The Manifesto on How to be Interesting

by Holly Bourne

  “Now, Bree, I’m most disappointed by your lack of efforts in showing some skin today.”

  Bree had been busy thinking about how Shakespeare invented the word “eyeball”, so did that cartoon looking-around thing before she realized Matty was talking to her. For the first time ever.

  Her legs were clad in a sweaty pair of tights covered in tiny lipstick prints today – her scars still needed to heal up.

  She looked at him over the rim of her designer sunglasses. “Excuse me, do I know you?”

  Hugo laughed and Jassmine’s head bobbed up and down on his stomach.

  “Yeah, Batty Boy, where are your manners?”

  Matty wrinkled his nose. “I’m only polite to girls who’ve got their legs out.”

  “Well, I’m only polite to boys who don’t need to dye their eyelashes.”

  Hugo pissed himself laughing, so much that Jassmine’s head lolled onto the grass. The boys clocked his reaction and all laughed too. Then the girls joined in.

  Bree dug into her bag and chucked a mascara at him. “Here, you can borrow this if you’d like.”

  More laughter.

  Matty lobbed the mascara back at her. Quite hard. Luckily, she caught it before it hit her face.

  “Oooo, calm down. Someone’s got man PMS.”

  The laughter continued.

  “Who are you anyway?”

  Bree held out her hand. “Lovely to be introduced to you, Matty. My name’s Bree.”

  He looked at her hand like it was dirty but shook it anyway.

  “There. That wasn’t so hard now, was it?”

  The laughter died down, with Seth the last to quieten.

  “Damn. This new girl has proper banter,” Seth said.

  Bree beamed inside. Her planned transition from flirty to backchat seemed to be working. They respected her lack of fear. She lay back next to Jessica and relaxed behind her glasses, glad the conversation was no longer about leg-showing. Jassmine reclaimed her spot on Hugo and kissed his cheeks while he ignored her. Jessica and Emily both looked a little lost without her guiding them.

  “So what are the latest plans for the party then?” Seth asked.

  Hugo batted Jassmine away.

  “My dad’s hiring some kickass DJ and a massive marquee. It’s going to be epic. Like, apocalyptically epic.”

  Jassmine ignored the rebuff and started stroking his hair.

  “Man, I’m so excited I might get an erection,” Seth joked.

  “Really? Cos Batty Boy here told me you had trouble getting it up in your shower session with him last night…” Hugo raised an eyebrow.

  The laughter Bree had generated was nothing compared to this. Jassmine and Emily cackled the loudest, making shrill shrieking sounds.

  “You’re hilarious, Hugo!” Emily shot him an admiring look but was instantly stared down by Jass. “I mean…ha ha. Seth, you’re not really gay, are you?”

  He blushed pink, while trying to look like he didn’t care. “Why? You’re not coming onto me, are you? Cos I think if you did, I definitely wouldn’t be able to get it up. Yuck much?”

  Emily’s face recoiled into itself, her eyes blinking madly to hold in sudden tears. Seth looked round eagerly for hilarity. He got none.

  “Seth, you are such a dickhead,” Jass said. “Like Emily would shag you anyway.”

  “Yeah, mate. Calm down, no need to make it nasty.”

  “I’ll happily shag you, Emily,” Matty Boy piped in.

  “Oooo, thanks, I guess,” Emily muttered, and everyone giggled.

  “What’s with the tension today, boy?” Hugo said. “This is our last chance to catch some serious vitamin D before, like, next century. Can’t we all chill and stop being mean to each other? I’ve decided that the following topics of conversation are the only things acceptable: the Rugby World Cup, Jassmine’s tight arse—”

  “Oi,” she said, slapping him playfully.

  “As I said, her tight arse…erm…my clungefest of a birthday. And did I say Rugby World Cup?”

  Bree rolled over onto her tummy. “Wow, Hugo. Way to buck the trend of rugby meatheadness there.”

