Not Pretty Enough (4 page)

CHAPTER 8

May.

Can I just say that I hate geography? The tables are
arranged in a square around the perimeter of the room, so you’re all looking at
each other. Lloyd is right down the other end of my line, so I can’t even see
him. If there’s one good thing about some lessons, it’s that you can watch
Lloyd Layton without being noticed, but not this one.

I’ve been in this school for two
and a half years now. I’ve had this teacher – Mr Edmond – for a year and a half
of them, and he has not yet realised that I am not interested in geography. In
fact, the only thing even mildly interesting in this classroom is the fact that
Lloyd Layton is in it.

I don’t know if it’s because my
seat is directly opposite the teacher’s desk, or if it’s because he just
doesn’t like me, but he loves to do quick fire questions, usually before you’ve
even settled at your desk and got your books out. I’m always the first one he
picks, and it’s always some rubbish about the Earth’s core or volcanoes that
erupted fifty years ago. I never get it right, and I think Mr Edmond thinks I’m
teasing him by pretending to be stupid when the truth is that I can just about
find my way home from the bus stop.

“Miss Clemenfield,” Mr Edmond
begins just as we are settling down in our chairs. “The population of Japan
is?”

“Um…”

“Wrong. The population of Japan
is not um. It is in fact…” He stops and stares at me for a moment. “Francesca,
are you okay?”

I look up. “Yes, thank you.
Yourself?”

“No, your face. It’s all red.”

“I had to run down from my last class.
Mr Griffiths kept us behind.” I nod emphatically. Okay, so I’m seriously unfit.
Why don’t you point it out to the whole class and have Lloyd Layton turning to
look at my red, sweaty self, panting due to a short run from the maths block?

“If you’d like to go and get a
glass of water from the fountain, you’re welcome to go now before the lesson
begins.”

“I’m good, thanks.”

He walks away and starts the
quick fire questions down the other end of the room.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”
Ceri, who sits on one side of me, asks.

“You know, you do look a bit red
and blotchy, Chess,” Ewan says from the seat on my other side.

“All right, I’m unfit,” I snap.
“Why don’t you just announce that I’m a fat cow during school assembly and be
done with it?”

“Sorry.” He holds his hands up
and starts intently reading his textbook.

Leigh leans across from where
she sits a few chairs down. “Don’t worry, Chessie,” she says with a sickly
sweet smile that’s as fake as plastic flowers. “I suffer from PMT too. Do you
want me to ask for a tampon for you?”

“At least mine’s not permanent,”
I snap at her.

After ten minutes or so goes by,
the teacher is about to fire another dumb question when he stops in his tracks
and stares at me.

“You know, Francesca, I really
think you ought to go and see the nurse.”

God, won’t anyone just leave me
alone today?

“It’s Chessie, please.” I grab
my bag from the floor and dig around in it until I find my compact mirror. “Is
there something wrong with the lighting in this class or something today, Mr
Edmond? Because I’m absolutely fi—”

Oh God. My face
is
all red and blotchy. It’s like I’ve come out in
some sort of a rash. Crikey, no wonder the teacher was worried about me.

“Sorry,” I say quickly.

“Ewan, Ceri,” Mr Edmond
addresses them. “Could you two move your chairs away a little bit, just in case
it’s contagious. If everybody could just shift down a little.”

Contagious.
Contagious
? He thinks I’m contagious? And he’s just
announced it to the rest of the class, and suddenly thirty pairs of eyes are
peering at me and talking amongst themselves.

Crap.

Couldn’t he just have said
something to me quietly, without making the entire class think I have the
bubonic plague? That’s just great, isn’t it? Now Lloyd will never look twice at
me because I’m like a walking wart. A giant walking wart that is contagious.

Although, perhaps a more
pressing matter is what on earth is wrong with me. Why is my face all
rash-like? I look like I’ve been sleeping in a nest of stinging nettles.

“I think you should go to the
nurse,
Chessie
.” Mr Edmond puts unnecessary
emphasis on my name.

“Yes, thank you.”

I grab my bag and rush out the
door, grateful to be able to walk away from the staring eyes.

The nurse’s office is just down
the hall from the geography room and I wait patiently while she finishes
dealing with a first year boy who has a headache.

