Adorkable Read online

  What he did was extremely not cool. Even if there hasn’t been actual physical cheating, which I guess would be handholding and kissing and all that other mushy stuff, there’s been emotional cheating, and if Barney had closed down the space in his heart that he’d let me rent out then he should at least have had the decency to tell me. Right? Of course, right!

  Also, another thing that’s speeding me on my way to a total rage blackout is that even the geeky boys with the flicky fringes and the need to fumble adorkably in their longfingered way with guitar picks and mix CDs and Moleskine notebooks will always throw over geeky girls in favour of the easy option, especially when the easy option has long blonde hair, size-eight skinny jeans and zero personality.

  I’m not saying that all size-eight blonde girls have zero personality, of course I’m not, and, hello, do you not know about my out of control girl crush on Lady Gaga? And I’m not girl-bashing, not even on this particular girl, rather I’m asking: When will being independent and strong and not following the pack and daring to be different and being brave in my opinions, my fashion choices and my hair colour be enough?

  Aren’t those all admirable qualities for a girl to have? They are when you’re a boy with no confidence and no ability to stand out in a crowd until a girl like me drags you into the limelight. And I liked Barney. I liked having him in my life and I’m trying to be philosophical, though it’s hard when I can taste anger and disappointment in the back of my throat and it tastes the same as licking a battery – and let’s not go into why I know what licking a battery tastes like.

  Mostly I’m mad and ranty because there’s nothing I can do. ’Cause Barney’s so blinded by love that all he can see in me are all the ways that I’m not like this other girl.

  Actually there are lots of things I can do. Sixty-five of them would get me arrested, forty-seven of them would reflect badly on me, so all that’s left is declaring right here, right now that Barney never deserved me and he’s a traitor to dorkdom.

  And no, outing Barney and turning the hurt into words hasn’t made me feel even a teensy bit better.

  To start off with I was pissed off to be side-swiped as an antidork, like that was a bad thing. Then I wondered why someone had to document their every last thought and feeling for total strangers to pick over and, when I was done with that, I thought about Jeane.

  Before I’d thought of her as Barney’s bossy girlfriend who made his life such a living hell that he had to sniff around Scarlett, but now I could see that they’d been a proper couple. OK, she was still really bossy and it seemed like their whole dynamic revolved around Jeane giving Barney a crash course in her brand of loser cool, but they still had something between them: friendship, affection, a crappy taste in music.

  I’ll say one thing for Jeane though: when she was hurt and upset, instead of being all ‘Like, whatever,’ or ‘I wasn’t really into him anyway,’ she wasn’t afraid to get real, even if getting real meant getting messy. I had to respect that because I was always worried that people would start to hate on me, or lose respect for me, if I was anything less than perfect. Being perfect isn’t always easy.

  Back on Twitter, instead of holding court like I expected, Jeane was fielding off all enquiries.

  adork_able Jeane Smith

  It’s all in the blog. I have nothing to add, unless you want to send me chocolate or pictures of dogs in amusing outfits.

  I could kind of empathise with what Jeane was going through, because I was kind of going through it too. Also, when I thought about it, Jeane didn’t have anyone at school to hang out with, apart from Barney. Besides, who doesn’t love a picture of a dog in a comedy outfit? I could do better than that though.

  winsomedimsum is yum

  @adork_able Dogs on surfboards totally pwn dogs in amusing outfits

  I tweeted Jeane with a link to pictures from the annual dog surfing competition in California, which I had saved in my bookmarks for when I needed a laugh.

  Then I went downstairs because it was time for dinner and a lively family discussion about Al-Qaeda, if it would be possible to clone Alice so cloned Alice could go to school and real Alice could stay home and watch CBeebies, and why both Melly and Alice were too young to have mobile phones. I made my escape once Melly started crying because apparently she was the only seven-year-old in her class who didn’t have an iPhone.