  He smiled and caught her eye, then gave her a knowing look. “Do you want to give head to my meat, Bree?”

  She was glad her sunglasses hid most of her face as she was irritatingly impressed with his quick way with words. The others cheered.

  Bree couldn’t think of a very good comeback. “In your dreams.”

  “Be careful, Bree. My dreams often become a reality.” And he did the eye-shag thing again. Her stomach went a bit funny…until she caught the look on Jassmine’s face. The murderous look.

  “This isn’t an allocated topic of conversation. Don’t you guys need to discuss kicking a pig skin around or something?”

  Her aloofness saved her. Jassmine stopped evilling her and began harping on about England’s chances. This gave Bree time to think.

  Hugo wants me. This is interesting.

  chapter twenty-five

  The tension in Bree was building, like a slow-cooker meal of crap and stress. She’d never believed in fate – but she felt somehow, somewhere, inside her bones, or her heart, or whatever, that Hugo’s party was going to be a dramatic event in her life. One of those nights forever etched onto your memory. Usually for the wrong reasons…

  There were a number of complicating factors to her master plan. The first being that she’d forgiven Mr Fellows and now spent ninety per cent of her time wondering what his face would look like at the end of a church aisle on their wedding day.

  You know, as you do.

  Creative-writing club was her oasis from bitchiness, her holiday home from Shallowsville. It just so happened that it had become an after-school club, so it was less obvious now to Jassmine and company when she kept slinking off. This also led to a few late nights in Mr Fellows’s classroom afterwards, spending a little too much time tidying away pencil pots and thesauruses. It was gorgeous, every last moment. They explored his extensive bookcase, delving into old volumes of poetry and reading their favourite stanzas out to each other. Or had disagreements over who should win the next Pulitzer…which she really needed. She missed Holdo’s yearly sweepstake.

  It was all completely inappropriate. Of course it was. The situation had veered into dangerous territory many times. He spoke in far too much detail about his personal life. She heard all the clichés about his unsatisfactory relationship with his wife. How he couldn’t bear being with someone who didn’t read. How he’d rushed into marriage with the first girl who’d showed an interest in him at university. He once even hinted that they hardly had sex any more.

  Each word, each held look, moved them further and further into HE’LL-GET-FIRED-AND-JAILED land. But, as organic as their developing friendship seemed, it also contained a tidal wave of emotions she felt were too strong to control. Bree was being pushed along by the current and it felt good, so good. Being with him made her brain go quiet and the edges of reality go fuzzy.

  They hadn’t kissed again or anything.

  It was all in control, she thought.

  Maybe.

  Nothing would happen. It was fine.

  Another issue was that, sometimes…only occasionally…well, sometimes a bit more than that, Bree found herself quite…liking some of the perfect posse. When they weren’t torturing people for no reason, that was. Though that had calmed down considerably since Jass had got back with Hugo, as she was too distracted following him everywhere. Plus, Bree prided herself on coaxing Gemma out of posting some of her most barbaric rumours on Dirty Gossip. Ironic really, as Bree was blogging about their every move.

  She walked in with Jass every day now and they chatted in the way she’d always imagined girls chatting. Jassmine wasn’t utterly shallow all of the time. She had moments of genuine insightfulness when she wasn’t discussing Hugo, her appearance, or who was a loser at school. Her intellectual revelations were never earth-shattering, just:

  “Sometimes I worry about
all the crap they put in make-up. What if I’m just applying cancer to my face every day?”

  Or:

  “Do you think Gemma might have some undiagnosed personality disorder?”

  Definitely not reinventing gravity, but there was more there than Bree had initially thought.

  The others weren’t so bad either. Gemma was so consistent in her nastiness it actually made Bree kind of respect her over time. It had to be hard work to keep up such constant levels of aggression towards everyone. Jessica, especially, had grown on Bree ever since they’d both drunk too many apple Martinis at Gemma’s house and sung Broadway songs the ENTIRE way home.

