The Manifesto on How to be Interesting

by Holly Bourne

So you’re dying to know how it went, aren’t you? My first day as an attractive – and therefore interesting – person.

  I’ll be honest with you. I didn’t think it would be like the movies. I’m not a thicko and I know Hollywood and books and love songs on the radio are responsible for spreading the most atrocious lies about life on a daily basis. Egotistical bad boys falling in love and changing their chauvinistic ways because they meet a ditzy girl who falls over sometimes. Or some under-appreciated policeman saving the world from certain destruction at the very last moment. Or a massive weirdo loner undergoing a makeover and suddenly everyone’s like, “Oh wow. You’re pretty now. And you don’t wear glasses any more. I’m going to forget immediately that I’ve spent the last five years of our school career telling everyone you have rabies and sticking Kick me notes to your back, and suddenly respect you, make you popular and completely change the way I relate to you.” For ever.

  Life doesn’t work like that.

  Or so I thought.

  Here were my predictions for today. People might notice, sure. But I’m still me. I’m still that loser they’ve hated for years. Why would that change just because I’m pretty now? I expected MONTHS of snazzy new outfits before I even got a “Hello”.

  How wrong I was.

  Because, today, walking down the school corridors, it felt like pop culture crap is actually onto something. People moved out of the way for me. Me! I heard whispers of excitement about me. Me! Some guy – who until this week has only spoken to me once, and that was only to say “Out the way, you’re blocking the vending machine” – actually SMILED at me. ME!

  I became somebody in the time it took to walk from the school gates to my first lesson. I became important and interesting from the moment I applied thirty-quid mascara this morning. Years of torment have been forgotten in a quick outfit change.

  How screwed up is that?

  At first I was confused. It CAN’T be this easy, I thought. The world can’t be so vacuous. Looks can’t alter your life so drastically and so quickly.

  But then I thought about it. And – I’m not sure why – but yes, becoming attractive does do that.

  Imagine your school and then imagine the loner-iest weirdo social outcast there. You’ve thought of one, right? Every school has one. They usually have some kind of…issue, making them the weirdo they are. Usually it’s because they’re fat. Or noticeably ugly. Or just plain weird. Or smell funny. It doesn’t take much. And they’ve got a bad attitude, haven’t they? They’re PERFECT for winding up, because they react. You get what you want. Their hatred for you for being so much higher on the social food chain is so obvious, that you kinda enjoy flicking them the odd nasty comment. Sniggering behind their back just loud enough for them to hear. Asking guys at school questions like “Would you shag so-and-so for a million pounds?” and then laughing hysterically at the disgust on their faces.

  Until today, that person was me.

  Now, imagine if, one day, your outcast waltzed into school looking bloody fabulous. Better than you, in fact.

  In theory it shouldn’t make a difference. In fact, it should just add fuel to the bullying fire, shouldn’t it? “Oh, look, bless, you’re trying to BE like us.”

  But attractiveness doesn’t work like that. It’s power, it’s currency. And if you’ve spent your whole school life treating this suddenly-gorgeous girl like total crap, if the power shifts, then you’re in trouble.

  Everyone’s in trouble.

  Because there is a whole lotta karma heading your way.

  So, yes, I was wrong. About how quickly this plan would work. But it’s working, right?

  So now I’m onto phase two.

  “What’s phase two?” I hear you cry.

  Every school has an outcast and – because nature always has to balance, doesn’t it? – every school has a popular group too. A gang of people you know every single detail about – though they probably struggle to remember your name.

  Got them?

  Good. Because I’ve got those people in my school too.

  And I’m coming to get them.

  chapter sixteen

  Breaking into the perfect posse wasn’t going to be easy. Bree knew that. But in just three days a number of notable things had happened.

  1) She and Holdo no longer walked to school together

  Nothing was said. No guns were drawn. But, after Bree’s spiteful comment and decision not to eat lunch with him, Holdo hadn’t waited at the school gate to walk home with her. She’d walked back alone – her new shoes rubbing blisters into the backs of her ankles. Holdo never stayed mad at her for long though, and the next morning he stood at the corner, nervously shuffling his shoes in the leaves.

