The Yearbook Read online

  “Exactly. They need me. And I can’t adopt them all.”

  I hugged her tight, wishing as ever I could tell her what the night meant to me, but never able to reach for the words. Scared that my intensity of need would scare her off, even though she was my aunty and she loved me.

  It took for ever to find my house key as I had to dig past all my library books, but I eventually retrieved it, and quietly unlocked the front door. I pushed in, stood on the doormat, paused, and tried to take the temperature.

  It felt warm. Calm. Good.

  “Is that you, Paige?” Dad called. Warm Dad. Calm Dad. Good Dad.

  “It’s me.”

  I stashed my bag at the bottom of the stairs and followed his voice to the living-room. My parents were the very picture of couple goals when I found them. Both snuggled up on the sofa, limbs entwined, empty wine glasses on the coffee table, the TV news whispering on low volume. And there was mess. Mess. Plates of uncleared things on the dining table behind them. Four dirty place settings.

  “Hi, Paige.” Mum’s head lay nestled in Dad’s armpit. “Sorry for the mess. We had the Smiths over. You just missed them.” Every inch of her body was relaxed, her smile blasted heat into the room. The good vibes made sense. The Smiths were a couple Dad knew from work, and my parents were therefore always on their most perfect behaviour when they came over. There was usually a warm aftermath while they glowed in their pretence, trying to get it to stick. Of course they hadn’t told me they were having anyone over. If Adam was still here, they would’ve made sure he was in so they could drag him out to sparkle.

  “They were bowled over by your mum’s pavlova,” Dad said, kissing her head. “How was your evening in Spinsterville?” he asked me.

  He was asking to get a dig in at Polly, not because he actually wanted to know.

  “It was fine, thanks.”

  It was best to be vague when talking about Polly. Accepted adjectives were as follows: Fine, okay and alright. You could add in a good or nice as long as you carefully followed it with a I suppose.

  Dad had a red wine stain around his mouth. “And how was the crazy cat lady?” he asked, laughing at his overused joke.

  “Oh Glynn.” Mum swatted him.

  “What? It’s true though, isn’t it? How are the only men in her life? Still coughing up furballs?”

  “The cats are all fine too.”

  “I think she misinterprets her job spec. Her role is to protect the cats, not adopt ALL the cats and use them as substitute husbands.”

  I’d heard this one a million times too, and yet we all laughed obligingly. I hovered in the doorway, awaiting instructions.

  “What are we watching?” I asked.

  “The news is about to finish but there’s some pathetic romcom starting, isn’t there, Jane?” Dad leaned down to kiss Mum’s head. “Thought I’d see how long I can make it through.”

  She giggled like a love-struck teenager. “You like this one! It’s got John Cusack in it. You like him.”

  Dad nodded his approval. “Say Anything? I do like this one. They’re childhood sweethearts. Just like us.”

  “Just like us,” Mum repeated. She snuggled further in, happiness oozing from her while I stood awkwardly on the threshold, awaiting an invitation to join them that wasn’t going to come.

  Dad and Mum’s love story was pretty similar to a lot of films. He was the most popular boy in school. Great at football, good-looking, rich from his job at the video shop. He was the first person in school to get a mobile phone. He could’ve had anyone he wanted. Mum was the pretty-but-shy girl. Too shy to even notice Dad at first. They inevitably fell in love and Mum soared up the popularity ranks, becoming an unelected queen. Dad made it “cool” to have a girlfriend and all the other boys got one. My parents were the most golden, however. They were voted Most likely to get married in their yearbook and married they got. Right after Dad graduated from uni, while Mum waited patiently at her parents’ house, pretending to be a secretary.

  My parents were getting a bit much on the sofa. I faked a loud yawn to remind them I was there.

  “Tired,” I said. “I’m going to bed.”

  “Night, poppet.” Mum hardly looked away from Dad’s gaze.

  I left them to it. Feeling a bit ick about what it was, but also relieved they were getting on; but also abandoned, and lonely, and humiliated that I wasn’t wanted and wasn’t invited. This is what it always felt like in my house. I could never experience one emotion singularly – there were always multiple conflicting ones. Like ordering emotional tapas.

