My Ideal Boyfriend Is a Croissant Read online

  “Don’t ask.”

  “What is that?”

  “I tried to have a picnic by myself so I could get on with my bikini designs and an accident happened.”

  “With what?”

  “My picnic. I was trying to be healthy and have a salad, which I made at home—”

  “What flavour?”

  “Like, an exotic mix-up.”

  “ ’K.”

  “Then I walked past a fruit and veg shop and they had all these amazing slices of watermelon that really caught my eye but they also had pomegranates and just recently I’ve been noticing they’ve been putting pomegranate in all the salads at the supermarket, so I thought, Oooh that might be nice, so I bought it.”

  “For some reason I don’t think that’s the end to this story, is it?”

  “OK, so…I couldn’t get into it. Its skin’s really hard; I guess to protect all them gems—have you seen pomegranate seeds?”

  “Beautiful, aren’t they? Like little alien pods.”

  “My gosh, they are…they are like treasure, gems like costume jewellery. Anyway, I tried stepping on it and using my teeth but…nah…so I went over to a tree and pressed the pomegranate in between my chest and the trunk and sort of squeezed the—”

  “You hugged a tree?”

  “Yeah, well, I can see how it would seem like I did.”

  “And it burst on your top?”

  “Yeah. It’s dry now, though. Salad is such effort, and they wonder why people don’t eat enough of it.”

  “It’s goddess food, apparently, pomegranate.”

  “Really. Knew there was a reason I was attracted to it.” Cam scrunches her nose up at me and pokes out her tongue, posing for a second like a goddess before failing miserably and shaking her head in dismay. I wrap my arm round her neck.

  “Come up with any good bikini designs?”

  “Yeah, bikinis with tassels, and ones that go right up your bum so you can get a tan on your bum cheeks.”

  “Who wants a tan on their bum cheeks?”

  “Oh trust me, there’s a market for it. Then in, like, five years I’m gonna go to fashion week. Paris, New York, Milan…that’s the plan, anyway…and Dubai too. Have you ever been there? It’s mental. It’s like futuristic and caveman at the same time…like all these crazy metal fancy shiny buildings just built on a desert.”

  “Sounds like Flintstones mixed with The Matrix.”

  “Yeah. That is kind of it. You feel like the birds are clockwork and you could unscrew the sun.” Camille lies on her back. She’s already caught the sun. Flecks of fish-food-like freckles dot her nose, speckles of neon pollen crown her Afro.

  “So guess what?”

  “What?” She bolts up.

  “Mum’s agreed.”

  “To what?”

  “I don’t have to go back after the summer.”

  “What?”

  “Yep. I don’t have to go back to school.”

  “SHUT THE FRONT DOOR!”

  “No. Serious.”

  “Flip! B! That’s huge. WOW!”

  “I know. Hasn’t quite sunk in yet.”

  “Have you told school?”

  “Mum’s dealing with it.”

  “What’d your dad say?”

  “Not much. Not much he can say, is there?”

  “Whoa, Bluebelle, this is mad. So what you gonna do?”

  “I actually don’t know. I have to technically do an apprenticeship cos I’m sixteen, like, make up the hours doing a skill….”

  “You could go into business with me!”

  “I’d LOVE to be your apprentice! What would I do?”

  “Make bikinis for girls that have massive boobs?”

  “Yeah! With great patterns on them like…I dunno…”

  “Toads or something.”

  “Yeah. Toads.”

  “I feel like a toad bikini could be my compass to decide if a girl could be my friend species or not.”

  “Oh totally, same for me with the shop, like if a customer walks in and doesn’t like the idea of wearing a bikini with toad prints on it, then GET OUT OF MY SHOP—you’re not my kind!”

  I laugh.

  “So I’m gonna work at Planet Coffee for a bit but…I need to persuade Alicia to offer me a barista apprenticeship scheme.” I kick my shoes off; air licks my swollen toes. “Look at my trotters, bloody hell.” I laugh. “These shoes are meant to be comfy.” I squint at the sun. “But I couldn’t ask her today cos I think she’s pregnant.”

