I blinked. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t quite catch that. Did you say that you were wrong?’
Michael nudged me so hard that I almost fell off the wall. ‘I said that maybe I’ve been wrong, but you’ve been wrong too. God, you’ve been wrong to the power of, like, a billion.’
I couldn’t believe I was arguing with Michael Lee again. I’d missed it so much. I’d missed it even more than I’d missed his kisses.
‘Yeah, but you were just one of the many people who repeatedly told me that life would be much easier if I wasn’t so different.’
‘No one but you forced you into a pair of skinny jeans,’ Michael snapped back at me. ‘But you know what? Your experiment with being a normal girl has just proved to me that I don’t like normal girls. I like girls who are different and make me see the world in a way that I’ve never seen it before. And it isn’t just a bunch of freaks off the internet, who I still reckon are probably weird middle-aged men who live with their mothers, who care about you. There are actual real people in the actual real world who care about you too. Like, say, Melly and Alice.’
‘I love Melly and Alice. I’m totally going to raise them in my image,’ I said, as Michael shuddered at the thought. ‘And, well, I think your mum and I have reached an understanding, haven’t we?’
Michael shuddered again. ‘She was making noises about asking you to come and live with us.’
Now it was my turn to shudder. ‘God, I don’t think things are that bad.’ I shot him a sideways look. ‘But, well, coming round for dinner a couple of nights a week and staying over occasionally might be cool. When I’m not busy with Adorkable stuff – if I decide that I’m going to do the Adorkable stuff, that is,’ I added, even though it was a forgone conclusion. Every bit of me was longing to go Adorkable again.
‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ Michael said. ‘Like, if you had the whole Adorkable thing going on and the support of a good man behind you – that’s me, by the way – Jesus, I think you’d probably be able to take over the world in about six months tops.’
He had a point. I’d always been really goal-orientated but there was so much more I could achieve if I didn’t have to waste so much time being angry. ‘Well, the world does need changing, doesn’t it? And as long as you don’t get any funny ideas about being the power behind the throne, then maybe we could work something out,’ I told him, and I felt strange. Like I wanted to run around the garden and maybe try a cartwheel. And I wanted to laugh out loud and have Michael pick me up and spin me round really, really fast until I thought I’d throw up. I wasn’t entirely sure but I think what I was feeling was sheer, unbridled happiness.
‘More of a silent partner, then?’ Michael suggested and I pretended to think about it, until he looked a little annoyed. ‘Come on, Jeane. This last week, haven’t I shown you that it was the dorky Jeane I wanted? J’adork – you can write a whole blog about it. You can even post my picture if you think you can live with the shame of dating a boy who has stupid hair and wears clothes that are mass-produced and sold in major chain stores. I’d do pretty much anything for you.’
I narrowed my eyes. Thank God I still hadn’t lost that little trick. ‘Anything?’
‘Pretty much anything. Trips abroad without parental permission might still be a little tricky and I’m going to dress how I want and do my hair in its usual awesome style,’ he said. ‘Apart from that, yeah, anything.’
It was what I’d been longing to hear. I jumped up from the wall and grabbed his hand. ‘Great! Then take me back to yours so I can get out of these jeans, because for every second that I wear them I can feel my powers draining away.’
And he did.
J’ADORK
I’m back! I’m back in dorkdom. Did you miss me? I hope you did because I missed me and I missed you, too. I was wrong, OK? And I hate to be wrong but I could no sooner stop being a dork than I could stop breathing or eating a bag of Haribo every day or seeing an abandoned mitten on the pavement and taking its picture to post on Twitter.
But I needed to screw up in a big, dramatic, throw-all-my-toys-out-of-my-pram way to realise that what I created with Adorkable has taken on a life of its own. When I started blogging, it was because I had no one else to talk to about the ace new band I’d discovered or to see how splendid my new frock was or to test out my theory that cats are evil and want to control us with subliminal messages cunningly disguised as a cute meow.
I never imagined that I’d find even three people who were on my level, never mind finding you. All of you. Yes, even you at the back. But I still convinced myself that I was on my own, that the people I knew on the internet were just people on the internet and certainly not friends.
My definition of a friend was someone you could call at three in the morning to say that you couldn’t sleep because the very fabric of your life was precariously held together with thumbtacks and they’d be at your door within five minutes with a tub of ice cream and a lovingly compiled mix CD. By that definition I didn’t have anything even close to a friend.
So, I had this HUGE meltdown and tried to turn my back on dorkdom. I even dyed my hair brown and bought a pair of jeans. I wanted to fit in and it was a disaster. Also, it was very, very boring. I’ve been to a dark place, my friends, and what pulled me out of it was realising that no matter how much I thought I was pushing people away, there were people who wanted to be close to me, if only I’d let them. Even people I went to school with – like, how weird is that?
But mostly there was you guys, and I hope we’re still cool because I can’t do Adorkable without you and I think Adorkable is too important to lie dormant in a dusty corner of the internet. Not all of us want to conform to the narrow definitions of what it means to be a girl or a boy or a teenager or gay or straight. I know this because I know you.
We’re the lucky ones; we’ve found each other. Adorkable gives a voice to anyone who’s sat in their bedroom or on the sidelines or is trying so hard just to fit in. But guess what? You don’t have to fit in. You don’t have to be anyone else but who you really want to be. Sometimes we forget that there’s no law that says you have to be what other people expect you to be.
Dorkdom isn’t something you can choose. It’s something you are. But instead of dividing the world up into dorkside and darkside, I’ve realised that we all have a little bit of dork inside us.
So, yeah, I’m back and I’m adorkable all the way. I don’t know how to be anything else. But as well as being adorkable, I’m going to strive to be more adorable so you’ll love me more than you ever thought possible.
This is my pledge to you. All dork. All of the time. Jeane x
*dork face*
Acknowledgements
Samantha Smith, Kate Agar and the team at Atom for making me feel so welcome in my new YA home. My wonderful and wise agent, Karolina Sutton, Catherine Saunders and all at Curtis Brown.
I’d also like to thank Hannah Middleton for bidding so generously on the Authors for Japan auction to win the chance to have a character named after her and Keris Stainton for organising the auction.
Props are also due to Lauren Laverne, Emma Jackson and Marie Nixon for being in Kenickie when they were teenagers and providing the soundtrack for this book and to Miss Hill, my English teacher who got me through my GCSE, and always forgave me for being a gobby, obstreperous girl because she could see something in me that I couldn’t see myself.
Sarra Manning is an author and journalist. She started her writing career on Melody Maker, then spent five years on legendary UK teen mag, J17, first as a writer, then as Entertainment Editor. Subsequently she edited teen fashion bible Ellegirl UK and the BBC’s What to Wear magazine.
Sarra has writen for Elle, Grazia, Red, InStyle, The Guardian, Sunday Times Style, The Mail on Sunday’s You, Harper’s Bazaar, Stylist, Time Out and the Sunday Telegraph’s Stella. Her best-selling YA novels, which include Guitar Girl, Let’s Get Lost, Pretty Things, The Diary of a Crush Trilogy and Nobody’s Girl have been
translated into numerous languages.
She has also written three grown-up novels: Unsticky, You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me and Nine Uses for an Ex-Boyfriend.
Sarra lives in North London and prides herself on her unique ability to accessorise.
Sarra Manning, Adorkable
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