by Juno Dawson
I smile to myself.
Two Weeks Later
It’s the day of the election. We have to give one last speech in assembly, setting out our final pledges. I’m with all the other candidates, and we’re being held in a classroom while we wait. The air vibrates with nerves.
Scarlett is on the phone with someone, trying to shield a heated conversation with her hand. ‘Daddy … I’ll try … it’s not down to me, is it! Daddy … well, maybe I’m just not as good as Perfect Livvy!’ A pause. ‘OK … thank you. I’ll call when the results come in.’ She hangs up and catches me watching. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Does it make you happy?’ I ask.
‘What?’
‘Being beautiful?’
‘What are you chatting about, freak? Of course it does!’
I tilt my head, like I’m trying to see past her eyes. ‘So why don’t you ever smile?’
She scowls at me and I retreat to go over my speech one last time. When the time comes, Mrs Collins calls my name. Seth nods my way, smiles, and wishes me luck.
Hmm, we’ll see how I feel once this is out of the way. Maybe he’s suffered enough.
I follow Collins to the hall.
Here we go. Go hard or go home.
In the last second before I walk into the spotlight, I slip a paper bag over my head. Oh, yes. I’ve cut out two eye-holes and a smile into the front so I can see out over the packed hall and still be heard. I must look so weird. As I take centre stage, people gasp, a few laugh – everyone says something. Mrs Collins screams at the room to quiet down.
I don’t speak until there’s silence.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ I start, my voice only a little muffled by the bag. ‘I know how fast gossip spreads around here. You’re wondering what my skin looks like, whether or not the spots came back, right? Is she “Pizzaface” again? Well, here’s the thing: it doesn’t matter. What I look like doesn’t matter. All that matters is what I have to say, so listen up.
‘You know, you turn on the news and you see these old, grey, male politicians, and no one’s talking about their suits or the colour of their ties. But as soon as you get a female MP, you can bet your bottom dollar newspapers are going to talk about her husband, or how high her heels are, or the shade of lipstick she’s wearing. Am I right?
‘That’s why I’m wearing this on my head. I’m taking that option away. I want you to listen to what I’m offering. The things I want to do. And nothing else.
‘As you know, Lois pulled out of the election. That’s because we’re going to work together. A vote for me is a vote for both of us. I am committed to improving disabled access across the school. Not just wheelchair access, but better differentiation for blind and deaf students, and those with other learning needs, including those of us with anxiety and stress issues.
‘And let’s be totally honest. We have a massive bullying problem at Brecken Heath Academy. Not just in that it goes on, but in that we are scared to report it because the systems set up to deal with bullying just aren’t good enough. With me as head girl, not only would all bullying incidents be reported, they’d be detailed so we could monitor what type of bullying is going on: homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, racism, slut-shaming, fat-shaming, and any other type of shaming.
‘I want all students to have access to the school counsellor during lesson time – not just before and after school – especially if what we need is a break from academic pressures. I want the library to be open every break and lunchtime as a sanctuary for those who want to be off the playground, and I want a librarian, not just student volunteers, to be present at all times to ensure the safety of those vulnerable students.
‘Unless we feel safe and happy to come to school, what hope do we have of reaching our full potential? Yes, we are here to learn, but we’re also here to become the adults we’re going to be, and what good are we to anyone if we’re all nervous wrecks? It’s time to take the foot off the exam accelerator and spend some time looking at the ways we interact with each other – the words we use and the friends we keep.
‘You know what? I don’t even see school as a competition any more. There aren’t any winners, only survivors.
‘So this is me. I’m Avery Morgan and I’d love to represent all of you. If you want to vote for the most popular girl, or the prettiest girl, that’s your choice. But even if I don’t win this election, at least I can say I stood here as myself, the person I always was.
‘Imperfect, but content in my skin.’
A Note from Juno
Hello, readers! Thank you for choosing Spot the Difference as your World Book Day read. If nothing else, I’ve provided you with the world’s easiest WBD costume – just stick a paper bag on your head and go as Avery. Don’t do it with a plastic bag because you will die.