  Bree: “Hi.”

  Holdo: “Hi.”

  And that was the extent of their dialogue for the rest of the journey. All their usual topics of shared hatred failed to stimulate conversation. So they kicked leaves and looked down at the ground, as the silence strangled them and their friendship. Lump after lump swam up Bree’s throat and she struggled to swallow them down.

  The next morning – just to avoid the sheer awfulness of it all – Bree left for school earlier than normal. And Holdo didn’t wait at the gates at home time. And so, very quickly, Bree was all alone in the world.

  The second thing was:

  2) Hugo gave her his famous shag-me eyes

  Bree had plans for Hugo, but they weren’t due to start for a while yet. So she was surprised when they were put in motion for her early.

  By him. And his groin.

  Just before a form-time dedicated to pushing the Duke Of Edinburgh gold scheme like it was crack, Hugo and his disciples blocked the doorway once again.

  “How’s plans going for your eighteenth, dude?” Seth was red-faced again. It was definitely just how his face was naturally, all the time.

  Hugo smiled, and tapped his nose. “All under control, gentlemen. All under control.”

  “Are you really holding an actual festival in your garden?”

  He laughed. “I could do. I could erect a tent especially for drunk girls and call it the Gash Palace.”

  Or you could call it the Questionable Consent tent… Shh, Bree. Stop being a feminist, just for now. It’s not part of the plan.

  Bree stood there patiently waiting to get past, tapping her shoe as they all hiccupped with laughter.

  “Gash Palace. That’s brilliant!”

  “It should have turrets.”

  “Made out of thongs, condoms and hardened lube.”

  “I could be the king of Gash Palace and wear a crown,” Hugo said.

  More insane laughter.

  “Ahh, man. If that’s the case, let me be in your court!” Seth said, almost dribbling.

  Bree cleared her throat and they all looked up, not the least bit embarrassed to have been overheard.

  Last Friday, they’d ridiculed her. And now, despite the earth only spinning a measly five times, everything was completely different.

  Bree gestured to the door. “Can I get by? You’re all kinda in the way?” She giggled.

  I’ve just giggled. And said “kinda”. Please, God, make this all be worth it.

  If her film marathon was anything to go by, giggling was an intrinsic part of breaking into a popular gang. Giggling, along with quick sassy comebacks, a bitch-eat-bitch mentality, and a kindness lobotomy. This was the first time she’d really tried it out.

  Hugo stared at her in confusion, like he was trying to place her face. Then he smirked, stood back, and bowed with a hand flourish – like she was a princess.

  “This way, madam.”

  The guys guffawed, getting the joke. Bree fought the urge to smash their heads together.

  “You can bow all you like, but I won’t be going into your Gash Palace, Your Highness.” She needed all her acting skills to make her voice sound playful and confident. She was dying on the inside.

  “OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHH!”

  They jumpe
d on her comment in delight, pissing themselves with laughter.

  “Whoa. The Gash Palace backlash has already begun.”

  “DENIED.”

  Bree, hating herself, let out another giggle. She stepped past them, flicking her heavily-mascaraed eyes up at Hugo as she did so.

  He just stared at her.

  Bree had heard about Hugo’s legendary eye-shag. His deep-set blue eyes, framed with luscious completely-wasted-on-a-boy dark eyelashes, were apparently irresistible when he gave you “the look”. She’d heard girls who’d fallen foul to it drone on about it in the loos.

  She was quite sure she was getting it now. Her knees went buttery and her heart did this weird dive thing, as all sorts of hormones flashmobbed through her blood.

  It was a bit too soon. She couldn’t conquer phase two – the perfect posse – with Hugo eye-shagging her. So, trying to remain unflustered, she broke eye contact and sauntered straight past him.

  3) Some girls at school had started wearing the same tights as her

  And not even ironically, like the time Jassmine and the perfects had all worn pink stripy tights and walked behind Bree, sniggering.

