Jeane asked me to stop at a garage, then got back in the car with a bag of Haribo Starmix and a bunch of flowers. ‘Are they for my mum?’
‘Nope,’ she said, and I waited for her to start asking me questions again but she just stared at the route on the Sat Nav. We were only a couple of miles away from our destination and I still wanted to know where we were going, but she didn’t seem to want to tell me.
Take the next left. You have arrived at your destination, the Sat Nav informed me as I pulled into a cemetery. The sign said it was a green burial ground but it looked like a cemetery to me.
‘What are we doing here? Are your grandparents buried here?’
Jeane shook her head. ‘Andrew. I told you about him.’ She unbuckled her seatbelt. ‘Though now that we’re here I realise I don’t have a clue where his grave is. We’re looking for a bench and a wild cherry tree. Do you know what a wild cherry tree even looks like?’
It was freezing cold with a damp, vicious wind rolling in from the open fields and the ground squelched underneath our feet as we peered at gravestones. They weren’t laid out in neat rows but dotted randomly about. It was nice, I suppose, that each grave had its own space and they weren’t all crammed together, but it was still depressing to be wandering around a graveyard, even if it was an ecologically aware graveyard.
Eventually we found the right grave, after we’d done a complete loop and were almost back at the car. I stood to one side as Jeane crouched down and wiped at the stone with the sleeve of her fun fur anorak.
ANDREW SMITH
1983 – 1994
Cherished son, beloved brother, taken too soon. Rest with the angels, our brave, beautiful boy.
There was a wooden bench under a tree, possibly a wild cherry tree, which I sat on as Jeane removed a desiccated bouquet from a vase on the plinth of the grave and arranged her own flowers in it. Then she stayed squatting for several long moments, which must have been hell on her knees, until she slowly straightened up and walked over to me.
‘I realised that this was the first Christmas that no one had visited his grave,’ she said, as she sat down next to me. It was even colder now, a seeping wet cold that felt as if it were burrowing into my bones, and Jeane was shivering so I put my arm round her, not in a copping-a-feel kinda way but more like a boy-scouts-who-huddle-together-for-warmth-when-they-get-separated-from-the-rest-of-the-troop-on-an-Outward-Bound-course kinda way. She immediately huddled against me. ‘The only person who could come this year was me.’
‘Does it make you sad?’ I asked curiously, because she didn’t seem sad so much as thoughtful.
‘This place isn’t exactly a laugh riot, but it is a nice place to come so people can feel close to the people they’ve lost.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Though, really, you shouldn’t have to drop everything to come here to remember someone. They’re either dead and that’s it, or if there is some kind of afterlife then they’re always with you.’ She nodded her head in the direction of the grave. ‘I mean, that’s just his bones, it’s not him.’
‘Oh, Jeane, Jeane, Jeane …’ I said and I honestly didn’t know what else to say. ‘Something is really wrong, isn’t it?’
‘It really is but I’m going to make it right,’ she said. ‘Because I don’t want to die and have no one to visit my grave.’
‘You’re not going to die,’ I said and I tried to make it sound like a joke, but now I was worried that she was suicidal or something.
‘Well, of course I’m not going to die,’ she said with a touch of the old scathe back in her voice, which was a relief. ‘Unless I get mown down by a bus, I plan to be around for ages, but I don’t want my life to be long and lonely and the way I’m going, I will be lonely. No, worse than that. I’m going to be alone.’
‘You won’t be alone. You have loads of friends who—’
‘People I know off the internet,’ Jeane reminded me dryly. ‘Michael, even my own parents don’t love me.’
‘But they do! They’re your mum and dad, they have to.’
‘Just ’cause they’re supposed to doesn’t mean they do,’ Jeane said. ‘And, yeah, I have friends, but I spent Christmas Day with your family who barely know me and the one invite I did have got cancelled because of a fight between a middle-aged man who went menty after doing too many drugs and his alcoholic perv of a friend. That’s not cool. And the night before, when the shower door broke, I thought: I’m seventeen and I’m all on my own and it’s just too much responsibility. I kid myself that I’m fine and I’m coping but my life is just a flimsy façade held together with Haribo and Pritt Stick. When I really needed help, there was no one to call.’