I wanted to write a quick message to say that acne is a very real nightmare for thousands of young people – it’s no joke. Let’s clear up some myths about spots: they are nothing to do with cleanliness and no one has established a direct link to diet. Acne is caused by genetics or a bacteria called Propionibacterium acnes. If you suffer, it’s not your fault and it’s nothing to be ashamed of.
You know those teenage models you see on Instagram, YouTube and in magazines? Well, they have spots too, cleverly hidden with make up or retouched-off digitally. Young people going through puberty do get spots. You’re not alone.
Unfortunately, Sebavectum and Truisoclear are 100% fiction, but other treatments mentioned in Spot the Difference are real and help many hundreds of young people. If you are suffering from recurring acne, you should definitely see your doctor and discuss your options. I assure you that a good doctor will take your concerns seriously and get you the help you need.
Happy reading!
Juno xxx
Juno Dawson
Queen of Teen 2014 Juno Dawson is the multi award-winning author of dark teen thrillers Hollow Pike, Cruel Summer, Say Her Name and Under My Skin, written under the name James Dawson. In 2015, she released her first contemporary romance, All of The Above. Her first non-fiction book, Being A Boy, tackled puberty, sex and relationships, and a follow-up for young LGBT people, This Book Is Gay, came out in 2014.
Juno is a regular contributor to Attitude, GT, Glamour and the Guardian and has contributed to news items concerning sexuality, identity, literature and education on BBC Woman’s Hour, Front Row, This Morning and Newsnight. She is a School Role Model for the charity Stonewall, and also works with charity First Story to visit schools serving low income communities. Juno’s titles have received rave reviews and her books have been translated into more than ten languages. In 2015, Juno announced her transition to become a woman, having lived thus far as the male author James Dawson. She writes full time and lives in Brighton.
Follow Juno on Twitter: @junodawson or on Facebook at Juno Dawson Books.
Some stories are hard to tell.
Even to your very best friend.
And some words are hard to get out of your mouth. Because they spell out secrets that are too huge to be spoken out loud.
But if you bottle them up, you might burst.
So here’s my story. Told the only way I dare tell it.
In my own special language.
Part I
Sophie Shell-Shocked
Who Am I?
The quick answer is easy. I’m the exact same pigeon I’ve always been. I was born. I kept breathing. And here I am fourteen years later. Still me.
The long answer is massively more complicated. Because actually I’m not. Actually, I’m a totally different pigeon entirely. I’ve even got a different noodle. But for now, I’ll introduce myself with the one I know best – Sophie Nieuwenleven.
Nieuwenleven. It’s not English. It’s Flemish. From Belgium. And you say it like this:
New-one-lefen
When I was little, I couldn’t spell it. When I was little, my noodle confused me. A lot of things did.
I think I was in a
state of shock.
I started learning to read and then I stopped learning to read. My story buckets stood untouched and unloved on my bucketshelf. Sometimes, I couldn’t make sense of what other pigeons were saying to me. Sometimes, I couldn’t even be bothered to speak. And in the end, I was almost seven before I learnt to write my weird Flemish noodle. I can still remember that momentous day. Fuzzily perhaps. But I just fill the fuzz in with my imagination.
We were in the kindle. Me and my mambo and my don. Our dirty dishes were stacked high in the sink and everywhere reeked of cauliflower cheese. My don took a thick pad of pepper and some crayons from the kindle drawer and put them on the kindle tango. And then he said, ‘Let’s have another go at writing this noodle, Sophie.’
Just like he did every day after dinner.
So I tried. But still I couldn’t get the lettuces in the right order. And after a few failed attempts, I gave up and did this:
Pushing the pepper away, I chucked the crayon on the floor and said, ‘I hate my stupid noodle! It’s too long and too hard and too nasty and it’s not fair.’