  By Thursday, she’d spotted at least four other mock-stockings and heard grumblings from her Latin teacher that they broke uniform rules for not being corporate enough. Bree planned to keep the trend changing. Her mum had deposited yet another clothing bundle on her bed which included two new pairs of tights. One was sheer apart from perfect black velvet polka dots. The other had miniature stepladders on them. Bree didn’t know much about fashion – apart from that ponchos were bad – but even she knew these tights were cool. Her legs were getting a lot of admiring looks these days. From boys – enjoying her showing off some leg. And girls – wanting to see what she wore next.

  Things had certainly changed in a few short days. People had upped and noticed. However Jassmine etc. weren’t acknowledging her rise from loser to looker. They still ignored her. When she’d breezed past them earlier that day, they’d been busy congregating around Gemma’s phone, whispering and screeching with delight.

  “Noooo, Gemma, you can’t send that around.”

  Gemma shrugged. “Why not?”

  “How did you even get it? Oh, it’s awful! Look at the size of her nips.”

  Gemma shrugged again, her eyes glinting. “Danny left his phone in my form room by accident. I picked it up to see whose it was, found this picture of his girlfriend, and sent it to myself.”

  “You are just evil,” Jassmine said, poking her with delight.

  “I’d rather be evil than have burger nipples.”

  “Burger nipples,” they all whispered and dissolved into laughter.

  Bree wasn’t entirely sure what was going on, but she felt like someone’s life was about to get ruined.

  She needed to be in that huddle. To find out what was going on. How was she going to break them?

  During Latin, Bree sat in her usual spot, doodling in her notebook, as she’d already conjugated the verbs set for that week. Latin was a very full class – it looked good on the UCAS form. And Bree would do anything to ensure her place to Cambridge. In her head, she saw herself frolicking through the cobbled streets with a gang of lovely smart friends, trading intellectual comments with one another…

  Anyway, Latin was so crammed, her scribbling went unnoticed.

  Bree wrote down everything she knew about the perfect posse.

  The perfect posse

  Jassmine Dallington

  Aka The Queen.

  Why? The usual reasons. Tumbling mane of perfectly coiffed blonde hair. Perfect body, combined with that weird power some people have that makes everyone desperate to be liked by them.

  If rumours were true, she wasn’t utterly perfect though. She was nicknamed “Apple Tits” behind her back, because apparently her boobs looked like two halves of an apple stuck onto her body. And she seemed to have an utter weak spot where Hugo was concerned – letting him mess her about like an abused puppy.

  Apart from that, there wasn’t much there with Jassmine. She was pretty vacant, like personality would damage her reputation or something.

  Gemma Rinestone

  Gemma was mean. Soulless mean. Like, you wouldn’t be surprised if she laughed watching Schindler’s List mean. Anytime Bree had been teased by the perfects, Gemma had been the orchestrator. She’d been that way since they were little kids, yelling “LOSER” the loudest through the gap under the toilet cubicles in Year Seven when she knew Bree was hiding in there.

  The weird thing about Gemma was that she wasn’t actually very pretty. At all.

  She was also blonde, but her hair was frizzy and she had a weird gummy smile with too-big clown lips. Plus, the foundation she shovelled onto her face didn’t hide the thick layer of acne on her chin.

  That said, when Gemma Rinestone started putting her hair up in a bun with rainbow clips – a fashion nuke bomb for anyone else – a week later the whole school was doing it.

  And though attractiveness might not be a currency she was wealthy in, Gemma was filthy rich in the currency of evil. These were some of the mean things Bree had seen her do:

  Lifted up some random Year Seven’s skirt for five whole minutes while the poor kid just stood there, crying.

  Personally stolen Bree’s graphics coursework, dumped it in the canteen bin so it was irrevocably ruined by spaghetti hoops, then boasted about doing so.

  It was she who’d started Jassmine’s “Apple Tits” nickname, during some intensely complicated fight with her about something to do with somebody else’s ex-boyfriend and a sexual experience on a bench at a party… Jassmine still didn’t know.

