Stereotype

by Claire Hennessy

  (Read the journal, Abi, and quit boring us with your speculation. Yeah, yeah, I know.)

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Thank God it’s Friday. When I get into school Karen informs me that the synagogue was, as suspected, boring.

  I smile. “I told you – you should’ve left.”

  “Did you go home on your own?” she asks.

  “Nah, Sarah came with me,” I say. See, Karen, I’m not necessarily going to be a loner just because you decide you’d prefer to stay in school to hang around with Leanne.

  Call me bitchy, or obsessive, or whatever, but I like the fact that I’m closer to Sarah and even Fiona than Karen is. I guess Karen’s lucky that she can fit in with any group, but I think the trouble with being universally liked is that it’s harder to get to know people well.

  Either that, or it’s my way of trying to convince myself that it’s better to have a few close friends than a crowd of semi-close ones, so I can feel better about my disastrous people skills.

  Because it’s the day before a bank-holiday weekend, the entertainment-related discussions have reached their peak. As have my stress levels. If one more person mentions St Patrick’s Day, I’ll scream.

  This weekend I will not be going to the parade, or going out drinking, or anything remotely normal. I was planning to be completely reclusive. You have to admit there’s something enchanting about the whole idea of cutting yourself off from the world to maximise your creative potential. You know, living alone, being all crazy and poetic . . . it does sound appealing.

  But my plan to have a trial weekend of isolation has been thwarted. There’s a party on Saturday night in Sarah’s house. The infamous Shane will be there, as will the rest of the band. The final decision was made about the members yesterday. According to Sarah, one of Shane’s friends desperately wanted to be involved. He’s also desperately tone deaf. I feel sorry for him.

  So it’s Sarah, Shane, and three of his friends, including, surprisingly enough, Caroline. I didn’t know they were friends, but apparently they went to primary school together and live in the same estate.

  I see Caroline on Friday afternoon. There’s a hockey match on, one of the senior teams playing, and we’re allowed go out and watch it.

  Since hockey doesn’t terribly excite me, I end up talking to Caroline for the duration of the match.

  “Hey! Are you going to the party?” she asks.

  I nod. “Yeah, Sarah’s making me.”

  She grins. “Good. It looks like there’s going to a bunch of people from Shane’s school there, and I don’t know any of them. I was scared it was going to be just me and Sarah around, like, a hundred guys.” She frowns. “Actually, maybe that wouldn’t be that bad.”

  “You’ve always got Shane, anyway,” I remind her.

  “Ah, of course,” she says. “Except I think he’ll be too busy with Sarah on Saturday night.”

  “Does he like her?” I ask.

  She shrugs. “I don’t know. He says he just likes her as a friend, but –”

  “But he acts like he does,” I finish.

  “Yeah.”

  OK, it’s settled, he fancies her. I change the subject. “Have you guys decided on a name yet?”

  Caroline frowns. “Shane came up with one, but we told him where to go with it.”

  I grin. “What was it?”

  “God, I don’t think I can even pronounce it right. Idio – idiosyncratic. I had to look it up when I went home.”

  “I like it,” I muse.

  “I bet you know what it means, too.” She rolls her eyes.

  “Sort of,” I say. “Distinctive, unusual, individual.”

  She groans. “It took me ten minutes to find it in the dictionary and you know it off the top of your head. That’s not scary at all. I didn’t even know how to spell it.”

  “So probably not a good idea for a name, then,” I say.

  “Yeah. We all wanted something we actually understood, so we’re still thinking of names.”

  Call me crazy, but that little story suddenly makes me interested in this Shane person. Big words impress me, OK? Of course, he probably picked it up from some pretentious rock song. But still . . .

  I like the idea of us both knowing what a word meant while everyone else is confused, two misunderstood souls.

  So, Saturday night, huh?

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Friday night is Frasier night. The whole family sits down to watch it, even Jess, who doesn’t think it’s “cool” to watch any programmes that your parents enjoy. (Not to mention your older sister. It’s hard to believe Jess used to look up to me. Even up until she turned thirteen, just before Christmas, she used to borrow my clothes. Now she wouldn’t be seen dead in anything I’d wear. Sigh. I should be devastated, but it’s such a relief to not have to worry about her taking my stuff anymore that I’ve forgotten to grieve.)

  Is it just me or did all the fun go out of the Niles-and-Daphne relationship once they actually got together? I mean, the great thing about them was the hope that maybe one day they would get together, that Niles would finally confess his feelings for her. You wanted him to get her, and you felt sorry for the poor lovesick puppy. The excitement is in the “maybe”. Once they actually became a couple? Blah. All the hope was gone.

  Unrequited love is much more interesting. Even in real life. The possibility of something happening is what keeps you going.

  Like me and Ronan. This was – oh, ages ago. First or Second Year, I suppose. He was a friend of Hannah’s and I fell madly in love with him. Every spare moment of my time was devoted to dreaming about how we would profess our undying love for one another. Then Hannah said that she thought he liked me.

  I should have been happy, delirious, over the moon. And I was – for about a day. It was wonderful being admired. It was a nice change. But the novelty wears off quickly, and you realise that the excitement has gone.

