The Manifesto on How to be Interesting

by Holly Bourne

  “Why do you only ever have red wine?” Bree asked, taking a generous sip from her beaker. The bottle probably cost at least fifty quid but she never noticed the difference. As long as it had alcohol in it, she didn’t mind. Especially after today.

  “Why? What else do you want?”

  She shrugged. “I dunno. Some vodka?”

  Holdo looked disgusted. “Eww. What next? You’ll be telling me soon you want to ‘strawpeedo’ some ‘Bacardi Breezers’ and follow that with a ‘Jägerbomb’.”

  “It’s what everyone else our age drinks.”

  Holdo opened his mouth into a perfect “O”, like he was waiting for someone to pop a grape in there.

  “This is an Eastern France burgundy made from grapes grown on a small tributary of the Rhone River.” His voice trailed off.

  Bree had somehow hurt his feelings and now she felt a little bad. “It’s really nice. Thank you.”

  Both embarrassed, they returned their attention to Donnie Darko – one of Holdo’s absolute favourites. It was his lifelong dream to lose his virginity while Joy Division played in the background, just like Jake Gyllenhaal does in the film.

  Screw that. It was Holdo’s dream just to lose his virginity. Period.

  Bree snuggled further under Holdo’s blanket and took another deep sip of wine. She couldn’t concentrate on the film. Mr Fellows’s words echoed in her head and she thought once more of the rejection letter spiked on her bedroom wall.

  She sighed.

  “You alright? We can watch something else.” The wine had stained a crimson ring around Holdo’s mouth where his lips were chapped. She didn’t have the heart to tell him.

  “I’m fine. Just distracted, ’tis all.”

  “You still thinking about the rejection letter?”

  Her head was beginning to feel heavy. A giant grey bunny rabbit was bashing its way through a mirror on the television. She didn’t reply.

  Holdo, sensing her restlessness, muted the film.

  “Have you thought about blogging?” he asked, turning his body towards her on the sofa. “That’s one way of getting published.”

  Bree pulled a face. “Blogging?” She said the word like it was poisoned.

  “It’s cool to blog now, Bree. Bloggers are taking over the world.”

  “I dunno.”

  “You should give it a go. Can’t hurt, can it? Anyway, if you get a strong following that’s a good thing to tell publishers when you write your next submission letter.”

  Bree put her wine on the floor and lay down heavily on the sofa, putting her head in Holdo’s lap. He looked confused and nervously stroked her mousy-pink hair.

  “There are no more submission letters. I’ve tried everyone.”

  “Well, write another book.”

  “That’s what you said last time. And I did it. That’s not worked either.”

  She looked back at the mute telly. Jake Gyllenhaal was wandering round, dressed as a skeleton.

  “Why couldn’t I have had the idea to write about a paranoid schizophrenic who saves the world?” she asked, in a childish whine.

  “This film bombed at the box office.”

  She turned over so she was looking right up into Holdo’s nostrils. “Really? But everyone loves it now.”

  “Yeah, but it didn’t open well. Barely sold any tickets. You know what it’s like – credible things never do well. But shove a formulaic romantic comedy onto the screen, or yet another superhero special-effects spunk-a-thon, and people trample all over each other to see it.”

  Bree thought again of Mr Fellows. “Do you not think it might be because people want to escape their humdrum lives for a while? Instead of wallowing in them?”

  Holdo scoffed. “Are you kidding? Those populist things aren’t real. They’re not important. They’re not going to hang around and make man stop and really think for decades to come. They’re disposable trash. In the long run, people want a mirror held up to them. They want to look at themselves and be scared at what they see. They want to be confronted, challenged…”

  He went on a bit. Holdo was always worse after a few glasses of vino.

  “…I dunno, Bree. You’re kinda weirding me out. I think you’re letting this rejection get to you. You usually HATE all that kind of stuff. Don’t change who you are. You’re perfect.”

  He looked down at her blearily, like an adoring puppy. An adoring puppy whose water bowl had been spiked with wine. Bree got off his lap before the alcohol made things happen.

