The Manifesto on How to be Interesting

by Holly Bourne

  She couldn’t bear to be near him. “You’re disgusting.” She turned on her heel to leave but he grabbed her wrist. Hard.

  “Where are you going?”

  His face was angry suddenly. Aggressive. Fear replaced the nausea.

  “Away. Before you say something stupid. Loudly. And screw everything up.”

  “I hope this doesn’t mean the end of our time together?”

  “Jassmine is my friend.” Bree stuck out her jaw. Maybe reasoning with his soul would work? He must have one somewhere, buried inside all that testosterone.

  Hugo let go. “Funny…you weren’t acting like her friend the other night.”

  “And you weren’t acting like her boyfriend.”

  “Touché.” He smiled. “And this is why we’re so good together.”

  Bree mustered all the strength left in her drained body, grabbed his hand, and placed it on his own crotch.

  “No. You and your hand are what’s good together. And I really don’t want to come between such a special relationship.”

  She stalked off down the corridor, leaving him laughing behind her.

  The moment she got back into her empty home she got into bed. Her mum must’ve been out shopping, or yoga-ing, or wondering why her new perfect daughter had turned back into her old crappy daughter. Bree pulled the duvet over her face and allowed all the emotion she’d repressed since seeing Hugo to seep out of her. She bit her fist until tiny specks of blood emerged and she could taste the iron in her mouth. This brought back the nausea. She dragged her bin to her bedside and dry retched into it, spitting and gurgling up nothingness onto the top of a celeb magazine Jass had brought round. After that pleasantness passed, she stared at the ceiling, counting to a hundred and back again, trying not to think about the sharp objects in the en suite.

  Hugo was dangerous. She’d known that from the start and that this part of her plan wouldn’t be easy. What she hadn’t counted on was a) growing more of a conscience and b) a sexual experience so awful that she couldn’t bear even entertaining the thought of doing it again. This threw an oversized spanner into everything.

  How could she keep him placated enough so he would leave her be, without being actually sick? He loved the chase, she knew that. But she could only fight him off for so long before he got frustrated and wanted to play a different game.

  The darkness crept back in again. It started in the top corners of the ceiling and she watched as it edged down the walls. She could see an actual shadow creeping down towards her, ready to penetrate through her skin, pour through her veins and head straight to her heart. Making it all numb.

  Bree had no will left to fight it.

  But then, just as the blackness was about to reach her, she got out of bed and went to her special bookshelf. To let the books rescue her, like they always did.

  She took out her copy of Jane Austen’s Persuasion and flicked through to her favourite quote at the end.

  “I am half agony, half hope.”

  The book fell open to the page, the quote still decorated with pink biro hearts Bree had intricately drawn all round it when she first read it many years ago. It was a quote about love, written in a letter to the heroine at the end, after a story of patience and longing and things never going as they should.

  To Bree, it was a quote about her life.

  Half of it was agony, the simple agony of being Bree, of seeing herself as the world saw her. Weird. Pointless. Nasty.

  But the other half of her life was hope. Hope that it would all be worthwhile in the end, hope that she’d eventually stop hurting all the time.

  Hope that the agony would produce words and sentences as beautiful as that one.

  It was also a quote about love.

  Mr Fellows…

  She had a whole day with him tomorrow.

  It was like a match being struck.

  And the bad retreated as she fell asleep properly – for the first time in two days – a small smile on her troubled face, and the book clutched in her hand.

  chapter thirty-four

  Her legs wobbled as she walked to meet him at the station. Her knees, in fact, had grown a will of their own that didn’t agree with the other parts of her lower limbs. It was like trying to run a marathon on tranquillizers.

  Then, of course, there’d been the issue of what to wear.

  Bree knew he wouldn’t care. Not really. He’d kissed her in that awful champagne clingy mess at the leavers’ ball. He’d seen her vast collection of neon stripy tights. Witnessed every statement hair colour. And…it wasn’t even a date, was it?

  Plus Bree had a brain. A brain he was interested in. She laughed as she realized it was kind of like her brain was going on a day trip today – like a witness protection person being allowed a restful day by the sea or something. She was allowed to say intellectual things today. She could talk about the books she’d been secretly reading. All this was wonderful, and yet it would be so lovely if she could just look…well, fantastic at the same time.

  In the end she’d plumped for dark skinny jeans and a lacy black jumper, with a big faux fur cropped overcoat that made her feel like a glamorous spy. A touch of red lipstick and just a brushing of mascara finished the look off.

  Oh – and she’d accidently-on-purpose hidden a Kafka book in her bag which she planned to accidently-on-purpose drop on the floor and say “Oh, oops, silly me. Have you read this one?” before looking up at him through her eyelashes, the very face of intellectuality, sexuality and innocence.

  Well, that was the plan.

  She pressed the button at the pelican crossing and waited for the green man to flash. She was only about twenty metres away from the station entrance and caught sight of Mr Fellows waiting for her. Her heart went into overdrive. He was here! She watched, amused, as he paced back and forth outside the sliding doors. He repeatedly checked his watch, looking troubled.

  He hadn’t seen Bree yet.

