My Brilliant Life and Other Disasters

by Catherine Wilkins

  For Pat, Christopher, Joy and Colin.

  C. W

  “Jess, are you even listening?” asks Natalie.

  “Yes, of course I am,” I lie. But actually I was miles away, thinking about the comic.

  “So…?” says Nat. I’m grudgingly transported back to our desks in 6C. I try and turn my blank look into a thoughtful face.

  It’s nearly the end of lunch on Tuesday. Natalie and Amelia are planning what to do at Amelia’s sleepover on Saturday. But the thing is, I’m absorbed in much more important matters: I’ve had a brilliant

  idea for a cartoon about a bee and a wasp having an argument.

  “Well?” Nat prompts. “Which sweets should we get?”

  “Oh, um. Well, I like fizzy wands,” I reply.

  “Yes, but not everybody likes the fizzy ones,” says Amelia.

  Honestly, was it really worth interrupting my train of thought for this? Sometimes I just don’t think Natalie and Amelia appreciate that I am part of a Global Creative Enterprise now. (I mean, you know, potentially – in the future – you have to aim high.) Tomorrow is the big unveiling of the comic fanzine that I’ve been working on with Joshua and the others. I’m very excited about it.

  “Well, how about a mixture of both fizzy and non-fizzy sweets?” I suggest patiently.

  Don’t get me wrong; I am super glad that Nat and I made up. Natalie has been my best friend since we first heard tell that Old McDonald was the sole proprietor of a bizarrely musical farm. And it was just awful when we weren’t speaking last term.

  “Yes, but which ones?” asks Amelia.

  But at the same time, I can’t help but feel this is too much effort to put into planning a sleepover. Surely sleepovers are just meant to be fun? Sometimes it seems like all they do is admin.

  In fact, now I can’t quite believe I was so jealous when Natalie went off with snooty new girl, Amelia. Especially as, since being allowed into their special secret world, I’ve found out the main activity seems to be list-making.

  “I don’t know, which ones are there?” I ask.

  “I’ll make a list,” says Nat. (See?) She gets out a pen and paper. Amelia starts dictating, and I feel myself starting to zone out again.

  “We should definitely get some liquorice, as my cousin Scarlett loves it,” Amelia is saying. “I can’t wait for you to meet her, babes. She’s just amazing.”

  Babes. I frown. And not Scarlett again. Amelia is so ecstatic that her “super-amazing, super-cool” cousin can make it on Saturday, that’s practically all she can talk about.

  If Amelia is to be believed, Scarlett has single-handedly invented fashion, music and the Internet. And my general rule of thumb is: if Amelia thinks something is amazing, I probably won’t.

  Still, the main thing is, we’re all getting on really well now.

  “You don’t have to come, you know,” Amelia says to me then, clocking my expression.

  Well, we’re very nearly getting on really well. It’s almost going swimmingly. You know, in the bits where it’s not going terribly.

  “Why are you saying that?” I ask.

  “Well, why are you pulling that face?” asks Amelia.

  “What face?”

  “Like, you’re above this and I’m boring you,” says Amelia.

  “That’s just my face!” I protest. “Though, in truth, I do think I’m above this, and you are boring me,” I add, just not out loud. But how did Amelia pick all that up from a frown?

  There’s nothing like a good ceasefire. And this is nothing like a good ceasefire. Ha ha. I’ve still got it. Hmmm.

  Amelia and I are like chalk and cheese. Or, like chalk and a really mean, snooty bully, who joins the chalk’s school at the start of Year Six and takes the chalk’s best friend away; and goes on about how unfashionable and immature the chalk is; and forms a secret gang and doesn’t let the chalk join it, forcing the chalk to respond by forming a rival secret gang. (I am the chalk in this scenario.)

  Though to be fair to Amelia, since we all made up she has pretty much knocked most of that on the head, and she’s stopped referring to my clothes as “Primarni” altogether.

  In fact, in a bid to end the turmoil and bury the hatchet represented by our opposing secret gangs (that were never very secret), Amelia united us the only way she knew how: with admin.

