Me Life Story by Scarlett Moffatt (pdf e book reader .TXT) 📕

‘I don’t mean an actual ho, I just meant a date, that’s not ho’ish in the slightest.’

‘Why not? Aye, I’ll be your prom date.’

Now I was just as surprised as the rest of the year. Part of me did wonder whether it was a dare, like is it going to turn into a scene from Carrie and he’s going to throw pig’s blood and guts on me when we rock up there, but he was actually just a really lovely lad. We started spending more time together in school and he even complimented me on occasion. Now I have never taken compliments very well. Someone will say, ‘Your hair looks lush today,’ and I’m like, ‘Happy birthday’. I never know what to say. But with him it was different. I would tell him Victoria Wood jokes and make observations around the playground. He would tell me all the secrets about the cool PE group and how his mate Greg always wore tracksuit bottoms rather than shorts during football because he couldn’t grow leg hair.

The week before the prom came around quick and because my mam now worked at Burton’s, she helped Seamus get a suit for the prom. His mam came along, and we got a suit and a tie that matched my dress – it was so amazing.

That was the highlight of my time at that school. I don’t think Seamus realised just how much it meant to me. We danced, we drank mocktails, we giggled and then a week or so after prom me and Seamus never really spoke again. Not even a smile on the playground.

Around the same time, the mother of one of the only friends I had at school, Helen Race, decided to open a B&B in the Lake District. So Helen left and I was back to being in isolation and finishing school ten minutes early again. I had lost all interest in studies and I just couldn’t cope with school any more. I would pretend to be poorly constantly so I didn’t have to go in. That’s when my mam and dad sat me down.

‘We have always taught you that running away is not the answer but in this case, Scarlett, it is. Your work is going to suffer; you’re not reading any more like you used to. You don’t even want to go dancing. All you want to do is sit in your bedroom and pretend you’re poorly so you don’t have to go to school. Me and your dad have really thought about this so … how would you feel about moving schools?’

I didn’t know what to say. I thought I’d managed to hide how miserable I was.

‘Why don’t you switch schools, kid? You aren’t happy there,’ my dad said gently.

Even though I had tried to play things down my mam and dad knew. It’s like a superpower that parents have. They have the ability to know when you’re lying, if something’s wrong and also the ability to make carrying very heavy shopping bags look effortless.

So I went for a meeting at my school. I sat down on a black swivel office chair in the headteacher’s office, resisting the temptation to spin round on the chair and ready to pour my heart out. I explained how I just needed to be somewhere I could feel safe so I could concentrate on my studies. I was met with sour faces but I ploughed on. ‘Mrs Wood,’ I said. ‘There’s another school that I want to finish my GCSEs at. Sunnydale in Shildon.’

The reply I got was not what I was expecting. ‘If you go to Sunnydale, it will come to the summer of 2006 and you will end up having no qualifications to your name. It hasn’t got the greatest reputation and it’s too late to be changing schools and subjects when you are about to go into Year 10.’

That response made me more determined than ever. ‘You are not telling me that I won’t get one GCSE. If you want to learn and do well, you will. It doesn’t matter what school you go to!’

I knew if I wanted to achieve anything I had to leave. See, sometimes withdrawing and leaving has nothing to do with being weak, it has everything to do with strength. In the words of Don Quixote author, Cervantes:

‘To withdraw is not to run away, and to stay

is no wise action when there’s more reason to

fear than to hope.’

Chapter Seven

QUARTER LITRE OF VODKA AND A BLUE PANDA POP, PLEASE

One of the first people known to have invented the modern office chair was naturalist Charles Darwin, who put wheels on the chair in his study so he could get to his specimens more quickly.

The record number of fish and chip portions sold in a chip shop in one day is 12,406 at Marini’s in Glasgow, set in 1999.

Vodka is popularly believed to soothe jellyfish stings. It helps disinfect the wound and some say it alleviates the pain – though other studies say it might aggravate it. (I say you should always keep a little bottle handy if you’re by the seaside, just in case.)

So aged fourteen, I was due to go to this new school, Sunnydale, after the six-weeks’ holidays. Now over the summer holiday, puberty hit. And I started to change in other ways too. My mam took me to get my eyebrows waxed, the caps on my teeth looked a lot less like polystyrene, and yes, my tooth was still black but it wasn’t as noticeable. I just felt like everything was finally starting to come along nicely; even my face was starting to look more symmetrical which was something I was always conscious of because of the Bell’s palsy. I just all of a sudden wasn’t as ugly as I had been. I’m not saying I was