  She crossed the road and walked up to meet him, her eyes on him the whole way. He kept turning his head from side to side, jumpy, looking for spies from school or something. And then, finally, he saw her.

  She watched a conflicting range of emotions cross his face. Fear. Shock that she’d come, maybe? And then relief. His eyes softened and he couldn’t help but smile as she walked up the steps.

  There was an awkward moment when they didn’t know how to greet each other. They performed some weird hug-kiss-dodge dance, before quickly and silently deciding on a polite British peck on the cheek.

  “Bree, you came.”

  She grinned. “You sound surprised.”

  “No. Yes. Well, I didn’t know if you would.” Nervous energy poured out of him. His voice sounded crazed.

  “I said I would, didn’t I?” she said in a soft voice, trying to calm him.

  “Yes of course. I’ve got you a Travelcard. Although I couldn’t use a Young Persons Railcard to get a discount. Because of course I don’t have one, do I? Cos I’m an old bugger. Not like you. So I just got you a regular one. Is that okay? That’s okay, isn’t it?”

  “Sir. It’s fine. Do you want some money for it?”

  He flinched. “Oh God. You just called me sir. What are we doing, Bree?”

  Away from the classroom, Mr Fellows seemed completely different. There was no authoritative desk between the two of them. He wasn’t wearing his normal navy-blue suit, but a grey V-necked jumper and jeans, with a beanie hat covering most of his hair. It made everything even odder. Even more wrong. Yet, when Bree thought about how his eyes had looked when he’d seen her, she felt the happiest she had since she’d started this stupid project.

  “I don’t actually know your real name, Mr Fellows.”

  It was the stupidest thing to say. He sighed and put his hands over his face.

  “Of course you don’t. Oh God, seriously, Bree, what are we doing?”

  She reached out and gently removed his hands, forcing him to look at her.

  “We’re not doing any
thing wrong.”

  “It’s illegal.”

  “No it’s not. I might just be bunking off school because I’m a seventeen-year-old who hates my life. You might be pulling a sickie to go for another job interview. We’ve bumped into each other at the train station by chance. No one can prove otherwise.”

  He stared at her. “But that’s not what we’re doing, is it, Bree?”

  “I’m not sure what we’re doing but I know it doesn’t feel wrong.”

  A smile crossed his face. “Exactly right as always.” His voice was happier now. “Anyway, it’s not like we’re hugging or kissing or anything, is it?”

  “No.” Bree managed to keep the disappointment hidden. “You’re just cheering me up, right?”

  “Right.”

  They grinned at each other.

  “So when’s the train leaving?” she asked.

  Mr Fellows looked through the glass of the sliding doors at the announcement board. “About fifteen minutes.”

  “Brilliant. Plenty of time. I’m just going to buy a bottle of water.” She moved to go to the little shop attached to the station but he called something out, making her stop and turn round.

  “Logan,” he said.

  “What?”

  He looked right into her eyes, so intensely that she really couldn’t breathe. Only savour…

  “My ‘real’ name. It’s Logan.”

  Smiling, she said, “Nice to meet you, Logan.”

  He smiled back.

  “Nice to meet you too.”

  chapter thirty-five

  That was the end of the awkwardness for most of the day. Whatever moral hump Logan needed to overcome, it was done. It was a blissful train journey up into London. With rush hour over, half the carriage was empty, leaving plenty of room to devour the broadsheet paper Logan had bought.

  It was like being in a couple. The sort of couple Bree had always wanted to be one half of. They rode up in companionable silence – talking only to swap sections or read out bits they thought were good, or funny, or wrong. They occasionally put their papers down and stared vacantly out at fields of green speeding past, which became lines of offices and traffic-clogged roads. Bree made a passing comment about how getting the train into London always reminded her of Larkin’s The Whitsun Weddings poem and Logan gave her one of those looks that made her feel like she was the most special thing in existence.

  She wished the track would spread on infinitely so they could stay in that carriage for ever – that God would build more railway line like Scalextric so she could stay this happy always. But God was obviously too busy pretending to solve world hunger and wars, and so, much too soon, she felt the train slow and grind to a halt in the city at Victoria station.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, as they picked up the bits of newspaper they’d inadvertently strewn all over the carriage.

  “It’s a surprise.”

  Bree made a face as she folded up the Life and Style section to put in the bin. “I hate surprises.”

  “Well, you’ll like this one.”

  They disposed of their rubbish and navigated their way down to the Underground. The tunnels were warm with leftover body heat from the earlier rush hour. Bree took off her fur coat and fanned herself with her hand while they waited for a tube. One arrived shortly and they hopped on, each holding onto a pole rather than sitting.

  “I love the Tube,” Bree said, as they whizzed through the darkness. “It always reminds me of those photos from World War II, crowds of people sleeping down here, using the stations as giant bomb shelters.”

  “I’m not a huge fan,” Logan said. “I don’t like thinking about what would happen if we got stuck.”

  “We’d suffocate slowly?”

  “Exactly.”

  “No we wouldn’t.”

  “Well, maybe we wouldn’t die. But I would definitely have some kind of mental breakdown.”