  It was almost ten, according to the glow of my hand-me-down alarm clock. I rushed through putting on pyjamas and getting ready for bed.

  “Alexa? Did you have a nice day?”

  “Today was sunny, with highs of twenty-one.”

  “Wicked. So you got a tan?”

  Silence.

  “No sense of humour, robots.”

  Another sharp tug of loneliness, but there was a jumble of books in my bag to take the edge off. I could not be arsed with Shakespeare so I plucked out Jane Eyre and took it into bed. I started reading, but it quickly became scanning. I knew Jane Eyre was supposed to be a romance about a nanny falling in love with her master or something, but it took for ever to get there. My clock read eleven, then half past eleven. Just before midnight, Mum and Dad’s laughter came up the stairs and I turned my light off and sat silently in the dark till they were safely in their bedroom. By twelve thirty, Jane was still in bloody school, and I hadn’t come across one red message. My fingers twitched with impatience, my eyes flickering from tiredness. I started rifling through the book, looking for them, looking for them, looking for them…

  BAM.

  There. In the margins. Next to a passage from Jane saying she never intended to fall in love with Mr Rochester.

  Four words.

  All only one syllable long.

  But my, the power of those four syllables.

  Maybe it was the tiredness, but I started crying. The words set a part of me free and I let them unleash and unlock. I stepped into the wonderful, weightless feeling of being understood.

  Love was such a trap, they were right.

  I’d never been in love, of course. Not for a lack of wanting it. Wanting it was part of the trap. But the undeniable truth was that I was invisible as well as unloveable. Nobody could see me at all, let alone look at me and see the potential to store their heart there. People don’t fall in love with wallpaper. Or silence. Or the colour beige. You need at least a fraction of glitter, something to say, a reason for existing in order to be someone else’s. I had none of those things, so no one would love me, and that hurt…but it also stopped me from getting hurt, so I guess it wasn’t all bad.

  No, I thought, as the tears made my duvet damp. I had not known romantic love, and yet I still knew it was a trap.

  Why?

  Because I saw Mum in one. Every single day.

  Tonight had been a trap. The lovely dinner with lovely friends, the sofa, the gold, the cuddles, the kisses, the relief, the unspooling of joy from being so very loved so very hard. When Dad was like that he was a lump of cheese on a mousetrap. A carrot luring a donkey up a mountain. A fake recording of someone crying for help so you’d run into the booby trap to rescue them. Because Dad like that never lasted. What made it so ridiculous was that I KNEW it was a trap. I had spent my whole life watching the trap snap shut, the carrot never reaching the mouth, the bomb going off and the building exploding with you still inside. Yet Mum stayed. Bound and broken and sucked dry of life, she chose to stay.

  And, despite all this, I, too, longed for the trap of my dad’s love. Yet he didn’t even bother leaving out any bait to tempt me. All he cared about was Adam. I’d hoped that maybe when my brother went away they might show me the slightest bit of interest… That very evening, all I’d wanted was to ensconce myself in their glow, to maybe take up a bit of space in their hearts. But no.

  I turned into my pillow and let it soak up my tears. I wept with rehearsed volume control. Then I lurched up and started flicking through the rest of the book. I needed to know who this person was. It wasn’t fair for them to get into my head and not let me know who they were. Authors put their names on their book spines so, if their story wriggled in, we at least knew who was responsible. Who was this DICK who thought it okay to get into my head but leave no trail? How dare they? I flicked page after page, feeling like I’d explode if I didn’t find something. Flick flick through Jane Eyre, then I chucked it to the end of my bed. Flick flick wallop through Shakespeare. Flick flick flick flick through the poetry anthology where I could see Red Pen had had a freakin’ FIELD DAY making annotations. I didn’t read the graffiti, just flicked and flicked, and oh, there MUST be something. I wouldn’t be able to handle it if there wasn’t. Then…

  No, it couldn’t be.

