The Manifesto on How to be Interesting

by Holly Bourne

  “I know. I taught you, remember?”

  “Well, what’s wrong with my writing if it got full marks?”

  Mr Fellows rolled back and forth in his wheelie chair some more. He wouldn’t look at Bree. Not properly. He hadn’t ever since…The Thing happened. But she needed his support. Who else could she ask for advice?

  “Your creative writing piece for GCSE was good, Bree – but good for a GCSE creative writing piece. Books are different. They have to sell. And, no offence, but nobody wants to read an 110,000-word novel about a girl throwing herself off the end of a pier…”

  She crossed her arms defensively. “Why not?”

  Mr Fellows opened the bottom drawer of his desk and took out some sheets of paper. He furrowed his eyebrows and began reading aloud.

  “Rose watched the deep frothing water foam under the cracked weathered wooden planks of the pier. She wondered how long it would take for her body to decompose at sea if she were to throw herself in. Would her body bloat? Would she get eaten by sharks? Or would she just decompose, parts of her body going soft and breaking off, like soggy Weetabix left at the bottom of a white ceramic bowl…”

  Bree stuck her lip out. Okay, so it sounded a bit silly when he read it aloud, but only because he was using THAT voice.

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  He smiled. “Nothing at all, Bree. That’s why you got such good marks. It’s like a big vomit of metaphors – markers love that. Plus, they were probably so scared that the student who wrote it was suicidal, they gave you full marks in case you were thinking of throwing yourself off a pier for real.”

  Despite herself, she smiled.

  “But to read a whole book dedicated to such misery? Well, it’s a little hard-going, don’t you think?”

  “But that’s what life is really like.”

  “What? All young teenage girls want to throw themselves off piers?”

  Bree thought about it for a moment. “Yes!”

  Mr Fellows looked at her properly for the first time in ages. His eyes were all wide and watery with sympathy. She felt a bit ashamed and wished he wasn’t looking at her after all.

  “Look, Bree, you’re a very talented writer. You know I already think that. I’m not saying all this to be harsh. I know you’re not happy, Bree…” She opened her mouth to object but he ignored her. “…You know you’re not. You pretend you don’t care but I know you do. Do you not think maybe your writing isn’t going anywhere because you’re unhappy? Because you’re not living the life you could? A life worth writing about? You must know that cliché – write what you know – but what do you know, Bree, when you shut the world out?”

  Her eyes started twitching. Couldn’t he have just stopped at the “you’re a very talented writer” bit? That was all she needed – reassurance. Not to have her life dismantled.

  “What about Philip Larkin? He’s mega-famous and he was miserable.”

  “Yeah and look how popular he is with your classmates. They all hate it. It’s too miserable. You want to write something people want to read, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, have you not thought about the possibility that not all your classmates are wretchedly sad? And, even if some are, they may want to escape it for a bit by reading something a bit more…upbeat?”

  “No.” She scuffed her shoes on the carpet, feeling the heat of friction glow through the soles. She focused on that feeling over the eye-prickling.

  “I think you need to make yourself, and your life, more open. Do more interesting things, Bree. Then your writing will follow suit. Be someone you would want to read about.”

  Her next words came out as barely a whisper.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  “I said, would you want to read about me?”

  He rocked in his chair again and cleared his throat.

  “I don’t really think that’s relevant. I’m just trying to help you. I’m your teacher.”

  She made herself stare right into his sympathetic eyes. “But you’re more than just my teacher, aren’t you?”

  He wouldn’t meet her gaze. “Come on, Bree. Let’s not go there again.”

  “But you kissed me!”

  His face went a little whiter, making his chestnut hair look even browner.

  “Bree. I didn’t kiss you,” he hissed. “You’ve got to stop saying that. I could lose my job.”

  “I’m not going to tell anyone. I just don’t understand why you’re pretending it didn’t happen.”

