Misfit

by Charli Howard

  We weren’t rich. We weren’t poor. We certainly never went without. I knew I was very lucky, even if I did think depriving me of a McDonald’s every night was practically child abuse. My parents had normal jobs, and although they had the occasional row they were very much in love and together. My little sister used to wind me up and bite me sometimes, but whose sibling didn’t? Bar the odd family drama, life was simple. And, for the most part, I was truly content, except when I didn’t get my dog cage for Christmas. Basically, there were no childhood traumas to excuse me from going completely mental later.

  One day, my mum and dad announced something.

  ‘We’re moving.’

  We weren’t just moving down the road. We were moving to Germany. To Hamburg, to be precise, which might as well have been the North Pole.

  I met this announcement with mixed feelings. It was the first time I had to leave a life I was actually happy with. I’d never had to question how content I was until that moment. This move meant starting over from scratch, when I didn’t want to start over from scratch.

  Moving had never bothered me up until that point, because I’d never had a life I cared so much about. But this time was different. All of my friends were here. It meant coming to terms with the fact that my one true love, Darryl, was probably going to marry someone else while I was away. It meant Kelly was most likely going to forget about me and get a new best friend – probably that cow Kathryn, who had recently begun hanging around us like a bad smell.

  Well, I thought, if that was the case, maybe I should move on, too? But wait – what if I never made another friend again? What if I was destined for an entire life of loneliness? This wasn’t what I wanted. And, in the annoying way parents decided things without your consent, like dragging you to Ikea for a ‘family day out’, I had no say on the matter.

  My parents went out of their way to convince me that moving would be a great experience for us all. My dad had flown over there to visit the school beforehand, taking photos of it throughout for me to see. The new school looked very fancy indeed – nothing like my school in London. It certainly didn’t look like the type of place paedophiles liked to hang around in their free time, or where people stole cars and burned them on the lawn for fun – both of which made a pleasant change. It was a private English-speaking international school in an exclusive part of the city, representing every ethnicity and religion under the sun.

  And so we moved. I may have only been eight, but the differences between Hamburg and London were very noticeable. Mainly, the very liberal attitude to anything sexual. Billboards were covered in naked women with boobs approximately eleven storeys high. At a sleepover, I was confronted with a massive painting of my friend’s parents having sex (I mean, I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want that in your living room). To get to school, our bus drove down an infamous street full of sex shops and prostitutes. In England, this would have been deemed inappropriate. In Germany, it was fine. For some reason, this barrage of sexual images, words and scenes really affected me. I couldn’t look at them without thinking: SEEEEXXXX!!!! Could I get pregnant because I was sitting next to a boy on the school bus? Had I had sex with someone without knowing? I was freaking out – and I couldn’t help the inappropriate thoughts that popped up when I saw these images.

  For the first time I couldn’t control what I was thinking – but I knew that what I was thinking was disturbing. From our first week in Germany it drove me absolutely mental.

  On the first day of school, I arrived feeling terrified. I was trying to keep it together, but I still missed London and the things I knew. I hastily made my way into the classroom, telling my mum to clear off so as not to embarrass me in front of the other kids.

  ‘I like giving my pupils nicknames,’ my new teacher said cheerily once we’d all sat down. ‘What’s your nickname, Charlotte?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I replied truthfully, as the class turned to look at me.

  ‘Well, you must have one. Everyone has a nickname! Is it Lottie?’ he asked.

  ‘Erm … my dad and grandad always call me Charlie,’ I said.

  ‘There you go!’ he said. ‘From now on, you’ll be called Charlie.’

  So, that was it. It was like a rebirth. For added pizzazz, I decided to drop the ‘e’ from the end of my name, like a certain Geri ‘Ginger Spice’ Halliwell. I rather liked the fact that Charli went with my tomboy personality. It may have only been a subtle name change, but this gave me a sense of freedom over my own body – the feeling that I was in control of my own image.

  If only I could control my thoughts in the same way. And I don’t know if it’s coincidental or not – but this was when my bad behaviour started.