  I stopped liking him. Then he stopped liking me, at which point I started liking him again. And so on. It went on for about three months, and the funny part is that nothing ever came of it. I never even kissed him.

  In a way, the daydreams are more fun. Reality just can’t compete.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  He writes a song for me, and sings it for me at the band’s first public performance, gazing into my eyes intently. I stare up at him, loving him so much that it hurts.

  Or maybe we’re not together yet, and he sings it. I am in the audience, thinking, “Wow, what a great song” when he accidentally catches my eye, and looks embarrassed. It hits me – the song’s about me. I look up at him, and he is both hopeful and scared. I smile, and he grins, throwing himself into the music.

  Or maybe one of the other guys in the band starts to fancy me, and he thinks I’m interested, and gets jealous. One night he confronts me, somewhat awkwardly.

  “I don’t know what you’re doing with him,” he says.

  “Why?” I ask, somewhat coquettishly. (I’m not at all sure if I can be coquettish, but it’s a fantasy, so we’re allowed take some liberties.)

  “He just doesn’t seem like your type.”

  “Really? So what is my ‘type’, then?”

  “Someone – I don’t know. Someone who appreciates you.”

  I look at him. It’s one of those perceptive looks that Sarah’s so good at.

  He looks slightly embarrassed, but doesn’t blush. “What?”

  “Nothing,” I say.

  “You know . . . I really think you’d be better off without him.”

  “Why do you even care?” I ask, exasperated at this stage.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” he says, joining me in The Land of Frustration. “Why do you think I care, Abi?”

  And then . . . he looks at me, and I look at him, and we kiss, and it’s wonderful.

  Or maybe I’m really drunk at the party, and can’t even stand, and he has to carry me upstairs to Sarah’s room. I’m practically unconscious at this stage,
so he watches me for a little while, and pushes strands of hair away from my face, his tender fingers lovingly running over my skin. (Fun to imagine; but if it actually happened the intimacy would be lost on me.)

  Or maybe we’re alone in a room and we just talk. One of those wonderfully deep discussions where you realise how much you have in common. And he makes me laugh. And then I make him laugh. It’s perfect.

  Or maybe we’re watching a movie and it’s really emotional and he brushes a tear away from his eye. I look at him.

  “What?” he says defensively.

  “You’re crying,” I note in amusement.

  He does the whole macho-man thing, denying all allegations of tears, before I tell him that I love sensitive guys.

  “Especially cute ones,” I add.

  Or maybe I don’t even know this guy. I’ve never met him, I don’t know what he looks like, and the only thing I do know about him is that he’s talented.

  And has a wide vocabulary, which is why the daydreaming began. Aaagh! I ask you, how many sixteen-year-olds do you know who find big words a turn-on?

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  On Saturday I am struck with a severe case of anti-social-itis. I don’t want to go out. I don’t want to see people. I just want to stay at home and read and watch TV and if that makes me a loser than so be it, because I’d prefer to be at home than out and not enjoying myself.

  I consider making an excuse. “Look, Sarah, I’m feeling really sick, I don’t think I can come tonight.” Or plead a case of irrational parents. “My mom’s really pissed off with me, she won’t let me go.” Or anything, any reason for not being able to go to a party full of people I don’t know. People who take their music really seriously and can tell you everything you never wanted to know about a particular band or singer.

  People who idolise Kurt Cobain and light a candle every April 5 and who can explain exactly why his death was such a tragedy and how he influenced the music of today, blah blah blah.

  People who talk a lot about suicide and think it’s cool. People who would sooner shoot themselves than listen to uplifting, pop music once in a while. People who are so pretentious that I would happily put them out of their misery and kill them.

  I hate pretentiousness about anything. I hate people who only read “literature”, like Jane in my class. Jane spent her childhood with her nose in the classics and thinks you’re deprived if you haven’t read Pride and Prejudice at least ten times. She uses English class to make comparisons between every male character ever created and Mr Darcy. Riveting, I assure you. (I mean, if you’re going to take any literary character to use as a basis for comparison, it should really be Emily Brontë’s Heathcliff. But that’s beside the point.)

  I wonder if Sarah will even care if I don’t go. If I’m not there it’ll give her a chance to spend more time with her instantly-acquired music-related friends, and before I know it, we’ll be drifting apart. I’ll call to her house one day before school only to be told that she’s already left. I’ll suggest doing something for the weekend and find that she has other plans that I was never told about. I’ll ring her on the phone and she’ll find some excuse to hang up after five awkward minutes.

  I’ll go back to being Lonely Abi. And even though I enjoy being alone a lot of the time, it’s much worse to have it thrust upon you because no one wants to be around you.

  I really don’t want that to happen. Besides, I usually have a good time once I actually go out. And I have the rest of the weekend to be my usual anti-social self.

  So . . . what am I going to wear?

  Chapter Thirty

  I run into Graham’s mother while I’m walking down to Sarah’s. Mrs – sorry, “Anna, call me Anna” – O’Brien. Considering there’s all of ten metres between my house and Sarah’s, it’s surprising I see her at all.