  I headed straight for my computer because I had a Comp Sci essay that wouldn’t write itself and was amazed to find that I had over a hundred emails. I wondered if my spam filters had broken until I saw they were all Twitter follow notifications though I wasn’t sure why.

  Then I checked Twitter and I knew exactly why. Jeane had retweeted my tweet, as well as replying to me.

  adork_able Jeane Smith

  @winsomedimsum Oh dear Lord. I have seen the light. There is nothing funnier than a pug on a surfboard.

  Then she tweeted the masses:

  adork_able Jeane Smith

  Thx for puppy pics. Still waiting for chocolate. Too overwrought for Twitter. Will be adding songs to a break-up playlist on Spotify.

  I settled down to make some sense of the notes I’d taken in class but it was hard because my focus was not on database theory. It wasn’t even on Scarlett and what I was going to do about that whole sorry situation. No, I was clicking refresh on my Twitter feed and trying to pretend that it had nothing to do with Jeane Smith.

  It took me a long time to fall asleep, not just because my entire body was still thrumming with rage, but because I had to file my monthly trend-spotting report with an ad agency for 8 a.m. Tokyo time.

  I must have slept because all of a sudden I was woken by the triple threat of alarm clock, iPhone and computer all beeping merrily at precisely 7.43 GMT. Before I even sit up, I always check my email and, snuggled up in my inbox, was something from Bethan.

  Just read your blog, little sis. Remind me never to piss you off. Are you OK? Let’s Skype after school. Love you longtime, Bethan xxx

  It was one of the best ways to wake up, except it reminded me all about the day before. I couldn’t reread my blog until after I’d showered (when was someone going to make a handheld device that was totes waterproof?) but, as I was brushing my teeth, I managed to and then I read the comments. Ninety per cent were in the ‘You go girl, kick his sorry arse to the kerb’ camp. As ever, the other ten per cent called me a man-hating, lesbian feminazi who needed a good shag and a beating, and when I read my blog for a third time, I did wonder if maybe I’d gone a little too far. Going a little too far was a habit I just couldn’t break.

  As I photographed my morning ensemble (stompy motorcycle boots, bright orange tights, plaid knee-length shorts, long-sleeved green T-shirt and prim, floral short-sleeved blouse) I contemplated deleting the blog. I contemplated it for the whole time it took to shove two raspberry pop tarts in the toaster then scald my tongue because I was too impatient to wait for them to cool down.

  I decided that I wasn’t going to delete anything. Yes, I’d given Barney a bashing, but he had deserved it, and everything I’d written and posted was how I really felt. They were my feelings and I had the right to express them in any way that I wanted to. People were so scared of telling the truth because the truth was chaotic and complicated and decidedly uncool, but uncool was the way I rolled. Or it would be if I used tired old phrases like ‘That’s the way I roll’, which I so don’t.

  I wasn’t going to cut and delete, but I could still make things right.

  It was a measure of how sorry I was that I marched up to Barney’s front door and rang the bell, even though I knew it would be answered by his mum.

  That woman hates me. Like, she really hates me. She opened the door, looked at me and said, ‘Oh, it’s you,’ except she made it sound like, ‘What primordial swamp did you just crawl from and why can’t you just leave my son alone, you horrible, badly dressed little tramp?’

  ‘Thought Barney and I could walk to school together,’ I said in the face of some tr
uly malevolent glaring. I stared right back at her.

  ‘He’s already left,’ she finally said, though he obviously hadn’t because I could see his parka hanging from the banister.

  Not even I could call Barney’s mum a liar to her face, but then Barney came tripping down the stairs, falling down the last two as he caught sight of me.

  ‘Oh, I thought you’d already gone,’ said his mum without any attempt to sound sincere. I had to admire her barefaced rudeness. ‘Jeane’s here.’

  ‘What do you want?’ Barney demanded, as he picked himself off the carpet, then grabbed bag and parka. ‘You’ve got a nerve.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, standing aside as Barney brushed past his mother, who tried in vain to kiss him goodbye. ‘Bye, Mrs M. Lovely to see you again,’ I cooed, because I knew it would piss her off. Then I climbed back on Mary, my bike (named for Mary Kingsley, famous Victorian explorer), and pedalled after Barney, who was running down the road.

