be such a meanie sometimes. I just see her as this emotionless blob. How the fuck would I feel, being teased all day? I’m no stunner myself. At least Zoe does something with her life. She helps out with the school plays – painting the sets and stuff. What do I do?
Exactly.
Chips
If you feel that you must write a diary, be aware that you are writing not to document your misery but to make your future self happy. Your diary should be a nepenthe.
Exercise II
Write a diary, imagining that you are trying to make an old person jealous. I have written an example to get you started:
Dear Diary,
I spent the morning admiring my skin elasticity.
God alive, I feel supple.
In the late morning, I met a girl in the bandstand. We did cartwheels, headstands, the crab. Then we shared our perfect bodies.
I read small print without squinting. I hear all sorts of minute noises. I never ask the question: Am I happy?
Even my imaginary experiences are more real and vivid than the day-to-day lives of the over-forties. While walking home from the park, I annihilated the Death Star, discovered a pan-dimensional portal and shrank myself to the size of a dust mite. I am not remotely tired.
God alive, I feel supple. I think I will spend the rest of the evening standing on one leg.
Good day,
Oliver
V
‘Kids can be Cruel’
A Mitigation.
In your diary, you mentioned Jean the dinner lady using the phrase: ‘Kids can be cruel.’ Adults use this phrase to trick themselves into not feeling guilty about the bad things they did as children.
You are expected to be cruel. Put on your pointy shoes.
VI
Only Being Yourself Inside Your Head
You must be willing to transform any facet of your personality to fit in.
After they called me ‘posh’ in primary school, I changed my accent to sound more poor; I cut out the vowels like Marks and Spencer’s labels from my shirts.
It is okay to study as long as you do so in private and, while in class, you maintain a façade of indifference.
Exercise III
Look in the mirror. Make your facial expression suggest boredom while you are secretly running through your tenses: je mange, tu manges, il mange, elle mange, nous mangeons, vous mangez, ils mangent, elles mangent.
Zoe, I’ve seen you steal sachets of mayonnaise; I’ve seen you covertly eat iced buns in class: channel your mischievous streak. Like food, I know you’ve got it in you. And if you ever feel that you are all alone then remember this: there are more fat people in the world today than there are hungry people. And if I had to use a word to describe you, it would be zaftig – which means to be desirably plump and curvaceous.
Good luck, endomorph!
Note: in keeping with the above rules, I will not stop bullying you until someone else stops first. That’s the way things work.
Compunction
Fat’s not been in school since we cremated her diary. It’s been more than two weeks. She is probably at home, imagining all her classmates reading out loud about the no sexual experiences and the no drug abuse.
I have been keeping my pamphlet in a sealed brown A4 envelope in my bag in case she turns up; it’s starting to get a bit tatty. If only she could know how close she is to changing her life for ever.
There’s only one person who will know what has happened to Fat: Jean the dinner lady, recognizable by her loose forearms and the way you can see her scalp through her hair if you catch her in the right light.
I get up at seven and out of the house by ten past; I tell my parents that a boy can’t exist on Raisin Splitz alone, slamming the front door. I get to school by half-past seven. Breakfasts start at eight.
I find Jean at the back of the dining hall, dwarfed between two giant steel bins, staring out towards the rugby pitches. She has a cigarette in one hand, the other is deep in the pocket of her faded turquoise smock. In the half-light, she appears to have a full head of hair.
‘Morning,’ I say.
‘Up early,’ she says.
‘I came to see you.’
She pulls on her cigarette for a long time. I don’t think she knows who I am.
‘I want to talk to you about Zoe,’ I say.
The smoke comes out of her nose first.
‘Who’s Zoe?’ she asks.
‘Fat,’ I say. ‘Some people call her Fat.’
‘You one of ’er friends?’ she asks, exhaling, her jaw angled to