My Family and Other Freaks (14 page)

The girls and me ask for three Dr. Peppers from the bar. “Bad Romance” comes on so we go and dance. One of the boys is doing quite funny Lady Gaga impressions on the dance floor. This is quite a laugh. No, it isn't. Treasure and Damian have just walked in and she looks A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. Every head in the room turns to look at her like they do on films. She has had her hair put in rollers and blow dried so it's mega curly, and she is dressed in a red dress, red hairband, red cardigan and red sparkly shoes. I don't hate her.
I loathe and despise her. Damian looks his usual miserable self.

“Hi, Danni” says Treasure. “Brave of you to come—and in one of your little sister's dresses. You look like 10 pounds of potatoes in a 5-pound sack.”

Yes, I definitely loathe her.

Some boy from Year 10 is doing the DJ-ing and a load of girls from our year are hovering around him like giggly flies. He's playing “I Just Can't Get You Out of My Head” by Kylie. This is a bit retro, but at least it's not a… oh no. Now it's George Michael's “Last Christmas”—a slowie. Just what I was dreading.

Treasure has her head resting on Damian's shoulder like a big, wet limpet, but her eyes are open and scanning the room like a basilisk to make sure I'm watching.

Damian, I'm delighted to say, looks as stiff as a Topshop dummy. Where is Amber when you need her? Oh, look, she's sitting with Neil, probably discussing how to save the two-headed natterjack or something. She looks over and gives me a shrug which says, It's crap that they are slow dancing in front of your very eyes—but, hey, what can you do?

Smack Treasure over the head for starters.

I go and pull Amber out of her seat. “Let's go and play pool in the other room with some of the lads,” I say with a frozen smile on my face. I must be breezy. I MUST BE BREEZY.

Amber looks a bit grumpy. Hello? I thought best friends were supposed to be supportive.

Someone touches my shoulder. It's Sean again. For some reason he is holding a balloon, which makes him look a bit, you know, simple. “I know you're feeling sad, but it's really not worth worrying about,” he says.

Oh yeah? Try living in my brain for a week.

Sean is still talking. “I've told Damian I don't know how he can spend so much time with Treasure. She's so boring—and thick.”

What? I'm liking this—tell me more. He then does quite a funny impression of Biggins Bad Breath, who is always saying, “An hour in detention is an hour of your life that you will NEVER. EVER. GET. BACK,” except that Sean says, “An hour listening to Treasure talk about the latest top that her mother brought her back from her latest mini-break to Paris is an hour that you will spend in a DEEP, DEEP COMA, possibly never regaining consciousness.”

I snicker. A lot. “Oh, don't worry about me. I'm fine,” I say. And I am actually. Weirdly.

Megan comes running over in her
Grease
prom dress looking like a shiny meringue. She is so excited her ears have gone bright pink. “Guess
what,” she says. “Eliza Bowman Saw Damian and Treasure when they were first walking in and they were bickering.

“Apparently,” she goes on, breathing quite deeply so that she sounds like she's giving birth (she loves reporting gossip), “Damian feels that he doesn't see enough of his friends anymore.”

Really? REALLY? Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you. Didn't I always say there was a God? But deep down I don't feel as thrilled by this news as I thought I would. Strange. And anyway, they're both still wearing each other's pathetic bracelets. And she's still draped over him like a cheap rug. They're not exactly OVER, are they?

I need to have a quiet think. Plus this dress is killing me. Oh, how nice. The girls' toilets are out of order because someone has tried to flush a
sanitary towel and blocked one toilet and the other one hasn't worked for about four years anyway. Bad Breath Biggins is now policing the doorway of the boys' toilets so that we all can use them but not boys and girls at the same time.

“You can't go in at the moment,” he says, like he's guarding the Crown Jewels. “Andrew Slater's in there.”

“Oh well, we'll be here all night then,” I say. “By the time he's finished checking his reflection in the mirror.” (He's quite vain.) BBB looks like he's actually smirking at that but he says nothing.

Andrew comes out smoothing his hair so I go in and as I do there's a simpering voice behind me. “Please, Mr. Biggins, sir, can I go in with Danielle. I'm bursting.”

