Hazel Wood Girl

I have NO friends. None. Count them.

It’s OFFICIAL since last night, and I can’t even feel angry any more these days. I don’t feel anything now, it’s like having pins-and-needles in the places where I used to feel happy or sad. I mean, God, you’d think that I could make
one person
like me after six months here. I can’t believe people are still pissed off that I had lunch with Danny from chemistry when I didn’t even
know
he’d been that girl’s boyfriend for the last million years. I think they just like having someone easy to hate. Possible Solution: I need a brother, or even another sister to hang out with, and maybe then
I’d
get to be the ignorer for a change. And I could tell them things and they’d have to 
behind her. Or a parrot! That would do the job, and I could go all super-geek and teach it to say,

‘Poppy girl, you are the best person ever in the whole history of everything!’

Only except Mindy would sneak up to it at night, and re-train it to worship
her
.

OK, BRING IT ON! Chapter one million of the moan-fest! Why not? Even my old friends from the city haven’t called or written back in forever, so I have to write in this or I’ll go properly, grown-up mental and start talking to the sheep AND (as if we needed further proof of my defectiveness) it’s not like this notebook is some wonderful pink and silver job like Mindy has with butterflies in the corners, but I think I ripped out most of the bits that had old homework notes.

I bet I could go the whole summer without talking to one single person.

LIST OF POSSIBLES FOR ME TO TALK TO:

Mum (way too efficient)

Dad (way too jokey)

Mindy (away for weeks)

Trug the sheepdog (limited conversationalist)

Dad’s Cousin Adam who lives with us (too weird) 

Adam is OK, but not exactly what you’d call normal, what with the way he talks so loud like he’s always standing in traffic and the way he doesn’t eat or wear anything not officially, by-the-book, organic and ethical. Super-weird for a farmer. I hope he doesn’t wonder why he can’t get a girlfriend.

Tonight I am going to iron my hair to make it go straight (my hair-straighteners are another thing that got lost in the move), and put in lemon so it will go from light brown to blonde. If I look better, then they might forget that I don’t talk the same or have the right clothes. What worked in the city doesn’t look good here for some weird reason. I was hoping that writing in this would make me feel better, but I now actually feel
worse
, which I didn’t think was possible. Last night’s COMPLETE DISASTER was something that belonged on a sit-com end-of-series special, and has me doomed to cringe every fifteen minutes until the end of time itself.

The main reason it hurts is because I really made a
huge
effort, and thought it would be amazing and I’d finally have friends. Mum should have
told
me that they wear jeans and stuff to dances here, after all, she did grow up in the countryside. And that way I wouldn’t have turned up looking like a Christmas catalogue compared to the rest of them. An hour can 
feel like a year; one hour exactly, standing at the side of the badly-decorated school hall in my
stupid
short, red dress and high heels and no one even said ‘hello’ back when I said ‘hello’! After that I just waited in the ladies’ toilets until Adam collected me. I was there for ages in the end stall, hoping no one would guess it was the same person in there all the time. At one point I heard my favourite song playing and couldn’t even go out for that.
Mortification
with a capital ‘M’. I think I will just stay in my room until I am seventy when half the people from last night will have lost their minds or be dead. And I am NEVER wearing that red dress again.

More grief. Much more! I am only writing in this hoping it will stop me feeling sick every time I think about it. It’s like a nightmare or something that should be happening to someone else. In school for the last few weeks they’ve been talking about ‘The Farmer’, asking, ‘Is The Farmer coming?’ or, ‘Have you
seen
what The Farmer is wearing today?’ I’ve been wondering who The Farmer is, but was too shy to ask anyone. Then today just before geography class, I worked out that it’s
ME
. God, they so hate me!

I felt so stupid and so
nothing
that I ran home right after geography without telling anyone, and hid in my room until the time I usually get back, when I 
crept out and came back in through the kitchen all noisy and clattering about. Since then I’ve just been lying on my bed, going over and over it all in my head. The Farmer.

The Farmer! Why can’t they find another torture-victim and just leave me alone for once?

I just keep imagining we’re back in our old home. I know Dad was sick of the accounting thing, but I’m still in shock and amazement that he got Mum to stop lawyering. I think they saw a reality show about leaving the luxury of the city and living off the land, and bought into the whole hype.