  She was the “editor” of the Year Eleven yearbook and tampered with the Most likely to be… results. She invented a new category called Most likely to eat their way through the school canteen and made the winner this poor fat girl called Matilda, who’d never once spoken to Gemma or anyone else for that matter. When the yearbooks were handed out, Matilda broke down into silent tears, ran from the school and was never seen again. Gemma laughed and said loudly to anyone who was listening – which was everyone – that “some people just can’t take a joke”. She also changed the results so she won Most likely to be a model. Bree knew this because she’d helped on the yearbook and was in charge of counting up the votes.

  Gemma hadn’t even made the top twenty.

  Jessica Rightman

  Jessica was convinced she was going to be a Hollywood movie star. And so was the rest of the school. She’d been the lead in every school play for the past four years. She sang throughout every lesson in her TERRIBLE nasal voice. She’d got some God-awful brother, Drew, in the year above, who also believed he was some sort of acting genius. Their parents had to be pushier than Stalin.

  Aside from the annoying singing habit, Jessica also practised her vocal skills by making snide comments to anyone she considered beneath her. Which was everyone. Like she was permanently pissed off that she had to share oxygen with other people.

  Jessica also wasn’t that pretty, definitely not as pretty as Jassmine. Everything on her face was right. Two eyes (blue), a nose, okay lips, cheeks, etc. But the way they were put together wasn’t quite correct. Everything was too angular and pointy. But Jessica believed herself to be a goddess and threw herself at all men, expecting them to drop dead with gratefulness. Her victims tended to either use her, or shrug her off their laps. At which point she’d laugh, screech “You’re such a tease!” and toss her hair back with a big swoosh of inner denial.

  And then there was the hanger-on.

  Emily Nashville

  If anyone needed an example of vacuous air, they should just point to Emily. She’d sacrificed her personality, on a metaphorical temple like a slaughtered lamb, in order to get in with the perfect posse. Her opinions were Jassmine’s opinions. Her jokes were Gemma’s jokes. Her put-downs were Jessica’s put-downs. She laughed at anything any of them said, clutching her sides like she was trying to
hold in her guts.

  So that was the four. The four Bree needed to infiltrate somehow.

  Bree’s concentration was interrupted by a flurry of vibrations echoing around the classroom. Phones rumbled on silent simultaneously under people’s desks. Her Latin teacher, Mrs McQuire, who was oblivious to any technological advance from the twentieth century onwards, didn’t notice.

  Well, she didn’t notice until the whispering began.

  “Oh my God.” Someone psst-ed next to Bree, shoving their phone into their neighbour’s lap. “Have you SEEN this?”

  Bree, whose phone, oddly enough, hadn’t gone off, strained her neck to catch a glimpse of the screen.

  She caught her breath.

  It was a photo of a girl from their year, Natalie. Topless. A selfie, from the looks of it. She was pouting naively at the camera, but Bree’s eyes ignored that, and went straight to her chest. Someone had manipulated the photo in Paint, pointing a massive red arrow to her boobs, with the words BURGER NIPPLES scrawled underneath.

  So this was what Gemma had been talking about. This was the life the perfect posse had decided to ruin that day. For sport. Some poor girl they hardly knew, whose only sin was to be naive enough to send a photo like that to her boyfriend.

  The poor, poor girl.

  “Quiet,” Mrs McQuire said. “What’s going on? No talking.”

  The class ignored her.

  “It’s Natalie – jeez, have you ever seen areolae that big?”

  “Where did it come from?”

  “Gemma’s phone.”

  “Poor Natalie.”

  “What a bitch.”

  “Have you sent it to anyone else?”

  “QUIET, PLEASE!” Mrs McQuire yelled, and they settled – for now. But the buzz of silent gossip hung heavy in the air, the vibration of received texts punctuating their verb conjugations.

  Bree looked at her notepad and felt a bit sick. She noticed her hand shaking and lay her pen down.

  Why?

  She picked up her pen again and wrote the word down, underlining it twice.

  Why would those girls do that?

  Why was she trying to break into them?

  Why do people find them so interesting when they do things like that?