Stereotype (13 page)

Chapter Sixty-Four

“Did you have a good night out?” the parents ask. I don’t know why they ask. They don’t want details. They don’t want to know what’s happening in my life.

“Yeah, it was OK,” I reply. The right answer, the one they want to hear.

“Did you get much sleep? You look tired.”

“Yeah, I am. I think I’ll go up to bed for a while.”

I lie in bed and contemplate the events of Saturday night, and the more I think about it, the more it starts to remind me of an over-the-top teen drama series.

I think about Shane and Sarah and, because I’m in the mood for torturing myself, put on
Iris
. And then I replay it.

And again. And again. And again.

Abi, I tell myself, you are absolutely pathetic. You got yourself into this mess. You put the idea of liking Sarah into Shane’s head. You invited Graham along and danced with him. This situation is entirely your own fault.

Somehow it doesn’t make me feel better . . .

On Monday the sun is shining. I wear long sleeves. Town isn’t particularly crowded, but it’s still busy. People rush off to work. Rush to the shop for a doughnut or a cup of coffee. Rush, rush, rush. It’s calmer inside the shops. Sales assistants stack new books on shelves, rearrange CDs, brush specks of dust off clothes, chat.

They eye me suspiciously as I browse. Oh, give me a break! Do I look like I’m going to steal something? Why do you assume that just because I’m a teenager I’m up to no good?

Fine. You want to think the worst about me? Go ahead. Might as well give you some evidence to back up your assumptions. I’ll just slip this book into my bag and see if you notice. See if I can get away with it. Walk out.

No alarm wailing, no one stopping me. So easy. Sure, it’s wrong. Do I care? Not really.

Or maybe I do, and maybe that’s why I’m doing it. But I’m not in the mood for in-depth self-analysis. I have shops to visit.

CDs are impossible to take. There’s no use trying to steal them. Books are easy. Cosmetics are easy. Clothes can be, depending on the shop. Check for security tags, check for observant shop assistants.

Look casual. Look normal. Browse first, then take, then walk slowly out of there.

I go home and read. Jess yells at me over something trivial. I go into the bathroom and take out a razor blade. Automatic reaction. Don’t think, just do. What a life.

Tuesday brings with it a hate-filled text message from Graham, which I delete, and then switch off my phone in disgust. I don’t want to talk to anyone. I just want to be left alone.

I toy with the idea of thrusting my scarred arms in front of my parents’ faces and saying “Look!” Keeping it a secret doesn’t seem to matter anymore. Who cares if they know?

And yet I know that I’m never going to tell them. There’s a power in being secretive, a feeling of control over your life when you and only you know what’s really going on.

And now I’ve added shoplifting to the list of Typical Teenage Things that I’ve done. I paint my nails in a shade of dark blue, courtesy of Boots and the distracted sales assistants.

I hate waiting for nail varnish to dry. It is the dullest of dull activities. You can’t move. Because if you move, you’ll smudge the nail varnish, undoing all the work that went into painting each nail carefully and perfectly. Forget about burning bras and not shaving your legs, the feminist movement needs to start thinking about the nail varnish conspiracy. What better way to keep women oppressed than by nail varnish? While waiting for it to dry, we’re rendered immobile. It chips easily, so we’re forced to reapply it at regular intervals, or else buy overcoats and undercoats and all that sort of thing, which diverts our funds away from important things, leaving us dependent on our boyfriends/partners/husbands, taking away our power so that we’re at their mercy.

It’s a valid theory. I’m not insane. Really.

Someone’s at the door. I’m the only one at home, unfortunately, so I’ll have to journey all the way downstairs to answer it instead of yelling at one of my siblings to answer it. It’s probably one of their friends, anyway. One of Jess’s friends, trying to look rebellious and cool in a Korn hoodie, hands shoved in the pockets of impossibly baggy trousers, or one of Greg’s friends, with a football tucked under his arm.

I’m wrong. It’s Sarah. “Heya. Can I come in?”

