Ugly Shy Girl

Laura Dockrill

This book is for …

Contents

Begin Reading

Copyright

About the Publisher

You might have once known somebody like Ugly shy girl.

You might have even been like her yourself.

The story I am about to unravel starts in a normal place, like I don’t know, Streatham or Elm Park … except not in London because there are more trees…

A normal place where people know each other a little bit more and

Still go to church on a Sunday

And bake cakes to raise money for the church

Where tea time is at 5.30

And shops shut at 6.

And young people do not curse or say, ‘I want.’

And people still buy After Eights and buy loaves that come in brown paper bags and fight for rashers of bacon.

And sometimes share the same bath water …

A place where the kids sit and smoke in bus shelters and steal traffic cones and write ‘EMMA 4 BEN 4 EVA’ on the sides of bridges, that kind of place. On a normal road with a couple of paper shops, a post office, a few pigeons squabbling over a small discarded leg of fried chicken; is a normal brick house and inside live a very out of the ordinary family indeed.

The reason the Rodgers are so out of the ordinary is because they don’t really behave like a family at all. They are almost like a bunch of lodgers living in separate rooms, never crossing paths, sneakily stealing a blob of butter or a drop of milk. It wasn’t always like this, they had tried once upon a time, but now they were like a reject puzzle from the puzzle factory. No matter how hard they tried the pieces didn’t fit, the components not compatible.

This is Mrs Rodgers … or Camilla. Notice the tadpole like eyebrows, the heavy pencil that colours them in and the lipstick. She has worn that shade her entire lipstick-wearing life, ‘Flawless’. The manufacturers went bust in the late nineties so she buy sit in bulk online. Camilla is a time-bomb waiting to go off, filling up her day with vital time-saving activities such as making her breakfast the night before work or using disposable plates and cutlery. Mrs Rodgers is obsessed with anything ‘handy’; pocket-sized 6pk tissues, and disinfectant hand spray, diaries that come with a pen. Camilla believes strictly in routine and order, she has trained her body like a scientist would a robot, disciplining herself not to eat, sleep or even use the toilet unless absolutely necessary. She never burps or coughs, sneezes or yawns. She is like a mechanical doll. Mrs Rodgers met Mr Rodgers in the days when she was young and busty; both were two odd strays at a charity summer fête and had no choice but to join forces in a 3-legged race. They came last and laughed about it at the time but Mrs Rodgers has never forgiven Colin for allowing them to come last and probably never will … actually … this is my story … no, she will never forgive him.

Colin, (Mr Rodgers), was always a happy child. Growing up he was known for his kindness to animals and was encouraged to study biology at school to further his interest. Sadly, he suffered from dyslexia and without the support, failed his exams. Two days after his devastating results, Colin’s father was hit by a tractor and with two younger sisters and a widowed mother, Colin, being the devoted brother and son he was, saw no other choice than to take over his father’s job as a farmer. However, he was kicked in the face by his favourite horse Bracken (by accident) which not only meant he suffered from a slight case of brain damage, he also managed to lose every tooth in his pie hole. Nice. Colin decided not to have his teeth replaced. He firmly believes that everything happens for a reason. These days, Colin likes nothing more than the sofa and watching recorded videotapes of snooker. He survives on the happiness in his gut that reminds him his cup is always half full. As much as he enjoyes his nightcap, ‘cheese on toast with a beer mixed in’ (I’m terribly sorry, I don’t know what that’s called), there is nothing that makes him drunker than life itself. Colin just has a beautiful soul and although his life hasn’t panned out exactly as he’d planned, he wouldn’t change a single bit of it.

James is their twenty-year-old son. He likes these three things; cars, talking about his 21st birthday and a girl called Rebecca Great who has a slight case of nappy rash around the lower half of her neck. To his face, Rebecca likes to pretend she fancies James, but really, behind his back, she says some wretched things, aimed mainly at the spare tooth that pokes out of his gum that she refers to as ‘the tusk’.

