Karen bloody Rodgers was there. She was smirking at me (it seems to be her default expression) and when I was leaving she said, ‘Watch out for the paparazzi!’ And her horrible sidekick Alison laughed like this was the funniest thing anyone has ever said in the history of the world. I hate both of them.

  At least I’m home now. You can take it for granted, by the way, that I’m still not talking to Mum, but I had to give in and eat her food. I couldn’t take any more eggs. Or sausages. So I grudgingly shovelled in some lentil and chicken casserole this evening. Lentils sound disgusting but actually they are delicious when they’re mixed up with chicken and bacon and mushrooms and stuff, and that casserole is one of my favourite things – I think Mum might be trying to win me round with food. I can’t be bought that easily, though. Not after a day like today. When will this nightmare end?!

  Tuesday

  What is up with Vanessa Finn? She was being weird again today. I was getting stuff out of my locker this morning and when I closed the door she was standing behin
d it smiling. I would have shrieked if I hadn’t given up shrieking forever after the Paperboy incident.

  ‘So!’ she said. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Um … okay,’ I said. ‘Fine.’ Her sudden friendliness is making me nervous.

  ‘How are you finding being a celebrity?’ She was still smiling in a slightly mad way.

  ‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘A celebrity, I mean.’

  ‘Oh, come on, you’re like, completely famous now,’ she said.

  ‘Well, not really,’ I said. ‘I mean, it was just one …’ But Vanessa interrupted me.

  ‘You were in two papers,’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t know you paid so much attention to papers,’ I said, trying to edge around her.

  ‘Of course I don’t,’ said Vanessa (sounding like more like her usual snooty self). ‘My mum was reading it and I saw the photo of you and said, ‘God, that’s that girl from my class at school’. And my mum was, like, so impressed and said that your mum is some super-famous celebrity writer, or something. My mum’s, like, obsessed with your mum’s books.’

  Oh God, not another one.

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  ‘So yeah,’ said Vanessa, ‘I didn’t know your mum was a famous writer, or whatever.’ Well, at least someone hasn’t been paying any attention to Mrs Harrington all term. That’s kind of good to know. ‘You don’t have the same surname, do you?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Rafferty’s my dad’s surname. My mum didn’t change her name when she got married.’ I’d done it! I’d squeezed around her. ‘Um, I’ll see you later, Vanessa.’ And I ran out of the room down the corridor before she could say anything else. But why is she being so weirdly friendly to me in the first place? I don’t think it’s really kindness. She’s up to something. Although maybe she has just taken a good look at the state of my hair and realised that at least one of her classmates is definitely not going to be a hairdresser. Anyway, it is starting to get annoying.