  I happen to like Anna, despite the intensely obnoxious nature of her son. She, after all, has no idea what an asshole she’s raised, and I think she always secretly hoped that I’d become Graham’s girlfriend and eventually wife and mother of her grandchildren, and so on.

  We do the hi-how-are-you exchange, followed by a don’t-you-look-lovely-where-are-you-off-to on her part, followed by an explanation from me, followed by an oh-enjoy-yourself.

  She says goodbye and walks off, weighed down with green bags from Superquinn. I think about her going home and telling Graham that she was talking to me.

  I imagine Graham filling her up with lies about what a horrible person I am. Funny that I care more about what his mom thinks of me than what he does. Then again, I have a tendency to seek approval from authority figures and/or role models. It’s part of my insecurity complex.

  I try to present myself as a quiet-but-polite girl to adults, an intelligent and reasonable teenager. This obviously excludes my parents and anyone who actually knows me well, because fooling them would be impossible. Not that my parents know me that well, but still.

  I wonder what Anna would think of me if she saw the scars on my arm. Recent, still red, still painful. Considering it makes me feel uneasy. I don’t want anyone to find out what a mess I am, I realise slowly in something akin to an epiphany.

  Obviously I am nowhere near as messed up as the kids who have real problems. You know what? I hate that term. “Real” problems. Who defines what’s real and what’s not? It’s a real problem if it involves death, abuse or illness, but not real if it involves anything else? Real if you’ve got a prescription for Prozac, not real if you just don’t want to go out to a party? You’re only allowed complain if you have a real problem, but if it’s just melodramatic teen angst, forget about it. It’s not important. You are irrelevant.

  I am irrelevant and I hate it. Surprise, surprise.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  I find myself thinking of that debate in Irish during the party. The one about the uniforms. One advantage that we never mentioned was their ability to hide just how skinny some people are so that the not-so-skinny people can feel a little better.

  I’m also reminded of why I hate colour days. Well, in a way I love getting to wear my own clothes into school, but in another way I hate the fact that all the thin people wear clothes to emphasise that and I’m left feeling rather elephant-like.

  And it’s ridiculous because on a good day I know that I’ve got a relatively good figure. Maybe not wonderful, but it’s not that bad.

  I just hate the way that everyone else seems to be prettier, thinner, better than me. I don’t want to compete with anyone. It’s pointless.

  Everyone else has make-up plastered on, too. Well, the girls do. The guys – for the most part – don’t. I’m wearing a little eye shadow and tinted lip-balm. I feel severely inferior.

  I think most of the girls here are from school, although I’m not sure. I don’t know that many of the Fifth Years. It’s not like Sarah has parties regularly. Or ever. Not like this. Not with the loud music and people spilling out into the back garden. Sarah’s sister is upstairs, locked away in her room. Their parents are away for the weekend and she’s supposed to be in charge and not let any wild parties be thrown. Because she’s the desperately “good” type – sort of like Rebecca The Annoying Optimist – they know they can trust her to keep things under control.

  Which is why she’s made Sarah promise to clean up thoroughly tomorrow morning. Fiona and I are staying over to help, on the condition that anyone throwing up is her responsibility.

  Fiona, I notice, is doing a wonderful job of mingling. I am the wallflower, watching – and utterly bored. I don’t know most of these people. I hate parties. Why am I here?

  I could just hide out in Sarah’s room until everyone leaves. Read a book, watch TV, escape from this.

  I hate drunk people. I think I inherited this from my non-alcohol-drinking parents, who are always the designated drivers at an event, the sober people who end up taking care of the ones who can barely walk. Now I know how they feel, surrounded by incoherent idiots.

  The party
has barely begun, so not everyone has reached that stage just yet, but a lot of people were drinking before they arrived. That annoys me too. I mean, what’s the point? (Oh, God, I’m turning into my parents. Help!)

  I go into the kitchen to get another glass of water, debating whether or not to follow the “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” rule and go for a Smirnoff Ice instead.

  Sarah is sitting on the table with someone who I presume to be Shane. He looks vaguely familiar, and I can remember watching American Pie with him and Sarah at her house.

  “Abi! Having fun?” she asks.

  I shrug. “Yeah, I suppose so.”

  “Hey, Abi,” Shane says.

  “Hi,” I smile. Behold, ladies and gentlemen, my amazing conversational skills!

  Awkward silence. To have something to do, I get my drink. (I choose to “join ’em” and take a bottle of Smirnoff Ice. Total rebel, that’s me.)

  “So, this is awkward,” grins Sarah.

  Shane and I laugh. Then silence again.

  “That was meant to break the ice,” Sarah says pointedly.

  “Oh! Have you guys come up with a name for the band yet?” I ask.

  “Still throwing around ideas,” says Shane.

  “No, you’re throwing around big words,” Sarah tells him.

  He shrugs, grinning.

  I look at him. He’s not in typical rocker attire. Just jeans, and a semi-loose but not excessively baggy plain black t-shirt. I’m somewhat impressed by the non-statement he’s making.

  He also happens to be quite attractive, if you were wondering.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Shane, Sarah and I do the small-talk thing for a couple of minutes; then he leaves to go talk to his friends.