“So, Miss Clemenfield,” she
says. “I can see why you’re here.”

Thank you, I think. Don’t make
me feel better or less conspicuous about it, will you?

I sit down as she turns my face towards
the light and starts examining it with a magnifying glass. Wearing her rubber
gloves, obviously. Wouldn’t want her to catch anything
contagious
.

“This looks like an average
allergic reaction, Chessie. Have you eaten anything you shouldn’t have lately?
Tried anything new? Gone for any walks in the countryside?”

I shake my head.

“How do you feel? Any pain
anywhere?”

Does embarrassment count as
pain? Because I think it should.

“Well,” she says. “I’ll give you
a couple of antihistamine, they should do the trick for now, but I think you
should keep a diary of all the things you eat and do, just in case this comes
up again, we need to be able to eliminate certain things that you might be
allergic to, such as dairy products.”

“I’ve eaten dairy products all my
life. I don’t think I’m allergic to them.”

“It was only an example.” She
angles my face to the light again and has another look.

Great. Now she’s wiped off all
my new foundat… Oh.

“Um, I have a new foundation on
today. Is that likely to be the cause?”

“Oh,” she says. “You should have
told me that before. You’ve never suffered with this before?”

I shake my head.

“And you’ve never worn this
foundation before?”

“No.”

“Then I think it’s safe to say
that we’ve found your problem. Go to the sink in the back room and give your
face a good wash, I think it’ll clear up in no time then. And I’d highly
recommend not wearing that foundation ever again.”

“But it cost six quid.”

“People wear foundation to cover
imperfections in their skin. I don’t think this has done its job quite right,
do you? It’s your choice, Chessie, but I should warn you that if you continue
to use it your face could end up scarring.”

“Great,” I mutter under my
breath as I scrub my face with soap. Perfect. So much for invisible bloody
foundation.

“Now then,” the nurse says when
I come back out with my red, blotchy but clean and make-up free face. “Do I
have to remind you of the school rules regarding make-up, Miss Clemenfield?”

“I’m sorry,” I say
automatically. “It was this invisible stuff, it wasn’t supposed to notice.”

“No make-up means no make-up,
Francesca. Make-up is make-up whether you can see it or not.”

“Okay, I won’t wear it again.”

“Good. I’ll be keeping a very
close eye on you. If you re-offend then I will be forced to send you to the principal.”

If I re-offend? What am I, some
kind of criminal?

I make my way back to the
geography class and immediately thirty pairs of eyes swivel in my direction.

“It’s okay, you won’t die from
sitting near me,” I announce. “It was just an allergic reaction to my make-up.”

“Miss Clemenfield, you must be
aware of—”

“I’m well aware of the school
rules,” I interrupt. “Thank you, sir.”

“Come and see me at lunchtime
for detention, Miss Clemenfield. We’ll simultaneously revise the population of
the Far East and appropriate ways in which to speak to your teachers.”

Great. I want to say something
along the lines of
could this day get any worse
,
but that would be like the kiss of death.

CHAPTER 9

June.

I always have high hopes for technology class. I figure that
technology is my chance to show Lloyd my artistic side. I mean, he’s probably
figured out by now that I’m not very academic, so I keep hoping that one day
I’ll find out I have an artistic side instead. To be honest, I’m not very good
at the whole arty side of things either. There was that time I nearly blew up a
saucepan in cookery class and the teacher said that the whole building might
have gone up in flames if she hadn’t had the forethought to place me at the
work unit next to the fire extinguisher. Or the time that I stabbed myself in
the finger during sewing and got blood all over my work, or the time when Debs
and I had to bring bars of chocolate in for cookery but we ate them all during
IT instead.

Okay, so maybe I’ll never be
very good at technology either, but I’m probably better at it than I am at
maths. Although with the mess Debs and I get into most lessons, it’s doubtful.

Debs and I stick together in
technology. We’re both as bad as each other, and we both ended up in the same
set. Lloyd Layton must not be very good at technology either, because he ended
up in Set Two as well, and he’s usually in Set One for
everything
.

At the moment we’re making a
box. Just a plain wooden box that will serve no purpose other than to be a box.
This is one of the many lessons that I find a complete and utter waste of time.
Technology would be so much more interesting if we were actually making
something useful. We pull our half-made boxes out of the lockers where Mr Vale
makes us keep them, and sit at a workbench with Ceri, because she’s about as
good at technology as we both are.