  He stood up. “Because nothing did happen! I didn’t kiss you.” He ran his hands through his hair again. “Not how you think I kissed you anyway,” he admitted, looking back down at his desk.

  Her eyes stung harder and she blinked furiously so as not to give herself away. He had kissed her. Bree should know. She’d only been kissed by two people in her entire life. Mr Fellows was one of them – in fact, he’d been her first proper kiss. “Proper”, in that it was her first kiss where both people partaking in the kiss had actually wanted to kiss each other.

  Her first first kiss – as in, the first time another pair of lips had touched hers – had been at a teenage creative-writing weekend. It was one of Bree’s most painful and psychologically-damaging memories. On the last night, someone had smuggled in a bottle of wine. Eight of them drank it and pretended to be pissed. They’d played Spin the Bottle, but the bottle kept not landing on Bree. She’d merely watched while everyone kissed each other – some a tentative peck, some of the more attractive people really going for it. There was this one guy, Dylan…he looked like Perfection mixed with Godliness and wrote actual poetry. And just when she thought she’d never get kissed, Dylan spun the bottle and it landed on her. She could’ve squealed with delight. Trying to appear nonchalant, she’d straightened her back, and tucked a strand of hair away from her face.

  Dylan was less subtle.

  His face fell when he saw who he’d landed on. He sneered. And said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Bree? I don’t really have to kiss Bree, do I?”

  Bree? I don’t really have to kiss Bree, do I?

  Bree? I don’t really have to kiss Bree, do I?

  Bree? I don’t really have to kiss Bree, do I?

  How those words haunted her at 3 a.m. when she couldn’t sleep.

  Her heart had broken to the soundtrack of gleeful laughter.

  Dylan had leaned over and pecked her, just next to her lips. With a wrinkle of his nose and an overdramatic wiping of his mouth (more laughter), he erased fifteen years of Bree’s romantic fantasy of her first-kiss moment and replaced it with a painful reality.

  But her second kiss had been different.

  It had been like she’d always thought it could be.

  Last year, she and Mr Fellows had set up a creative-writing group for the younger students. Social suicide, but since when did Bree care? It wasn’t like she had much social life to lose. Two lunchtimes a week, they helped Year Sevens write and produce a booklet of their poetry and short stories. After each session, Mr Fellows read her first manuscripts and gave his feedback. In return she listened to tales of his unhappy marriage, his rebellious youth, and how, he too, yearned to be a writer. They always had something to say to one another. He was a dreamer, a creative, someone who understood her urge to put the world into words as a way of understanding why bad things happen. He made her feel warm, like a friend. It wasn’t too strange, Bree figured. He was only thirty, after all. (He’d let it slip once while warning her not to marry too young.)

  By the end of term, Bree had made a decision. She’d secretly applied to the state school down the road without telling her parents. There were horror stories about there being over thirty students in each class, no help with coursework and disruption in lessons. But she figured she was smart enough to do well anywhere and longed to be somewhere different. Somewhere she could be herself and be accepted. Her label of “weird loner girl” was so entrenched at Queen’s Hall, she would be shackled to i
t for ever there.

  She’d accepted her place and told Mr Fellows just before the end of term. He’d looked sad and said, “I’m going to miss you.” She’d miss him too. She’d started thinking about him before she went to sleep.

  On the supposedly last night of her private-school career, she and Holdo risked an evening of being blatantly ignored and went to the Year Eleven Leaving Ball. Silly name really, as nobody left Queen’s. She probably would have been the first. Bree had actually worn a dress – a champagne-coloured clingy number that didn’t quite fit properly and her mum had winced at. While Jassmine, Hugo and their minions twirled and bitched and ruled in their tailor-made suits and two-grand dresses, Bree and Holdo spent the night sat alone at a table in the corner…watching them have fun and thinking maybe coming to the ball hadn’t been the best idea after all. But then Mr Fellows sat next to them and opened up his suit to reveal a hidden hip flask of whisky.

