Ugly Shy Girl Read online

  Abigail kept on running, her bag dangling half way down her body now and giving her ankle a good bruising. She threw herself into the house and went straight to her room where she shut the door and slammed her body onto her bed – which she knew was dramatic, but that’s how she felt.

  Abigail woke up to the sound of drilling. She sat up and checked the time, 4.05 am. She wasn’t childish but noises in the night did frighten her. It was one of those horrible moments when you feel too scared to sit in bed but too scared to go and investigate. She lay there for a bit, her eyes jerking about in their sockets, searching for light, her pupils as wide as saucers. Then she heard James’ door open.

  ‘WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?’ he yelled, his voice far more grizzly than usual. The drilling didn’t stop. Abigail got up and opened her door too.

  ‘I’m gonna go and see,’ James grunted at her. His hair was greasy and matted, he smelt the same way your hand smells after holding a copper coin for ages, hot, metallic and dirty. Abigail followed him.

  In the living room, dressed in her work suit still looking as fresh and uncreased at it did that morning, her hair firmly in place, was their mother drilling holes into the wall.

  ‘MUM! MUM!’ James shouted and she swung round, switching off the drill as she did so

  ‘What are you doing up?’ she asked in a surprised tone.

  ‘You’re drilling at four in the morning, are you some sort of crazy person? What is going on? I’ve got stuff to do tomorrow,’ he said, his voice high-pitched and whiney.

  ‘Well, if your father wasn’t so incredibly talented at being such a LAZY GOOD FOR NOTHING PIG, I wouldn’t have to be putting my own shelves up.’ She eyeballed the ceiling.

  ‘I don’t believe this, this is beyond ridiculous, go to bed.’ James tried to prise the drill from his mother but she held onto it. Abigail zoned out by drawing around the designs on the sofa with her fingertip, wondering why she had bothered to come downstairs in the first place.

  ‘Go to bed? Darling, I’m not tired.’ She tutted as if offended.

  ‘Yes. You. Are.’ James smiled wearily.

  ‘No, I’m bloody not!’ she muttered but dropped the drill to the floor, sighed and ushered them up the stairs. ‘Night night, kids,’ she whispered, before opening the door to her bedroom where Mr Rodgers was snoring away as happy as an elephant getting rid of an itch with a big stick.

  ‘Just so you know,’ she began, slamming on the lights and shaking Colin’s shoulders forcefully which resulted only in a soft grumble, ‘the kids HATE you for not putting those shelves up, I hope you feel terrible. I’m going to make some coffee,’ and with that she flounced out of the room without switching off the lights. Abigail and James could hear her loud footsteps clanking back down the stairs and seconds later the drill was on once more.

  ‘You’re taking the piss now,’ James howled as he bounded down the stairs again

  ‘I’m taking the piss? I’m the taking the piss?’ Her hands were flying round hysterically as though she were trying to catch some bats. ‘I’m not Billy No Brains up there snoring my head off. One of these days I’ll drill his arse to the wall. That’ll wake the slob up. Fat, lazy, good for nothing SLOB.’ The defeated James made his way back to his room and closed the door. Mrs Rodgers, teeth gritted, continued to drill until the neighbours knocked half an hour later to ask if everything was okay.

  The next day, Abigail was feeling even more ropey than usual. She sat at the back of every class. She sometimes did not even bother to get her books out. She was one of those students with a star next to her name that meant, in one way or another, Let this student get away with everything, i.e. not participating is class, chewing gum, sleeping, eating, moisturising their kneecaps or elbows etc as they are being bullied. Quite badly. Ta. Which she was aware of but never really took advantage of, instead she saved them all up, for days like this when she could just slump into the corner and stare out of the window, wishing that the alarm would go off for the fire drill.

  Suddenly, two furrowed brows popped up at the little classroom-door window. The door opened. It was the receptionist.

  ‘Hello, Nick. Sorry to interrupt your class but could I steal Abigail for a short mo?’ Abigail was resentful to ‘be stolen’ but happy to get out of creating a ‘group Bayeux tapestry’ even if only by the receptionist for just ‘a short mo’. Snaking down the corridor behind her, Abigail began to think about why she might have been called out. She couldn’t bear it if she had been falsely blamed again for graffiti, or the fag butts in the toilets.