  By the end of the first week I still hadn’t made any friends, and this worried me. I kept daydreaming about Kelly and Darryl, and how they were probably all huddled up with that friend-stealing Kathryn now, laughing at the memory of our marriage and what we once had.

  When you’re eight, a week of not having a solid friendship group feels like a year, and I knew I couldn’t continue life like this. It was far too depressing. So, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I’d make friends in the way I thought best – forming a girl band like the Spice Girls. Who cared that I couldn’t sing and that I danced like I was having some sort of fit? With the right band members we could be set for stardom.

  I decided to ask two girls in my year I’d been admiring from afar to join – Emma and Hannah. Both were pretty and wore fashionable clothes. Both were avid Spice Girls fans, which made me like them even more. They both also performed dance routines in the playground during break times, and I desperately wanted to join in, but didn’t feel comfortable enough to ask yet.

  So, one Monday break time, I asked (very seriously) if I could speak to them in private. As I stood there, clutching a notepad full of songs I’d written that would easily get me noticed as the next Mozart, I took a deep breath:

  ‘Do you want to be in my girl band?’

  Emma and Hannah looked at one another.

  ‘Yeah, go on then.’

  We recruited another member, Olivia, and by the end of the day we were friends, busy planning what our band name should be. We settled on the Angelz, with a ‘z’ – because everyone knows adding a ‘z’ to the end of a name makes things ten times cooler.

  Soon, a new girl called Anja joined our class. She was Danish, tanned and beautiful. Without hearing her sing, and despite the fact she could barely speak a word of English, the four of us knew she would make a great fifth member. When Anja became a fully fledged member of the Angelz, our band was complete.

  I hadn’t got over Kelly, but I did like the fact I now had a nice group of girls to hang around with. Like the Spice Girls, we each had our own personalities:

  Emma, who was the most grown-up one, and whose mum let her wear make-up;

  Hannah, who looked up to Emma, and who was fun and loyal;

  Anja, the pretty one, who had all the boys after her;

  Olivia, the academic one, who had issues with her weight;

  And me, Charli, the tomboy, who was, as you’ll soon discover, the troublemaker.

  The third week in, Hannah asked me if I’d like to come for a sleepover – which, in girl land, basically means you’re friends.

  ‘Of course!’ I said excitedly, as though she’d offered me a million pounds.

  Before we went to Hannah’s that Friday night, we first needed to make a detour from school to her dentist, where Hannah was going to get her mouth moulded for braces. Braces seemed terribly grown-up. As I waited for her, I looked in the mirror. I hadn’t really thought about my teeth before. Were they wonky? Did they make me look less attractive? How had I not noticed that I didn’t have straight teeth before?

  As I pondered this, I spotted a bowl full of free miniature toothpaste tubes that you could take home with you. Now, I’m not one to pass up a freebie, so I grabbed handfuls of them and shoved them into my pockets, as though the worl
d would suddenly run out of fluoride.

  Hannah’s house was beautiful and huge, with a big winding staircase and an even bigger garden to play in. Her house was attached to another house owned by an old German lady called Frau Lardegus, who Hannah had described to me as a horrible old witch. She didn’t speak any English, but would routinely tell Hannah’s mum in German how irritating Hannah and her brother were, and how she didn’t like children, and got them into trouble.

  ‘She sounds awful,’ I said. ‘We should get revenge on her.’

  Hannah’s room was the most grown-up room I’d ever seen, with a beaded rainbow curtain across the door frame and a large double bed, which made my room seem terribly babyish in comparison. As an added bonus, she also had her very own balcony that overlooked the sea. Frau Lardegus’s room was directly next to hers, with a balcony that was separated from Hannah’s by a gap and a large drop.

  We had some dinner, then, like any other normal girls, went up to Hannah’s room to listen to some music. As I took off my jacket, the toothpaste from earlier suddenly fell out on to the bed.

  We looked at each other as though we’d read one another’s minds.

  ‘Remember I said we should get revenge …?’ I asked Hannah, raising an eyebrow.

