Misfits and Mean Girls

Question 1a – what is 2⁴ in ordinary numbers?

I know I should be sat here scribbling away like everyone else, I mean this is an easy question anyway, but it’s not like they expect me to do well! I’m not good at maths to start with, but everyone seems amazed that I’ve even turned up, like I should be at home moping. Well no offence but that’s pathetic. Is ran away, it’s not like she’s been abducted. She chose to leave, no one made her. She’s probably sat in some cozy B&B – lying in fact – with her stupid boyfriend. Everyone can act shocked, but it’s hardly surprising is it? Maybe deep down Isolde didn’t fit in like she was meant to. Maybe she was a misfit too.

I’m a misfit – I don’t fit in with the crowd. Being a misfit isn’t just about wearing black lipstick or cutting off your hair, it’s about not being like everyone else. It’s about not being understood by anyone you know, about being yourself and sacrificing your popularity in hope of doing that. It’s about being the person you want to be, not the person everyone else expects you to. It’s about trying not to care what other people think (and sometimes failing miserably). But mostly being a misfit is not fitting in. I’m Isla and I don’t fit in. I never have.  

Maybe it’s the way that my hair won’t go straight and flatten down into a sort of limp stream of waist length bleached blonde conformism. Maybe it’s the fact that I hate parties and discos and the thumping of dance music that someone has created on an apple mac computer and some clips of sirens and electronic screeching. Perhaps a part of it is the fact that I like my auburn hair and I don’t dye it brown like every other person with hair that has even the slightest tint of red.

Whatever it is, I’m not like the others at school. My sister Is was though. Isolde is my twin sister, but unlike me Is fitted in just the right amount. Her hair was straight and limp and honey blonde (dyed of course) like it was meant to be. She was invited to every party and she loved dancing, no matter who was watching and of course she always knew which song was top of the charts. I didn’t. I didn’t know anything about the Thrift Shop Song and Nikki Minaj. Is did ballet lessons and bought clothes in Jack Wills and had a big group of girlfriends who squealed and went shopping with her for shoes and who all looked pretty much the same as each other. I tripped over my own feet and never even walked past Jack Wills and had a few friends, half of them boys, and we didn’t go shopping or look even vaguely similar to each other.

Is began spend most of her time with her irritating new best friends, Kate and Bex, shopping and hanging around at the park or going to parties and getting drunk when we turned eleven or so. Kate and Bex are probably the other most popular girls in our year at school.

Bex is a classic blonde bimbo, another clone who Is somehow picked up. She wears a ridiculous amount of foundation and her clothes are all a size too small, clinging to her figure like she’s just worn them swimming. She had the biggest boobs in our year, even in primary school. Is always used to say she was so dumb she probably measured intelligence by bra size, or something of the sort. Once she even stole her bra after swimming and hid it for fun. Is always was a bit of a bitch, but of course you don’t notice things like that when it’s your twin sister and your best friend. Anyway, in year seven Is hand-picked Bex to become a member of the exclusive trio known to all of us as “The Golden Trio” which I disputed, seeing as that’s kind of a Harry Potter thing, but you know, it stuck.

Kate isn’t half as dumb as Bex. In fact, she’s quite intelligent. She was apparently allowed to be brunette because she was mixed-race, so it didn’t count. Kate is absolutely gorgeous (though never quite as attractive as Is, of course). She didn’t know any of us before year seven – apparently she went to St. Jude’s in Abringdon, a nearby village – but she soon became best friends with Is. Kate can, and will, be a massive bitch, the most two-faced person I know, with the ability to make up extremely realistic yet impossibly mean rumours. Take for example the time Emily Thornston got off with her boyfriend at some stupid party. By the time she had gotten into school a day later, everyone thought she had herpes – supposedly she’d given it to the guy too. This was of course a lie. It was Kate who gave the guy herpes, before going to some STD clinic to get rid of it and Emily who got it from him. Kate then went over to the girl’s house to “tell her she was okay with her” and while Emily went to the bathroom she took a photo of the test results – positive, of course – and put it on Emily’s facebook. Suddenly Emily Thornston - the pretty one who’s good at art, became Emily Thornston – the one who slept around and gave Freddy Jones herpes. Kate was poisonous, despite her pretty brown eyes and her tiny figure. She still is, but the thing is, my sister is a whole lot worse. She’s become the person I never thought she would.

Before year seven Is and I were best friends. We shared everything and did our best to look identical. We were just known as the Carson twins, not Isla and Issie: separate entities, but things changed when we went to the big secondary school, over in Penzance. Penzance Larkenbury High was far bigger than the primary school we’d been to in our village with its cozy little playground and teachers who knew your name, and at PLH they split twins up to “help them develop their own personalities”. Maybe we would have stayed best friends if they’d let us have our lessons together, but they didn’t and after that Is became known as Issie. Within a couple of months I was friends with other girls, called Harper and Rose in my class, who liked decent music like me and read books, and Is was making friends with Bex Lister, who I thought she hated. I gave up ballet to spend more time on my singing, while she stopped getting high marks and started to fail the subjects I knew she found easy. By the time our twelfth birthday came around that summer we weren’t really close anymore, in fact we barely even spoke. Is got her hair bleached blonde and a new super-expensive iphone and I got a trip to Warner Brothers’ Studio Tour and a vintage dress. Whereas before we got the same things, now we got totally different, despite the fact her presents were so expensive. She was cool, and me? I was a misfit.

2⁴ = 16