  ‘Sit down, Abigail. It’s nothing to worry about, just a couple of questions … Would you like some water?’ the receptionist asked. She had spinach in her teeth.

  Abigail could have done with a drop but shook her head. In came Mr Stanton.

  ‘Hi there … err … sorry your name seems to have escaped me …’ Mr Stanton began; obviously unaware that Abigail was not the type to help people out in conversation.

  ‘I … err … need to ask you a few questions about your buddy, Mr Matthew Gates.’

  Abigail looked down at the floor. ‘I believe you have a good relationship with him?’ Abigail was mute.

  ‘I’m sorry to be so direct, it’s just that we need to get this sorted as soon as possible. Has Matthew, ever tried to … how shall I put it? Caress you?’ Mr Stanton put the question to Abigail, who sat stiffly on the chair and then shook her head.

  ‘No? Never touched you in a private way?’ Mr Stanton attempted again. ‘Inappropriately?’

  Abigail shook her head.

  ‘Never asked, perhaps, if you would, I don’t know, touch him, has he ever asked a personal favour from you?’ Mr Stanton’s eyes looked like two cannons, intense behind his spectacles. Abigail shook her head again and realising the gravity of the conversation said, ‘No. Never. He’s my buddy.’

  ‘Thank you then … errr … if you do think of anything, please let us know.’ Because people do seem to forget those things don’t they? Really. As if.

  As she made her way back to the classroom, she saw Mr Stanton going back into his office where Rebecca sat with the college nurse and a box of tissues crying her eyes out. Abigail, for one moment, was in two minds.

  The rest of the day without Matt was a struggle. The canteen was like a circus. It was over crowded and claustrophobic and smelt like oil and crayon. Posters on the wood-chip wall reminded Abigail just how cruddy it actually was:–

  ‘GOOD FOOD CAN BE TASTY’ ‘AN APPLE A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY’ ‘A BALANCED DIET IS A GOOD DIET.’ The canteen supervisor obviously found it irrelevant that each poster was drenched in grease.

  There is something strange about the whole make up of a college. It sort of floats in this non-existent, implacable area; it’s the purgatory of education. Kids with any brains would stick to the sixth form of their secondary school; at least then you wouldn’t have the hassle of making and keeping a new set of friends for two years. The canteen though, this is where everything goes wrong. Its main function is supposed to be for students to re-fuel, to eat, to drink, to relax, to perhaps socialise? It’s not there for table ownership, to say the fat people sit on that table and the thin people sit on this table, to pluck your eyebrows, to cut out your split ends, to make a comic book of ‘How Alison and Sita were found lezzin’ off in the changing room Part 3’, to pour a carton of juice into somebody’s bag, to get off on making somebody’s day a misery. College is for teenagers that have reached that weird age, like when you’re twelve and you no longer want to wear the George from ASDA range of jumpers, but you can’t fit into Warehouse or Oasis, and nor will your mother spend £40 for you to have a pair of jeans that you’re just going to grow out of in six months. Being sixteen and seventeen is like that all over again. A bunch of wiggly, uneven misfits with hormones bouncing off the ceiling, caring far more what CD spins about inside their Discman than whether or not they’re going to pass their A-Levels.

  ‘Been dumped have you, skank?’

  ‘Where’s your man now, ho?’

  ‘You all lonely now, Ugly Shy Girl? Boo hoo hoo …’ Having been greeted by such delightful comments, Abigail had decided to eat her lunch sitting on the outside wall. These days she often made sandwiches to avoid eating in the canteen. Marcus Brigg was always outside at lunchtime. Today he had chewed an ink cartridge and blue ink trickled down his chin and in various designs on his hands and shoes. Another girl sat outside too, she was drawing the back of the school on a sketchpad. Abigail had never seen anybody dressed like her before. She was clothed entirely in black with lots of silver necklaces, her lips smothered in black lipstick. Abigail didn’t even know you could get black lipstick. Abigail stared at her intensely. She felt addicted to this girl’s face. Who was she? Where did she come from?

  Abigail could hear mopeds whizzing by on the nearby road. She knew it was the boys from her year, they always left at lunchtime and came back with chip rolls. She heard the bikes park up and the boys began talking and laughing. Two walked in, one still had his helmet on and the other was slightly shorter with tiny cornrows.

  ‘How long tho’ does it take for a whole building tho’? To like burn down?’ one asked the other.