  No way.

  There.

  In tiny red letters. Right at the end of the anthology. So small you might not notice them.

  It read:

  My words. They’d written my words. Not only that. They’d written the date.

  A date of only a year ago.

  The red pen person.

  That meant…

  …They likely still went to our school.

  There wasn’t a lot of cruelty in Year Seven. We were too young. Just children really – spat out into the big bad world of secondary school, clutching our rucksack straps to our chests, staring wide-eyed at all sixth formers like they were celebrities. It’s a shock. Going from being kings of primary school to the youngest again. You’re a diddly fish in a big pond, and all you’ve got to offer the pond is your dedication to wrapping your exercise books in sticky-back plastic.

  So, no, there’s not a huge amount of cruelty. No time. You’re all too busy trying to work out where the English block is, figuring out who to make friends with, and worrying what maths set they’ll put you in.

  But this is where it begins.

  The popular people are the ones who adjust to this new world the quickest. Year Seven is a feeding frenzy. The power’s there, just waiting to be hoovered up and popular people realize that and turn their goddamn Dysons on.

  When the rest of you are just kids, wondering if you’re too old to still secretly be playing Barbies, they log it all, and then they never let you live it down. They won’t let you live your own childhood down.

  And now, here, in the yearbook, they are still not letting you live it down. They are committing it to foreverness under the guise of nostalgia, reminding you of this important message for ever.

  The message is…

  We control your story.

  We control your identity.

  We decide who you are.

  We do.

  We do.

  We do.

  And all because you were too busy being an innocent kid in a gold bow tie, or a Disney costume, and trying to enjoy the last dregs of your childhood before puberty hit.

  How stupid you were, to try and do that.

  They’re here. They go to this school. I’ve probably passed them in the corridor multiple times. They wrote what I wrote. I exist.

  I was in such a daze that I could hardly concentrate in the lunchtime newspaper meeting.

  They’re here. They go to this school. I’ve probably passed them in the corridor multiple times. This is too much, too much, too much…

  I was doodling stars, my head resting on one hand, hardly listening to Ms Gordon.

  “So, Daisy, I have you down to cover the petition the Year Sevens have started about being last to get into the canteen. How’s that going?”

  Daisy looked up from her notebook with her eye-linered eyes. “Yeah, fine. I interviewed them yesterday. Their major concern is that all the potato smiley faces have sold out by the time they’re allowed in.”

  Ms Gordon laughed from her perch on her editor’s desk. Today she was wearing a denim jumpsuit with neon-orange heels and matching hairband.

  “It could be the splash.” She smiled at Daisy with her purple lipstick. “Flesh it out as much as you can. Have you spoken to the head yet for a quote?”

  “I asked reception and they said they’ll set something up, but I haven’t heard back.”

  “Hmm. I’ll have an ask around the staffroom, see if I can hurry it along…”

  The door opened and I swear the air got colder. I sat up, stunned out of my daydream as there on the threshold… There they were. The terrible trio of twats – a clusterfuck of populars.

  “Girls! You’re early! The yearbook part of the meeting isn’t for another ten minutes.”

  “Whoops, sorry.” Grace led them in, not sounding sorry at all. “We’ll wait.”

  Their scent overpowered the room. For the rest of my life, I swear I’ll be triggered whenever I smell vanilla. Everyone’s head turned down towards their notebooks.

  Ms Gordon, unaware, picked up her tablet and scanned her notes, while I prayed she didn’t call my name.

  “And, finally, Paige.” She looked up. “How’s it going with the Year Eight girls who want to start a cheerleading club?”

  All eyes on me. I didn’t want all eyes on me. Not their eyes. I felt a trap snap across my leg, ripping through my flesh.

  “Cheerleading club?” Amelia raised an eyebrow. “That’s cool.”

  “Yeah,” Laura agreed. “Why weren’t we allowed one of them?”

  “Well, that’s the story,” Ms Gordon explained, recrossing her denim legs. “Why don’t you explain it to them, Paige?”

