The Manifesto on How to be Interesting (11 page)

Anyway, Latin was so crammed, her scribbling went unnoticed.

Bree wrote down everything she knew about the perfect posse.

The perfect posse

Jassmine Dallington

Aka The Queen.

Why? The usual reasons. Tumbling mane of perfectly coiffed blonde hair. Perfect body, combined with that weird power some people have that makes everyone desperate to be liked by them.

If rumours were true, she wasn't utterly perfect though. She was nicknamed “Apple Tits” behind her back, because apparently her boobs looked like two halves of an apple stuck onto her body. And she seemed to have an utter weak spot where Hugo was concerned – letting him mess her about like an abused puppy.

Apart from that, there wasn't much there with Jassmine. She was pretty vacant, like personality would damage her reputation or something.

Gemma Rinestone

Gemma was mean. Soulless mean. Like, you wouldn't be surprised if she laughed watching
Schindler's List
mean. Anytime Bree had been teased by the perfects, Gemma had been the orchestrator. She'd been that way since they were little kids, yelling “LOSER” the loudest through the gap under the toilet cubicles in Year Seven when she knew Bree was hiding in there.

The weird thing about Gemma was that she wasn't actually very pretty. At all.

She was also blonde, but her hair was frizzy and she had a weird gummy smile with too-big clown lips. Plus, the foundation she shovelled onto her face didn't hide the thick layer of acne on her chin.

That said, when Gemma Rinestone started putting her hair up in a bun with rainbow clips – a fashion nuke bomb for anyone else – a week later the whole school was doing it.

And though attractiveness might not be a currency she was wealthy in, Gemma was filthy rich in the currency of evil. These were some of the mean things Bree had seen her do:

• Lifted up some random Year Seven's skirt for five whole minutes while the poor kid just stood there, crying.
  
• Personally stolen Bree's graphics coursework, dumped it in the canteen bin so it was irrevocably ruined by spaghetti hoops, then boasted about doing so.
  
• It was she who'd started Jassmine's “Apple Tits” nickname, during some intensely complicated fight with her about something to do with somebody else's ex-boyfriend and a sexual experience on a bench at a party… Jassmine still didn't know.
  
• She was the “editor” of the Year Eleven yearbook and tampered with the Most likely to be… results. She invented a new category called Most likely to eat their way through the school canteen and made the winner this poor fat girl called Matilda, who'd never once spoken to Gemma or anyone else for that matter. When the yearbooks were handed out, Matilda broke down into silent tears, ran from the school and was never seen again. Gemma laughed and said loudly to anyone who was listening – which was everyone – that “some people just can't take a joke”. She also changed the results so she won Most likely to be a model. Bree knew this because she'd helped on the yearbook and was in charge of counting up the votes.
  

Gemma hadn't even made the top twenty.

Jessica Rightman

Jessica was convinced she was going to be a Hollywood movie star. And so was the rest of the school. She'd been the lead in every school play for the past four years. She sang throughout every lesson in her TERRIBLE nasal voice. She'd got some God-awful brother, Drew, in the year above, who also believed he was some sort of acting genius. Their parents had to be pushier than Stalin.

Aside from the annoying singing habit, Jessica also practised her vocal skills by making snide comments to anyone she considered beneath her. Which was everyone. Like she was permanently pissed off that she had to share oxygen with other people.

Jessica also wasn't that pretty, definitely not as pretty as Jassmine. Everything on her face was right. Two eyes (blue), a nose, okay lips, cheeks, etc. But the way they were put together wasn't quite correct. Everything was too angular and pointy. But Jessica believed herself to be a goddess and threw herself at all men, expecting them to drop dead with gratefulness. Her victims tended to either use her, or shrug her off their laps. At which point she'd laugh, screech “You're such a tease!” and toss her hair back with a big swoosh of inner denial.

And then there was the hanger-on.