  ‘What? As in shit, boy, that building is getting licked? Or just say like a house fire?’

  ‘Nah, I’m talking ’bout flames, boy.’

  ‘Pshhhh … hours … days … maybe?’

  ‘Would be kinda sick tho’, watching it would be kinda mad, like, imagine dat, if in science we could just sit dere an burn shit. I would get bare As. It’d be heavy.’

  ‘You’re sick tho’, bruv, allow burning stuff, you’re an … wass the word … arsonist, bruv.’ The taller boy laughed and pushed the other who pulled a lighter from his pocket which
he began angling at the air, admiring the flame.

  ‘Yeah I am, I could burn dat bin over there, dis whole patcha grass, da trees, da sports centre, dat girl’s butters coat … actually that coat needs to be burnin’ …’ the boy said, peering closer at Abigail’s Naf-Naf puffa coat.

  Abigail slowly carried on biting chunks out of her sandwich and trying to swallow them, wishing her coat would swallow her up instead. Hide her like a Russian doll.

  ‘Hey, you, yes, you … I wrote you a beautiful poem, shall I recite it?’

  The boy flashed a smile and dramatically cleared his throat … I MC you see, so I’ll free style for you. Okay, you ready?

  Little miss Naf-Naf

  sat on her pom pom

  eating some bits of shit

  along came an arsonist

  with a flame and petrol fluid

  and fucking burnt the bitch …’

  Then he roared with laughter, his little maggots of cornrows shaking as he did. The friend smiled and tried not to laugh. ‘You’re nuts, man, calm down.’

  ‘Nah, wait. I wanna see how this coat burns, bruv. I ain’t never burnt a Naf-Naf coat. I’ve dun me a Burberry, Adidas, Nike, Kappa, La Coste … which burns brilliantly if I do say so myself … but Naf-Naf, I ain’t never burnt a Naf-Naf … speshly not a big old school yellow one like ‘dis …’

  The boy came closer and closer; his flame came closer and closer. Abigail began to panic. She could already smell her hair barbecuing, and the way it sizzled and curled up, each strand snatching itself away like a child with a slapped wrist. A tear began to slide down her cheek.

  ‘Oi! Low it, man, you’re making her upset. Stop it,’ the taller of the two said, ‘I wanna eat my chips, come on,’ he urged, his eyes lighting up at the sight of the flame, letting it slip that even he didn’t trust this friend, even he didn’t know how far it would go.

  ‘I wanna blow up Little Miss Naf-Naf …’ the arsonist said. ‘Don’t cry, Little Miss Naf-Naf or your tears will put my flame out.’ He had a lisp that rang on all of his S’s; it shook Abigail’s brain and her eyes re-filled, the tears brimming over.

  The girl with the sketchbook got up to walk away, then changed her mind and turned back, refusing to ignore the confrontation.

  ‘Oi … what are you doing?’ she shouted. ‘That’s my friend.’

  ‘Agh what? I’m sorry, Jade, I didn’t know, man … sorry ….’ The arsonist instantly put his lighter away and pulled himself together, snapped out of it as though he’d been under a spell.

  ‘You will be, you freak. Now find something else to burn. Go on, piss off.’ Both boys ran to the canteen door, the taller one lightly slapping the arsonist around the back of his head before they both went inside.

  Jade turned to Abigail.

  ‘My mum’s best friends with Kieran’s mum, the one that tried to burn your coat. If I told my mum about that, she’d tell his mum and he’d be eating his guts for dinner. He’s a dick … you okay?’ Jade asked.

  Abigail had never actually spoken to a Goth but she was pretty certain that this was one in front of her, and was grateful to get a better look up close. Jade’s face was whitened out and her eyes surrounded by a thick black smudge, one eyebrow was pierced and so was her bottom lip – both with chunky silver hoops. She had a mop of scruffy black hair, a suede coat and boots that would not have looked out of place on Edward Scissor Hands.

  Abigail nodded. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘K … well … have a nice day, yeah? And don’t let people take the biscuit, you were nearly on fire, remember that …’

  Abigail hurried inside, unable not to think about Kieran eating his own guts for dinner.