  Instead of just disbanding our rival gangs, Amelia thought it would be better to merge them under a new umbrella gang name. It had to be a new name, she said, as otherwise “we’d just want to use our own gang’s name”.

  She wasn’t wrong about that – my gang had a brilliant name. It was called “Awesome Cool Enterprises”, or ACE for short (thank you, thank you very much). Amelia and Natalie’s gang was called “Cool Awesome Chicks”, or CAC (which I always thought made them sound like one of the milder swear words for poo).

  I was working on the comic with Joshua when Amelia discussed new gang names, and when I came back at the end of lunch I discovered that Amelia had settled on: “Great United Friends”. Or, as it unfortunately spells out: GUF.

  Yep. That’s right. Guf. Yes, exactly. Amelia has learned nothing from last term about how acronyms work.

  By the time I was able to point out that this made it sound like “guff”, a word often taken to mean both “fart” and “nonsense” – neither of which, let’s face it, have particularly positive associations – the motion had been passed. (Ha ha, motion had been passed.)

  Of course, Amelia insists you say it G.U.F., but I think we all know the truth. We could have been called ACE, the idiots.

  Still, it was fun making the new cartoon badges for everyone. (Though I resisted the temptation to draw fart clouds – even though Joshua double-dared me to. And I wrote G.U.F. in very tiny lettering.)

  Back in class, Natalie leaps to my defence against Amelia’s accusation. “Yeah, Amelia, Jess just has a slightly weird face.” Thanks, Natalie. Still, at least she is defending me though; that is huge progress on last term.

  “Hey, Jessica?” We’re interrupted by Hannah, a girl in our class.

  “Uh, yes,” I reply.

  “Please can you draw a rabbit on my rough book for me?”

  “Oh, yes, sure,” I reply happily. Then I address Natalie and Amelia joke-haughtily. “Excuse me a moment, ladies. I have to be a cartoonist. We can get back to discussing my weird face afterwards if you like.”

  Natalie laughs and then looks at me drily, with one eyebrow raised. “You’ve changed,” she says.

  I know Nat was joking, but I have not changed. Just because I think I’m totally brilliant at cartoons now doesn’t mean I’ve become arrogant or anything. Hmmm. Still.

  And anyway, I think as I walk from the bus stop to my house, maybe Natalie and Amelia just can’t handle it that now I’m the awesome, popular one? Well, kind of. That is to say, I’m the one not being overtly bullied by the scary kids any more. But again, this is still a huge step up on last term.

  But the point is, I haven’t changed. It’s people’s appreciation of what I can do that’s changed. (There’s already a bit of a buzz about the launch of our comic tomorrow – it’s going to take Year Six by storm.) But I’m exactly the same as I ever was.

  And I’ve always drawn cartoons on people’s books for them. Admittedly, it’s happening slightly more now, but you know, cartoons have always been my thing. It’s an open-and-shut case of jealousy, I decide, as I enter my kitchen.

  The great thing about home these days is that the economy drive my parents subjected us to last term is over.

  “You’ll have to put two teabags in there; these Value ones don’t taste of anything.” My mum is barking instructions
at my dad, who is boiling the kettle and hastily putting shopping away.

  My Spidey Senses are suddenly tingling. Value teabags? I spot that all the rest of the shopping has the same “Super Saver Value” branding on it. Super Saver Value tins of tomatoes, Super Saver Value squash, Super Saver Value cornflakes. I can’t help but feel that so many words about saving money in one product name isn’t a good thing.

  “Hi,” I say warily as my mum wrestles the toastie maker out of a junk-filled cupboard. I feel a brief leap of excitement – I love cheese toasties! But this excitement is extinguished after a moment of watching my mum impatiently trying to butter some thin-looking Super Saver Value bread.

  “Hi,” she replies absently, the knife going right through the bread and causing several holes.

