The Real Rebecca (12 page)

To my amazement, I am not the only person who thinks I am getting better. Dad came in today while I was drumming away on the sofa and said, ‘Wow, Bex, you sound like a real drummer!’

Maybe I really have found my calling.

After reading
Pride and Prejudice
(which was very good. Especially as Elizabeth escaped her embarrassing mother in the end), I am in the mood for more old-fashioned books about people with horrible parents. Rachel gave me
Jane Eyre
, which was also written in the olden days. It is okay so far. Jane Eyre is an orphan which frankly doesn’t sound so bad to me right now. Although I suppose Dad isn’t that bad. Some of the time.

FRIDAY

Vanessa Finn is being so nice to me I’m starting to feel a bit sorry for her friend Caroline. Today she asked me if I wanted to sit with her for lunch, ignoring poor old Caroline. In our class we don’t go around asking people to join us for lunch, and I was already eating my sandwiches
(wholemeal bread, cheese, ham and lettuce) and drinking a carton of juice (apple) with Cass and Alice, as usual. So that was weird anyway. Caroline just sat there, looking hurt. I politely said that I was having lunch with Cass and Alice, and Vanessa gave me a sugary smile and offered me some of her chocolate brownie. But I didn’t want to take any of it. I’m afraid she has ulterior motives. I just wish I knew what they were.

And I had another conversation with Paperboy this evening. But I’m not sure if that was a good thing or not. I was at home practising the drums, as is my wont these days, and when the door rang I shouted ‘I’ll get it!’ and walked very calmly into the kitchen, got the paper money from the counter, and walked slowly out to the door (I ignored Rachel sniggering and saying, ‘Oh, Bex is answering the door at this time on a Friday, what a surprise’). Then I took a deep breath, smiled, and opened the door. And there he was, looking as lovely as ever. Oh, he’s so tall. I have to lean my head back to look up at him, even when he’s standing a step lower than me.

‘Hi,’ I said. I held out the cash. ‘Here you go.’

‘Thanks,’ he said, in a friendly way. ‘Did you manage to
stay out of the papers this week?’

Without thinking, I said, ‘Well, no, not exactly.’ As soon as I said it I wished I’d kept my mouth shut. Or rather, lied. If he hadn’t seen the shorts photo, what on earth was I doing telling him about it? It was better if he never knew anything about it But it was too late now. And then it was like I was possessed. I couldn’t stop talking. ‘My mother did an interview with a newspaper and gave them a photo of me and my sister when we were little,’ I said. ‘We were wearing ridiculous shorts. It was pretty embarrassing.’ Which is why, of course, I am telling you. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?

But Paperboy laughed in quite a nice way. ‘Wow, you really are famous,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure that I, a humble paperboy, should be allowed talk to you.’

I should have thought of something clever or funny to say to that, but of course I didn’t, so I just laughed like a crazy person and he grinned and went off.

I wonder if he thinks I actually am a crazy person? Or at least a sad idiot who appears in the paper by accident all the time.

He was quite friendly though. And he was joking with
me in a nice way, not a sniggering way. That was pretty cool.

Hmmm.

SATURDAY

I don’t want to write about this but I suppose I have to. Something horrible happened today. We had an early band practice because Alice had to go and visit some relatives, and afterwards Cass and I went into town on the bus. Cass had to buy a birthday present for her brother in some stupid sports shop and she said she knew it wasn’t fair to make me go there, so we split up and said we’d meet in half an hour. I went off to potter around the shops, even though I couldn’t really afford to buy anything, and when I was coming out of Tower Records, Paperboy was coming in. We almost walked into each other in the doorway and when I realized it was him my stomach turned over with excitement and happiness. We just stared at each other and I was starting to say hello when I realised there was someone with him. A girl. She was tall-ish (taller than me,
anyway) with brown hair and she was wearing a really nice coat and had a cool bag. She was quite pretty, I suppose.