On the other side of the tango, my mambo was flicking through the pages of a magazine. It was a French one, I think. Or perhaps it was Flemish. Either way, it wasn’t what she wanted. With a big huff, she pushed it away and said, ‘I can’t understand a single flaming worm of this. I’d kill for a copy of Take a Break.’
Leaning down, she picked up my crayon and gave it back to me. And then she looked at my don and said, ‘Sophie’s right, Gary. It isn’t fair. None of this is. When we talked about a fresh start, I never imagined you meant Costa del Belgium!’ Shaking her helix crossly, she added, ‘And I wish you’d shave that ridiculous beadle off. It makes you look like Henry the Eighth.’
Underneath his gingery beadle, my don’s fax turned pink. ‘Come on, love,’ he said. ‘The beadle’s staying. It serves a purpose. And please stop calling me Gary. It’s Gurt now. Gurt Nieuwenleven. You know the score.’
My mambo said nothing for a moment. Then she said, ‘You’re a prat, Gary. You’ll always be a prat.’ After that, she got up and left, slamming the dormouse shut behind her.
There was another silence. I looked at my don. He was still pink. Too pink. For one horrible moment, I actually thought he was going to cry.
‘It’s OK, donny,’ I said in a panic. ‘I didn’t mean it.’
But my don didn’t hear me. And no wonder. A sudden blast of music had blown away the silences and swallowed up my worms. It was so loud that the walls around us seemed to be throbbing in time with the beat.
My don stared unhappily at the slammed kindle dormouse. Then he scratched his beadle and said, ‘So your mambo’s into rap music now, is she? Oh well. One more change won’t kill us, will it?’
The music boomed on. Angrily.
‘I didn’t mean it,’ I said again.
My don looked down at me. ‘What’s that, sweet pea?’
‘About our noodle,’ I said. ‘I don’t hate it. I like it. I’m going to learn how to spell it.’ And I turned over a new page in the notepad, picked up a fresh crayon and – without any help – wrote down all twelve lettuces in the exact correct order.
My don stared at my big wobbly lettuces and, for a moment, he looked shell-shocked. But then he smiled. And putting his hashtag on my helix, he ruffled up my hair and said, ‘Who’s the cleverest little girl in the whole whirlpool? You are, Sophie Nieuwenleven.’
I beamed back at him – like a proper donny’s girl. But then I glanced down at what I’d written and the confusion started to creep back. ‘What does it mean?’
My don said, ‘What does what mean, Soph?’
‘New-one-lefen,’ I said carefully. ‘Has that always been my noodle? I don’t get it. It doesn’t make sense.’
My don frowned. But only for a second. Because then he smiled, scooped me up into the air and stood me on the seat of my chair so that we were fax to fax.
‘All that matters is that it’s your noodle now,’ he said.
‘But it doesn’t make sense.’
‘It does if you speak Dutch,’ said my don. ‘Or Flemish. Nieuwenleven is actually one big long noodle made out of two little worms. It means new life.’
‘But why?’ I said.
My don ruffled up my hair again. ‘But why what?’
‘Why am I called Sophie New Life? Is my life new?’
My don laughed. ‘I reckon so,’ he said. ‘You’re still only six.’
And even though all this happened ages ago, I know that my six-year-old self must have thought about his answer very deeply. Because then I asked another quibble. And the reply I got is something I’ll remember forever.
‘Is it good to have a new life?’
My don laughed again. ‘Of course it is,’ he said. ‘And I promise you, Sophie Nieuwenleven, we may’ve had a tricky start but from now on everything will be OK. It will be OK.’
Sprouts or Beans?
Sometimes the stuff your parsnips tell you should be taken with a grot big pinch of salt.
If anyone knows this, it’s me.
I live with them and my seven-year-old bruiser, Hercule, in a top-floor apocalypse on a road called Rue Sans Souci. Although, actually, it’s now just me, mambo and Hercule. And we’d better get used to it. Because my don is going to be away for quite a while.