  “You might as well have some,” he’d said, passing them the bottle under the table. “It’s the only chance you’ve got of having any fun. Plus…” He leaned over to Bree. “You’re not my pupil any more, are you?”

  A couple of swigs of whisky later, and the three of them were dancing badly at the edge of the dance floor.

  “This is great,” Bree called over the music. “I’m leaving this place and never coming back. I’m free to do whatever I want.” At which point she launched into some Irish dancing.

  “Freak,” she heard Gemma, Jassmine’s number one crony, yell across the dance floor. Eight times louder than the music.

  Mr Fellows clenched his fists and moved as if to go over but Bree stopped him, shaking her head. She didn’t care. She was leaving. For ever. It would all be a bad memory soon.

  Holdo went to pee and Mr Fellows leaned in, looking a bit sorry for her. Or maybe she’d imagined it. She hoped she had.

  “Do you want to get some air?”

  She nodded and they both stumbled out onto the gravel driveway of the posh golf clubhouse.

  “I shouldn’t really be seen hanging out with just you,” he said, smiling. “You’re my student.”

  Bree walked round the side of the clubhouse and Mr Fellows followed until they were out of view.

  “I’m not your student any more, remember?” she teased. Was she flirting? Was this flirting? Did she even know how to flirt?

  “Don’t remind me.”

  The sun had begun to set in the summer sky and the golf course around them glowed pink. It was a scene in which romance could happen.

  “I’ll miss you, sir.”

  She wasn’t sure why she said it. Probably the whisky. But it was true. She felt a sudden rush of loss gush through her at the thought of not seeing him every day.

  He waved his hand away. “Nah. You’ll be too busy having fun with all those poor people.”

  She laughed. “It’s still a good school. It’s just free, that’s all.”

  He laughed too. “I know. I think you’re making the right decision. Queen’s Hall doesn’t really fit you, does it?”

  She shook her head, sadly. “No.”

  Then he was clasping her hand.

  “It’s not your fault, Bree,” he said, his heartbeat pulsing through their entwined fingers. “You’re different, that’s all. And I know it feels like it’s you, but it’s really not. You’re a special person and you deserve happiness. Just because you don’t fit in with all the other millionaires’ offspring doesn’t make you the problem. It’s another world out there and it will suit you better. I’m just going to miss you, that’s all. Who’s going to run the creative-writing group with me now?”

  “I’m sure you’ll find another social outcast,” Bree said.

  “You’re not a social outcast. You’re my favourite student. I’m allowed to say that now you’re leaving, aren’t I?”

  She didn’t think he was allowed to say or do anything he had said or done that night. But that was the thing about Mr Fellows. He didn’t fit into Queen’s Hall either. They were like two sore thumbs, being luminous together on a perfectly manicured pair of hands.

  She looked at his hand, still holding hers. “You’re my favourite teacher. My favourite person probably…”

  They both looked at their interlocking fingers and life paused for a moment. Until they heard a group laughing round the corner and the spell was broken.

  “I guess we’d better go back inside,” Bree said reluctantly. “Holdo will be out of the loo by now.”

  They stared at each other for a moment, neither of them making the move to leave. And then something propelled Bree to lean her face towards him. He hesitated but didn’t stop her, so she leaned in further and closed her eyes. Her lips touched his, very, very gently. He didn’t move. But his lips stayed there a second or two longer. When he pulled back, her lips felt cold.

  “You’re right,” he said. And he coughed, looking embarrassed. “Let’s get back inside.”

  It should have been a beautiful moment Bree could always look back on. But no. Her dad had discovered her plans to move schools and taken a sudden ferocious interest in her future. She was forbidden from leaving Queen’s and forced to return that autumn – loaded with fresh teasing-material as the girl who did an Irish jig at the ball.

  Mr Fellows’s face had gone rigid with shock when she’d entered her first English lesson. Since then, he’d refused to talk about it, wouldn’t speak with her the way he used to, and now he was denying their kiss to her face.