  “WHAT?”

  “I know.”

  “Poor kid.” Cam tuts. “Why can’t we just do stuff like work as mechanics like they do in films?”

  “You need a form for everything these days. You can’t just fall into a line of work because you one day get on really well with a plumber and they’re, like, Hey, kid, why don’t you just be a plumber like me? I’ll teach you everything you need to know. All has to be forms and stuff.”

  “Yeah, but it’s a bit much. How are you meant to know when you’re a kid what you want to do for the rest of your life? You choose your subjects for your exams when you’re SO young without realising that those exam results could shape the rest of your whole future. It’s bonkers.”

  “I know. And just think, I scribbled around my fruit bowl in art in black charcoal. Great.” With my toes I claw at the grass. “How do you know where the right spot on the planet is for you? Like, how do I know I’m meant to be here, right now, doing this? How do I know I’ve landed in the right spot? My calling could be…I dunno…in New Zealand or St. Lucia or Mexico or New York or Berlin—”

  “Or Dubai?”

  “And I wouldn’t even know it. And that makes me think life is too short. I don’t have the time to test all these places out and find out where I fit.”

  “You can’t spend your whole life hopping round to see if you fit in somewhere or you’ll never be able to settle and see if it suits you or not because you won’t stick around long enough to find out.” Cam lies on her back and closes her eyes. “Anyway. You fit in here just fine; this is your home.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Just do.” She picks up a daisy and twirls it in her fingers. “You belong with me.”

  A girl struts past in a pair of short jean shorts, cut off on the bum cheeks, wedges and a belly top. “Jeeeez, that girl is feeeeeeeeling herself!” Cam nods at her. “You go, girl!” she shouts.

  “Good for her.” I smile at Cam. “But back to me.”

  “Heaven forbid the subject would detour from you for a millisecond. Sorry, yeah?” We laugh.

  “And, like, I’m only sixteen but already there are some things that I’ll never be able to do.”

  “Huh? You’re doing that thing where you start a sentence with ‘and’ and I’m meant to know what you’re talking about.”

  “OK, like, I’ll never be the best ballet dancer in the world. I’ll never be the best violinist….”

  “Not true.”

  “Yes, Cam, because some people started learning to do these things when they were literally two years old. You’ve seen those shows with the child geniuses. It’s too late. I have to get a wiggle on. I have zero life skills.”

  “Well, what do you want to do? What do you want to be the best at, BB?”

  “I need time to decide.”

  “Take your time, then.”

  “I need to think at what I’m, you know…good at.”

  “OK…well, what are you good at?”

  “Eating.”

  We giggle. Bellies jolting up and down. Up and down.

  Cam pats the grass next to her. I lie, my head touching hers. Listening to the squealing sounds of summer. Kids in the paddling pool, dogs yelping, laughter, the nostalgic shrillin
g bell of an ice-cream van and the angry honks of hot agitated drivers from the road nearby.

  * * *

  —

  After a little while we dust the blades of grass off our bums and pick the wheaty fluff from each other’s hair. The press of grass thatches our elbows.

  “I’ll call you when I finish.”

  “I’ll walk you back but not to the door. Don’t want to see Alicia today, not with the aftermath of the open-heart surgery pomegranate.”

  “Fair enough.” We hug and say a love you.

  “Fudging hell,” Cam grunts. “Everyone is so buff in the sun.”

  And I look behind me and that Max from work is wheeling the bin out onto the street.

  CHEESEBURGERS

  You are a normal person before you get on the bus, then the moment you pass the driver you become a part of the Bus Community. Bus Club. Knighted for your annoyance at the sight of a coin of bubble gum puckered to the side of a fuzzy armrest, waiting for an issue to allow you to eyeball-roll and tut with a stranger. It’s about survival, building relationships, I guess.

