Boys on the Brain

Pilch said gloomily that it’s because of her sister being thin as a pin and going out with all these boys, even though she is only twelve and a half.

“Mum thinks I’m being left behind.”

“So she wants you to starve yourself?” I said.

Honestly! What with my mum going on about boys, and now Pilch’s mum wanting her to starve herself, it’s a wonder we’re not both on Prozac.

Pilch said anxiously, “You don’t think I’m fat, do you?”

I said, “No, you’re just well covered, and even if you were fat, what would it matter?”

“I wouldn’t want to be fat,” said Pilch.

I said, “Now you’re just being sizeist! You’re as bad as your mum.”

Pilch said it was all very well for me as I am what she calls “a fashionable shape”. In other words, thin. I said, “That just happens to be the way that nature made me,” and I got on my high horse a bit and started lecturing her about turning herself into a media creation.

Pilch said, “What do you mean, a media creation?”

“Like you read about in the papers,” I said.

I told her that I was sick of young people always being depicted as lame-brained airheads only interested in the opposite sex, head-banging music, designer drugs and clothes.

“Some of us have a bit more going for us than that! We don’t spend all our time gazing into mirrors and tarting ourselves up and going on diets and making ourselves ill. Your mum ought to be ashamed of herself,” I said.

Pilch cheered up a bit when I said this. She confessed that she had lain awake half the night pinching bits of flesh between her finger and thumb and wondering whether she ought to give up eating entirely, or at any rate stick to yoghurt and raw carrots.

“It was making me really miserable,” she said, as we stood in the queue for lunch. “And oh, look!” she added. “They’ve got macaroni cheese!”

I don’t really like macaroni cheese that much but I ate some just to keep her company. I think it is important that we stand shoulder to shoulder in this crisis.

Friday (#uf376bd7b-51ca-583d-9852-83d1c1c990ed)

Harry came round. As usual. He and Mum went up to the pub. Also as usual. Mum said, “You don’t mind, Cresta, do you?”

I said, “Why should I mind?”

“Well -” Mum looked at Harry. This sort of “Help me!” look. “It seems so awful! Me going out to enjoy myself while you just mope here with a book.”

“I’m perfectly happy,” I said.

“Yes, I know,” said Mum, “but—”

“You ought to get out more,” said Harry.

I said, “I do get out! I go to school every day. Or hadn’t you noticed?”

“There’s no need to be rude,” said Mum.

I wasn’t being rude. But I hate it when they start on at me like I’m some kind of freak! Is it truly so abnormal to want to get somewhere in life? You’d think with all the bad experience Mum has had she would be pleased I don’t gad about, as Nan would say.

Maybe she is scared that I am a lesbian, though what there is to be scared about I really don’t know. It is perfectly acceptable. But anyway, I’m not! If Carlito were to suddenly appear I would gad like crazy. I wouldn’t be able to stop myself! I would do all kinds of unspeakable things. I would snog, I would French kiss, I would probably even have under-age sex… Gulp! It is probably just as well that he is merely a figment of my imagination.

“So! You really don’t feel like joining us?” said Mum.

“Truly,” I said. “I have things to do.”

“Well, all right. We shan’t be late,” said Mum. “We’ll probably all come back here.”

“Yes, and this time,” said Harry, “the nasty old folk will behave themselves. No noise! That’s a promise!”

They’re back here, now. I’m in my room and they’re downstairs, and they are making a noise. It seems they can’t help it. They’re playing music VERY LOUD. But I don’t want to be laughed at again so I’ve just stuffed cotton wool in my ears and am doing my best to ignore it.

It is not easy.

Saturday (#uf376bd7b-51ca-583d-9852-83d1c1c990ed)

Met Pilch in the shopping centre. Bumped into Tasha, on her own, i.e. without Cindy. But with a boy. The boy was Brad Sullivan. So much for Mum’s plan for him and me to get together. Ha! I didn’t want to, anyway. But it intensely annoyed me when Pilch said, “Wow! Where did she get that from?”

I said, “It’s only Brad Sullivan. He lives in my road.”

“Oh! He’s the one your mum wanted you to meet,” said Pilch.

“I don’t need to meet him,” I said. “I’ve already met him. I know him.” Well, I do, sort of. We always say hello.

“He’s kind of cute,” said Pilch.

Cute??? Brad Sullivan??? No way!

“He reminds me of Carlito,” said Pilch.

Indignantly I said, “He isn’t anything like Carlito!”

Pilch said, “I think he is.”

“Well, you can think what you like,” I said, “but he’s not your character, so how would you know?”

She said, “I’m just going by the way you describe him.”

“Well! Ho!” I said. “If I were going by the way you describe Alastair I would think he was a total nerd.”

Pilch’s face suddenly transmuted into this big overripe tomato.

“What do you mean?” she said, all tight and quivering.

“Tall and willowy, lissom of limb and lithe of body, with hair like spun sunshine.” That is, actually, what she wrote. It was so naff that I memorised it. “Anyway,” I said, “if he’s Scotch he’s a Celt, and Celts don’t look like that.”

“Oh?” said Pilch. “So what do they look like, according to you?”