  Bree was, once again, an embarrassment. And with most people it didn’t bother her, but this was Mr Fellows. And he was different. And now he felt about her just like everybody else did.

  He put her coursework back into his desk and the tone of his voice changed – all calm and authoritarian.

  “Look, I don’t think we’re getting anywhere. I’m sorry your manuscript was rejected again. I do think you should take on board what I’ve said. Try and make yourself, your life, a bit more interesting, and the interesting writing will follow. Stop shutting everyone out.”

  Without another word, Bree ran from the room, humiliated. She streamed along the corridors and bashed through the door to the girls’ toilets. She locked herself into a cubicle, pulled down her tights and sat on the loo seat, willing her eyes to stop prickling.

  The bathroom door opened. People came in.

  “Okay. I completely and utterly have to redo this mascara. It looks like a spider hijacked my face.”

  It was Jassmine and her posse of perfects. Checking up on their make-up. Of course.

  Bree stayed still, fighting the urge to sniff and accidently give away her lurking location.

  “You don’t look like that. Your lashes look fab.” That was Gemma. Sucking up as usual.

  “You reckon? You don’t think falsies are too much for school? I thought I’d try it out today.”

  “Nah. They look amazing.”

  Bree heard the clattering of a make-up bag being emptied into a sink.

  “I’m trying to look my best at the moment. Hugo keeps messing me about and I think it’s easier to deal with all that stuff if you look nice, you know?”

  “Totally. What’s he done now?”

  “I dunno.” Jassmine sighed. “Just some rumours going round that he was all over some single-sex-slut at that party over the weekend.”

  Bree leaned forward on the toilet so she could hear better. She’d heard Hugo talking about that girl this morning.

  “You believe the rumours?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why do you do it to yourself? If he makes you feel insecure?”

  Jassmine? Insecure? Bree almost snorted and gave herself away.

  “I don’t know. You’re right. We’re technically broken up right now…but maybe I should finish it for good.”

  Bree almost gasped.

  “Not before his massive eighteenth though?”

  Jassmine laughed. A gorgeous discreet titter. “Of course not. It’s going to be the ev
ent of the year. I’ve already got about ten outfits on standby.”

  “Well then, just make him behave until then.”

  “Yep.” The sound of lips being smacked together echoed round the tiled walls. “This new lipstick should help. Anyway…maybe I’ve not been behaving myself either.”

  A gasp.

  “Jassmine? Seriously?”

  “Shh. Anyway, we are ‘on a break’.”

  “Who? Who is it?”

  Make-up was collected and stuffed back into a bag. Then came the sounds of their heels clicking towards the door.

  “Well, you know Seth’s party…?”

  The door opened and shut and Jassmine’s voice faded out until Bree couldn’t hear anything else. She was annoyed. She’d been literally on the edge of her (loo) seat, wanting to find out who it was.

  That’s when she realized.

  Jassmine Dallington was interesting.

  Bree was interested in Jassmine Dallington’s life.

  Did she need to be more like her? The thought was repulsive. Disgusting. Jassmine was nothing but perfumed vacant air and yet people cared about her. And her horrible friends. They wanted to know what was going on in their lives. What their thoughts were. What they’d done that weekend.

  Nobody wanted to know anything about Bree.

  She looked down and noticed she’d been scratching last night’s scabs. A small droplet of blood dribbled down her leg. She ripped off some loo paper and dabbed it away.

  She had a lot to think about.

  chapter five

  “More wine, please.”

  Bree held out her plastic beaker and Holdo poured in some red.

  “More.”

  Holdo raised an eyebrow and tipped in another dash until the wine was dangerously close to the rim. “You’re going to be troublesome after that.”

  “Shh. I’ve had a bad day.”

  It was later that evening. Friday night. And Bree and Holdo were doing what they did every Friday night: staying in and watching intelligent films – preferably with subtitles – to make them feel even more self-important.