flight. No one lives on clouds. At all.
What is their bedroom like?
Full of books. And full of mess according to my mum, but she doesn’t get it. I know where everything is and I like having everything close to hand, not shut away in cupboards or filed away on shelves like everything else in our house.
What is your character’s motto in life?
Tidying is for wimps. And cleaning is for people with way too much time on their hands, who should be made to move somewhere deadly dull – like Bognor Regis.
Does your character have any secrets?
Yes. Since Helen left I’ve skipped school three times to go up to the Southbank to people-watch for the day. And although everyone in my class – including my teacher – knows I’m being bullied, my parents don’t. What a great secret!
What makes them jealous?
People who are happy and don’t ever get picked on.
Do they have any pets?
No, because a stray dog hair or morsel of cat food might get on to the carpet and cause their parents to have a total freak-out.
Is their glass half full?
She’s currently drinking a can – of coke – and it’s nearly empty. Bit of a random question!
Have they ever lost anyone dear to them?
Helen when she moved away. And I guess there’s my real dad. Although he left when I was just a baby and moved to America, ‘because he had commitment issues and was incapable of growing up’ according to my mum, and I’ve never seen him since. Can you lose something if you can’t remember ever having it?
Who do they most admire?
Laura Ingalls Wilder and Anne Frank.
Are they popular?
No. But I try not to let this get to me because I wouldn’t really want to be popular with most of the people I go to school with anyway. It’s kind of like asking Anne Frank if she’d want to be popular with the Nazis.
Do they love themselves?
No, of course not!
What is their motivating force in life?
To get through a day without being beaten up.
What is their core need in life?
To not feel like the wrong part in a jigsaw all of the time.
What is their mindset at the beginning of your story and what do they want?
She is totally fed up and she wants to change everything. Everything.
Chapter One
‘Dear writer, imagine if you will that your reader is a trout, swimming merrily downstream. The first paragraph of your novel should be like the maggot on the end of the fisherman’s line. Juicy and appealing to the point of irresistible. Hook them with that and then let the rest of your first chapter reel them in.’
Agatha Dashwood,
So You Want to Write a Novel?
If you could pick any date in the calendar to find out that you aren’t actually who you thought you were then I suppose your birthday is pretty much perfect. Today, on my fifteenth birthday, I found out that for my entire life I’ve been living a lie.
I actually got up before my parents this morning as they’d been to this cringey conference called ‘Unleash Your Inner Tiger’ last night and didn’t get home till late. Well, when I say late, I mean late for them. They got back at twelve-thirty. I know this because I was still up re-reading The Bell Jar at the time. Normally, my parents go to bed at nine so they can get up mega early and do an hour of Nordic Walking before work. Nordic Walking should be renamed How-to-Totally-Humiliate-Your-Kids Walking. It basically involves striding about in giant steps while holding a pole in each hand – the type of poles you use when you’re skiing. This wouldn’t look so weird if you were hiking your way through a snow drift, or up a mountain. But when you’re walking down a London street in the middle of summer it looks about twenty different kinds of wrong. Anyway, when I got up this morning at seven, there was no sign of them, their walking poles or the twins.
I poured myself a glass of icy water from the fridge and sat down at the breakfast bar, wondering if there was any chance Mum and Alan would let me have the day off as it’s my birthday. But getting Alan to agree to me bunking off is like getting the Pope to sell his soul to the Devil – it’s never going to happen. So I sat there sipping at my water, hoping it would dilute some of my usual morning sickness. I’m not expecting a baby or anything – just another crap day at school. To be honest, I haven’t even been kissed before, let alone anything else. Well, I’ve been parent-kissed, and too-much-perfume-Grandma-kissed, but not heart-trembling, knee-quivering, boy-kissed. So there’s probably more chance of the Pope getting pregnant, but anyway . . .
When the post plopped through the letter box I nearly didn’t bother going to see if there were any cards for me. I mean, all of my friends would be giving them to me in person in school, wouldn’t they – ha ha! But then I remembered the text I got from Helen last night about the card she’d sent me with a really sick joke on the front and how I wasn’t to open it in front of my parents. So I put down my water and trudged along the hall to the door. Fanned out across the doormat were a couple of the insane magazines Alan subscribes to – Get a Life! and Do It Now! – and some brown, bill-looking envelopes for my mum. Poking out from underneath them I could see two that were obviously cards. I picked them up but only one – the one in Helen’s handwriting – was addressed to me. The other one, in a bright blue envelope, was addressed to someone called Cherokee Brown. I double-checked the address, thinking that the postman had delivered it by mistake; there was no way someone with such a cool name could be living in Magnolia Crescent. The most exciting thing to happen around here is when the milkman leaves an extra pint by accident. But the address was definitely ours. I was still turning the envelope over in my hand when Mum came bounding down the stairs in her bright pink tracksuit.
‘Happy birthday, pumpkin,’ she called, coming over to give me a kiss. Then she saw what I was holding and said, ‘Ooh, a birthday card. Is it from Helen?’
I shook my head. ‘No. The other one is. This one’s for someone called Cherokee Brown.’
Mum stared at me as if I’d said, ‘This one’s for someone called Adolf Hitler,’ before snatching the card from my hand.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked as she marched off down the hall and into the kitchen. By the time I got there she was stuffing the card into the bin.
‘Well, it’s not for you so we’d better get rid of it,’ she replied, her voice all weirdy high.
‘Yes,