  They’d covered every Andrew Lloyd Webber song they could remember, stumbling into the road, so the walk home had taken three times longer than normal. Then Jessica had confided that sometimes she thought Jassmine was selfish and that when Hugo pulled out of Cyrano de Bergerac, she’d cried herself to sleep for two nights running.

  Emily was just harmless. Pathetic? Maybe a little. But harmless. And who could blame her for attaching herself to them like duct tape? If she was hanging onto their coat-tails for an easy ride through school, then why not? Bree’s life had certainly become easier since she’d got in with them.

  She supposed that this was what she found interesting about people. How, as you get to know someone, it’s not so much their good points that warm you to them, but the eccentricities, the confessions of self-doubt, the flaws you only realize when you get close up – like the pores on your nose in one of those ghastly magnifying mirrors. She didn’t believe there were many great life lessons out there for her still to learn. But perhaps this was one of them. That, by letting people in, even seemingly shallow nasty people like Jassmine, you learn something. Something you can only get through intimacy.

  Then Gemma would call her Twatty McGeek again and all this candyflossy insight would fall right out the window.

  Little by little, piece by piece, the inner sanctum of Queen’s Hall was revealing itself to Bree, like peeling a large onion – that smelled of Coco Mademoiselle. Each quirk and admission of secret yearning was noted and blogged about, and Bree had begun to think she sort of “got” most of them.

  Apart from Hugo.

  Hugo.

  What an enigma. The boy didn’t reveal ANYTHING. It was all bravado, bravado, bravado mixed with odd signals Bree just didn’t understand. Like opening his eyes mid-snog with Jassmine to wink at her. Or randomly smoking one day after school in an alleyway and then deliberately burning Seth’s arm with a cigarette butt. Or putting his hand up in Bree’s philosophy class and saying the most profound thing about Plato she had ever heard…then making a fart noise with his armpit and blaming it on the teacher.

  The boy was a mystery – one she was keen to unravel. If only she could think of a way to do it other than The Bad Way. The way she was certain was the only way. And a way that made her stomach churn like batter being stirred.

  chapter twenty-six

  “Mum, I need your help.”

  They’d finished dinner. It was just the two of them. Again. Her mum’s attempt at a meat-free spaghetti bolognese had tasted of wrong. Just plain wrong. So most of it was now churned up by the garbage disposal and her mum had ordered in Thai. The boxes lay scattered between them on the carpet, a stray noodle hanging out onto the rug, where it would sit until morning, when the cleaner arrived.

  “Of course, Bree, what is it?”

  “I’ve kind of been invited to a party. A big party. And I have no idea what to wear. I was wondering if you could—”

  “GO SHOPPING WITH YOU?”

  The leftover box of pad thai was hurled to one side in her excitement. Bree couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Well, yeah. That’s what I was gonna ask.”

  “Again? You’ll let me go shopping with you again?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “I thought last time would be a one-off. Like, a lifetime one-off. Unless maybe one day you decided to get married, and needed a wedding gown, and every other person on earth was dead – I hoped maybe we would shop again then.”

  “Hey, Mum. I enjoyed it last time.”

  “You did?”

  “Sure.”

  “But you scowled the whole time.”

  Bree laughed again. “Well, I wasn’t so used to that sort of thing back then. I’m more into it now.” She gestured to today’s outfit. A pair of skinny jeans with a dusty pink see-throughish jumper, garnished with different-sized pearl necklaces. “See this? I picked this out all by myself this morning.”

  “And you look lovely.”

  “Thanks. But I’ve never been to a party before.”

  “Is it Jassmine’s party? She’s an…interesting girl.”

  Jassmine. A guilt surge squidged in Bree’s stomach. Hang on, interesting? What did her mum mean by that?

  “It’s not Jass’s party, but she’s gonna be there.”

  Her mum clapped her hands together. “This is so exciting! Your first massive party. Why don’t you go shopping with Jassmine though? Surely it’s more fun to shop with her?”