Emily Nashville

If anyone needed an example of vacuous air, they should just point to Emily. She'd sacrificed her personality, on a metaphorical temple like a slaughtered lamb, in order to get in with the perfect posse. Her opinions were Jassmine's opinions. Her jokes were Gemma's jokes. Her put-downs were Jessica's put-downs. She laughed at anything any of them said, clutching her sides like she was trying to hold in her guts.

So that was the four. The four Bree needed to infiltrate somehow.

Bree's concentration was interrupted by a flurry of vibrations echoing around the classroom. Phones rumbled on silent simultaneously under people's desks. Her Latin teacher, Mrs McQuire, who was oblivious to any technological advance from the twentieth century onwards, didn't notice.

Well, she didn't notice until the whispering began.

“Oh my God.” Someone psst-ed next to Bree, shoving their phone into their neighbour's lap. “Have you SEEN this?”

Bree, whose phone, oddly enough, hadn't gone off, strained her neck to catch a glimpse of the screen.

She caught her breath.

It was a photo of a girl from their year, Natalie. Topless. A selfie, from the looks of it. She was pouting naively at the camera, but Bree's eyes ignored that, and went straight to her chest. Someone had manipulated the photo in Paint, pointing a massive red arrow to her boobs, with the words
BURGER NIPPLES
scrawled underneath.

So this was what Gemma had been talking about. This was the life the perfect posse had decided to ruin that day. For sport. Some poor girl they hardly knew, whose only sin was to be naive enough to send a photo like that to her boyfriend.

The poor, poor girl.

“Quiet,” Mrs McQuire said. “What's going on? No talking.”

The class ignored her.

“It's Natalie – jeez, have you ever seen areolae that big?”

“Where did it come from?”

“Gemma's phone.”

“Poor Natalie.”

“What a bitch.”

“Have you sent it to anyone else?”

“QUIET, PLEASE!” Mrs McQuire yelled, and they settled – for now. But the buzz of silent gossip hung heavy in the air, the vibration of received texts punctuating their verb conjugations.

Bree looked at her notepad and felt a bit sick. She noticed her hand shaking and lay her pen down.

Why?

She picked up her pen again and wrote the word down, underlining it twice.

Why would those girls do that?

Why was she trying to break into them?

Why do people find them so interesting when they do things like that?

This wasn't about revenge… Well, maybe it was a little bit. She'd wasted many hours of her life fantasizing about how to get revenge on them – especially on the days she was their victim. But it was more about her writing – getting good stories, good material, stretching who she was and noting what happened along the way. Could she make it a bit about revenge too? Would she even be able to? For the sake of the perfect posse's victims – herself included – shouldn't she try?

She stared at the list, trying to work out what to do. Who to approach. And how. How does one go about making oneself popular? What was the secret ingredient?

Everyone in the circle of perfects offered something, she realized – brought something to the stockbroking table of popularity.

Jassmine was their high-roller. Oozing confidence and beauty, she was the sort of person who made perfection look effortless. You can't learn that. It's a gift usually bestowed on people who don't deserve it. Yet she played her ace card well – keeping the school infatuated with her and Hugo's relationship, living out a real-life soap opera. Being just nice enough for people to want her to like them. Not having any obvious flaws.

Gemma brought the nasty side. The fear factor. The lack of soul needed to dominate a school. She was smart. She got people – how they worked, what they wanted, needed, how to break them. Bree had heard she was amazing at maths and the teachers were priming her for a life as a merchant banker. She could imagine Gemma used those skills in her social life as well. Weighing up and calculating the risks of a nasty comment. Predicting market shifts in popular culture and Queen's Hall's collective opinions. Having the guts to go on her instinct made her a force to be reckoned with. None of the others brought that.

Jessica, well, she brought deluded self-confidence and apparent star power thanks to the school plays. School plays, in Queen's at least, were cool. Achievement – including dramatic achievement – was another form of currency here. And what better way to showcase such currency than for every student and parent to part with twenty-five quid twice a year to watch seventeen-year-olds hurling themselves round a stage shrilling “I Feel Pretty” in the school's three-hundred-seat, red-velveted, state-of-the-art theatre? Around the time of the play, Jassmine always got a tad twitchy as Jessica's celebrity soared. Jessica would start wearing sunglasses to “hide her dark circles from all those late-night rehearsals” and glow whenever an eager Year Seven told her how good she was. There'd been an infamous moment last year when Jessica got cast against Hugo in
Cyrano de Bergerac,
which had meant they would have to do a kissing scene.