“Sure,” I say. “What’s up?” Because
something’s
up if she’s asking can she come in, without waiting for me to invite her, or even just walking in because she knows that she doesn’t need an invitation.

“Are you OK with me and Shane?” She gets straight to the point.

“Yeah,” I lie. It’s what she wants to hear. She’s not here to find out whether I’m actually OK with it or not. She’s here to ask, to be told that everything’s OK, so she can go on her merry way with a clear conscience.

“Seriously. Are you? I know you said you didn’t like him, but I had a feeling you did. And then you invited Graham along and spent the night with him and I figured that you didn’t like Shane after all, but now . . . I don’t know. I wanted to make sure you’re not upset about this.”

“I’m fine with it, really. So what exactly is the story with you two? Are you going out with him?”

She grins. “Yeah.”

I smile. She looks so happy.

“So, what about you and Graham, huh?” she enquires.

“Oh. Yeah,” I say somewhat unenthusiastically.

“Well . . . is he your boyfriend now, or what? You seemed pretty close on Saturday night.”

“Yeah, but . . . then I came to my senses. He’s an asshole. He hasn’t changed.”

She breathes a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank God. I was thinking you’d completely lost your mind there for a second, and I was going to have to pretend to like the guy for your sake.”

“Nope. He’s out of my life forever. Hopefully.”

“Fabulous.” She hugs me. “Well, listen, I’d better go – I’m supposed to be meeting Shane at three, so . . .”

“Have fun,” I say.

She beams. “I’m sure I will.”

Jealousy. It feels like I spend most of my life being jealous. Of Sarah, who’s so perfect, who’s so wonderful, who everyone loves. Of the pretty girls. Of the smart girls. Of the talented girls.

Can’t I just step out of my skin and be one of them? Can’t I be special too?

Can’t someone I like ever reciprocate the feeling? Unrequited love isn’t fun. It’s painful. It’s depressing. Do people ever really find people to love who love them in return, or do they end up settling? Did my parents fall madly in love, or did they decide that it was better to be married than live alone?

I mope. I mope and I mope and I mope, and I’m so sick of it, so sick of myself, so sick of everything. I wish I could sleep but don’t want to. I wish I could distract myself by watching TV, but it doesn’t work. I wish I could write something, but I can’t. My mind’s blank. I’m frustrated. I’m bored.

Boredom. That’s what it is, Abi. It’s not depression or anything as interesting or valid as you’d like to believe. It’s just you being fed up.

You’re not special. There’s nothing unique about you. You’re just a silly little girl, a melodramatic teenager who wants so badly to believe that she’s important that she has scars in an attempt to prove it. Grow up.

I’m in town again on Wednesday. I wander aimlessly around, slipping into shops I’ve never visited before, seeing what I can get away with.

“Heya,” a blue-haired girl says, stopping in front of me on Grafton Street. It takes me a moment to recognise her as Emily.

“Hey! Love the hair.” It really does look fabulous, making her stand out from the crowd. I debate dying my own hair, then decide that it’s unique enough already without adding dye. Maybe auburn isn’t such a bad colour after all.

She grins. “Thanks. What’re you doing in town?”

I shrug. “Shopping.”

“Ah, right. Get anything nice?”

“Not really. Just looking around.”

“Well, listen, there’s a few of us over in Stephen’s Green, if you feel like sitting down and listening to Hugh try to sing. He has a guitar – there’s no stopping him!”

“Can he sing?”

“No,” she laughs. “It’s a nightmare. But we’re having fun.”

“Who else is there? Anyone I know?” I ask.

“Well, Fiona, but she’s busy telling Hugh how wonderful he is.” She rolls her eyes. “You know Barry? Roisín? Andrew?”

“Vaguely,” I say. They were at Sarah’s party, but I didn’t really speak to any of them.

“Good enough,” she grins.

“I think I’m going to go home, actually,” I say, shying away from the possibility of actually interacting with other human beings. More to the point, human beings I barely know.

“Not in a social mood, huh?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

“OK. Well, I’ll see ya – sometime, I’m sure. Take care of yourself.”

