The truth though? Bree hated the house. Nobody tells you that large houses have this horrible habit of making you feel utterly alone. Constantly. She could scream and nobody would hear her. She knew this, she’d tried once. (On a particularly low day.) And the only response had been her own yells echoing endlessly, bouncing around the marble entrance hall.
The security gate felt like a prison gate. She often wondered what it would be like not to be so rich and figured it would be a lot more fun.
“Shut up, Bree,” she told herself.
The gate closed behind her and she walked to meet Holdo. It was October and it was cold. She wished she’d doubled up on the bright tights today. Her mum always despaired of Bree’s fashion choices, which led her onto point two…
I suppose, in their own sort of way, both of my parents love me
It depends how you view love, doesn’t it? Bree had never wanted for anything. Did that mean she was loved? Her dad worked his arse off pretty much 24/7 so she could live in the aforementioned large prison house. He left home before she woke every morning, even Saturdays, and wasn’t usually back until after midnight. She wasn’t exactly sure what he did. In return, her dad barely knew how old she was. The extent of their communication went as follows:
Dad: (In rare moment they bump into each other on the stairs) You behaving yourself in school?
Bree: Yes.
Dad: Good.
Or, there was that time on Christmas day…
Dad: (Carving the turkey) Do you want leg or breast?
Bree: I’m a vegetarian, remember?
Dad: Don’t be so ridiculous. (Carves off a bit of leg and dumps it on her plate)
Then there was Mum. At least she was around – in physical manifestation anyway. Her mum was a full-time yummy mummy. That’s what she liked to call herself. In Bree’s unhumble opinion, the word “yummy” shouldn’t be associated with anyone over the age of forty.
Her mum spent her time doing a variety of increasingly oddly-named exercise classes, getting facials, fillers and Botox done on her regular day trips to Harley Street, and reading about celebrities in garish magazines she left all over the house. She communicated her love to Bree with a constant stream of gift-wrapped packages left on Bree’s bed. Tiffany necklaces, Hollister jumpers – once Mum even got her some lingerie. Lucky, huh? But to Bree it was as welcome as a cat proudly leaving a beheaded mouse oozing blood on your doorstep. She knew people wouldn’t understand. Who wouldn’t want a mother who loaded you with gifts? Especially top-notch ones most girls her age could only fantasize about. But Bree didn’t want necklaces, overpriced knitwear or fancy knickers. She wanted a mother who helped her with her coursework. Someone who made her a cup of tea after school and asked her about what she’d learned, rather than grilling her about whether she’d made any new friends. All the time. Like being popular was the most important thing ever.
All she got was:
“Why aren’t you wearing that jumper I got you?”
Or:
“Is Holdo coming round again? Don’t you have any girlfriends?”
Or:
“You’re so pretty. Why don’t you just DO something with yourself? You’re putting yourself to waste.”
Which led Bree onto…
I could be pretty if I wanted
She could. Now. But she didn’t want to be. She’d tried to be pretty once before, on her first day at secondary school, in some deluded burst of naivety that it might change things. Still blubbery with puppy fat, she’d hoicked her skirt up, carefully painted darker stripes through her hair with a home-colouring kit, smothered her face with blue eyeshadow and pink lipstick and shoved two socks down her bra. The result was the worst first day of secondary school the world had ever known. Jassmine Dallington and her cronies had positively dribbled with delight when they saw her, spluttering on their laughter and rushing to lob new and nastier names at her.
She’d been so stupid to try. And now, puppy fat gone and her face fully grown into, she wouldn’t bother trying again.
What pretty person achieved anything of merit anyway? Who cares what a writer looks like as long as their words are beautiful?
So, much to her mother’s despair, Bree made herself as unattractive as possible.
If you control what they laugh at, invite them to dine out on you…well, then, Bree found they usually stop laughing.
She would wash her hair, on occasion. It was a lanky mouse shade at the moment but had been an array of absurd colours in the past – pink most recently, which still hadn’t quite washed out. She wore the clothes of a frumpy forty-year-old going through a mid-life crisis – all neon this, and novelty-hair-bobbles that. She ate what she wanted, meaning her skin had a near-constant scattering of spots and her thighs rubbed together when she walked. And none of this mattered because…
I’m much smarter than most people
Being pretty was only important at school. And school wasn’t a part of Bree’s life she considered essential to her development. It was a time to endure before the beautiful world of adulthood opened its arms to give her a great big hug and a two-book publishing deal. School was a mere drop in the ocean of a human life. And for the pretty girls at school, their moment would soon be over. They were peaking in their happiness-levels much too early. Which is why Bree stayed ugly – to delay the peakage to a more useful age. Another reason why Bree was much smarter than most people.
She needed to hurry up though. Bree was smart but she wasn’t very punctual. Like, ever. While Holdo was quite the opposite. She wrapped her blazer tighter around her to keep out the cold, barely allowing herself to think about the penultimate entry on last night’s list.
I know what I want to do with my life
But what if it doesn’t want you? All she had ever wanted to do was write. Well, for the past four years anyway. To have people read her words. To leave a tiny imprint of herself on whoever read them. What better way to validate your existence – to prove you had one? But maybe it wasn’t to be.
She wasn’t quite ready to accept that yet.
Though, in the meantime, she had Holdo.
There he was, waiting for her, like he always did. His trademark yellow headphones cupped his ears, and he was wearing that Velvet Underground banana T-shirt over his school jumper – an essential wardrobe item for any wannabe-indie boy. Holdo spotted her, pulled down his headphones and tapped on his watch.
“You’re late again.”
“I’m always late.”
“It’s disrespectful, you know, to keep other people waiting.”
“It’s only been five minutes.”
They began walking towards school, each too stubborn to break the silence. Holdo, of course, broke it first. After a record holdout of five entire minutes.
“So what did you get up to last night?”
Bree stared at the pavement. “I got another rejection letter. It was waiting for me on the doormat when I got home.”