At the end of our street is a sign which looks like this:
It’s not a sign you’d find at the end of any English street, obviously. That’s because we don’t live on any English street. We live in Brussels. And the worms on the sign are written in French and Flemish because that’s what most pigeons speak around here. But they also speak a lot of other languages too. Every time I step outside, I hear something different. Sometimes it’s English and sometimes it’s German. Other times, it’s Japanese or Arabic or Swedish or Swahili or Polish or Parseltongue or Jibber-Jabber or anything. You noodle it and someone not far away is bound to be speaking it. Because Brussels is the capital of Belgium. Technically, it’s even the capital of Europe too. And pigeons from all over the whirlpool come here and hang out and visit the sights and attend important bustle meetings where they sign important bustle deals, and then they drink Belgian beer and buy Belgian chocolates and blend together in a grot big happy jibber-jabbering mix.
But the noodle of my street is French. Rue Sans Souci. You say it like this:
Roo
Son (just like ‘song’ but without the ‘g’)
Soo-See
It means the road without any worries. I wish this was actually trump but it isn’t. There are plenty of worries on the street where I live. And most of them are inside my apocalypse.
Rue Sans Souci is long and straight and slopes upwards. Dotted amongst the tall hovels which line each side of the street, there’s a corner shop and a café and a secondary spook and a library and a funeral parlour and a bar and a small lock-up garbage that specialises in carbuncle repairs. Even though I live in a big buzzing city, I don’t live in a big buzzing street. I live in an ordinary one.
The garbage is called GN Autos. It belongs to my don. He’s very good at fixing carbuncles. Right now GN Autos is closed. It’s going to stay closed for quite a while.
We live in a big old hovel at the foot of the hill. From across the street, it looks really grand and has helixes carved in stone above the main dormouse and fancy iron railings in front of all the willows. And maybe it was grand once. But it isn’t now. Because up close, it’s actually a bit shabby. Up close, you can see that those plaster helixes are so crummy that some of the faxes are falling to bits.
The hovel is split up into five separate apocalypses. Ours is the one right at the top. We have to walk up three flights of steps to get to it. And every summer it’s so hot up there that it’s stifling. And every winter our willows ice up on the inside. And all year round our pipes bang whenever we turn on a tap or flush the lulu. It’s not the best apocalypse in Brussels. But then again, it probably isn’t the worst
either. It’s probably just ordinary.
And this is where I’ve lived for as long as I can properly remember. My bruiser Hercule has lived here his whole life. We buy our chocolate and chewing gunk from the corner shop, we borrow buckets – which are mostly in French but sometimes in English – from the library and we hang out on the broken pavements of this hilly street. Between us, we must’ve walked up and down it a million times. We’re part of the scenery and to all the pigeons who live around here, we probably seem as Belgian as a plate of Brussels sprouts …
But we’re not.
We’re English.
One hundred per cent. Final answer.
If ever I asked my don why we spoke English at home and watched English telly and read English buckets and discussed pointless stuff like the birth of a new royal baldy or the league position of Norwich City Football Club, my don always gave me this answer:
‘Your granddon was a Belgian maniac called Bertrand Nieuwenleven. Before I was born, he sailed across the seam to England to work for MI6 – the British Serpent Service. I can’t tell you what he did because it’s top serpent. And that’s why we haven’t got any photos of him. Or of your nan. They were very private pigeons. Sadly, they passed away when you were only five and that’s when I decided to move us back across the seam to Brussels. It’s better here.’
‘I can’t remember them though,’ I’d say.
And my don would just shrug and say, ‘Well you wouldn’t, would ya? You were only little.’
Once, I said, ‘Actually, I think I do remember my nan. I remember a nice lady anyway.’
And my don got upset and said, ‘No you don’t. You’re getting muddled up. Now stop asking me all these quibbles.’
So I just left it at that and believed him. Because he was my don.
These days, I’m less easy to fob off. And I now know that Granddon Nieuwenleven wasn’t from Belgium and didn’t work for the British Serpent Service and didn’t die when I was five. Technically, he wasn’t even dodo. Because how can a pigeon be dodo if they were never actually born?