“You too.”

I watch her walk away. I want her to come back. I thought she wanted to be friends, that she actually cared about me.
No, Abi, she doesn’t really give a damn, she just fancied you. Get over it.

And then I remind myself that she invited me to hang out with her friends, and that I refused. Because I’m not in the mood to be social. But I still feel left out.

I am the epitome of unreasonable and irrational. I know, I know.

To make my day even better, I pass by Shane and Sarah kissing. On the street. I hate people who can’t keep their hands off each other in public. They’re so wrapped up in each other that they don’t notice me.

I would yell out ‘Get a room!’ but I’m too choked up to speak without bursting into tears.

I go home, slam the door behind me, storm up to my room, throw myself on the bed and cry. Every time I stop crying, I keep reminding myself of everything that’s so awful in my life, and it starts all over again.

And then finally it stops, and I get up, dry my eyes.

I roll up my sleeves, stare at my arms. I empty out my bag, the bottles of nail varnish and lipsticks and earrings and key-rings falling onto the bed.

The cliché, the angry teenager who overreacts to everything and acts out to get attention, the thing I never wanted to become, is what’s standing in my room right now. Where did I go?

I’m like the rest of them, thinking that I’m different, special, unique, when I’m not. We’re synchronised swimmers, moving in perfect unison. We like to think we’re doing something different, but it’s just part of the routine. When we look around we realise everyone else is doing exactly the same thing.

I don’t know how to be different. I can keep cutting, keep stealing, keep wallowing in my pathetic little teenage angst, and that won’t make me special. I can be happy and well-adjusted, and that still won’t make me special. I can work hard in school or I can fail, and it won’t make any difference, it’s all been done before.

Everything has been done before.

So what does that leave?
I ask myself.

I make a list. Reasons why I feel depressed.

I’m ugly and uninteresting.

Everyone else isn’t.

I feel like no one cares about me.

I feel like no one takes me seriously.

I feel like a typical teenager, and that annoys me, because I want to be special.

I cut myself. But that isn’t really a reason. More a consequence.

I don’t have any valid reasons. That bothers me more than anything. I can’t really put my finger on why I feel like this. It’s too vague and non-specific.

Because there’s a part of me that likes feeling down. I like being the victim in my own mind. It means I can wallow without actually doing anything about it.

My life feels pointless.

The words ‘brat’ and ‘self-indulgent’ come to mind. I crumple up the list. I throw things around my room. Shoes hit walls. CD cases crack. By the time I calm down, the room is a mess. Well, more of a mess.

I take out an old notebook and begin to write. Words spill out of me, angry, depressed, sad, bitter, lonely. I don’t censor myself in an attempt to sound deep and meaningful. I don’t toss in any symbolism to make it sound more poetic. I just write, because I need to, I need to get this out of me and isn’t it better to get it out through writing than through blood?

I write about hating the people at school even though I used to want to be like them, about how Sarah and Shane being together is painful and beautiful at the same time, about feeling empty and maybe now sickened over Graham.

How can you let your worst enemy touch you just because they pretend to care? How can you sink that low and not even realise it? How can you tolerate someone’s company just so you can feel validated? I used him because he paid attention to me, and I ignored Sarah, who actually gives a damn, maybe because it’s always easier to reveal your secrets to someone whose opinion doesn’t matter . . .

My hand gets tired after a while. I turn on the radio instead. Poppy, happy music is playing. Total teenybopper stuff. I listen anyway. It’s light, it’s bubbly, it’s fun.

I start cleaning up my room. It feels oddly calming, like I’m taking control. Which I guess I am. Yes, I decide. I am taking control. I’m going to stop moping. I know it can’t possibly be that simple, but I have to try. I’m sick of living like this.

I text Sarah asking if she wants to sleep over tomorrow night. I doubt the parents will have any objections, and we haven’t properly talked in a while.

I set my phone aside, expecting her to be too engrossed in Shane to reply, but a beep two minutes later proves me wrong.