  Bree elbowed him playfully. “Oh, because bunking off work and taking a student up to London isn’t having some kind of mental breakdown?”

  Lead balloon.

  His face went blank.

  “Come on, I was joking.”

  “Not funny, Bree,” he muttered towards his shoes more than to her face.

  “Well, I know that now.”

  The silence lasted two whole stops.

  “So which stop are we getting off at?” Bree asked eventually.

  He didn’t answer at first. She felt a little guilty, but mostly a bit pissed off. Why couldn’t they joke about the fact that what they were doing was totally forbidden? It was too weird pretending it was normal.

  “The next one.”

  She looked at the Tube map along the top of the carriage. “King’s Cross St Pancras?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Are you taking me to Paris?” Her face lit up.

  “Er…no.”

  “Oh…of course not…right.”

  They rode on in another fuggy silence. Bree was a bit annoyed, but she couldn’t quite put her manicured finger on why.

  Well, okay, she could…

  He hadn’t declared his undying love for her the moment they’d got on the train. He hadn’t entwined his fingers with hers, stared into her eyes and said, “Bree. Let’s run away and grow old together in a caravan, writing poetry and reading it to each other by a roaring fire.”

  They got off at their station and rode up the escalators together, avoiding being whacked in the ankles by tourists wielding wheelie suitcases, and emerged into bright winter sunlight.

  “Where now?”

  Logan looked about to get his bearings and sidestepped to a map. “Er…right, I think.”

  It was a quick walk past bustling traffic before Logan stopped and said, “We’re here.”

  She looked up at the imposing red modern building.

  “Where are we?”

  “You don’t know?”

  She shook her head.

  “It’s the British Library.”

  All her annoyance dissipated.

  “Seriously? This place?” She took in the wide paved courtyard of red and cream squares and the crimson bricks of the building. Everything looked neat, tidy and, most oddly of all, new.

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  She turned on the spot, just gazing at it. “No. I’m fine. It’s just, well, not what I thought it would look like at all.”

  “You’ve never been here?”

  “Never.”

  He looked proud of himself. “What were you expecting it to look like?”

  She shrugged. “I dunno. More like Hogwarts. It’s so…modern.”

  “They moved it from the old British Museum Reading Room, so it used to look more like Hogwarts. It’s got a copy of every single UK book published, you know?”

  This fact made Bree very excited. “Really? Every single one?”

  It looked even more swanky and un-library-ish on the inside. Security guards checked their bags and Bree practically floated up the giant marble steps.

  “I can’t think of a happier place for a book to live,” she said, to no one in particular.

  Logan laughed. “So you’re over it not looking like Hogwarts?”

  She half-nodded. Everyone around them looked like the sort of person Bree could be friends with. They each had their head in a book, or several. They weren’t wearing stupid fashionable clothes, but rather comfy stuff for a day of study. And the quiet thing was taken seriously.

  “Maybe one day my book will be in here,” she murmured.

  “Are you working on a new book?” Logan – she would never get bored of knowing that was his name – looked at her with a mixture of admiration and anxiety.

  She grinned to herself. “I’m working on something. I’m not sure what it is yet.”

  “It’s great that you’ve kept on writing, Bree.”

  “Well, there are no more girls chucking themselves off piers, you’ll be relieved to know.”

  She could see hi
m struggling not to laugh.

  “That’s…a shame.” His non-smile got bigger.

  “Hey!” She smacked his arm. “That was an amazing piece of prose!”

  “It was quite an accomplishment…to make one suicide attempt last for 110,000 words.”

  He burst out laughing and she flew into a mock rage and chased him up the giant staircase, much to the displeasure of everyone around them. Out of breath, she jokingly punched him again in his (rock hard) stomach and they sank onto a bench.

  “So what is there to do here?” she asked, looking up at the high ceiling.

  He scratched his head and looked uncomfortable. “Well, you have to apply to get into the reading room to see all the actual books.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “What sort of whacko library is this? You can’t just walk in?”

  “Nope.”

  “So can we apply to get in?”

  He looked even more uncomfortable. “Well. You have to be over eighteen.”

  Bree nodded slowly. “Riiiight.”

  “There’s something I brought you here to show you though.”

  “Is it age appropriate?”

  It was supposed to be a joke but it didn’t sound like one. Their age gap, and all the reasons they shouldn’t be there, hung around like cheap perfume.

  “Come on, it’s this way.”

  He led her back down the stairs, past a giant glass column filled with proper antique books. She pointed to the towering shelves, encased in glass.

  “See, that’s what I thought the British Library would look like.”

  “It does pack a bit more of a visual punch than a computer database, doesn’t it?”

  “So where are we going?”

  “It’s just at the bottom of the stairs.”

  He led her through a dark doorway and they emerged into a deep purple light. The air was cool in that museumy way that immediately demands good behaviour. Everyone pored over backlit glass cases.

  “What is this place?” Bree whispered.

  The tranquillity of the room calmed Logan’s face. He took her hand and squeezed it.

  “It’s the Treasures of the British Library. I thought if anything was to cheer you up, this would be the place.”