  ‘You can’t get away from me that easily,’ I said, as I steered myself into the road. ‘I know you’re really pissed off with me, though I’m not sure if it’s about what I said yesterday or if it’s because you read my blog, or—’

  ‘Or because you never listen to what I’m saying because you’re too busy making everything about you.’ Barney shook his head in disgust. ‘There’s so many reasons why I’m pissed off with you that it’s hard to pick just one.’

  ‘Well, if it helps in any way, I’m sorry for all of those things,’ I assured him, then I had to pause to do an illegal left turn. ‘It’s very hard to be a good listener when you talk as much as I do.’

  ‘Will you take down the blog?’ Barney asked. He didn’t seem like he was ready to forgive me, but at least he was still talking to me.

  ‘No, I can’t do that. I’m entitled to have those feelings and blog about them, but I will take your name off the post,’ I conceded. ‘I don’t ever self-censor. This is huge for me.’

  ‘Yeah, well, the stuff you wrote was well out of order.’

  ‘And what you did was out of order too,’ I pointed out. ‘I had to find out from Michael Lee. Michael fucking Lee. If you’d told me from the start, yeah, I’d have given you a hard time, but I wouldn’t have turned into a complete ranting maniac. So for that, I’m sorry.’

  ‘I heard you the first time,’ Barney snapped. I was forced to slow down as we were a couple of streets away from school and the road was clogged up with people who were too lazy to walk and got lifts everywhere from their doting parents, then dared to complain about global warming. ‘Fine, I accept your apology.’

  Part of me wanted to remind Barney that he should apologise too but that would only lead us into another argument. Besides, there was another part of me that was hugely relieved that we’d never have to kiss on the lips for the count of fifty elephants ever again. Barney would make a much better friend than a boyfriend and I just had to suck up the humble pie.

  ‘So, are we, like, cool now?’ I asked.

  Barney came to a halt. ‘If I say we’re not cool, you’ll just badger and harass me until I change my mind, won’t you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say harass, exactly.’ I had to admit defeat and get off my bike because there were too many cars at a standstill for me to get through. ‘But I won’t rest until I’ve made you see the error of your ways. You need me in your life because I’m a really good friend. I’ll make you mix CDs and cupcakes and find amazing comics in second-hand bookshops and … and … and I’ll even be nice to Scarlett. I’ll be the measure by which all other friends are judged and found unable to compare to my superior friend skills. What do you reckon, Barnster?’

  ‘Since when do you call me Barnster?’ Barney asked sourly, but he was wavering, I could tell. It was something in his eyes.

  ‘It’s the kind of nickname friends give each other.’ I tried out a cheeky grin, though there wasn’t much to grin about. I was still mad at Barney, not for crushing on Scarlett but for being such a dick about it, but I needed to get over it, because when he wasn’t being a dick, Barney was good people. ‘You can give me a nickname too.’

  ‘How about, um, Rage Against The Jeane?’

  We’d arrived at the school gates now and Barney had fallen into step alongside me, so I could elbow him in the ribs. ‘That’s not a nickname, it’s a really bad pun and it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it?’

  Barney wanted to smile – his lips were stretching and contracting like he had some weird facial tic. ‘Why is it impossible to stay mad at you?’ He shrugged. ‘Fine, we’re friends, but you’re on probation and don’t ever blog about me again.’

  ‘And I will be nice to Scarlett,’ I vowed magnanimously. ‘I won’t make any snide remarks or say anything to her that in any way could result in snivels, let alone tears. Honestly, I want you two to be happy. People should be happy.’

  Barney tagged along with me to the bike sheds and stayed while I chained Mary up. ‘We’re not together, you know,’ he said morosely, hands shoved into the pockets of his parka. ‘She’s scared to break up with Michael.’