  I mean, I don’t claim to be an expert on cheese toasties, but I do know that’s going to make for one messy blob once the cheese melts. I want to point this out, but it’s always wise to be careful when giving my mum constructive criticism. I’ll have to be tactful.

  “Um, what’s with the bread?” I say, a bit untactfully.

  “Don’t start with me!” snaps my mum.

  “PPPRRRRAAAAAAAAASSSSHHH!” This is when my little brother, Ryan, chooses to run into the room with his arms above his head, pretending to be a space rocket.

  He’s so loud I feel like the house almost shakes. If this was a cartoon, bits of plaster would be falling from the ceiling, nearby dogs would start barking and there’d be a long shot of planet Earth from space, Ryan’s voice still audible. As it is, all that happens is my mum’s left eye starts twitching a bit.

  “Indoor voice, please, Ryan,” says my dad calmly, as if Ryan has merely spoken a fraction of a decibel too loud.

  Ryan stops running with his arms above his head and blinks at my dad in apparent surprise. “But, Daddy, I can’t, I’m a space rocket,” he explains, as if my dad’s insane, even though he’s the one wearing a helmet and thinking he’s a space rocket.

  “If you don’t stop making so much noise you’re going to be in big trouble,” my dad threatens politely.

  “Der Der Der!” exclaims Ryan dramatically, making the noise you sometimes hear to indicate a cliffhanger or unexpected twist on a TV show.

  Secretly, I find this kind of funny. But I am less keen on how loud Ryan is. He really does tread that delicate line between cute and annoying. I sometimes feel torn between screaming and laughing at him. I know it’s not his fault or anything; this is just what six-year-olds do, but still. Why can’t he do impressions of rockets parked quietly with their engines switched off?

  Ryan seems to have got the message though, so I turn my attention back to Mum. “I’m not starting,” I say carefully, wary of enraging her more than I have to. “But that bread looks too flimsy for cheese toasties. Why didn’t you buy the good stuff?”

  “Because it’s too expensive,” says my mum crossly.

  “But I thought the economy drive was over,” I protest pointlessly, given the surrounding evidence.

  The economy drive was awful. My mum refused to buy any new food until we had eaten everything that was in the cupboards and freezer. This meant my parents were combining things like fish fingers and tinned beetroot, and calling it dinner.

  “The economy drive is over,” says my dad.

  “Then what’s all this?” I ask.

  “Well…” my dad pauses, thinking, “…now we are tightening our belts.”

  “Der Der Der!” says Ryan.

  “Um, I don’t mean to split hairs,” I say carefully, aware my mum is already mildly irked and still not wishing to tip her into full-blown anger, “but that sounds like another way of saying the same thing.”

  “It’s similar,” agrees my dad.

  “So when you said we were out of the economy drive, what you meant by that was we were in no way out of the economy drive?” I continue.

  “Did you lie?” asks Ryan, his interest suddenly piqued.

  “Don’t say lie, say fib,” answers my dad. “It’s more polite.”

  “Oh sorry,” I reply sarcastically, “so basically you told us a polite but giant, humongous, epic fib?”

  “No,” says my dad. “We are tightening our belts. It is different. And actually, it’s a good chance for you to learn more about fiscal responsibility.”

  If my dad thinks he can win an argument by using words I don’t understand, he is temporarily correct. But I am going to Google that later.

  “Why don’t you kids do something useful like lay the table?” says my mum.

  “Or,” I counter, “why don’t we just eat with our hands and save on washing-up liquid? Or maybe there’s some tasteless cardboard we could eat instead that would be cheaper and less messy than actual food.”

  My mum is not impressed by my sarcasm. “What did I tell you about starting with me?” she asks, slamming the butter knife down on the counter.

  “Tea!” blurts out my dad. “I’ve nearly finished making your cup of tea. Hang on.” Then in a curt undertone to me he adds, “Jessica, please do as you’re told.”

  “But I thought it was good to speak your mind,” I counter cheekily. “Auntie Joan says so.”