  Bree looked at the stray noodle on the lush cream carpet. “Yeah. Maybe. But I kind of wanted to spend time with you.”

  She made an oomph sound as her mother flung herself across the rug to hug her.

  Her mum took the finding of a dress very seriously. Like, military-operation seriously. She dragged Bree out of bed before the sun was even up, despite it being a Sunday, and within an hour they were on a train whizzing to London.

  Bree yawned. “I still don’t see why we couldn’t shop in town.”

  “And risk someone potentially turning up in the same dress as you?”

  Bree hadn’t thought about that.

  “What kind of party is it anyway?”

  “Sort of like a mini festival, I think.” Bree blitzed through the rumours in her head. “It’s in this guy’s garden. But I think his garden is more like a country than a garden.”

  “Grass?”

  “I assume so. Unless his whole garden is tarmacked.”

  “You’ll need wedges, otherwise your heels will sink into the grass.”

  “Wedges? What are wedges?”

  “Just trust me, darling.”

  They got a taxi from Victoria station (“I don’t do the tube, darling”) and were spat out onto the bustling streets of London. Right in front of the gold revolving doors of their destination: Selfridges. Or The Mother Ship as her mum kept calling it, laughing hilariously at her own joke. They were soon engulfed by the thick air of the cosmetics counters. Each one displayed a rainbow palette of every conceivable beauty product, surrounded by perfume bottles sculpted into ornate glass oddities.

  It was a different universe.

  “We need floor three.” Her mum steered her past assistants spraying all sorts of overpriced water at them. “Womenswear.”

  They fought their way to the lift and emerged again into a different and equally puzzling world. There were clothes EVERYWHERE. Rails and rails of them; it was overwhelming.

  Her mum was utterly undeterred. In fact, she ran out onto the shiny floor and draped item after item over her arm.

  “This could work. Oooh, I love this one. Hmm, the colour’s great but the hemline would need to come up…”

  Bree could only follow behind her, watching the pile build.

  “Mum. I don’t think it’s physically possible for me to try all that on before the end of this century.”

  “Don’t be silly. Let’s go get a spot in the changing rooms.”

  Bree’s very limited experience of changing rooms consisted mainly of cramped cubicles with mirrors that made everything evil, curtains that never closed properly, and lighting that took sheer unadulterated joy in highlighting every imperfection of every atom of her skin.

  Selfridges’ changing rooms were quite different. They were ushered through to something called the Personal Shopping zone, where they were given their own little suite – comple
te with beautiful mirrors that made everything in this beautiful world even more beautiful, as well as sparkling glasses of champagne to drink. They were left entirely to their own devices as Bree struggled in and out of stuff, grateful for the curtain separating her from her mum so she didn’t have to worry about Mum seeing her scars.

  Her mum provided a constant stream of commentary.

  “No that one won’t do, you look like a headmistress. What is it with fashion these days? Doesn’t anybody have a waist any more? You should definitely show off your legs, they’re your best feature. Red, honey, I’m thinking red. What do you think? You may as well stand out, you’re so pretty. If only it were summer, looking good is so much easier in the summer.”

  The pile of discarded clothing on the floor grew. Nothing was quite good enough. Nothing was “the one”.

  “Matching an outfit to an important event is like trying to find a soulmate,” her mum said, digging through the other (much smaller) pile of stuff left to try on. “It takes hard work, belief, and instinct.”

  “Mum, it’s just a dress.”

  “It’s never just a dress, dear. It could be the dress you’re wearing when you get your dream job, or when you meet the love of your life. The cloth, the way it’s cut, how it makes you feel, this all has an impact, you know. It can be life-changing… I still remember exactly what I was wearing the night I met your father.”

  “Dad?”

  “Yes. It was a red dress – far too short really, but I was young then, and you got your legs from me. I was so silly, running around London, all tarted up, desperate to find a banker to take care of me…” She picked up a dress in bright blue silk and chucked it over. Bree caught it and pulled it over her head.