‘You called me,’ I told her. ‘Or was I the last resort?’
‘The very last of my last resorts but I think I knew, deep down, that you’d come, even though you hate me right now.’
I tightened my arm round her. ‘I don’t hate you. You’re not my favourite person in the world but maybe you’re starting to grow on me again.’
‘Yeah, like a fungal infection.’
‘You’re not quite that bad,’ I said, and Jeane looked up at me and grinned. ‘And you’re only focusing on the bad stuff because it’s Christmas and when you feel crap at Christmas it’s a special, powerful feeling like crap. There’s loads of good things happening for you. The TV show and the book and the website – that will teach me not to call you an absurd media creation.’ I took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry about that, by the way, and all the other things I said.’
Jeane bit her lip and stared down at the ground. ‘Well, thanks for apologising, and I’m sorry that I said … well, hurled loads of insults at you, but pretending that you didn’t know me on Twitter, that was not cool.’
I wriggled a bit and hoped that Jeane would think that I was trying to get more comfortable rather than squirming in shame.
‘I know, but honestly, it didn’t start as some evil scheme to get one over on you and you were so much nicer to me on Twitter than you were in real life. Then when we started to hang out and stuff, you were still much nicer to me on Twitter than in real life. Like, you were less adorkable and more adorable. And it’s like I said at the airport in New York, I’d let it go on for so long that, in the end, I couldn’t tell you that we were Twitter friends.’
She didn’t say anything for a long time. I wasn’t quite sure if she’d even understood what I was trying to say but then Jeane ‘hmm’ed and almost giggled.
‘I suppose I can relate to that,’ she said at last. ‘About being more adorable than adorkable, I mean. It’s why I’m quitting all that. I’ve decided I’m not doing Adorkable any more. Not the book or the TV show or any of it. I’m going to give the money back or something.’
‘What the actual fuck? Are you mad?’
‘I don’t want to be Adorkable any more. I don’t want to be a dork. I want to be like everyone else instead of pretending that it’s OK to exclude yourself and that everyone else is wrong because they like all the same things and they dress the same way. I’m meant to be preaching to people about how cool it is to just be yourself but really what I mean is that it’s only cool to be how I want you to be and what do I know about anything? I know nothing.’
‘You know lots of things, Jeane. That speech you gave at the conference was amazing. One woman sitting in front of me was crying.’
‘Well, she probably had her own stuff going on,’ Jeane argued. She struggled to sit up straight instead of leaning into me and I felt cold without the warmth of her body against mine. ‘I’m so hostile that I’m pushing people away even when I want them to be close. Like you. It doesn’t matter if you have stupid hair and you wear those overpriced poseurish clothes—’
‘What were you just saying about how you were going to stop making snap judgements about people just because they don’t dress in a Jeane-approved fashion?’ I asked her tartly and she huffed and flounced where she sat. I think Melly and Alice were rubbing off on her.
‘That’s my point
. Despite your lamentable personal style, you are actually capable of independent thought and you know loads of interesting things about computers and Hong Kong and artificial intelligence and your parents are cool and it was right that you didn’t want to lie to them, but I only ever see things from my point of view and my point of view is seriously deluded. I just want to be part of the world instead of looking down on it the whole time and that’s what I’m bloody well going to do.’
I could hear what Jeane was saying. I even agreed with some of it. She was always banging on about people being shallow and how they shouldn’t judge other people for being weird or different when Jeane was the most judgemental person I had ever met. But Jeane was weird and different and, if there were absolutely no witnesses, I’d have to admit that her weirdness and her difference was what I liked most about her.
‘I wouldn’t do anything rash,’ I advised her. ‘I mean, you’re obviously feeling a bit raw right now but you can still do Adorkable and go on about jumble sales and all that other crap.’