I always keep one eye on Lloyd
Layton during tech lessons, and not just because he looks really hot when he’s
intensely sawing wood or anything, but mainly because I want to know why he
ended up in Set Two. It’s kind of sadistic, but I want Lloyd to mess something
up just to prove that he isn’t
completely
perfect. It doesn’t look like he’s going to today though. His box is three sides
finished and all smooth wood and perfect lines, whereas mine looks like a
three-legged cat wearing a blindfold stuck it together.

Luckily I’m not alone. Debs’ box
doesn’t look much better, and Ceri has this knack of looking like she knows
what she’s doing when she really doesn’t. She’ll have the kind of box that will
look perfect but fall apart if you so much as touch it. This is why I think we
should make something that we actually care about. If we were making something
that we wanted, then we’d all work hard and strive to get it done well.
Personally, I don’t give a damn if my box looks like a box or a pancake, just
as long as I don’t get a D or lower for it.

All of this thinking has meant
I’m not concentrating on the block of wood I’m supposed to be sawing, and I
don’t even realise I’m still moving the saw until Debs clicks her fingers in my
face and says, “Chessie, what are you doing?”

Oops.

I look down and the saw is
halfway through the workbench. It’s embedded. In fact, it’s downright stuck. I
pull and wiggle it but it won’t come out.

Oh, hell. Why do I always manage
to mess something up?

I stick my hand up in the air
and hope the teacher won’t make a scene about it. It was an accident, after
all. I really don’t need Lloyd thinking that this is another lesson that I’m
totally incompetent in. Is it too much to ask that he might think I’m good at
something? Even just one thing?

“Miss Clemenfield?” Mr Vale asks
in his most patronising voice.

“Sir, I, um, had a little
accident,” I say, stepping back so he can see the saw that’s gone right through
the wooden workbench.

“Oh dear. A little overzealous
with the sawing, were we?”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I thought I
was still doing my block. My mind was somewhere else.”

“Thinking about boys, no doubt,
eh? I know what kids your age are like.”

I’m just about to put in that I
was actually thinking about ways to improve our technology lessons when
suddenly Mr Vale’s voice is booming around the classroom.

“Everybody, gather round,” he’s
saying, and gesturing with his hand to come over to our table.

Thirty students gather around
us. I can feel Lloyd’s imposing frame right behind me. If I leaned back a
little I’d be touching him. I wish I had the courage to do that. I wish we were
friends. I wish he’d comfort me and tell me that it doesn’t matter that I’ve
embarrassed myself yet again and the teacher is making a scene about it. But I
don’t really get a chance, because Mr Vale prods me out of the way a little too
forcefully, and I fall off my stool. I go to grab something to hold me up, and
horror of horrors, I grab at the one thing that I never wanted to meet with in
this way.

I have grabbed Lloyd Layton’s
crotch.

Oh, crap.

The entire class is practically rolling
on the floor in fits of giggles, and up until now, I would have thought it
humanly impossible to turn red so fast.

It occurs to me that it might be
a good idea to let go, and I drop my hand and jump back like I’ve been burnt.

Even the teacher is laughing. I
don’t dare to look up at Lloyd, but I would imagine he’s gone bright red too.
At least he’s not laughing like all the others.

“Sorry,” I mumble in an upward
direction, and settle myself back on my stool, trying in vain to hide my head
in my hands.

“That’s enough excitement for
one day,” Mr Vale says finally, even though he’s still giggling himself. “I
just wanted you all to see what happens when someone like Miss Clemenfield pays
more attention to Mr Layton’s work than to her own.”

Crap. He noticed that?

Oh well, I don’t see what it
matters because my face cannot get any redder right now.

Eventually the class file away
and Mr Vale removes the saw from the bench and hands it back to me with a grin.
I sneak a glance over towards Lloyd. There is a definite hint of a blush in his
cheeks.

Great, not only do I embarrass
myself beyond belief but I make him feel bad too.

Perfect.

“At least you can’t say he
hasn’t noticed you anymore,” Debs whispers.

“Thank you. That makes me feel
so much better.”