And then there lives one other person. A person that is more private and quiet than all of those we’ve just encountered. Abigail is so shy it’s a wonder how people ever see her. For she is like a tiny speck of dust that the Hoover has forgotten to suck up. Unlike most seventeen year olds, Abigail has a very difficult life, she is plagued with constant cruelty and downright meanness. There is always somebody at college giving her a hard time and she is bullied, horrendously. The Rodgers have no idea that their daughter is so terribly unpopular … or that she is known as the Ugly Shy Girl.

Abigail walked up to her college entrance to find Matt sitting on the wall waiting for her.

‘Hey buddy, you’re five minutes early … fresh start to the New Year, eh?’ he laughed. Colleges have these people, support assistants, agony aunts, whatever you like to dress it up as and they are assigned to a case, like a detective, to shadow. To make sure that their days run smoothly. At this college they are known as ‘buddies’ and Matt is Abigail’s buddy. Some people would say that Abigail was lucky that her buddy wasn’t a tight-fisted old hag with a melting face but Matt was just as difficult to get along with for different reasons. Matt was 32 years old. When his head wasn’t consumed by a tight beanie, he had his hair all spiked up like he had used a whole tub of Brylcreem … (excuse me … I mean … Wella) to get that out of bed look. He played around with it all the time, constantly referring to it as his flea pit but the warm smells of coconut shampoo and limey gel haunted him on his day to day whereabouts; it was very clear that his hair was washed more than the hands of the man with OCD. Matt wore baggy jeans that cut an inch or two too high around the leg; sort of swung around his ankles, showing off his Family Guy socks, making him look very awkward and slightly try-hard. Then there was that skater chain that hung so blatantly from his side pocket, reflecting Abigail’s dismal grimace and every other spare reflection in its twinkling presence, screaming, ‘I’M MASSIVLY OVERPRICED, WAS I EVEN BOUGHT FROM A COOL SHOP? WHAT THE HELL AM I USED FOR?’ Matt had the vocabulary of a fourteen year old; he used words like ‘sick’, ‘wicked’ and his good old favourite, ‘random’.

‘It’s raining, random.’

‘Hey, the guys have got a football, we should totally play, could be random?’

Which frustrated Abigail because she found that when something was actually ‘random’ she couldn’t bring herself to use the word itself, she was tired of having to find alternatives … ‘Yes, the lottery balls are chosen at … melon? Transformer? Broomstick?’ You see, it just doesn’t work.

This wasn’t the only thing that annoyed Abigail, it was the relentless refusal to give-up on her. He loved it. Abigail spent almost everyday giving off all the signals that she didn’t need him around. When he spoke – she stared at the floor, folding her arms aggressively, scuffing her boots along the walls. When he sat near her at lunch – she would get up and move away but he would still come after her, like the stinky boy in class with the bad breath and the dried smudges of sleep sculpted around his eyes. He would still want to be next to her to make more pointless comments about the weather or The Simpsons or what he had eaten for breakfast. ‘Toast. Random.’ The ‘buddy’ system was even more painful as it quite frankly made matters worse. Bullies just made jokes about Abigail going out with a teacher, the girls would crack up laughing for no reason at all whenever the two of them walked past and the boys would make ludicrous sex noises:

‘FUCK ME, MATT.’

‘ONLY WITH A BLINDFOLD YOU UGLY SHY BITCH.’

Matt was so polite and so protective of Abigail he would just play along with the comments, laughing hysterically, creasing his newly wrinkled face and sometimes overacting by putting a hand on his stomach. ‘You guys!’ he’d hoot breathlessly, dramatically slapping his thigh. Matt wasn’t fooling anybody; he was as transparent as a looking-glass. Abigail knew that she had no friends; she knew that she was the pinnacle of everybody’s fun and she knew that it was her that everybody was laughing at. She just knew.

So when Matt greeted her at the entrance to college at the start of the new term, she already had a pretty decent idea of what the next few months were going to work out like. (Which is why she pretended not to notice him.)