  I could’ve killed her. I went red, my hands instantly sweating. “Erm.” I cleared my throat. “There’s just some resistance from some teachers about whether or not cheerleading is, erm, sexist or not.”

  Grace’s nose shrivelled up. “Sexist?”

  “Yup.”

  “What’s sexist about cheerleading?”

  I was careful to only report what others had said. “Well, Mrs Collins has told the paper that the team would only be made up of girls, and their current plan is only to cheer for the boys’ football team. They’re not, like, professionally competing as cheerleaders so…umm…her issue is that it’s not very…er…modern.”

  “Well that’s just stupid.”

  I was saved by Ms Gordon, which was the least she could do considering she was the one who’d endangered me. “Our job as reporters is never to take sides,” she explained. “We have to be objective. Tell both parts of the story.”

  “Oh, okay,” Grace said, playing with her ponytail. “Cool. Anyway, we’ve written something for the yearbook and we want you all to look at it.”

  “I’m not sure if we’d planned…”

  But they were already standing, handing out some printouts proudly, like children showing off a painting. “So, yeah, we’ve started with Year Seven, thinking of all the funny things that happened and I wrote some ‘copy’? Is that what you call it?”

  Ms Gordon let the meeting get totally overrun. In fact, she was smiling, like she was proud of them. “That is what you call it, well done.”

  The rest of us robotically passed round the papers. I practised my best neutral face as I read their atrocious “copy”. They’d used caps lock and exclamation marks all over the place.

  Grace pretended to blush. “I mean, I can’t BELIEVE Amelia put that in about me and Sam. So embarrassing.”

  They all giggled while Ms Gordon scanned it and burst into yet another smile. “This is a promising start, girls. I’m proud you’ve done this all in your own time. Let’s pad out these memories even more. Shall we assign some people to do interviews?”

  Amelia put her hand up. “I can interview Grace about the disco.”

  Grace squealed with faux humiliation. “Oh my God, Amelia. No way, that is too hilarious.”

  Amelia held out an imaginary mic. “So, Grace, when did you realize that Sam kissed like a washing machine?”

  “OMG, Amelia, YOU HAVE TO STOP, YOU’RE ACTUALLY KILLING ME.”

  They descended into hysterics while the rest of us wondered what the rules were regarding joining in.

  “Well, that’s one sorted,” Ms Gordon said. “Anyone fancy a crack at any of the others?” We all looked down but today was not my day. “Paige!” I closed my eyes. “You’re a stellar interviewer. Want to chat to Freddy about his magic show?”

  No, I wanted to scream. I don’t want to talk to Freddy about his magic show. And Freddy doesn’t want to talk to me about his magic show. Because he finds it hugely embarrassing, especially now he’s all cool and artistic. This was YEARS ago. Why can’t people be allowed to live things down?

  Luckily, I was well-rehearsed in placation. I got out the voice I use for Dad. “Yep. Sounds great. I’ll track Freddy down.”

  I avoided eye contact as Ms Gordon allocated the rest of the memories.

  “How are the photos going?” she asked them at the end. “Has anyone sent any good ones in?”

  Amelia shook her head. “Not yet but we only put the posters up yesterday.”

  “Plus,” Laura added, “we can always raid people’s social media if we don’t get enough.”

  “Hmm, I’m not sure that’s legal, Laura.”

  “Oh yeah, of course. No worries, miss.”

  (They did go on to lift photos from social media anyway and never told Ms Gordon where the photos came from.)

  Eventually our meeting was dismissed. The Awfuls left first while I hung around, waiting for the room to completely empty. I watched Ms Gordon pack away her things, humming a tune. I had an exciting idea hatching and had been waiting to get her alone.

  “Er, miss?”

  “Paige! Sorry, I was in my own little world there. Excited about the yearbook? It’s all taking off very quickly, isn’t it?”

  “Hmm. Yeah. Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course.” She leaned back against the desk and all her gold bangles clanked down her wrists.

  “I was just wondering, off the top of your head, if you knew what the set texts are for Lower Sixth English?”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve read all the others already?”