  “Yes, well, Auntie Joan also thinks she’s seen Bigfoot,” sighs my dad, handing my mum a cup of tea.

  I decide to accept that they have won this round and grudgingly start handing cutlery to Ryan.

  The thing about my mum is, although she is lovely on the inside, she’s a bit prone to bursts of anger on the outside, unless constantly placated with cups of tea. There’s probably a Latin name for this condition. Anger-tea-icus, maybe?

  In many ways she’s actually very laid back. She only gets angry when things are too expensive, or too noisy, or too messy. So the main cause of her affliction is that she lives with us.

  Sometimes she gets annoyed by the little things. Like if there’s a queue; or someone hasn’t put the scissors back; or if my older sister Tammy gets arrested for protesting.

  Recently she’s been annoyed by the fact that our car wing-mirror is held on by gaffer tape, while our next-door neighbours (the VanDerks, with whom my parents are weirdly competitive) have been gloating about their new car. She describes stuff like this in particular as the living end.

  But anyway, as I say, apart from all that she’s lovely.

  So what has two thumbs and got to eat rock-hard, crispy fried-cheese-bread last night for dinner? This guy. (You can’t see me but I am pointing at myself with my thumbs. Geddit? Sure, I’m recycling, but you’ve got to keep hold of the gold.)

  I didn’t mind really; it still tasted nice. And overall I like my life at the moment. As they say, tomorrow is another day.

  Well, actually, tomorrow is today. What I mean is, it is the next day. Today, now. You know what I mean. Basically it’s Wednesday. I’m in my form room at registration pretending to be interested in Natalie and Amelia’s list of their top-five favourite pop stars.

  But more important than any of that, it’s comic-launch-day! I briefly wonder how famous you’d have to be to actually rename a day of the week like that. (I definitely haven’t changed, though. Definitely.)

  I looked up “fiscal responsibility” online last night, after dinner. It brought up loads of stuff about economics and governments and treasuries, but, as far as I could tell, “fiscal” essentially just means financial, so it’s all to do with money.

  Why didn’t my dad just say we need to be careful with money? He can dress it up in fancy words if he likes, but I am from the Google generation and we can easily decipher them. (As long as we have the Internet handy.) We coped with no money before; we can cope again. I just wish they’d be honest about it.

  I should totally write a “parents’ handbook” or something. Hey, maybe that would be a funny idea for the comic! But the bell goes before I get a chance to write it down.

  Stupid assembly, making me lose my creative flow, I think sulkily as we file into the big hall.

  “What’s
up with you?” whispers Natalie as we stop at the end of our row.

  “Oh nothing, I just – hey, you don’t have a pen on you, do you?” I whisper back. Maybe I could quickly write this on the back of the hymn sheet!

  “Um, let me think…” Nat pretends to pat nonexistent pockets, looking for a pen. “Uh, no.” She frowns at me quizzically.

  “That’s cool, I was just going to write down an idea. I – it doesn’t matter,” I whisper, suddenly feeling slightly embarrassed. Natalie and Amelia just don’t get how brilliant the comic is, and so they don’t care about it as much as I do.

  “God, I’m getting, like, so bored of your tortured artist routine,” whispers Amelia, and Natalie giggles, which annoys me.

  Oh yeah? Well, I’m getting bored of your face, I think. And what tortured artist routine? I am a happy artist. I don’t say anything though, and probably for the best. I can come up with better zingers than that.

  There is a notice in assembly that all of Year Six are having an extra assembly after lunch in the hall. But I don’t care about whatever that is. The main event as far as I’m concerned is our comic launch at lunchtime. Even Amelia insulting me doesn’t bother me for long today. I’m too excited.

  I can’t wait for my morning lessons of double English and double DT to be over. Which in many ways is a shame, as I like DT, and I don’t really mind English, but I just can’t concentrate.

  My friends Cherry and Shantair actually tell me to shut up about the comic in DT (which is kind of impressive in itself because they are my chess-club friends and they’re normally too shy to do stuff like that). But they like getting good marks and I was distracting them.