  “Come on then.” She downed her glass. “Let’s get wasted.”

  An hour later and Holdo was monologuing as the Rolling Stones played on his state-of-the-art stereo.

  “I know, I know, I know, they made millions of pounds, but ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’, it’s, like, almost prophetic. The way they understood consumerism and just how…empty it is. That line about someone not being a man, you know, because he smokes a different brand of cigarette?”

  Bree nodded her head heavily.

  “…Well, it just sums us up, doesn’t it? How brainwashed we are by adverts. And branding. And how segregated we are now. Like, no one knows their neighbours any more, do they? Who lives next door? I dunno. Do you know who lives next door?”

  Bree shook her head heavily.

  “That’s exactly my point. I mean, how are we supposed to be satisfied when we don’t even know our neighbours?”

  He talked himself out. They sat for a while, listening to the music.

  If we were cooler, we would be smoking right now.

  Bree wasn’t sure where the thought came from but it surprised her. It surprised her more to realize she was right. They should be smoking! An illegal substance preferably. Then this monologue would seem less pathetic, less bitter, less trite and would instead be delivered in a hazy smoky atmosphere of cool, hipster-ness. They definitely should be smoking. Wasn’t that what young disenchanted people were supposed to do? Not drink two bottles of very expensive French burgundy.

  She lay her fuggy head on the armrest and half-closed her eyes. As she stretched out her legs, they brushed against Holdo’s. She apologized and drew them back into herself.

  “S’okay,” he muttered. His own eyes were half-closed and his blondish hair fell into them, hiding the worst of his acne-splattered forehead.

  If we were more interesting, we would be having sex right now.

  Again the thought came out of nowhere. But again she knew she was right. They should be having sex! That’s what people cared about. That’s what interesting people did. They shagged each other and then got confused and upset about it and told everyone. And you would listen – interested – dying to know more. If she and Holdo ended up sleeping together tonight that would be a very interesting thing to have happened. She wondered if she should try it. Could she bring herself to? Tentatively, she stretched out her legs again, but this time laid them on Holdo’s lap.

  If he starts stroking them, what will I do?

  She watched his reaction. Holdo looked at his lap and the unexpected human parcel that had landed there. His hand clenched and unclenched and then she was certain she saw him reach towards her, to maybe touch her leg. Her breath quickened with suspense…

  But then he dropped his hand like a damp dandelion and scratched a spot on his chin.

  Not really disappointed, she closed her eyes and concentrated on the music. Jagger was yelling about not getting what you want but getting what you need.

  But what if you needed to get what you want…just once?

  She opened her eyes to tell Holdo her clever thought about the song.

  “Holdo?”

  His head had flopped down and a small snore whistled out his mouth.

  He’d passed out.

  “Holdo?” she said a little louder, but nothing. He was gone. Bree sighed, bored of this evening, bored of her life. Tired of it always feeling like sludge to wade through. She carefully extricated her apparently unenticing legs from his lap and stood up
, wobbling slightly. She took a moment to roll Holdo over so he was lying on his side and put a bin next to his head. She knew Holdo, and he would always vomit when he’d had too much wine. The stain on Bree’s bedroom carpet was proof. She examined him for a while – how his face looked when he was sleeping. Maybe he would grow up to be good-looking one day. There was certainly potential. It was just hard to get over the bad skin and, well, Holdo’s somewhat difficult personality. He really needed to learn to stop interrupting people to correct them on their grammar.

  She left Holdo sleeping – dreaming about a world where he wasn’t him, where he was someone else…

  …Someone confident enough to reach out and stroke a girl’s legs.

  chapter six

  The house was quiet when Bree stumbled in. She’d had trouble with the security gate and almost set off the alarm. Now she was having trouble closing the door without making a noise. Every bang seemed to echo around the huge lonely house. She didn’t know whether her parents were asleep or out. Her dad was probably still at work. She removed a crystal glass from a display cabinet and pushed the button on the giant fridge to let ice fall. She then filled it with water and downed it as quickly as she could, before opening the cupboard to get out another strawberry Pop-Tart to take up to her room.