  The bus always smells of cheeseburgers…cheeseburgers or wee or sweat or cold cheese and onion pasties but actually I think all of those things could also smell like a cheeseburger. When it comes to burgers I like to keep it simple. It has to have cheese. The bun has to be brioche and just as sweet as a cake. The meat has to be good quality, juicy and seasoned really well, the outside a bit blackened and charred. I love mine with a gherkin. If you can’t get the best version of a cheeseburger that you possibly deserve, then you should just sack it off and have a cheese toastie instead.

  I can’t get a window seat and I’m looking over the heads of everyone to see where Dove is. Suddenly I see her blond ribbons of hair pegging it towards the next stop. Dodging and skirting and ducking through the streams of people like a skilled security guard dressed as a Christmas Fairy running after a shoplifter. My heart clutches as I watch her get on safely; I hate anybody that doesn’t let her pass with ease—just move out the way. She’s red in the face and panting but quickly gets over it. I’d be on the floor, wheezing, if it was me. Well, let’s be honest, I wouldn’t be running for a bus in the first place.

  “You could have just waited for the next one?” My voice feels loud on the bus. Everybody is sweaty. Even with the windows open the heat sticks to us.

  “I wanted to get the bus with you. You already waited for me.”

  We are literally going eight stops.

  “Do you always get this bus?”

  “Not really, mostly I run. Whatever the boys are doing. Sometimes they give me a backie.”

  “You run home?”

  “Errr, yeah, walking’s so long.”

  It is cute that we both go out of our way today to get the bus home together. Dove’s nose is ruby-red with sunburn. The hairs on her arms and lashes have gone swan-feather white. I’m so jealous that she’s getting to enjoy the six-week break to its full potential, UNLIKE me, who got conned into working a job like a full grown-up adult beast and yet still, for some reason, has to keep a food diary like a baby child.

  “Think we can persuade Mum to get a takeaway tonight?”

  “Not sure, all she’s saying is how broke she is the whole time. Think she’s worried in case her and Dad never sort it out and then she has to be a single mum.”

  “Dad will still give her money, won’t he?” Dove looks worried.

  “What money? Dad doesn’t have any money either. Plus, if they break up, he’ll probably use all of his money for some soul-searching trip to India.” I grip her hand. “We’ll be all right,” I say. Luckily it’s the same time the bus swings around a sharp corner, so it masks the grip as for support rather than affection.

  “Do you reckon Dad is Mum’s biggest regret?”

  No. I think I am. She could have got that part if it wasn’t for me.

  “Probably, yeah.” I change the subject. “Do you ever think about the supplies you have in your bag and think, if this was the end of the world and these were the only people left, who would you share your supplies with? I have nothing on me, so I would have to be really sucking up to all these strangers.” Dove takes the question in; she looks quite serious, chewing the inside of her mouth aggressively. I carry on, “Imagine the contents of everybody on this bus’s bags tipped out into a pile….” We watch the people, stereotyping their bags by their mannerisms and clothes. “In her bag I bet there’s hand moisturiser…chewing gum and…”

  “Cigarettes…,” Dove adds.

  “Why cigarettes?”

  “My teacher always has gum and moisturiser in her handbag to mask the smell of the cigarettes.”

  “Ah, well spotted!” I nod, smiling. “OK, so we’d have hand cream, gum and fags. What else?”

  “That man’s got a pram, so he’ll have loads of great stuff…wet wipes, rice cakes, apple juice, grapes…milk, maybe!”

  “Good call. I’m sticking with him. But look, she’s got bags of shopping full of stuff. Most of it’s frozen, but in this heat…Come on, those Smiley Faces will be defrosted in no time.”

  “You’d kind of need to go round, wouldn’t you, like a buffet, and take what you needed. Or exchange?” Dove offers.

  “They all probably think I have loads of food in my bag. People always think I carry food with me.”

  “They’d be disappointed,” Dove replies.

  “Nobody would share with me. They’d think I’m greedy, I bet. They wouldn’t dare share half their limp cheese sandwich with me just in case I snatched it and inhaled it. Like a giant, plopped it on my tongue to dissolve like an edible postage stamp!”