It's Treasure. Why does this always have to happen to me?

“Yes, yes, but hurry up,” says Biggins. He's now another person I would like to put on my fantasy shipwreck. (This is a collection of people I don't
like who I would like to be marooned together forever on a desert island with only broccoli to eat.)

I sit down for a wee in one cubicle while Treasure sits down in the other. “How's your poor mom?” I hear her say in her faux concerned voice through the partition wall.

“Fine—why shouldn't she be?” I say, pulling some toilet roll out of the dispenser really hard.

“It's just that Dad heard about her collapsing the other day. He says it must be so hard at her age.”

I can feel my blood boiling like a kettle but luckily I am distracted by some small commotion I can hear outside in the disco room. Maybe they've let down all those balloons from the ceiling. How will we ever contain our excitement? “Actually it was nothing to do with her age,” I say coolly. “Anemia can happen in pregnancy even if you're 18.”

“Well, look on the bright side,” says Treasure.
“After the baby's born she can sterilize her teeth at the same time that she's sterilizing the baby's bottles.”

I have to admit that's quite a good line by her standards. But I'm so angry I bang the partition wall like a madwoman. “Why are you so totally, totally VILE, Treasure?” I scream.

“Me?” she splutters. “You're the vile one, always trying to steal my boyfriend. You must know he's not interested by now. He says your family are all weird but I think he's being kind. I think the phrase he's looking for is ‘unhygienic Clampett freaks.'”

Time seems to stand still. I think about my lovely little sister being called a freak. I think about the way she collects slugs in the garden and gives them individual names and apartments made of pebbles and I feel this rage coming over me like the Incredible Hulk, which is apt really because my dress is about to split.

I clamber to stand up on the toilet seat so that I can see over the partition. Treasure looks a bit worried to be honest, as she sits there with her underpants around her ankles looking up at me while I jab my finger at her from above.

“Don't you DARE call my family freaks,” I say, tottering on the seat a little. “At least we don't spend all our time shopping and simpering and being thick and walking around with skin the color of a Satsuma—aaaaarrrrgh!”

Oh no. Somebody shoot me.

We are not alone. I turn my head and see that—oh dear lord, no—Damian, Sean and Nerdy Neil are standing there with their mouths wide open. They heard everything. I slip and feel a wet sensation on my leg. One of my feet has gone down the toilet …

“What are you doing in here?!” I splutter, trying to hide the fact that I have a dripping, peestained shoe. “This is girl-weeing time. Biggins is supposed to be guarding the door.”

Damian's face is blank.

Oh well, he certainly won't fancy me now. Sean says that a couple of lads got into a fight on the dance floor and Biggins had to go and sort it out. “We were worried about you. You've been ages,” he says awkwardly, looking at his shoes again. “Amber is searching for you everywhere.”

Damian says absolutely nothing.

Treasure has now pulled up her underpants, opened her cubicle door and is rushing into Damian's arms. “Take me home,” she says with these little fake sobs. “I think I'm going to faint. She's been HORRIBLE to me. And it's all because she wants you for herself. I've told her that you think she's a freak.”

Drama queen—much? That girl should win an Oscar. Damian looks at her with a strange expression on his face, but steers her out of the door.

“You didn't wash your hands!” I shout feebly after her.

Sean puts a hand on my arm. “We heard what she said about your family and the, er, sterilized teeth,” he says. “Oh, and obviously the bit about you trying to steal her boyfriend.”

My cheeks burn at the thought of Damian knowing that I have been plotting for so long.

Someone's coming back into the toilets. What is this—a coffee morning?

It's Damian—alone. “Danni, I, er, just wanted to say that Treasure was out of order then. I did say you were a bit of a freak after, you know, the thing in the park, and after that time when I came around and you were sitting on top of the dog painting its face. But I don't think that now. In fact, I think you're great. Better than great. I think you're cool. I'll call you.”

I'm standing there staring into his handsome face. And I can think only one thing: he is actually wearing CONCEALER!

I watch his back as he walks out of the door.