‘I can’t. It’s wrong. It’s not me. I don’t want to buy my clothes at jumble sales any more. I want to buy them from Topshop.’
I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh because only Jeane could be so unintentionally funny when she was trying to be deathly serious. I wasn’t that surprised when she hit me, though she apologised because, ‘I’m not going to hit other people when they disagree with me any more. I’m going to be so easy to get on with that they won’t even disagree with me.’
It made me laugh even harder. I stood up. ‘You can’t change who you are. Being argumentative is hardwired into your DNA.’
‘You wait,’ she muttered darkly, standing up and following me to the car. ‘On the way back let’s stop somewhere so I can buy a pair of jeans.’
I’d always thought the oddest thing about Jeane, and this was really saying something, was that she didn’t possess a single pair of jeans.
‘You might want to ease yourself in gently,’ I said, as we reached the car. ‘Start off with a pair of coloured jeans. Maybe orange ones?’
‘Blue jeans,’ Jeane said firmly. ‘And I need to get some hair dye too.’
Every time I thought I’d got the laughter under control, it would bubble back up, so in the end Jeane was forced to sit on her hands so she wouldn’t be tempted to hit me again.
37
THAT’S ALL FOLKS!
You know how I’m always saying that Adorkable is about following your own path in life and cocking a snook (though I’ve never actually known what a snook is or how to cock it) at mainstream fashion, whether it’s the clothes you wear or the music you listen to or the thoughts you thunk?
Yeah. That.
Well, I take it all back. Every single last word, comma, semi-colon and full stop.
I denounce dorkiness. Dorkiness and I have broken up. We’ve decided to divorce due to irreconcilable differences.
Does dorkiness automatically make you a better person? Does being touched by the hand of dork turn your life into puppies and rainbows and instant happiness? Does dorkiness keep you warm at night or make you cookies or give you a back rub when you’re feeling down? No, it doesn’t. And I’ve been doing myself, and you, a disservice by claiming that it’s OK to be different. Maybe it is and maybe it’s not, because you (by which I mean me) become so obsessed with being different and not fitting in that you push away anyone who tries to get close.
Really, what’s the point in having half a million people following your tweets and being the teen queen of the blogosphere when it’s Christmas Day and I’m so knee-deep in loneliness that I had to throw myself on the mercy of strangers?
It turned out all right, the strangers were very welcoming, but I’ve been forced to take a long hard look at myself and where I’m going. It’s become clear that my final destination is mad old lady with a thousand feral cats and my only human interaction will be with the person who delivers my Meals on Wheels.
I really don’t want my future to be like that, so I’m shutting up shop.
Down with dorkiness, I say! Here’s to crossing over to the darkside. Except it doesn’t feel like the darkside. It feels like I’m moving towards the light.
So, this is me, Jeane, signing off.
Over and out.
End message.
38
So it turned out that being normal was great. It really was. It was just so easy. Why had no one ever told me this?
To start with I dyed my hair brown, much to Melly and Alice’s disgust (they even threatened to throw me out of their special club, The Melly and Alice Club, which I’d been inducted into with great ceremony). I packed away all my multi-coloured polyester dresses and Day-Glo tights and I went to Hollister and Abercrombie & Fitch and American Apparel to buy tight stretchy clothes in navy, grey and black, which were actually perfectly all right colours because they went with everything. I was eating three proper meals a day, some even contained vegetables, going to bed at a proper time and getting up nine hours later, and I even took all the shouty girl groups and boy groups and obscure film soundtracks off my iPod and was listening to chart music. I’d also unplugged myself from the internet. No blogging and no tweeting. I was living in the moment, man. I was just, like, being. And without all my Adorkable extra-curricular activities, I had so much spare time. Loads of it! I hardly knew what to do with myself.