And as if I needed even
more
hassle (I mean, why stop until I’m friendless, homeless
and
hairless?), I burned my hair a bit last night and it still stayed curly, especially because I had to wash it again because the lemon was so sticky and made me smell like a pancake.

I keep pretending I’m OK, but really I feel like I will break. Will they stop if I break?

I bet some of them have never even been to the city and still they call
me
‘The Farmer’. I tried telling Mum and she said not to take them seriously or they’ll win. I tried to tell her that they already have won, but she was busy matching socks. Even socks are more important than me. 

I asked Dad can I join Mindy at the French summer school and he said ‘no’ and something about maturity. She is only two years older than me and she went two years ago so it’s not fair. Nothing’s fair. It’s all Mum and Dad’s fault for moving us. They don’t even care that they have ruined
everything
.

Dad is immersed in his book on trees again and says that the long double line of trees that are on the way to school is made up of elm trees. I would never admit to liking anything around here, but I do love how the double line of them makes a sort of roof, like a grand palace. When I walk under it I pretend I’m a magical, royal creature of the woods. I know that’s stupid and like I’m seven or something, but it’s the only way I can stand going to school.

Today I ate breakfast during the walk, because the breakfast table was unbearable again with everyone talking about the farm and the problems, and Dad eating half a pig’s worth of bacon over his notes, and Mum pretending to have a headache so Adam will 
leave her alone about the non-organicness of the coffee.

I can fit two slices of peanut-butter toast into my pocket, made into a sandwich so it doesn’t go mushy all over the lining. Today I pretended it was doused in a mystical power-giving potion that would make me say and do all the right things, and then finished it quickly before I got to the main road so no one would see. I was reminded it was really only peanut butter when that massive girl with the loud voice and blue eyeliner tripped me up on my way in the gate. I didn’t even get my mandarin orange back because it rolled under a teacher’s car.

They are having a field day now that Mindy’s not around to even pretend to care.

Only three days to go.

We had a free class because the English teacher said that we could use the time to get to be better communicators. It was SO obvious that it was because she couldn’t be bothered teaching us anything new and because she wanted to read her book. (It’s the sort of book that would never get on the curriculum from the look of the muscley man on the cover.) So we had to talk to someone in the class we didn’t really know and find out about them and their family and what they liked doing. I looked at Barbara Montague because I always thought she might want to be my friend once she knew me, or at least not ignore me, but everyone just talked to their mates and Miss Phillips didn’t notice that I sat there 
all class just watching people talking. I did try to say something to Matthew Blondel, but he just looked embarrassed and moved away, and it’s not like he’s the most popular guy in school.

In exactly 1,192 days I will be eighteen. Then I will move to Paris and become wonderful, and get re-married every two-and-a-half years to richer and richer men, and live in bigger and bigger houses until I wind up in the palace at Versailles. I will be a sculptor and a musician and a writer, and have more friends even than shoes, and that will be hundreds. Please let that be true, please don’t let me be here on my own while Mindy has a life.

Today was a good day. I walked slower than normal so I didn’t get to the school road for ages and Barbara Montague was dropped off at the crossroads at the same time. I said ‘hello’ because I am an idiot and still always say ‘hello’ even when people blank me, but today she asked me what I was doing for the summer holidays. I was so floored that I couldn’t think of anything and so I said,

‘Not much.’

Then she told me all about how her family was going to an island off the west coast of Africa and how they had horses and dirt bikes and a swimming pool there. I think she just asked me about my summer so she could show off about hers, but I’d
want to tell everyone if I was going somewhere fantastic, so I understood. It’s the first time in ages that I had someone to walk into school with, even if she did dump me for a group of girls in the year above as soon as we got near the cloakrooms. It’s an OK start.

Mindy always speeds up whenever we get to the gate so she can talk to guys she likes without her sister there getting in the way.

I told Mum and Dad about Barbara and her holiday and Mum suggested maybe she’d let me go with them for a couple of weeks, and so I know she really doesn’t get that I don’t have any friends. She thinks it’s like before when I had loads of friends in my old school. I wish I could go back and maybe live with one of them.