  She still couldn’t get Mr Fellows’s words out of her head. They merry-go-rounded in her brain over and over. She knew why. It was because he was right. Bree needed to become more interesting.

  Closing her bedroom door behind her, she leaned against it for a moment and stared at her special bookshelf. The shelf drilled into the wall just above her rejection spike. All her favourite books stood lined up on it in pride of place, for her to yank out and reread night after night. She walked over and trailed her fingers along the crusted spines, thinking of the authors who’d created these beautiful collections of words, and why.

  She stopped on Stephen King. Alcoholic and drug addict. So intent on self-medicating his demons he still can’t remember writing some of his most famous stories…just stuffing tissues up his nose to stop blood dripping onto his typewriter. And yet it was his words that conquered those demons. Writing about them was vanquishing them. His stories mending him, word by word, page by page, until his blood was clean again.

  Next was Jane Austen, her favourite. Bree took out her battered copy of Pride and Prejudice and leafed through the pages. It was all biting social satire. Jane flicking literary spitwads at the world of romance and marriage, a world she was never invited to join herself.

  And finally there was Virginia Woolf. Whose brain composed words of such brilliance, and yet tortured her with such darkness that she filled her pockets with stones and wandered into a river.

  Pain, loneliness, darkness.

  Bree’s three favourite writers; Bree’s three most present emotions.

  And yet, on her bookcase, all that remained of her heroes’ torments were their stories and their words. If Bree could write, if she could write interesting things that people wanted to read, she too could be immortal. Her pain too could be worthwhile – transformed and transfigured into the redemption of A Good Story.

  She just needed something good to write about.

  She opened her desk drawer and took out her latest rejected manuscript. She sat down and read the opening few lines.

  Rose didn’t know why she had come to the pier but the black waters had coaxed her here with their tidal magic. She knew the water would consume her eventually. She couldn’t fight its intoxicating force. Misery. It would claim her misery. Wash it away and make her clean again. Jumping was the inevitable conclusion to this visit. She knew that, the pier knew that, the water definitely knew that. But before she jumped she needed to understand her pain and why it had brought her here.

  Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was her teacher’s words. Or maybe it was the countless rejection letters. But something finally clicked in Bree.

  This. Was. Terrible.

  Laughably terrible.

  Hysterically laughably terrible.

  A snort escaped her nose. A hiccup popped out of her mouth. She reread it again, chuckling to herself. The chuckles turned to hysteria and soon she was laughing so hard she was almost crying. She flopped back on her bed, sinking into the pillows, and let the giggles bubble from her mouth. They sprang through her body until she was hiccupping instead of laughing. High on the hilarity, Bree rolled over and rummaged in her school bag to retrieve her notebook and pen. She turned onto her belly and sucked the end of the biro.

  She knew what she had to do.

  Her writing was scrawled, messy from the red-wine haze. But the plan was clear. It lay before her, a path waiting to be walked.

  How to become interesting…

  She wrote several bullet points, the rules she needed to follow – scribbling some out, rewriting them, until the list was complete. Then she turned on her laptop.

  Bree signed up to a blogger platform. It was unexpectedly easy to pick a wallpaper, a domain name, and get ready to post. She just had to write and click – then she would be a published writer. Online, anyway. She took a bite of her Pop-Tart and, before she lost her nerve, Bree began to type.

  THE MANIFESTO ON HOW TO BE INTERESTING

  Hello.

  I EXIST. I EXIST. I EXIST. I EXIST. I EXIST. I EXIST. I EXIST.

  Isn’t this what blogging is all about? Proving our existence? Leaving a tiny crap mark on the world so when we die it doesn’t all seem so horribly pointless?

  Good evening, reader. You are reading a loser’s blog. That’s right. I’m a massive loser. If you go to school with me, you won’t know my name. If I walked past you in the street, you wouldn’t even notice. If you talked to me, I would have nothing of any interest to say.

  Why?