Matt was engulfed in some meaningful conversation about Japan with the librarian. Rebecca, Florence and Leilah paraded in through the library doors like three long-legged exotic birds and began gabbling over the other side of the room,

‘Just a minute, Matt,’ the librarian excused herself. ‘Girls, you know the library policy, keep it down, please. Thank you.’ To which Rebecca stuck up her middle finger as proud as a kitten that had managed to shit on the expensive rug. Then the whispering began. Rebecca was more of a threat to Abigail in comparison to everybody else, the reason being, she was the only person from the college that had been to her house. She came over to ‘knock for James’ and ended up having a glass of lemonade and a cherry bakewell. This meant that Rebecca knew perhaps an extra 60% more information about Abigail a.k.a Ugly Shy Girl than the rest of the outside world, which made Abigail feel slightly vulnerable and certainly uneasy. Rebecca was also renowned for being a top-class bitch. She had mastered the art of being a bully. Now, whispering across the room she had Florence and Leilah suckling on her words like bees on nectar. And her strong eyes, as fierce as two axes, were pinned to Abigail, strangling her with their pupils. Florence got up and sauntered over to Abigail, pulling up the chair opposite her and swinging it round so she was sitting on it back to front. Just like that song sung by that woman with lots of hair, this was irony in its finest form. Abigail was caught like a fly under a swot. The girls had slipped in through the cracks in the brickwork and where was Matt? Having a blast with the Librarian in the turtleneck.

‘Rebecca and Leilah reckon you haven’t got any pubes. I’m saying you do. You do right? If you do could you pull out a few so I can show them to shut them up?’ snickered Florence. Abigail picked at the edges of her diary.

‘Well you have or you haven’t?’ Florence started again.

Abigail’s head was facing so far forward it felt as though it could snap. Her fringe smothered her eyes which were scampering wildly about, searching for an escape.

‘Or are you one of those girls that are dark on top but ginger downstairs. Hope not. You can felt tip them, you know. Not with a Berol though, it has to be a permanent marker really.’

Abigail’s heart was beating so quickly she was sure everyone could hear it. Leilah and Rebecca sat across the room, bog-eyed and long-necked.

There was a long, painful silence.

‘Agh, who cares anyway? She’s a baby, she hasn’t got any.’ Rebecca chuckled wickedly, threw her head back and snatched a copy of HEAT magazine off Leilah, flicking through it without glancing at a single page. Then her face contorted into a grimace and she began to waft her hand dramatically in front of her face.

‘Saying that though, she certainly doesn’t smell like a baby. Ugh, she smells like rotten fish. Shut your legs can you, Ugly Shy Girl? Jesus, I can smell you from here.’

Rebecca carried on wafting the nonexistent stench out of her face.

‘I can’t smell anything,’ said a confused Leilah.

‘Me neither,’ huffed Florence, annoyed. Both girls were clearly not horrid enough to catch onto Rebecca’s vile rope.

‘Well you’re lucky, it’s disgusting,’ Rebecca said, peering back down at her magazine. ‘I’m bored of this, let’s go and watch Amy Benton in her leotard, she’s got stretch marks up to her eye balls.’

Abigail, who had been rooted to the spot, paralysed by fear, breathed a sigh of relief as Matt plodded into the room, grinning like a happy bear. ‘The librarian is from Japan. I so totally went there for a year. Random.’

‘Another day with no trouble then. See, it works, doesn’t it? Having your buddy with you during the day?’ Matt said, shuffling his papers scrawled with colour co-ordinated notes and little scribbles of rocket ships and monsters with long teeth. Ugly Shy Girl, I mean Abigail, shrugged and looked about the room, focusing on the damp patches in the corners, the second-hand filing cabinets with the bent sides, and the rust around the runners.

‘Have you ever listened to Led Zeppelin?’

There was a knock at the door.

It was Rebecca.

‘Hi, sir. You all right, Abigail? I was just wondering if I could get five minutes with you after you’re finished with Abigail?’ She dipped her eyes so they suddenly went all doe-like. She had applied a fresh layer of gloss to her lips. Abigail noticed how strange her name sounded coming out of Rebecca’s mouth. She was so used to hearing the oh so familiar, ‘Ugly Shy Girl.’

‘Yes, of course, we’ll be done pretty soon if you just want to hang about outside.’

‘Yeah, sure.’ Rebecca grinned, as nice as pie, the unmelted butter perched on her malicious tongue. The door closed again.

‘Yeah sorry, where was I? Led Zeppelin? I’ll make you a CD, I’ll put some other stuff on there too, how about that?’ Matt said, winding his headphones around his iPod. ‘Sound all right?’