But Hugo mysteriously dropped out right before rehearsals began. Funny that…

So, what could Bree offer them?

She was smart. That was an asset. But she was a bit too smart. Geek smart. And she was probably a bit richer than them. But money wasn't really an object for any of them. Then there was the fact that they were definitely a little scared of her transformation…but how could she use that to her advantage?

“Bree?”

Maybe set up a rival posse? But then who would she recruit? That would require a whole evening of list-making and she needed to strike while the makeover hype was still hot.

“Bree?”

“Huh?”

She looked up to find Mrs McQuire staring at her.

“The bell's gone, Bree.”

The chairs around her were empty and the hubbub of student noise echoed out in the corridor. It was louder than usual, as the gossip and photo spread from person to person like a YouTube viral. In fact, the photo probably already was viral by now… She looked at her notebook. It was crammed full of illegible scrawl. For the best really, as her teacher was eyeing it disapprovingly.

“You'll need to work on your handwriting for the exam. No one will be able to mark that mess.”

“Sorry…I was…”

And, without explaining herself properly, she dashed out the door. She folded her notebook into her new designer satchel and made her way to the quieter toilets in the chemistry block to reapply her lipgloss and, most importantly, to think. Yet when she pushed through the doors she heard she wasn't alone.

Someone was in the far cubicle, crying.

Not just crying, but sobbing to the point of hysteria.

“Are you okay?” Bree called out. She wasn't usually one to get involved, but this wasn't the kind of crying you ignore.

Her voice didn't stop the torrent of wails.

“Hello?” she called out again, tentatively.

Silence. Except for the odd gulping and sniffing noise.

She bit her lip, wondering what to do. After a second or two, she went into the neighbouring cubicle, climbed onto the toilet seat and peered over.

She could distinctly see the top of Natalie's head.

“Hey, Natalie, is it?” she said gently.

Natalie didn't even look up. “Leave me alone,” she coughed out.

“Are you okay?” Bree asked, ignoring her.

“Please, just LEAVE ME ALONE!” Natalie shouted at her with such ferocity, Bree imagined her hair being blasted back.

“Are you sure?”

“Please…” And it was said so desperately that all Bree could do was get down off the toilet and go to her next lesson.

She spent the rest of the day ruminating. And the evening. She ate her dinner in her usual mute state while her mum's hyper-babble filled the silence. But her mum must have noticed something was up, as she was standing outside Bree's bedroom door later on.

“What do you want?” Bree asked, annoyed that her mum was blocking the entrance.

“I got you this today.” She stuck out her hands, and opened each palm to reveal two black tubes.

“What is it?”

Her mum started jumping up and down with a scary smile on her face, squealing through her teeth.

“Seriously. What is it?”

“Open one and see.”

Bree took a black tube and popped off the lid. “It's a lipstick.” She twisted it and a Disney Princess pink twirled elegantly upwards.

“IT'S NOT JUST A LIPSTICK!” Her mum looked like she was about to wee with excitement.

“What is it then? Does it recite poetry?”

“Don't be silly. Don't you see?” Her mum twisted out the other one. “This is the Marvel limited edition Pink Princess lipstick. Sold out everywhere. Worn by every beautiful woman who matters. And apparently suits everyone who tries it on.”

Bree tried not to roll her eyes.

“I got you two! One to wear, and one to carry around to marvel at its beauty. Marvel – get it?”

“Great.” She couldn't keep the sarcasm out of her voice.

Her mum shot her daggers. “Bree, you're missing out on how important this lipstick is. It's the only plus side of your dad working so many hours and leaving us alone all the time – the freebies he gets from the cosmetic industries he represents. I could have given these away to the girls and been worshipped for ever. But I saved them for you instead.”