  I snorted. ‘You’d think she’d be glad to be shot of that overbearing idiot.’

  Barney nodded vigorously. ‘Yeah, you would, but Scar doesn’t like confrontations or hurting people’s feelings and she’s terrified of having the wrath of every other girl in the school rain down upon her. You can’t dump Michael Lee without serious repercussions.’

  I turned my head so Barney couldn’t see that I was rolling my eyes so hard that I was sure one of my retinas had just detached itself. I tried to make sympathetic noises but Barney looked at me sceptically like he wasn’t buying it for a second.

  ‘Oh, Jeane, you are so full of shit,’ he said, and he smiled at me properly for the first time in days. ‘It’s what I like most about you.’

  It wasn’t until lunchtime that I was able to hunt Scarlett down. Her and her boring friends always headed for the high street to visit the salad bar in Sainsbury’s so I trailed behind them, pausing only to buy spicy Nik Naks and Haribo, then followed them back to school as I waited for an opportunity to get Scarlett on her own. The four of them didn’t appear to function singularly.

  Luckily Scarlett had a hair emergency and a free period so she was forced to leave school on her own and, as I’d been banished from my A-level Art class for a week after telling Mrs Spiers that I’d rather poke my eyes out with a paintbrush than have to draw a landscape, seascape or anything else pertaining to nature, I seized the opportunity.

  I let her buy her hair gloop first, because I’m nice like that, then fell into step beside her as she dawdled along the road. As she glanced to the side, she caught sight of me. Her eyes widened in terror and her face drained of all colour. It was the perfect time to launch into my apology.

  ‘So, I’m sorry, right. I’m sorry about what happened in English, though I didn’t mean that you were a retard. I was talking about the whole class but I shouldn’t have used that word in the first place and I shouldn’t have had a go at you about our set texts as a sneaky way of having a go at you about this whole business with Barney, OK?’

  It wasn’t an elegant apology but it came from the heart and that had to count for something. Scarlett didn’t seem to think so. She tried to duck past me, but I swiftly sidestepped so I was facing her full-on. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone look so terrified, not even when my friend Pam Slamwich (so obviously not her real name) realised she was the only member of her roller derby team who wasn’t in the penalty box and she was just about to get thrown off the track by four blockers.

  ‘Please leave me alone,’ Scarlett said in a pained whisper.

  ‘I can’t do that until you at least acknowledge my apology. I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I’ve said I’m sorry and I meant it.’

  Scarlett shook her head. ‘Whatever,’ she managed to say, but it wasn’t in a jaunty, fuck-you kind of way. More like it was the bravest thing to ever come out of her mouth. She was s
o wet that I wanted to wring her out.

  ‘So, does that mean you accept my apology?’ I persevered and Scarlett shrugged and pursed her lips and generally acted like she was in ungodly amounts of agony.

  This was going to take for ever. And I didn’t have for ever. I was too busy for for ever. And what Scarlett was too stupid to realise was that she had all the power, so I was going to have to point that out for her and also run to keep up with her as she suddenly dashed across the road.

  ‘Listen, Scarlett … will you just listen to me?’ I grabbed hold of her arm and she stopped instantly as if my touch had paralysing properties, which would actually have been very cool.

  ‘OK, I’m listening,’ she mumbled.

  ‘Scarlett! You might think that I’m just an uppity, shouty, badly dressed girl who’s made you cry on two separate occasions and if I’d just disappear then your life would automatically be one hundred per cent better, but guess what?’

  ‘What?’ I definitely had her attention now.

  ‘My future happiness is in your hands,’ I told her, grabbing the limp, lily-white hands in question and giving them a little shake so she’d appreciate the urgency of the situation. ‘I like Barney and you like him too.’

  ‘Well, look, about that …’ She tried to pull her hands free but I hung on for dear life. ‘It’s not what you—’

  ‘You probably like him a lot more than I do and he likes you way more than he likes me, especially right now ’cause he’s mad at me, but we were a disaster as a couple, so the two of you have my blessing.’