“Let's go and find Amber and get out of here,” I
say to Sean and Nerdy Neil. “But first can you tell me something?”

“What?” they say together.

“Why do boys' toilets smell so bad?”

We're all walking home—me with a squelchy shoe, Sean, Amber and Neil. Amber and Neil are talking about something boring, and me and Sean are walking slightly behind—in silence. Suddenly he coughs and says, “For what it's worth, you know, I think you're way prettier than Treasure. I always did. Damian thought I was mad to think that.”

Gee—thanks.

Still, Sean thinks I AM WAY PRETTIER THAN TREASURE!!

“Do you? DO YOU?” I say. “In exactly what way ‘prettier'?” (Yes, I am fishing for compliments, but I so rarely get my ego boosted.)

“I just think you're lovely. A couple of times I was mad with you for saying mean things to Neil, but I know why you do it, I think. It's when you're nervous. And I've must say—you can be really funny.”

Sean O'Connor thinks I'm lovely and funny! Sean O'Connor thinks I AM LOVELY AND FUNNY. How strange is this night turning out to be?

“And you've got what you want now,” he says in a small voice. “Damian told me the other day that's he's fancied you for a while.”

Wake me up, I'm dreaming. “Why didn't you tell me?” I say.

He goes quiet. “Because I was jealous,” he says eventually.

And then I realize how weird life is. Because someone is saying the words “I'm not interested in Damian anymore,” and I realize that person is me. What's more, I mean it. I really mean it. I think of how he never helped Sean in his fight with Thick
Mick and how he never once told Treasure to shut up when she was being cruel to people and, worse, how he was wearing concealer on his pimples. And how he's actually quite DULL.

And now I'm thinking about Sean, remembering all the times this term when he'd smile at me in French and how if it wasn't for him Simon might be back in the animal shelter and how brave he was standing up for Neil.

“But I thought all boys fancied Treasure,” I say. “I mean—look at her tonight. She's gorgeous. And those red sparkly shoes!”

Sean looks at me as if I'm mad. “Are you completely demented?” he says. “Danni, she looked like a Barbie Dorothy from
The Wizard of Oz
.” A snort comes down my nose and then I'm doing big, proper belly laughs. We walk into the night laughing and laughing and laughing.

Then Sean says, “Er, Danni—I should tell you something. Your dress has split.”

Well, considering that I was humiliated, virtually called a nasty scheming bitch in front of Damian and had a row while standing on a boys' stinky toilet seat, which the whole school now knows about, I think last night went quite well.

Sean is the nicest boy I have ever met. I can't believe I couldn't see how much cooler and funnier and more interesting he is than Damian. It's me that needs my eyes tested.

Mom is making bacon sandwiches. Her tummy's so big now she can hardly turn around in the kitchen. Dad is fussing around her like an old woman, saying, “You need to conserve your energy for the birth, pet.”

Mom looks at him witheringly. “No, what I will need for the birth, Dave, is lots of painkilling drugs. Now shut up and eat your sandwich. But we've run out of brown sauce.”

Typical.

Because I am a strict vegetarian I only have one rasher of bacon on mine.

Amber calls. About time. I've been texting her all morning. Where has she been? You just can't rely on some people.

“I told you about a million times,” she says. “I've been to that protest against the plans to chop down six trees to build a new leisure center near the park.”

“Oh yeah, I vaguely remember you saying something about that,” I say. “Anyway, let's talk about me.”

Amber rolls her eyes. “I saw Neil at the protest,”
she says. “He bumped into Damian this morning. He and Treasure had a huge argument on the way home. He's not sure if he wants to go out with her anymore. Apparently she's been in tears ever since.”

Hmm, I feel less smug about the thought of Treasure crying than I thought I would.

“It was a good night in a funny way, wasn't it?” I say.

Amber's face brightens. “It was great!” she says. “Me and Neil—”

“You'll never guess what Sean said to me,” I interrupt, lying back on my bed with my hands behind my head. I know it's rude to butt in, but I don't want her getting carried away droning on about some eco-issue again. She doesn't know when to stop.