  Now, a psychologist may read the rest of this chapter and think I was being naughty because my life had been uprooted – an act of rebellion, or the need for attention. Looking back now, I think it was probably to distract myself from the revolting sexual images that I couldn’t stop from popping into my brain. At the time, I genuinely thought I was doing this on behalf of all the children who had ever been victimized by mean old ladies.

  ‘We need a backpack for our things,’ I instructed Hannah, despite the fact that all we were doing was climbing over on to the balcony next door.

  She began handing me items we might need for our adventure. Notepad and pen? Check. Spare T-shirt? Check. Brain? Hmm.

  ‘Don’t forget this,’ Hannah said, handing me her dad’s mobile phone. This was at a time when people didn’t have mobile phones; they were considered a luxury item, rather than a necessity.

  ‘We don’t need that!’ I said, and threw it on to the bed.

  ‘What about a hairbrush?’ Hannah asked, handing it to me.

  ‘Nah,’ I said, and threw it behind me.

  CRACK!

  The hairbrush smashed the screen of the mobile phone, and Hannah and I looked at each other in shock.

  ‘My dad’s gonna kill me,’ she said.

  Still, there was no time to lose. We could deal with the broken phone another time. We had revenge to get on with. Hannah put the phone on the bedside table, and we put on some jumpers for warmth.

  We slid open her balcony door, trying to be as quiet as we possibly could so as not to disturb her parents, who were blissfully watching TV downstairs. I glanced down over the balcony. It was a huge drop. But you don’t think about danger when you’re eight, so we (stupidly) climbed over the edge and on to the balcony next door. (As a little side note, I’d like to warn readers DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. Even by my standards, this was pretty idiotic.)

  As we peered through the glass and the gap in the curtains, we spotted Frau Lardegus innocently watching TV in her bedroom, with a sewing kit on her lap and dogs by her feet. Anyone would have thought she was a cute old lady. Only we knew the truth.

  ‘Psst, pass me the toothpaste,’ I whispered.

  Hannah handed me a couple of tubes, which I proceeded to squeeze across the window.

  ‘Let me have a go,’ she said enthusiastically, and before long we were like Banksy, fighting the establishment (or mean old ladies) one toothpaste tube at a time.

  ‘Right, I think that’s enough,’ Hannah said, and we took a step back.

  Well, if we’d wanted to make a stand, we’d done a good job of it. The window was covered in the stuff.

  As we climbed back over to Hannah’s balcony, I was suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of guilt – not to mention fear of how much trouble we’d probably be in when Hannah’s mum found out.

  ‘We’re gonna have to wipe it off,’ I said to Hannah. ‘Go and get some toilet paper and wet it, then pass me some over the balcony.’

  Suddenly, as we were about to step outside on to the balcony again, there was a knock at Hannah’s bedroom door. Our hearts stopped. I shoved the empty toothpaste tubes under the bed as quickly as I could, and we put on smiley, innocent faces as her mum opened the door.

  ‘Having fun?’ Hannah’s mum asked.

  ‘Er, yeah!’ Hannah replied, not daring to look at me.

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘OK, darlings, sleep well. I’ll see you in the morning! Love you, sweetheart.’

  As she closed the bedroom door, not knowing about our random act of anarchy, Hannah looked at me. ‘She’s going to kill me,’ she said. ‘We need to get rid of it before Frau Lardegus tells her.’

  ‘Hmm, she’s kind of old. Perhaps she’s blind and won’t be able to see it?’ I replied reassuringly.

  Hannah went to the bathroom and wet lots of tissue paper, then I climbed back over. She passed me the wet tissue from her balcony and I began scrubbing the window as much as I could.

  Now, I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but when you try to scrub toothpaste off glass in a circular motion, it gradually becomes bigger and bigger until it turns into a whiter, smudgier, blurrier mess.

  Oh, wait – no, of course you didn’t know that, because you’re not a f***ing idiot.

  ‘It’s not coming off!’ I hissed.

  No matter how much I scrubbed, it just wouldn’t disappear. The window was becoming dirtier and dirtier by the second.

  ‘Maybe it won’t look so bad in daylight,’ I said to Hannah hopefully, who was panicking by this point. ‘It might be a trick of the eyes.’