  Dove laughs, then does an impression of some dinosaur-like hungry beast, groaning, “MORRRRRRRE!”

  “Exactly. People think fat people can’t get full up. EVER. Like our stomachs are massive everlasting gobstopper laundry bags.”

  Dove frowns. “Really?”

  “Yeah, they think that’s why fatness is connected to sadness, because we never feel full. Like, we eat to fill an empty void. This is what the stupid teachers at school say about me—that’s why I hate that place; they never talk to you about Mum and Dad breaking up, because you’re a thin person. The idea is so far-fetched, it’s annoying.”

  “You’re not sad at all. You never seem sad to me.” Dove looks concerned. “Does that make you angry?”

  “No, it makes me laugh.” Because it does. That people think that to be fat you also have to be sad. Like sadness is the reason you’re fat. It’s what all the girls and teachers from school think. “Oh, BB’s OBVIOUSLY fat because she’s sad and she’s OBVIOUSLY sad because her parents are breaking up, again.”

  My weight has NOTHING to do with my parents. What actually makes me feel sad, if anything, is others assuming that. Like I have no control over my emotions.

  The skinniness-equals-happiness myth is just a terrible sum created by the media and brands to make women believe that if they are thin they are leading a perfect, carefree, successful life. That being slim means you are also automatically blissfully beautiful, intelligent, liberated, popular, cool, kind, disciplined, motivated, high-achieving, witty, spontaneous, adventurous, strong, courageous and ambitious whilst also being seriously deep in love with the person of your dreams and probably rich too, from being your own boss at your ideal job.

  How, also, does this make thin people feel? Like they aren’t allowed to be unhappy?

  They are making money out of our insecurities, knocking us down by shoving an unachievable airbrushed model in our faces eating low-fat yoghurt and making us believe that THAT is who we need to be in order to be all of the above, to make us buy their stuff, read their magazines.

  In other words, they are suggesting that being thin means you’re winning at life.

  And if you are otherwise, you are, well, losing.
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  And all of that is an utter load of absolute bad stinking rubbish.

  “So this lot can go round thinking that I’m the greedy one, when in reality, if it turned to cannibalism, in desperate times, they would eat me. Everyone on the bus. Stand around me, sharpening their Oyster cards like makeshift cutlery, stomping some horrible bloodthirsty barbaric song, and then try to roast me over the engine of the bus…”

  Dove is laughing so much little tears are building up in the corners of her eyes. “I’ve always wanted to eat the little fatty bits of flesh that hang over the top of your bra at the back, by your arms.”

  “Oooh, tender morsels there. Proper fillet. There would be a fight for those babies.”

  “Tossed in a bit of butter…”

  “You’d probably ruin it by slathering it in ketchup.”

  Dove nods, giggling at the same time. “You’d taste so good, plumped up with all that superfood goodness you eat.”

  Our laughs fizzle out to a comfortable silence. Sisters. Both boiling hot and clammy. Sticky and grubby with sweat. Do people think we look alike? No. Probably not. My whole skinny family look nothing like me. But I feel strong with Dove by my side. Her arm reaching across my chest to hold the rail.

  “Oi, quick, there’s two seats….”

  SQUASH

  People avoid sitting next to me on the bus, so I usually avoid peak hours. Not because I’m embarrassed, I just CANNOT be bothered with the beef of people accusing me of treading on their toes or squashing their egg boxes with my calves. Quickly throwing their laptop bag on the chair next to them before I can sit down—“This seat’s taken by my boring black bag.” I once had a woman snatch the end of her coat from underneath me as I went to sit just in case once I sat, that would be it, she’d never see her coat again. That my bum cheeks would STEAL it. Vacuum it up with one gust of air.

  I’m quiet, thinking about what the strangers have in their bags; are they wondering what I have in mine? But I bet they’re just thinking, She would be really beautiful if she lost a bit of weight.

  I’ve heard this before: “You’re tall, BB. If you lost a bit of weight, you could be a model.”