  ‘THE FASHION SHOW’ was the line that caught Abigail’s eye as she paid for her marshmallow flump at the tuck shop. A bright yellow poster with a picture of Agyness Deyn trying to be all seductive was stuck to the wall. ‘Auditions now taking place for Models and Designers.’ Abigail couldn’t help but drop her jaw a bit. There was nothing she liked more than believing things were fate. It suddenly became clear why she had been thinking about fashion design, perhaps this was destined to happen? She wrote the information on her hand with her gitter gel pen (that had very nearly run out which meant that most of her personal note was written in a white dusty scratch) and felt her body fizzle with excitement and hope. She hadn’t seen Jade yet today and wanted to talk to her now more than ever, even just to point the poster out to her. She waited by the tuck shop for twenty-five minutes until she decided to go into the town and buy a DVD and probably some pick ’n’ mix. She liked the chewy eggs so much, they had occurred in her dreams more than once.

  ‘Hey, hey!’ a voice called after her. ‘Hey wait …’ Abigail’s first instinct was that it was going to be Leilah or Florence, not Rebecca; she knew her voice better than her own mother’s. She kept walking, it had happened before where her name had been called and she had turned around only to see a group of people laughing at her.

  ‘Hey …!’ An arm caught her puffa coat and some of the white puff poured out. It was Jade. She was wearing a worn out ‘Siouxsie and the Banshees’ t-shirt with a black denim jacket and black leather trousers. She had a heavy clunky silver charm around her neck that perfectly framed her whitened face. ‘Oops … sorry.’ She laughed awkwardly, handing her the bit of loose fluff. ‘Hi, didn’t you hear me shouting? I want you to meet my friends.’ Abigail did not know what to say. She was trying to be nice, even though she was convinced this was a trick.

  ‘Erm. Okay,’ she managed to gurgle, and then began walking round the back of the steps, the sunshine on the grass, the leaves dancing on the tarmac. Abigail’s bones were rattling in her body, like jangling alarm bells, preparing her body to go into overdrive. Trusting Jade, she followed her to a small brick arch.

  ‘Come on, slow coach. Now watch your head,’ she said as she put her own hand on top of Abigail’s and led her into the arch.

  ‘Everyone, this is Abigail.’

  Sitting in a small semi-circle were a group of about eight Goths, all dressed similarly to Jade. Most of them had piercings and wore black lipstick – even the boys.

  ‘You all right, Abigail?’ said one vampire, his arms behind his head, a cigarette perched in the corner of his mouth.

  ‘Hi, girl. I love your hair,’ spoke another vampire; this one was small and chubby with large boobs. Abigail was shocked when the girl began to stroke her hair. ‘Yeah, you’re cute.’ She continued as though she were answering a question, ‘Do you like my fairy wings? I made them myself.’ She hummed like a deathly butterfly. So, a moth basically.

  ‘Do you smoke?’ Another boy prodded his wrist against her elbow, offering her a cigarette. Abigail shook her head.

  ‘Course she doesn’t, Lucas, you tit.’ Jade bat the fag out of Lucas’s hand and put her hands on her hips, ‘You must like cider though?’

  Abigail had never been drunk before. It was a very strange feeling, especially at four o’clock in the afternoon. Her brain was tickling itself, tripping over its own thoughts and sentences. She began to daydream. It was as if her brain had been dropped onto an ice rink – like a frozen chicken, and clowns were kicking her brain about, knocking it on the sides of the rink while the audience applauded and cried with laughter.

  ‘What do you think, Abigail? Häagan Dazs or Ben and Jerry’s?’ Jade asked her.

  ‘Sorry? Jerry who?’ Abigail slurred.

  ‘The ice cream, you fruit cake.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve never tried it. Not properly anyway.’

  ‘PHH, yeah right,’ laughed a ginger boy with a piggy nose and a sweaty head.

  ‘No.’ Abigail rocked, swaying in her seat, her eyes flapping up and down as though she had penny coins stuck to the lids.

  ‘You’re pissed, mate,’ grizzled the small busty girl. ‘Haha, you’re out of your box, Abi.’ They all began to laugh. The smell of cider and old man’s BO wafted up her nose and began to make her feel sick.

  ‘Don’t laugh at me,’ Abigail said abruptly, trying to change the subject but everybody laughed harder. ‘Stop laughing at me!’ she snapped again. Nobody was laughing to be nasty but it became like one of those moments when you’re not supposed to laugh and no matter how hard you try you just can’t stop. It happened to me once in an art lesson but then I stood on a drawing pin and the laughter naturally wrapped itself up.