  All of a sudden, Frau Lardegus’s dogs began barking hysterically at the window, making her sit up in her chair. A normal child would have legged it by this point, but as I’m sure you’ve gathered by now I wasn’t normal.

  ‘Moooo!’ I yelled – yes, like a cow, because why not? – sending the dogs into further hysteria.

  ‘Go, go, go!’ Hannah snapped, and I climbed back over the balcony and into her room, sliding the balcony door shut as though none of this had ever happened.

  ‘I don’t think the mooing was that necessary,’ Hannah said, and to be fair I think she had a point.

  ‘We’ll check the toothpaste situation in the morning,’ I said, trying to calm Hannah, who was by this stage anything but calm. We climbed into bed, hoping that our act of revenge would remain a secret.

  Well, all that excitement for one night knocked us out. In fact, it knocked us out so much that we forgot to destroy the evidence – hundreds of empty toothpaste tubes – and were awoken by the sound of Hannah’s parents barging into the room.

  ‘What the hell have you two done?’ Hannah’s mum yelled. ‘Get out of bed – now!’

  Oh. The toothpaste must’ve been noticeable then.

  Hannah began crying, her brother was smirking at us in the background, and I stood there not really knowing what to do. I suddenly remembered the remnants of Hannah’s dad’s now-smashed mobile phone, which lay on top of her bedside table. He must’ve seen where my eyes were gazing …

  ‘What the hell’s happened to my phone!’ he asked angrily, and I tried to do my best ‘Oh my, how did that happen?’ face.

  ‘Do you know how dangerous climbing over a balcony is?’ Hannah’s mum yelled. ‘You could have both died! What on earth were you both thinking?!’

  In hindsight, maybe it had been a bit dangerous.

  ‘Your parents are on their way,’ Hannah’s mum said to me, and to be honest I was pretty grateful for that fact. ‘You two are in big, big trouble. This is incredibly unlike you, Hannah.’ And then came the worst words a mum can ever say: ‘I am very, very disappointed in you.’

  We were marched next door to Frau Lardegus’s house, where she kept saying how viol
ated she felt, and how she thought she was being attacked by robbers with toothpaste, and how she definitely didn’t like children now. When my mum picked me up, Hannah’s mum began insinuating that it was all my fault, as though Hannah was forcibly made to squirt toothpaste out of a tube and on to a window against her will.

  ‘You couldn’t have waited just a few months before putting toothpaste on a window, could you?!’ my mum said to me as we drove home. ‘We’ve only just bloody moved here, and look at the impression you’ve made!’

  While getting up to mischief took up the majority of our day, our girl gang also began taking an avid interest in the way we looked, despite the fact we were still only eight years old. We put our musical ambitions on hold to focus on more important things – i.e. make-up, popularity and boys.

  Emma was the most fashionable one of the group, the girl I envied the most, and probably the most mature. By ‘most mature’, I mean she knew about things the rest of us didn’t, and was allowed to wear make-up and heels, and read teenage magazines. She may have only had bee stings (because, oh yeah, she was NINE), but her mum had bought her a bra and frilly knickers from M&S that made my white vests and ironing-board-flat chest look very babyish in comparison.

  ‘My sister says boys like big boobs,’ Emma informed us knowledgeably.

  ‘I’ve got the biggest of all of us,’ Olivia bragged, and they spent the afternoon bickering about whose non-existent breasts were the biggest.

  If Emma said boys liked girls with boobs, she was most probably right. She treated everything her older sister said as though it was gospel. Was this the reason why I couldn’t get a boyfriend? Or was it because, as I’ve said before, I was a small child?

  For the course of our friendship over the next few years, Emma and Anja got all the male attention, eventually landing the two most good-looking boys in the class. They got Valentine’s presents from them and were allowed to go on mini-dates with them at weekends, making Hannah, Olivia and me very jealous indeed. I’d occasionally tried squeezing my boobs together, in a feeble attempt to look like a Page Three model I’d once seen in a newspaper, but I’d never really given my boobs (or lack of them) much thought up until then. But of course, once they start to become the main topic of conversation, suddenly bodies are all you can think about.