  Because I’m not interesting!

  I’m boring. I’m a nobody. I don’t live life. I don’t embrace life. But that’s all about to change. Because I am starting a project. Here. Now. For myself. And if you want to come along for the ride then you’re very welcome.

  What’s my purpose? I’m going to become interesting. I’m going to become somebody you want to read about.

  How?

  I’m going to do all the things you’re too scared to do. And then I’m going to tell you about it. If you’re really brave, you can do it with me.

  This is The Manifesto on How to be Interesting. I’m going to pinpoint EXACTLY what it is that makes a person worth caring about and then do it.

  I’ll let you know how I get on.

  It’s not going to be easy.

  But then interesting things never are, are they?

  She finished typing with a flourish and hit Publish. And then, without even brushing her teeth, Bree fell onto her bed and fell fast asleep. Smiling.

  chapter seven

  Bree woke up with her notepad stuck to her forehead.

  Her mouth tasted of dead rats. It was so dry she was quite certain her tongue could sandpaper a piece of wood. Her head was thudding like a giant gong had been erected overnight in her brain and some mischievous kids were constantly bashing it. Bash. Bash. BASH.

  Despite all this, Bree felt just wonderful. This was the best hangover ever. Because it was a hangover with purpose. She rolled over and picked her laptop off the floor. She logged on and read back what she’d garbled out last night.

  Not bad.

  It wasn’t great literature. But – even though she’d written it herself – Bree got excited reading it back. This was going to happen. She was going to do this.

  She grabbed her toothbrush and jumped in the shower of her en-suite. She liked to brush her teeth and wash at the same time, especially when suffering a red-wine hangover of doom. The water was scalding, reviving, and she stayed in until her skin was bright red and she felt light-headed.

  “Morning, dear,” her mum greeted her as she entered the kitchen. Mum was wearing a crop top. Actual real fifty-year-old midriff was on show. It was only for the gym, but stil
l.

  “I’ve made you a fresh fruit salad.”

  Bree grunted and opened the freezer to retrieve some veggie bacon for a sandwich. Today was a carb day.

  “Your father had to go into work again but he wants us to all have a proper family dinner tonight. That sounds nice, doesn’t it? I was going to make a roast.”

  Bree got out the frying pan.

  “I’ve just come back from spinning. You feel so amazing afterwards. You should come with me sometime…”

  Bree emptied the bacon onto the hot oil. It began to splutter and gasp and brown.

  “Well, I’m off to Waitrose. What are you up to today? Got any nice plans?”

  She flipped the bacon over.

  “Bree, I said have you got any nice plans?”

  Finally Bree spoke. Two whole words. “Watching TV.”

  “Is that all?”

  She nodded.

  “You’re not going to go outside or anything? Not even meeting up with Holdo?”

  Bree tipped the slightly burned bacon onto some white bread. “I’ll go outside when I walk to get the films.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know.”

  “You could come to Waitrose with me. I’ll let you put whatever you want in the trolley.”

  Bree gave her mother her very best You gotta be kidding me? face.

  “Suit yourself. That white bread is full of rubbish, you know. It will give you cellulite.”

  And with that, her mother powered upstairs to change out of her belly top.

  Bree didn’t hate her mother exactly. Especially after the whole she-birthed-her-and-it-probably-hurt thing. She didn’t mean to be rude, nasty, and standoffish. But – at the risk of sounding like a massive bitch – Bree had no respect for her mother. Her mum seemed so satisfied by such shallow stuff, like good wallpaper and toned thighs, rather than her husband being around, or having a purpose to her life beyond shopping. And apart from all that inconvenient unconditional love stuff getting in the way, Bree was quite sure she didn’t like her mother either. How can you like someone you have no respect for? The sad thing was, Bree knew her mother was equally disappointed in how Bree had turned out. She’d no doubt longed for a daughter just like Jassmine Dallington. Some perfect plastic cut-out she could get pedicures with. Instead she’d got Bree. With her embarrassing stripy tights, slammed bedroom doors and sneering judgements.