I did take Melly and Alice to the cinema to see a film. We were meant to see the latest Pixar but it was sold out so we watched a film about princesses. I suppose that was actually quite hard because it was a really shit film, and instead of sitting there and composing a blistering blog about forcing antiquated notions of gender and sexuality on small girls and how pink needed to be reclaimed as a colour that had nothing to do with princesses or fairies before it was lost to us for ever, I just had to sit there and try really hard to keep my blood pressure at manageable levels. But when the film finished, Melly and Alice both thought the main princess was stupid and she should have just rescued herself instead of singing sappy songs until the prince came along to save her, so it was all good.
Yeah, being normal was the way forward and I loved having all this me-time to give myself facials and watch back-to-back episodes of America’s Next Top Model and My Super Sweet 16. I even did some heavily supervised cooking that didn’t involve putting leftover takeaway food in a microwave to heat up.
It was a whole different Jeane. An adorable Jeane, if you will.
‘You can’t keep this up for ever,’ Michael said to me on the fourth day of my new exciting life as an ordinary, regular, run-of-the-mill girl. ‘You’re going to crack. I’ll be amazed if you can last another week.’
‘I’m not going to crack. I love the new me,’ I said as we loaded the dishwasher after dinner. We’d finally seen off the last of the turkey and were now working through a massive ham that hadn’t been cooked on Christmas Day because there’d been no room for it in the oven.
I’m not entirely sure but I could have sworn I heard Michael mutter, ‘Well, I don’t think much of the new you.’ But when he straightened up from rearranging the cutlery that I’d shoved into the dishwasher in a more ergonomic fashion, he had a bland smile on his face. ‘All I’m saying is you can’t pretend to be normal. You either are or you aren’t and you aren’t.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong. Like, if I pretend to be normal then eventually it won’t be pretending, it will be just what I do.’
‘Except anyone else wouldn’t think of it as doing normal, they’d just be normal.’ Michael grinned again, because he thought the whole thing was just a joke and not a big life-changing transformation. I kept catching him giving me these odd, expectant looks, like he thought I might suddenly rip off my new clothes to reveal a fluorescent catsuit and shout, ‘Psych!’ as loud as I could.
Considering that he’d always complained about the way I dressed and got really, really pissed when I was lecturing him on sexual politics or the history of Hari
bo, I’d have thought that he might have been, well, more attracted to the new me. Now there was nothing embarrassing about me, and I would no longer lose eleventy billion cool points by going out with Michael, it would make perfect sense for us to get back together again.
I had lots of free time to devote to a boyfriend and if I was going out with Michael Lee, holding hands with him in public, then the whole world would be able to tell that I was just a normal girl going out with a normal boy. Move along, nothing to see here. Except, now that I was doing normal, I was forced to admit that I was plain and ordinary-looking while Michael was still exotically handsome, and last time I checked he was still the centre forward on the football team and head of the student council so in a normal world that made him completely out of reach.
It was a timely reminder that normal wasn’t always going to be such a breeze.
‘This New Year’s Eve party tonight, just so we’re both clear, we’re not going to it together,’ Michael said, just in case I wasn’t up to speed on that point. ‘Not as a couple, just as mates, so I can properly introduce you to all my friends that you’ve looked down on for years and you can start to become socialised.’
I counted to ten. I’d been counting to ten a lot over the last few days. ‘OK. I’m going to get changed. I think I’m ready to wear my new jeans outside the house.’
Two hours later I was ready to rock this joint. Or go to Michael’s friend Ant’s New Year’s Eve party. My brown hair was freshly straightened. My make-up was light and tasteful and I’d applied two coats of brown mascara (I hadn’t even known that mascara came in brown) to make my eyes look less piggy, and I was wearing a black top, my skinny dark blue jeans and black suede high heels. No corsages pinned in odd places. No glitter. No animal-prints. I was going to look the same as all the other girls, though there was just one problem …
‘I didn’t think denim would chafe so much,’ I said to Michael as I hobbled along beside him. High heels that hadn’t been worn in by a previous owner then donated to the jumble really hurt my feet. ‘Jeane in jeans. It would make a great photo essay for my blog, except I don’t do that any more.’