I froze for a split second and then said, ‘Oh, hi!’ I hope I sounded casual. I have a horrible feeling I didn’t. He looked a bit awkward and said smiled and said, ‘Hey.’ And the girl sort of looked at me funny. If we’d been in the street, I’d have just kept walking but we were still in the doorway so there was a stupid awkward bit where we all moved out of each other’s way in the same direction until finally I broke free and sort of bounded out into Wicklow Street. I said, ‘Um, bye then,’ and he waved and said, ‘See ya,’ and the girl just looked at me blankly, and then I walked down the street as fast as I could and I wanted to die. I wished I didn’t have to meet Cass at all because I just wanted to be on my own. I sort of wandered around the streets near the George’s Street Arcade until it was time to meet her, trying not to cry. We went for a hot chocolate and I told her what had happened. I tried not to show how awful I felt. Cass was all ‘oh no, he’s taken!’ but she didn’t seem to really care. And I do care. And I feel really embarrassed for caring.

I keep running it over and over in my head. I wish I
knew whether they were holding hands or not. I mean I wish I knew that they weren’t – right now I think they weren’t but I can’t be sure. Not that it makes any difference. I’m clutching at straws. I wish I could tell myself that she was his sister or his cousin or just his friend but I don’t want to give myself false hope. I feel so, so, so stupid. I’ve spent the last few weeks thinking about him so much, I really thought there was at least a possibility that there was something in it. I can’t believe I was all happy and hopeful about him last night. I can’t believe we were practically engaged in my dreams. I wish he liked me. I wish I knew him.

SUNDAY

Here’s something really shameful – I keep wondering whether Paperboy looked awkward when we met because he didn’t want me to know that he had a girlfriend. Because he likes me. But probably he just looked awkward because he thinks I’m just a silly little girl he bumps into every week when he’s doing his job and he doesn’t want to
have to see me in public. I hope he doesn’t know I like him. If he did and felt sorry for me I would die. It’s the worst thing I can possibly imagine. Although he probably feels sorry for me anyway, with my unwanted fame. God, I’m so pathetic.

I rang Alice and told her everything, including how crappy I felt (I didn’t tell her about my shameful hope that Paperboy secretly loves me). I don’t know why it was easier than talking to Cass. I suppose it was partly because, after the first excitement, I don’t think Alice really cared about Paperboy. She preferred the boy who (still) goes past us on his bike on Calderwood Road. He actually sort of smiled at us the other day so perhaps she’s on the right track. But also it was because we have been friends for much longer than me and Cass, and although I do get on really well with Cass and she is very funny and I probably have more in common with her than I do with Alice, sometimes I feel that perhaps Alice understands me better, in a more serious way, not just about liking the same books and music and
TV programmes and stuff like that. So yeah, I told her, and she was really nice about it, and said she understood, and told me about how once she saw Bike Boy exchanging waves with a girl in a St Mary’s uniform when we were on our way into school, and I hadn’t seen anything so she acted normally until we got there and then she went into the toilets and cried. Anyway, I felt a bit better after I talked to her.

MONDAY

I keep forgetting about Paperboy and his stupid girlfriend (it actually gives me a horrible pain in my stomach to write that) and then I remember and feel sick in my tummy. School is so boring, I have plenty of time to think about it. I was in such a daze in maths that I didn’t even notice that Ellie and Jessie were having a competition to see who could tip their seat back the furthest without falling over until Jessie actually did fall over and Mrs Condren spent the rest of the class telling us how we were meant to be grown-up now and it was disgraceful to see
fourteen-year-old girls acting like babies.

TUESDAY

As if I didn’t have enough to annoy me at the moment, Vanessa Finn kept going on at me again today. What is up with her recently? I ended up having to sit next to her in German because Cass and I were late for class and there weren’t two free seats beside each other so Frau O’Hara ordered me to sit next to Vanessa. Anyway, we were meant to be practising talking about our favourite TV programmes ‘auf Deutsch’ but Vanessa kept talking about this ginormous birthday party she’s planning and asking me what I thought about it.

‘I haven’t decided whether to arrive on a big pink tank or a pink horse. What do you think?’

What I thought was that she was a total lunatic but I just said, ‘Um, where are you going to get a pink horse?’

‘Oh, we’re just going to dye a white one,’ she said, as if this was a perfectly normal thing to do. Perhaps it is, for her. Perhaps she has a whole stable of horses of every colour.

‘And, well, where are you going to get a tank? Isn’t that, like, illegal?’