We Are Not Okay. Natália Gomes
student accommodation and be subjected to one toilet between twenty people. I could live with my friend but she lives in a council flat and probably couldn’t fit me in anyway. She’s also got a ten-month-old that her mum looks after during the day sometimes…me and a crying baby under one roof?
No.
University is not for me. Besides, I wouldn’t even be able to work out how to complete the first page of the UCAS application.
University – or ‘Further Education’ as the guidance counsellor calls it – is for people who:
1. Read William Shakespeare (and understand what the hell he’s saying – is it even in English?)
2. Drink tea in the afternoons, especially if it comes with a scone and a porcelain jar of clotted cream, whatever that is. Is it just regular cream? What makes it clotted?
3. Write with a pen that has a fluffy thing on the top that sits on a spring and bounces side to side when you write with it
4. Post photos of themselves with their parents, usually on some expensive holiday abroad – and they actually look normal, and HAPPY!
5. Detail volunteer work experience at homes for the elderly and children’s hospitals on their profile and define this experience as ‘life changing’
6. Use the term ‘extra-curricular activities’ on their CVs. Actually, bigger point here – it’s for people who have CVs!
7. Have a five-year-plan that includes getting married and buying a fancy breed dog
8. Make daily ‘To Do’ lists and probably tick off each item as it’s accomplished with that annoying fluffy top bobbing to the side pen!
9. Colour-coordinate their school folders
10. Season-coordinate their wardrobe – although this one sounds tempting as I hate digging into the back of my drawers in the dead of winter and only finding summer shorts and sleeveless vests
I’ll tell you who it’s not for – and keep in mind, this list is where I fall in. It’s not for people who:
1. Don’t read Shakespeare, but who have just one book on their bookshelf that has the inside pages ripped out and a stash of cigarettes inside (Mum goes through random bouts of ‘Ciggies are so bad for you’ moments and searches my bags and drawers to ‘help me’)
2. Drink vodka and red bull – occasionally vodka and lemonade if I want to sleep that night for more than three minutes
3. Write with a black sharpie pen – and only on the bathroom doors of the boys’ toilets at school
4. List ‘partying’ and ‘sleeping’ on their activity list
5. Post photos of their mates falling down the stairs of O’Neill’s on a Saturday night
6. Have a mum that works at a home for the elderly for minimum wage, bathing creepy old men, while snobby girls with gel manicures breeze in for their daily thirty minutes of ‘Read to an Old Person and Feel Good About Myself After’
7. Actually know what CV stands for…
So, as I said, this is where I fall in. And I mean, clearly fall in. Like there’s no mistake about that.
And as you’ve probably guessed – the first section is where Rhys is. Although hopefully not the part about the pen with the fluffy top…or the afternoon tea with scones…but probably everything else, mind you.
BUT that didn’t seem to bother him over the summer, did it?
No actually, it was the total opposite. He seemed really into me over the summer. We even met up a couple of times the week before school started back. And now he’s acting distant, and I heard he’s even been talking to his ex Lucy again. I hate that girl. STUCK UP SNOB!!!!!!!!!!!
She thinks she’s better than everyone else, and she’s not. She got dumped by Rhys before school ended for the summer and then got upset when he and I got together. She threw a drink in my face at Euan’s party and called me a slut. Nice. Yesterday, she called me the same thing in the middle of the cafeteria then pretended that she was just coughing. She’s so immature. What did Rhys ever see in her? And her friends are just as bad. I think I’m dumb – but Mollie Bridges? She takes the…whatever that saying is. And Cara and Lily are basically mini Lucys. UGGGHHHHHHHH! I can’t wait for Friday. This week is going to SUCK!!!!!!
‘Are you not eating today?’ Ulana asks me.
I look down at my empty tray that perches lightly on the cold metal racks of the cafeteria island. Round white plates line the silver shelves in the middle. There are no healthy choices at Birchwood High School, except if you count the salads, which most people do. I don’t. Most swim in a sea of oily dressings. ‘No, I don’t really see anything that looks good today. I guess I’m not really hungry.’
She’s looking at me in a weird way.
‘I had a big breakfast,’ I quickly add.
She eventually nods and gets back to choosing between tomato pasta or a ham and cheese roll for lunch. She’s the only girl at school that I know who doesn’t talk about her weight, or know the number of calories in a KitKat, or even read those magazines that claim to have ‘the secret for losing a dress size in a week’. Which they don’t because no magazine can tell the public that if they actually want to lose a dress size in one week then they’d basically have to starve themselves for that whole week.
I would give anything to have Ulana’s confidence, her self-assurance.
But maybe not her parents. Gone would be my quiet evenings with Steve alone in the house if I had her parents. No, I’d be sneaking out back to meet my boyfriend too.
She struggles to lift up her full tray, while mine rests lightly on my forearms. ‘Where do you want to sit?’
My eyes skim the crowd, quickly locking onto Lucy McNeil and her friends in the centre of the cafeteria. ‘Maybe not there.’
We shuffle to a table at the side, in the back, and plop our trays down. Streaks of ketchup and mustard left behind from the last occupants make my tummy flip.
‘You’re really not hungry?’
I shake my head and poke at the bruised apple on my tray. ‘Told you. Big breakfast.’ I glance over to Lucy’s table, her tanned brown skin, shiny dark hair falling around her shoulders. Girls like that are just born that way, while we have to claw our way up or risk being mediocre and forgettable our whole lives. ‘Looks like someone’s enjoyed a holiday abroad.’
‘Who?’ asks Ulana as she digs into her plate with a fork a little too small for her fingers.
‘Lucy McNeil. Look how tanned she is. So jealous.’
‘Burned you mean,’ she says. ‘Anyone who intentionally sits out in the sun is just burning their skin.’
I take a bite of my apple. The waxy skin tastes like shards of plastic in my mouth. I gaze down at Ulana’s pasta. ‘How is it?’
She shrugs and takes another mouthful, some flakes of Parmesan falling from her fork. ‘It’s not Italia Nostra, but it’ll do.’
‘I love that place.’ Freshly ground garlic and rosemary seep out from under the kitchen door and float through the restaurant, occasionally out onto the street. Beautiful circles of brick-oven pizzas loaded with fresh basil and mozzarella that stretches for yards. Tubes of red pasta dotted with black pepper served in bowls that have yellow and blue swirls looping around the edges. I clutch my belly as a low gurgle moves through my body. ‘Have you ever thought about sex?’ I suddenly blurt out.
Ulana coughs on a piece of pasta and sets her fork down.
I slap her on the back. ‘Sorry.’
She