Ugly Shy Girl nodded. She rarely spoke to Matt, but she wasn’t stupid, she knew when somebody was actually doing something kind for her.

‘I’d like that,’ she mumbled.

‘Have a nice evening,’ he said and opened the door for her. ‘See you tomorrow for another crazy day, eh?’ He saluted to her and signalled a ‘chin-up’. Rebecca took no notice of Abigail as she passed by, she was busy texting on her phone. But before Abigail was out of earshot, she hissed, ‘Whore’ and stood up on her ostrich legs, moles scattered over them like bits of chocolate chip. She scooped her long dark hair over her shoulder, swanned into Matt’s office and the door clicked shut behind her.

Abigail’s walks home were never lonely, there was always somebody behind her calling her a ‘tit’ or a ‘moose’, asking her why she looked like she was going to the alps, or why she couldn’t afford a hair cut. Today was one of the trickier days. The boys were at the bus stop and she knew them all from making her life difficult at secondary school. These were the boys who chose not to go to college but preferred to sit on the wall outside Tesco’s smoking Sovereigns and drinking White Lightning.

‘Oi, Ugly Shy Girl!’ One of them tried to get her attention. It was Gary; he had once sat opposite Abigail at their previous school. Abigail recalled a particular art lesson where the task was to draw your reflection. Everybody sat around the room with their mirrors, the violin music playing in the background, shading their complexions, trying to capture their acne, the shape of their eyes. When it came to sharing their work at the end of the session, Gary had just drawn ‘up Abigail’s legs’. It wasn’t even a good drawing; it was just a very badly drawn cartoon. The class loved it, they smacked the table with their fists, stomped their feet and began asking Gary if they could keep it. Abigail was humiliated; she’d had no idea that the mirror was even under the table. Her drawing was put on display, not because it was good, but because the teacher felt guilty; she too knew how it felt to be isolated from class, like being the only sober one at a riotous party, she identified with Abigail.

‘HEL-LO! You got shit in your ears or what?’ yelled Aran who was always known as being ‘half a slice short of a sandwich’. He had once tried to shave three lines into his eyebrow and ended up cutting his forehead and removing his eyelashes. Aran had short-back-and-sides with peroxide tips that had gone a sort of chicken-korma greenish; he liked to go swimming and the chlorine had reacted with the bleach. Aran also had about five brown teeth that sat rooted at the bottom of his mouth like a rack of burnt sweetcorn. It would send shivers up anyone’s spine to look at his putrid mouth. The other boys were clones of each other, lined up in their Diadora tracksuits, Reebok Classic trainers, and yellow gold rings.

Abigail pretended not to hear them; she was actually really good at that. It was amazing how helpful a fringe can be when it comes to avoiding sounds or people.

Then she heard the scramble for bikes and knew it was about time to pick up pace. She walked slightly faster but could hear the rumble of tyres behind her and had no choice but to run.

‘GET HER!’ roared one of the boys, and so they came, like a swarm of vicious hornets, she felt them behind her. Her heart began to rush and her skin prickled against the frosty air. Abigail was clumsy at the best of times and her down-to-the-ankles denim skirt, her heavy school bag and her long fringe only made her clumsier. She ran, ran as fast as she could, feeling vomit collecting in her throat, and her eyes burning against the sharp wind. The boys had found bin lids now and those who were better at riding were slamming them together with their hands, charging towards her in an angry parade. Just when she reached the familiar kerb that told her brain she was close to home she began to run faster, pounding round the corner, tears streaming down her hot face. The boys went straight past her and rode off laughing throwing the bin lids onto the pavement, smacking hands and spitting, their hearts all racing as one.

Abigail kept on running, her bag dangling half way down her body now and giving her ankle a good bruising. She threw herself into the house and went straight to her room where she shut the door and slammed her body onto her bed – which she knew was dramatic, but that’s how she felt.

Abigail woke up to the sound of drilling. She sat up and checked the time, 4.05 am. She wasn’t childish but noises in the night did frighten her. It was one of those horrible moments when you feel too scared to sit in bed but too scared to go and investigate. She lay there for a bit, her eyes jerking about in their sockets, searching for light, her pupils as wide as saucers. Then she heard James’ door open.

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